The Phoenix Dawning #2
“I can’t tell the difference, because no one’s ever been able to mess with my visions before,” Marcus said regrettably.
“If the kidnapper used magic to block me from seeing anything, it’s got to be a really intense spell even a demigod can’t get around.
I can’t sense magic being used on me, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t.
The Warden has ascended to godhood, so he might have access to power I can’t get around. ”
I didn’t care if the Warden was the godsdamn Great Spirit himself. I wouldn’t let him get away with this.
I whirled on Maddie. “You’re a prophet, like Casey is. Can you work some kind of magic, have some sort of vision as to where he’s gone?”
“My prophetic abilities do not work on command,” Maddie said dryly.
“They come to me when it’s time for knowledge to be imparted, and my specific naderei powers are connected to what’s to come in the future, not what’s already happened in the past. I could no more harness a vision of who took your son than I could command the world to turn the other way.
We could potentially search for a prophet who does have these abilities, but by the time we found one, we’d have no chance at catching up with whoever took Casey. ”
I wanted to ask what good her powers were, then, but forced myself to bite my tongue. Taking my anger out on my allies wouldn’t help me get my son back. I needed to focus on finding him and nothing else.
“I don’t understand how the Warden knows that Casey even exists,” Marcus said, confused.
“We’ve kept his existence pretty quiet. Ava gave an order that no one was to know about him but the people who had to.
The public in Ilamanthe doesn’t realize he was born.
We haven’t announced it yet, so the citizens don’t know Ava gave birth. ”
“But everyone in the palace does,” Danny countered. “There are a lot of people who live here. Ava ordered them to keep quiet, but somebody went against those orders, ran off and told the Warden.”
“Alistair.” His name was poison on my tongue.
“We never caught him once he escaped after killing Professor Hemlock. For all we know, he’s still in the palace, listening in on gossip and running through the secret passageways.
He heard Casey was born and found a way to get the news back to the Warden. ”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Marcus admitted.
Alistair was a thorn in our sides that had become a dagger, and he was cutting me open. I knew he wasn’t a great guy, but for as terrible as he was, I thought he would’ve considered hurting a kid off-limits.
Now I understood there were no limits to what Alistair would do to accumulate power.
He’d suck the Warden’s dick if he had his chance to get a spot at the top, so handing over a baby was no problem for him.
He was too big of an idiot to realize the Warden would cast him aside once his usefulness ran out.
“Is it possible that Alistair kidnapped Casey?” Kallie asked.
I nearly went mad at the thought. If Alistair had laid hands on my son, I’d rip him into so many pieces there wouldn’t be anything left to find once I was done.
“No. His signature’s not here,” Marcus said. “I know what his magic feels like, because I’ve been around it enough times when he’s cast. I would be able to sense if he came in here and took Casey.”
Marcus paused. “But… there’s something else. A kind of magic I’m not familiar with.”
I summoned my Elf powers, and a magical signature I hadn’t noticed before tingled up my arms. It was subtle at first, but upon closer inspection, I could feel the power brushing against my arms, though it never truly touched me.
It made the hairs on the back of my neck rise, like the magic was present here in the room with us, but yet… didn’t quite exist.
That didn’t seem possible. “Marcus is right. There’s magic here, but I don’t recognize it.”
“What you’re sensing is afterlife energy,” Queen Emmaline said, breaking her silence. “Can you feel it, Lucas?”
The voice of Marcus’ father was contemplative. “I can. My reaper powers can read the room clearly.”
“Someone opened a portal to the afterlife here. I can tell, because I’ve been there,” Queen Emmaline said.
Kallie’s mother sounded particularly forceful, like she was absolutely sure of what she was talking about.
“I don’t know how they opened this portal inside Ilamanthe’s shield, but they managed somehow. ”
“What are you saying? That someone took Casey to the afterlife?” I demanded.
“That is what it looks like,” Lucas confirmed.
“Which afterlife?” Ava hissed. “There are two ways he could go, you know. If someone dared to drag my son down to hell, I’m going to personally gut him, and drag his intestines across every hellish afterlife for all of eternity.”
