Chapter 17
Late that night, I followed the shivers in the house’s magic to find Kallen standing beneath the Blood Tree. He was unarmed and dressed simply in a long-sleeved black shirt and matching trousers. “Ready to train?” he asked.
I looked over my shoulder, thinking longingly about my bed.
We’d had our first house meal in a dining hall near the kitchen—an awkward affair, considering how many people from different backgrounds were in attendance—and I was emotionally wrung out from faking confidence.
Worried, too, because Anya had refused to join and then refused to talk to me about it, instead sequestering herself in her room with a bottle of wine.
All I wanted was to hide under the covers and pretend none of this was happening.
I had agreed to being trained, though, and over a hundred people were now depending on me to be strong. “Yes,” I said, facing him again. “Let’s do it.”
His gaze traced over me as if assessing me for battle preparedness. Caedo was shaped like a necklace, and I was still wearing my dinner attire—a red dress secured by a black sash. “Should I dress more like you?” I asked.
“No, this is good. You should learn to fight in what you’ll most often be wearing.”
I fell into step beside Kallen. We turned right down the slope, heading in the direction of Void House. It was located the farthest underground, and I’d never been near it before. “What’s the trap outside Void House?” I asked.
“Thinking about breaking in?”
“Trying to avoid dying if I come to see you.”
He slid me a glance, as if surprised I would want to visit. “There’s a pitch-black chamber before the door. In the middle of it is an abyss you have to walk across. If you belong to the house or are an invited guest, pavers will appear beneath your feet, creating the path. If not…”
The intruder would fall. A shiver skittered down my spine. “So stop outside the room is what you’re saying.”
“Stop within the first ten feet, at least.”
We reached an intersection, and he pressed his hand to my lower back and guided me to the left. His hand lifted from my back as quickly as it had settled, but it returned again when the path split a second time.
I still wasn’t used to these casual touches from him. Truthfully, he didn’t seem used to them, either. There was a slight hesitation before each one, like he was weighing the risks. What those risks might be, I had no idea.
Each passage was narrower than the last, until we were moving single file through a damp hallway coated in moss. It was a mazelike warren of tunnels, and the slick moss and narrow passages made me think of…
I frowned. What did they make me think of? Somewhere I’d been with Lara once. Some dark, twisting place full of danger. It must have been during one of the trials, but I couldn’t remember what the place had been or why we had been there.
Again I felt disoriented and disturbed. So far, I could remember most of the time leading up to each trial, as well as the immediate aftermath.
Bits and pieces from the trials themselves, too, like camping in the woods or killing Garrick or holding Lara’s hand in the dark, but nothing that revealed what trait had been tested or how it had been tested.
My memory had been modified by a magic even older and more powerful than the Noble Fae, and I didn’t like it one bit.
Kallen stopped at a plain wooden door and held it open.
The chamber within had an unusual padded floor.
Mirrors lined the walls to the right and left, and racks of weapons were bolted to the stone in front and back.
The air was cool with a slight breeze, and I noticed a narrow ventilation shaft near the ceiling, no wider than the width of my palm.
In one corner, a stuffed burlap sack dangled from chains.
Intrigued, I pushed it with my hand, feeling the heavy resistance. “What is this for?”
“Practicing punching,” Kallen replied, closing the door behind him. Shadows coiled at his feet, seeping out through the crack beneath the door to stand watch, and then he waved a hand and a ward descended over the entrance like a translucent black curtain.
“Can you teach me how to do that?” I asked.
Kallen nodded, then reversed the motion, making the magic vanish. “You can set this one.”
I moved into position next to him and held my hand up, palm facing the door.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
I hesitated, then obeyed. The air shifted as he moved behind me, and then his hand was curving around mine, positioning it more to his liking. He tilted my hand back on my wrist, curling my fingers like I was preparing to catch a ball.
“This is a piece of basic magic common to all the houses,” he said. “It’s not elemental in nature or overly complex, so most of the Noble Fae should be able to cast a ward with enough training—though the effectiveness varies.”
“So it might make sound quieter, rather than blocking it entirely?”
