“Yesterday, I had the librarians search through the records for a portal into Oldwilde.” She waited a second to let the information sink in. “I found out what quadrant the gateway’s in.”
“That’s great!” But something like a cold fist closed over Fate’s heart and squeezed the joy from her. She slumped in her chair. “I can’t leave here, Gerdie. I want to, but I can’t.”
“I know. You’re Keep Guardian. The oath won’t let you.” Gerdie produced a piece of paper from her pocket and unfolded it. “But you can leave with this. It’s a spell to either summon or appoint a proxy guardian in your place.”
Fate took the rumpled sheet of paper and skimmed over the words. “This’ll release me from my oath?”
“Not exactly. It’ll free you from feeling duty bound, so long as your proxy’s in place. But if somethin’ happens to your stand-in, the oath kicks in and you’re back to being emotionally chained to the Keep again.”
“Wow, Gerdie, that’s huge.” Fate’s pulse raced with anticipation. This was exactly what she needed. Now she’d be free to find Finn. “Can I do the spell any time I want?”
“Sure, there’s no special time you need to do it.” Gerdie squirmed in her chair. “Um, there’s just one thing. You have to appoint Brune.”
Fate stared at Gerdie in shock. “What? You can’t be serious! How can I possibly trust Brune after she chucked me into the Book of Fables? I almost died in there. Not just once but several times. And how can you trust her? Anyone who would leave her defenseless six-year-old sister in the clutches of a child-eating monster is just…I don’t have a word bad enough to describe her!”
“No arguments there, but that was the deal we made. Remember? She said she’d find a way to get you out of your oath, so long as she got to be Keep Guardian again. Well, this is her holding up her end of the bargain.”
Fate could not stop shaking her head. “No, no, no. This is insane. What’s to stop her from doing something even worse to us once she’s got what she wants?”
Gerdie lifted her legs and stared at her toes. “Nothing, I guess.”
Fate stood and stormed across the room. She felt torn in half, wanting more than anything to run straight to Finn, but entirely unwilling to surrender her position of power. She stopped in her tracks. Since when had she ever desired power over love? It had to be the oath. It was making her feel this way. She turned back to Gerdie. “I say we squelch on the deal we made with Brune and summon a random proxy.”
“Don’t you think that’s kinda risky?”
“Riskier than appointing Brune? No.”
“Think about it. You’d be summoning some innocent girl away from her life the way Brune summoned you.”
Twinges of guilt kept Fate from arguing.
“Besides that your proxy needs to be someone with experience. Someone who won’t get herself killed her first day on the job like you almost did.”
Gerdie had a point, but Fate’s distrust of Brune was too great. “Is this the only way Brune can be Keep Guardian?”
“That’s what she told me.”
“Huh, so that’s why your evil sibling was so helpful when the Chimera was ready to chow down on me. She needed to keep me alive.” Fate paced back and forth. “We know what happens if my proxy meets an untimely end, but what happens if the untimely ending is mine after I appoint someone? Does that mean the proxy gets to be Keep Guardian on a permanent basis?”
Gerdie thought about it a minute. “I’m not sure.”
“You need to find out.”
“Done.” Gerdie slid off the chair.
“Don’t let on that you’re noodling around for information. Be subtle,” Fate warned her.
Gerdie marched over to the door. “As much as I can, but you don’t have a whole lot of time.”
“What do you mean? I thought you said I could do the spell anytime.”
“The spell yes. It’s the portal you gotta worry about. It’s going underground in roughly three days, so if you don’t go through it before then, you’re gonna have to wait a hundred years before you get another chance.”
Fate started to complain, when a knock on the door stopped her. Gerdie opened the door to Jessie, who held out a platter full of fudge brownies. “Copious amounts of chocolate at your service. This stuff is the bomb. Waaay better than anything you’ve tasted on Earth,” she said with a wide grin.
Her smile was infectious, causing Fate’s worries to recede for the moment. The promise of chocolaty goodness and the tremendous relief at having her best friend back were exactly what she needed to take the edge off.
