“You’re lying!”
“There are six of them.” Zig pauses for a few seconds, and when he continues he sounds uncharacteristically hesitant. “Each is covered with a thick membrane and, um, spherically shaped so they look like...”
I hear someone gasp.
“They look like giant eggs, don’t they?” Ingrid says grimly. “You’re saying she left six eggs behind.”
She sounds so appalled that, even as the world begins to spin around me, I try to explain one last time, “They need time… to grow. Become… whole.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Gunn says quietly. “What have you done?”
But I can’t answer because as soon as I open my mouth, I start retching, and after that there’s only pain and darkness.
Chapter 24
To those who would see the Bloodmagic skill of Enthrallment as nothing but a form of mesmerism – beware!
Enthrallment requires no suggestion, no incantation, no ritual or herb to effect its treacherous power. It may be the most dangerous and most powerful of the deep skills, and is to mesmerism as a steel trap is to a silk thread.
From Orations of Aelius (1st Century CE); translated from the original Latin by Sofia Rodriguez (1999)
There’s something very strange and melancholy about being back in your childhood home when you’re not a child anymore and everything has changed forever.
As a kid I lived a nomad’s existence in faraway places with my mom, constantly moving from one tiny, forgotten desert town to the next. I grew up running barefoot through dusty streets, happy and loved and free, but apart from a handful of vague sensory images, I can now recall very little of that time. Red sunsets and yellow heat. Hot sand beneath my feet. The humbling vastness of the starry sky. The delicious glow of my mother’s full attention. The loneliness of wide-open spaces. The chirping quiet of a desert night.
Maybe happiness blends memories together in a way that unhappiness doesn’t, or maybe early childhood just scrambles your brain in a certain way, but I tend to think of those years in Africa and Australia and South America as one long dream of sunshine and innocence and laughter and belonging. A kind of happiness far too pure to be real.
My real life—–a life that includes complexity and uncertainty and sorrow—–began here, in Ingrid’s house. It’s the place where I watched my mother suffer the agonies of hell before she died. The place where I got my first period, and made my first real friends, and where I first learned about shopping and boys and video games and social media. Where I fell in love for the first time. Where I mourned my mom, and lost myself to grief, and slowly rebuilt myself again. It’s where Gunn told me he doesn’t love me and never will. Where I realized I’d been lied to my whole life. Where Ingrid became a stranger, and I found out what it means to be “drilled” into magic.
To wake up in a place filled with so many powerful memories is a strange experience because you realize you’ve been more than just one person in your life and that, once you’ve shed your skin, it’s impossible to go back to the person you once were. You look at the Polaroid pictures against the wall, the handwritten notes in the drawer, the fairy lights above the bed, and you think: who was that girl? Was that girl really me? And would I really want to go back to that life, if I could?
I rested for eight-and-a-half weeks, the longest yet, and I woke up to find everything changed. It’s strange: when you live your life day-to-day, you don’t realize how much things change because it happens so gradually. But when you lose two months in the blink of an eye, those changes seem very real and a little sad.
Your hair is longer. Summer is over. Your face looks older. Everyone has left.
So yeah. The first thing I noticed when I woke up this morning was that Zig had gone. I walked out of my room to find my door unguarded and my life suddenly free of angry scowls and disapproving comments, and (probably because I’m a masochist and a complete idiot) I consequently spent most of the day feeling lonely and disoriented. Abandoned.
When I scraped up the courage to ask Gunn what had happened, his only answer was that Zig would not be coming back. Apparently, there had been some kind of fight between Zig and his grandfather, and the old man told Ingrid that Zig would never be allowed anywhere near me again.
So that’s that, I guess.
Jonathan seems to have disappeared too, but neither Ingrid nor Gunn has mentioned a word about him and I haven’t asked, mainly because I can’t bear to think about what happened at the Pendragon mansion. It all feels like a dream now—–the littered corpses, the bloodshed and mayhem, the sick monsters, the long healing—–and whenever I try to think about that day my mind seems to slide away from under me, my thoughts becoming curiously light and fluttery even as my heart becomes heavier and harder, until it feels like a stone in my chest.
Best not to dwell on any of that now, I think.
Best to push it all down as far as it will go.
Down, down, down.
I’m staring at the bookcase in the dining room, determinedly not thinking about anything, when Gunn walks in.
He comes to stand right next to me. “Looking for some reading material?”
I keep my eyes fixed on the leather-bound books. “How did I never see this?”
“See what?” His voice is so gentle that I almost look up at him.
But I don’t.
I can’t remember exactly what happened on that night he carried me back from the lake, but I do know that whatever lid I’d placed on my feelings for him seems to have come loose in the worst possible way, so that right now his nearness is enough to make my stomach clench and my mouth go dry.
For crying in a bucket.
“Dragons in Chinese Folklore,” I read out loud. “The Celtic Dragon Myth. Dragons and the Early Gods. Legendary Dragons. The Origin of Dragonlore.”
“There’s certainly an obvious theme.”
