Chapter 24 Uncloaked
UNCLOAKED
Azrion
Azrion held the parchment covered in runes at arm’s length and squinted. “So, all we need to do is solve this to wake up Elliran?”
Kat nodded tightly, lip bitten between blunted teeth and a whole sky of anxiety painted across her lovely face. “And get her back in the right body. Well, I think she’s still in her body, it’s just different. So we just have to get her body to be right again.”
“Oh, easy.”
“Really?”
“Not at all.” Azrion blew out a long breath.
When he’d arrived at the scholar’s hall that morning, the place was a mess.
An office had exploded overnight, the illusion shielding its door failing and its insides completely destroyed.
They learned shortly after that the office’s owner, Zelvax, was dead.
Orange demons reveled in their ability to create and destroy, though, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Zelvax had charmed his office to cease to exist along with his soul.
There was no doubt in Azrion’s mind that the runes Katarina brought him were connected to Zelvax’s death, but without any of the orange demon’s work, he had no idea where to start.
At least the clandestine meeting with the human Rosalind had gone off without a hitch, but then something had to work out right.
She had been thrilled to get those torn ledger pages but told him it would take a few days before she could take action against Tarzul.
From the looks of things, they needed more than just a few days anyway.
Katarina crumpled into the chair across from his desk, head falling into her hands. Damn it. She’d only been in his office at the scholar’s hall for a few moments after an entire day apart, and he was already ruining everything. “Oh, darling, I didn’t mean—”
“What if I’m wrong?” Kat peeked between her fingers, and there were tears brimming in her eyes.
“What if I dragged your poor sister into that infirmary chamber on nothing more than hope, and she was so desperate to find her girlfriend that she just saw what she wanted? Because it’s crazy, isn’t it?
That Elliran’s body has been changed into a human’s?
Balran said it definitely wasn’t an illusion, and you did say once that shapeshifting is possible, and magic is just so…
” She spread her fingers as if to say magic was everything.
The concept was indeed crazy. Mad even. Utterly preposterous. But so were many things, even magic when it came right down to it, as was talking to the stars and creating fissures in the sky and the whole concept of soulbonds.
Ah, soulbonds.
“Zaiya and Elliran belong together,” he said, and whatever uneasy tightness had briefly gripped him let go.
“Soulbonds know each other anywhere, in any life, in any body. Even if Elli was trapped inside a stone, Zaiya would pick it up and keep it forever whether she knew it was her mate or not. Not that demons can be turned to stone. Unless?” A strange thought flickered into his mind and just as quickly blew itself out.
“No, no unless. This is complicated enough without unless.”
Kat sniffled and wiped away the tears that she refused to let fall. “Zaiya told you they’re soul bonded?”
“She didn’t have to. I can tell, remember?
I painted them. Well, not them—I’m not wholly debauched—but it’s like I explained: the stars spoke to me, and after I finished one of my pieces, I knew.
Just like with your delivery human friend and the beastkeeper, or my favorite alchemist and that curious blue human, or your sister and irascible old Ozirax. ”
“What?”
Azrion swallowed at the sudden flatness in Kat’s voice. “I didn’t mean to tell you that.”
“You mean…you mean tattoo Ozirax?” She pointed to his chest.
He slapped a hand over the plunge in his neckline as if he could hide the ink she already knew was there. “I fear there is only one.”
“But that’s her squadron commander.” She rose slowly out of the chair. “Isn’t that some kind of breech of protocol?”
“Oh, I don’t deign to understand the intricacies of…oh, dear, what are you doing?”
Katarina’s face went red in a different way than all the other times, and Azrion began to wonder if humans actually might be able to conjure fire after all. “That can’t be allowed! It’s completely inappropriate! He’s… he’s taking advantage of his subordinate!”
“Ah, darling, I don’t think anyone could take advantage of your sister if they tried. When they came round to my place—”
“You met my sister at your house?”
“No! I mean, yes, but met is a strong word. Well, no, it’s a rather dull word actually.
Rendezvous is much stronger. But the truth is that we just occupied the same portico for about three and a half minutes, and it wasn’t at all pleasant, I assure you.
