“Doesn’t matter,” Riley told him. “She might’ve been there. That was enough to sway the vote, because Lesley was the one Sloane cared about.”
“You could have wiped us out.” Addie’s eyes were big with shock. “But you let the battle come here, let the Aerons burn the forest and the Llyrs destroy that town—to save one girl?”
“No,” Riley said. “To save three girls, one boy, and an entire race.” He reached out to Evangeline, and she took his hand in hers.
Jax opened his mouth to make another complaint about public displays of affection—just to lighten the moment—but Evangeline turned suddenly on her sister. “Now that we have a moment alone,” she said, “how about telling us the truth? Because that was a whopping pack of lies you gave Bedivere.”
38
“YOU’RE CALLING ME A liar? I haven’t seen you in years, and as soon as we’re back together, you call me a liar?” Addie found that an attack was often a good first line of defense.
“I know your ‘lying voice,’ even after years apart,” said Evangeline. “And I’ve seen that your talent has changed. What did the Old Crone do to you?”
“I’ll leave,” the Pendragon boy offered. “If you want to speak privately.”
“I won’t,” said the girl with the orange hair, putting her chin in her hand. “I want to hear this.”
Addie saw Evangeline squeeze her boyfriend’s hand, encouraging him to stay. Feeling like everyone was ganging up on her, Addie turned to Jax, who nodded. It’s okay. Talk.
“I was the one who was supposed to break the Eighth Day Spell, okay?” she said. “I can copy any spell I see. I can use magic that doesn’t belong to me. I didn’t need to have the Treasures. I only needed them active so I could use their power to boost my own. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“What happened?” Evangeline asked.
Addie crossed her arms sullenly. “I didn’t do what I was told to do.”
With a gasp and a laugh, Evangeline let go of Riley and threw her arms around Addie. “Of course you didn’t! When do you ever?”
Addie should have been offended by that, but even she had to admit it was true. Still, she added over Evangeline’s shoulder while her sister hugged her, “They would have killed me when they were done with me. I’m sure of it. But I hate the Eighth Day Spell! I wanted to end it!”
“We all hate it,” Riley said. “But it’s our burden to preserve it.”
Evangeline drew back and took Addie’s face in her hands. “Did you kill Bran?”
“He fell,” Addie insisted. Then she admitted, “He attacked me. I defended myself. Then he fell.”
“He fell off the tower while he had the Spear?” her sister probed. It shouldn’t have been possible.
“I had the Spear,” she confessed. “For a little while, it was mine. But I lost it. I’m sorry. I know it was valuable.”
“Not as valuable as you are,” Evangeline said, hugging her again.
Over the next few hours, the Transitioners rounded up the remnants of the Aeron marauders and put out the fires. The town and all the neighboring residences had apparently been evacuated of Normals during the seven-day timeline. “The original plan,” Jax told Addie, “was for Sloane and her Dulac relatives to plant a false emergency in the minds of the mayor and the police and fire chiefs. But thanks to all that rain and flooding, they had a real emergency on their hands.”
Jax dragged Addie around the Bedivere mansion and grounds, checking on his friends. He seemed to have a lot of them. They ruffled his hair, patted him on the back, and congratulated him for pulling off a successful “extraction.”
Addie, of course, was the thing he’d extracted. Like a rotten tooth.
A dark-haired Morgan girl who seemed to know Jax pretty well filled them in on the details of the Transitioners’ military defense. “We were trying to keep the casualties low,” the girl said. “But they weren’t making it easy. They set half the mountainside on fire, and they didn’t care very much about preserving their own lives. Believe it or not, having the Donovans with us made a big difference. I don’t know how Thomas and Michael could smell out people through all that smoke, but they did. Michael even saved a couple Kin kids who got separated from their captors and were trapped by fire. He was a real hero.”
“You take that back, Deidre Morgan!” shouted a red-headed man who was being tended by a healer for burns. “You’ll ruin my reputation!”
