Corey thought he had a point and let Wil handle the package until it sat securely in the center of the desk, surrounded by flasks, Petri-dishes, and vials.
“And how do you suggest we open it?” She wondered and stared at the item, eyes searching for anything that would give away the sender. “It won’t explode if I touch it, will it?”
Wil shrugged. “You never know.”
Corey sometimes forgot how different their education and training had been. While Wil had been working on his dexterity, his reflexes, and his strength, she had trained her mind in assessment and combinations of information. Details were her strength, not muscles. Patience when she was waiting for magic to reveal itself or nights of reading through Gan Krai’s works.
“Let me do it.” She closed the door and stepped past Wil to sit at her desk.
Ignoring Wil’s words of caution, she picked up a pair of tweezers and a scalpel and cut the yarn holding the wrapping together. She held her breath and let the paper pop open.
Nothing happened, not even the tiniest of smoke or sound hatched from the package. Instead, she found herself staring at a stone—a purple crystal similar to the one she created when she had tested Maray’s blood that first night when Heck and Jemin had brought her to the warlock quarters.
“What is it?” Wil asked and bent over Corey’s shoulder, curious.
Corey used the tweezers to pull the wrapping aside and found herself staring at a note.
“What does it say?” Wil was there, breathing past her cheek, eager to identify whether there was a need to alarm Scott and the others.
Corey didn’t speak. She was too immersed in the words that were written on a small piece of paper behind the crystal. ‘Devil is as devil does. Don’t forget who you are.’
“What does it mean?” In the meantime, Wil had crouched down on the floor, his face level with Corey’s shoulder, and was now twisting and turning the paper in his hand. “Devil. Does it mean Gan Krai? Rhia said he’s the devil.”
Corey wasn’t thinking so much about Gan Krai right now but that she, according to Rhia, had his blood running through her veins. She was called a devil-child because the devil’s blood was in her. Through an experiment or through natural procreation, she didn’t know. But she knew that this was a reminder—paired with a blood test crystal—that she was Gan Krai’s heir, and whoever had delivered the message wanted her to remember that.
“Rhia could have delivered this herself,” Wil suggested, mind already on solving the mystery. But Corey’s thoughts were somewhere completely different.
She had spotted more writing on the inside of the wrapping paper as she pulled the crystal out. The script was familiar, a bit uneven and eccentric, and almost impossible to decipher.
“Wil,” she hissed, stopping him from rambling in the background. “I know who sent this.”
Wil turned his head, brown eyes wide and curious, and eager to learn what she had figured out.
“Feris.” She couldn’t believe that one word filled her with relief, but it did. After more than a month of absence and silence, this was the first sign he was alive. He was hiding for some reason, though, and while a couple of days ago, Corey would have been tempted to just throw him in the dungeons with Rhia, now she was split between being hurt by his betrayal and understanding the motives that drove him to do the things he did.
“He is here? In Allinan?” Wil asked as if Corey had an answer to that.
“There is a good chance this is just another deceit from Rhia.” Corey went back to Wil’s original thought. Who knew if she could believe anything anyone involved in this mess of intrigues said.
“And there is a good chance it is Feris and he actually is trying to help you,” Wil noted.
“Help me with what?” asked Corey with a sour edge. She ran her hands through her curls and absently pulled one of them down to her shoulder. “Remembering that I might have a blood relation to the evil overlord?”
Wil pursed his lips. “Don’t you want to at least read his message?”
“And even if he was here? Who knows if he really wants to help or if he is actually just executing one of Rhia’s plans?” With a frown, she pulled the paper closer. Doubt had filled her top to bottom, and she wasn’t sure she could take another hit. Learning that Feris wasn’t the beast she’d thought just to find out a minute later that he was even worse…
“If you won’t, I will.” Wil had his hand on the desk, fingers about to pull the note from Corey’s hand.
“Shelf three, book seven, green and purple are yellow and blue,” Corey said, emotionless.
