Was it a game for him? Had he enjoyed toying with me?
Re stood and lifted his hand like he was going to touch my shoulder. Another attempted apology.
I flinched away. The danger posed by this place was more palpable than ever . . . because of him.
For a moment, he stood there, eyes locked with mine, not touching me and not pulling away.
My stare was a challenge. Touch me. I dare you. I’ll rip your face off.
Re sighed and lowered his hand. “I wish you hadn’t told me,” he whispered so quietly I almost couldn’t hear what he said. He looked at me for a moment longer, then made his way around the table to stand before the High Council just as I had done. He clasped his hands behind his back, squared his shoulders, and held his head high.
My entire body went cold as I processed his words. He knew. About Isfet and my half-formed plan to get home to release her . . . about everything. Because I’d told him. Because he’d tricked me into thinking he was the one person I truly trusted. It had been a huge relief to get everything off my chest. But it had been a mistake—an unwitting one, but a mistake nonetheless—and I had a dreadful feeling that that moment of relief was about to be quickly overshadowed by an eternity of regret.
I glared at the back of his head, wishing my anger alone could sear a hole through his skull and boil his brain. Silently, I willed him to keep his mouth shut.
“You have spent some time with Katarina Dubois disguised as one she trusts,” the Mother of All said.
As she spoke, my glare shifted to her. She was the one behind this. She’d set the whole thing up. The Netjers on the High Council seemed just as shocked as I was about the Nik-is-Re revelation. Was it a power play? Was I just here as a pawn the Mother of All was using to make a point to the High Council—that she was better than them?
“Tell us, Re,” the Mother of All said, “to the best of your knowledge, has Katarina Dubois been forthright and honest with us?”
For seconds—eons—Re remained immobile and silent. Until finally, he nodded. “So far as I know, everything she said was the truth.” He answered carefully, seeming to dance cleverly around the question.
Not cleverly enough.
“But was it the whole truth?” the Mother of All asked.
I held my breath and crossed the first two fingers of both hands. Re hadn’t exactly been forthcoming in his answer to her first question. Maybe he wasn’t a fully cooperative participant in this charade. Maybe he would withhold some of what I’d shared with him. He hadn’t really tried that hard to get any information out of me. If anything, he’d been cold and distant, almost like he’d wanted to push me away. Almost like he’d wanted me to keep my mouth shut.
And I’d gone and blabbed everything to him anyway. Gods, I was an idiot.
“No,” Re finally said, and my heart plummeted. “She did not tell you everything.”
I closed my eyes, chin trembling. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up,” I mouthed, repeating the phrase over and over and over again.
“Katarina Dubois has been in contact with Isfet,” Re said.
Swallowing roughly, I opened my eyes.
The High Council exploded in a chorus of gasps and whispers. But their reaction was nothing compared to that of the Mother of All. She bristled, those diamond facets in her skin glinting as they shifted sharply, her glare moving from Re to me. Apparently, she really didn’t like Isfet.
I shrank back in my chair, repulsed by her palpable rage, sinking down a few inches.
It took the Mother of All a few seconds to calm herself. When she was finally able to speak again, she flattened her palms on the arms of her throne and stood. “I had such high hopes for you,” she said to me. “What a disappointment.”
I was overcome by a whirlwind of emotions, and it was a struggle to stop them from overtaking me. I was still outraged at Re for duping me—and at Anapa, too, because he’d been in on it. I was embarrassed and ashamed that I hadn’t seen through the ruse, that I hadn’t been able to tell the difference between this imposter and the man whose soul was bound to mine. I was lonely and frightened, all of these alien faces staring at me, these strangers hearing my story and deciding my fate. And now, seeing the disgust and what could only be called hatred in the Mother of All’s amethyst eyes, I drowned in a tidal wave of dread. My stomach turned to lead, my mouth to cotton.
What would happen to me now? Would I be sent home? Or would I be held here until the bonding withdrawals killed me?
