Chapter 41 Accept Help from Heroes
(Even When It Physically Pains You)
Kazimir
Pass the jam, would you?” Sebastian asked Vex, who was seated across from him at the war room table.
The massive obsidian surface—the one Arabella and I had destroyed and subsequently replaced—was currently covered in an incongruous spread of breakfast foods.
Scones (Sebastian’s contribution that I refused to eat on principle), bacon, eggs, and Griffin’s very first attempt at pancakes that had somehow achieved sentience and were trying to escape their plate.
“Raspberry or blackberry?” Vex asked.
“Raspberry, please. Though they’re both excellent. Who made these?”
“—and then,” Griffin continued, gesticulating wildly with a piece of bacon, “this apprentice applicant writes that his greatest magical achievement was ‘successfully animating his grandmother’s dentures to bite his uncle at a family dinner.’ Can you imagine?
” He turned to Sebastian with a grin. “I mean, points for creativity, but that’s not exactly what we’re looking for in a citadel enchanter. ”
Sebastian laughed, nearly dropping jam onto his shirt. “Are you going to accept him?”
“Of course not.” Griffin paused with his bite of wriggling pancake halfway to his mouth, then added sheepishly, “Though I did ask for details on that spell matrix. Purely for academic purposes.”
I listened to this exchange while pretending to study the maps spread between the food. Griffin had clearly overcome his hero worship somewhere on our journey and was now treating Sebastian like an old friend rather than a deity to be revered from afar.
“The kitchen staff made them,” Vex replied to Sebastian’s earlier question. “Though I did suggest adding cardamom to the blackberry. It pairs well with the fruit’s natural tartness.”
“Brilliant!” Sebastian beamed. “There’s this little bakery in—”
“For fuck’s sake,” Thorne interrupted, stabbing a sausage. “We get it. You like jam. Some of us are trying to eat without a side of courtship rituals.”
“No one’s forcing you to listen,” Vex said mildly, though I caught the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth. “You could always take your breakfast elsewhere.”
“And miss whatever chaos is about to unfold?” Thorne gestured at the room with his fork. “Not a chance. Besides, someone needs to make sure the pretty lord doesn’t accidentally seduce half the citadel with his earnest appreciation of preserves.”
Sebastian flushed slightly but lifted his chin. “I hardly think discussing jam constitutes—”
“You made three separate varieties of flowers bloom just from Vex acknowledging your existence,” Thorne pointed out. “There’s an entire garden sprouting under your chair.”
I glanced down. He wasn’t wrong. Delicate white flowers were indeed pushing up through the cracks in the stone floor, their petals unfurling in Sebastian’s direction. Maybe there was something to Arabella’s theory about Vex and Sebastian. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
“That’s unintentional,” Sebastian muttered, and the flowers immediately wilted.
“I’m just happy to be on solid ground again.
Or rather, at least feel like I’m not floating in the sky.
Thank the gods that the seasickness wasn’t as bad the second time around.
Though I could have done without the captain barking ‘Over the side!’ every time she saw me. ”
Thorne jerked his thumb at me. “Take it up with management.”
Arabella, who had been unusually quiet throughout this exchange, finally looked up from the tea she’d been nursing. “I’m glad to be home too.” She smiled softly, and some of the tension I’d been carrying since yesterday eased.
Unsurprisingly, she’d been subdued since the memory incident, and I’d been watching her closely, noting the shadows under her eyes and the way she kept touching her temple when she thought no one was looking.
She saw her mother’s killer, the voice said darkly. She has a score to settle.
So did I. Thanks to Arabella’s description of the sorceress, I knew exactly who to hunt, though I’d long assumed—hoped—that particular woman was dead.
Gray robes with red stitching like veins of blood.
Sharp cheekbones and gray eyes. The scent of bitter herbs and old blood.
Every detail Arabella had shared yesterday matched perfectly with memories I’d spent years trying to bury.
The description had been rattling around in my skull ever since, a venomous snake coiling tighter with each passing hour.
I shoved the thought away, along with the intrusive thoughts. One crisis at a time. Today was about preventing an apocalypse, not settling old scores. That particular reckoning could wait until after we’d secured the heroic bloodlines.
The Shadow King’s essence might be bleeding through, but I’d be damned if I’d let it use my old wounds to control me.
