Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
Opera Night. A few hours till we have an answer.
Cadenza brought her fingertips to her cheek. Canon’s protective veneer had slipped before, and she’d seen him work at pushing it aside on purpose, but this was different. His face blazed, raw and honest.
And sad.
A well of pain radiated from his eyes and a longing to see deeper threatened to pull her heart from her chest. A tune rose from the hardwood floors, the voice of long-dead trees keening for lost possibilities.
No, she thought, tilting her head. Not lost. Unchosen possibilities.
Canon walked away, back straight, shoulders square. She tried to call him back, to ask him what hurt and how she could help it, but the tree song stole round her throat.
“What’s he doing here?” Reyna laid a protective hand on Cadenza’s shoulder, come to fetch her for their performance.
She shook her head. “I’m not sure. But I don’t think we’ll need to worry about Thomas tonight.”
When the performance began, Reyna sang first. She held nothing back.
Even so, the country club faces watching her saw only a part of her performance.
Incapable of perceiving the rest of what she did, they saw only a woman on stage, heard only a well-trained voice.
Her skill in shaping the unseen, the heat created by her spirit, her will that bent elements into a shape of her choosing—to these they remained oblivious.
She wove her intent through her song, directing it at the tuning fork, morphed to its portable size, in the pocket of her formal.
Forged with her own hands and will, the instrument soaked up her intent like a sponge, storing it for later.
This audience would never see the fruition of her performance—when she used that stored will to force the vault room to open for her.
Canon pushed open the door to Learmonth’s office. Thomas sat in a chair, brooding over a framed picture. He didn’t look up.
“You can still change your mind, Mr. Richards. This serves no one.”
Canon ignored the remark and waited until his former employer lifted his head.
“Three Fates showed you three roads—”
“Canon, don’t.” Thomas rose.
“—and you chose between them.”
“Please, lad, I won’t be able to help you.”
“Open the gate. Take me to the crossroads.” Canon’s breath heaved in his chest. Such simple words, not even a poem. But when he said them out loud, power rushed through him, leaving his skin prickling and hot.
Thomas stared at him, quiet. Canon waited, arms folded.
“I will open the gate and take you to the crossroads.” Thomas’s words sounded rote, memorized, but bitterness laced his voice, and creased lines around his mouth. “And you must follow through to the end and accept the consequences.”
The room wavered. The hardwood floor under Canon’s feet softened to grass. The walls faded to moonlit hillsides, and the ceiling crumbled to stars. Canon unfolded his arms, mouth falling open as he took it all in.
Thomas gestured to a doorway glowing in the side of a hill. “After you, candidate.”
Cadenza wrapped Reyna in a hug when she finished her set. “That was amazing!” She pitied the audience for not being able to fully appreciate everything Reyna just did.
Reyna tossed her braids over her shoulder with a smile. “I know. Now it’s your turn.” She bumped fists with Cadenza. “Get it.”
Cadenza took her place on stage, gratitude clashing with nerves. Get it. She’d known Reyna only a few short weeks, but that small phrase expressed more confidence in Cadenza’s abilities than anyone in her family ever had.
The band started into her first song, and she drew breath.
Reyna slipped out of the dressing room while Cadenza sang.
She hurried down the hall, behind the kitchens and ducked into a dim corner by a metal door marked HVAC.
The door was locked, but not with the kind of lock she could open with lock picks.
She pushed the tuning fork flush against the door, the locked doorknob resting in the curve of the iron, and wrapped one hand around both tines and knob.
Heat shimmered off her skin as her stored intent flooded over the door.
“Open to me,” she commanded.
She didn’t wait for a visual change but stepped forward through the metal door onto a grassy plain.
A single tree grew next to a dirt path. Under the tree a crystal box rested on a pedestal.
No hinge or visible opening marred its clear sides.
Inside, two wooden eggs, each the size of her face, sat upright on a cushion, looms carved into the burnished wood.
When she tried to make off with the oracles the first time, she hadn’t known how to open that box. But now, Cadenza’s soprano lilted through the hall of the club and followed her into this hidden pocket of meadow.
Reyna smiled.
A ripple of energy shuddered over Cadenza’s skin. That was her cue. The vault room was open.