“Exactly. But wards aren’t just designed to block sound, though that’s the most common kind.
A minor one, like the shadows I cast here or at the entrance to Blood House back when we were…
” He trailed off, and I wondered how he planned to finish that sentence.
Back when we were in an uncomfortable blackmail arrangement?
“Some function more like alarms,” he said, apparently deciding not to open the door to a discussion of what we had been doing only a few days ago.
“They let us know when a person crosses a threshold they aren’t supposed to.
And more powerful wards can delay someone from entering a room or stop them entirely.
Those are rare, though—it’s unusual for someone to be able to cast with that level of intensity, and especially on a large scale.
Which is why no one before Osric was capable of turning Mistei into a prison. That level of power was unthinkable.”
I shivered, thinking about the wards that had once bounded Mistei. Those hadn’t just stopped faeries from leaving; they had killed anyone who tried. “The spell protecting him against the other houses—he called that a ward, too.”
The spring equinox ritual had been the first time I’d realized how devastating Osric’s grip on Mistei was. Before then, I’d imagined it would be possible for someone to chop his head off if they got close enough.
“It was a variant on this magic, yes,” Kallen said.
“A ward is a prohibition at its core, and though it’s usually cast on a place, it can be cast on people, as well—so long as something of the person goes into the spell.
My understanding is that the equinox ward only worked because the house heads participated. ”
I thought about the house heads dragging blades over their forearms. It was bitter to think of them choosing to chain their own people in suffering, but they’d probably seen no other choice. “Why did he use blood, though?”
“It strengthens wards. Osric told me he used his own blood to cast the ward bounding Mistei—and the blood of many others, too.” His fingers twitched around mine, and I wondered why he was still holding on to me, now that he’d positioned my hand to his liking.
I felt the tingling nearness of him at my back, one animal attuned to the presence of another.
His hand finally fell away. “Stay like that. Imagine the door in your mind, and now imagine a curtain falling across it.”
I imagined a velvet curtain, but that didn’t seem quite right. Instead I tried to think what my own ward would look like to an outsider, settling on a gauzy veil of dark red. I painted it with a scarlet glimmer and imagined sparkling points of silver. “Is it working?” I asked.
“No.” I heard amusement in his voice. “Because I haven’t taught you the spell word yet.”
My eyes popped open. “There’s a word?” I turned my head to look at him over my shoulder. “I haven’t needed words for the other things I do.” I’d never heard Drustan speak a spell out loud, either.
There was a trace of a smile on his lips. “Magic is complex. The first thing young faeries learn about is the elemental power associated with each house. It takes practice, but it doesn’t require any language because it’s an innate ability.”
I’d always thought of Kallen as a warrior first, but the scholarly side of him I’d been seeing lately intrigued me. I was greedy for more of these thoughtful, detailed lessons.
“That’s not the only magic, though,” he continued, “or why would bestial powers exist? Why would some of the Nasties be able to shape-shift? There are magical artifacts sprinkled throughout legend, too—a bone fiddle that can raise the dead, metal animals that repeat anything spoken in front of them, impossible weapons like your dagger. More than can be explained by house magic.”
A fiddle that could raise the dead. I got goose bumps at the thought. “The dagger doesn’t require a spell to work. Not a spoken one, anyway.” It did need blood, though, and I supposed that was a type of ritual.
“The greatest rule of Faerie, wherever it can be found across the wild places of this world, is that every rule has an exception.” His smile had grown; he was enjoying this.
“Even things that look the same aren’t. Hector and I are similar, but not identical in power or temperament.
Una is…” He paused for a moment. “Different, too. She cannot cast wards, for instance, even though the rest of her magic is strong. The spell does not enjoy being spoken by her tongue.”
Now that was interesting. “Do you know why?”
His face grew blank. “I have a suspicion.”
“And that suspicion would be?”
“A private one.”
Maddening faerie. He could be so detailed in some of his explanations and utterly cryptic with others. I sighed, then faced the door again. “Fine. Keep your secrets. What’s the spell?”
“Close your eyes again. Think of the door and the curtain.”