“What?” Wil stopped.
“The note says, ‘Shelf 3, book 7, green and purple are yellow and blue’,” Corey repeated.
“A code?” Wil wondered and got to his feet.
Corey shrugged. Was Feris really trying to help? A spark of hope flickered inside her heart. Even if her father was only an adoptive one, he was the only father she had. She was inclined to believe that his intentions were to help her in any way he could—even if he had hurt the ones she loved, her friends.
“What’s on shelf three?” Wil asked as he was already on his way to the bookshelves.
Corey picked up the note and let the crystal glide into her hand. It flickered silvery and sizzled just the way Maray’s had when she had first touched it, proof it had really been her DNA which had been used to create the artifact. She didn’t drop it the way Maray had, though, but stared into the lilac-silver layers as she twisted it between her fingers.
“Book seven, it said?” Wil verified from the background.
Corey nodded, too absorbed by the concept of having a living relative, even if it was the one person who was apparently commanding an army of Shalleyn demons. And even if the relation might have come to exist through one of his experiments rather than through biological procreation. It was just that she had never thought she would see the day when she would hold one of these in her hands and it would be hers.
“There is a gap where book seven should be,” Wil narrated from the back of the room. “Corey?”
Corey returned to the present.
“Are you coming?” Wil asked, his head appearing from behind the dusty rows of books.
“Sure.” Corey picked a small velvet bag from the shelf above the desk and dropped the crystal into it before she stored it away in the pocket of her pants. Then, she got to her feet and went to join Wil in his attempts to solve Feris’ clue.
“Empty,” she repeated as she arrived at the shelf. Wil was running his fingers over the rough wood, searching the surface for slits or dents. “Don’t bother. I have dusted those shelves so many times, I’d know if there was a hidden mechanism.” While she was still speaking, she thought through the message again. ‘Green and purple are yellow and blue’.
That she had never noticed a mechanical mechanism didn’t mean there wasn’t a magical mechanism.
“Green and purple are yellow and blue.” She slid into the gap between Wil and the shelf, very much aware of his presence as he wrapped one arm around her from behind, and lifted herself onto the tips of her toes to see the empty spot better.
“You know you are incredible,” he whispered into her ear as he lifted her higher with both hands so she could see properly without needing to get the footstool from the corner, which Heck and Jem so frequently used as an improvised chair. “Is there anything that can throw you out of balance?”
Corey wondered what he was talking about and glimpsed left and right, pulling out the books surrounding slot seven.
“You, if you let go of me,” she answered without laughing. She was too busy getting her mind to work it out. Feris wouldn’t leave her a clue she couldn’t solve. He knew what he’d taught her and he’d taught her everything. “Green and purple are yellow and blue.” Corey looked for colors, lines, spots, anything that would indicate there was more there than actually visible, but all she could see was the unpainted wood and the wall behind it.
With a sigh, she let her chin sink to her chest, her hair brushing the front of the shelf. “You can put me down now,” she informed Wil, who let her slide in between the palms of his hands until her toes touched the floor.
“I am truly reluctant to let go of you,” he murmured, and Corey noticed a subtext in his tone that was new. It wasn’t the gentle, patient, correct Wil she’d gotten to know and she’d fallen in love with, but there was a spark of excitement there that she hadn’t felt since Jem. She had almost forgotten it existed.
It was in no way an appropriate time to think about it, but Corey’s body reacted before she could. She leaned backward into Wil’s arms as he let his hands slide over her stomach, pulling her so close she could feel the muscles of his torso and thighs against her. Her head was still bent forward, leaving her neck exposed to Wil’s lips.
“I know, I shouldn’t be doing this right now,” he murmured, making Corey crave his closeness even more.
“The end of Allinan is nearing,” Corey joked, “this is a better idea than wasting time worrying.”
Wil’s chuckle tickled Corey’s earlobe, and as she laughed, she threw her head back against his shoulder.