That made a lot of people laugh. Addie smiled faintly, pretending she got the joke. Although these Transitioners came from different clans, they seemed united by a common enemy—and elated by their victory. Addie felt out of place, having been, for a time, one of the enemy, but the Transitioners didn’t seem to object to her presence. Apparently the story she’d told Bedivere, painting herself as an innocent victim, had been accepted.
Not even Evangeline and Jax knew how close she’d really come to destroying the Eighth Day Spell.
Addie and Evangeline were the only Kin present for most of the morning, but around noon, a group of Kin adults were escorted into the house. Evangeline hurried to greet the new arrivals, while Addie craned her neck trying to see them.
“Who are they?” Jax asked.
Addie started to tell him she didn’t know and realized the question was addressed to Riley Pendragon, who’d come up behind them. “Some of them are people who voluntarily took refuge with Bedivere, but you recognize the last two guys, don’t you? The Taliesins?”
Addie stood on tiptoe to take another look. The Taliesin brothers had been the ones to pull her kicking and screaming out of Evangeline’s arms on the day their parents died.
“They’re special guests at our Table meeting,” Riley went on. “We’ll be talking about what to do with the prisoners, and these Kin representatives have been invited to take part in the final discussion. Which is kind of a big step forward in Transitioner-Kin relations.”
Evangeline caught sight of Addie and gave a little wave, mouthing the words See you later. Then she disappeared into Bedivere’s banquet room.
“How’d you pry the Taliesins out of their library?” Jax asked Riley.
“The Taliesins are record keepers for the Kin. They’re going to help place those orphans. Some will go back to the Carroways, but the Taliesins may be able to reunite long-lost family members.” Riley looked down at Addie. “That reminds me. We need to get you back to Vermont. Not to stay, I mean. Just to visit.”
Addie hesitated. “I don’t know if they want me to visit.”
“Are you kidding? Dale phones me every Thursday to get an update on your whereabouts.”
Addie felt her cheeks flush. “I wasn’t sure Dale would forgive me.”
“Sure he will. Jax set me up to be shot by his evil relatives and fed to a wyvern, and I forgave him.” Riley clapped Jax on the shoulder and slipped into the meeting room before the door closed.
“That’s a totally unfair version of what happened,” Jax muttered. Then he turned to Addie. “I bet you wish you could have some time with Evangeline without all this going on.”
Addie shrugged. “When you’re invited to be a special guest of the Round Table . . .”
“She’s not a guest. She’s a member. Evangeline took Merlin’s place at the Table.”
Of course she did, was Addie’s first thought. Then she quashed it. “Good for her,” she said—and meant it. She was proud of her big sister. “I couldn’t do it.”
“Sure you could. Why not?”
“Is that your attitude about everything?” Addie demanded. “Why not?”
He grinned. “Why not?”
She laughed. “I knew you were going to say that.”
“Seriously, Addie, I sat in for her once. If I can do it, so can you.” Jax looked across the mansion’s massive entrance hallway. “While we wait for her to get out of there, I really should say something to my so-called evil relatives.”
When Addie followed his gaze and saw who he was looking at, she dr
ew back, putting Jax between her and them. It was the Dulac inquisitor who’d captured Addie and taken her blood for experimentation, along with his wife, the falsely smiling woman who had decorated Addie’s prison cell with Hello Kitty junk—although she wasn’t smiling now and seemed quite upset. “I knew you had his mark!” Addie gasped. “You are one of them!”
“He’s my uncle, yeah. But my mark’s slightly different, which means I’m not part of his clan,” Jax explained. “He’s a jerk, but I feel bad about Lesley. I want to tell him and Aunt Marian how sorry I am. You can come with me. They won’t bother you.”
“The last time I saw that man,” Addie said, staying behind Jax, “I bit him.”
“Erg.” Jax grimaced. “Okay, wait here. I’ll just be a second.”
“Can your brownie wait with me?”
“Sure. Stink, stay with her.”
