Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
Ifelt the floor first, the cool slickness of well-worn wood beneath my fingers.
Then I opened my eyes. I was on my back in a large octagonal room, the domed ceiling painted with designs in gold long faded to glittering smears.
Below it was a balcony supported by ornately carved brackets twenty feet above the floor.
There were no windows, so I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious, or the time of day.
The space was lit by a circle of candles stuck to the floor around the edges of the room. I didn’t like the way they hissed.
I sat up slowly, ensured all vital parts were still attached. Then I climbed to my feet. “I’m awake,” I called out to the person I could feel in the shadows. “So you might as well come out.”
Aetheric magic bloomed, my heart contracting like a fist, and a man appeared in the circle of candlelight, draped in a long, hooded cloak in a fluid black fabric. Beneath its raised hood, a mask of gleaming gold covered the upper half of his face, its edges jagged and sharp.
“Mask,” the assassin in the woods had said. I guess we knew now what he’d meant. The Aetheric practitioner had found me.
His eyes looked dark, but it was hard to tell in the candlelight and the sickly green haze of Aether that surrounded him. Every heartbeat was painful now, like my heart was beating against shards of broken glass. I tried to ignore it and focus on staying alive, and hoped it didn’t kill me first.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Former gambling hall, I’m told. Unused for many years.”
“And who are you?”
“I am the Luminae.”
“Which is what?”
“A human endowed with the gifts of the Aetheric god. The ability to control Anima, to manipulate Aether, to wield it as the god would.”
I didn’t know what a Luminae was—Luna had never said that word—but that sounded like an Aetheric practitioner. “You’re the man who tried to kill the prince.”
His smile was thin. “It’s an ongoing process.”
So he was willing to admit to murder. I didn’t think he was much older than me—maybe about the prince’s age.
Was he rich and connected enough that he didn’t think he could (or would) be punished?
Or maybe he was arrogant enough to believe he could overcome anyone who wanted to punish him.
Given my current circumstances, I wasn’t in a position to argue.
“You use possessed humans to do your work.”
“Fate binds us all,” the man said, and walked across the space, looking up at the woodwork in apparent admiration. “A lucky few are strong enough to pull a thread or two, to loosen a knot or weave a new pattern.” He stopped and looked back at me. “I am one of those. It appears they weren’t.”
“So the girl who chased me in the alley. Where is she?”
“I have no idea.”
“You killed Tommen?”
“Who?”
“The blacksmith.”
“Ah. He was a servant, and his work was done.”
“The Aether left scars,” I said. “You killed the assassin in the woods. The one shot with an arrow?”
“I didn’t, no. A servant did.” Despite his apparent money—he wore a gold mask, after all—his assassins had all worn threadbare clothes. No point in sharing your wealth if you considered everyone your servant.
“Where’s the weapon Tommen made for you?”
His eyes narrowed. “What do you know of the weapon?”
I bet he wasn’t sure what we’d found at Tommen’s forge. “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? He was a blacksmith, and you left a bag of coins at his feet.”
He moved toward me again. I took a step backward; I didn’t want him any closer than necessary. “What did you find in the woods? I saw you search the corpse.”
I knew he’d been out there, could feel him watching. But not closely enough, or carefully enough, to see what the dead man had hidden away. In fairness, we didn’t know the origin of the bit of seal we’d found. But I wasn’t going to tell him that.
“Coins.”
“Coins,” he repeated.
“Gold. Two of them. But if that’s what you want, I don’t have them.” Which I was sure he knew, because only a fool wouldn’t have searched me while I was unconscious. “You’d have seen the prince’s guard take them. I assume he gave them to the prince and they’re in the palace.”
“The prince’s guard?”
“Bodyguard, technically. He’s also the man in the market who fought the possessed human who tried to kill the prince.” Also the gods-damned prince, but even as disappointed as I was, I wouldn’t share that secret with a madman.
“Since I don’t have what you want,” I told him, “I’ll be going.”
“You can leave,” he said, and gestured vaguely toward my right. “But I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
“About what?”
“About a new order in Carethia. A new ruling power.”
So this wasn’t just about killing the prince; that was only the first step. “Oh,” I said blandly. “You want a different guy in the palace. I don’t really care about that.”
