Chapter XXI
XXI
Places have a magic of their own, built and grown over the centuries.
As such, feats that are impossible for a single witch become possible through the borrowed power of an ancient place.
For instance, the Order’s fortress at Avalon Castle remains one of the only places in the world where witches can travel freely through the ether, relying as they do on the castle’s assistance.
Vic woke up when her face hit the floor. She groaned and shut her eyes. The air was cold, but she was warm. She pulled her knees toward her chest and tried to go back to sleep.
“Nice of you to drop in.” Aren’s voice came from somewhere north of her pounding head.
Vic moaned. Not again.
“Oh, it’s not so bad. You only fell a few feet.”
Hands gripped Vic’s shoulders and pulled her from the floor, and she was too disoriented to protest. Aren propped her up against something ridged and bumpy.
“Where am I?” Vic mumbled, but she didn’t need to ask.
She remembered the space as soon as she drew the energy to open her eyes.
The assembly room, under the castle. Cave walls and carved stone steps.
They were on the dais where the Elders sat.
Aren was mocking them. Vic groped behind her and found that she leaned against the sculpture at the back of the stage.
To her immediate left, its gaping mouth hung ajar.
Without the crowd of witches in black robes and the blazing fire and the animal tension, it became an entirely different—though no more welcoming—space.
“You’ll have to forgive me for your ungraceful entrance,” Aren said. “It appears they’ve given you a strong sedative. Normally, I assume, you would have the reaction time to land on your feet.”
Vic resented the implication that it was her fault he dropped her. She scowled at him as she rested her head on the sculpture behind her. Her neck did not possess the strength to hold itself up.
“What do you want?”
“Such attitude. I merely wanted to make sure you were okay. I heard about some funny business at the castle. Something about a human facing off with a manananggal.” He gave Vic’s bruised and bloody appearance a once-over. “And losing.”
“Who told you that? It’s been like an hour.”
“I can’t believe it—the Order can’t even keep the beasts out of the castle now.”
Vic narrowed her eyes at him as her conversation with Max came back to her. Leave it to Max to reveal critical information when she was in pain and slipping out of consciousness. Sarah swore he was a genius, but he seemed to lack core interpersonal skills.
With great effort, Vic hoisted herself up to a standing position, keeping one hand on the statue for balance, and turned her back on Aren.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said.
“Whyever not?” Aren bounded around her until they were face-to-face again.
“I’m in pain.”
“Oh, that’s not why.”
“I don’t like you.”
“That’s better. Are you still upset that I pushed you? Because you know that wasn’t real.”
“Max told me you murdered my mother.”
Surprise flashed in Aren’s bright blue eyes, and he took a step back.
“Is that all he said?”
“He said you killed her when you found out she’d been spying on you for the Order.”
Again, his eyes flared. “Meredith never did anything for anyone, I can guarantee you that.”
“You’re avoiding the subject.”
He leaned in and locked eyes with Vic.
“And how would you react?” he said, voice low. “If I told you I caught Meredith spying and killed her out of spite, what would you do?”
“Did you?”
“Answer the question first. Then I’ll tell you.”
Something dangerous lay in his flinty eyes, so close to Vic’s. She couldn’t focus. She couldn’t think. Whatever that doctor had given her swam through her thoughts like syrup, slowing everything down.
“I don’t know,” she finally said. “I can’t even stop you from grabbing me in my dreams and forcing me to talk to you. I don’t know how you would react if I accused you of murder.”
“You already did, Victoria.”
“I only told you what Max said.”
Aren leaned against the statue, his arms crossed as he scrutinized Vic.
“It hurts my feelings that you would suggest I force you to talk to me,” he said after a long pause. “I’m a delightful conversationalist. Ask anyone. And for the record, I did not murder Meredith Wood.”
“Why does Max think you did?”
“Because he hates me? Because he envies me? Because he’s cast me as the villain in the great melodrama of his life? I don’t know—you’ll have to ask him.”
Vic shook her head. She couldn’t talk to Aren right now, not when she struggled to stand and her legs shook underneath her. Vic leaned against the vile sculpture as she fought to wade through the fury and exhaustion clouding her mind.
“And what about this?” Vic said, shoving her arm forward. His eyes trailed to the spot on her wrist, and for an instant Vic thought she saw something there. Something dark against her skin and complex, but it was gone, and only bare flesh stared back at her.
“What about it?” Aren asked with an affected shrug.
“It’s Orcan magic,” Vic said.
“I’m fairly certain you knew that when you agreed to participate,” he pointed out.
“Because I didn’t think it was real,” Vic said.
Aren raised an eyebrow. “Did I tell you that?”
Vic breathed hard as her anger took control over more rational emotions. He was a monster, a murderer. He wanted to tear the Order down, kill people like Sarah—she should not egg him on. She should not make him angry. And yet…
She found herself asking, “Someone said it was a bind. What for?”
“Normally this curiosity comes before you perform magic together.”
“Tell me.”
Aren watched her with false kindness. “I’m only trying to help you.”
“And yet you keep doing this,” Vic snapped. “You bring me here. You won’t let me out. You hold me captive in my own head. You bat me around like a toy.”
