And to think Lena was foolish enough to think the book was about the runes in its back pages. How stupid. How utterly and completely foolish.
As Ingrid opened her mouth to presumably ask about Vale and Tamlen, how they were in bed and all the juicy details her friend was always more than willing to share with Lena, the dining hall erupted into a cacophony of sound the moment an enchanter stormed in. Enchanters had their own quarters, their own kitchen. They did not dine with the students. Questioning whispers filled the oblong room, the dozens of students around Ingrid and Lena did their best to ignore the enchanter’s presence. They wouldn’t for long, though.
“Classes have been canceled until further notice. The gate’s been closed,” the enchanter shouted, using amplifying magic to enhance the loudness of her voice. Her small hands crinkled the sides of her blue robe as she easily spoke over the dining hall’s noise, “No one is to leave College grounds.”
One of the journeymen students in the hall spoke up, “What about the hunt? The High Enchanter approved my leave—”
“Regardless of approval, no one will leave the College until the incident surrounding Rivaini has been investigated. The hunt itself has been postponed indefinitely.” The enchanter’s answer was swift and stern, shutting down any other student who thought they could argue with her.
Lena’s heart stopped the moment the enchanter said the gate was closed. The gate was never closed, unless the city was being attacked or someone in the College was suspected of doing something they shouldn’t have. Shit. The tome was in her dresser, not very hidden. She had to store it someplace else—but where? If the gate stayed down, if anyone in the College was suspected of doing something illegal, she knew they’d have no privacy. Rooms could and very well would be searched, if it came to it.
“What’s going on?” A rather young initiate asked after raising her hand to speak, earning a few laughs from the older students in the hall.
The enchanter pursed her lips, clearly debating whether or not she should tell them all what was happening outside. After throwing a quick glimpse around the dining hall, the enchanter said, “There have been numerous sightings of the undead. Some are fresh from their graves, others nothing but skeletons. Necromancy is an illegal branch of magic in Rivaini and any other civilized kingdom. To call forth such a dark spell is beyond foolhardy. If you know anything about it, do not hesitate to speak with me or one of the other enchanters. The gate will be closed until the undead are dealt with and the mage responsible is discovered.” With a bow of her head, she hurried from the dining hall, leaving the entire room in an unsettling quiet.
Not for long, though. Gossip started flying left and right. Who’d be stupid enough to raise the dead? Some asked. Others asked questions involving how a mage could hold so much power. Wasn’t necromancy higher-level magic? It was one of the journeymen or the enchanters, the initiates decided.
As the world descended into chaos around them, Ingrid leaned closer to Lena as she whispered, “Tell me it wasn’t you.”
Lena wanted to be shocked that her friend would ask such a question, but she couldn’t be, for she did accidentally raise an entire crypt’s worth of angry skeletons and two ridiculously attractive men with magic of their own. It wasn’t such a strange question, considering. Still, she felt miffed as she quickly muttered, “No. I didn’t. I haven’t done anything since…Vale and Tamlen.”
Pushing away her breakfast of fruit, her friend said, “I’m finding it hard to believe that it’s a coincidence.”
Coincidence. Lena wasn’t certain there were coincidences when magic was involved. She muttered “I’ll be right back” before standing and hurrying out of the hall. She ignored Ingrid’s shouting, knowing eyes were on her, but not caring. They stared at her weirdly before, too. The initiate who refused to do any sort of magic. There wasn’t anyone in the College who was nearly as much of a freak as she.
It took her just short of ten minutes to reach her room, to jog up the steps in the living quarters for initiates. It took her only two seconds to realize that her door hung open, less than that as she sprinted inside, her heart in her throat. This day just got worse and worse, didn’t it?
Her bed was made shoddily, something she’d rushed to do earlier. At its base sat half a dozen folded robes, the color of sunrise, a bright and clean orange. The hue that apprentices wore. Lena stepped further into the room, setting a hand over the robe pile. She grabbed the top one, unfurling it, holding it out. They were the exact same size as the one she now wore, stitched and sized so that they would not cling to her body in an androgynous way.
