by Jenn Stark
“What is this?” I swayed against Armaeus, a distant part of my mind surprised when his arm went around me and held me close, not with the sensual, almost erotic touch I was used to from the Magician, but a clasp of gentleness, of care. As if I was once a perfect, precious artifact that had survived terrible turmoil and now—somehow—it was going to be better. Now, somehow, I was going to be okay. “What’s happening here?”
Armaeus scrambled my thoughts further as he leaned down, brushing his lips against my brow, though neither one of us was truly real, neither one of us was actually present in this place, both of us instead merely bursts of energy and thought. Still, the Magician’s hand lifted to brush away the tears I hadn’t realized were spilling over my cheeks. I felt the damp truth of those tears as my chest tightened, my breath releasing in a terrible racking sob as the energy of this place, its terrible regret, spilled over and around and through me, again and again.
“This is the ache of a mother’s loss,” Armaeus murmured to me. “Your mother, Sara. Your true mother.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
He caught me as I jerked away from him, holding me fast. We were back in the sunny room in Nashville, and it took a second wrench for me to pull from his grasp. I lifted my hands to my cheeks, scrubbing away the last of my tears.
“She’s reached out to you, hasn’t she?” he asked, his question not bold, not probing, but honest and almost sad. “You’ve felt her. Not responded, though. Not yet.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Even as I said the words, I heard their falseness ring in my ears. I had experienced…something. A touch, a shift. A faint whisper in the breeze. A picture on a wall of an abandoned temple. Not enough alone to merit notice, but together… “She’s never reached out to me. Not really.”
“It’s possible she can’t,” Armaeus said. “There are too many variables. Too much we don’t know.” He settled back in his chair, studying me, but though he was present with me, I suddenly sensed his mind was churning on a totally different plane.
I should have been angry, but my mind was doing its own churning. “Was this worth it to you, this walk down memory lane?”
Armaeus didn’t respond at first, and I let the silence lengthen as I stared out the window. My mother. I had no sense of her, not really. I’d—almost felt her, I was certain. A couple of times now. But she was gone as quickly as she came, leaving me with more questions than answers.
Finally, the Magician spoke. “Your father never admitted to the Arcana Council that he’d had a daughter. Fatherhood is not something that was encouraged on the Council.”
“It certainly does violate that whole noninterference clause.” I ran my hand along the plush upholstery of the embroidered chair, considering how far I’d come. We’d lived a hardscrabble life, despite what I’d learned about my father’s financial arrangements with my surrogate mother. Again, not really poor, not exactly, but there’d never been enough to go camping in the hills of Tennessee, for example. My lips twisted a bit, thinking of that. My mother had never seemed the camping type.
Armaeus’s smooth, quiet voice surrounded me again, a rich counterpoint to our elegant surroundings. “Once it became clear that you existed, and that your skills were…exceptional, Willem still didn’t come forth, not officially. I suspected there was more to you than we understood—your abilities were too strong, advanced too quickly. But when you began working more closely with the Arcana Council, and particularly when you faced the dragon Llyr, your father appeared. At long last.”
I nodded. “I was there for that part.”
“Not all of it,” Armaeus said. He seemed to be weighing a great burden, considering what to do with it. “After you returned with…the children. The children you’d first learned of while you were still so young yourself, the ones that the Emperor sacrificed for his own ends, Willem finally broke his silence. He came to see me before he returned to guard the veil. And he told me things that, in my hubris, I ignored.”
I knew better than to take Armaeus’s bait, I did. Then again, this was my dad he was talking about. A man—immortal, whatever—who I’d never be able to know enough about. So I bit. “What things?”
“Warnings, mostly. I should take better care of you, and be warier in how I availed myself of your services. That you were being watched by powers greater than I could imagine.” His smile was thin. “Willem appeared a simple man, but you don’t become the Hermit of the Council without a strong belief in your own wisdom. I listened, to be sure, but I didn’t take his words to heart, not fully. If I had, you never would have entered Hell, seen the things you did.”
Instantly, I was on my guard, but likely not for the reasons Armaeus suspected. Hell had been a turning point for several reasons, only a few of which the Magician knew. I carefully battened down the hatches of my mind as I sought to redirect him.
“You didn’t have anything to do with me entering Hell,” I said. “That was a job from Soo. A job I was happy to take.”
“A job that got further complicated because you elected to search for me as well.” Armaeus shook his head. “Hell is not a realm for the uninitiated. The dangers were too great. Even then, I didn’t worry much. You confronted me—attacked me to achieve the task Kreios had set for you. And you succeeded. I returned from Hell once more immortal, while you emerged changed, but not fundamentally so.” The Magician’s dark laugh rippled through the luxurious room. “Not yet anyway.”
Now I did turn to look at him. I wasn’t the only one that Hell had damaged, no matter what Armaeus said. He looked—not older, exactly, but different. Before he’d entered that plane, he’d been the man with everything. Once he’d left it, in moments where his expression wasn’t guarded, he’d become the martyr of an indescribable loss.
Mirabel, I thought. The Magician’s first love, whom he’d failed utterly.