“You’re just like your mother, aren’t you? What are you going to do about it?”
“Stop fucking comparing me to my mom,” Vic spat, and she shoved him in the chest, hard, with both hands. And they fell. Together, they toppled over, through the floor and down, too far down. Vic hit the ground again, and rolled away.
When she came back to herself, Aren stood over her, watching her face through a frown. They were in a different room, one Vic did not recognize.
Vic scampered to her feet and spun. They weren’t in the castle, Vic was sure of that.
In place of gothic curves were modernist lines—sharp angles and brutal edges.
The wall at her back was made of glass. Windows overlooked a black forest, lit only by an abundance of stars.
In front of Vic hung a gilded mirror as tall as she was, the only thing in the room save an altar and a wall of shelves glittering red.
“How did you do that?” Aren asked. He watched Vic with an odd expression. Awe, maybe, or horror. “You took control. I’ve never seen anyone do that.”
“Where the fuck is this place?”
“This is my home.” Aren spread his arms in a gesture of welcome, the dazed look still on his face. “You’ll have to forgive the mess. I wasn’t expecting visitors.”
Vic strode away from him, sick of him, and approached the wall of shelves.
From the floor to the ceiling, square compartments the size of a hand each contained a single red stone.
They glittered with internal light, and below each sat an inscription in tiny, careful print.
Vic reached for an oblong stone at eye level.
“I wouldn’t—” Aren began, reaching to stop her.
But her fingers closed around the rough stone.
The steering wheel was leather, white and clean and polished smooth, and it was a perfect day.
He held the wheel with a single hand laid softly over the top of it, and he stretched his right arm sideways over the bench seat, where he could brush the pads of his fingers over Anne’s shoulders whenever he felt like it.
They couldn’t have picked a better day to visit the coast. They’d beaten tourist season, and they didn’t mind the chill.
Neither of them was a born swimmer, and they relished the opportunity to sit by the sea without the distraction of other beachgoers.
He was pleased enough to get the car out of the garage.
His friends at the club had teased him for buying the convertible, typical midlife-crisis mobile, but he loved it.
It was a beautiful day, and Anne smiled up at him with the wind in her hair, and how could he regret a single choice that had led him here?
“Look out!” Anne shouted, and he twisted forward.
A man in a suit stood in the center of the road, his arms at either side of his hips and palms facing forward. He stared at the car with a determined glare as they careened toward him. What the fuck was he doing, standing in the middle of the road? They were going to hit him.
He slammed on the brakes, and they cried out as they fought—and failed—to stop. The car slid sideways, to the edge of the road overlooking the cliff, and he didn’t feel the guardrail give way, but the final impact—when the car collided with the surf—he felt. He felt every moment.
Vic jerked back. The stone fell from her shaking fingers, and Aren caught it before it hit the ground. He replaced it in its nook and adjusted it to face forward.
“I warned you not to do that.”
“That was…that was…” Vic gagged around the urge to vomit, to expel remembered pain. Hot blood and icy water, the crunch of bone and metal, and the sound of a drowning scream.
“A blood stone, yes. Are you familiar?”
They held the essence of the dead. Of the people Aren had killed.
“They were strangers. They were having a nice day, and you…”
“Yes, yes. It’s unfortunate, but things are often unfortunate in war.”
Vic looked behind him at the rows and rows of identical stones. There were so many of them—hundreds, thousands. Bile crept up her throat.
“Why?” she breathed.
“Power, my dear.” He shrugged as he said it, but his eyes held a sorrowful heaviness. Was he ashamed of his actions? Or was he ashamed that Vic bore witness to them?
Vic backed away from him. In her mind’s eye, Aren’s features changed. Sharper, meaner, harsher. She couldn’t get away from him fast enough. Her back hit the cold glass of the window, and she stilled.
“You are who they say you are,” Vic said, realizing the truth of her words as she spoke them. “You set the Orcan loose in the castle, you kill people, you…you killed my mom.”
“You know nothing about the world you were born into,” Aren said as he approached her.
He shook his head, a pitying look on his face.
“You think you’ve stumbled upon a morality play—good and evil, clearly delineated, an obvious choice.
But there are no heroes in this story, Victoria.
You think Meredith didn’t know what I was up to?
You think Max didn’t? None of us are innocent here. ”
He closed the distance between them. Aren looked down at her, his face inches from her own. Vic shook her head.
“I did not kill Meredith. I didn’t need to. She was on my side, in the end. She would have brought you to me, if she’d lived. You and Henry.”
Vic swallowed around rising panic. Her brother, oh god, he knew about her brother.
“I may be a murderer,” Aren said. “But murderers are hardly in short supply in the world you’ve stumbled into. Condemn me all you want, but I’m right in the end. And I, for one, haven’t actually hurt you. Not once.”
He rested a hand against Vic’s cheek, his palm warm and dry and heavy on her face.
“Remember that.”
Vic ripped her head back, away from him, not caring if she smacked into the glass. She didn’t want his hands on her.
She woke alone, gasping. She was back in her bedroom in the castle, with no idea how she’d gotten there and no energy to find out. She imagined the shadows shifting around her as she fell back into a fitful sleep.