by Jessica Gunn
She shook her head, her lips thinning. “No. There’s no way to without crossing the walls around Alzan again, which is something Shawn and I are trying to limit given my… situation.”
“Then he doesn’t know we’re safe?”
“No.”
My stomach dropped. The sirens. The human police who’d showed up to the wreck the house had become. That fight with Lady Azar had become so unintentionally public so fast. Hydron’s CIA department was sure to have a field day.
“Shit,” I said, closing my eyes, as if that’d help erase the last three years of my life.
“Pretty much. That’s why we need to talk to Jaffrin, get our magik situations sorted, and return to our plane as quickly as possible. If we can manage to cut off Lady Azar, that’s our best shot.”
I looked her in the eye. “We’ve tried twice now to do that. And failed miserably both times. I think we need a new plan.”
“We’re running out of time for that.”
Except for the half-baked, insane idea I had. One I shouldn’t voice yet. “One thing at a time. Is Rachel awake?”
Krystin nodded and then walked over to a panel on the side of the wall. “She was in another holding cell. These were created to deal with invaders from Darkness during the First War, as well as to hold Neuians who came to Alzan without an invitation. Jaffrin’s being held in a similar cell a few stories below us. It was to keep your magik under control until the effects of the Pyramid Building nullified your power some. I’ll admit it doesn’t totally do the job. Shawn and I still have access to our magik, but it’s somewhat dimmed here.”
Krystin tapped a few keys on the panel, then the shield wall dropped. “There you go.”
“Thank you. It seems like Alzan has a plan for everything.”
Krystin’s eyes darkened. “Everything except the final conflict.” She straightened, pulling in a deep breath, then cocked her head toward the door. “Let’s go. I believe Areus is with Rachel and the others right now.”
I gestured toward the door. “Lead the way.”
But as she started to walk through it, I reached out for her arm. She spun, a question on her lips. “Just—thank you,” I said. “Thank you, Krystin.”
“For what? Bringing you to Alzan?” Her eyes were questioning. “It was the only way—”
“For saving me. Again.”
Her brow furrowed. “I’ll always save you. We’re teammates, Ben. And friends.”
A smile worked its way onto my lips, but I held it back. “I think we both know there’s more to it than that.” I dropped my hand to hers and interlocked our fingers. “Thank you.”
She nodded. “Always.”
My head pounded as Krystin led me through a maze of halls she couldn’t possibly have memorized so quickly. It’d only been days since she and Shawn had returned from Alzan. I had to wonder if it was their magik guiding her like some sort of beacon.
Every step tested my balance. Krystin was right; this building seemed to dampen the effects of my magik flare, but I still felt it burning through my veins. Although I was beginning to question if it was less backfiring and more transforming into whatever being a Neuian actually meant.
“They’re just through here,” Krystin said as we rounded a corner and stopped outside a room connected to the hall by a large archway. The doors had been swung inward, held open by two bronze statues of winged horses. I gulped at the sight of the mythical creatures, swallowing hard.
When I’d come here a few days ago on the heels of Shawn and Krystin’s teleportante, I hadn’t been here long enough to get a good picture of the place. We’d appeared in a lobby with a high vaulted ceiling and stained-glass windows. Now, I saw that there was so much more than that.
The room before me had been filled to the brim with bookcases stuffed with leather-bound tomes and gilded pages and lettering. A musty smell permeated my nose, but it was swiftly overtaken by incense burning in a corner. In the front of the sweeping, marble-walled room was a sitting area with plush white seats. There sat my team, except Rachel, who paced the distance between the chairs and the closest bookshelf.
“Hey,” Nate said, looking up as Krystin and I entered the room. “You’re awake.”
Rachel halted her pacing, her gaze swinging up to me. Her once-average blue eyes were now shimmering with brighter, bluer tones—like gemstones—and faint tattooing appeared at her temples. Like the tattoos Karen and Jaffrin had had. “Ben.”
She crossed the room to me and wrapped her arms around my middle. I held her with one hand, unsure of what to say. All words clung to my tongue but didn’t make it to my lips.