It hit her like the sun did when you step out of the darkness after hours. As she faced the spines of the books she had pulled aside a moment ago, she noticed their actual titles. “‘To the Palace and Back to the Palace’,” she read, and “‘The Colors of the Sky’.”
“I beg your pardon?” Wil had stopped grazing Corey’s ear and bent around her to check what was going on
“There is no book seven on shelf three,” Corey explained as if it was the most logical thing in the world.
Wil used his gentle touch to turn Corey around and eyed her intensely for a moment.
“The book titles,” Corey pointed over her shoulder. “‘To the Palace and Back to the Palace’,” she quoted. “The book is not in Allinan.”
“You think Feris put it in the other world to protect it?”
“There is only one way to find out.”
“You don’t mean you want to portal to the other world right now,” Wil asked, understanding correctly.
Corey nodded. “Feris wants me to find the book. It has to be the book.” She thought longingly of the pages full of scribbles and sketches.
Wil, a moment ago so confident, all of a sudden was reluctant to even consider it. “Shouldn’t we at least inform Scott, or Maray or Laura?”
“Just to have them slow us down?” Corey asked and didn’t at all like her tone. She felt it. She had to be quick, or they’d never go. This was her chance to get the information she’d been craving. “You have your bracelet on, right?” Corey asked as she pulled ‘To the Palace and Back to the Palace’ from the shelf to flip it open.
There were maps and drawings of the Allinan palace in the book. The main building and the connections to the side buildings. In Allinan, they were the warlock quarters and the servant quarters, the barracks and the weapons room. In the other world, Corey didn’t know what to expect. The same building but different purposes for all areas. She wondered if the warlock quarters were even used in the other world, and if so, who they would give a heart attack by popping up in a cloud of white mist.
Overlays of pages created an assembly of hotspots of the palace in the other world—tourist offices, coffee houses, entrances and exits for visitors and staff. The warlock quarters were basically blank in the non-Allinan version. It was nightfall and winter. Who would roam a museum around these hours on a freezing day like this? Corey shoved aside whatever doubts were crawling up on her, snapped the book shut with one hand and took Wil’s hand with the other.
“Let’s go.”
Not a single scream greeted Corey and Wil as they stepped into the realm Feris had always warned was not a place for a warlock.
Wil stepped forward first, letting her fingers slide out of his grasp. “Not what I expected,” he noted and looked around.
Corey followed his lead and glanced around the mostly empty room. It was darker than the place they’d left, no magic light illuminating the wooden floorboards and plain, white walls. There was a desk where Corey’s lab desk was in Allinan, but it was empty. A chair stood abandoned in the center of the room, and there as one single bookcase sitting at the far end of the room right beside the window.
“Over there.” Corey pointed and started walking, but Wil blocked her path, and he holding his finger up to his lips again. His eyes moved up and down as he checked the room for anything which remotely reminded of a trap. Corey knew that look. She had seen it on Heck and Jem a couple of times, and on Wil when they had been down in Langley’s hideout to free Jem.
“Is the air clear?” Corey ran her fingers over Wil’s arm and gently shoved him aside so her path was cleared to get to the bookshelf. She could almost smell it—even when magic supposedly didn’t work in this world. Everything about that shelf screamed magic.
Wil let her pass, apparently satisfied with his assessment, but didn’t store his weapon away. “Be careful, Corey.”
But Corey didn’t need his words of caution—what she needed was that book. One step after the other, she approached the shelf, ready for a Yutu to jump out of a corner, and very much aware that without her magic, she wouldn’t be able to defend herself.
The bookcase was about the same size as the one in Feris’ study in Allinan, only it was empty—except for a single book, which was sitting approximately where slot seven was in the other world. Could it be that easy? It was hard to believe that anything would be that easy.
“Should I pick it up for you?”