Right on time, her aria started. She closed her eyes, searching for the vault’s song. A flash of music, like lightning, bright and uncontainable. She sent her voice on the hunt.
Because a Spinner had made the box, and only a Spinner could open the box.
The door in the hillside opened to a wide room. Canon took it in with wonder. When Vasilios told him Thomas had more power, he never imagined that meant making an entire country club disappear or opening portals to…wherever this was.
Rock walls rounded to a ceiling of earth. Tree roots covered with fireflies dangled from the center of the ceiling like a chandelier. Horse stalls lined the side of the cave. With actual horses in them.
Canon was out of his league here; he had to admit that.
He’d traded a magic password for a shot at something epic, at the risk of everything.
He shot a glance at Thomas, not sure if he were allowed to investigate the room—the cave?
—but the old man just sank wearily into a chair next to a worn wooden table and waved for him to look around.
Canon edged closer to the row of stalls on quiet feet.
Too much noise seemed like an intrusion.
Well-muscled bays, palominos, and grays occupied the stalls, their hooves looking capable of splitting stone, but none of them moved.
He waved a hand in front of one’s eyes. Nothing.
The herd stood stiff, asleep or frozen. A suit of armor stood next to each horse.
Or… Canon leaned over a stall door for a better look.
Ghostly skin peeked from between shoulder plate and helmet.
Not just armor. Men. A knight stood ready in each suit of armor.
He walked down the line. Not just men. One of the suits was shaped for a woman.
But all of them were motionless like the horses. He reached to lift the woman’s visor.
“I wouldn’t.” Thomas’s voice echoed off the stone walls.
Canon turned. “Who are they?”
“You’ll find out. If you make the proper choice.” Thomas pointed to two objects on the table that Canon could swear hadn’t been there before.
“What choice?”
Again, Thomas pointed to the table. “Pick one.”
Canon approached the table. A plain, white button-up shirt lay crumpled next to a newspaper.
“You want me to pick one of these?” he asked, frowning. They’re just random, meaningless things.
Thomas raised an eyebrow. “They’re neither random, nor meaningless.”
Canon flinched. “How am I supposed to pick one when I don’t know what they’re for?”
“The cave selected these items for you specifically, for your choice. You wanted in. I told you no. You forced me.” Thomas leaned forward, eyes blazing. “Now choose.”
Behind the cottage, Taran froze his ax mid-swing. Ruairi dropped the firewood he’d been stacking.
“Was that…?” Taran didn’t finish. A tugging sensation he hadn’t felt for centuries blurred his vision, and he struggled to keep the wood pile in focus.
Drostan jogged around the corner of the house. “Someone’s in the cave.”
The plain around Reyna fractured. A dim room, like some kind of subterranean chamber, layered itself over the grass and tree. Something heavy covered her head, obscuring her line of sight. She could just make out two people talking through the slit in front of her eyes.
She grabbed at where the safe should be, found cold glass and sighed in relief.
The vault was still there. She was still next to the vault, still on the plain, but somehow, she was seeing this other room—A cave?
—at the same time. She felt both springy grass and hard rock under her feet, but when she lifted her hand in the plain to touch the safe, her hand in the cave room refused to move.
Fear struck like lightning, and she fought to douse it.
Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Maybe this was some kind of protection or alarm system on the vault? But it wasn’t here the last time I tried to open it.
Cave-Reyna strained to turn her head. Plain-Reyna spun wildly.
Two of me. There are two of me. Or me in two different places? She needed all of her in the same place. How do I get myself in one place? Think. At her forge, when she melded two different pieces of metal together, a seam grew where they touched, then melted together into one whole.
I need to find the seam.
Cadenza climbed the melody of the vault box like a ladder.
A long ladder.
A long ladder that made her arms tired.
If matching the frequency of the safe was like spinning through the numbers of a combination lock, this had to be the longest combination in lock history.
None of the objects she’d practiced matching had fought her, but the safe’s melody slipped and slid away from her.
She snatched at it, fighting to keep up.
The shuffle of high heels and the scrape of chair legs on the floor jarred her concentration.
The clink of forks on plates threatened to yank her off key.
Even the glare of the stage lights threw out its own brassy notes.
If Canon weren’t keeping Thomas busy, there’s no way he’d not know what I’m doing. A chill crept down her spine. How exactly was Canon distracting him?