Evenfall, p.23
Evenfall, page 23
“I can’t linger.” A flicker, as if to back up the statement. But when her backlit form solidified again, her gaze was far clearer than before. “We plan to breach the palace on the last night of the celebrations, when the festivities reach their peak,” she said, then added, softer, “We’re getting you out, Ember. Can you hold on until then?”
The phantom heat of Mordecai’s lips on mine scorched my memory. I let loose a breath and nodded. “I can.”
Ada cocked her head to the side. For a moment, I thought she was going to comment on my hesitation, however brief it might have been.
Because there could be no mistaking my reluctance, even if I tried to mask it into fear, then conviction, as I said more soundly, “I can hold on for three more days.”
Mercifully, she only dipped her chin after a few torturous seconds, the illusion of her turning more and more translucent.
“I’ll try to contact you when we have the details.”
“Be careful,” was all I said as the colors faded, leaving me alone in my bedroom once more.
I slumped back down on the bed, then burrowed my head in the pillow. But as hard as I tried, the incessant roll of my thoughts refused to give way to sleep.
For all my supposed affinity for time, I sure was running short on it.
“Again, Ember. Try again.”
I cut a sharp look at Mordecai where he was standing by the wall, the gleam from the sconces reflecting off his hair. With his arms crossed and cool disinterest shaping his features, I could almost believe his lingering on the sidelines had nothing to do with maintaining his distance from me.
Almost.
While that was a relief, my continued, constant failure to open a damn portal certainly wasn’t.
Even after I’d scoured the small, but well-stocked library yesterday for any books I could find on magic—not as many as I’d hoped—and read even the most marginal of mentions on how to command space, I still couldn’t push that damned gap open.
Mordecai’s instructions bore no fruit, either.
It was becoming frustrating, to say the least.
In order to reunite the fragments, I would have to actually get my hands on them. Svitanye. Soltzen. If each land harbored a piece of the relic, the first step to locating them was to be on the same plane.
Doing Mordecai’s bidding or working with Ada—it made little difference if I couldn’t progress from phase one.
But most of all, it was the deadline breathing down my neck that set me on edge.
There wasn’t that much point in escaping if Ada broke me out of the palace before I mastered this ability. With Mordecai overseeing my training, there was at least a chance we’d work out my performance issues eventually. Alone, that hope dwindled.
I chanced a look at him—at that flawless mask—and suppressed a groan.
I couldn’t leave before I succeeded…
Mordecai would hunt us—of that I was certain—and we would be stuck in Somraque, the savior completely useless. More than useless, actually. A dead weight.
Without being able to wield blood magic, I could hardly hold my own if it came to us being on the run. I thought of the pendant, tucked beneath the black uniform, its surface warm against my skin.
Sun damn me, even if I had to shred myself to pieces, I would do this.
The innate vibrations of magic spread through my exhausted body, linking me with the blade I held in my hand as seamlessly as if it had been the pendant. But this part had always been easy.
Gritting my teeth, I channeled every thought, every ounce of power into the dagger as I sliced it through the air and broke up the threads that held reality together to fuse new connections.
Darkness gaped, thin and sharp, but even as the air shimmered, even as I willed it to grow, to open up until I could glimpse my own bedchamber lying on the other side—the cursed thing collapsed.
Sun…
“One would think that for all your people had done, this majestic bloodline of yours would not be so damn pitiful,” Mordecai sneered.
The iciness in his tone whirled me around. I clutched the bone handle tighter. “What?”
“You Soltzeniens think you’re so grand”—he pushed off the wall, each stride slow, demanding—“that your magic is above what comes from the body, cleaner.”
I inched back, suddenly very aware this anger encompassed more than just my current inability.
I forced myself to stop moving lest it fueled that predatory wrath.
“And yet”—his eyes flashed—“you fail to complete even the simplest of tasks. Is there nothing you can do right?”
Thunder boomed in my ears, my breaths deepening in tune with the fire igniting in my veins. I should have asked what he’d meant, why this hatred for my people, for Soltzen, the buried echoes of some sort of history that hadn’t released him from its clutches—or one he had chosen to shackle himself to. Yet all I heard was the poison dripping from his words—the viciousness now directed at me.
I exhaled, only it wasn’t serenity that filled the vacancy.
“You know what? Screw you, Mordecai. I haven’t been here a week, and you expect me to do something I have not only never been trained for, but haven’t been allowed to even think of for eighteen years? I don’t know if your knowledge of the other worlds is that rusty—although I doubt it, given how you like to insult us every chance you get—or if you’re just that self-absorbed. But I’m a High Master’s daughter, Mordecai. Daughter. Sun, how many times do I have to repeat it to you people!
“All my life, I was nothing but a tool to my father. Trust me, if you think I’m pitiful now, then you can’t even imagine what I would have been like if I hadn’t fought him every damn step of the way.” I threw the dagger at one of the armoires lining the wall, and the tip embedded itself deep in the wood. I didn’t even have it in me to be surprised. “My father had his purposes, as I’m sure you have nefarious ones of your own. But I am not an object to be wielded and taken advantage of at your convenience. I’m done. I’m done being everyone’s pawn.”