Gerdie took the brownie Jessie offered. “Mmm, that is good.” She stepped out into the hallway before turning back to Fate. “I’ll let you know when I’ve got that thing you wanted.”
“Thanks, Gerdie.” Fate closed the door and followed the aroma of freshly baked brownies into the sitting area.
Jessie set the platter down and flopped on the sofa. “That sounded ominous. What’s she talking about?”
Fate grabbed a brownie and curled up on the other end of the sofa. “Just some boring guardian business.”
“Oh.” Jessie’s relaxed demeanor suddenly stiffened.
All the recent hurts rushed back in and Fate tensed. “Do you want to hear about it?”
Jessie rose from the pile of pillows and stared at Fate. “Of course. Why would you even ask? It’s not like we haven’t shared everything since we were in kindergarten or anything.” She crossed her arms and frowned. “I don’t know why you keep shutting me out.”
Fate’s throat went dry. She set the brownie down and pushed the platter away. “Me? You’re the one shutting me out.”
“Hardly. I’ve always been the one on the sidelines while I watched the charmed one being showered with one miracle after another. Like the treasures you always stumbled on without the hunt. God, it’s so annoying! While you’re finding diamond bracelets in purses from thrift stores, I’m finding petrified jellybeans in mine. And the quarter of a million dollar comic book from the garage sale–”
“Which I sold for $10,000 before I knew what it was really worth,” Fate reminded her.
“Oh, boo hoo, cry me a river.”
Fate stared at Jessie, shocked by this sudden attack. “Do I need to remind you of my nickname at school?”
“So a bat got tangled in your hair at one of the games and you freaked out in front of everybody. Could’ve happened to anyone.”
“I don’t know anyone else who’s been called Batty since ninth grade. Not exactly the self-esteem builder I was looking for.”
“You’ve got to admit, it’s better than what they used to call you in third grade after the worm incident.”
Fate bit down on the tears stinging her eyes. Out of those closest to her, Jessie knew how badly traumatized that experience had left her. She still had a worm phobia.
Jessie’s expression hardened. “Suck it up, Fate. You turned out all right in the end. You’re the gifted one, the bestselling author with droves of fans coming to your book signings. I have no idea what I’m going to do after high school, unless I do what my parents want. Do you see me as a veterinarian? I fall apart when I see a perfectly happy three-legged dog.” She shook her head. “But you…your career’s set for life. Do you know how many articles of authors I’ve read who said they struggled for decades before they got where you are? And you got there by accident.”
“That’s because I’m cursed by my name. You know what the dictionary says. Events are beyond my personal control and usually determined by a supernatural power. Look around you. If this doesn’t prove it, then I don’t know what will.” Fate waited for Jessie to absolve her, but she remained stubbornly quiet. Fate sighed. “As for all that hype over my book, I don’t even care about that anymore. Not after everything that’s happened lately.”
“And there’s the rub.” Jessie laughed, a harsh sound that rang through the room. “I wouldn’t let your fans hear that. They’d follow you anywher
e. Hell, they did. They’re here right now, risking their lives to help you.”
“I never asked them to come here!” Fate shouted.
“But they came, and you need to appreciate that they’ve sacrificed everything for being drawn like moths to the bright light that is you.”
Tears welled in Fate’s eyes, blurring Jessie’s angry face. “You sound like you hate me.” She swiped the tears away with the back of her hand. “Do you?”
Jessie dropped her heated gaze and grew quiet.
“How long have you felt this way toward me? Since grade school? Since forever?”
“No.” Jessie’s voice was so low Fate barely heard her. She lifted her gaze. “Since you became this big deal author. I’ve been jealous ever since.”
“Why? Is that what you want to be?”
“I write stuff,” Jessie admitted.
“You do?” Fate fell speechless for a half second. “Why is this news to me? I thought we knew everything about each other.”
“I was too embarrassed to show you. My stuff’s never been as good as yours.”
