by Linsey Hall
“You’re impressively resourceful,” Ares said.
“Conjuring is a good skill to have.” I polished off my sandwich and took a sip of water, then huddled into the sleeping bag.
Ares joined me, and I curled up against him, seeking his heat. The desert was cold at night, down to the forties at this hour. Though being close to him set my blood on fire, I was too exhausted to sit upright, much less do anything else.
“Not just the conjuring,” Ares said. “You created new magic today. You saved us from the Phantoms.”
I sighed. “Yeah. A bit of a surprise.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. The new magic was a shock. And… I’ve been doubting myself a lot lately.”
It felt good just to say the words out loud. Even feeling doubt could be guilt inducing. Like I should be strong enough not to feel uncertain in the first place. Which was just a vicious circle.
But saying it out loud… kinda took the burden off.
“You’re one of the strongest, most resourceful people I know.” Ares’s arm tightened around me.
“It’s just that I only have the conjuring power. It’s super handy. But if you’re up against a seriously powerful magic, conjuring a sword doesn’t get you very far.”
“It’s gotten you pretty damned far, I think.”
I smiled. “I’m proud of that. I am. But one day, I’m going to be out-powered.”
“That’s a risk for anyone. But fate wouldn’t choose you if you weren’t worthy.”
“Thank you.” And maybe he had a point. I’d blasted those Phantoms away with my new magic. Magic from Elesius, which had chosen me over all my ancestors. “Considering everything that my city had given me, I really ought to have had some faith. To honor its sacrifice.”
“Doubt can be a tremendous burden. It will slow you down.”
I looked up at him. Moonlight cut across his face. “You know something about that?”
“I do. For a long time, I thought I couldn’t uphold my father’s legacy as Enforcer. Or be worthy of the post at all.”
“But you are.”
He shrugged. “Took some time to realize that. But I’d have been better off if I’d have realized it sooner.”
“How did you realize it?”
“Just forced myself to do the job and give it my best. Eventually, I started to believe in myself.”
“Not a bad plan.” It was something I needed to do. Just try—try to succeed, try to believe I could do this.
Yeah, there was a lot at stake. And sometimes I felt like I was standing at the base of Mount Everest in flip-flops.
But getting mired in doubt was a terrible way to spend the magic that Elesius had given me. I owed it to myself to have a little faith in my abilities. I owed it to my home.
“You’re going to be fine, Nix. I’ve always believed in you. And I don’t say that easily.”
I smiled. Whatever came my way, I’d do everything in my power to stop Drakon. To finish what fate had started for me.
“Thanks.” I snuggled closer to him, exhaustion dragging at my muscles. It was pretty awesome to confide in Ares. Scary, to get this close to another person, but awesome. Really freaking awesome.
I ran through the forest, leaping over tree limbs and dodging boulders. Tears poured down my cheeks, fear turning my chest to ice.
All around me, the forest died. Trees lost their leaves and grass shriveled to nothing. Elesius was dying, but Mum wouldn’t tell me why. She said I was too young to know, but I was thirteen! Nearly an adult.
I scrubbed the tears from my cheeks, but my blurred vision made it impossible to see the tree root. I tripped, sprawling on my hands, pain shooting through my knee. A rock.
I sobbed, head bent.
The forest was betraying me. As if it were my fault it was dying. I shook my head.
“No,” I whispered. That was crazy.
I rolled onto my butt, sitting with my back against the dead tree that had tripped me. All around, wind whistled past the trees. But there were no leaves to rattle. No grass to wave in the wind.
At my side, there was a tiny, struggling vine. It leaned toward me, as if blown by the wind. But the wind came from the other direction. I reached out to pet it.
A footstep sounded behind me.
I whirled, catching sight of the old man who occasionally visited me when I was in the forest.
“Grandfather Ademius!” I called. I sniffled, shoving back the tears.
He turned his head in my direction and smiled, as if he’d been looking for me. I hadn’t seen him in ages.
