by Cora May
He wasn’t alone, Addy realized.
“You’re getting far too cocky,” the other being said. It was a woman’s voice. She sounded old, bored, and annoyed, all at the same time.
Addy’s heart skipped a single beat. He was working with someone else; she knew it.
She couldn’t look, though, to see who it was. The being that spoke stood far, far behind her in the cave and was making no movement forward. She tried to concentrate instead on the voice, to place it somewhere in the castle. Ultimately, she knew it sounded very, very familiar, but she couldn’t place it.
“Me?” Donlarr asked, incredulous and, like the female voice had said, cocky. So, very cocky. “I’m not the one who intercepts the Obsidian bearers. I’m not the one who opens the portals. And I’m certainly not the one who had the idea to begin with, much as I’d like to take the credit for it. You’re the one who orchestrated it all, and you plan to let me take the downfall, should it all crumble. After all, what am I to you but a being that has already passed?”
“You are more than that,” she told him fervently, “and you know that very well. You are my husband. And I am your wife.”
Donlarr laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound.
“What a fat lot of good that arrangement has done for me. You’ve born me no children. How much quicker, how much easier, would this have been if we could have bred them from the start? How much more could we have accomplished if we had raised our own children and released them into the world? Instead, we’re forever dependent on the human beings.”
The female didn’t say anything, but Addy could feel the shame in her silence. It was enough that even she felt a small bit of sympathy for the female. Then again, she also felt glad. Should they have released their own spawn into the world, what hell that would have been.
“The Obsidian bearers are my doing, my creations,” Donlarr continued, “and without my children, we would have nothing. And you say I’m cocky? My dear Swan, I am the only reason you’re here.”
“You’re the reason this has continued for so long.”
It was a vicious argument, one that was meant to put an end to the whole conversation and to let him know that she was right. But that’s not what happened. He enjoyed the statement. He seemed to accept it as a compliment.
“You can’t fault me for savoring the downfall of my counterpart Anam, can you?” he said, his voice soothing and seething at the same time. “They have everything that I should have been given, everything that Dimonis has tried so hard to give me. Everything I deserved.”
“You have what you deserved,” the female argued. “You made your choices, and this is what you got. This is what I will have, too. You think the Reaper is wrong in where he placed you?”
Addy could hear the smile in his voice when he answered her.
“I know where I belong.”
It was such a simple statement, but it gave her the heebie-jeebies. She wished she could have shaken the feeling away, but her body was not in her command. That was probably to her benefit, though. If she had shivered, they would have realized she was listening.
That was the first moment it had dawned on her. They truly hadn’t been aware that she was listening. She was sure Viktor was listening to the whole thing, too, and they weren’t aware. If they were, they wouldn’t have been so revealing, so nonchalant in their words. Though it was not the ideal situation, her enemy had unknowingly brought her here to spy.
She tried to listen in-between the lines.
“How long will this last?” the female asked.
Bored. She was getting bored. Of the conversation, or of the entire situation, Addy could not tell for certain. One way or another, she was bored. That was a good sign, Addy wanted to believe.
“It’s going to last till I am done,” Donlarr said. He was dismissive of his wife. He sounded bored himself, but Addy was pretty sure he was bored only of the woman in front of him, and not of the huntings that he had orchestrated. “I have many plans, you see. There are many things that Dimonis has asked me to do.”
“Sending ten of my school’s students into the Realm of Light every few nights is one of them?” the woman challenged. “What good is this doing for him? They’re barely doing anything to the Solas population, and even if they succeeded in killing everyone there today, do you not realize how many would be there tomorrow? Human beings die every day. New Anam enter each Realm every day, and not just one or two—or ten. Thousands enter, Donlarr. Thousands! And yet, you pick ten children to hunt them. They are nothing compared to the Solas, Donlarr. Can you not see that?”
“Have some patience,” Donlarr scolded her. “If you haven’t noticed, the Solas are not really doing anything to retaliate. They don’t know how to fight. They’re too good for that. They’ll just sit back as we pick them off one by one. It’s in their nature.”
The woman did not seem pleased with his answer.
“Again, do you realize how many more new Solas populate the Realm every day? Ten children can’t make a dent.”
Donlarr was moving about the cave again, reaching the far end and moving around whatever was placed there. It sounded metallic, whatever it was.
“It sounds like you’re undermining me. Is that the case?” he asked. Hatred and terror boiled in the undertone of what he said.
“No,” was the woman’s frank, curt answer. She didn’t sound afraid of him, not one bit. It didn’t sound like a true denial, either. It sounded like nothing more than the answer she knew she was expected to give him.
“Good,” Donlarr said anyway. “An undermining wife is the last thing I have time for. I’d have to fix that behavior right away. Wouldn’t I?”
There was a little hesitation in her answer this time.
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes,” he repeated, purring at her submission. “Yes, I would.”