“So cut to the chase,” I said, with perhaps a bit more impatience than necessary. “Something’s clearly bothering you about all this. What is it?”
“In short, I now believe Willem was telling the truth—but I still don’t understand the ramifications of that truth. The Hermit has long been an outsider to Council activities, and never one to fall in line with what was expected from him. As evidenced by the reality of your existence. I simply…” He shook his head. “I’ve spent countless hours contemplating the possibilities. And I still cannot determine what he means, specifically. I’ve been with the Council a long time, but not as long as Eshe, Death, the Hierophant. And none of them will speak of it, what the Hermit might mean. They either don’t know, or they’re forbidden to share information. I’m frankly not sure what’s worse.”
I was about to respond when Armaeus glanced out the window, apparently realizing the time. He stood, and I stared at him.
“What now?” I asked, belligerently.
“Only dinner,” he said. He glanced my way, his face still haggard with unspoken words. “If you would indulge me.”
Oh. Well, dinner meant food anyway. I shrugged. “I can eat.”
The house kitchen apparently was fully up to whatever task the Magician set for them, as was usual around Armaeus, and the side patio where we were shown was a secluded oasis, with a commanding view of the lush valley and a faraway river.
We were served in near silence by a parade of waitstaff, the rich aromas and colors mixing together with the turmoil of my mind. Despite my earlier assertion, neither one of us was eating. The moment seemed too fraught, the sights of the day too intense.
“You asked me a question earlier today,” he murmured, and I glanced at him over my wineglass. “The illness I suffered that manifested when I returned to the mortal state and lost the perfect cellular alignment my role as Magician affords me.”
I nodded, securing another drink. In my mind’s eye, I remembered the moment Armaeus had told me about that illness. It’d been about thirty seconds before he’d melted in front of my eyes, so I hadn’t been sure of what was reality an
ymore, and what was the realm of illusion merely screwing with me.
Armaeus’s attitude as he broached this subject didn’t bode well, however. He was somber, almost regretful, and when he spoke, his words seemed to slip along the warm, humid night air almost as an afterthought. Barely murmured, yet impossible to ignore, like a flash of lightning you weren’t sure you truly saw.
“I’m not sick, Miss Wilde, not in the true sense. If I told you that when we were in Hell, I was trying to manipulate you.”
“You were dying, you said.” My hand tightened on my glass. “You were growing old, and tired, and you were dying.”
He lifted his brows, considering that. “I have made…sacrifices, over time. In my role of Magician, in my studies of alchemy and the arcane. The pursuit of knowledge is a never-ending quest, and sometimes, it leads to dark paths.”
“So you, what? Made a deal with the Devil? Because I’ve met him, and he likes you.”
“No.” Armaeus smiled, but it was a pained expression. “Much as you took in a piece of Hell you should not have had to process, I have allowed myself to be…changed, at the molecular level. Trying to become something I am not. There was a price to pay for that.”
I frowned at him. “What kind of something?”
He gestured with his glass. “More powerful. Better able to process magic, the electrical energy we use so carelessly, but on a far greater level. The cellular damage that kind of power causes is insignificant to an immortal, but not all of those achievements were possible in my immortal state. And as a mortal, mistakes count for more. Cells degenerate more quickly and don’t repair. They can’t repair, at this point. I’ve been doing it too long.”
“So—you will die.” I stared at him. “You’re not sick in the traditional sense, but you might as well be. You have to stay immortal. You’ll die too quickly as a mortal.”
Something about this proclamation felt wrong to me, ineffably sad, and I scowled. “Why is that a bad thing? Because I feel like it is.”
He shook his head. “It’s not a bad thing, in the main. I took the role of Magician with a limited understanding of its requirements, but I knew it would take me away from everything I knew, everyone I cared for. But, like Willem, there was always the possibility of a return to my former state, should I wish to reject the role of the Council. And that possibility is gone to me now. I can return to a mortal state temporarily, but I cannot sustain it.”
“And that’s a problem…”
“It’s a problem because as an immortal, certain abilities are greater, as you’ve noticed. But as I mentioned before, pure, raw power—the flash of greatness—that is the province of mortals. There are places I cannot go as an immortal, things I can’t do. And those things remain a temptation. A hazard of the business, I’m afraid.”
“You’re going to keep doing it,” I said, staring at him. “Turning mortal. You did it last time because you had to, you said, you couldn’t heal from the magical attack without doing so. But you stayed that way. On purpose.”
“Mortality is a requirement for entering Hell.”
“But you could have sent me down there to find the Hierophant—instead, you went yourself, on purpose, knowing you were on borrowed time. You went to learn things, to see things. Like Mirabel.”
I hadn’t meant to say the woman’s name out loud, but Armaeus stiffened. That quickly, the specter of his first love hung between us, and I couldn’t take it back.
“You’re wrong,” he said quietly, after another long moment. “I didn’t expect to see Mirabel again, certainly not in Hell. That she was there, unable to pass from the reality of her earthly life to the next reality that awaited her, took me by surprise.”
“Yeah, Hell was big on surprises,” I muttered.