“He will be fine,” said a voice I vaguely recognized. Areus, Krystin and Shawn’s mentor and guardian. For all of a week, tops. “Ben took the brunt of whatever Karen did to you.” Areus glanced briefly at his hands clasped in front of him. “I regret that things occurred this way. Had I known the Daughter and Son were involved with Neuians, I would have handled it differently.”
“How exactly?” Krystin asked, peering up at him. “We didn’t know.”
Areus regarded her for a long moment. “I perhaps would have counseled you to stay in the city longer.”
“You don’t trust the Neuians,” I said, my eyes narrowing. Of course not. No one did. Even Giyano and Lady Azar had backed the hell off when they found out. What made them so scary, anyway? Because they’d been around longer and were more powerful?
Areus sat on the arm of a nearby seat and sighed loudly. His kind eyes were drawn, fatigue wrinkling his forehead. “No. But it’s not so much a matter of trust as it is the way it has to be. Despite your ancestor Karen’s assistance and the help of other Neuians in the First War against Darkness, they have and always will despise Darkness and the Powers. For what we are as much as what we stand for.”
“And what might that be?” Rachel asked.
Areus’s gaze lifted to Krystin and Shawn, then traveled to the rest of us. “Their failure. We don’t know much in Alzan, other than, as I’m sure the Daughter and Son have already told you, they’re older than we are. They created the cianzas. And as far as I can tell, the cianzas are all they care about.”
“And claiming any living descendants as their own,” I said. “Why did Karen wait until now to come to me and Rachel? Why not our ancestors?”
Areus gestured to Krystin and Shawn. “I believe it has to do with these two, and her previous experience with the first Daughter.”
Krystin offered him a hard stare. “She did mention the first Daughter. Care to elaborate?”
Areus rubbed his chin. “I told you the first time you and Shawn were here that Alzan was forced to prematurely call forth a first set of Son and Daughter named during the First War. We misunderstood the prophecy. Karen Reiner was here that day with me when I called them. She was there when Alzan was moved to this plane of existence.”
My jaw fell open. “How old are you?” Heat lapped at my cheeks with the question, one I couldn’t stop from falling out of my mouth. Areus didn’t appear to be much older than his mid-thirties. Demons often aged slower than humans. Was the same true for Alzanians?
Unease rolled through my stomach. Would Krystin now age slower too?
I glanced at her. A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have looked to her for anything. A year ago, and I wouldn’t have even known her yet. All the same, it was slowly becoming unfathomable to me that there was ever a time Krystin hadn’t been in my life. Or that there was a chance she’d never be again.
“Old enough to still be paying for the sins of that day,” Areus said, breaking through my thoughts. “But I suggest we learn more of this history from your former Fire Circle Leader, if possible. Jaffrin’s cell is but a few stories below where we currently stand. If anyone might have answers as to why the Neuian Council sent Karen to you now, it’d be him. He must have still been in contact with them.”
You hope. I massaged the back of my neck. “If you say so. Are we all going?”
“I want t
o know what he knows,” Rachel said.
“Ditto,” said Shawn, his eyes narrowed on Krystin.
She shrugged. “Hey, I’m absolutely going. Then I’ll take care of the other thing.”
“You know I’m in,” Nate said before Areus could give Krystin more than a quick, questioning look. “Let’s find out the truth. Or if there might be any way to keep Rachel’s and your magik from turning.”
I stood straighter and searched inside myself for the strength needed to walk into that cell and pretend Jaffrin’s real identity—and my true heritage—didn’t bug me. “Then let’s go.”
We padded down another maze of hallways, following Areus along with two other Alzanian guards. I wasn’t sure who they were here to protect since it wasn’t us they were worried about.
Unless they think you’ll attack Jaffrin.
I wouldn’t pretend the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. It wasn’t that I’d necessarily put full stock in what Jaffrin was selling, but I had trusted him to a certain degree when it came to finding my son. Then it had turned out he’d been in it for an entirely different reason altogether.
