He closed his eyes and let out a long exhale through his nose. “No one will come looking for us here, and that spell just now is the best I can do to ensure our privacy at the moment.”
“Sound-proof.”
“Yes, Jessica. A smaller version of the enchantment around the upper level outside.”
She raised an eyebrow, then pounded a fist on the table and shouted, “Brokar! This fae wants to bash your face in! Anyone wanna take a bet?”
Leandras blinked dully at her and slipped his fingers through the handle of his copper cup. “Are you finished?”
After another moment of listening for any response at all and finally getting none, Jessica smirked. “You can’t blame me for wanting to test it out.”
“Because you still don’t trust me.”
“Not completely, no. Maybe this little chat will clear that up.”
He leaned toward her across the table, his silver eyes reflecting the blue glow from the hinwi in his cup. “I don’t believe you.”
“Sounds like we agree on all points, then.”
“If you were still convinced I mean you harm, in this world or yours, then please illuminate me as to why you brought me back from the dead.”
Jessica’s upper lip curled into a crooked smile, but it didn’t feel like amusement. “I didn’t do that.”
Leandras sat back and spread his arms. “I am the proof.”
“No, I don’t heal people. I don’t bring anyone back from the dead. I do the exact opposite.”
“Yet here I am.”
“That’s just one point on the list of things you’re about to explain.” She stabbed a finger at him. “And it’s a long fucking list!”
They stared at each other, and Jessica realized how heavily she was breathing. She slumped back in her seat and glared at him.
His gaze flickered down toward her untouched copper cup. “Perhaps now you’ll—”
“Shut up.” She snatched up the cup, sloshing blue glow over the side, and took a long drink before she even tasted what was going down. The bubbles burned her nose, and she pulled away from the drink to give herself space to swallow. “Not alcohol my ass.”
“I said it’s nothing like liquor.”
“This literally tastes like blueberry vodka and sprite.”
“That’s an interesting revelation. I wouldn’t have pegged you for the blueberry vodka type.”
Jessica set the cup down and pushed it away from her, scowling despite the immediate and overwhelming warmth flaring through her limbs. “It was one time, and it was enough to know I hate it. Quit stalling.”
The fae’s smile couldn’t fool anybody now, apparently including himself. “Then I’ll start from the beginning of our arrival here.”
“Great idea.” She didn’t hold back on the heavy sarcasm in that either.
Leandras folded his hands on the table and blinked, as if that would settle him enough to go over all the things he kept trying to avoid. “We covered my surprise at seeing Cálindor fallen.”
“That first ruined castle-thing with the Gateway floating in the air? Not really.” Jessica settled back against the cushioning of the booth that did actually feel like velvet too. “You covered that you hadn’t known it was destroyed, that it didn’t exactly belong to your enemies, and that you’re not exactly upset about seeing it gone.”
“Yes. That is...” He cleared his throat. “It’s a confusion contradiction, I know. What I can say is the stronghold was a seat of political turmoil and apparently now a long-forgotten battlefield. But the Gateway stands.”
“Yeah, I get that part. And the whole thing about the wasteland creatures that eat everything that moves.”
“So then tell me what you want to know.”
Everything. Answers to all her questions she couldn’t possibly put into words with the allegedly short and deadly timeline on which they were racing across this world to gather Leandras’ precious artifacts.
Right now, she really wished she still had the bank in her mind. They’d done more together than either of them knew was possible; breaking into the thick-headed vault of the fae’s mind probably wouldn’t have been that far out of the question.
Jessica swallowed, trying to get rid of the hinwi’s sickly sweet and definitely alcoholic taste, and finally settled on asking, “What happened between you and Ati’ol?”
Leandras raised his eyebrows. “That’s your first real question?”
“Well you answering it definitely starts at the beginning of what I want to know.”
“Jessica.” His amused smirk returned, and he dipped his head toward her. “I’m sure you can find a better topic to dig into than anything that might have caused a little jealousy—”
“Jealousy?” A bitter laugh escaped her. “She tried to kill you. I honestly thought I had killed you. Or at least that I didn’t get to the problem fast enough. This isn’t about me.”
“Is it not?”
“I’ll wipe that smile right off your face if you keep pushing it.” Jessica folded her arms. “She brought up your purpose, whatever that is. And no one down there really wanted to actually talk about it, so that’s why it’s on my list.”
The fae man’s smile faltered. “It was a long time ago.”
“So was everything else, but we’re still dealing with it right now.”
He took another long drink of hinwi. “The Naruli tribes have maintained and looked after what they call the underworld. Not for the dead in the way you’ve heard of it but for the living. The plant life that sustains certain nexuses of magical power in this world. They haven’t suffered nearly as much under the Dalu’Rázj’s reign as those above the surface, but they’ve felt the strain of it. And I...made a deal with them. Before I ever left this world to spend the next few centuries in yours.”
Well now they were getting somewhere.
