Chapter 49 #2
They stopped first at a washroom loaded with a basin of warm water and a fresh set of clothes. “You’ve got ten minutes,” the leader snapped, opening my shackles. He shoved me in and slammed the door.
I considered refusing out of spite, but I was covered in filth from the journey, and in the small quarters, my own reek was strong enough to make me ill.
I hurriedly washed as best I could, then squeezed into the tight-fitting slacks, billowing silk blouse, and opal-buttoned vest, trying not to think about their original owner and whether they had died at my hand.
When I finished, the men bound my hands again and pushed me down the hall to a large godstone door.
Luther and I had seen it while exploring the library, but its bloodlock hadn’t opened with my blood.
Today, Ophiucae stood beside it, hands clasped behind his back—and Sorrow’s Edge hanging from his hip.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said.
“Unless it involves letting me go, I’m not interested,” I grumbled.
“Very well.” He glanced at the leader. “Unlock her chains.”
“She’s dangerous,” the man protested.
Ophiucae smiled frostily. “So am I.”
No one was willing to argue with that. The man freed my wrists, and the mortals scurried to get out of my reach.
Ophiucae looked me over. “Have you eaten?”
“We gave her food,” the leader cut in. “She refused it.”
Ophiucae ignored him, awaiting my response. When it didn’t come, he clicked his tongue. “As stubborn as Auralie.”
It was deeply unsettling to remember that this terrifying man had known my mother in every way. There was a vital part of her life, a part that completely changed her future, that only he had seen and perhaps only he would ever fully understand.
“Bring us a platter of food,” Ophiucae ordered. “The rest of you, leave us.”
The leader bristled. “I’m not your servant.”
“Are you questioning me?”
“Maybe I am. Just because we’re here doesn’t mean you—”
“Do as you’re told,” Ophiucae compelled.
His face went slack. All their faces went slack. The men nodded as one and walked away.
Ophiucae let out an irritated sigh. “They test me at every turn. I have waited thousands of years to enact my plans. My patience is wearing thin.”
“The mortals have been making plans for just as long,” I said.
“I’m offering them the vengeance they want,” he snapped.
“You’re offering the same cage with a different captor. They’re never going to kneel to you.”
His skin pulsed with a malevolent glow. “We’ll see.” He pointed to the door. “This room is the personal archive of the Sophos Crown. Only their blood can open its lock.”
My blood.
Though I hated to admit it, my heart sank. “So this is why you had me taken.”
“Not at all. I only discovered the room this morning. It’s a pleasant surprise you happened to be here.” He smiled. “One might even call it fate.”
Without my Umbros magic, I had no way to tell if he was lying. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.
“Shall we explore it together?” he asked.
Since bloodlocks only worked with willingly given blood, this was the one choice he couldn’t force me to make. Ironically, it was also the one request I had no desire to fight. I was equally curious what knowledge the Sophos rulers had hidden from the other Crowns.
I started to offer my hand, then hesitated. “Show me the children first. I want proof they’re safe.”
“That’s going to be difficult.”
My stomach dropped. “Because they’re dead?”
“Because they’re not here.” Invisible fingers tapped against my mind. But I can show them to you, his voice boomed inside my head.
I braced for his Umbros magic to seize me in its grip, but he waited with a silent, expectant look. Would he really stay out of my mind if I withheld my consent? He’d never extended that courtesy to anyone else.
“Show me,” I agreed. This was not the time to test his limits—not when I was already at the furthest reaches of mine.
I caught a flash of his satisfied smirk before my vision clouded, and a new image appeared inside my mind: Kéani and her niece, bound and seated on a horse.
They stared at me in terror as I rode beside them, and I realized I was seeing through the eyes of the man Ophiucae had sent to take them away.
Though the sun was high, we were bathed in speckled shadows from the blackened, knotty trees.
The Forgotten Lands. Of course he’d kept the stolen children hidden in his own realm. I’d sent the gryverns to look for them here before, but the dark canopy of branches made it almost impossible to search. The real mystery was why Ophiucae and his men weren’t here, too.
They approached a high wall hidden among the trees.
The ground rumbled, and an opening formed in the slab of rock, revealing a village within.
The buildings inside were rudimentary, made of the same Montios stone as the outer wall, while fields of crops (flourishing, despite the lack of sun) and a landlocked brook looked to be gifts of Arboros and Meros magic.
