Chapter 18 – Baelen
CHAPTER 18
BAELEN
“ Y our ring?” Charlie repeated.
With my jaw tense, I explained, “It gives me the power of invisibility. I had it in the dreamscape before the shadows attacked me.” I vividly remembered Zaide looking at my hand and guessing at its power.
“And now it’s missing,” Charlie finished. “Did you have it on your hand in real life when you went to sleep?”
“Yes.”
“So the shadows have taken it?” He summarized and sighed.
My fangs descended as anger brewed inside me like a sandstorm.
As though they haven’t done enough to me. As though I haven’t healed their entire realm. Yet they have the nerve to resort to petty thievery?
“It seems so. I didn’t realize it was missing until now,” I growled, especially irritated because it would be useful in exactly this situation. I took it from my father for the ease of creeping into slave markets and rescuing titans. But those smokey creatures had poached it from me without me even realizing.
Charlie shrugged one shoulder. “To be fair, you had other things on your mind. Or in it, as the case may be.” He gave me a rueful smile and asked. “You wanted to use this ring as part of the escape plan?”
“Being invisible is helpful.” I sighed and rubbed my chin. With it gone, I didn’t have a way to contribute to the escape plan, and I didn’t know enough about the technology in this realm to be useful.
“Not helpful if there is infra-red or heat sensors there,” Isaac added. “Or biometrics door locks.”
“That falls under tech and it’s last on the list.” Charlie replied, “I don’t see anyone else contributing a gadget. At least Baelen’s trying.”
His defense of me made me smile, and I said. “This ring won’t get me through doors, but as far as I’m aware, it makes one invisible in every sense of the word. It’s a powerful relic. Sensors shouldn’t detect me.”
“Have you tested it against human tech before?” Charlie asked dryly.
“No.” I admitted.
“Then today isn’t the day to test it. Besides, you don’t have it, anyway.” Charlie shrugged and turned back to his screen to click something.
“I could retrieve it.”
The plan formed in my mind. I was tired, but I felt strong enough to portal and fight, if need be. And more than anything, I wanted to pay the shadow back for all he’d done to me. I’d planned to find him when all this trouble was over, but with the theft of my ring, I had the powerful urge to punch something. Preferably him.
Charlie raised his eyebrow. “You want to portal to a realm which has only just been restored with a connection to the realms, to find the shadow who possessed you and ask nicely for your ring back?”
“I wasn’t going to ask nicely,” I sneered. “And he was the king. So I assume he will be easy enough to find.”
“He’s probably dealing with a shit tonne of civil unrest.” Charlie pointed out. “You’re safer here. I’m not getting in trouble with Clawdia for letting you go off on your own, and I’m busy here.”
I blinked at him. He doesn’t want to get in trouble with Clawdia? Most titans and enemies quiver with fear at the sight of me, but he’s more concerned about what Clawdia might do to him? She has him truly wrapped around her finger.
As I tried to formulate a response, Daithi spoke, “We will go with you.”
“Sorry?” Charlie and I asked simultaneously.
“We will come.” Savida nodded and smiled enthusiastically. “That way, Clawdia cannot be upset because you were alone. We will help you.”
“I feel worse about that.” Charlie stated flatly.
I agreed. “Me too.”
Charlie continued dramatically, “I think Zaide would beat me to a pulp and then snap my neck if I agreed.”
“You haven’t agreed, but we are still going.” Daithi stated, leveling me with his green eyes. “The shadow realm is open for the first time since before the fall and we will be some of the first to visit since.”
“Always the opportunist, this one.” Charlie rolled his eyes at me. “If you think you can all get there, get the ring and get back quickly without issue,, it might be worth it.”
Exactly my sentiments. It would be helpful to get the ring. I could portal there and back quickly if fate was on my side and be back to help with the rescue. But I was displeased that Daithi seemed to think it was an opportunity for sight-seeing.
“You stay with me,” I told them firmly. “If you get lost, I will leave without you. Zaide can punish me once he is alive and freed.”
“We want to help.” Savida assured me with an unusual seriousness. “It’s not about traveling to a lost realm. We can’t support you in any other way here, so let us be of use.”
“Fine.” I sighed and rubbed my chin. “We’ll go now.”
I pressed my lips together and concentrated my power on the middle of the room, and bystanders moved out of the way as a portal grew from a blue speck into a swirling pool of light.
“Wait.” Elizabeth stopped us as we headed toward the portal. “I’ve sent my daughter to guard the shadow realm portal. I’ll text her now to explain, but she may not see it. She will try to stop you, but please do not hurt her instead reason with her. There might also be hunters hovering around, so keep safe, and if you need to incapacitate her, hide her before you leave.”