Fate was flabbergasted. “You’ve been writing this whole time and never showed me?” She thought back to all the afternoons and weekends they’d spent together thinking up ideas for Fate’s stories. Jessie’s imagination had always outstripped Fate’s. In all that time, she’d never once suspected that Jessie had been interested in writing her own stories. “Okay, when we get back, I have to see what you’ve written.”
“No way, I couldn’t stand the humiliation.”
“Oh no, you don’t. It’s happening. And you know what?”
“What?”
“I know I’m going to love it all,” Fate assured her. “After all the crazy ideas we’ve dreamed up together, yours were always the ones I ran with in my stories.”
Jessie nodded shyly.
“When this is all behind us and we get back to Earth, we should write something together.”
Jessie’s eyes lit up. “Yeah? I’d like that.”
Fate held out her hand. “Deal?”
Jessie shook her hand. “Deal.”
“So, are we good now?”
Jessie let go and squirmed in her seat.
“There’s more?” Fate’s stomach tightened with dread.
“It’s just that ever since you’ve been back, you’ve been so careful about what you tell me. Especially about what you don’t. It makes me feel like you think I’m too stupid to handle whatever it is you’re not telling me.”
“I’ve only been trying to protect you.”
“From what? The Chimera? News flash. That was me who saved you from the monster.” Jessie tensed, and Fate could see the anger sizzling on the surface. “If anyone here needs protection, it’s you.”
“You couldn’t be more right,” Fate admitted. “I’m not brave. I’m scared all the time. Scared for myself, scared for you and Dad. And I…”
“What? Say it, I can take it.”
Fate drew her legs to her chest and hugged her knees. “And I hurt all the time. It never stops.”
Concern edged out Jessie’s frown. “I thought your leg was healed.”
“It’s not my leg, Jess. It’s my heart. I left someone behind and I can’t stop missing him. I have this terrible ache in my chest. The pain’s always there and I can’t tell anyone about it.”
Jessie leaned forward. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”
The tears stinging Fate’s eyes ran freely as she began filling Jessie in about her history with Finn. How she’d first met him at the bookstore and her initial refusal to believe he was her written character come to life. Fate sobbed all the more when she described the day she told Finn the truth about his origins. She relived the painful rift his shock and disbelief had caused them at finding out he was the product of a young girl’s offhand daydream.
Jessie listened quietly as Fate went on to describe the darkness Finn had become infected with. She recounted the insidious changes Finn had gone through when he destroyed the Dragon Empress and Old Mother Grim. She choked on her tears as she described his battle with the darkness and the need to protect her by staying away from her.
As Fate relived her bittersweet reunion with Finn after he had learned to control the dark influence inside him, she calmed down somewhat. Until she came to the part about how she’d carelessly used her Words of Making to summon an ancient nature god to solve a dilemma in one of the earlier fables. She fell back into tears, her body shaking as she told Jessie she was to blame for the nature god returning to inter Finn inside a giant oak in order to restore life back to a barren island.
“I left him, Jess,” Fate confessed. “I just left him to rot in that tree.”
Jessie rushed over and hugged her. That was all it took to break the dam Fate had so carefully constructed to hold the pain at bay. A flood of sadness and regret washed over her and there was no stopping it. Fate collapsed against her friend, crying an ocean of tears she feared would never stop.
Jessie sat with her, quietly, patiently holding her until her sobs finally subsided. After awhile, Fate drew away and wiped her eyes dry. “So there you have it. The good, the bad and the ugly.”
Jessie smiled sadly. “I’m so sorry. I completely misunderstood. It’s just that you’d changed so much. You traded in your plaid pants and argyle sweaters for leather armor and I was afraid you wouldn’t think I was cool enough to hang out with anymore. Not that I ever really was, but you know what I mean.”
“Are you kidding? You saved my butt today! I still can’t get over how brave you were. Unlike me.” Fate slumped against the pillows. “I’m a total coward without my super powers.”
“Don’t talk like that. Who wouldn’t have a hard time with being normal again? It’s so…limited. If I didn’t have the Dragon Eye, I never would’ve gone out there.”