Addy didn’t want to even start guessing at what he would do to correct the behavior. She couldn’t quite understand their relationship. She was his wife, yet she had more control and power than he did, somehow. At the same time, he was manipulative, as any good Dorcha should be.
He was coming up behind her now. She could feel sweat bead up around her forehead. Her nerves were running wild, but her body remained still. Unmoved. He came to stand beside her.
Addy didn’t move her eyeballs. Though she had control over them, fear held them in place. She didn’t want to do anything that would give away her consciousness, yet she had to know what was in his hands. She concentrated on the spot in her vision that his arms had entered.
Whatever was in his hands glowed too bright for her to make out in her peripherals, though. It was a bright gold color, and it made everything in his hands look like a blob.
She could tell that Donlarr, though, was looking at her with pride, like a father would look on his child.
“I’m having fun,” he told his wife, “doing things my way. And these children? They are some of the best Warriors I have seen. I sincerely hope some of them end up down here in their afterlife. I hope all of them do, really. It is my greatest hope that everything I am doing for them now will expel them from the Light. That the Reaper will look at what they’ve done to the Solas and cast them into the darkness forever.”
He paused then, reaching out to caress Addy’s face.
She would have cringed. Or vomited. Or ran. If she had had any control of her body whatsoever, she might have even done all three. But there was nothing she could do but stare blankly ahead of her as he touched her.
She felt so violated.
“We will accomplish so much more,” he purred, “as soon as my children are all down here with me.”
He took his hand away then, a reprieve for Addy. Then he began to pass out what was in his hands.
Weapons.
The golden blades that pierced through the souls of the Anam. The blades that enabled her to kill. To hunt. This was where she had gotten them from. From the hands of the devil himself. Or, she s
upposed, the devil’s helper.
Her body accepted the blade as he handed it to her, and then she began to take steps—toward the woman. She tried to get a good look at her. She was short. Much shorter than Nessi, but she was hooded. She couldn’t tell what her face looked like. The shape of her body seemed familiar, though. She was leaning over like she was old and broken. As if she was a frail old lady. That could have been a trick, though. Who she was tricking, Addy couldn’t be sure, since all of the students were supposed to be unconscious in this phase.
They had been, up until this point.
“Make the portal,” Donlarr commanded, his voice booming through the cave, as the students all began to line up by the woman with their weapons in hand. “We don’t have all of eternity to hold them here.”
She didn’t like being commanded, and she wasn’t done saying her piece. That much was clear, but she obeyed Donlarr, her husband. With a powerful gust, she began to weave the familiar yellow orb that would grow into a portal. That would take her to the Realm of Light.
She was much quicker than Douglass had been, but Addy could see the similarities. She could see the points of light that seemed to follow the command of the woman. She could feel the heat and the wind and the power that emanated from her body. She was very skilled, that much was clear. Perhaps Douglass was just much less experienced than she was. That terrified Addy to think. What else could this woman do?
The yellow orb grew and grew. When it was big enough to fit through, her body had no hesitation. It had already received its orders, had already known what was expected of it. She let her legs march her through that portal. She didn’t bother to fight it anymore. She didn’t even bother to look at Viktor. There was no point.
The yellow light swallowed her up once again.
The feeling of passing through portals was beginning to make her sick. It was a sort of motion sickness, she supposed. Or a guilt sickness. Maybe a bit of both. Either way, she was somewhat relieved when she landed.
That relief didn’t last very long, though. It felt nice to be back in the Realm of the Light, but only because she was out of the Realm of Darkness. She looked around as much as she could while her body moved forward.
The Realm of the Light was a pleasant place. It was bright and fairly colorless. Most things were white, but occasionally a pop of blue or yellow or silver or gold would come up, usually in the form of a flower bud on a white root. It was all very relaxing.
Or, at least, it would have been, if she hadn’t been quarreling with every movement of her body. She realized she was alone and figured they must have all landed in a separate part of the Realm. She wondered how everyone else was faring.
Her body wandered the Realm until she started to come across Anam. There was a group of them, sitting around what looked like a courtyard. The minute they came into focus, her body ducked behind a big, white bush that lined a part of the edge of the courtyard.
Hunting. She was hunting.
Her eyes peered through the branches as it watched its prey.
There were four Anam, three of them women and one man. They were sitting around a round stone table. The stone table looked cracked in many places, but in each crack was a Gold filling. Imperfection made perfect. The Anam were laughing, telling each other jokes or funny stories. Each of them had yellow hair with something attached to the top of their heads like a hat. Or a halo, maybe. It glowed, but it was completely transparent, like a hat made of light. They all wore white clothing, and all of it glowed transparently, too, but it wasn’t like they were wearing see-through clothing. Instead, it was more like they themselves were a little bit transparent. Like they were ghosts in a Realm that could not quite touch reality.
After crouching behind the bush for twenty minutes, two of the Anam Solas rose, bid their friends ado, and walked off. Addy’s body stayed behind. She continued to watch the two that were still sitting there. They continued to chat. Though the laughter had stopped, it was clear that their subject matter was still light. It was like they had not a worry in the world.