More importantly, what would happen to my universe? Nothing good, that much was certain.
Desperation flooded me. I couldn’t just leave things like this. I had to try to make it better. I had to try . . .
Trembling with an influx of adrenaline, I stood, licked my lips, and cleared my throat. “Please,” I said, voice steadier than I felt. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Enough!” the Mother of All roared.
I froze, stunned by the hurricane of alien energy coming off of her in wave after wave. Even if I’d had access to my powers here, I wouldn’t have been a match for her. Not even close.
“Get out of my sight,” she said and flung out one glittering hand.
“No, wait, I—”
There was a flash of brilliant blue light, and then the courtroom was gone and I was sitting on my butt on the floor of my bedroom. Of my prison cell.
And for the first time since coming to this universe, I was truly alone.
14
“Damn it!” I shouted, scrambling to my feet and lunging at the empty wall where a door should have been. I slammed my fist against the wall, fully expecting the satisfaction of knuckles breaking through drywall. I was sorely disappointed.
When my knuckles hit the wall, the impact sent out the faintest ripple along the surface, and the force of the impact reverberated back through my hand, grinding my newly healed bones together painfully. Because the wall was made of Essence, like every other damned thing in this hellhole. I wasn’t really home. I was a prisoner, and my universe was likely doomed.
Fuming, I marched over to the standing mirror. If I couldn’t tear down a wall, at least I could break something big. I gripped either side of the mirror and flung it across the room, howling in anger.
The mirror crashed into the armoire with the sound of splintering wood, then fell onto the floor, glass-side down. The stupid fake mirror didn’t even have the decency to shatter, probably because it was made of Essence too. It was a construct, whatever that meant. It wasn’t real.
I glared at the mirror, offended by its very existence. And then something on the face of the armoire caught my attention. There was a very distinctive dent in the right door, and splinters of wood interlocked along the break like tiny, jagged teeth.
I moved closer, intrigued as faint little waves cascaded across the broken door, smoothing the faux wood out until the break was gone. The door of the armoire appeared to be undamaged once again. But it had been damaged. Maybe it wasn’t real wood, merely Essence made to act like real wood, but it had been damaged.
I frowned, brows knitting together. So why hadn’t the mirror broken, too?
Hands on my hips, I looked down at the mirror. The back of the frame wasn’t the original ashy oak as it had been when Anapa first sent me into my artfully disguised prison cell; it was an opaque, almost crystalline material. This mirror looked exactly like the real one in my bedroom, which Nik had transformed into At to protect it from ever breaking just moments after I etched Dom’s name into the wooden frame.
I knelt beside the mirror, sliding my fingertips under the edge. The front of the frame was smooth but covered in deep grooves. I could tell just by touching the grooves that they made up letters, and I knew exactly what they spelled out, because I was the one who had carved them.
“What the hell?”
I lifted the mirror by the edge so I could see its face and rested it against the base of the armoire.
“Huh,” I said, sitting back on my heels. I was t
otally baffled by what I was seeing.
This most definitely wasn’t the same mirror that had been in here earlier. That mirror had been made to look like it was a creation of wood and glass. But this mirror—it was made entirely of At. Genuine At. I could feel it, resonating with the threads of At marbling my soul.
I reached out with my right hand, tracing the grooves spelling out Dom’s name. This wasn’t just a replica of the mirror that was in my bedroom. This was the mirror from my bedroom. It pulsed with potential, the magic I’d imbued it with humming subtly. The charm was still there, even if rendered inert.
Anapa must have brought it here while I was being questioned by the High Council. So, what—he’d gone on a water-and-magical-mirror run? Odd combination. But why bring me the mirror at all? It wasn’t like it would do me any good here. Without my powers to charge it, I couldn’t reach Dom through the mirror. Without my powers, I couldn’t do much of anything.
I touched the right pocket of my leather coat, feeling the outline of the deck of tarot cards stowed within.
