Chapter Seven
One of the first things Valerian learned in his mercenary days was to know his prey before beginning the hunt.
Normally, this involved a combination of research and observation.
Since the only knowledge he could access was his own, and he’d never encountered this kind of magic, research wasn’t possible.
He would have to stalk his prey through the mind forest, which presented its own dangers when the terrain itself was hazardous, constantly trying to trap him in his dark past.
I’ve already lived it once; I don’t have any desire to live it again.
Admittedly, there were some memories he wouldn’t mind revisiting, but those were few and far between.
His back still ached, as if the long-healed scars had reopened.
If he had to relive every one of his scars, he wouldn’t be in any shape to face a single spider, let alone their master.
He found himself constantly jumping over roots, ducking branches, and dodging trunks that appeared in his path with the blink of an eye, all while trying to follow the spiders weaving their webs in the canopies.
Following a specific spider would be useless.
Although they were distinguishable sizes, they scurried through the shadows and foliage too quickly.
Tracking down a specific prey was less important right now.
That would come after he whittled their numbers down.
For now, the abundance offered him plenty of targets to choose from.
Anytime he lost sight of one, another climbed into view.
The spiders ignored Valerian in favor of converting the trees—his trees—into their own little home away from home. Unlike him, they could interact with the forest without being involuntarily dragged into a scene, crawling up and down the mirrorlike bark with no ill-effects.
So how did one end up in that memory of the contract? It must have been a deliberate choice, but why? To gather information for Alistair? To spread their webs to deeper parts of Valerian’s mind?
The only way to find out would be to follow one in.
How could he manage that without being forced to reenact the memories?
Both times, he had only a few flashes of clarity at the end.
He might gain more with practice, but who knew how long that would take, how many memories he would need to wade through.
Time had no meaning in the forest. The webs blocked out the sky, and even if they didn’t, Valerian suspected there would be no sunrise or sunset.
Aside from his aching back, he experienced no hunger or weariness, nothing to help his internal clock adjust. He might have spent years trailing after the creatures high above him, or only ten minutes.
Finally, he watched a spider crawl down a trunk.
One glimpse showed him a memory he knew well.
He grimaced, determined not to fall into it.
Instead, he watched from afar, brandishing the dagger any time a root came too close.
Cutting it would probably hurt him in the end, but the threat made the root shy away.
He couldn’t see what the spider was doing within the memory, its form too small to track, but he could guess.
Olivia sat at the kitchen table in their apartment. Though calling it a ‘kitchen’ table was being generous, since the apartment was so small there was no distinction between the kitchen, dining room, and sitting room. The table could seat three people if they were comfortable rubbing elbows.
Since all the memories were from Valerian’s point of view, the image shifted around as he moved through the kitchen, gathering the breakfast plates he’d spent over an hour preparing.
He’d cooked more often around Olivia than he ever had before or since, using the time between jobs to try new dishes.
He’d loved seeing the way her face lit up when he got one right.
And, secretly, how it scrunched up, her mouth screwing into a puckered point, when he got one horribly wrong.
She’d always try to recover herself, but she’d been an awful liar.
Every emotion, good or bad, played across her face.
Which was probably why the memory focused everywhere but her face—because he’d caught one glimpse that morning and couldn’t bear to look at her afterwards.
She had something to tell him. Something horrible, something life-changing, something he wouldn’t want to hear. While he was cooking, she’d slipped away a few times, maybe to compose herself, maybe to catch her breath. Now she sat stiffly, hands folded in her lap, back straight.
Valerian wished he hadn’t been such a coward back then so he could see her face now. See if any traces of happiness mixed with the dread.
When the spider crawled across her bodice, he almost lunged forward. He barely stopped himself in time, fingers a breath away from the bark. He withdrew his hand and clenched it at his side, watching the tiny black body crawl onto Olivia’s shoulder, where it settled in for the show.
Without sound, Valerian couldn’t tell where in the conversation they were. He had to rely on his own, non-magically enhanced memories to fill the gaps.
“Eat up,” Valerian said, voice forcefully cheerful to try to brighten Olivia’s dark mood.
She accepted each offering—fluffy scrambled eggs, slightly overcooked bacon, slightly undercooked biscuits—and placed them on her plate.
“Everything all right, dear?” he asked, his voice higher than usual from the strain of pretending her answer would be an honest ‘yes.’
Her eyes rose from the plate but didn’t make it to his face, stopping at his left arm, seemingly captivated by the bandages poking out from his short sleeve.
He could have worn long sleeves to cover them, but they were in the middle of the hottest time of summer.
No matter what, she would know he’d been injured again. “What happened this time?”
She used to ask similar questions as she traced his scars, full of eager curiosity for the stories behind them. Sometimes he told her the truth. Sometimes he lied. And sometimes he pulled her into his arms and kissed her deeply until she forgot she’d ever asked.
Valerian expected her to act the same when he came home with fresh wounds after a mission-almost-gone-wrong.
He’d spent the trip home preparing his story, putting himself in the best light and the villain in the worst. But wounds were not the same as scars.
They encouraged dread and worry instead of fascination and wonder.
After that, while he didn’t hide the fresh wounds, he didn’t make up stories for them either.
He told her the truth, as much as she was willing to hear, and nothing else.
Her tone now was dull, as if she only asked out of duty, not because she wanted the answer.
So Valerian tailored his story to her mood. “A scrape, nothing more.” Truthfully, the skin underneath was raw and blistered, burning with every lift of his arm. She didn’t need to know that.