Were they not aware that they were being hunted? That their own kind was dying off, one by one? Had news of the Hunters not reached them yet?
It was about to.
One of the Anam, the last remaining woman, stood up. She held out a finger to the man, signaling for him to stay, as she took a couple of steps backward.
I’ll be right back, her lips said. Don’t you move.
The man made a show of turning into a statue, an action that elicited a small chuckle from the woman. Addy was too far away to hear any of it, but she was sure that sound would have been heavenly.
She wondered if the scream the woman would make when she returned would have a heavenly ring to it, just because of the Realm they were in. Did anything sound bad here?
She knew she wouldn’t stick around to hear that scream, though. Her body tensed up, readying itself for action. As soon as the woman was gone, she stalked out into the courtyard, her blade gripped tightly at her side.
Her body didn’t seem to care if it made noise or not, and when she got close enough, the man turned to look at her. The smile he wore wavered for a moment at seeing her human form, but ultimately it did not drop entirely. Even when his eyes found the blade in her hand.
“I’m so sorry,” she managed to say. She had control of her mouth, it seemed. That was nice.
“Why are you doing this?” the man asked calmly as she stepped closer and closer.
So they did know, then.
“Why aren’t you running?” she whispered. Her voice shook.
She struggled to slow her steps.
“I grow tired of eternity,” he answered softly. “I have lived here for thousands of years. I am ready to leave if you must take me. I will spare myself of the humiliation of running and begging. It has never worked before. Not for any of my friends.”
“Please,” she begged, a tear gathering in the corner of her eye, “run. Save yourself.”
“It will do me no good,” he answered. “Just tell me why.”
“I’m not doing it,” she whispered as her body came to a stop in front of him. She brought the blade up to his heart, the tip pressing against the transparent clothing there. She struggled against the plunging motion her body was trying to take.
Tears were freely falling down her face now.
“Please,” she begged again.
The man considered her for a moment, taking the time to look at the blade on his heart and the shaking arm that held it. It was shaking, not because her body was unsure of any motion, but because she was still fighting against herself. The man only nodded, though.
“Let go,” he told her.
It was a losing battle, and she knew it. He did, too. If he ran, she would track him down. If he begged, her body would hear none of it. The harder she fought, the harder her body pressed forward.
She was an Anam Hunter. Or, at least, her body was. She wondered if he understood that when he saw the shaking arm. She wondered if he knew that it was not her who was in control.
The blade slipped through, plunging its way into the heart of the Anam Solas. He gasped, his smile fading completely.
He felt pain in that moment. His hand rose to clutch his heart. It was as if he had not felt pain in a very, very long time. In thousands of years.
She pulled the knife away and took a few steps back. She watched as the man, still clutching his heart, fell to the floor where his friend would find him when she came back.
Addy was glad when her body didn’t stick around to see that. She was glad when a portal opened up for her in the courtyard. She didn’t fight as her body leapt through the white light again.
She was glad when she landed in her own room. She was also glad when her own body tucked itself into bed. She didn’t have the energy to do it herself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: CHANTA
S eeking out Creggor and George had been harder than Chanta was expecting. They seemed to be nearly gho
sts in the school. She knew their stones to be Emerald and Amethyst, though, so on Fenneck’s suggestion, they started by scouting out the Emerald Common Room. After giving him a brief description, Fenneck added that he was sure he had seen George around before.
“I’m not so sure about his friend, though. Creggor?” Fenneck asked her. “Seems like he’s one to stay on the edges, to keep just out of reach. Especially around the Keepers.”
“He’ll see it coming,” Chanta finished his thought process.
It was a part of her plan she hadn’t entirely anticipated. Seeking him out would be enough warning—with his ability to read minds, thinking his name would be almost as if she was calling out for him. The rest would be easy—tune into her mind, figure out she planned to have Fenneck borrow his ability, and then he would stay away. It was the perfect way to ruin everything she wanted to do that night.
“Exactly,” Fenneck continued. “Our luck might run a little thin today.”
“It doesn’t matter. He has answers that I need.”
Fenneck nodded, motioning that they should leave the small study. Chanta gladly agreed to lead the way.
Out in the common room, Fenneck and Chanta sat down on the couch in front of a nice, warm fire. They sat facing each other, neither one looking directly at the other one. The trick, Chanta reminded herself, was to remain blank in her mind. Not entirely, by any means, but she needed to clear away any thought of the plan she had.
Her chest was heating up. It wasn’t an unpleasant warmth, though she suspected it was based on her nerves.
She felt awkward sitting on that couch silently like they were. Staring at each other, or staring just beyond one another, and saying nothing was a sure way to attract attention. She realized they had to start a conversation.
“What were you studying?” she asked. Small talk should work just fine—something to keep them looking normal while they looked around the room. “Before I came in, I mean.”