He’d brought me the cards, too. Why? Had he brought them because he knew something I didn’t? Had he brought me these things because there was actually a way for me to use them?
Hope surged within my chest, and my gaze slid down to the mirror’s silvery surface. Maybe I wasn’t as powerless as I’d thought.
But Dom didn’t suddenly appear there. That surge of hope wilted and died, crushed by my half-brother’s absence.
But I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel yet. Oh, no. I’d only just begun.
Eyes narrowed and focus razor-sharp, I scooted back a foot or two, making a fairly large space on the carpet between my knees and the mirror. I pulled the deck of cards out of my coat pocket and untied the little string holding the velvet bag shut. I dumped the cards out of my hand and closed my eyes, placing my other hand over the top card.
“Come on . . .” I squeezed my eyes shut, searching for some spark of that familiar, primal energy. “Come on . . .”
Just like with the mirror, I could feel the potential for the magic. My sheut reached out, a dowsing rod seeking the energy it needed to make the magic work. I could feel the threads of At and anti-At within my soul coiling up in anticipation.
But there was no answer from the universe—no influx of electric energy. Because I wasn’t in the right universe. So far as my sheut was concerned, the required form of energy didn’t exist in this place. I was too far away.
I blew out a breath, arms drooping to rest on my thighs. My fingertips tapped on the top of the tarot deck, and I stared at the wall behind the armoire, thoughts whirling, like the faux drywall might hold the answers I sought. How could I bridge the gap between this universe and mine? The universes were connected—the Mother of All had told me so herself. And Anapa must have brought me these things—these magical things—for a reason. Which made me think there had to be a way.
An idea struck me all of a sudden. My finger stilled, poised above the cards. Maybe these walls did hold the answer.
I set down the deck of tarot cards and stood, making my way around the mirror and armoire, one hand upraised. I pressed my hand against the wall until my palm was flush with the faintly textured surface.
Nik—or rather Re—had told me that Essence was this universe’s version of At and anti-At, the base substance making up all things here. Maybe my sheut was the source of my original magic—but it was the veins of At and anti-At permanently embedded into my soul that made me so powerful. Those veins allowed me to tap into the most primal forces in my universe, giving me abilities akin to those of a Netjer.
If I could just tap into the Essence like I did the At and anti-At, I thought there was a chance that I could bridge that unbroachable chasm separating me from my universe. Separating me from my power.
I couldn’t sense the Essence like I could the At and anti-At, but I wasn’t about to let that reality stop me from trying. I pulled my hand away from the wall and looked at my palm. The Eye of Horus inked into my skin shimmered, moonstone with onyx striations.
Gritting my teeth, I called out to the threads of At and anti-At interwoven into the fabric of my soul, coaxing them to extend out of my body through the ancient symbol on my palm. The Eye of Horus represented protection, along with proclaiming my clan affiliation—clan Heru, all the way. Beyond those things, it seemed to provide a focus for the unfathomable powers writhing and churning within me. I just hoped it was enough of a focus to make this hairbrained scheme work.
Ever so slowly, threads of At and anti-At sprouted from my skin, inching longer and waving gently as though they were alive. I supposed, in a sense, they really were alive—more so than anything else in existence. They were the building blocks that were there at my universe’s inception, and they would be there if and when it ever came to an end. They were more than alive. They were eternal.
At times in the past, I’d sensed that the At and anti-At had something of a mind of its own. I supposed that would make sense, considering it was technically the body of Isfet. The soul-energy was her spirit—her soul—and it was her mind that was trapped in Aaru, leaving the other parts of her being fractured and without direction. Leaving them ripe to be molded and directed by a couple of enterprising Netjers.