“A theme? You mean to go with the dragons carved on the staircase? And the ones on the family crest? Or what about the dragons on the ceiling, and the doorknobs, and the mirrors, and the carpets… Why did I never see this before? Was the house under some kind of spell?”
“Not the house, no. But we’ve long suspected you might be under a spell.”
“A spell cast by who?”
“The half-dragons.”
That fluttery feeling in my mind again, that heavy dullness in my heart.
I swallow. “Really?”
“No one else was powerful enough to have created such a long-lasting and complicated Enthrallment. Think about it. It wasn’t as if you never saw the dragons on your ceiling, was it?”
“No. I definitely saw them. But I never thought of them as dragons. They were more like, I don’t know, weird, snake-like creatures, I guess.”
“And these books?”
“Weird books about monsters and myths?”
“The family crest?”
“Winged lion-reptiles dancing around a shield?”
“Do you see how carefully this was done? Enthrallment spells are dangerous; too severe a breach with reality can lead to permanent psychosis. But the illusion placed over your mind was precise enough to allow you to both see and not see at the same time, so your experience of daily reality was hardly compromised. Nobody except the half-dragons could have done it.”
You can only stare at a bookshelf for so long before it becomes weird. When I do finally look up at Gunn, he’s got that worried-about-my-pet look on his face again, and annoyingly it looks so much like real, loving concern that I feel my cheeks heating up.
“I don’t understand. Why would the half-dragons have done it?”
“We suspect they did it as a favor for your mother.”
“My mother?”
“No one else ever had any interest in hiding the dragon aspect of your nature from you, Jess. I promise—–”
“Why would they have helped her?” I interrupt quickly, determined not to go down that route again.
Gunn sighs. “If our
visit to the Amazon taught me anything, it’s that your mother had a genius for making secret deals with the most unexpected people.”
His words remind me of the shy, sweet smile on the Green Lady’s face, that day in the boat when she told me all about her great and enduring love for my mother.
A woman I clearly never knew at all.
“You weren’t the only person they Enthralled, by the way,” he continues when I don’t say anything. “There’s a reason nobody ever asked a single question about what happened to Jack Pendragon’s wife after Jonathan was born. Nobody ever wondered what happened to his mother either, or any of the Pendragon women, really. And why do you think nobody complained when the Pendragons fenced in that glorious lake, or ever questioned the way they ran the town? Everyone was affected, over a period of decades, and yet the spells were so subtle that nobody experienced even the vaguest discomfort. It must’ve taken staggering amounts of magic to pull it off.”
Something about his words worries me.
“Why are you using the past tense?”
“Because you’re not the only one whose eyes have been opened. The spell is broken: in the past couple of months, the whole town has suddenly started asking questions about the Pendragons. Questions they’ve never asked before. And the answers don’t look good, especially now that Jack Pendragon has disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“No!” My mind races as I consider the implications. “They don’t want to re-open the lake again, do they? They can’t! The half-dragons will need a safe place to live. And Jonathan! Is he okay? What do people think happened to his father?”
“I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about Jonathan.” Gunn’s expression is difficult to read. “He believes you killed his entire family, and he wants you dead.”
“Really? But I told him that’s not true.”
Oh boy.
Now, I might have mentioned this before, but Gunn has amazing eyes. And not so much because of the color of his irises (which is pretty great too: a pure, sky blue) but because his pupils always look slightly enlarged, as if he’s staring straight into your soul. Most people find it difficult to look straight at him for too long because his normal, everyday look has about the same intensity as the smoldering stares of those guys you see on perfume ads. Which means that when he does show real emotion, like now, the effect is almost unbearable.
“Oh, Jess. We were all on the banks of the lake that day, helplessly watching you hack the half-dragons to pieces. It was a hugely distressing experience for all of us, but for Jonathan—–”
“I didn’t hack them to pieces!” I cry, stung. Don’t you understand? It was a really difficult operation, and I was awesome. Do you have any idea how difficult it was to undo all that rotten earthmagic, and to find the core inside them that was still pure and whole?”
“Perhaps not.” By now the look in his eyes is so infinitely gentle that I have no choice but to stare at the carpet. “But I’m afraid you don’t understand either. When we went back to the lake to check on the… remains which Zig claimed he saw, they were gone. There was nothing.”
“So? A thousand things could have happened! They could’ve rolled into the lake, or sunk into the mud—–”
“Jonathan hired divers to comb the entire lake and sniffer dogs to search the woods. He didn’t find anything.”
“I didn’t kill them, Gunn, I promise you.”
“I know you didn’t mean to kill them,” he says quietly. “But the fact is there’s no trace of them left. And all the magic they ever wielded is gone.”
“Still, that doesn’t mean—–”
Before I can defend myself further, Ingrid clips into the room on her high heels. “We’ve got a problem. The Green Lord is here and he’s insisting to speak to Jess.”
I pull a face. “Evil Clark Kent? Are you serious?”
“As cancer,” she says before turning and motioning for me to follow.