Olivia poked at the food with her fork, not taking a single bite.
Valerian ate his first plate and his second, needing the fuel for the magic he would be working later.
It’d been too long since he replenished his spells, and he’d been wounded that time because he didn’t have exactly the scrolls he needed.
Halfway through a mental list of the ingredients to stock up on, she finally spoke again.
“I’m leaving.”
“All right,” he agreed pleasantly. For some reason, he didn’t ask where she was going. The answer would have better prepared him. “When will you be back?”
She took a deep breath and lifted her head, finally meeting his eyes. “I won’t be.”
The food turned to lead in Valerian’s stomach. He pushed his plate away. “Have I done something wrong?”
She laughed, not the usual infectious giggle or the chiming bells. A sad, choked sound that stabbed his heart. Her next words twisted the knife. “I’m pregnant. The midwife confirmed it last night.”
His first thought, full of amazement and excitement, was: I’m going to be a father! But then he remembered how this conversation started. “Is it mine?”
Anger flashed in her eyes and her jaw clenched but she could hardly blame him for asking.
In the year they’d been together, he’d been gone more often than he’d been home.
She had plenty of opportunities. If she said ‘no, it’s not yours, I’m sorry’ he would understand.
He’d ask her if she was leaving because she was in love with someone else, or if she thought he wouldn’t want to raise a child he hadn’t sired.
“It is.” The two words were crisp and defiant, daring him to call her a liar.
He believed her. “Where are you going?”
“I’m not telling you.”
Another twist of the knife. It was amazing he could still breathe—that he wasn’t bleeding out on the floor. He struggled for words and only managed, “Why?”
“I thought being with you would be an amazing adventure—like all the stories you tell. But it’s not.
It’s a horror story.” Tears filled her voice as she talked and he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt her.
“I never know if you’ll come home broken or never come home at all!
And worse, I never know what you’ll bring with you. ”
His temper rose at the accusation and he snapped, “When have I ever put you in danger?” Even though it drained his resources, he rented a workshop away from home where he kept his volatile ingredients and spells.
He never brought them home, instead trudging out of his way to the workshop after every mission.
He’d also never left a job half-done, never left any loose ends.
The one time someone had sought revenge, he’d stayed away from home for weeks, leading them on a merry chase so they wouldn’t discover Olivia.
He never told anyone—not even the mercenaries he’d worked with for years—where he lived or that he had any loved ones.
In fact, he’d spun yarns about his lonely life, no family, no lover, no pets at home waiting for him, to discourage anyone from thinking they had some route to blackmail him.
Everything he’d done to keep her safe and she was still leaving him.
“It’s not about what you’ve done in the past.” Her tone softened as if she regretted her outburst. “It’s about what might happen in the future.
I can’t risk our child …” she trailed off.
He wasn’t sure if what she said next were her real thoughts all along, or if it was a new fear just occurring to her.
“I can’t risk our child using you as a role model. ”
“What does that mean?”
“What child wouldn’t look up to their father? Especially if he’s a mage. A mercenary. One of the most dangerous men alive. If they inherit my sense of adventure,” she spat the words out like they were the worst part of herself, “they’ll die before they really live.”
Valerian stared at her for a long time. He couldn’t talk her out of leaving—he didn’t know where to begin.
She’d had much longer to prepare for this conversation, for her fears to build until they were insurmountable.
No matter what he said, she wouldn’t stay with him.
Instead, he asked, “Will you replace me? Find an upstanding, respectable young … shopkeeper,” he snarled, thinking of the safest job imaginable, “and pretend to be a happy, normal family?”
She raised her chin high. “I might.”
He wanted to ask how honest she would be with her new hypothetical husband, but he didn’t want to know the answer. He wouldn’t be there to see any of it anyway. “Stay here,” he ordered.
She opened her mouth to protest until she realized he meant ‘at the table’ not ‘with me.’
He went into the bedroom and looked under the bed.
Beneath it, hidden by a basic glamour, was a simple wooden box filled with extraordinary things.
He snatched it up and brought it to the kitchen, dropping it onto the table with a heavy thump.
“There,” he said. “If you’re going to leave, I at least want to make sure you can survive for longer than a week. ”
She pulled the box toward herself without opening it or asking what was inside. “Thank you.” It was the last thing she said to him before gathering her things—already packed, he just hadn’t seen the bags until then—and walked out the door.
The scene in front of Valerian wound down and he stepped to the side, waiting for the spider to come out.
Two hairy legs poked through the mirror, growing from the size of an eyelash to the size of his arm in an instant.
The rest of the enormous thorax followed as the spider pulled itself straight into Valerian’s dagger.
A charred smell of meat and burning hair assaulted Valerian’s nose as the enchanted dagger sizzled and popped.
The spider writhed, legs flailing, unwittingly digging the blade deeper into itself.
One of its legs smacked Valerian, more out of desperation than aim, and sent him tumbling across the ground.
A root tried to sneak up on him while he was down, to drag him into a memory, but he rolled out of the way and up to his feet.
The spider swayed, as if drunk, crawling toward Valerian.
He dove under it and grabbed the dagger, still burning its flesh, and dragged it along with him.
Thick, green goo splattered onto his face.
The spider stepped to one side, then the other, almost trampling Valerian with its chitin legs.
He scrambled out from under it just before it toppled over.
The legs twitched a few times, then curled in on themselves, contracting in death.
Valerian ran a hand down his face and flicked the mess from his fingers. “One down,” he said, looking up into the canopy. “Only another hundred or so to go.”