by Amanda Fleet
Heat warmed my cheeks and I cleared my throat. “Yeah. Well. It’s difficult.”
She frowned. “Have your tastes changed? Is Faran not attractive to you now?”
“God, it’s not that.” I sipped my water. “I feel like I’m losing Finn. I mean, I knew the pain of his death would get less, but the closer I get to Faran, the further away my life with Finn seems.”
“Have you told Faran this?”
“No. I know I should, but I just don’t know how to. And we have enough other things to worry about at the moment. I know I’m clinging to a ghost, and I know it’s all wrapped up with my feelings about Outside.” I closed my eyes. “Being that comfortable with Faran… that’s the final bridge, and if I cross it, there’s no way back.”
I looked at her, gnawing my lip.
“Would it help if I told you what I see?” she asked. “Because I do see stuff. I am a Seer.”
Her words made me smile. Did I want to know? Would it help?
I shook my head. “I need to work it out for myself. But thank you.”
Her gaze drifted to the clock. “I’m sorry. I have to go. The curfew bell is due.” She squeezed my hands. “Things will get better. Trust me.”
She stood and pulled me into a hug. “Come and visit me soon? In all my excitement about telling you about the baby, I haven’t asked you about what happened Outside.”
My mouth went dry. “I’m not sure I want to relive any of it. But I will come and see your new rooms. I promise.”
I saw her out, then flopped down on the sofa, thinking about what she’d said and wondering what Lord Sondan wanted to talk to Faran about.
Just as the curfew bell sounded, Faran returned. He scrubbed a hand through his hair as he came in, looking annoyed.
“Lord Sondan okay?” I asked as he unbuttoned his jacket.
“Sondan is an idiot.” He shucked out of his jacket, shaking his head.
I laughed at his tone. “Why?”
Faran flung himself on to the sofa next to me, rubbing both hands over his face. “I can’t tell you. But he’s got himself into a scrape, and I don’t see how he’ll get himself out of it.” He turned to look at me. “Did you have a good evening with Lilja?”
I slipped my arm around his waist. “Yeah… I’m sorry I’ve seemed so negative about everything. It’s just been a big adjustment.”
He cuddled me closer. “Does this mean you might want children eventually?”
I thought back to him play-boxing with the kid a few days ago. He’d be an amazing father. “Eventually. Maybe.”
He kissed my crown. “Well, that’s a start.” He leaned his cheek on my head. “Was Lilja her usual honest self?”
I smiled into his top. “Yeah. She told me to focus on the good stuff.”
He plonked his feet on the table, stretching out his legs. “My mother – who my father underestimates enormously at times – once told me to only fight the battles I could win and accept defeat over those I couldn’t.” He laughed lightly. “Of course, the skill is in judging which battle is which.” He drew me closer to him. “Aeron, you can’t change being a Guardian, and you can’t change the way The Realm runs – well, not instantly. If you can accept defeat over those and not spend all your emotion and energy fighting them…” He kissed my hair again.
“Pick the right battles, huh?”
“Mm. Otherwise, you’ll never be happy.”
“I’ll try.”
24
The following morning, I pushed open the door to Hesta’s room and peered in, ready to collect warning bracelets for my team. Other than dropping off captured slaves or demons, I hadn’t really spent any time in the technicians’ quarter. The room felt surprisingly modern, with white walls and enamelled tables. It was almost empty, and I wondered where all the technicians were. Only Hesta was there, towards the back of the room, dropping things into a large jar. Whatever it was she was adding to the jar, fizzed and popped, making her eyes glitter.
“Hesta—” I walked over to her and my eye snagged on the small pile of objects next to the jar.
Death stones.
“Hesta, what the hell are you doing?”
She scooped up all the remaining stones and tipped them in the jar, before turning to smile beatifically at me. “Hello, Aeron.”
“Aegyir?”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!
Aegyir-Hesta smiled and tilted her head. “Very perceptive, Aeron.”
