by May Dawson
When I came home from boarding school for the last time, she was gone. My father met me in the cold, expansive entryway to our house, wrapped me tightly in his arms, so distraught he couldn’t speak for long seconds, and then told me she’d left us. Looking back, I think maybe he put an enchantment on me so I wouldn’t question it. I hated her for leaving us.
It was only when I was Earthside that memories of her began to haunt my dreams. It was only then that I remembered the graves outside the house, and how I’d sleepwalk, waking up with the wind whipping around me, alone in the gloom and breathing in the scent of iron.
Every time I think of my mother, I imagine her as a ghost, smiling at me from somewhere down the street. Her face is hazy in my memory; I can’t imagine her up close.
Although I guess she wouldn’t smile if she really saw me, living this odd and often ugly life of mine.
“Your mother is a spy for the Crown,” he says, cocking his head to one side. “Didn’t your father ever tell you?”
“No.” The thought makes my chest tighten. It can’t be real. That my mother could be… the image that rises in my head, faster than reason can push it away, is of the ghost that smiles at me from afar. But color washes over her as she becomes solid, her cheeks turning pink again, that frozen faint loving smile widening…right before she takes a step forward, holding her arms out to me.
Stupid. I’m always so stupid when it comes to the things I want most: those men of mine, and true friends like Stelly and Josie, and my mother back.
“She’s on a mission in Vasilik, but I’ll reach out to her.” He promises me. “I’ll make sure you get to meet her.”
I stare at him. I want my mother back so badly that I can’t say anything.
“Oh, would you do me one favor?” He passes a slip of paper to me. “I can’t get into that library of yours on campus. Find me this book, Tera.”
It’s clear this is the carrot: my mother for serving his wishes.
I stare back at him, because there are so many things that don’t make sense. If my mother were alive, why wouldn’t she have rescued me years ago? Why would this man—who claims to be someone important in the True—know where my mother is, if she were an agent of the Crown? They wouldn’t exactly have much in common. He’s full of shit.
But the fantasy of my mother living and breathing still spins around me.
He pushes a piece of paper across to me. “I think one day you’ll need to go home, Tera. But I’ll go with you if you like. I’ll be right by your side.”
I unfold the paper. The title inside is written in the old language, the one from before Avalon and Primus were torn apart. I can’t read the entangled, foreign letters.
“And how exactly does this book help you?”
“It will give us the ability to see through time,” he tells me. “We can use it to exonerate your father. And it has many other powerful spells too—to enhance your powers, to help you take your rightful place in the world, Tera.”
I nod at him brightly. All these old spells that seem too good to be true—like the one that was supposed to rekindle my magic—are as fake as a fairy tale. Not only is he True, he’s a loon.
My mother’s nothing but a fairy tale, too.
“If I decide to do this, how will I get back in touch with you?” I ask briskly. I still have a mission, even if my hopes have flared suddenly and then crumpled to ash all in the course of one short conversation.
“We’ll be in touch,” he promises me. “Are you ready to go back?”
I hold my palm out. “No more smoke. That gave me a headache.”
“We had to act quickly to bring you through the portal.”
“That’s illegal, isn’t it?”
“So is being True,” he says. “But all right. We’ll return you to your room. Don’t tell anyone we met. Once I know I can trust you, I’ll introduce you to everyone. They’ll be so happy to meet you, Tera.”
“Who would I tell?”
“Don’t you have a boyfriend?”
“You think I’m going to replace Padrick Donovan, the Dark Lord, and you’re asking if I have a boyfriend?” A girl can’t get any respect in this world, even if she is its most infamous living villain.
He starts to say something, and I cut him off. “Look, as I’m sure you know, I’m rarely on my own. Someone’s going to notice I was gone. I’m going to need a cover story.”
“You won’t,” he tells me earnestly. “No one will know you were gone.”
“I went missing what, an hour ago—” I don’t know how long that smoke left me unconscious.
