by Sarra Cannon
And how in the hell did she figure that I had taken her sons from her in the first place?
“I had nothing to do with either of your sons leaving this city,” I said. “No one knows why Aerden left, and no matter how much I tried to convince Jackson to stay here and find a way to fight without abandoning his kingdom, he was determined to leave. All I did was stand by his side.”
Tatiana made a face and turned away. “Don’t call him that,” she said. “It makes him sound so human.”
“He prefers that name now,” I said. “Maybe because he feels closer to the friends he’s made in the human world than the demons here who betrayed him.”
“You speak of things you know nothing about,” she said. “I tried to keep them safe, but once they were gone, there was nothing I could do to help them.”
“You could have gone after him like we did,” I said. “Aerden is alive now because we refused to give up on him. And now you’re going to take the second chance you’ve been given and throw it all away again? I don’t understand you.”
“Aerden never should have been taken by the Order in the first place,” she said, facing me. “I made a great sacrifice to make sure he would be safe. I still don’t understand why he was taken. That never should have been possible.”
I stepped back, my hand absently fluttering to my chest. I no longer had the diamond key I had worn close to my heart for a century, but I could still imagine its cool metal against my skin.
Tatiana studied my reaction, her eyes widening. She raised a hand to her lips, as if holding back a cry.
“You know, don’t you?” she asked. She closed her eyes and leaned against the bannister for support. “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before this moment. He gave it to you, didn’t he? He gave you the key? Before he left?”
My heart raced. I had wanted to know the origin of that mysterious key for decades. Even more so after my last fight with the hunter attacking the domed city to the south.
“Where did you get a diamond key, Tatiana?”
“I told him to keep it on him at all times and to never take it off for anything or anyone,” she said, still looking into the distance toward the demons sparring in the arena. “I knew he...but I never dreamed he would give it to you. He was the one in danger, not you.”
I gasped. “You knew he was going to leave,” I said, realizing it for the first time. All this time, I’d thought Aerden’s absence from the castle on my engagement day was a surprise to everyone.
Tatiana ran a hand along her own thick braids, smoothing her hair even though not a single one was out of place. “I suspected it for several moons before he left. That’s why I gave him that key,” she said. “It was never meant for you, and if you hadn’t taken it from him, he would have been safe. He would have eventually returned to us. Our lives would be very different if you had never accepted that key, Lazalea.”
I closed my eyes and let her words sink in. Were Aerden’s years of slavery my fault?
“I didn’t know,” I said, finally steadying myself enough to look at her. “He said it was an engagement present. He made me promise to never take it off. I had no idea you had given it to him to keep him safe from the Order. How could I have known that?”
Tears shimmered in her eyes. “You couldn’t have known,” she said. “I just wish it could have been different.”
“Where did you get a diamond key, Tatiana?” I asked again.
She hesitated, gripping the stone on the edge of the bannister tighter. For a moment, I thought she would refuse to tell me, but after a long pause, she eventually turned back to me.
“I bought it from a shaman who used to live near the borderlands,” she said. “She was not the type of demon I normally would have wanted to have any dealings with. She was rumored to deal in dark magic and items stolen from the witches and hunters of the Order of Shadows.”
“Did she tell you where the key came from?”
“She told me she’d stolen it from a hunter who worked for the High Priestess herself,” she said. “She said the hunters use keys embedded with a gemstone from each demon gate portal. That’s how they mark a demon to be taken. They mark their chosen demon with a dark kind of magic and lock a piece of their spirit into a small box. Later, when they come back to retrieve the demon, they simply use the key to open the box. The magic summons that demon from their home where they are sent through to the human world and locked inside a witch’s body.”
My throat went dry. This was information the Resistance struggled for decades to discover. We’d found keys in the lairs of some hunters in the past, but we never knew the purpose of those keys or their small boxes until recently.
“You’ve known this for all these years and never told anyone?” I asked. “It took the Resistance decades to uncover the truth about how the hunters mark the demons they intend to take. If we had known this information, we could have saved lives, Tatiana.”
“We?” she asked, smiling sadly. “You stand here in the gowns of a princess, but you still think of yourself as a member of the Resistance.”
“I am both,” I said. “All of us should want nothing more than to see the end of the Order of Shadows so that we can bring as many of our demons home as possible.”
“When Aerden was taken, I thought that maybe the shaman had lied to me,” she said, ignoring my comment. “When I had a chance, I went back to search for her, but she had closed her shop and moved on. I’ve never seen that shaman again, and I blamed her for my son’s disappearance, never dreaming that he had given the key to you all those years ago.”
“Did she tell you anything more about the origin of the key?” I asked. “As far as anyone knows, there are no diamond gates in the human world. We’ve heard rumors and speculation about diamond covens and gates, but in all our time searching, we’ve never once found proof that they exist.”