He glanced at me curiously, shocking me with his next words. “Eshe told me you were there. Inserted into the incarnation of Mirabel’s death. That…you saw her die. Saw me let her die.” His lips twisted. “You weren’t there the first time, I’m sure of it. But now…now I almost have a memory of your presence. A bending of time and truth that I cannot deny.”
I swallowed, but I didn’t look away. “I didn’t realize that was happening until it was too late.”
He nodded, and I was stuck anew by the pallor of his expression, his eyes sunken and lost. “She was my first and greatest love.”
The words were like an ice pick to the gut, but I’d already heard them once. This second time wasn’t so bad. I don’t even think I would have minded so much if there hadn’t been—what had happened before between us. What had happened but not really happened, an illusion wrapped in a deception served up by Hell specifically to cause me pain. “She would be my only one.”
I winced, then snapped my gaze to him, sudden pain sparking inside me. “Yeah? She was that impressive?”
He didn’t react to my anger, still lost on the tide of his own emotions. Instead, he merely waved his glass. “It was but one of the sacrifices,” he said simply. “I gave up the ability to love.”
I stopped with my own glass halfway to my mouth. A cascade of memories surged over me, memories that Armaeus had taken no part in, I assured my protesting brain. And yet… “That’s not seriously a thing.”
“All human emotion is energy, Miss Wilde,” he said. “Energy ebbs and flows, exacting a cost all the way down to the cellular level. To preserve my strength at the highest levels possible despite being in an immortal state, some sacrifices must be made. Emotion is one of them. One of the most insidious of those emotions is love. It’s not predictable, like hate or even rage. It can weaken you when you least expect it. And in my position…”
“You gave up loving.” Everything in my mind rejected this, even if I ignored the reality of what had happened between us in the illusions of Hell. Arguably, that hadn’t really been Armaeus, insofar as he hadn’t really been there. Further, he’d been mortal, so maybe the rules were different.
But what had happened between us up to now… That hadn’t been simple physical attraction. Had it? Every touch, every look, every caress…
His smile was sardonic. “Do you think that Kreios loves—truly loves?” he asked. “Or Eshe?”
“Dude. She’s Eshe. Totally different bag of crazy there.”
“Or the Hierophant, or the Emperor or—”
“My dad,” I said suddenly, looking up at him. “I’m here. That may not be love, but certainly…”
My mind reached the logical end of that thought process a second later. “He’s stuck between the worlds on purpose, isn’t he? And he’s aged. Legitimately aged. He’s old.”
Armaeus nodded. “Willem chose to return to the mortal state for long stretches of his service to the Council. When you are mortal…you age. And yes, you are capable of great and powerful magic—greater than you can wield as an immortal, in many cases—but that ages you further.” He smiled. “And you may love—truly love, yes.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t help it. I thought better of Willem for his lapses into humanity, if it meant he’d allowed himself to love. Of course, his job was keeping a dragon from eating humanity now, so not all his choices were ideal.
Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Armaeus I’d known, however erroneously, in one of Hell’s insidious cabinets of curiosities. He’d been dying, but he’d also loved. Or his illusion had. He’d loved me. Would the real Armaeus even be capable of such emotion after so long as an immortal?
And why did I even care?
Armaeus continued watching me. “You have me at a disadvantage, Miss Wilde,” he said. “I know something more occurred between us during your time, something beyond your sense of betrayal at watching me let Mirabel die, but something tied to that—to her, somehow. Or to the idea of her.”
He leaned forward, fixing me with his golden-black gaze. “Why won’t you tell me what it is?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Every sense went on high alert, but I kept my hand steady, my voice even. “It doesn’t matte
r what happened in Hell. It was an illusion,” I said. “Besides, at the time that it happened, you were mortal. Now you’re not. From the sound of things, you shouldn’t be mortal again anytime soon, or your cells will self-combust. So it’s kind of a moot point.”
Armaeus looked like he would say more, but I didn’t want him to. I didn’t trust this Magician, whose face was no longer wrapped in a veneer of aristocratic arrogance. I didn’t trust his searching eyes and soft, gentle touches. The cynical part of me, the smart part, guessed that this was all part of a game to him, simply a new and better means for him to gain access to whatever information he wanted to know. Still another part wanted to believe in the fantasy he was weaving around us, this new intimacy of possibility and shared trust, starting from our little mental side trip to Memphis all the way back to here, on this quiet patio overlooking an even quieter valley.
I set down my glass, then pulled the napkin from my lap and placed it on the table, the universal sign of wrapping up a conversation. “We should focus on what we’re going to do with Tesla,” I said. “If he’s smart, he’ll be nowhere near Nashville while we’re here, I don’t care how tempting the bait is. Do you think he secretly wants to rejoin the Council? Or more broadly, humanity?”
Something gleamed in Armaeus’s eyes for just a moment at my redirection. A flash of anger? Of hurt? I couldn’t decipher it, and it was gone as quickly as it arrived.
“No,” Armaeus said. “Nor does he quite want to let go. If he did, he would have stepped down from his post on the Council, rescinded his immortal state. You’ll note he did neither. Tesla, above all, wants to remain relevant, to continue his research and development, regardless of how misguided it may be.”
