28 The Gauntlet
The Gauntlet
“Reggie?” a voice calls.
I clench my fist down hard on that last thread, right before it slips away from me. One last spider silk filament tethers my soul to my body as my heart skips a beat and my eyes fly open.
“Zara?”
She’s standing there, impossibly. Holding Meredith by one hand, clinging to the frame of an open door with the other.
Meredith’s eyes are wide, gazing past me to the still-raging magical storm above us. She smiles in pure awe, not a trace of fear, as only a child can manage. She takes a step forward, reaches toward the magic, and I snatch for her in panic.
Her fingers are toddler sticky; her tiny palm in mine feels like home.
“What are you doing here?” Zara asks me. There’s no awe in her voice, only fear in her eyes. “I love you. Don’t go, Reggie, don’t go.”
“I just wanted to—” I can’t tell her.
“We shouldn’t be here. Let’s go,” Zara says, tugging on Meredith’s other arm.
I take a stuttering step so I don’t let go of Meredith. The force dragging on my gloved arm recedes, but it’s sticky still, like I’m stuck in quicksand.
“Let’s go, Reggie,” Zara says insistently, hauling hard on the chain our linked hands make. “I love you,” she says again.
“I love you, too, Zara.”
I strain against my armored hand. Meredith and Zara don’t belong here.
My hand slides free with a jolt, and suddenly the magic, the swirling darkness, is gone.
I’m gasping on the floor of my lab, Zara kneeling over me, Meredith in her arms. The lab is in disarray, as if a hurricane swept through.
One of the guards normally responsible for minding us is groaning on the ground, blood trickling from his forehead as he struggles to his feet.
Another is pulling debris off the kicking feet of the third.
I’m still wearing the strange glove. A Gauntlet. Silver armor with darkest shimmering black shining through cracks that run like veins throughout it. I’m myself again. But I can feel the pull still in my hand, the call of that endless void. It’s a fight to control it.
“What did you do?” Zara asks me.
Before I can answer, one of the guards yanks Zara away. She yelps and nearly drops Meredith.
Anger, that red-hot rage I felt deep in that magic space, washes over me.
The Gauntlet I’m wearing calls to me. Shoves itself through the door deep in my mind, and I’m powerless to stop it.
It feels wrong, but it tastes like power.
The knowledge of what I’ve created hits me all at once.
A gate. The glove is a gate, a conduit forcibly shoving open the door and leaching magic out.
Exactly what I promised myself I wouldn’t make for my mother with those collars.
A thrill runs through my veins as I wrestle with it, determined to control it.
“Stop,” I say coldly.
The guard holding Zara disregards me entirely. The other two converge, stepping in between me and my sisters as I get to my feet.
“I said, stop,” I say again.
They ignore me.
“Zara!” Meredith yelps as one guard tries to pry her from Zara’s arm.
I reach outward, my gloved hand moving in tandem with my mind, with the magic I can barely keep a hold on.
My vision blurs, and then I think I can see something else.
Tendrils of energy. My fingers curl in the air, and somehow I know what to look for, what to reach for.
The guard holding Zara gasps and goes rigid before collapsing.
She writhes and screams on the ground as I push magic, direct raw energy, to every nerve ending in her mind and squeeze.
I know exactly what she feels, and I relish it.
That sharp pain I felt, that first sensation when I crossed the threshold; I remember it, and I shove it down her throat.
“You should have listened to me,” I say, a satisfied smirk creeping onto my face, though she can’t see it from under my mask.
Zara shuffles backward, pulling Meredith with her.
Another guard moves toward me with a sharp motion, and it’s easy, instinctual, to extend my grasp to encompass him, too, and he folds in an instant.
I look at the third guard, frozen, eyes wide in terror through his half mask.
I drop my hand to my side, and instantly the guards are free, their screams quiet. The man retches onto the ground before lying unmoving. The woman, panting, crawls backward, clutching at an overturned table for support, and she stands.
“Go,” I say, pointing toward the door.
The lone guard standing hesitates. “Our orders are to watch the girls.”
“I said to go,” I say calmly, reaching out again.
He flinches. This time I’m gentler. I grab and hold with enough pressure to make him gasp. His eyes widen, and he babbles pleas. I squeeze a tiny bit. He whimpers, and I feel a thrill at how easy it is to control—and how easy he is to control—now that I understand how to.
“All of you, get out. I won’t ask nicely again.” I nudge the man on the ground with my foot. “And take him.”
This time, they comply without hesitation. The two left standing don’t even bother helping the downed guard to his feet. One grabs his legs and one lifts him under his shoulders and they haul him out.
“Are you both all right?” I ask my sisters after the guards have gone.
“Yes,” Zara says. She won’t meet my eyes. Meredith nods and curls into Zara.
I reach for them without thinking, and Zara flinches, her eyes on my gloved hand.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say sharply, dropping my hand, glad the mask hides the hurt I’m sure is evident in my eyes.