Tatiana shook her head. “She didn’t give me any further information,” she said. “She simply told me she’d bought the key from a demon who claimed to have killed the hunter who carried it. I foolishly trusted her, and at great cost to myself. I emptied most of our savings and gave away many of our most precious family treasures in exchange for that key.”
“The key is real,” I said. “She didn’t lie to you.”
Tatiana’s eyes widened. “How do you know?”
I swallowed and glanced away. How much should I tell her? After all, this was a woman I’d recently overheard discussing my permanent relocation to the dungeons. I shouldn’t trust her.
“Recently, that key saved my life,” I said. “The diamond inside it is real.”
“Where is it now?” she asked. “Do you still have it?”
The truth was, I didn’t know where my key was now. It had been inside my bag, along with the diamond amulet I’d taken from the hunter who attacked the domed city the night the world was frozen in darkness.
That bag had been taken from me by the guards when they’d brought us here, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to let Tatiana know that it was possibly still here in the castle.
Besides, Essex had created that bag specifically for me, making sure that no one else could open it, no matter how hard they tried. I kept my most important possessions in that bag.
“I lost it,” I said, lying.
Tatiana sighed. She looked tired as she turned her gaze back toward the arena.
“I did try to keep him safe, Lazalea,” she said. “And I begged him not to volunteer in these games. He refused to listen to me.”
“You went to see him?” I asked, my heart aching. It had been months since I’d seen Aerden, and I missed him so much it hurt.
“A few times,” she said. “But, like you, he believes I abandoned him. He hates me. He won’t listen to a word I say.”
“He doesn’t hate you,” I said. “He’s hurting, and coming back here and being thrown in the dungeons instead of being recognized for the hero he truly is doesn’t help.”
“I wan
ted to set him free, but those decisions aren’t up to me, anymore,” she said. “The council is nothing more than a lie these days. Surely you see that, don’t you?”
“What do you mean? The council isn’t working together to make decisions for the city?” I asked.
She sighed again, lifting her head as the sparring in the arena came to an end and the prisoners were lined up and taken back through the archway that lead into the cells where they were being kept.
“You are a smart girl, Lazalea, but you see only what’s there on the surface,” she said. “If you looked deeper, you might start to see things as they truly are, rather than how you imagine them to be. All the answers you seek are right there in front of you. All you have to do is open your eyes. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the party. I’m sure it won’t be long before our presence is missed.”
She started back toward the main ballroom, but I called after her and she turned slightly, her face enveloped in the shadows cast by the large obsidian archways.
“Why did Aerden leave the city?” I asked, a part of me not quite sure I was ready to hear the answer to the question. “Why did he give me that key when he knew how important it was?”
Tatiana glanced toward the arena one last time. The shadow of a smile played against her lips.
“Maybe you should ask Aerden that question,” she said. “Good night, Princess.”
She left me standing there, alone in the chilled spring air, afraid that deep down, I already knew the truth.
Nothing Left
Harper
Hours later, when the sun was close to making its appearance in the eastern sky and the scent of smoke still lingered in the air, Brooke and I made our way back inside the house Priestess Evers had called home.
The local hospital in this small town didn’t have enough room for all eighty-three of the girls, so they had been separated and transported to three different facilities in the area. For now, all I had was a handwritten list of their names and the determination to somehow get each one of them home where they belonged.
Did they all come from the same time as Brooke and me? Or had they been captured from different decades and brought here by the priestess? Until their memories were restored to them, we had no real way to know.
I was too exhausted to make sense of all of it tonight. I needed a few hours of rest before I could face the repercussions of everything that had happened.
“How are you feeling?” Brooke asked. “I don’t know about you, but at this point, I feel like I could sleep for a week and still not be rested. Do you think it’s safe to drop this glamour?”
I closed the door behind us and locked it.
“There are too many windows down here,” I said. “And too many unknowns. We have no idea who is working for the Order or watching the house right now. I was really hoping to be able to search the house tonight for any sign of a portal, but I’m so tired, I can barely find the energy to take another step. I think we should both go upstairs, lock ourselves into a room, and get some sleep. We can get up in a few hours and make a plan.”
“I like the idea of sleep,” Brooke said. “I don’t even think I have the energy to jump in the shower and wash the smell of this fire off my body. I just want to pass out and forget this mess for a little while.”
We both headed up the stairs and chose a pair of bedrooms next door to each other.
“If you wake up before me, come wake me up, okay?” she asked.
“Same for you,” I said. “Get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Brooke threw her arms around my neck, and we stood in the hallway for a long time, holding each other. There were no words to express everything we’d been through over the past several months, and we both knew that there was still a long journey ahead of us. And no matter how much she had once seemed like my enemy, I was so grateful to have her here with me now.
As we parted, my knees buckled slightly, and Brooke grabbed my arm.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I put a hand to my forehead, a sharp pain tearing through me. My glamour flickered, and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.