“Right,” I said, pushing back from the table. “As delightful as this domestic scene is, we have an apocalypse to prevent. Vex, the map.”
She cleared a space while I activated the tracking spells etched into the war table’s surface. The map shimmered to life, showing the Western Realms in exquisite detail.
“The situation,” I began, “is thus: Auremar has been systematically hunting down those with heroic bloodlines, using them for sacrifices to obtain power from the Shadow King’s prison.
But he’s weakening it to the point of no return.
We need to find the heroes he hasn’t grabbed yet and secure them before he can perform another ritual. ”
“Secure them,” Arabella repeated, raising an eyebrow. “That’s a very polite way of saying ‘kidnap.’ ”
“It sounds more likely to result in criminal charges,” Sebastian muttered, then seemed to realize he’d spoken aloud. “Not that I’m—I mean, obviously you don’t care about—”
“No, I don’t,” I agreed. “Though I appreciate your concern for my reputation. Now, the question is where to find these would-be sacrifices. Auremar’s been thorough in Solandris, but he can’t have reached everyone yet.
Sebastian, you’re ostensibly familiar with noble bloodlines, which is why I’ve asked you to be at this meeting. ”
Sebastian had been briefed on the essentials: Auremar was hunting those with heroic blood for some catastrophic ritual, the Shadow King’s prison was failing, and time was running out.
He didn’t know—and I hadn’t told him—about the Heirloom of Dominion or exactly how we planned to stop the apocalypse.
But he knew enough to understand that every person with heroic blood Auremar captured was one step closer to the end of the world.
That had been sufficient motivation. Sebastian might be a pacifist, but he wasn’t an idiot. When faced with the choice between helping the Dark Lord kidnap people or letting them be sacrificed to free an ancient evil, even he could do the math.
Sebastian straightened, clearly pleased to be consulted despite the circumstances.
“The obvious choices would be the allied kingdoms. Valmont to the northwest, and Meridian Isle to the south. Both have intermarried with Solandrian nobility for generations. The bloodlines would be diluted but still present.”
“Vex?” I prompted.
“Lord Bela Varga of Valmont married a Solandrian duke’s daughter, Lady Pennyweather, forty years ago,” Vex said without hesitation.
“They had three children, all of whom married locally. At least seven grandchildren of confirmable heroic descent. Similarly, Meridian Isle’s royal family has two cadet branches with heroic blood through the maternal line. ”
Arabella leaned in to me. “How does she do that? Did you brief her last night?”
“No,” I murmured back, watching Vex continue her impromptu genealogy lesson. She was spectacular when she had data to work with.
“—which means Auremar likely hasn’t moved on them yet,” Vex was saying. “Both kingdoms have defense treaties with Solandris. If Auremar’s called in those treaties for the war effort, their militaries will be mobilizing. Perfect chaos for us to slip in and extract our targets.”
Thorne cleared his throat and pulled a folded report from his jacket.
“Speaking of chaos in Solandris, this report came in this morning. Three more spontaneous magical fires in the merchant quarter of Sunspire yesterday. And the King’s Bridge—you know, that massive enchanted bridge that handles all the trade from the western provinces—collapsed at dawn.
No warning, just”—he made a crumbling gesture with his hands—“gone. The magical supports apparently started eating themselves.”
“Eating themselves?” Griffin asked, fascinated despite the grim implications.
“That’s what it says.” Thorne tossed the parchment onto the table between the jam pots.
“Everything heading to Sunspire from the west is now stuck on the wrong side of the Silverrun Gorge. Food, supplies, reinforcements—all of it. They’re trying to reroute through the mountain passes, but that adds weeks to the journey. ”
Griffin began muttering about not having enough time to watch everything that came across the Doom Scroll.
He was positively addicted to that thing.
While he was distracted, one of the pancakes slid off his plate and bounced toward the door.
Then another followed, dripping syrup all over the stones.
“It’s all caused by the Shadow King spreading through the ley lines,” I said, ignoring them. “The magical infrastructure of Solandris is starting to fail.”
Arabella picked up the report, scanning it quickly. “This is going to make Auremar desperate.”
I nodded and turned back to the map. “Two kingdoms to target,” I mused. “One ringed by mountains, the other an island. Both allied with our enemy. Both probably mobilizing their forces as we speak.”
“It’s a logistical nightmare,” Thorne said cheerfully. “I love it. How many teams are we talking?”