“You didn’t,” he assures me. He raises his voice, twisting back. “Kairus!”
He turns back to me, a benevolent smile on his lips. “My son. You know his name now. And so you know how much I trust you, Tera—I am putting our lives in your hands.”
That’s a weird thought.
The door opens, and the blond-haired boy from earlier comes in.
“Take Tera back to her university.” He rises abruptly, and the feet of the chair scrape across the rough stone floor.
Kairus nods. He holds his hand out to me. “Come with me. I’ll take you through the portal.”
His voice is deeper than I expected, a deep, musical voice that doesn’t quite fit with his narrow frame.
I wait until the old man has left before I turn to him. I expect I’ll walk into a room full of Crown agents, including perpetually-exasperated Cutter. If I bring this kid back through the portal with me, he’ll be arrested, the Crown will rush in, and we’ll have met one goal—finding the men who invaded the ball—but we’ll have left so many questions unanswered.
“You can’t open a portal into that room,” I tell him kindly. “It’s too dangerous.”
He touches a finger to his lips, a flash of mischief in his eyes.
Then there’s a flash in the door, too.
I shake my head as I follow him toward the door.
But when he opens it, it doesn’t lead into the night outside or into a chaos of police sweeping through the door with their swords and shields.
In front of me stands Airren’s dorm room, with the neatly made bed and the silver coffee pot and the stacks of books and the windows that look toward the library. It’s quiet. Empty.
“I can do funny things to time.”
I turn back, but he’s still in the doorway. “Sleep well tonight, Tera Donovan.”
There’s not a chance in hell of that.
He closes the door between us.
Well. It’s been a whirlwind of an evening, what with the kidnapping and the revelation that my mother might be alive. Although it can’t be true, my head still pounds as I cross to the window and push open the sash. When I breathe in the cold night, it carries a bite of wood smoke and the soft, pleasant dampness of rain-soaked air. As I gaze up at the whirl of silver-bright stars above, I put a hand over the back of my dragon, holding her against my shoulder; I don’t want her to tumble out the window. She seems as unsteady in this world as I feel. I should tell the guys about what just happened, shouldn’t I? If they are Crown after all, they need to know. If they’re True, they’ll be pleased I’ve made contact with Lerak.
But what about my mother?
Whatever their mission, no one will care about finding her like I do.
I don’t have more than a moment to make sense of it. There’s a creak as the door opens behind me.
Airren comes in, with Stelly behind him. He’s shaking his head, and she’s laughing at whatever she’s just said that he doesn’t approve of. The minute they see my face, Stelly stops. As she stares at me, Airren dashes toward me. Stelly suddenly comes back to life, closing the door so the noise of the hall fades away.
He stops a step away, holding his hand out as if I’m a skittish animal.
“What happened, Tera?”
I can’t ask him if I can trust him. He’d lie to me anyway.
But I still walk unsteadily toward him, and he closes his ar
ms around me, enveloping me in his warm, hard grip and the scent of his cologne.
I feel safe when he holds me. But is that the biggest lie?
22
“Talk to me,” Airren says, tucking my hair back behind my ear.
“I was taken.” God, I can’t keep that from him, even if it would be smart to lie; I’m still shaking. “By one of the True leaders. Lerak.”
“One of the True leaders?” Airren frowns. “The True leader here in Corum is Raila…”
“There are two of them,” I say. “They’re fighting for control. Lerak wants Raila dead. He didn’t say so, but…I’m sure.”
I turn my back on him, twisting in his arms—though I’m not quite willing to leave them—when I say, “And you didn’t tell me about Raila.”
The bitterness threaded in my voice is real. I can’t stop thinking about how Cax embraced her. How I’m nothing but sweet.
“I’m sorry,” Airren says. “But we didn’t know much of anything about her. She disappeared three years ago.”
“You’re such an idiot.” Stelly’s voice is acidic. “I can tell you anything you want to know about Raila. I don’t need her file.”