“You assisted the prince.”
“You mean accompanying his guard into the woods? Sure. Like you said, I can see Anima. He offered me some coin. You haven’t offered me anything, and you don’t need my skills.”
I heard more people slip into the room around us. I didn’t dare turn to look, but I expected it was the same shabby assassins who’d been helping him from the start.
I was now outpowered and outnumbered. My heart began to beat faster, which only made the pain worse. But I swallowed my fear, because showing it wouldn’t help me. Better to play unbothered; if it gave me a way to escape, all the better.
“There are so few like you, and even fewer like me.” He lifted his chin and pushed back his shoulders, obviously proud of the honor. “We understand that the world shouldn’t be ruled by Terrans, but by people like us. Those who can reach across the realms. Those of us with power.”
“With power?”
“Carethia has become weak. Somnolent. Carethia was built by war, but we aren’t aggressive enough in defending it. If we don’t use the tools available to us to protect ourselves from Eonin, Vhrania, Orlash, Illarnin, it will be only a matter of time before we’re destroyed.”
He’d named each of the four nations that surrounded Carethia. While the borders weren’t always peaceful—the gates existed mostly to keep bandits at bay—there hadn’t been a full-out war in years. Did this man have more knowledge than me, or was he inventing excuses?
“But if those who are gifted hold the reins of power,” he continued, “hold the crown—we bring the might of two realms to bear. We would be unstoppable.”
“What tools?”
“Anima and Aether. We must use them as they were meant to be used.”
“Anima aren’t tools to be used.” The possibility that he might try to control Luna like a damned marionette was infuriating.
“If they become tools, they were weak to begin with. That’s their failure. Not mine.”
His logic was more twisted than the alleys I’d chased him through. And his ambitions scared me as much as anything ever had.
“I don’t have useful power, and even if I did, I’m not interested. I don’t want war. I’m interested in getting drunk, paying off my bond, and getting the hell out of the stronghold.”
His gaze narrowed. “You don’t understand what our world could be.”
“Didn’t you show us all in the market? It would be violent, just like the world we already live in.”
His mouth was a thin line of disapproval. He’d expected me to be excited by what he was telling me, apparently because Aether was not just a connection between the realms but a connection between us. Or maybe he thought I’d be flattered at the possibility of being his servant.
“Good luck with your warfaring,” I said. “I’ll be leaving now.”
As I turned for the door, the assassins moved to block it. Not much of a surprise, but I still looked back at the practitioner. “I thought I was free to go?”
“Perhaps not yet,” he said. “I need to understand if you’re important.”
My laughter echoed through the room. “I am the least important person you’ll ever meet. A girl who sees ghosts, and nothing more.”
“If you can see Anima, maybe you can do more.”
I snorted. “I’m a bond servant, working for a woman to pay off someone else’s debt. If I had magic, I’d be powerful. I’d be rich.”
“Perhaps you do have magic. And perhaps you still can be rich.”
He lifted his hands, palms up and extended as if waiting for an offering.
The air began to stir, and the candles flickered in the breeze.
A sparkling white-gold haze began to bloom like clouds within the candlelit circle, lights flickering within it like stars.
A wisp of it curled toward me, brushed my skin, and my heart clenched hard enough to steal my breath.
I wheezed, trying to suck in air, trying to fight back against the pain.
I knew that I might not survive whatever came next, and this man, who believed everyone was disposable, wouldn’t bother trying to save me.
I had to try to live. I had to run.
I pivoted and ran for the door, dropping to roll beneath the grasping arms of two of the assassins who’d surrounded me. They hadn’t expected me to run, which was probably the only reason I made it that far. But the others caught on and managed to block my way.
I feinted right. That had one dodging the wrong way, but another didn’t move, and her dark eyes dared me to take another step forward.
I took that dare, of course. I kicked out—not skillfully, but hopefully enough to have her shifting position. She didn’t budge, and the other assassins wasted no time in grabbing my arms.
The girl smiled thinly.
“Nothing to smile about,” I told her. “You work for the bad guy.”
They turned me back toward the practitioner and pushed me to my knees. “What do you want?”
