Chapter Twenty-Six
“We’re closed—” The man nearly chokes when he turns to see the four of us standing in the doorway of the ramshackle bar Jol had called the Leaping Lizard. The mop he was holding clatters to the floor. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Neither do we,” Owen says smoothly, lips turned up in a pleasant, if slightly terrifying, smile. He hoists the shield in front of him, taps it delicately. “A friend of ours told us you might know something about this.”
The man’s throat works on a swallow, his eyes darting from Titus and me, still dressed in our bloodred armor, to Gabriel, leering at him like he’s trying to decide where to slice, and finally Owen, grinning like a sweet, innocent nightmare.
“It’s me, Darius,” Titus finally says. “It’s Malachi.”
The man’s eyes narrow with suspicion. “I don’t know any Malachi.”
“Yes, you do.” Titus takes a small step forward. “Malachi Shade.”
Darius’s breath leaves him in an exasperated snort. “Malachi Shade is dead.”
“No, he isn’t,” Titus says. “He’s standing in your very fine establishment, wondering if you’re still capable of pouring a drink stronger than your throwing arm.”
Darius stares at him for a long moment, wide-eyed, jaw slack. “You… you’re really… you?”
Titus does a sort of half bow, and I realize that his helmet obscures his face, no different than the mask he wears as Captain Shade. “In the flesh.”
Darius deflates, hand pressed to his chest as he looks Titus’s armor over incredulously. “Why—” He shakes his head. “No, don’t tell me. Just… follow me.”
He turns swiftly and disappears through a doorway behind the bar.
No one moves.
“You know him?” Owen asks, keen eyes scanning the empty tavern.
“Captain Shade once saved this place from a group of bandits holding him hostage,” he says, his jaw tight. “He joined the Order shortly after that.”
Gabriel grunts. “I’d like to see his mark.”
Owen snorts. “At least take him out to dinner first, mate.”
“Might not matter either way,” I say. “The mark, not dinner,” I add quickly, rolling my eyes. The three of them stare at me, confounded. I shrug. “Loopholes.”
Owen’s smile returns. “Well, we either follow him and hopefully find someone to read this,” he says coolly, tapping the shield, “or take our chances elsewhere.”
“I suppose that settles it.” I take the lead.
Darius stokes the hearth in his small, disheveled living quarters connected to the Leaping Lizard.
“Come in, come in,” Darius says.
Owen and I share a look. Gabriel’s shoulders tense.
“We were told you could help us read this,” Owen says, tapping the shield once more. “How?”
“Not me,” he says quickly, shaking his head. “No. No. But—but I know someone who can.”
Titus and Gabriel exchange a wary glance. Owen sucks his teeth.
“Quickly,” Darius says as he skirts past us, pushing the sofa aside.
“Morana has spies everywhere. They could already know you’re here.
” He lifts the lip of the yellow rug, revealing a hatch.
He opens it, motioning for us to climb down the rickety ladder into the pitch-black depths.
“I wouldn’t trust me, either,” he says. “But I’m afraid it’s your only choice. ”
Owen claps his hands together. “Shall we?”
He’s the first to climb down. Gabriel follows, then me, then Titus.
“Long live the heir,” Darius says, closing the hatch before anyone can say otherwise. He covers it with the rug, blocking the light that filters down through the slivers in the wood. The sofa groans as he moves it back into place, sealing us in darkness.
The underground tunnels seem to stretch for miles with no escape, our only source of light the occasional match Owen strikes against the dry cave wall.
“Gabriel,” Owen calls from ahead, “can you sense anything?”
Gabriel is silent for so long I begin to wonder if we’ve lost him somewhere in the maze. “I think so,” he says finally. “There’s something up ahead. I can sense… wood.”
“That’s”—Owen pops his lips—“ helpful. Any idea how far?”
“No.”
“Even better.”
I start to think we’ll never reach the end when Owen breathes a long, low sigh of relief.
“Thank the Stars!” He kisses something—loudly. “Gabriel, mate, you were right.” He smacks the wooden ladder, as if testing its strength. “Wood!” He laughs. “What a talent.”
He starts climbing the ladder, but—
“Wait!” Gabriel whispers. “It could be another trick. We don’t know what’s waiting for us up there.”
Owen nods, considering. “Only one way to find out.” He takes a knife from his belt and holds the hilt between his teeth. Winks.
But just as soon as Owen reaches the top, a hatch opens above, revealing an elderly woman with hair as gray as a storm cloud and eyes like pale silver moons.