I didn’t mention you, of course, mostly for fear that my neck and tail would have had an unfortunate, life-ending rendezvous of their own.
It wasn’t planned, though, that I promise.
Ozzy just brought her along when he was picking up pigments, and he never brings anyone, and… well…I could just tell.”
“And now my sister is soul bonded with a demon?”
Azrion’s heart hitched. “Is that such a bad thing?”
“It’s crazy!” She threw her hands up, voice echoing into his office, and he was glad for the charm that kept the noises in, though he wasn’t glad he had to be in the chamber suffering under her words.
“She doesn’t have those kinds of feelings, and she was trying to get us to—wait, will this mean she won’t want to leave Heck after all?
Am I doing all of this for nothing? Or is she going to want to take him with us?
Oh my gods, I can’t believe she would bring along a stupid boy and make me the spare! ”
“Leave?” It took just one word to shrink the world around Azrion, darkness hemming in so that he had to grip the edge of his desk to make sure it still existed. The feel of the wood in hand was hardly reassuring. “You’re going to leave Heck?”
“That was Kalypso’s plan! One she was so insistent about that we ended up in a terrible argument, and I haven’t spoken to her since.
” Kat was pacing across the office when Azrion’s vision came back, the angry bend to her voice lacing with disgust. “She wanted us to run away from here, brave the forest, go back to Ankerick. I told her I didn’t want to—I even yelled at her about it, and I never yell at anyone, Azrion! ”
“Excluding the present moment,” he murmured, but she was too incensed to hear, thank all the gods. “I’ve been feeling so fucking guilty over it too. I spend every night trying to come up with a plan using all that coin you gave me to convince her to stay.”
“So you don’t want to go?” he asked tentatively.
“Of course not! I hated Ankerick, and life is so…well, it’s not exactly easy here.
” Her eyes flicked to him for the first time since her voice had risen, and she came to a stop, arms falling away from her chest and face losing its sharpness.
“But it is better. Kaly refused to see it when I told her, but I guess it took someone else’s love to prove it. ”
Azrion had many thoughts then, including an uncharitable one about Kat’s reluctance to visit her sister and sort all of this out, but he knew she didn’t need that kind of truth in the moment. “Time,” he said instead. “What it took was time. Even soulbonds need time to grow.”
She squinted at the wall over his head. “Unless this is all part of some other scheme.”
“Again, darling, no unless. Not now.”
“But—”
“Kat,” he said as he pressed a hand to his chest. “Think of how you’ve changed in the short time you’ve been here.”
“I’m not different.”
“You are,” he stressed. “You don’t scurry around under a cloak anymore, and you speak instead of cower, and you tell me to shut it at least half the time that I should.”
Her mouth opened, then stayed that way, no words coming out.
“You see? You wanted to tell me to shut up just there, didn’t you? Don’t you think it’s possible your sister changed as well?”
It was, of course, not just possible but fundamental to Kalypso’s story, though neither sister could have known the requirements of a heroine in a romance novel.
Kat clicked her tongue and then slumped back into the chair like the anger had been all that held her up. “Maybe you’re right, but you can’t listen to me now anyway—you have work to do.”
“I think you mean we have work to do.” He flattened the page on his desk and leaned across it, eager to be out of trouble. “If you’re up for a little magic, that is.”
Magic was useful in a number of ways, but especially as a distraction from Katarina’s frustration.
She seemed to crave it, in fact, diving into the work as he shared it with her, and it was an even better exercise for himself.
As he redrew the runes she brought him, he explained what each symbol meant—the ones he recognized anyway—and she asked just the right questions about the swirls and squiggles he skipped.
The old reference books he hadn’t touched in ages were quickly pulled out and scattered around the office.
Kat suggested using two colors of ink to separate what they understood from what they didn’t, and she took to copying the runes down herself over and over to get a feel for how they were made even if she had no ability to bring them to life.
Soon his office was covered in bits of parchment, tacked up on the walls and perched on shelves, and the two were fully immersed in finding a solution to a problem neither completely understood.
After a meal Azrion fetched for them and a few more hours of sketching and guessing, they had a small list of theories for what some of the pieces meant but no way to put them together. It was only the beginning of an idea, the inspiration for a painting that had no form yet.