“Where have you been?” I asked. Happiness fluttered in my chest.
He approached slowly. He said he was slow because of his old bones, but there was something timeless about him.
“Well?” I prodded.
“Calm down, child.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s harder for old Ademius to get around these days.”
“You could just come live here, you know.”
He tutted. “That I could not. And I have my reasons.” He held up a finger to still my usual arguments. “But it doesn’t mean I can’t visit you.”
I smiled, leaning back against the tree. He sat down to join me, his joints creaking. Ademius had started appearing to me years ago, but only while I was in the forest. I thought of him almost as a woodland sprite, though he wasn’t very spritely at his age. He’d said he was my family, one who’d had to leave Elesius long ago. He looked a lot like my mother, especially around the eyes, so it was clearly true.
I loved his company. Though I had my parents, my grandparents had died before I was born. Ademius was the closest thing I had to a grandfather.
“Have you done your gardening today?” he asked.
“Yes.” He always asked about my garden, giving me tips and tricks. “But I’m worried. Not only has the forest been dying faster, now my garden is starting to look wilted. The herbs are failing. That’s never happened before.”
Ademius’s eyes turned sad, but he nodded knowingly. “It was only a matter of time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Things can’t live forever, child.” He gripped his walking stick. “Not even me.”
Mention of his death distracted me from my worry over the forest. “You’ve lived a long time, but why not longer?”
He smiled. “I’ve lived plenty long. You have no idea. But don’t you worry about me. It’s you we have to talk about.”
“Me?”
“Yes.” His gaze met mine, suddenly serious. “I will have to go away soon and won’t be able to visit you as often.”
“You only come a few times a year, at most.” I dug my hands into the dirt. I couldn’t lose Ademius.
“Be that as it may, I must leave.” His eyes were kind. “But you will find me again, one day.”
“How?” Tears pricked my eyes. This felt final.
“You’ll know the way. It will be inside you. But I have left something for you that will help. When the time comes, your mother will give it to you.”
“Like a map?” This was like a game—except it was sad. What was the point of a sad game?
“Like a map, yes. But it’s inside of you.” He held out a hand, silencing me. “While I’m gone, you must take care of your garden. Learn to tend it.”
“Why is that so important to you?” I loved my garden, but I almost thought he loved it more.
“It is important to you, Phoenix. You must tend to the life within your garden. It will reward you tenfold.”
“Okay.” That was weird. What did he even mean by that? “Do you really have to leave now?”
He nodded, then slowly rose, leaning heavily on his cane. I jumped to my feet, throwing my arms around his frail body. I sniffled, but the tears wouldn’t stay back any longer.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” I sobbed.
“I must. Someone is hunting for me. Someone evil. I must not fall into his hands or…” I drew in a shudd
ering breath. “Just tend to your garden, Phoenix. It will love you in return.”
I popped awake, gasping. The sun peaked over the horizon, spreading a golden glow over the valley.
“What’s wrong?” Ares’s voice was groggy as he sat up.
“A dream.” I scrubbed my hand over my face to dry the tears. “I knew Ademius when I was a child.”
Suddenly, things were falling into place.
“How?”
“He visited me in the forest several times a year. He must have known what I would become. But then he disappeared. He said he was being hunted.”
“By Drakon?”
“I think so. He said he was evil.”
“That means Drakon has been seeking this prophecy for over a decade. He didn’t have the Vessel of Truth at that point, though, did he?”
“No. He first got it by stealing it from us. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t know the legend of the beaker. Vessels of Truth are rare. He could have learned of Ademius first, then found the beaker.”
“And Ademius got wind that he was coming for him and ran for it,” Ares said.
“Exactly. But not before telling me to tend to my garden.” I smiled. Though I couldn’t remember the other times I’d seen him in the forest, I could recall how comforted I’d felt to be in his presence. How much I’d enjoyed talking about my garden with him. “I’ve always liked older people and I wondered if I had a grandparent. I didn’t—not technically. But I’d had Ademius.”