I glanced at Charlie, who was listening to his birth mother, but he didn’t seem outwardly upset that I would meet his sister before he did. To Elizabeth, I nodded and then inclined my head at the faei and his daemon to follow me into the portal.
We portaled back to the farm where I’d fed on the cattle to recover from healing the shadow portal. There seemed to be a ward preventing me from portaling directly into the cave, which I assumed was placed by Elizabeth’s daughter. I pointed Savida and Daithi toward the cave while I found another animal to feed on.
The blood wasn’t even close to the same nectar that my soul mates provided me, but it sated the hunger and gave me additional strength. When I was done, I caught up with the other two quickly and we continued walking quickly up the hill. The bright sunshine was harsh on my eyes, but the forest offered a little protection and the wind blowing through my hair was refreshing. Were I not on a mission, I would take my time on the walk. As it were, I rarely took my time when I traveled. The Fates were asking much from me.
Savida interrupted the peace with a hesitant question, “You spoke to Zaide in your dreams? Was he … well?”
I blew out a breath as I thought of my titan soul mate. “They are taking his blood. I’m sure you know how he feels about that.”
Savida choked on a breath and stumbled over his feet, his wings flapping to catch him. “Oh, poor Zaide.” His heartbroken expression turned to his mate, and he asked, “You didn’t see that, did you, my love? You didn’t know?”
“I didn’t see that. Only the beatings,” Daithi replied solemnly. But what could he have done if he did see it? Telling Zaide would have made him more terrified. You can’t prepare your mind for the certainty of torture. Daithi’s green brow rose as he asked me, “You are aware of his triggers around blood?”
“I am.” I plucked a leaf from a bush, rolling it between my fingers. “I don’t intend to hurt my soul mate.”
I could feel his stare like a brand against my neck, but I didn’t look at him. Daithi might have freed Zaide, might have been his close friend, but I didn’t want to be lectured on how to treat my soul mate. I’m an honorable male. I care for him and I will protect him.
Daithi hummed thoughtfully. “No one intends pain for those they care about. Sometimes the choice is out of our hands.”
“I don’t know what troubles have passed between you all, but I’m not blind to the tensions even while everything is going on. I’m sure when this is over and we are safe and settled, you will fix the bonds that are broken. But in the meantime, please continue to care for him.”
We neared the top of the hill. The cave should have been just around the corner, tucked into the hillside under the shade of the huge trees, but an angry female voice stopped us in our tracks. “Don’t take another step or I’ll kill you.”
“Murder? So soon?” I mocked as she appeared from behind a large tree trunk holding a human weapon. Interesting choice for a witch. “You are so eager to kill you won’t ask questions first?”
“I don’t need to ask questions. This is private land and you need to leave,” she sneered. But at least she no longer wanted to kill us. It was progress.
“Your mother said to check your phone.” I told her, “she’s texted you to inform you of our arrival.”
“My mother?” Her weapon shook as shock widened her eyes. “What do you know about my mother?”
I tried to restrain my eye roll. “Your mother, Elizabeth, is working with our friend, Charlie, your brother, to defeat Fafnir, your defected family and the hunters. We need access to the shadow portal I healed only a few days ago.”
She paused, and I tapped my foot impatiently, waiting for her to finish her assessment. She shook her head and glared. “You could have captured them and are using the information to trick me into letting you cross.
I sighed. “Check the text.”
“No.”
No? No? I looked at the other two, incredulous.
Daithi frowned. “You are as stubborn as your brother.”
“She resembles him too, don’t you think, Daithi?” Savida added cheerfully. “Maybe something about the hair and eyes. Also, the glare. The glare is familiar.”
“Stop talking. I’ll check, but if you make one move, I’ll shoot.” We nodded our agreement and without taking her eyes off us, she pulled her phone from the pocket in her trousers. Her eyes flickered from the screen to us as she read, then typed a message back finally, she put the phone away again, and said, “She says to let you go, but I’m not sure if you can be trusted. How can I believe you? You could have typed this on her phone and sent it after you captured her.”
Her imagination was certainly like her brothers. But her heart wasn’t in the accusation.
“Do I look like someone who knows how to use one of those tiny devices?” I rolled my eyes. “You don’t seem to be convinced of your own fear of us. You know your mother, her words, and the situation we are in. I don’t have time to debate with you. I don’t want to harm you, but I will if you delay me.”
Her phone dinged again, and she checked it, with a little less paranoia, and sighed, lowering her weapon. “She’s used her codeword. I doubt even torture would have gotten that out of her. I won’t apologize. Hunters have been stalking this area for days, so I’ve had to be careful. But if she says you’re good, I trust her. Go. Quickly.”
“We won’t be returning through the portal, so don’t wait for us.” I informed her as I headed inside the cave.