Chapter 29
It took everything Jessica had not to grin at his obviously hesitant confession. Finally, the fae was coughing up the details. Granted, it was in a completely different world this time with a ridiculous amount of unknowns for both of them, but at least they didn’t have to swear a damn binding to make him open his mouth.
“A deal for what?”
Leandras slowly tapped a finger on the tabletop as he gathered his words. “That in return for their protection of the Madraqór when I left, I would ensure a certain...favorable status for them within the Xaharí political sphere.”
“Oh, so now you’re telling me you’re a politician.”
“Of sorts.”
“That explains a lot, actually.” Jessica fought back a smile at the sight of his clearly unamused frown. “Is that something you can actually give them? Favorable status?”
“That remains to be seen.”
Something didn’t sound right in the way he said it. But now that she had him on a roll, Jessica couldn’t ignore the rest of what needed to be discussed. “What about the tree?”
Leandras cleared his throat and blinked quickly, like he was trying to shake off some memory he didn’t like. “That was the Madraqór. Reinvented as the Mahayál.”
“Wait, what?”
“Apparently, it had plans of its own when the earth sank and it was buried beneath...well, that pit we somehow managed to escape.”
“We didn’t somehow manage it. She teleported us out.”
“Yes, and that requires a rather large store of magic to accomplish the way she did it.”
Jessica slowly shook her head. “So we still don’t have it.”
“Not the original. Ati’ol was gracious enough to hand me a seed before sending us through her doorway into oblivion.”
The black orb from the tree. That made sense, even when the thing hadn’t looked remotely like a seed at all. “So why were you so pissed?”
“If you’d cultivated an astoundingly rare artifact within an incredibly specific set of parameters to be used at a later date for a spell you may or may not live long enough to perform, woul
d you be pleased to find it already sprouted from the ground in the care of precarious allies?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Not when you say it like that.”
“Then you understand. The Naruli agreed to protect the Madraqór as they saw fit, as long as its integrity was maintained. I was...pissed, as you put it, because Ati’ol did nothing to stop the original from taking root before its time. Knowing full well how it would alter my plans.”
“Okay. So we’re bringing the seed of your original seed back to Earth to...what? Plant a tree inside the bank? ’Cause I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
“It was never meant to take root. And I don’t intend to let that happen when we return.” Leandras grabbed his cup again, drained the rest of it, then eyed hers. “Are you—”
“Nope.” She slid it toward him and waited as patiently as she could while he chugged down probably half of it in one breath. Only when she was sure he couldn’t ignore the next part did she add, “None of that explains why she tried to kill you.”
“I...” He seemed more perplexed and suspicious of that statement than any of the others. “I don’t believe she had any intention of killing me.”
“Really? Come on. She literally gave us a wicked-witch cackle at the end before sucking us up from her secret cave and spitting us back out...here. She knew exactly what she was doing.”
“I won’t argue on that count, Jessica. Ati’ol knew what she was doing. She merely was not aware that her spell would have certain unintended effects.”
“Like killing you.”
Leandras shot her a deadpan stare. “That is one of them, yes.”
“Someone powerful enough to do what she did doesn’t just accidentally kill a fae.” Jessica shook her head. “I don’t care if you’re the Laen’aroth, which I still don’t understand. I don’t even care how powerful you are, even if you’ve been holding back the whole time I’ve known you. Hell, she was happy to get rid of us. Short of completely blowing you to smithereens, her magic did exactly what she wanted it to do.”
“But it didn’t harm you.”
“What?”
Leandras bit his bottom lip and stared at the gleaming tabletop. “That’s interesting.”
“It’s called intention.”
“No. I call that a change of...” Scrunching up his face, he whipped his hands off the table and sat back in the booth. “It seems my time spent in your world has changed a few core realities of my own existence.”
Jessica scoffed. “You have to realize how crazy that sounds.”
“What? That I’ve spent so much time on Earth, waiting for the right Guardian to take her place at the right time, without having lost any of my previous...character traits?”
More like flaws.
She shook her head. “Jumping through worlds doesn’t suddenly make you allergic to magic that wasn’t supposed to kill you.”
Leandras met her gaze with a deepening frown. “Nor does it grant a vestrohím the ability to heal a lifeless body until that life is restored. But we have clearly witnessed both of those things.”
“No.” Closing her eyes, Jessica tried not to lose it on him. He was obviously freaking out a little about having been dead—she couldn’t believe she was even thinking about it like that—and he naturally wanted to put a rational explanation behind it. It just wasn’t a rational explanation. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that wasn’t me.”
“Even when I heard you?”
Her eyes flew open. “What?”
There was no trace of amusement, concern, or underlying irritation looking back at her now. A little surprise, maybe, sure. But Leandras studied her with the same level of compassion and open acceptance as when she’d spilled her guts to him about the past she never wanted to remember in the first place.
She shifted in the booth and had to look away. “You can’t say stuff like that.”
“I’m saying it now, Jessica. Look at me.”
“You know what? Let’s just get whatever it is you have to get here so we can move on to the next and go home. My home. Not yours.” She slid down the booth, fully intending to stand up and walk right through his little sound-proof enchantment.