“He’s a grandparent.” The corner of Ares’s mouth quirked up. “If you add about one hundred ‘greats’ in front of his name.”
I smiled, my heart suddenly light. We were going to find Ademius. More family for me.
I climbed out of the sleeping bag and stretched my sore muscles. “Come on. We’ve got to get a move on.”
“Excited?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I gazed out at the rising sun, hope filling my chest. “Last week, I knew nothing about my family. Not even if they were alive or dead. Nothing. I’ve been desperate to know for ten years. But now, I have parents. And Ademius.”
“That is a good streak of luck.” Ares smiled.
“Yep. And I’m going to keep it going.” I called upon my magic, conjuring a breakfast of cheese sandwiches and water. I handed one off to Ares.
“Cheese sandwiches for breakfast?” he asked.
“Cheese for all meals.”
“Thanks.” He bit in. Chewed. Swallowed. “You’re a good cook.”
“Only with the conjuring. And cheese.” I ate my sandwich quickly, then conjured a simple nylon backpack. I crouched down and bundled the sleeping bag up into a tiny packet. I’d been careful to conjure one of those compressible ones. I hated leaving trash behind, so I’d just carry it out of here, along with our used water bottles.
“You don’t want to use your destroyer power to clean up?” Ares asked.
“No.” I shoved the sleeping bag into the backpack. The destroyer magic felt too dark inside me, more so than ever. Was that because I was becoming more in tune with the Life magic and the two couldn’t coexist easily? Though it was controlled and no longer making me ill, I didn’t like using it. “I don’t want to use it more than necessary. And I should save my power anyway.”
“Fair enough.” Ares reached for the backpack and swung it onto his back.
“I don’t mind carrying it.”
“It feels like a feather on my back. Literally.”
“All right, Superman.”
Ares grinned. “Just a vampire. But I’ll take the title if you insist.”
I laughed and punched him playfully on the shoulder. “Lets get a move on.”
We set off across the desert, following my dragon sense toward the mountains in the distance. The sun blazed down, making me wish that Ana and Bree had been able to stick around with their buggy. Too bad I couldn’t conjure a car. I was getting close—all that practice with fixing up Fabio and his siblings was giving me enough of an understanding of a car’s inner workings that I should be there soon.
But for now, we were on foot. The ground was too uneven for a bike, so we were stuck with walking for at least two hours. In the blazing sun.
Yuck.
“I think we’re almost there.” I pointed ahead of us, to the mountain that loomed in the distance. There was a massive rock at the base, like a huge flat boulder that had rolled down the mountain and settled at the bottom.
When we neared, it became clear that the rock had been placed there intentionally to block something. An entrance, probably. Hider’s Haven was in there. Or through there. Hard to say.
I eyed the massive rock in front of us. It had to weigh several tons, no question. “Well, that’s not going to be fun.”
“We have to move it to get to the path beyond?” Ares asked.
“Yep.” I inspected it. Magic shimmered around the stone, a haze of white that indicated a spell could remove it. “There must be some kind of password to get by.”
“Perhaps that’s what Ana and Bree meant when they said it would be difficult to get in without an invitation.”
“Makes sense.” I examined every inch of the stone, then started checking the mountain around it, looking for some kind of clue. When I helped Cass and Del on their jobs, we sometimes had to figure out riddles to get through the tricky parts of tombs and temples. Usually, I was pretty good at them.
But this time? “I’ve got no idea how to get through.”
“I’ll try to move it.”
“It weighs thousands of pounds.”
“True.” Ares approached, eyeing the slab of stone. I could almost see the calculations going on behind his eyes. He rubbed his hands together, then crouched at the edge of the rock and gripped a small crevice. He heaved upward.
Ares strained, veins standing out at his neck as he grimaced. The rock shifted, scraping against the mountain. It lifted a centimeter off the ground. Two centimeters.