I slammed my hand over my communications button. “Faran. Get yourself to the technicians’ quarter and bring your father. Aegyir is here.”
“And do what?” asked Aegyir, his voice silky. “Put me back in a vessel? We both know that’s not a lasting solution. The only lasting solution is to grind your talisman to dust and scatter it over me. Where are all those other stones? Oops.” He looked down at the jar. “They’re dissolved in here.”
“Aeron? Are you okay?” Faran’s voice emerged from my communications button.
“I’m fine, but haul your arse here quickly, because it’s only me and Aegyir here.”
I circled Aegyir, warily. He’d stopped bothering to look like Hesta and stood before me looking the same as he had when he’d dragged me up the hill to the portal and sliced my finger off – cadaverous flesh stretched over his bones; skull-like head; long black leather coat; leather boots. It was still a projection, but one he obviously preferred.
“So, what will you do when your adoring husband arrives? You’ve summoned his father too, which sounds as if you want to make the triad around me. I always thought the plan was to destroy me. That’s what I read in your head.” He walked towards me, trailing his fingertips along the edge of a table.
I backed off but kept him in sight. On my own, even protected with the talisman, I couldn’t do anything to defeat him. My heart raced, and I tried to be rational and calm myself. Aegyir couldn’t take my energy.
Aegyir inclined his head. “Aeron, you do know that of all the Guardians here, only you, Faran and Eredan will ever be able to trap me. It’s always needed your top three Guardians. But if you take off your talisman, you’re no longer eligible as you won’t be a true Guardian until I’m dead. The question you need to ask is, does your talisman work?” He circled back to the jar, running a bony finger around its rim, before staring at me, red eyes burning. “Dear departed Hesta tested the stones you brought back and I’m sad to say, they work very well at destroying my kind. But does yours? What would happen if you took it off, ground it up to use on me and, poof! nothing happened? Since it would still need the top three Guardians to trap me, someone would have to kill you to let another take your place, and you’d have to hope that your replacement was an equal match. How sad.”
Shit! I tried to calculate how many stones we had left. Certainly not enough to destroy all of the remaining demons. My talisman would have to be used to destroy Aegyir, but what if he was right? Sweat slicked my palms.
I moved to block the exit. “Come on, Faran. Hurry up!”
Aegyir flicked his long coat out and leaned against a table. “Poor Faran. How will he feel when he arrives here and finds you dead?”
“Except you can’t kill me.”
“No, Aeron. While you wear the talisman I can’t steal your energy.” His voice boomed across the room, making me flinch. “But I don’t need it. I just need you dead and there are many ways a Guardian can die, without me reaching into their chest and ripping out their life. You cannot live if your head is separated from your body, can you? I have enough strength to kill you.”
“Interesting. Because you don’t look as if you can match Faran and he doesn’t have the skill to kill me.”
Aegyir laughed. “Oh, he does. He just doesn’t have the will to kill you. Which is where we differ. Move out of the way.”
“No.” I drew my sword, adjusting my grip to accommodate the missing finger. My heart thumped. Could I really take him on, on my own?
Aegyir shook his head. “Foolis
h girl.”
“I’m not a girl.” I scoured him. He didn’t appear to have any weapons on him.
Aegyir marched up to me, red eyes boring into me. “Move out of the way.”
“No.”
The back of my head exploded in pain, and I crumpled to the floor, poleaxed. Aegyir leaned over me. “Oh. And always check behind you when you’re standing in a doorway.”
He stepped over me and vanished. I touched my hand to the back of my head, cursing. It poured with blood, and however hard I tried to stand, my legs gave way beneath me each time. I tapped my communications button. “Healer. Technicians’ quarters. Hurry.”
And then I threw up.
***
Faran, Lord Eredan, Lord Sondan, and the healer all arrived together. Faran ran to my side. “Talk to me. Are you okay?”
I tried to sit up, woozy. “I’ll be fine. Mind the sick.” I waved my hand at the floor.