“Stelly,” Airren says, with a note of warning in his voice.
“She ripped my brother’s heart out,” Stelly says. “And she shouldn’t have taken it anyway. He was sixteen. She was thirty.”
Airren’s eyes flicker toward Stelly and then return to me, his jaw tightening. “How did they take you?” he demands. “You were just here. I left you for two minutes—”
“They can twist time. Or at least, one of them can.” I wet my lips, about to lie, for the umpteenth time tonight. It’s not easy under Airren’s warm, worried gaze. “They want me to get a book for them. A book of powerful, lost spells. I think it might just hold the way for me to get my magic back.”
“Why?”
“Lerak said there’s all kinds of magic in that book. Powerful spells. The ability to restore things that were lost…”
“When it comes to time-twisting, that magic has been all but lost.” Airren’s eyes are worried. “If the True can twist time, the war is going to get a lot more complicated.”
I’m sure he’s not True. But with Stelly hovering beside me protectively, radiating concern and friendship that makes it hard to meet her eyes right now, I can’t tell him Cax might be True. Maybe he’s not—maybe he only betrayed my trust to win Raila’s over. The thought does nothing to ease the jealousy clutching my chest at the thought.
I hold out my palm to Airren, uncurling my fingers from the slip of paper Lerak gave me. My accidental fist has crumpled the paper into a ball. “Does this mean anything to you?”
His fingers brush against my palm when he takes the ball from me. “When are they coming back?”
“They didn’t tell me.” I shake my head. “But if I give them the book, they’ll trust me. Airren, he said there are more True…here, in Rawl House.”
Airren swears, running his hand through his hair. “I should have expected that.” But something in his tone sounds betrayed anyway.
“You need to tell me everything that happened, start to finish,” he says. “Every detail you remember. And we’ll find your book and see if we can give it to them for the sake of your cover.”
“Library?” I ask.
“We’re going to take a portal,” he says. “I don’t want anyone to follow us out.”
When he taps his wand against the door to his closet, I demand, “You couldn’t do this any time? Like when I was late to class?”
“Can’t spoil you, sweetheart. Also, it’s highly illegal.”
“And here I thought you were a rule follower.” I mean to tease him, but my tone comes out harsher than I intend. I regret the words as soon as they hang between us, something completely different than I intended.
He frowns as if I’ve hurt his feelings. “What made you think that?”
I shake my head, and he swings the door open for me. Ahead of us, the massive warehouse yawns, the shelves of relics and books disappearing into the darkness.
I don’t move to walk forward into the gray warehouse, and he turns back to me, then follows my gaze into the dark. “Sorry.”
The lights flicker on a second later, the long glass tubes turning on in sections as his magic brightens the bulbs. At least that means we’re alone. But the lights, and my inability to turn a light on in this world where magic runs everything, always frustrates me.
“Where’s Mycroft?” I ask as I step into the warehouse. It’s so hard for me to imagine Mycroft and Cax having any secrets from each other. But they are men. Lord knows if they talk about a damn thing.
“He’s working on a lead.”
“On Raila?”
Airren hesitates. “On your magic.”
“What kind of lead?”
Stelly follows us through the portal, and as soon as she’s joined me, Airren slashes with his wand to cancel the spell. The portal vanishes behind us, and the door to our office re-appears where his dorm room was.
“He thinks he can find the man from Avalon,” Airren says.
“Why now?” I demand. I need him with me right now. I don’t need him traipsing through Corum, hunting down the names of people who passed through a portal and came back bloody.
“Without your magic, you’re…” Airren hesitates, then shrugs, as if he’s decided to be blunt. “You’re an easy target.”
“For the True? I thought we wanted me to be a target.”
“For anyone,” he says. “You know you have enemies, Tera. And apparently, we can’t always protect you.”
Irritation threads through his voice, but there’s something more than that, too. Tension is evident in his broad shoulders, but then, as if he sees me noticing, he relaxes.