Chapter Thirty
My mood was positively foul after I left Mordecai and marched up to my chambers. Not even his stunned, if tested, silence could curb the storm raging within me.
Merayin made her presence scarce, staying for no longer than what was necessary for her to bring me lunch—then clear away the plates. It was unfair to her, I knew, but that part of me that would have cared… It was locked under impervious layers.
I didn’t regret anything I’d said down in the training hall. Perhaps only wished I’d uttered those words sooner.
Some savior indeed.
Tendrils of obsidian shot from my flesh, lashing out at the air and twisting in tune with my anger—but also honing it.
Instead of succumbing to the impulse to lay waste to this wing, this palace, the chaotic drive narrowed, coating my thoughts in merciless ice.
Maybe the three worlds deserved to rot. Maybe the reason they had broken apart in the first place was because this supposed harmony and balance magic sought was too deeply corrupted by the people to ever liberate itself from the twisted, festering depths of our reality.
The price for greed. For the inadvertent death of the Ancients our forefathers had caused—an immortal people they had attempted to eradicate, yet lingered on by a thread, just as tainted as the rest of it.
I was more than inclined to let them all pay.
Why should I give everything, anything, when the world had not extended the same courtesy?
A knock sounded at the door.
I glared at it, contemplating blocking the entrance with shadowfire and be done with it.
In the end, I hissed, “Yes?”
The door swung aside, revealing Mordecai’s form, but the Crescent Prince didn’t enter. His gaze skimmed the darkness swirling around me, the fury I could feel resting on my face.
“I came to apologize.” He hesitated. “May I come in?”
I snorted and fixed him with a hard stare. “It’s your palace.”
Mordecai remained on the other side of the threshold. He raked a hand through his hair, looking…lost.
I hated it—I hated him—but I gave him the consent he wanted in the form of a curt nod. The shadowfire, however, I left on display.
With evident caution that, on some disturbing level, pleased me, he walked over to the book-strewn table, as close as he could without coming within reaching distance of my obsidian flame.
“It was…uncalled for. What I said earlier.” He met my gaze. “I was too hard on you, and for that I am truly sorry.”
My shadowfire calmed as the sincerity of his tone struck me deep in my chest. “Then why were you?”
He strode past me to the window, his hands tucked behind his back, fingers clenched. “I’ve waited for millennia for someone who possesses the power to open gates between realms. Ages of monitoring every atom of air for that trace of magic… I have grown impatient.” He turned around, the sapphire falling on my face, darkening. “All that time, I have spent in solitude. I—I am not used to being around other people.”
The truth. But not the entirety of it.
“And I suppose that doesn’t have anything to do with you terrorizing your own people?”
A shadow flickered across his eyes, his body stiffening. “I have some business to attend to this evening, but I would very much like to have lunch with you tomorrow, Ember. I might not be able to give you all the answers, but those I can… They are yours, if you want them.”
My eyebrows rose, a refusal dancing on the tip of my tongue.
I angled my head. “Fine.”
I spent the hours after midday in a small chamber overlooking the inner courtyard, the pile of books I’d hauled along with me stacked on the table by my side. One of the tomes lay open in my lap, but I was hardly paying attention to the words as I kept glancing at the window, waiting to catch that glimpse of lean darkness cut through the somber light.
Between Ada’s distraction and Mordecai’s own business, whatever it was, I was eager to start exploring. And if I indeed found the relic, well, it would be my choice what to do with it the instant I was liberated from the castle walls. Portal or not.
The soft clicking of hooves snagged me from my thoughts. I peered over the windowsill, watching the rider atop the black stallion speed across the courtyard, his guards in tow. Despite everything, I found myself holding my breath at the sight, my gaze fixed on the straight line of Mordecai’s back, the dark hair that undulated in tune with the smooth, liquid motion of his mount.
Devastation personified.
The moniker seemed fitting. So fitting, in fact, that the thought extracted me from whatever thrall I’d once again succumbed to even before he cleared the gateway.
Casting the book onto the armchair I vacated, I rushed out into the hallway, then down its length, grateful for the uniform I was still wearing as I hurtled myself in the proper chamber and sprinted across to the window with a clear view of the path leading to Nysa. I spotted Mordecai instantly, his stallion aiming for the town as the guards rode in a spacious, yet firm formation around him.
I exhaled. This was it.
Quickly, although seemingly without haste, I made my way towards the wing harboring Mordecai’s private study. As I passed a few servants and guards, I kept my chin high and my steps filled with intent, as if I had every right to walk the palace grounds. Mercifully, I truly did.
All the time I hadn’t spent brooding, I had made sure to explore the palace, letting the people here grow accustomed to my presence. And now, even as I took a turn into the wretched wing—the single place I hadn’t entered since that day—they paid me no more attention beyond a perfectly normal acknowledging look. After all, no one had explicitly prohibited me from entering this section. Or its rooms.
