Chapter 50
Jane
Long after half the audience had filtered through the Hall’s gates, a rush of elation still coursed through me. Joy and I walked along the wide corridor just beyond the chamber where Varian had finally received what was owed to him.
A smile lingered at the corner of my mouth, my head spinning with a dizzying high as I thought of Caedmon.
Lord and Lady of Mountheim. My Lord.
Gods, if he knew I was fantasising about him, he would mock me for our entire lives.
Our lives.
Gods, Jane, get a grip.
“Are we going to the training room?” Joy asked beside me. Her fingers tapped against her leg, her gaze flicking towards the few figures weaving among us who seemed intent on reaching an alternative gate. The Audience had been fuller than ever.
“Yes. I hoped we could try flinging to the second floor,” I replied eagerly.
Flinging still left me a little nauseated, but when Joy had taught me how to manage it myself after Elaith included me in their tutoring, the exhilaration had been almost enough to drown out my weak stomach. Crossing an entire room in less than a heartbeat felt both maddening and glorious.
I still hadn’t sent my eagle with a message to Seraphyn asking if she might return to teach me. For now, Elaith was fine having me with them, and he was infinitely more agreeable.
Joy was flinging everywhere now. To our bedroom, to the dining hall, to the training room.
I could tell she wanted to fling now if only to avoid the passersby, as if she wasn’t worried about how much she could draw from her access.
It took a few measly feats for me to feel tired, and yet she could draw again and again as though there were no limit to her power.
“May Zara bless your rule, My Lady,” a man said as he followed behind me, wearing a black cloak, the hood obscuring most of his face, though the part I could see struck me as familiar.
It would take time to grow used to being called that.
“Thank you. That’s very kind,” I offered with a smile. “What is your name?”
“It is Onorio, Lady Jane, from the Wandering Cup.” He faced me fully with a tight smile.
“Oh, of course. I couldn’t see you under the hood,” I said, halting in the corridor. I sensed Joy’s impatience simmering as she stopped farther along the hallway, well out of the steady stream of people. I glanced behind him, but he stood alone. “Are Daria and Jack with you?”
Before Reagan’s curse ended, I remembered Onorio in a different way.
His complexion had been tinged green. I’d wondered whether it was linked to his familiar and what form it might take.
In his shop, I hadn’t paid much attention to his face without the beastly colour.
I didn’t know if his skin was always that pale, but it was his shoulders, stiff beneath the cloak, that drew my attention.
“No, My Lady.” His throat bobbed. “I was hoping I could speak with you. About them.”
“Your family?” I asked, studying the nearly empty corridor as he kept checking around us. Joy still waited, though the crowd had thinned.
He leaned close, his breath brushing my ear, his voice low and taut. “They told me to speak to no one but the future Lady of Mountheim.”
My body prickled as I caught the edge in his tone. He met my gaze, his thick brows knitted and wary.
Reagan’s instructions on how to recognise an attack or deception flared in my mind. I searched and found nothing. I couldn’t sense even the faintest numbness, nor any indication that Onorio was wielding.
Still, alarms rang in my ears. Suspicion sharpened my focus on him. I couldn’t let myself fall for the same mistakes again, and I didn’t trust my own ability to recognise when power was being used against me.
“Onorio, may I see your hands and ankles?” I asked, keeping my voice low and sober.
His chest swelled with a long breath, his eyes sweeping the corridor again. He showed me his hands, then lifted the hem of his trousers. Nothing. No relic I could see as he opened his cloak and lowered his hood. No glamour.
“Who are you talking about?” I asked.
“I didn’t get their names. But they…” His hands balled at his sides as he hesitated. “They took them. They kept me behind to give you the message and said you are the only one who can help me get them back. Lady Jane, I beg you to help me.”
My throat tightened. “People you don’t know took Daria and Jack,” I murmured, taking a deeper look at him.
Dust clung to some patches of his cloak. His shirt was wrinkled, and two buttons hung open, as though he had dressed in a rush. “Yes. I know where they are, but they won’t let me see them. They are being held at Yeary town, in an old construction building. It’s a holding for—”
“The Scion Order,” I cut in, the town’s name flashing through my thoughts from the Elven Lords’s list.
“They said I should bring you, in exchange for them.” His eyes brimmed with anguish. “I know it’s wrong of me to ask for your help, especially today, but…” His shoulders shook, his gaze falling to the floor.
He was asking me to come.