The brownie hopped from Jax’s shoulder onto Addie’s. When Jax turned his back to walk across the room, she waited about two seconds before slipping around two camouflaged soldiers and losing herself in the crowd. Stink made a squeaky protest. Addie ignored him. There was something she needed to do, and it had to be done before the Table meeting ended, because Evangeline, the rule follower, would never approve.
Addie found a staircase at the rear of the house and slipped upstairs to a hallway that was quiet and empty. “Where’s the nearest brownie hole?” she asked Stink.
Stink scolded her.
“Fine, I’ll look for myself.” Addie scanned the wall at baseboard height. “Brownies like food and trash, but there’s too many people near the kitchens for me to go there. They also like soft places to sleep, so maybe a linen closet . . .”
Stink made an aggravated noise and leaped down from Addie’s shoulder. He jumped through one of the walls, then popped back out again. “Why, thank you, Stink,” Addie said, squatting down to push her way into the invisible hole.
Jax had told her that all the people jumping in and out of the Bedivere mansion with brownies on their shoulders were Dulac vassals who’d been given access to brownie holes by the deceased Dr. Morder. “But humans can’t jump accurately unless they have a brownie guide—which is where Riley came in today because brownies obey Pendragons. He assigned a brownie to everyone who’d be using the tunnels—except my cousin Dorian, who wasn’t supposed to go anywhere but got lucky when he did. When we’re done here, Riley can order the brownies not to take Dulacs anywhere, which will hopefully shut down any plans Sloane has for using the tunnels to her advantage.”
Addie didn’t think Jax was right about that. If this kid Dorian had managed to jump without brownie guidance, then it could be done. She bet she could learn to do it, given her talent for working with other people’s magic. But right now, she was glad for Stink’s help because time was of the essence. According to Jax, the Transitioners had been preparing holding cells for prisoners for almost two weeks, but if what Addie had overheard while accompanying him around the mansion today was true, the captured Kin wouldn’t be occupying them anywhere near that long.
She told Stink where she wanted him to take her, and although his ears flattened in disapproval, he did what she asked. After a dizzying jump through space, Addie found herself standing in the hallway of another building. She had to trust that Stink had taken her where she asked—the place Jax had pointed out to her earlier from their vantage point on the Bedivere grounds. It was an office building, located safely above the flood zone.
When she tried to find a hole to exit the brownie tunnel, Stink squealed, stopping her. He stuck his head out, and it disappeared as if sheared clean off his body. Then he retreated back into the tunnel with alarmed squeaking, and Addie realized the problem. The tunnel was contained in an alternate timeline, and people outside it would not be visible to her.
So, she waited until Stink signaled the coast was clear before climbing out of the tunnel. The brownie scampered a few steps down the hallway, then stopped to sniff at one particular door. The ward painted on it was of Kin origin, with unique alterations made by a Transitioner artisan. It would keep the occupants securely inside, but did not prevent physical entry from the outside. Addie touched the lock, and it clicked open silently. Thank heavens for Aeron mischief. Stink scrambled up her pants leg and shirt onto her shoulder, and she slipped inside, closing the door behind her.
Kel was lying on a cot in the bare, windowless room with his arms crossed over his face, but he sat up at her entrance. “Addie! Did they get you, too?” Then he saw the brownie on her shoulder, with its unmistakable white-topped head. Jax’s brownie. “Oh . . . I guess you’re . . .”
“Here by choice,” she agreed.
“You’ve gone over to their side,” he said resentfully, “like your sister, the traitor.”
“Don’t call her that!” Evangeline might be annoyingly perfect, but she was a better person than Addie had ever been. She was Merlin’s heir, upholder of the spell, and most importantly, Addie’s sister.
“What happened to my dad?” asked Kel.
“He’s not hurt. The adult captives are under sedation, locked up, and warded. The children are being held separately. The Transitioners aren’t sure what to do with you and the Aeron teenagers. Evangeline is arguing in your favor”—in spite of what you think of her—“but there’s a good chance they’re going to send you with the adults.”
“Where?” If he was trying to sound defiant, he failed. Kel was scared.