“Your voice. Calling my name.”
“Stop.”
“You pulled me back.”
She froze where she sat, breathing heavily through her nose and staring at the table. “It could have literally been anyone. If you were dead, there’s no way to know that was me.”
“How certain are you that I actually did die?”
Slowly, she lifted her gaze to meet his, her pulse racing. She could drink every bottle of magical booze in this place, and even then, it wouldn’t be enough to get rid of the awful feeling that he might be right.
“I felt you die,” she whispered. “You were gone. And I—”
He nodded. “Whatever it is, say it now.”
“I can’t.”
“Jessica, as certain as you are of my death outside those city walls, however brief it was, I can assure you I am just as certain of what I experienced and why I listened. I did not turn away when I heard you call my name.”
The thin warble of the metallic instrument faded with the low conversation of the other magical patrons at this weird-ass bar. The lights dimmed in Jessica’s vision. Her mouth ran instantly dry, and she had to try twice to draw in a shuddering breath before finally finding her words. “What did you say?”
“The call I answered was yours alone. I cannot claim to understand how, but I imagine it has something to do with why I...”
Now even the fae’s voice was drowned out by the rushing in Jessica’s ears.
“Just promise me you won’t turn away when you hear them calling your name.”
Tabitha’s words clanged around in her head—the warning and the plea the scryer witch had given so suddenly before telling Jessica to make it a promise.
In the beginning, before she’d known anything about what the bank really was and what the Gateway meant to both worlds on either side of it, Jessica had just assumed her predecessor had been talking about the Gateway. All those nights spent trying to ignore the whispers coming from the other side of that door—a wealth of promises; the temptation to just give in and open the door; her own name uttered in a thousand echoing voices.
Tabitha hadn’t been talking about the Gateway at all.
She would have thought it impossible for the scryer to know Leandras would be uttering those exact same words to her now, in a different world, over two cups of fucking hinwi. But that was the beauty of scrying, wasn’t it? Most likely the curse of Tabitha’s gifts too.
None of it explained why the old witch had gotten things backward in her last cryptic prophecy before her own murder she’d predicted down to the minute.
“Jessica?” The concern in his voice brought her awareness crashing back down around her. “What is it?”
“It’s...” She tried to lick her lips, but everything inside her mouth felt stuck together. “Just something Tabitha told me. The day she died.”
Why was she telling him this? Why did a little coincidence even matter?
“It’s not a coincidence,” Jessica whispered.
“What’s that?”
She looked up at him and shook her head. “I don’t know. What you said about hearing me...”
“Did she tell you something about me? Is that what this is?” Now the fae looked concerned all over again, scanning her face and leaning against the edge of the table. “Jessica, if—”
“No. It was just the same...”
That wasn’t completely true, though, was it? Tabitha had told her something about Leandras, only instead of coming from the very alive lips of the scryer witch, it had come from a small hand-written note left inside Jessica’s safety-deposit box in the vault.
And nothing made sense.
“She told me I could trust you.”
That clearly was not what he’d expected to hear. Leandras pulled
away from the table and narrowed his eyes. “I find that hard to believe.”
“It was—” A surprised, airy laugh burst from Jessica’s mouth, and she tried to cover it up. “She wrote me a letter.”
“And gave it to you when?”
“She didn’t give it to me. I found it in the vault.” Running a hand through her hair, Jessica sighed and glanced at the padded velvet upholstery covering the wall beside their table. “And yes, that happened after she died.”
“Did she...” Leandras rubbed his lips with two slender fingers and looked like he’d just been sentenced to a year in prison.
She sure as shit knew what that felt like.
“Did she say anything else?”
“Yeah. That you’re a pain in the ass, which I completely agree with. But then she told me to take you at your word. To trust you.”
A weak chuckle escaped him, and he pulled his fingers away from his mouth in a careless gesture of acceptance. “That may be the most surprising thing I’ve heard you say.”
“Why? You’ve been trying to get me to trust you for weeks.”
“I know. But if Tabitha...” He took a sharp breath, shot her a crookedly uncertain smile, then drained the rest of her hinwi. “It doesn’t matter. We should go.”
“Wait, so I finally say something about trusting you, and it makes you wanna run away?”
“No. No, not at all. Jessica, I have no more answers for you about what’s happening in this world. Not about the Naruli’s magic, not about the state of the upper city inside the walls, not even how you managed to find me in the darkness of...well, death.”
She opened her mouth to remind him she wasn’t entirely convinced—even though it felt like now she might be—but he lifted a finger to stop her.
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe it. I do. Which means you’ve uncovered something I never expected to encounter. About both of us.”
“Like what, exactly?”
“That nothing’s set in stone.” He snapped his fingers, and the wall of his privacy enchantment shimmered again before falling away. Then he stood and offered her his hand. “The past, yes. But not the present. Most certainly not the future.”
“You’re kinda starting to sound like the scryer now. You know that, right?”
The Poisoned Veil (Accessory to Magic Book 4) Page 28