Sweat rolled down Ares’s temple. His face turned red. He grunted. The stone lifted another few centimeters, then dropped to the ground.
Ares cursed and stepped back. “Too big.”
Hmmm. That left me then.
I probably couldn’t destroy the whole thing with my magic—this was about a thousand times bigger than the dishrag I’d obliterated in practice a couple weeks ago. But I had to try.
I called upon my magic, stepping forward and pressing my hand against the stone. I shuddered, not wanting to call upon the destroyer magic, but forcing myself to. It felt weird, especially once the power rushed up inside me, but I focused on pouring the magic into the stone. It rushed out of me as a breeze, filling the rock.
Slowly the stone cracked, a fissure crawling from the top to the bottom of the enormous rock. The slab didn’t crumble away—I wasn’t strong enough for that—but the crack grew slowly.
I focused, feeding more of my power into the stone, envisioning it splitting in two. Finally, the crack crawled all the way up to the top. It was now in two pieces. Hopefully I could destroy at least one.
Panting, I stepped back. “Just give me a moment and I can try again.”
“Not necessary.” Ares stepped up and gripped the rock on the right, heaving it upward. His muscles strained, but the boulder crept up inches. Then a foot. He shifted it a few feet away from the mountain, then dropped it. It thudded to the ground. He stepped back, sweat trickling down his brow.
“Nice one.” I held up a hand for a high five.
Ares grinned and held up his hand so that I could smack it with my own.
“Good teamwork,” Ares said.
“We should make our own motivational poster. I’ll be the kitten hanging off the branch and you can be the eagle who is soaring toward his goal.”
Ares chuckled.
I joined him at the crevice where the stone stood away from the mountain and peeked inside. It was dark and narrow, but there was a darker bit and the cool scent of earth flowing out.
“Definitel
y a tunnel back there, and just enough room to squeeze through.” I was about to step inside when Ares slipped past me and went first.
He had to exhale fully and slide through sideways, but he managed to disappear into the tunnel entrance. I shuddered at the close quarters, then followed him.
Inside, Ares held his hands up, letting his magic light shine inside the dark space. It was about seven feet tall and ten feet wide, a railroad track disappearing down the tunnel.
“It’s an old mine,” Ares said.
I crouched, examining the track and the footprints in the dirt. “The track hasn’t been used in decades, but the footprints look fresh. Sorta.”
“Hider’s Haven could be a repurposed mine.”
“I’d almost bet on it.” I stood and started down the track. Ares kept at my side, his hands illuminating the passage in front of us. The air was dark and cool down here. For the first time since the sun had come up, I wasn’t sweating. “Hider’s Haven has got to be in this mountain. It’s not a throughway.”
“Between the heat and the monsters out in the valley, I agree.”
I kept my ears pricked and my senses alert as we went deeper into the mountain. Soon, a pale glow shined from up ahead. I pointed. Ares nodded.
We crept toward it on silent feet. As we neared, the glow coalesced to form a figure.
“A ghost.”
“Not a Phantom?” Ares asked. There was a slight shudder to his voice. I couldn’t blame him.
“No. Phantoms are blue. This guy is just a ghost.” They didn’t normally give the living too much trouble. This one was transparent white, about forty years old, with long messy hair covered by a hat. His overalls and old-time hat making him look like he’d stepped out of another century. “A miner.”
We neared, and I waved awkwardly. “Hi.”
He chewed on something, his jaw working furiously, but I couldn’t tell what he was chomping on. Then he tipped his hat. “Howdy. You got your pass?”
“Um.” I tensed, ready for a fight. “No.”
He frowned. “Hmm. Then I reckon you ought to turn back.”
“Can’t do that.” Ares stepped forward.
The ghost seemed to debate, then shrugged. “Can’t stop ya. But you’ll regret it.”
“Going farther?” I asked.