“Oeth-Anoeth,” Addie said bluntly. Kel flinched. “They’re going to put you into coffins for transport before midnight, fly you to Wales during the seven-day timeline, and when they let you out, you’ll already be there.” In a medieval fortress of magical suppression, cut off from the world.
For a moment she thought Kel was going to cry. If he did, she wouldn’t blame him. Unlike most Kin, he’d lived his life in luxury, and now he was going to the horrible place that had produced Griffyn and Ysabel. Addie didn’t let him despair for long. “That’s why,” she said, “when I walk out of here, I’m leaving the door unlocked. Don’t expect any more help from me than that. You’re on your own after this.”
“What about my dad?”
“He’s unconscious and under more guard than you are. You can’t help him. I’m only giving you this chance because we were friends when we were little—and because you brought help when the Dulacs had me. This makes us even.”
“I thought we were still friends,” Kel said bitterly. “I care about you, Addie.”
Did he? Addie thought about Kel watching while Bran tortured her and how he did nothing to stop his father pinning her to the floor to break her wrist. She compared that to Evangeline binding herself to Griffyn for Addie’s sake—and Jax coming to rescue her, getting stabbed, then returning for her with a really big sword.
“I don’t think you even know what friendship means,” she told Kel.
Addie didn’t look back when she slipped out the door and into the brownie hole with Stink on her shoulder. She knew, guiltily, that she had no right to cast stones at Kel. I ran away from the Carroways for selfish reasons and left them an ungrateful letter, too. I led terrible people to their doorstep and almost got them killed. I was as bad as Kel.
But Dale still calls every week to find out if I’m okay.
Addie felt oddly hopeful. Maybe, in the company of her sister, her vassal, and their friends, she could learn to be a better person, too.
Why not?
39
EVANGELINE SUCCESSFULLY ARGUED a reprieve for all the Aeron children under the age of thirteen, although the Table required that they foster with Transitioner clans. The same went for the kidnapped orphans whose talents were useful in combat. Even though those kids had been coerced into fighting, cautious members of the Table didn’t want to lose track of them.
What made Evangeline unhappy—and Jax, too—was that any Aerons thirteen and older were deemed “a risk” and condemned to Oeth-Anoeth along with the adults.
“That’s whe
n Riley proposed every member of the Table send a representative to Wales for the incarceration, to see for themselves where the prisoners are going and to make sure it’s modern and humane.” Evangeline looked up at Riley proudly, telling the story after the meeting. “It wasn’t a popular idea with everyone, but majority ruled.”
Sheila had voted against it, not wanting civilians cluttering up her operation. She was joined by Sloane, Bors, and Sagramore. The rest had sided with Riley, although Riley said the new Pellinore leader was more interested in justice for his brother than inspecting conditions at the prison.
Evangeline had insisted on confessing her part in the death of Ash Pellinore in front of the Table, against the better judgment of Riley and Mrs. Crandall. “Luckily,” Riley said, “it didn’t start a clan feud.” She hadn’t been the one to deliver the killing blow, and the new Pellinore leader accepted her apology. “Not graciously,” Riley reported, “but he appreciated her honesty.”
“Does this mean I’m going to Oeth-Anoeth to represent Evangeline?” Jax asked.
“No,” Evangeline said. “I was allowed to deputize Mr. Crandall to go, because my clan is composed only of minors.” Jax felt disappointed and relieved. It would’ve been cool to visit a magic fortress from the time of Merlin and King Arthur, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to watch kids his own age get locked up in it.
One Kin teen who would not be going was Kel Mathonwy. Even before the Table meeting was over, it was discovered that Kel had escaped from his cell. When Jax heard, he immediately looked at Addie. I left you alone for ten minutes! Addie stared back at him with the kind of innocent expression that only an extraordinarily guilty person could make. However, before anyone else could jump to the same conclusion, A.J. took responsibility. “The ward on his cell was sloppily done,” A.J. said. “I made too many in too short a time. It’s my fault.”
Addie’s changing expression was priceless. Surprise to elation to guilt. “That’s Riley’s vassal,” Jax whispered. “He’s got our back. Always.”
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