“What is that thing?” Zara asks, looking at my glove.
I hold it up, flex my fingers, the silver glinting in the few fluorescent lights that remain unbroken.
The swirling shadows running along the cracks of the silver surface seem to consume the light.
When I flex my fingers and twist my wrist, miniature voids are visible in every joint.
The thing is like a black hole, dangerous, dark. But I’m more fascinated than scared.
“A Gauntlet,” I answer Zara. “Protection. A weapon.”
She shakes her head. “It’s wrong. It’s bad.”
“No,” I say. “It’s freedom. It’s power. It will save us.”
I’ll let word reach my mother before I show her what I’ve done.
The first thing I do is add protection—spells to tie this thing to me.
I don’t think anyone but me could use it, in any case, with the way it’s tied to my own magical signature.
But I add an old blood spell to key it to my specific magic, to ensure no one else can use it.
I’m not stupid, and I know the first thing my mother will do is try to take this from me.
Between the lab I destroyed and the guards I punished, I’m convinced Adele will know within hours, if not minutes, what I’ve done.
I don’t wait long enough for her to come to me, though.
This will be on my terms. I stalk through the halls to her office.
No one is allowed to go in without express permission.
It’s an impressive space. A long hallway leading to a cavernous opening in the cliff face.
The open side is a wall entirely made of magically shielded glass.
It gives the impression it’s open air, that Adele might throw you off the cliff face on a whim if you piss her off.
It’s a facade of danger that doesn’t scare me anymore after a taste of the real thing.
The guard stationed at the entrance tries to prevent my intrusion, but with a flick of my hand, he’s writhing on the ground, screaming in agony. No one tries to stop me after that, and I stalk my way down the hallway.
Adele is pacing by the glass wall, staring up at the stars. The last vestiges of a wistful look are still in her eyes as she takes in my approach and I shut the door carefully behind me. Several members of her personal guard, her perpetual shadows, linger.
“Out,” I command. They don’t move, and Adele laughs.
“You don’t get to give those orders,” Adele says.
Adele eyes my gloved hand without surprise as I raise my arm. She watches with clinical interest at first, and then something like hope crosses her eyes as I force the guards to leave.
“I was right. You had it in you all along. You simply needed the right motivation.”
“I will no longer be tailed by guards like I’m a child who needs a babysitter. Give me back my sisters. I’ll do what I like, when I choose, how I choose.”
“Or what, Regina?” Adele says scathingly.
I want to crush her, wrap the metal hand around her throat, and squeeze until I crush the life from her.
Instead, I remember amber eyes and promises I didn’t keep.
I won’t let her wield me as a weapon any longer.
I won’t let her make me a murderer. So I settle for reaching with the magic.
It’s harder with her, and I’m not sure why.
I grit my teeth and grab, holding on with all my might as she tries to wriggle away.
Her mind is slippery as an eel, familiar yet foreign. I know her almost as intimately as I know myself, yet she feels almost alien. Maybe her mind is something more, after all. Her pupils dilate and she hisses, but she won’t give me the satisfaction of watching her scream.
“Or I will hurt you. I will make you suffer. I’ll take you apart slowly until there’s nothing left,” I say, stepping close, pulling my mask off with my free hand. Keeping my eyes cold, I lean in and whisper my threats. She falters, a single unsteady step, her nostrils flaring as I drop my hand.
“Impressive. You can try, but there’s hardly any of me left for you to take,” she says, recovering her composure.
My Gauntlet twitches, then starts to rise, dragging my arm along with it. I growl and yank my hand back. Rather, I try to yank my hand back. My control over my own arm fails me.
“What’s happening?” I whisper. It points toward Adele, my own fingers curling uselessly inside the Gauntlet.
“You will do as I wish,” she says.
My free hand scrabbles at the cool metal of the Gauntlet as I try in vain to remove it.
“I don’t think so, Regina. Weapons stay on you at all times.”
She’s breathing hard, nearly panting with effort, but she’s smiling. Her hand is outstretched, mirroring my own, mirroring the Gauntlet’s actions.
“No, no, no, no—” I gasp. “I keyed it to me, only me.” I desperately pull and flail, but my arm remains stuck as if in quicksand. I don’t understand what mistake I made. I don’t understand how this is possible.
“We’re the same, you and I. My blood in your veins. Of course I can use the weapon you made for me,” Adele says.
Same. One. Of course.
That can’t be right. It shouldn’t work like that, but somehow Adele is still controlling my arm, this weapon. Even my subconscious agrees with her. My stomach turns as other implications run through my mind.
I have no control, am only along for the ride when the Gauntlet gently replaces my mask.
When she calls in the guards. When she makes me demonstrate what the Gauntlet can do on one of them.
Then a second. And a third. The pain stops only when I stop fighting her, when I perform of my own accord.
A numb acquiescence sinks over me. I only stop when they are all terrified of me.
It’s the first time she tells me she’s proud of me.