This wasn’t right. Gregain had only spoken to her yesterday about promoting her to apprentice. There was no way the tailors could’ve finished them that fast; the College used tailors in town, not any of their own. No other College student had fitted robes like her—and if the gates were closed…
It meant Gregain had them already, that he either hoped Lena would eventually take the apprentice exam and pass, or he planned on promoting her regardless.
Dropping the robe, she flew to her dresser, pulling open the bottommost drawer. Where she should’ve seen her stash of clean, yellow initiate robes, Lena saw nothing but an empty wooden drawer. No yellow robes, no Noresh tome.
Shit.
She double-checked every drawer, finding that the tome was nowhere to be seen. How? Standing, Lena ran her hands through her hair. She’d just checked on it this morning, right before she made her way to the dining hall. She’d been gone a total of, what, forty minutes, if that? This was impossible. This wasn’t happening.
But it was. And now there was nothing Lena could do to stop it.
She smoothed out her last yellow robe, the one that still clung to her body. Her mind was beginning to form a plan when a dull, ho-hum voice interrupted, “The High Enchanter wishes to speak with you.” So melancholy, a monotone timbre. Almost like the man speaking had no emotions.
Lena turned to view Kyler, the guard who was in charge of the nightly roll call of this wing of the dorms. He stood in his armor, eyes vacant as they blinked. He looked pale, not like himself at all. Not that she knew him well.
“Kyler,” she said, stepping closer to him. “Are you all right?”
He said nothing, not even reacting to her concern. He spoke again, “The High Enchanter wishes to speak with you.” The very same words he just said, spoken in exactly the same way too. Something wasn’t right with his vacant stare.
Doing something stupid should’ve been out of the question, yet Lena found herself nodding along, saying, “Take me to him.” At this point, she didn’t have another choice but to go with him.
Without another word, Kyler spun in his metal greaves, walking away. She bit her lip, shutting her room’s door behind her before hurrying to follow him. He said nothing more during the escort, his vacant, emotionless eyes focused ahead of them.
“What does he want to talk to me about?” Lena asked, praying that her gut was wrong, that Kyler was fine—maybe he wasn’t a morning person. Maybe this was how he always was when it wasn’t nighttime. And maybe, just maybe Gregain didn’t find the book when the new robes were delivered. Maybe someone else had it.
She didn’t know which prospect was worse.
Again, Kyler repeated dully, “The High Enchanter wishes to speak with you.”
This…this wasn’t good.
The walk seemed achingly long, the climb up the winding stairs that led to Gregain’s office more arduous than it was yesterday. The air in the tower, in the hall leading to his closed office felt more stifling and stale. Did it feel like this before? Was she oblivious to it earlier?
Kyler let her reach the door first, standing close behind her as she knocked. No answer, and when she glanced back at Kyler, who seemed to stand a bit too close, she decided she better push in.
“High Enchanter,” she spoke, stepping into his office, her hand on the knob as she gazed around. “You wanted to…” Gregain was not in his office.
It was only her and Kyler. She spotted something sitting on his messy desk, overlooking everything else completely as she moved toward it.
The Noresh text. The hand with an eye in its center stared up at her, wordlessly asking her to touch it. It belonged to her, needed her. And Lena needed it…didn’t she? She ran her fingers across it, pausing as a blue wave of energy coursed over her, emanating from the tome. Calming magic, a spell placed on the book so that whoever touched it would fall into a slumber they could not fight.
It was a hex. Magic that was only taught to journeymen due to the nature of most of the spells.
“No,” she said, jerking back. But it was too late. Her movements were slowed, and she felt the magic sweeping over her, too strong and too instant to be denied. Lena stumbled, falling to her knees on the floor. She managed to crawl to the chair that faced the desk, but it was too little, too late.
Kyler watched her fall with disinterest, not moving a muscle to stop her or help her. His stare was glassy, his expression blank. Something was most definitely wrong with him. Her eyelids fluttered closed, and she was met with the unwelcoming coldness of the black void.