Perhaps the strangest part was that there was hardly an adult in sight. Young children ran unchecked through the settlement, while teens tended the crops or strolled with infants in their arms. Among the hundreds of inhabitants, only a handful were of age.
At our arrival, the younger children tucked nervously behind the legs of the older, while the adults—all women, and unlike the children, all mortal—marched for the opening.
“More children?” one woman asked. I recognized her from my days in the Lumnos Guardians. She’d been one of Vance’s most dedicated supporters. She was also one of the only people present armed with godstone weapons.
“Just these two,” the man answered. “More are coming from Meros soon.”
My heart stopped. Was Ophiucae planning to do the same to Meros that he’d done to Sophos?
The woman squinted at Kéani. “She’s too old.”
“He says she stays with the girl.”
“We only agreed to the children. She should be dead with the others.”
He grunted in agreement.
The woman jerked her head toward a pile of empty wooden barrels.
“We’ve hardly got any fresh water left. The children bathe in the stream—it’s not safe to drink.
Food is running low, too, and we can’t get outside the wall to get more.
I’ll take the girl, but that woman can go freeze in h—” Her voice choked off as her eyes glazed over.
A moment later, she gave a hurried nod. “We’ll take them both. ”
I could feel the man’s confusion, but I knew what Ophiucae had done—just like I knew why the barrels were suddenly brimming with water and the crops had begun growing at impossible speed.
It terrified me to see the things his magic could do from so far away. He could probably kill every Descended in Emarion with a snap of his fingers.
So why hadn’t he?
My suffering lasted for centuries, Ophiucae said. Why should theirs be quick?
I startled at his voice in my mind, even more at the realization that he’d probably just heard my every thought.
He moved us into Kéani’s head, allowing me to see through her eyes as the Guardian woman pointed out where she and her niece would sleep, the chores they would share, and the flameroot they were required to take every day.
My attention lingered on the flameroot. The Forgotten Lands existed in a strange limbo of control.
It was originally Omnos, the long-lost tenth realm, but after the Kindred changed the Forging spell, it became part of Montios, too.
Though I’d lifted the Forging’s ban on foreign magic in all the realms to give the Descended a fighting chance to survive his attacks, as the Crown of Omnos, Ophiucae should have been able to overrule me and reinstate it here.
If he was relying on the flameroot to suppress their magic instead, perhaps he feared the Forging magic was stronger than his.
Or perhaps he feared mine was.
If he was still listening to my thoughts, he offered no response.
He did, however, keep us in Kéani’s mind long enough for me to see that the other children were unhurt.
I also caught sight of the two missing Lumnosian women caring for the infants.
They eyed both Kéani and the Guardian woman with equal unease, as well as the weapon-bearing women positioned along the village wall.
Are all the female Guardians here? I asked inside my head.
This time, Ophiucae did answer: Most. A few stay with the men to handle their cooking and mending.
Back in my physical body, I felt myself scowl. There was no dishonor in cooking or mending, and certainly none in caring for the children. Still, I had to wonder . . .
Did the women choose their roles, I asked, or did Vance choose it for them?
I told him if anything happened to the children, I’d do the same to him, Ophiucae answered. Apparently, he didn’t trust his men.
I wasn’t convinced the children’s welfare was Vance’s real motive, even with his neck on the line. The more I learned about him, the more his vision of Emarion looked a lot like the Crowns’, but with the whip in his hand instead of theirs.
Ophiucae’s laughter echoed in my head. What was it you said earlier . . . new captor, same cage?
My mood turned dark. I’ve seen enough.
The settlement grew fuzzy as we receded from Kéani’s mind, though it wasn’t my own head I returned to. Through the eyes of the man who’d escorted her here, I watched him hand off the reins of the horses to a Guardian woman inside the wall.
“Eat ’em or keep ’em,” he said. “Up to you.”
“Don’t you need one to get back?” she asked.
He gave no answer as the wall sealed shut. He turned and walked into the woods.
This man betrayed you, did he not? Ophiucae asked.
I couldn’t answer. I wasn’t even sure who this man was.
He walked until the settlement was too far away to see, then he stopped beside a tree with a large, wide trunk.
Its blackened bark was dotted with patches of healthy brown, as if a coat of ash had been partially wiped away.
Up high on its knobby branches, a few emerald leaves emerged from scattered buds.