Faran crouched next to me. “What happened?”
“I got hit in the back of the head. I don’t know who by. What took you so long?”
“In a minute.” He stepped back to make way for the healer.
I opened my mouth to argue, but the expression on his face made me stop. Lord Eredan and Lord Sondan stood to the side of the room, alongside Faran, their faces serious. A young housekeeper was summoned to deal with the blood and vomit surrounding me while the healer checked me over. He rummaged in his bag and brought out a selection of small pots, daubing some of their contents on me. Once the pain subsided, I gingerly touched the back of my head. Blood matted my hair, but the wound was closed.
After the healer and the housekeeper left, I got to my feet, still groggy. “What kept you? I had him!”
“Orian,” said Faran, reaching out to steady me. “He’s escaped. And Mathas is in custody.”
“What?”
“The guards at the cells have been killed, and Orian is free. Mathas went to see Father this morning, and he made the slaves stone glow. He’s in custody.”
“Shit! When was he turned?”
I thought back over the last few Council meetings. Was any of his advice worth the breath used to give it?
“We don’t know. What happened here?” Faran wound his arm tighter around me to keep me upright.
“Hesta’s dead. I came in and saw what I thought was her dissolving all the death stones, except it was Aegyir, looking like her.”
“He dissolved the stones?” The colour drained from Lord Sondan’s face.
“Yes. She… he was dropping them all in that jar and they were fizzing. I think it must be acid.”
Lord Sondan marched over to the jar and peered in it. “There’s nothing left. Just sludge.”
“Keep it. Just in case,” I said.
“When did Aegyir kill Hesta?” asked Lord Eredan, his face grave. “Before or after she was supposed to have disposed of the demons that were brought back yesterday?”
I fingered the back of my head. “Good question.”
Faran glanced around the room. “Where have the carcasses been stored?”
“Hesta told me they would store them in a secure room until there was information from the library about what to do with them,” said Lord Eredan. “But I don’t know where, precisely.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s fan out and see if we can find them. Or any vessels.”
The technicians’ quarter was laid out in an orderly fashion, and it didn’t take us long to tally up carcasses and sealed vessels. We found three demons still trapped in vessels and the carcasses of five that had been destroyed using the dust from the death stones. All of the enslaved people we’d brought back had been released.
“Eight demons still here. Six now free, including Aegyir,” said Faran, rubbing a hand over his face, shadows under his eyes.
“Hesta must have been killed yesterday then,” I said. “The two demons Lord Sondan and I brought back and the two you brought back yesterday are gone. The one we brought back in a vessel is still here, as are the two from Storvik. It looks like Hesta released three demons from vessels and then destroyed them, and also destroyed the two we brought back from Oskdal that had form.”
Part of me was relieved that those three had been destroyed, but three people must have been sacrificed to enable that. A small corner of my brain recognised that their lives had been spent potentially saving many others, but the loss of any life seemed a high price.
“How many death stones do we still have?” said Lord Eredan, brows beetling.
I cast around, not expecting to find any. Aegyir had tipped a lot of stones into the acid. “I don’t think there are any here. Aegyir’s destroyed all the ones that had been reserved to kill the demons. How many are on Guardians out on patrol?”
“Five,” said Lord Sondan. “What about the warning stones?”
“Still here.” I indicated a box of the warning stones that were in the process of being made into bracelets. “Which is something, I suppose.”
None of the men seemed to share my positivity over it.
“So we have six demons loose and five stones?” Lord Sondan grimaced.
“Six stones,” I corrected him. “I’m still wearing one. Lock me up and take it off me when you need it.”
“Unless it’s used to destroy Aegyir, I’m not removing it,” said Faran, gritting his teeth.
“You’ll do as you are told,” growled Lord Eredan.
I could almost read a speech bubble over Faran’s head saying, “Yeah?”