When I first met the Green Lord, I thought he looked like an uptight and unpleasant version of Superman (imagine a young Henry Cavill with a stick up his ass, minus the superhero muscles) and my first impressions weren’t too far off. During that bogus trial that they put me through, he was unfailingly polite but also ridiculously petty: the type who’d harp on about protocols and regulations without ever questioning the morality of what was happening.
Thinking back, there was just something really bloodless about the way he stood by so self-righteously while they tried to break my body and my spirit, and something really spineless, and afterward I thought I’d never forgive him for as long as I live.
Which is why it’s so weird to be sitting here now, in Ingrid’s study, listening to him tell me that he’s always been my biggest ally and greatest supporter and that his greatest wish, above all else in the world, is to pledge himself to me, thereby becoming my devoted servant for the rest of his life.
Yup. This is actually happening.
For the past half an hour or so the guy’s been lecturing me on all the correct procedures to follow and the historical justifications for this kind of pledge. Unfortunately though, he’s so incredibly boring and long-winded that I’ve barely caught the gist of it. (Also, I’m weirdly distracted by his clothes. He’s wearing a dark navy three-piece suit, shiny reddish leather shoes, too many thick golden rings, and an elaborately knotted burgundy tie—the kind of outfit I’ve only ever seen on rappers in music videos.)
“…while it is, of course, completely unprecedented for a Lord of the Green Clan to pledge his allegiance to a trueborn daughter, I do believe that desperate times call for desperate measures, and I suspect there aren’t many who’ll stand against me. You might not be aware of this, but my family’s influence reaches far beyond the Order of Keepers…”
I half-listen to him drone on, distracted by my thoughts, which are mainly concerned with the strange phenomenon of how a really boring personality can neutralize even the most spectacular good looks.
“… can trace our ancestry back to the time of William the Conqueror – even further than that, if truth be told, although the exact genealogy does become rather hazy prior to the Norman conquest…”
Take this guy for example. He can’t be much older than Gunn—– twenty-six maybe? twenty-eight?—–and objectively speaking he’s very handsome: square jaw, cleft chin, dark grey eyes, thick black hair… If you ever saw a photo of him next to a photo of Gunn, you’d probably say they’re about equally good looking, and yet in real life Gunn is smoking hot while this guy is about as sexy as wet toast.
“…which means I am the only Clan leader who can rightfully claim the title of ‘Lord’ today. To be quite frank with you, it often pains me to refer to that horrid Amazonian creature as the Green ‘Lady’, when it’s patently clear that by any civilized standards…”
I decide I’ve heard enough. “Okay,” I interrupt him. “I get it. Your family has been rich and powerful for ages. Congratulations.”
He nods slightly, as if graciously accepting a compliment, and I’m reminded that this guy has no ear for sarcasm at all.
I suppress a sigh even as I sharpen my tone. “Look, what I’m trying to say is I don’t care if your granddad was the Sultan of Sudan or the King of Canada. I’m still not going to let you pledge anything to me.”
“I’m impressed.”
He is?
“Not many people know that Canada is still a constitutional monarchy and that, technically speaking, the British monarchs remain their sovereigns to this day. I have to admit straight away, however, that although our ties to the House of Windsor are—–”
Oh, for pity’s sake.
“Stop,” I say. “You’re not listening to me. What I’m trying to tell you is I don’t care about any of that stuff. I’m not letting anybody pledge anything to me again, no matter who they are or how connected their family might be.”
“How absolutely preposterous! Young lady, I don’t think you fully understand what an enormous honor this i
s. For someone like me to offer a pledge of allegiance to someone like you…” For the first time since he got here, the Green Lord seems to run out of words.
I’m about to tell him to go jump off a cliff when I realize that he might have a point.
I mean, now that he mentions it, why would someone like him want to pledge his allegiance to someone like me? Thinking back on the trial, I remember the Green Lord as pedantic and self-important to the point of being ridiculous, and so far this visit has done nothing to change my mind about him. But I also remember him as surprisingly tough under pressure: he was the first to realize how badly they’d underestimated me, and he tried to bargain with me even after I’d forced him to his knees.
This guy isn’t stupid. Annoying, yes, but not stupid.
“You really want to swear a pledge of allegiance to me?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me the real reason why. What’s this all about? What do you want from me?”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about!” He raises his chin so he can look down his nose at me. “Don’t you understand? I am here to offer you my support! By accepting my pledge, you won’t only gain the allegiance of one of the wealthiest and most esteemed families in the world, but also the undoubted backing of the entire Green clan, who look up to me as—–”
“Stop. Just stop.” I’m suddenly so sick of this that I can scream. Why is everyone forever lying to me? “Tell me what this is really about or leave. I don’t have any more time for games.”
“If you think this is a game you are very much mistaken!”
“It might not be a game, but I know when I’m being played. And I swear to God, if you insist on keeping this up, I’ll draw on my firemagic and make you tell me the truth.”
There’s a flash of excitement in his eyes, which he immediately buries under a flurry of bluster.” “Surely, you’re not trying to convince me that the rumors about your so-called ‘firemagic’ are true?”
Treasurekeeper Page 25
