Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
“Is he meeting the Aetheric practitioner?”
Red snorted. “Without an army? Why would he do that?”
I held out the note.
Red looked at it, and the doubt in his eyes faded to hard, cold fear. “Where did you get this?”
“His rooms. In the fireplace, where he burned it, or thought he had. Tell me.”
Red put aside his tools and rose. “I don’t know the details. Only that he took Galen and two soldiers to a meeting outside the stronghold. Surely he wouldn’t…”
“He wanted to draw out the practitioner. I suggested using me as bait, and he refused. Then the practitioner gives him a chance to meet outside the stronghold, where there’s much less risk of injury to civilians.
He thinks the practitioner is weak from our fight, and he thinks doing it will protect me. ”
“That won’t be a meeting,” Red said. “It will be a consensual assassination.”
“We have to find him,” I said. “And we need more soldiers.”
“I don’t know where they’ve gone,” Yue said.
“Where would they go?” Red asked me.
I tried to put myself in the Aetheric practitioner’s shoes.
Or cloak, anyway. “He must have a place relatively close to the stronghold; humans can’t travel very far through the Aetheric, and I don’t think he’d want to waste time in a carriage.
He wears a mask. Could be part of the costume, but I think he doesn’t want anyone to know his identity.
So he’d want a place that’s secluded and has places to hide.
In the foothills, maybe, where he can disappear in the woods but get to the stronghold quickly when he needs to. ”
I looked at Red. “You said Jonas was killed outside the stronghold. Where?”
“Down the road a bit from the garden—which is guarded by the prince’s soldiers now.”
Where the Aetheric practitioner had worked before. And we found Tommen in the abandoned house not far from there.
“Do you have a map of that area?” I asked, and rolls of parchment were checked until the correct map was found. It was spread on the table, its edges curled and flaking from use.
“The garden is here,” I said, and pointed. I traced a finger along the route we’d taken to the house. “This is where we found Tommen and chased the assassin through the woods. It will be near here.”
“Still a big area,” Yue said.
“Once we get there, I’m pretty sure we’ll find it. There will be Aetheric.”
“We?” Red asked.
“I’m going, too. We fight magic with magic.” And I hoped to the gods I could figure out a way to do that.
I rode with Yue, and wasn’t surprised by the bloom of Aether over the hills near Tommen’s house. I signaled everyone to a stop before we reached it. I dismounted and told Red what I’d seen.
“There may be assassins in the woods,” I added. “He was watching with an archer last time.”
Red nodded. “Yue, take your people through the woods, make a circle around the house.” Her group dismounted and tied up the horses. “Pax, take your people farther down the road. He’s working this area, so maybe he’s got a house. If we miss him here, we can grab him there.”
They nodded and moved silently away.
Red looked at me, hands on his hips and brow furrowed. “What do you need from us?”
“Don’t worry about me—just save the prince.”
We all had our roles to play.
We walked in silence, me in front and Red and the others behind. The fight was already underway outside the house, where Galen and the others were engaged in a heated battle against human assassins. Swords clanged, blood spattered the ground.
Where in Oblivion was Nik?
I felt no pinch, and none of these assassins appeared to be possessed; maybe the practitioner was exhausted like the rest of us.
“Stop!” I called out. They didn’t, but the practitioner stepped out of the house and walked slowly through the fighting around him. Two human assassins walked behind him, the prince between them, each of them holding an arm. His eyes were open, but there was a bruise on his cheekbone.
The ember ignited and burned suddenly white-hot. I was too furious to feel the accompanying pain.
“Let him go,” I said, teeth bared.
“I heard you were living in the palace,” the practitioner said. “Now you’ve shown up to save a Lys’Careth. I suppose you’ve made your choice.”
“My choice is peace. My choice is not killing civilians because you’re hungry for power. Let him go. You know you can’t win.”
“Of course I can. With a little help. Give me your magic, and I’ll let him live.”
I heard Red shift behind me, but he stayed quiet.
“You want to bring down the wrath of the Emperor Eternal upon you before you even have an army? Not a good strategy.”
“If I have your magic, it won’t matter.”
“You vastly overestimate my skills. You’re still alive, after all. And even if you were able to take whatever magic I have, why do you think you could use it? You can’t steal magic from me.” That one was a guess, but it sounded logical.
“Let’s see,” he said, and before I could brace myself, he threw out his arm and let Aether flow toward us, tinged with sickly green. I’d baited him, keeping his attention away from his assassins and the prince. And now I’d pay the price for that strategy.
It was opaque as a cloud, thick as water, and sparkling with energy.
I closed my eyes and let the wave hit me.
The ember became a flame, and my heart was battered with pain.
The remains of the seal, trying to protect me from what my parents had believed would hurt me, had become my greatest weakness.
I hit the ground and squeezed my eyes closed. “Luna,” I said, a bare whimper.
“She cannot be with you. Not right now.” This was the voice of the cloaked man I’d met in the Aetheric. The one I’d named Lochryn. “Breathe.”
“Why are Guardians always telling humans to breathe?”
“Because we can’t do it for you, obviously.”
“Hurts too much.” I could hear the others’ voices, but they sounded so far away. I wasn’t sure if they could see me through the haze, much less move through it.
“Do it anyway.”
“Okay,” I said. I closed my eyes and pursed my lips. Quick, short breaths.
“Good,” the voice said.
The pain didn’t ease, but I found I could live through it. Light shifted and changed, the effect visible even though my eyes were closed. The lights shifted into a rainbow of colors, shimmering and sparkling against the stone. It was beautiful, not unlike the River of Souls, but filled with color.
I lifted a hand and the light stirred, flowing around my fingers like water around a pebble. It was warm, but the heat was soothing. It was a relief compared to the fire in my heart.
“Not much longer now,” the voice said.
“Because I’m dying?” I whispered, not expecting an answer.
“You are not dying. This is not death. It is a removal.”
“What does that mean?”
The dots of light flowed down my hand and up my arm.
“Only a moment more.”
The Aetheric chill crept up my body as the lights moved, and they gathered on my left hand, too. Should I have been fighting this? Was it the work of some enemy? My suspicions were strong for a reason; they’d kept me alive.
“Am I supposed to fight back?”
The ember flared again, and I clutched a fist against my chest, lungs frozen against the sudden pain.
“Do not fight. They are not hurting. They are healing.”
“Healing what?” I managed, trying to breathe despite the tightness in my lungs, each breath strangled. The lights moved down my arms like fluid.
“What was broken long ago to keep you hidden, even from me.”
“You mean the seal?”
There were voices in the light, whispering things I couldn’t hear or understand but recognized as words nonetheless. There was a rhythm. A beat. And power with it.
“Now is the time for your fight to begin. Get ready.”
The beat grew louder as the lights covered my legs and abdomen, working their way to my heart. But the seal didn’t want to break. It hurt for a reason. To be broken was to abandon its responsibility.
Infused with Aether, the ember flared again, and I thought my skin was boiling, bubbling. The lights kept moving, progressing, a wave that crashed across the ember…and then the pain simply fell away.
The ember still smoldered, but it had been transformed. It no longer fought with the remains of the seal. It was gloriously warm now, the combustion of a different kind of energy. Of smiles and sunshine and embraces and passion.
This fire had burned forever, as eternal as our world, as the Aetheric, as the emperor who’d claimed this land.
And like all souls, it burned brightest.