“At the risk of sounding like I’m seeking favours from all of you, I think when the patrol returns, the three of you should wear talismans,” I said. “You’re the strongest Guardians. Aegyir said he was strong enough to kill any Guardian. I think he’s powerful enough to be able to kill you by stealing your energy, or through mortal injuries, but let’s remove one of those options for him because if he steals your energy, he’ll be unstoppable.”
“Agreed,” said Lord Eredan, giving me half a smile. “And Lady Aeron, no one could ever accuse you of seeking favours. You are nowhere near diplomatic enough.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Both Faran and Lord Sondan sniggered behind me.
“We still need to decide what to do with the carcasses and the vessels,” said Faran, straightening his face.
Lord Sondan rubbed his chin. “Put them all in the vault until the librarians have found out what to do with the carcasses?”
I picked through the box of warning stones. Lord Sondan and Lord Eredan already wore one of each. I arched a brow at Lord Eredan. “Any objection to me and Faran also getting these?”
“No. How many are left?”
I counted quickly. “About fifteen of each. Plus the patrol will have them.”
“We’ll distribute them through the Council according to status,” said Lord Eredan.
Faran handed his back to his father as if it would burn him if he kept it. “I’m not on the Council.”
“No. But you’re the strongest Guardian. You earn it for that reason.” He pressed it into Faran’s hands. “We need to call the Council to meet.”
***
Hearing that Mathas had been turned and was in custody had been enough to stun most of the Council to silence. From their sober expressions, I knew they were doing exactly the same thing that I had when I’d been told – working out which advice he’d given had been sound and which could have been used to trick us.
Lord Eredan stood in the middle of the space laid out for the Council meeting, hands on hips. “There are sixteen ‘slave’ stones that warn of the presence of corrupted people and eighteen ‘warning’ stones that will indicate a demon is in the vicinity. As First Lord and Acting Successor, both Lord Sondan and I have these stones. Lady Aeron and Faran also have them. The remaining stones will be distributed through the Council, according to seniority.”
The grumbling started immediately, emanating from the back rows of the Council where the most junior members sat
. Lord Eredan stood firm, glowering at them. Would any of them be brave enough to challenge him?
“Aegyir’s goal is to destroy all of the Guardians. He can most swiftly accomplish this by attacking the strongest and most senior and gaining their strength. We don’t have enough stones to protect all of the Guardians and so they will be distributed according to rank. There will be no further discussion on this.” He eyeballed one of the Council members on the back row.
“How many talismans are there?” It was the junior Council member getting the full stare from Lord Eredan. “Who gets them?”
“There are six in total. Lord Sondan, Faran, Lady Aeron and myself will wear them. The other two will be worn by the most senior members of each patrol.”
“Faran gets one? He’s not on the Council.”
“He might not be on the Council, but he’s the strongest Guardian,” said Lord Sondan, turning to face the back of the group. “His loss would be significant. The First Lord is protecting The Realm.”
“He’s protecting his son!”
“Who is the strongest Guardian. Could you beat Faran? I know I couldn’t.” Lord Sondan stared the Council member down. “And if you recall, Lord Eredan would have hanged Faran in order to protect The Realm, so please don’t accuse him of favouritism.”
I shot a glance at Lord Eredan. His attention was locked on the Council, his eyes hard, his face stern.
Lady Talia, another junior member, raised her hand. As the only youngish woman on Council other than Lady Morgan, I wondered if she was the woman Lord Sondan was sleeping with and studied both her and Lord Sondan with interest. Lord Sondan’s colour rose slightly as she got to her feet. Lady Talia had high cheekbones, creamy skin, and large eyes which were currently fixed on Lord Sondan, even though her question was for Lord Eredan.
“When a demon is brought back to be destroyed, which talisman will be ground up first?” she asked.
Lord Eredan turned to face her. “Those used by the patrols. Then Lord Sondan’s, Faran’s and mine. In that order.”
Concern flashed through her eyes. Lord Sondan bristled next to me, and Lord Eredan faced him.