A ragged breath came from Lena as she sat and looked around. She was in her bed. No, not her bed in the College, but another bed. Her eyes stared at a wooden ceiling, beams that she’d seen countless of times. Sitting slowly, she stared around the room, dread filling her when she realized where she was: her bed in her parents’ farmhouse. The bed that was nothing but ash and dust. Or it should be. This wasn’t right.
Lena quickly got up, finding that she no longer wore her yellow robes; instead, she was dressed in a dirty gown, stockings covering her feet. She watched her toes as she wriggled them. How odd.
Slowly, carefully, she stepped out of her old room, away from her dresser and mirror—a full-length glass piece that her father had saved up and bought her on his last trip to Rivaini when he went to sell their produce. Lena moved down the hall, freezing when she heard wailing. What in all of Rivaini was that noise? Her legs drew her to the kitchen, where she found Vale and Tamlen sitting at the table, a child on each of their laps. Babies. Twins, if their similar appearances meant anything.
“What is this?” Lena asked hesitantly, watching as Tamlen made a funny face to the crying baby in his lap. His cheek and eyebrow held no scar, which she found even odder than the baby he held.
Before Vale or Tamlen could speak or even look at her, tell her why they both held babies—and why they were in her parents’ farmhouse, which should’ve been burnt down and long forgotten—the scene before her froze. The baby’s wailing stopped, and the one in Vale’s lap was caught mid-smile.
“This is what you could have,” a voice seeped into her ear, into her head. Low and soothing, but strong all the same. “This is what you want. You can have this, as long as you give me what I want.”
Lena knew she should turn around, meet whoever spoke to her, see if that person was a danger to her, but even though the voice was commanding, she knew she was not in danger. “What do you want?” she asked, blinking once as a black, misty tendril of shadow wrapped around her neck. It did not squeeze, though the sensation was peculiar on her flesh.
“I desire only what I am owed,” the voice whispered. “You.”
Rivaini was not a slave nation. There were servants, but they were paid. She was not property; Lena was not owed to anyone.
“You swore an oath unto me, a blood oath. A child’s word is as much law as a man’s. You bargained with me, and I accepted your terms.” Blackness crawled around her, encasing her in the crawling, semi-translucent substance.
“I don’t remember bargaining with you,” Lena muttered, trying now to break free of the shadow’s hold. But she couldn’t. As she wiggled, as she struggled, the shadow’s hold only increased its intensity. Soon enough, it was hard for her to breathe.
“You are mine,” it hissed. “You became mine when you gave yourself to me when you were but a child. Blackblood, you are mine in every sense of the word. If you fight me, if you try to break your oath to me—”
Vale, Tamlen and the babies suddenly grew sick. Though they remained frozen, their skin blackened with splotches of sickness, their eyes dripping tears of blood. Their skin shriveled and shrunk until they were like skeletons before her; even the two innocent babies.
“No!” Lena cried, feeling her own eyes start to water. A tear slid down her cheek as the vision of her men faded to ash; the babies with them. Her babies. They had to be. “Stop,” she muttered. She’d do anything to save them, even if it meant giving herself to another…thing. Whatever it was.
“I will let you keep them, but you, blood of my blood, must understand that you are mine. You may give yourself to them, but they cannot truly have what has been promised to me since your oath.”
Blood of my blood. Blackblood. Lena’s eyes widened with realization. The shadow behind her was… “Zyssept,” she spoke slowly, inhaling sharply as the shadows around her grew tighter.
“The very same,” it said. “And you…you will bring me forth, unleash me into the world. Together, we will rule side by side. Zyssept, the god of death and bringer of disease and the void, and his goddess of death.” The shadows around her withdrew, taking shape in what was otherwise an amorphous blob of tendrils. The shadow now had hands—and she was too freaked out to look and see if the shadow had anything else.
Like a face. Or other body parts.