Deeper and deeper we climbed beneath the Pyramid Building, a structure I hadn’t yet seen from the outside to confirm its shape. But on the surface and higher levels, the empty space opened up into a vaguely pyramid-shape. What did it look like from the outside? Probably humungous.
A few minutes later we stopped outside another room where four more Alzanian guards stood watch. They wore silver-plated armor, a stark difference to the tunics and pants I’d so far seen on Areus and the other Alzanians.
The guards snapped to attention when Areus appeared.
“Sir,” one of them said.
Areus nodded. “We’re here to speak to the prisoner on the High Council’s orders.”
The guard’s gaze slid to me and Rachel, then to Nate. “Is that wise?”
Areus gave him a hard stare. “I’m a sitting council member. Open the door.”
“Yes, sir,” he said and turned to his fellow guards.
As they opened the door, I turned to Krystin with a questioning glance. If Areus was a member of the High Council, why did the guards question him?
But I’d forgotten: Rachel and I were Neuians just like Jaffrin. Apparently.
Unease spread through my gut. Would this ever get any easier? Or less crazy?
I thought my son being kidnapped by a demon and then me traveling to another plane of existence was the most insane thing to ever happen to me. I never could have imagined being turned into a different sort of humanoid creature. Assuming they were that different after all. Maybe it was the same as the difference between demons and humans, a magik so tainted it transformed one’s soul. And eyes and skin and—
“Ben?” Krystin’s voice called me out of my spiraling sanity.
“Yup,” I said, stepping into the room behind the rest of our team.
“Are you okay?” she asked, keeping pace with me.
“Yeah.” I kept my eyes on the entryway ahead. “Just want to talk to him and get back before anything happens.”
“You do realize anything that’s going to happen will occur here, right?”
“That’s not the point.” Besides, despite every failure to do so thus far, we still had an infinitely better shot at stopping Lady Azar’s plan back on our plane.
Once we were all inside, two of the four guards joined our group inside the room and the door slid shut. A flash of white magik slid down the doorframe like a seal. Or rather, a shield.
In the middle of the vast marble-walled room was a ten-by-ten cell lined with metal bars and another shimmering wall of pale yellow magik.
Jaffrin sat in the middle of the cell on a bench long enough for him to lie down on if he wished. Something vaguely resembling a toilet resided in one corner. He looked up at us, a single eyebrow arching upward and stood. “I was wondering when you’d come to visit.”
No one spoke. To see him standing there after years of wanting to trust him, of following his orders, to now be opposed to Jaffrin made my hands shake. I balled them into fists and held them close to my sides, hoping to hide it.
“We’re here for information on the Neuians,” Krystin stated, her voice even, as if this didn’t bother her at all. There wasn’t even a hint of indignation despite the fact that all these years, she’d always thought something was off with him.
I didn’t think she ever pinned him as a Neuian though. None of us had.
Jaffrin’s stare traveled from Krystin to me. He cocked his head. “So it is true after all.”
He knows. “That we’re Neuians? Yeah,” I said. Giyano had known Jaffrin knew. Kinder must have too. All this time, dormant Neuian magik had been in my system—in Riley’s, too—and we’d never known. “Anything helpful you could tell us about that?”
“It doesn’t appear as though your transformation is fully complete,” Jaffrin said. “Although that could also be the Pyramid Building dampening both our magik.”
“Unfortunate, that,” Areus said dryly. He had placed himself between Krystin and Shawn, and Jaffrin’s cage. Their guardian by both fate and choice it seemed. The fact that Krystin was letting it happen spoke more about her than she’d probably ever care to admit.
“Oh, come on,” Krystin said, her hip cocked and her arms crossed. “You’ve spent years ordering us around and dispensing information. What’s another lesson from our ex-Leader in the grand scheme of things?”
Jaffrin smirked. “As if you’d listen any better now than before.”
Rachel charged the cage, stopping short of the bars with a snarl on her face. “We’re turning into something we don’t understand. Something you knew about. Tell us what is going on. Why is this happening now?”