I nearly grew sick at the thought of my son, poor, innocent and defenseless, tossed into the cursed pits of hell to suffer through an existence of nothing but torment.
He was just a baby. I’d done a lot of bad things in my life, some of it to people who didn’t deserve my judgement, but whatever happened, I always did my best to never harm a child no matter what twisted actions I took.
What kind of monster could be capable of something like this?
“It’s not hell,” Lucas stated. “I can tell the differences between the various afterlife realms, and this is definitely Blessed Haven energy.”
“So… the kidnapper took Casey to a sacred place where he’d be safe? How does that make sense?” Marcus asked.
“The Blessed Haven is compromised. We know that, because the Warden is sending the dark gods to fight other deities there. It’s no longer a holy place, because the Warden’s got his filthy hands all over it,” Ava sneered.
“Who knows what it looks like now that he’s trying to run the place?
It was a warzone the last time the Elvish goddesses sent me a vision of it, and I’m betting it’s even worse now. ”
“The Warden must’ve ordered this kidnapper to take Casey to the Blessed Haven because he assumes we can’t get there, so he’d be out of our reach,” Kallie stated. “He doesn’t know that we already have a way in.”
“If the Warden has Casey, he’s already got plans for him. Alistair must’ve overheard that Casey’s a prophet, and told him. We have no idea what he wants to use Casey for, but we know we need to find him now.” Ava pounded a fist against the arm of her chair, and the thump struck me clean through.
The Warden had tortured Doctor Linda Mack to see visions for him when he’d been attempting to grow his power, and I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to a child. Doctor Mack’s usefulness had run out, but Casey’s naderei powers were far more powerful than any average Seer.
How do you suppose they’re getting past the broken boundary?
Oberi asked. Not even I can jump back and forth between the realms as I once used to, since the connection between the realm of the living and the dead has been ruptured.
There are many souls who’ve passed on that are waiting to get into the Blessed Haven inside the in-between for months.
How is this kidnapper able to make a portal there?
I voiced Oberi’s question aloud, because I was wondering the same thing. We’d been working for months to find a way into the Blessed Haven, and had only just now managed to find a way through. Whoever had done this was hopping back and forth easily, which shouldn’t be possible.
“If they’re sent by the Warden, they’ve got power we don’t.
Now that he’s ascended to godhood, who knows what he’s capable of, or what power, tools or resources he’s given his followers to cross back and forth between the realms,” Kallie said.
“We know he’s able to pass back and forth after ascending through the Elven Gate, which means his allies must be using the same means of passage. ”
“It’s more than that,” Marcus said darkly. “Whoever took Casey made a portal to the afterlife within the confines of Ava’s shield, which even the Warden isn’t strong enough to break. That means the kidnapper is probably more powerful than we are. That’s a terrifying thing to consider.”
“If the Warden’s got access to this power, is it possible he was the one to take Casey?” Sophia questioned.
I shook my head. “No. I’ve fought that bastard enough to know his magical signature. If he dared to show up in Ilamanthe, we’d know about it. He sent someone else to do his dirty work for sure.”
“If this person’s that strong, why doesn’t the Warden use them to bypass Ava’s shield and enter Ilamanthe?” Kallie asked.
“Maybe capturing Casey was more important,” I said. What the hell did this bastard want with my kid?
“I don’t give a shit how powerful they think they are. They’ve just made the biggest mistake of their life,” Ava spat. I shuddered at the frenzied wrath that echoed through her words.
“Is it possible he wants him because Casey’s a demigod?” Kallie wondered.
“I don’t think that’s it. Prophets, by definition, cannot be demigods. They are both lesser, and more,” Maddie corrected.
“It doesn’t matter how they got here or how they took Casey to the Blessed Haven, just that they did, so let’s fucking do something about it,” Ava said bluntly.
She was getting impatient— I could hear it in her tone.
She was tired of standing around talking when we needed to move, and I agreed. Words were useless right now.
I stepped forward, my hands clenched into shaking fists, because I was done playing this game of questions. “Ava’s right. We have a way through to the afterlife, so we can figure it out by beating the answers out of them once we find my son.”
“Finally, someone who’s speaking some fucking sense,” Ava snapped. “Let’s go.”