They both fell silent.
“I just wish you would’ve told me how much you were suffering over Finn,” Jessie said after a minute. “If I’d known, I never would’ve been such a brat about my own feelings.”
Fate shook her head. “No, it’s my fault. I wanted to tell you about him, but there literally hasn’t been any time since I got back. And mostly, I couldn’t risk falling apart in front of Eustace.”
Jessie raised her hands. “I get that. This is not the kind of thing you share with your dad, or any dad, for that matter.”
Fate sniffed and nodded.
Jessie grabbed two brownies and handed one to Fate. “So we’re good?”
“Better than good.”
They bumped brownies and bit into them. Fate swooned when the sweet, buttery chocolate melted over her tongue. “Oh my god. Did I just die and go to heaven?”
“Told you,” Jessie said through a mouthful.
Fate finished the brownie and reached for another. “We’re in for a doozy of a sugar hangover in the morning.”
“And hardly any sleep.” There was mischief in Jessie’s smile. “There will be no ending the night until I have the complete lowdown on Finn. I need my vicarious thrills and chills, so start talking. I want details–every smooch and cuddle, and other stuff.” She eyed Fate with curiosity. “Was there other stuff?”
Fate squirmed under the intensity of Jessie’s gaze. “Sort of, but not what you’re thinking,” she said, her answer muffled by brownie as her thoughts touched on the hallucination of Finn and the free fall she’d taken with him. Had the encounter been real and not some delicious dream that had twisted into the most horrible of nightmares, she would’ve had ‘other stuff’ to tell Jessie.
“Don’t tell me yet. Lay the groundwork first.” Jessie grabbed another brownie. “Okay, go. What’s his hotness factor? Mid to high? Or record breaking? He sounds like a sizzler to me, even when he was going through his bad boy phase.”
Fate’s face flushed with heat. “Oh, you have no idea.”
27
It’ll Be Over Quick
FRIGID WATER SCORCHED FINN’S skin like fire, ripping
him from a comatose-like sleep. Gasping with shock, he checked his surroundings, confused and disoriented. Half a dozen guards stood over him. They’d moved him into a larger room, which wasn’t clean by any standards, but seemed spotless compared to his cell. They’d stripped off his soiled rags. He was on the floor, naked as they doused him with another bucket of icy water. Finn curled in on himself, shivering uncontrollably. He wanted more than anything to fight back, but he barely had the strength to lift his head.
One of the guards, who stood out from the others as a royal guard, tossed some clothes at him. “Put these on,” he ordered.
Still shaking, Finn grabbed the clothes, his hands fumbling with the legs of the pants as he tried to shove his feet into them and missed.
“For god’s sake. You idiots turned him into a bloody invalid,” the royal guard complained as he knelt down to help Finn into his clothes.
“The king’s orders were to leave him to rot,” one of the dungeon guards retorted.
Finn looked away, humiliated by the low level of degradation he’d sunk to. Clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering, he let the royal guard lift him off the ground and heave him over to a table and chair.
“And you took that literally?” the royal guard asked as he helped Finn sit down. “Did it not occur to any of you that we needed the prisoner alive enough to be executed?”
Finn leaned against the table as another guard set a bowl full of gruel in front of him.
“Your last supper,” the man grumbled.
The sight of the gray lumps made Finn nauseous. He shook his head and pushed it away. “Water,” he rasped.
The royal guard brought one of the buckets over and emptied the last dregs of water into a scratched pewter cup. Finn gulped the water, tipping his head back when he got to the end, waiting for the last precious drop to hit his tongue. But within seconds of drinking the water, his body rejected the sudden influx of life-giving liquid and cramps doubled him over.
“Use your heads. We don’t want the Unholy Piper garnering any sympathy by looking pitiful.” The royal guard shook his head. “He’s thin and can’t stand on his own two feet. There’ll be no hiding the fact that you’ve starved the prisoner so close to death, it’ll look more like a mercy killing than an execution.”
Fate's Keep (Fate's Journey Book 2) Page 20