Jack and Daria had been taken. Sweet, shy Jack. Why? Had a Scion seen us in the shop? Was this another message intended for Reagan?
Cold fear washed over me. “Have you reported to Heil? Or any battle mage?”
“No,” he whispered. “They said I would never see them again if I reported them. They have eyes on me and these people… They don’t bluff. They said it should be only…”
He faltered, his gaze flicking away from mine.
“It’s fine. You can say it.” I glanced subtly around us. A few figures lingered, but this was the public wing. People often stopped to talk here after an Audience.
“Only the half-breed who would become lady,” he whispered apologetically. “I’m sorry, My Lady.”
The subtle flap of wings surged in my mind, as if some instinct had stirred the well of mana inside me. “Did they say why they want me?”
His ears reddened. “No. Please, we can’t tell anyone else.”
This would be walking straight into my worst nightmare. My heartbeat hammered.
I should call for Heil. I should call for Reagan. But if Onorio was right and there were eyes on him, as there almost certainly were in the Wandering Cup, they might hurt either Daria or Jack. Jack.
My hands wanted to shake with anger. I didn’t need my truth-telling relic to know the man in front of me was desperate.
“I will come with you, Onorio. We will bring them back.”
Reagan hadn’t left through this corridor.
I needed to find some way to send word. My abilities were limited.
I couldn’t even guarantee I could fling back.
What would stop them from taking all of us?
The child was a hybrid. There had to be some safeguard I could summon, something I could rely on before I stepped into their hands.
My gaze wandered the corridor. “All right. I will go with you. Let me speak to my sister. She’s waiting for me.”
He nodded quickly. “Thank you, thank you. I will wait here.”
I walked toward Joy, my feet dragging over the rug until I reached her.
“Can we go?” she asked.
I exhaled shakily. “No. I… I need your help.”
Her brows creased faintly. “What is it?”
“I need to go with this man. I need to help him, and I need to fling. Can I have your necklace?”
My lips pressed together as Joy unclasped the cord without question, offering the gemstone charged with her mana.
“Should I go with you? You’re not very good at flinging yet.”
A trembling laugh escaped me. “No, you can’t come. But I need you to do something for me. After I leave, fling to the training hall. Find Elaith or Cerridwen. Stay with someone, and then both of you need to look for Reagan.”
Her fingertips tapped against her thigh as she nodded.
“Tell him I had to go but that he can use the flask we made together.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, trying to ignore the instincts telling me to stop, telling me there was another way to handle this. But none came to mind.
Joy’s eyes flicked toward Onorio. “Where are you going?”
I hugged her before I could think, feeling the stiff line of her shoulders.
“Reagan will know,” I murmured, kissing her cheek before turning away, my robe suddenly stifling.
Joy’s relic pulsed against my palm, and my own mana stirred in response.
It would have to be enough. Maybe we could find his family before being seen.
I didn’t allow myself to stop or think again as I reached Onorio. “All right. Take us there.”
◆◆◆
It was easy to siphon from Joy’s relic to fling with Onorio. The sensation was the same as when Seraphyn siphoned her power to me, but it burned less. Joy’s mana was different, eager and responsive.
A weathered stone building loomed across a wide and empty road, the train tracks carving a line between bare dirt and cracked pavement. There were no other structures in sight, only this one, its barred windows catching the blood-red light of dusk.
A dark figure slipped behind one of the windows, and my hope of arriving unnoticed died.
Cold wind swept around us, tossing the dark green shapes of the trees against a scarlet sky. I swallowed as a foreboding instinct washed over me.
“This is it,” Onorio said, sounding both tense and resolute. “This way.”
“Wait.” I touched Joy’s relic, slipping it into my cleavage for quick access as I whispered a warding charm. With the eagle fixed sharply in my mind and the relic at my skin, the shield unfurled around us and disappeared into the air. “We can go now.”
Mere citizens like Onorio wouldn’t have so much experience into warding themselves and the absolute stillness of power around him confirmed he hadn’t. Or hadn’t thought it would make a difference.
It was the silence inside the building that unsettled me most. The foyer was empty, with a dark stone floor stained beneath a thin coat of dust. Nothing about this place suggested it was a permanent hideout.
We ascended a staircase that creaked under our footsteps. Then voices drifted down the corridor above, muffled and difficult to distinguish. Four, perhaps five different ones.
A figure stepped into view at the top of the second floor. We froze.