Chapter Seven #2
“This is one of my best!” Nostex said excitedly, setting the torch into a bracket by the wall as he brandished a key. “Kept safe and secure! I can’t wait to show you.”
Var murmured something appropriate, wondering what could possibly need to be locked away. The entire collection was filled with a great deal of metal, but otherwise, he didn’t see it having a lot of value to anyone.
Nostex fiddled with the large iron lock. Finally, the key turned, and he pushed upon the door. It was shadowed and dark inside.
“You go ahead,” Nostex said. “Let me just grab the torch.”
Var stepped inside, not able to see much past the door and the stone floor he was standing on. Behind him, the torch went suddenly out. Var was turning as the burst of magic hit him, and his shield snapped into place even as he was lifted off his feet and fell… and fell.
His heart hammered frantically as he wondered how hard his landing was going to be, though he’d be somewhat protected by the shield.
He flinched as his shield crashed… into water?
His magic absorbed most of the force, though he felt it reverberate through him.
More importantly in this case, his shield kept him dry and able to breathe.
It would keep him from sinking too far, but he couldn’t move deliberately.
The shield would simply remain suspended in the water.
To get out, he’d need to remove the shield to swim to safety, but—
There was a crashing noise, and Var and his shield were driven farther underwater.
He could feel the pressure against his shield, sharp and dangerous, and in the glow from his magic, he made out large, deadly-looking spikes.
Orienting himself now, Var climbed to his feet and looked in the direction that he assumed was “up.” A large metal grid protruding with spikes had pushed his shield down.
In fact, it seemed designed specifically to do this, to keep him underwater and put dangerous pressure on his shield.
(Or to crush and impale unshielded people underwater. He wasn’t sure which was worse, that this was regularly used for torture or had been designed specifically for him.)
Var pushed more magic into the shield and tried not to think about what was going to happen if it failed.
Because this couldn’t be taken as anything other than the attack that it was. Var should absolutely have known better after what happened with Yomil, but it had naively never occurred to him that Nostex could have something to do with this.
But with this last piece of the puzzle, everything made a horrible, sickening sort of sense.
The attack in Nexa had targeted Tor and Cala.
Remove them, and there were two places the Fealty was likely to go if Var died: and Var had ensured that they were both delivered to Nostex.
He swallowed back bile. Get rid of Ada, and Nostex likely had only one more person to get rid of before he acquired the Fealty of the entirety of the United Realms.
Would the other rulers be safe? Or was this just the beginning of what Nostex was trying to do?
A shudder jolted through him. If the man had schemed the deaths of both his daughter and his granddaughter, then there was absolutely nothing that Var would put past him.
Cursing himself for a fool for not at least considering this option, however outlandish it might have seemed a half hour ago, Var forced himself to push aside the fear that was hammering at his insides.
He prayed that both Ada and Var’s precious baby girl were still alive.
Nostex had obviously been waiting to act, and Var now assumed that it had been Ada’s arrival that the guard had been announcing.
Get rid of Ada and Cala, then get rid of Var, and Nostex would drive the Fealty exactly where he wanted it, into a blood relation that all but guaranteed it would go next to him.
Var closed his eyes and reached deep inside of himself, not thinking about distance or difficulty.
He thought instead of his brother, who’d been bright and curious and inventive.
Who’d wanted to know if magic really cared about walls.
(“Does magic need to see? Isn’t that ridiculous?
”) When it turned out that magic did not, in fact, need to see, he’d thought it was hilarious to raise a shield over Var when they weren’t even within sight of one another—because apparently it never got old when Var then walked into the magical barrier and had to either fight his way out or yell for his twin.
Var had figured out how to do it in retaliation, and there’d been a few weeks where there’d been an inordinate amount of cursing, laughing, and shield-forming throughout the entire castle.
There was part of Var that was always connected to Tor and vice versa.
(He swallowed thickly. There had been.) He could feel the other man if he looked deep inside himself, and he suddenly wasn’t sure why he hadn’t done that every day, why he hadn’t gloried in that beautiful connection.
But Var was connected to Ferna by their bond, to the rest of his family by Fealty and familial connection. And that meant that while he had never tried to do it before, he knew that he had to be equally capable of shielding the rest of his family even when he couldn’t see them.