Stepping out of the portal, yet more guards greeted us, and surrounding them was a realm which was completely unlike the one Kaatu had shown me in the dreamscape. The ground no longer looked like rubble, and although the landscape was still colored in muted grays, life was springing from the ashes in tiny spouts that danced in a gentle breeze, the elements no longer harsh and deadly.
It’s a completely different place.
Awe made my anger at the shadow king dim ever so slightly.
“When the king placed us here to guard the portal, I was certain we were in for a boring shift, but not even a week later, and we have our first visitors.” A male guard said, as he danced in front of us in his smoke form. “And an odd bunch, they are. Are you envoys from three realms?”
His companion, who was in solid form, scoffed and crossed his arms. “They aren’t envoys. Look at them. They are dressed like refugees.”
“We’re here to speak to your king,” I drawled, bored of being their entertainment.
“The king is busy,” the solid one retorted.
“He’ll want to greet the first visitors to our lands since the Fall.” The smokey one said. I had to wonder why he wasn’t solid like his friend. Was one form more comfortable than the other? Was it protocol?
“Follow me,” he demanded, and he dissolved to the ground to blend in with the rockery and, like a shadow, began moving across the land in stretches of smokey black.
We followed as best we could and thankfully, the journey wasn’t long. In a few short minutes, we could see a walled city in the distance. The ground still had large craters in it, there were abandoned homes and other relics along our path which proved how much the realm had declined after the Fall. Daithi and Savida made appreciative noises behind me, their eyes wide as they looked around.
When we reached the city, the large doors opened inward at our approach and there revealed shadow people and their gray stone homes and businesses. Some were shadows, black spots on the gray stone and ground as we passed. I wasn’t sure if that was out of fear or if it was normal for them.
The whispers began before we made it past the first row of buildings. “Akari? Faei? Daemon? I haven’t seen otherworlders since Before.”
“What are they doing here? We’re only just opened up.”
“Maybe they are guests of the king.”
“If they are envoys, there are no titans, shifters, or drakorians in their party. There must be a reason for that.”
“I hear the titans are all enslaved now. As they deserve. It was their war which caused our demise.”
I stopped dead and turned sharply to the shadow who said that. It was a female, solid, dressed in the thin, flexible bandages other shadows seemed to wear, but these looked nicer than some others. The edges weren’t frayed, and the gray seemed a shade lighter.
At my glare, her eyes widened and her image flickered as though she wanted to hide in the shadows but forced herself not to.
“Suffering does not heal more suffering,” I growled. “The titans were punished severely, considering only a fraction of those were warring in the human realm. They have suffered and continue to. Your plight has been ignored until now, but from the look of it, the realm is on its way to better health since the bond to the other interlinked dimensions has been restored. Perhaps your good fortune can allow you some charity towards others.”
I was not usually so diplomatic, preferring to use my fists to make a point, but my words were true. Fighting here would only cause more anger and resentment against other races, and there was too much of that already.
Perhaps the positive aspects of my soul mates are influencing me already.
“Spoken like a king.” My body froze for a moment as fear tried to leak into my bloodstream. But I wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t get to cause this reaction. I was not afraid of him and I would not be again. “Baelen, it’s been so long, I almost forgot the sound of your panicked mind.”
Like dumping water over my head, his words washed away all the fear and was replaced with fury.
I turned around and saw the shadow king, the crown on his head the color of bone, smirking at me. “Don’t look so angry, old friend. You came to see me, remember? I didn’t seek you out. Unless this is a revenge call. But if that were the case, I was expecting to see your soul pair and mate with you, not the friends.” His eyes flickered to Daithi and Savida before returning to me. “Why have you come?”
He wanted to do this publicly? “I want my ring back,” I growled. “I didn’t think a king would need to result in petty thievery.”
He laughed and my blood boiled as he turned his hand over to reveal the relic. The gold stood out like a star in the night sky against his dark skin and gray world. “You noticed it was gone, did you? You didn’t think of it the whole time I was in your body. I was beginning to think I’d taken something unimportant.”
The surrounding shadows seemed to mutter with their king’s admittance of the crime, but I couldn’t hear whether it was in opposition or approval. From the corner of my eye, I saw Daithi and Savida back into the crowd, probably to talk to them some more before we left and look around while I dealt with Kaatu, but I didn’t much appreciate being left.
“Why did you take it?” I asked as calmly as I could. He didn’t seem to know what it did, nor have any use for it, considering shadows could make themselves almost invisible, anyway.
“Leverage,” Kaatu shrugged and admired the ring on his hand. “And it is rather shiny.”
“What did you need leverage for? Everything worked out fine for you,” I growled.
“Not so for you, so it seems.” He pouted mockingly, and my gaze turned red as I restrained myself from knocking his lips off his smug face. “Tell King Kaatu what happened and I’ll see what I can do to assist. After a week of healing the realm, the people are in much lighter spirits, and we have you to thank for it.”