She quirks a brow. “I don’t suppose you were planning to knock.”
Titus staggers backward a step, but a surprised smile lights in his eyes. “Batya?”
Her mischievous grin reminds me of Bellaflor, the Sorceress I first met on my way to Castle Grim. The woman looks between Owen and me, her gaze as soft and gentle as a comforting embrace. “Aster and Owen Oberon,” she says with a somewhat wistful sigh. “It’s been a very long time, hasn’t it?”
I cut a glance at Titus. His smile falters, but his eyes still glitter with something akin to reverence.
“Batya,” he says with a grand, sweeping gesture at the elderly woman above, as if he were introducing us to royalty, “is the Sorceress who made those adorable bracelets you wear.” He flicks a hesitant glance at my chest, a muscle in his jaw feathering.
“The Sorceress who placed the enchantment around your heart.”
Titus and I sit on opposite ends of a lumpy sofa, facing a gaping hearth big enough to fit a cauldron the size of a bathtub, cradling cups of piping hot tea. The quaint, cluttered house smells like dried herbs and pressed oils, bitter and floral.
Batya kneels on the quilted rug in front of the fire, her expression nettled as she inspects the shield, glowing once more as it did in the vault. I touched it, only once, when we first arrived half an hour ago, but it’s been buzzing ever since, as if it wanted to be read—understood.
“It’s old,” Batya hums, peering over the rims of her glasses as she runs her hands over the grooves of the map.
“Brilliant.” Owen lounges comfortably against the wall nearest the hearth, hands behind his head, feet crossed at the ankles, at ease, as if the events of the day bore no consequence to him.
Batya lifts a brow, but a smirk tugs at the corner of her lips. “I’ll need to make a salve.”
“A salve?” Gabriel asks, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He sits in the chair closest to Batya, watching as she traces the glowing, silver script with her fingers.
She nods. “A salve of enlightenment—to give me the sight.”
“Oh, of course.” Gabriel shoots me a look. “That kind of salve.”
This seems to pique Owen’s interest. He sits up straighter, eyes narrowing. “You can make a salve of enlightenment?”
Batya gets to her feet, wiping her hands on the front of her apron. “I can,” she says, making her way to the kitchen across the hall. “Come, you can watch.”
Owen jumps to his feet, trailing after Batya without hesitation, asking her a dozen questions about sorcery and magic, his muffled voice carrying from the room over.
I glance at Titus, his head tilted back, hardened gaze fixed on the ceiling.
Gabriel clears his throat. “I’m going to supervise.”
Titus says nothing as Gabriel leaves the room. I’m about to stand, too—to see what Batya plans to show Owen—when Titus closes his eyes and releases a low, ragged breath.
“I should have taken it,” Titus says, his voice barely a whisper. “My mother’s painting. I should have found a way to bring it with me.”
I don’t know what to say. It would have been too difficult to take the painting, but that doesn’t change the way he feels.
“I keep thinking…” His throat bobs. “I never really knew my father. Calantha had compelled him for so long—my whole life.” A crease forms between his brows.
“But that painting—you know the one on the ceiling in the Queen’s Court—he never let her cover that one up.
I don’t know how, or why, but… he fought her on it, and he won.
I can’t help but wonder what it must have been like, just before—” He winces, his lips pressed tight in a frown.
“In those final moments, he remembered my mother. He was himself again.” His fists clench in his lap. “He asked for forgiveness.”
I’m careful not to shift my weight, not to breathe too loudly. I saw the moment the compulsion lifted—heard what the king said just before Titus slit his throat.
“I remember it all.” A single tear streams down his cheek. He presses the heels of his palms to his eyes, his teeth gritted. “Everything Morana made me do. But I couldn’t stop myself.”
I think of the weeks that followed the wedding—the Order members he was forced to execute, the ships he sank at her command. The innocent people he was forced to torture and kill.
“I don’t think it was like that for him,” I say gently. “It seemed to me as if one moment he was with your mother, and the next…”
I turn, closer to him than before, and place my hand over his. His eyes fling wide at the contact, and his body goes rigid.
Something that feels too much like fear spikes through me, my cheeks burning, and I jerk my hand away.
I shouldn’t have touched him, I think with a stab of humiliation.
I shouldn’t have said anything. I should just go.
Leave him alone, like he asked me to do when he was first freed of the compulsion.