“My wife,” Zyssept finished, lips on her neck. “The time draws near. Remember, I am always close by, even though you cannot see me.” She felt him smirk against her skin. “The scourge we will be on the land will be something great and awful. Together, you and I will rule it all, and no one will ever forget my name again.”
The hands on her arm spun her, forcing her to face him. Lena stared into a pair of eyes, set in black, shadowy skin. All her thoughts vanished immediately. Eyes, black as night, as bright as the sun. The opposite of a normal eye; what was normally white was black, and where the irises were was no color; only a pure, bright white with two dark pupils resting inside.
Lena should fight him, deny him. She was only a child when the mirror her father gifted her had spoken to her. Nothing but a naive girl as she offered her hand to the blackness swelling inside of it, offering the strange, melodic voice a prick of her blood as the moon hung full outside the farmhouse and her parents were asleep. She was too young to understand what it meant. She thought having magic would be fun.
What a foolish thing to do.
She didn’t even remember doing so until recently. Surely that counted for something? Surely she could fight Zyssept, go against him and break the oath she made? She did not want to rule over everything, to kill everything. She was not malicious. The regret and guilt of killing her parents nearly killed her. She couldn’t bear to cause any harm to others.
But she didn’t fight the god. She lost herself in the strange gaze that was held in a shadowy face—a face that was slowly looking more masculine as the seconds went by.
The moment Zyssept pressed his shadowy lips to hers was the moment she closed her eyes and surrendered.
Chapter Eleven
Lena’s head was bent at a terrible angle, and when she came to, it was rough lifting it. She went to rub her hands on her neck, but she found she couldn’t. Her eyes opened, and she saw that she was fastened to an old wooden chair, her arms tied down near the elbows to the armrests. Her feet were tied, too. Whatever this was, she wasn’t going to get away.
Unless she could summon some of that blackfire. But, no. The blackfire must’ve belonged to Zyssept. She wasn’t going to use any magic—partly because she was no good at it, and also because the bit she was good at seemed to be related to the old god of death. No, Lena would have to get out of this herself, somehow.
A small, dingy hut surrounded her, its wooden roof full of rot and holes. The windows were not windows at all, just small carved areas where there was no wood. Cobwebs clung to every surfac
e, alerting her to the fact that no one had lived here for years. What little furniture there was was upturned and broken, save for the chair she was tied to.
Clearly, wherever she was, she was out of the city. But how? The College’s gates were closed, and Lena assumed Rivaini’s gates were closed, too, because of the undead.
Shit. She was a sitting duck out here. She had to—
Two men walked through the front door, which wasn’t so much a front door as it was an archway whose door laid on the floor, broken and splintered. Outside, the world was a grey, dreary hue, the skies a cloudy, stormy omen of what was to come.
Until she realized she was taken, Lena was most concerned about her dream, about Zyssept, but the instant she saw Gregain and Kyler, she switched focus. Because, while Kyler still wore his anti-magic armor, Gregain no longer wore the robes of the high enchanter. His robe was black, pure black, save for the pale ivory skull that was painted on his new robe’s chest. Though she’d never seen it before, she knew it was necromancer’s garb.
Beneath his goatee, Gregain smiled. It was the same warm smile that Lena had come to love and look up to during her time at the College. The same smile that understood why she didn’t like to do magic. Now she hated it. “Ah, my girl, you’re finally awake. I was worried that I put the hex on too strong,” he said, reaching into his robe and retrieving the Noresh tome. His gloved hands ran down the tome. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to enjoy your new rank as apprentice. I had to speed things up, once I learned things about you.”
Lena glared at him, even though inside she was as strong as a puddle of water. What things could he have possibly learned about her?
“When Bastian brought you to the College, he told me that your brother had set fire to your home, killing himself and your parents. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I discovered you had no siblings. You set the fire.” Gregain handed the tome to Kyler, who took it without blinking. “Blackfire.” He knelt before her, his hands on her knees over her robes.
Spells and Necromancy: A Reverse Harem Fantasy (Unfortunate Magic Book 1) Page 19