Jaffrin’s gaze lifted from us to Areus. “Because the final conflict is fast approaching. All sides are claiming their champions. He should know. With the Daughter and Son claimed and in place at Alzan, Darkness has Lady Azar and Riley. The Neuians need their own soldiers.” He looked to me. “Your lineage is that of Karen Reiner’s. She was the Neuian ambassador to Alzan during the First War.”
“We know,” Shawn said. “We’ve already met her.”
“Oh?” Jaffrin asked. He sat down on the bench and crossed his arms. “I’ll admit, I didn’t know you two were related to her at first, Ben. I might have been more careful.”
“Why were you sent to the Fire Circle?” Rachel asked.
“To observe,” Jaffrin said. “To position myself in case the Daughter and Son arose to power before the final conflict.”
Krystin stepped toward his cell. “And to keep us from doing anything that’d hurt a cianza, even if it was the one at Alzan.”
“Especially if it was Cianza Alzan,” Jaffrin said.
My gut somersaulted. “What?”
“Don’t believe what he speaks at face value,” Areus warned, looking at each of us in turn. “Neuians will say anything if it means their escape. We had many such instances in the First War.”
“Relax, Areus,” Jaffrin said. “Do you know what they call you in the Neuians’ main city? ‘Friend.’ For your assistance in aiding Karen’s escape from Alzan during the siege.”
Areus glared. “I helped her escape because she was innocent. It seems that’s in question now.”
“Much has changed since then.”
Areus’s eyes darkened. “And indeed, a new war fast approaches. Spare them your lies.”
“I wasn’t going to lie,” Jaffrin said. “The reason the Neuians are involved now, why they’ve arrived to claim Ben and Rachel’s vaguely Neuian blood, is because of their direct role in the final conflict. Their proximity to the Daughter and Son of Alzan, and therefore the cianza at the city’s center. And because of Ben’s son, Riley. Because of the Power.”
Nate’s eyes narrowed as he too stepped closer to Jaffrin’s cell. “We know it’s the biggest cianza. That’s why Lady Azar wants control of it. But why else does it matter?”
I was more interested in how she planned to control the damn thing with her, her god-knows-how-large army of magik soldiers, and Riley standing on top of it. It’d explode immediately.
Unless the number of Alzanian citizens was enough to balance it out?
Jaffrin chuckled. “I find it intensely amusing that only after you capture me do you decide I’m worth listening to.”
“Could be because I’ve known you were an evil, lying bastard from the beginning,” Krystin snapped. “The only thing keeping me from jumping into that cage and attacking you right now is the fact that the wrath of the entire High Council would rain down upon me. And we need as many allies as we can get.”
Jaffrin’s gaze swung to me. “And what have you to say?”
I swallowed hard. “If Cianza Alzan is so important that my far-removed relative would swoop down to our plane of existence to change Rachel’s and my magik, then you need to tell us why. Because I don’t think Karen will, not without taking us back to wherever you both are from.”
That was all I knew to be true. And given a choice between someone claiming to be my relative and this asshole, I’d much rather deal with the devil I knew.
“Why don’t you just ask Giyano?” Jaffrin’s question hung in the air like a nuclear missile. But whatever aim he’d had in asking it missed its target. “You’ve always been fonder of his information than mine. He was turned into a demon by Lady Azar for what he knew about the Neuians.”
He doesn’t know.
Krystin stiffened, save for clenching her fists, a white light surrounding them. “He died saving Shawn and me. Demon or not, he was more a mentor to all of us than your bastard self.”
The smallest grin appeared on Jaffrin’s mouth. “I’d say I’m sorry for your loss, but…”
“Enough,” Krystin said. “If you’re not going to help—”
“What? You’ll let me die in here?” Jaffrin asked. “I’ll likely suffer that fate anyway. At least until Lady Azar arrives. If my brethren do not step in, the world itself will be destroyed. Then we’ll all be free—in one way or another.”