Who was to say there wasn’t some remnant of Isfet’s mind left in those other parts of her. Some instinctive part of it always seemed to know what was going on and what needed to be done. It always seemed to respond to my will like it could truly hear me, sometimes coming up with a solution to a problem that I barely understood. I was pretty sure critical thinking skills were usually beyond the scope of abilities for inanimate objects, making At and anti-At pretty damn animate.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and focused my thoughts, hoping those threads of At and anti-At would understand what I needed now. Hoping that they would hear me, they would listen, and they would know what to do, because I sure as hell didn’t. I moved my hand closer to the wall.
In an instant, every single nerve and cell in my body lit on fire. My eyes snapped open, and I sucked in air until my lungs were near bursting.
I stared at the place where the threads of At and anti-At touched the wall. I watched them spread out like ivy over brick, weaving in and out of the Essence. The farther they spread, the more intense the burning sensation became, until it was nearly overwhelming. It was all I could think about.
The searing pain was so all-encompassing that I couldn’t even remember how it had started. All I knew was that if the pain didn’t stop soon, it would consume me entirely.
“Little sister.” Dom’s voice was in my mind. “Can you hear me? Are you alright?”
Dom’s voice startled me out of the haze of pain, and I yanked my hand away from the wall, snapping the connection between the threads of At and anti-At and the Essence in the wall.
The pain stopped instantaneously, replaced by a swell of excitement.
I’d done it. I’d forged a connection to my universe. With Anapa’s understated help, I’d proven to myself that I wasn’t powerless here.
I raised my hand once again and pressed it against the wall.
Now it was time to prove that to everybody else in this gods-forsaken place.
15
Tapping into the Essence didn’t hurt as much the second time, now that the pain was expected. It was almost as though I was able to regulate the pain, to distribute it out among all the cells of my body even as I channeled that oh-so-potent energy from my own universe into my sheut. The energy poured into me, electric and alive, and I spindled it within my sheut until it was surging with power.
Even so, the pain scorching my soul increased incrementally, and I knew it was only a matter of time before it became unbearable. I wouldn’t be able to maintain the connection for long. Maybe a few minutes at a time. At this rate, it would take me forever to figure out how to make a doorway through the alien Essence and break out of here.
Problem was, I didn
’t have an eternity. I had until the High Council called me back into the trial chamber to deliver their not-so-great decision or until the bonding withdrawals became so bad that I lost consciousness, whichever happened first.
I was racing against the clock, my time ticking down with each passing second. I was looking at a matter of days, a week, max. It was figure this shit out or die. And I wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. Not again. Not for good.
I held the mirror pendant out from my chest so I could see it. “Dom? Are you there?” I couldn’t see him yet, but I wasn’t too worried; last time, it had seemed to take a little while for the power to build up enough that I could reach him through the tiny mirror.
I waited a few seconds and tried again.
Dom appeared suddenly, his expression wild. “Kat!” He leaned in closer to the tiny mirror’s surface. “What is going on? Why can I sense you all of a sudden?” he demanded.
“I don’t have long,” I told him. “I’m in the Netjer universe, and—”
“I know. Re reached out to Nik and explained some of what’s going on,” he said. “He told Nik everything about the Isfet situation, and the two of them are trying to figure out a way to reverse their connection to bring Nik to you via Re . . . at least in spirit. Re believes it may help slow the bonding withdrawals a bit.”
I blew out a breath of relief. I’d been right about Re; not only had he not been a willing participant in tricking me, but if everything Dom said was true, it sounded like he was genuinely trying to help. “Good to know,” I said. “This place is crazy, Dom, and I don’t really understand what’s going on. I think I may have an ally in Anapa, too, so I’ll see if I can get him to help me escape. I have to get back there to free Isfet. You’re all in so much danger . . .” I gritted my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut to fend off the pain searing my nerve endings.
“What is wrong, little sister?”
Again, I shook my head. “It’s nothing.” I took a deep, shaky breath. “I haven’t seen the twins, but maybe Lex can talk to them . . . see if there’s some way they can help me get out of here before—” I groaned, the pain bringing a wave of nausea.
Judgement (Kat Dubois Chronicles Book 5) Page 8