“All I want is my ring back,” I paused, “but if you are offering a favor too, then I will take it.”
Kaatu raised a brow. “But you don’t want to use it?”
“Not yet.”
He tapped his chin. “An open-ended favor from the king of the shadow realm is a big ask.”
“Not as big as healing your portal and saving your realm, I would think,” I retorted.
After a moment, he inclined his head in agreement. “Fine. A boon. When you ask it. And the ring? What does it do? Why do you need it?”
I would not give him the details of its power, but I hissed, “Because hunters took Zaide, as you well know, since you possessed my body at the time and my ring will help get him back.”
With my fists clenched and my fangs out, I threatened the king of the shadows in front of his people. “And if you don’t give it back to me, I will kill you and then I will take it from your corpse. I hope you have an heir to take over your newly revitalized realm.”
“You dare to speak to our king in such a manner?” A shadow from the crowd called.
I turned in a circle to eye the people. “I’ll speak to him however I please, and if you’d like to contest that, you can feel my wrath in his steed.” But none stepped forward to fight on his behalf.
“Kill me? Fight my people?” Kaatu laughed so long and hard that a tiny inky tear ran from his eye and my patience, like a stringed instrument, snapped. “You are a child. You couldn’t defend yourself against me before. Why are you so confident now?”
“Because I know you now. You might have been in my mind, but your actions spoke volumes.”
I wasn’t sure if I could touch him at all, but my confidence seemed to make him hesitate. He assessed me and I stared him down. I had plenty of experience in staring down kings and gods, so I raised a brow and stayed silent, waiting for his reply.
“I don’t think you could harm me, but my realm is recovering from a millennium of decline. My rule has been questioned and I’m working to repair the trust of my people. It wouldn’t do if an akari titan godling harmed their king, so I will not fight you or offer you the revenge you so obviously desire.”
“If I wanted revenge, I wouldn’t wait for you to offer it. You would already be dead,” I sneered. “As I said, I’m here for my ring.”
There was another long pause as he stared at me before finally stating with a smirk, “You are going to be an interesting creature when you grow up.”
Immortals are a patronizing lot.
“Fine. Take it.” He tossed the ring at me and I caught it, sliding it back onto my finger, where it belonged. “As much as you might hate me for what I did and as much as it must have pained you to ask me for your ring, your soul mates are worth it. And you are lucky to have found them so young.”
It was an oddly vulnerable sentiment and completely surprised me. Being stuck here and never finding your soul mate, or even daring to hope to find one, must have been hard.
I replied, “You will find your soul mate now, too. They are out in the realms somewhere.”
He shook his head and shrugged off my words, his body seeming to inflate with pride, which made me regret my sympathy.
“I’m more concerned about rebuilding my kingdom and my people. However, I could have use for two otherworlders who are so widely traveled to gently introduce the concept of inter-dimensional travel to the youths.” He looked to Daithi and Savida, who stepped to my side again. “What say you?”
“You want to take these two?” I asked incredulously. Did he have no shame? To poach my company right in front of me?
“I’m old. I take what I want and I care little for your thoughts on propriety.” He smirked. “Well?”
“We’d love to-” Daithi exclaimed in a show of enthusiasm that I didn’t think him capable of.
“But we can’t right now,” Savida interrupted, putting an arm across his mate to calm him down.
“Savida, this is a fantastic opportunity,” Daithi hissed, anger darkening his eyes.
“Yes, it is—”
Daithi continued as though Savida hadn’t spoken, “What can we do there? Tell me. We are of more use here. Where it is safer.”
Aghast, I shook my head. “You would leave before you know your friend is safe? You wouldn’t even say goodbye?”
“You are his soul mate. It’s up to you to see him safe now. We trust you and we can visit when this has all passed,” Daithi argued.
He is a coward. My lips curled and I couldn’t disguise my disgust, but Daithi wasn’t looking at me. He stared at Savida with pleading eyes.
With more patience than I believed he deserved, Savida asked, “Have you seen something, love?”
“Visions are always a valuable asset for a king,” Kaatu muttered, and when I glared at him, he waggled his smokey brows, which only infuriated me more.
Daithi shook his head. “I haven’t.”
“Then we cannot leave Zaide and the others again or we lose him forever.” Savida replied sternly and turned to the shadow king. “We would be happy to accept your offer once things in the human realm have settled down.”
I cheered internally at Savida’s directness and support of his friend. He was the better part of their duo, for sure.
“Then I look forward to your arrival. Baelen, should you need that favor, you know where to find me.”
I’m going to ensure it’s the most difficult, dull, frustrating and time-consuming favor the realms have ever seen. Just you wait.
His smirk told me he knew exactly what I was thinking, and he welcomed the challenge.
But first I had soul mates to rescue.