Corey’s heart almost stopped as Wil appeared beside her shoulder. He had followed her silently like a hunting Yutu. Corey shook her head, making her curls fly, and lifted a shaky hand to grab the plain, leather-bound item. Her fingers were tingling with anticipation. She recognized the width and height of the book, and as she pulled it toward her, the title on the spine became visible: ‘Laws and Rituals.’
“This is it, Wil.” Corey could hardly believe it. “We found it.”
“You found it,” Wil corrected with a smile, but his tension didn’t fade.
Anxious to get a closer look at what lay ahead of her, she flipped the book open, freeing an envelope stuck in between the pages. Corey bent down to pick it up from the floor, but Wil caught it with a quick hand before it even touched the floorboards. “This is for you,” he announced and held it up.
Corey reached for the simple, white envelope with her name scripted on the front—in Feris’ handwriting. The paper felt cheap when she touched it, not at all like the parchment texture she was used from Allinan, and for some reason, the sense of a need to rush vanished. Had she been unable to hold herself back from grabbing the book a moment ago, now she was dealing with a boiling dread over what the letter might contain.
“Do you think he was here recently?” Corey asked, procrastinating the moment when she’d finally have to look inside.
Wil didn’t say yes or no but pointed at the letter instead. “Does it matter? He apparently was at some point and wanted you to find this.”
Corey was looking for the courage she’d experienced a minute ago when she’d blatantly grabbed Wil’s hand and demanded to portal out of Allinan, but it seemed to have crumbled with the discovery that the book was actually here and that Feris had left her personal words—instructions, whatever they might be.
With trembling hands, Corey opened the letter and extracted a folded piece of paper. On top of it were thin blue lines which she had never seen before. If he was using this world’s paper, Feris can only have written this recently. She unfolded it, storing the envelope back in the book, and read:
‘Corey, I wish I could tell you in person, but I am not allowed within a mile of you, let alone talk to you.’
Corey swallowed, ignoring Wil’s questions asking her whether everything was okay, and continued reading.
‘There are forces at work that no one can stop. Gan Krai is a
live, and he is not the quirky scholar we sometimes imagined he might have been. He is immortal and dangerous. When Rhia opened the rift, she betrayed the Shalleyn. I took her to the one person who could close the rift and stop the Shalleyn, Gan Krai, and I have been paying the price she bargained for her ever since.
‘But I knew he was alive long before that. I sought out the hermit warlock I’d heard rumors of to find out how to deal with your gifts, Corey, and found Gan Krai hidden in the woods. Seeing him alive made clear that whatever he had written in his books about theoretical concepts wasn’t true. Immortality is as possible as battle magic or healing—the kind of magic you’re doing. And going to him was a mistake.
‘All devil-children are Gan-Krai’s experiments. They have his blood. The way Neelis LeBronn and Cardrick Langley have Yutu blood. I learned that technique from him when I learned about how to create immortality, and Rhia forced me to use it once she found out it was possible. What I didn’t know was that it was possible they survived. I thought the experiments had gone wrong.
‘Gan Krai will claim his children—his devil-children—eventually, and he will align them beside him. You need to be careful who you trust. He is on the move, and I am running—from him, from Rhia, from the Shalleyn, who will eradicate everything and everyone who stands between them and Allinan.’
Corey took a long moment to digest it all and shook her head. The pieces were falling into place. Rhia’s revelation, the Ambassador’s story, Neelis’ report from his mission with Jemin and Seri, and now Feris… Gan Krai was alive. And he was coming for her? She suppressed the fear that was spreading under her skin and returned to reading, turning over the paper as she reached the last line.
‘It is my fault Rhia ever learned about him and about immortality. It’s my fault that I didn’t prepare you for this. You might want to make peace with Laura and Maray for now, but trust me, the second she smells a chance to grasp power, she will sacrifice anything to get it. You are the one who will have to break the binding spell. You will find all instructions in the book. Don’t forget to use the code. I have sent you everything you’ll need.
Two Worlds of Redemption Page 17