“To test you. To see what you are made of. This,” he said, gesturing to the haze, “is untouched Aether, direct from the other realm. The substance of the Aetheric, which allows souls to live even as their bodies die.”
“That’s not possible,” I murmured as goose pimples rose on my flesh.
“You can see it for yourself,” he said, his arms and fingers stiff and shaking with effort.
I didn’t need to see it. I could feel it. It grew hotter as it curled and condensed around us, and it seemed to add weight and substance to the pain in my heart, like a hot stone dropped into water to quicken the boil.
This wasn’t just a ghostfinder’s trick, or an illusion created with fast hands or good mirrors. This was pure Aether. Not just the wisps that surrounded Anima, or the shadowed version that he’d trailed, but the actual stuff of the Aetheric. And he’d brought it into our world.
Maybe he was a Luminae.
“How are you doing this?” I asked.
“I willed it,” he said, his voice shining with arrogance.
The lights within the Aether grew brighter, like the stars that occasionally fell over the stronghold, leaving a trail of fire in the sky.
They moved across my skin, each pass increasing the pain in my heart, until tears slipped from my eyes.
I screamed, and the assassins released me to fall into a heap on the floor, no longer worried that I might run.
“Please…stop,” I managed, barely squeezing out the words through teeth clenched against the pain.
“You will be tested,” he said again. “Maybe you’re telling me the truth. Maybe you don’t believe you have more power. But perhaps it hasn’t yet revealed itself, and we can dig it out of you. The more powerful you are, the more I can use you.”
Fire speared through my chest, like one of those falling stars had penetrated my skin, landed beneath my heart, and settled there. I tried to breathe through the pain, to keep from clawing my fingers through my skin to release the heat and agony.
The haze thickened to a soupy fog, the circle moving faster, growing tighter around me. I curled up and covered my head with my hands, trying to protect myself from it. But the pain only grew stronger, the fire hotter, and I wanted so badly for someone to dig out that flame and extinguish it.
“Stop,” I said. “Please.”
He ignored the plea. And things got worse.
More Aether flowed in, and the world became a scream.
The power whirled like a dust devil, the very sound a flame that singed my skin.
Something inside me cracked, and my body jerked from the shocking pain.
I was breaking apart from the inside. No longer able to resist, I clawed at the skin above my breastbone, the scent of copper rising into the air as I ripped it with ragged nails.
“Breathe.”
I heard the voice in my head, not a voice I’d heard often but instantly recognizable.
“Luna?” I whispered.
“I can feel the Aether. What is happening?”
“Aetheric practitioner,” I whispered.
“I am the Luminae,” said the man in the room, believing I’d asked a question of him. Apparently he couldn’t hear Luna’s voice.
“No,” Luna said with absolute confidence. “He is no Luminae. Just a lucky fool. Breathe. I will find you, Fox. Keep breathing.”
The last was less a suggestion than a demand. I sucked in the biggest breath I’d ever taken. The air burned, but not as brightly as the flame in my heart. Another breath, and then another, and the circle spun and time passed.
And with a suddenness that had me dropping forward, the wind disappeared and the Aether dissipated, and whatever lights had blinked in that haze were extinguished one by one. The room was silent again. The candles flickered, unbothered by what had gone on.
Footsteps moved closer. I looked up.
The practitioner now stood in front of me, boot leather and mask glinting in the firelight like he’d caught some of that flame. Then he crouched, hands linked, and considered me.
“If you were truly gifted, Aether wouldn’t cause you pain. You would be able to touch it, to manipulate it, just as I can.” His gaze skipped down to my chest and the scratches I’d made there. “You are injured. But you are alive.” He sounded puzzled.
I only managed a whimper.
One of his people moved toward him and spoke softly. When she moved back to the door, the practitioner sighed.
“Unfortunately, our time has come to an end. It’s been…unusual. And I’m certain we’ll see each other again.” With that threat given, he rose, and just as suddenly as he’d appeared, he disappeared again.
I had to get out. Wren would be worried. Luna would be in danger. Carethia was on the verge of rebellion. I had to find them. I had to warn the prince.
I tried to rise, and didn’t even make it to my knees before the room tilted sideways. And once again, I fell.