But before I can gather the strength to stand, Titus closes the distance between us, his arm stretched across the back of the sofa, his hand lingering near my shoulder.
His gaze seizes mine, and I’m struck by that old familiar feeling that his eyes are like the tide, pulling me out into the deep. And suddenly, all I want is to drown—in his eyes, in his arms, in him.
“Ever since the compulsion,” he says, his face drawn, his voice a tentative whisper, “I don’t know if I can trust my own thoughts—my own feelings. You know what that feels like, don’t you?”
My throat tightens. “I do.”
His knuckles brush my knee as his other hand touches a strand of my hair. The air crackles with electricity, charged. Bright. Dangerous.
“There’s only one feeling I’m certain of.” He leans forward, wetting his lips. “I wish, now, that I could have done things differently. I should have told you the night of the Reckoning Day ball. I should have—”
Owen bursts into the room, breathing hard.
“She’s—” He skids to a halt. A wry grin twists his mouth as Titus retreats to the opposite end of the couch, his fists clenched in his lap once again. “Well, well, well.”
I glare at Owen, promising retribution, but he just smiles.
“Hate to break up whatever’s going on here,” he says, clucking his tongue, “but Batya’s finished the salve.”
We gather around the shield, teetering on a small, rickety table, as Batya coats her eyes in a foul-smelling green mush.
Gabriel watches, eyes narrowed, as she plasters on the paste. “So… can anyone use the salve?”
“No,” Batya says simply.
“Only Sorceresses?”
“Yes.”
“All Sorceresses?”
“No.”
He drums his fingers on the surface of the shield. “Just the ones who can read…”
“Animaela, yes.”
“And—”
“Perhaps,” Titus says with an exasperated look at Gabriel, “Batya could answer your very pressing questions after we’re through here?”
I think the pointed tips of Gabriel’s ears might burn crimson, but Batya begins to chant, her hands hovering over the shield, and a hush falls over the room.
Titus stands beside me, our shoulders touching just barely, enough to send waves of heat coursing through my veins.
“Aster?” Batya says, her voice a low hum.
I take a deep breath and place my right hand on the shield. The air pulses, casting my hair over my shoulder, and to my left, Titus’s fingers brush mine.
When Batya speaks again, her voice is clear, resonant.
“Where mermaids call
Born by night
Where dragons soar
And stars take flight.”
The shield rattles.
So do the floorboards.
Gabriel draws a long, curved blade from a makeshift sheath at his back. I don’t even have time to wonder where he got it before he hisses, “Someone’s coming.”
The shield glows brighter, almost blinding, engulfed in a cloud of glittering golden dust. Batya’s hands begin to shake.
“Where what is given
Must be gained
Where spirit—”
Batya staggers backward a step.
“Where spirit what?” Owen insists, panic creeping into his voice. “What else does it say?”
“We’ve got to go!” Gabriel points his blade at the hatch in Batya’s floor. “Now.”
Titus reaches for Batya, but she jerks away as if stung. “No!” She moans. “The words are—fading—we might not get another chance.”
Blood drips from Batya’s eyes like crimson tears, oozing out from beneath the green paste. But she’s right; the glowing script seems fainter by the second, its glow diminishing, the words fizzling into nothing like stars twinkling out of existence.
“Where spirits of the sea remain,” Batya groans the final words, her voice booming like a thunderclap, just before they vanish completely.
Owen seizes Batya’s wrist as she stumbles sideways, steadying her.
“Don’t fuss over me,” she says weakly, swatting at his hand. “I’m—”
A small red circle squirts blood from between Batya’s eyes at the very moment the front door swings wide and the floorboards erupt. A handful of soldiers floods the room from both the underground hatch and the open doorway, rifles pointed at us, shouting incomprehensibly.
The pebble had shot through the air, faster than a bullet, piercing Batya’s forehead before I even heard the hinges creak.
And there, standing in the front door, framed by incoming soldiers as they stream past him into the house—
Will, hand outstretched, panting for breath.
“Aster!” he roars, voice breaking as a cyclone of wind envelops me.
Pop.
We land hard on the deck of the Starchaser.
Titus absorbs the brunt of the fall, but he rolls, covering me with his body as if to shield me from bullets even here.
Gabriel sprawls on his back, the shield face up on the deck beside him.
He groans as his flesh rejects a bullet embedded in his arm. And Owen…
Owen sits on his heels, holding Batya’s frail body in his arms, her vacant eyes fixed on the stars above.