I tried three of the doors, but even before I peered inside, I knew they weren’t the answer. The maids had their orders, but I didn’t for one moment believe Mordecai would leave his study unlocked.
Nevertheless, I checked each and every one on the off chance my hunch was misleading.
I spared the contents—a sitting room, a smaller version of the training hall, a workspace, though one that didn’t seem as if it were in use—only a brief glance. The fourth, however, I slipped inside, driven by the cascade of light footfalls.
A servant… A maid, by the sound of it.
The moment I was inside the room, I cursed myself for the impulsive reaction.
Even if she had run into me in the hallway, I could have feinted going somewhere and that would have been it. If I’d had enough time to enter the chamber and shut the door behind me, then I could have easily moved away from it, too.
I smothered a groan.
When the footsteps neared, I pushed deeper into the room, though I didn’t take my eyes off the door just yet. No, this was still salvageable. As long as I kept the panic—and with it more ill-conceived decisions—at bay. If, by chance, she walked in and saw me pressed up against the wall like a thief or standing pinned in one place, waiting for discovery, it would raise far more suspicions than appearing busy in—
The bedroom.
I swore under my breath.
What were the chances that from all the Sun-damned chambers, the one I stumbled into just had to be a seductive spill of velvet and silk?
My gaze flashed to the large four-poster bed dominating the middle, an empty wineglass perched on the carved nightstand, a book, its pages worn as if Mordecai had read it countless times, beside it. Between it and the first of the windows, an archway similar to the one in my own bedchamber veered out of sight.
I looked away before visions of his body, bedecked in traveling droplets of water overtook my mind—
Only to find I had done myself no favors.
With no other furnishings, nothing save for the chiseled phases of the moon cresting along the midnight walls, my treacherous attention returned to the bed. My cheeks heated viciously as I couldn’t stop drinking in the black lining, the mound of pillows scattered about all too invitingly. It was easy to imagine Mordecai sprawled across them, his hair blending with the silk and his skin bringing forth a stark contrast from where it peeked from beneath the sheets.
I shook myself mentally, then dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands before I could do something foolish. Like run my fingers over the alluring black expanse.
The click-click-click of the maid’s low heels produced that final jolt that saved me.
I had forgotten about her.
Forgotten that I was supposed to have come up with a believable excuse to be in this chamber. But I didn’t dare crawl onto that bed, pretend I was here…for him.
My inner battle stretched on for so long, I would have been discovered in my worthless, unprepared state a dozen times over had I not been granted a reprieve.
Those steps, while still loud, still close, were growing fainter.
On silent feet, I stalked back to the door and listened. Followed the maid’s path to the landing.
A greeting.
A second set of footsteps.
Then…
Gone.
Counting the seconds to make sure no surprises lurked on the other side was a test of my nerves.
My hand trembled when I reached for the handle at last, but the wait had been worth it. There was no one left in the corridor but me. In fact, the entire wing was doused in silence.
I didn’t waste another moment.
After trying two more doors, I found one that wouldn’t give way under my touch. Out of instinct, I glanced around to make sure that I was, indeed, alone, then produced two slender pins, the silver strands I had swept away from my face now tumbling down the side of my neck.
Ada wasn’t the only one with weapons in her hair, even if mine were designed for frowned-upon deeds of a different kind.
It was second nature to straighten the pins—and have my way with the lock.
My father had quickly taken to sealing his doors in hopes of keeping me out, so I had been forced to uncover early on how proper leverage and just the right touch could help me to overcome those obstacles. Thankfully, Mordecai wasn’t using the same magic that barricaded the windows in conjunction with the lock. Otherwise, no amount of skill would have made a difference.
The distinct snick was like music to my ears. I carefully pushed open the door, slipped inside, then shut it firmly behind me.
Again, the discrepancy between my expectations and reality stunned the breath out of me.
I pressed my back against the wood, my chest swelling as I beheld the grandeur.
A library. Mordecai’s study was a library.
Not the kind of bare-boned collection we had at the Norcross estate, or the cobweb- and dust-covered trunks from which I’d pilfered those tales of night. It wasn’t even the display of carefully organized tomes Merayin had shown me to—
But an actual temple of books.
My lips parted as I swept my gaze across the two levels of the chamber, all of them filled with looming bookcases where not a single inch of space remained between the beautiful cloth- and leather-bound volumes. The space was illuminated by lanterns, every single one of them crafted with an artist’s devotion to detail.
It was… It was as if I had stepped into another world.
A silent, husky laugh bubbled from my lips.
Another world within another world.
A massive, dark-wood desk dominated the middle of the space, one brocade armchair resting on each of the longer sides. The smooth surface, as well as the chairs, were littered with discarded books, much like the ones I had found up in my wing. Sun…
It hadn’t been servants after all. But Mordecai.
Spending hours in the chambers I now occupied, perhaps gazing down at Nysa while resting his eyes between paragraphs—much like I did—was not an image he projected. Even in those moments when he was not the Crescent Prince, only Mordecai, there was still…something about him. Something that, perhaps, showed promise of an entirely different side, but not to the extent this revelation had taken it.