“I’ve done all right for myself so far with nothing but my wits.” It’s supposed to be a joke, but Airren rests his palm on my shoulder and leans forward to brush his lips against my hairline.
“You definitely have,” he says, and warmth rises in my chest. Then he turns to Stelly. “Send Cax a bubble to meet us here, would you?”
The warmth in my chest vanishes like so much smoke in the wind.
“Can you send Mycroft one too?” I should be able to send my own bubbles, god damn it. My voice sounds small to me whenever I have to ask.
“Sure,” Airren says.
Once the bubbles have drifted across the library to the door and worked their way out, Airren jerks his head for me to follow him. We walk through the quiet library—it’s open twenty-four hours, but few people are here now—to the card catalog, a row of mirrors set on a long table with bits of paper and pencils scattered across the pitted mahogany surface.
Airren taps his fingertips against the mirror. The face in the mirror isn’t his; it’s the same face in every mirror.
“I’m looking for a book with an old Briton title,” he says, before he reads something I can’t pronounce from the scrap of paper.
“One minute,” the face says, before it disappears. The mirror’s surface ripples.
Motion catches my eye in my peripheral vision. I glance over to see the mirrors have rippled all the way down the table; the faces are gone.
Anxiety swims through my stomach. I have a bad feeling about this, but it’s hard for me to tell what’s my ignorance about my own world and what’s a true instinct.
“Is that normal?” I ask softly.
“Sometimes.” Airren frowns, though, as if he doesn’t like it either. He hands my piece of paper back to me, and I stuff it into my pocket.
“Hey.” It’s Cax’s voice, low and close to my ear, and I jump, pressing my hand to my chest as if I can still my pounding heart.
His hands settle on my shoulders. There’s laughter in his voice when he says, “Are you scared of the card catalog?”
“I’m not scared,” I snap. That’s not my problem with him touching me right now. I turn on my heel, shaking off his hands.
&
nbsp; “Sorry.” He frowns.
Airren’s clear blue eyes are suddenly bright. “Tera, you weren’t at the library earlier tonight.”
It isn’t a question.
I shake my head, trying to shake away the question.
Cax’s eyes widen.
“We have important work to do,” I say doggedly. “We need to find that book.”
“Tera Donovan,” Airren’s jaw tightens. “I can’t believe you lied to me.”
“Like you lied to me, not telling me Cax and Raila knew each other?”
“Well, we figured you’d react just like this,” Cax says.
Airren buries his head in one hand, pinching the bridge of his nose as if we all give him a headache. “Cax. Not helpful.”
“I heard what you said.” There’s sudden color in my cheeks. “So are you True—”
“Of course I’m not True!” Cax exclaims. “I hate the True. I hate Raila.”
“You didn’t look like you hated her.” The raw jealousy in my voice has to be obvious to everyone else, and I bite down on my lip, too late.
“It was my mission,” Cax says through gritted teeth. “We know she’s involved with the True—”
“She’s trying to take control of the True throughout Corum.”
“Well, she’s always been ambitious.”
“And mature?”
“Tera.” His tone is stern.
“Cax.” I can match that, and I’ll raise him a note of hurt and disappointment.
The mirrors flicker back to life. “The book you seek is on floor eight.”
“Great,” Airren says. “Let’s go get that book. The sooner we deal with the True—”
“The sooner you all don’t have to pretend to care about me just to get the mission done?”
“Tera Donovan,” Airren sounds exasperated, and there’s hurt written across Cax’s face.
I turn on my heel and head for the stairs.
“Nope,” Stelly says. “You get back here. I don’t care about any book.”
If it was one of the guys, I’d keep walking. For my exasperated best friend, though, I turn on my heel. “What?”
“My brother is an idiot,” she says firmly. “Not a bad person. Tera. And Cax.” She turns to him, her eyes widening in anger. “Why the hell are you such an idiot?”