“I think I just need to drop this glamour and crawl into bed. My magic is completely spent,” I said. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, frowning. “I’ll check on you as soon as I wake up.”
I nodded and stepped into the darkness of the nearest bedroom. I closed the door behind me, and let the glamour fall from my body, as if I were releasing a breath I’d been holding for hours.
My shoulders relaxed, and I leaned against the door, just enjoying the release. It had taken everything I had to keep the glamour going throughout the night. Between my mad run through the institute to try to escape Priestess Evers and our fight in the basement, I was drained.
I didn’t even bother turning on the overhead light. There was enough light coming through the curtains from a streetlamp outside for me to make my way to the bed. There was a small lamp on the bedside table, and I flipped it on, realizing for the first time that I must have chosen the priestess’s bedroom.
I ran my hand along the beautifully embroidered comforter on her canopied bed before I pulled it down and started to climb inside.
Movement on the other side of the room stopped me cold, and chills of terror ran down my spine. I wasn’t alone, but the small sitting area on the far side of the large bedroom was drenched in shadows.
I stared into the darkness, feeling that I was looking into the dark moments of my own fate.
“Show yourself,” I said.
Another lamp clicked on, and there, sitting in a high-backed chair covered in green velvet, was a woman with dark blonde hair that fell to her waist in delicate waves. Her long, red skirt billowed around her legs and pooled on the wood floor. She wore a pristine white blouse, and there, at her neck, was a gold chain that dipped low against her breasts.
Every muscle in my body tensed. I reached for my power, only to find that there was nothing left.
“Hello, Harper,” she said, her crimson lips spreading into a sweet smile.
She absently lifted a hand to touch the pendant hanging from the gold chain. The stone in the center glittered as it caught the light, and I felt the blood drain from my face.
The pendant was a snake made entirely of rubies.
A Deal With The Devil
Harper
A single moment seemed to stretch out for an eternity, and I could hardly breathe.
I had no doubt the woman sitting in front of me was the ruby priestess herself. But how had she gotten here? And what was she planning to do to me?
Again, I reached out for my power, connecting for a brief moment to the life force of a large oak in the backyard, but I wasn’t strong enough to hold onto it. I was powerless. I quickly looked around me to see if there was anything I could use as a weapon, but other than the furniture, the room was bare.
“Calm down, girl,” she said. She shook her head and motioned toward a matching chair next to her. “Come, sit down.”
My heart raced, and my mind struggled to keep up. I had literally just ripped her sister’s heart out less than twenty-four hours ago, yet she seemed completely unconcerned. If anything, she looked amused with her bright blue eyes and light smile.
“I’ll stay right here,” I said. “Say whatever it is you’ve come to say.”
She sighed and clasped her hands in her lap. “I’m not going to hurt you, I promise. Just sit down so we can have a little chat. I have a lot to say, and I don’t have much time. To be honest, neither do you.”
“You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t trust you and your promises,” I said.
Amazingly, she laughed.
“I’m simply amazed at your spirit,” she said. “I was there for a good deal of my sister’s experiments when she first brought you here, and I have never seen anyone come through such torture with this kind of determination and spunk.”
&n
bsp; Spunk? She was speaking to me as if I were a child who had simply gotten up after scraping my knee.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I’m impressed by you and what you’ve accomplished,” she said. “None of us believed it was possible to kill even one of us with the power we have gathered and consumed over the years, much less two of us. In our centuries of power, we’ve never truly been challenged by anyone, and it amuses me that the source of our destruction was a young girl like you.”
She genuinely did look amused. Almost giddy.
I struggled to make sense of her reaction. Was she just trying to get me to lower my defenses so she could kill me? Maybe she didn’t realize that I currently had no access to my own power.
“I loved my sister, Hazel, dearly. She was by far my favorite sister, but I warned her not to bring you here,” she said with a shrug. “Just like everyone else, she underestimated you. She thought she could control you and turn you into one of her precious daughters, but she didn’t understand just how strong you are.”
The ruby priestess straightened in her chair.
“But like I said, I am not like my sisters,” she said. Her eyes were bright and wide as she stared at me. “I think you are an incredible girl. It’s so romantic how much you love your demon and how much both of you would sacrifice for each other and for your friends. It’s absolutely fascinating to see how much you can accomplish through love and sheer strength of will. These are things my sisters do not understand at all.”
I had no idea why she was telling me these things. She admired me? Somehow, I seriously doubted that. What game was she playing here?
“Don’t look so confused. I’m trying to pay you a compliment, dear.”
“Is that really what you came all this way to tell me?” I asked.
She leaned back in the chair again, pressing her hands together in front of her chest. “You’re right. Of course, what was I thinking? We are on limited time here, but I just wanted you to know that I admire what you’ve been able to do so far,” she said. “I’ve been on the winning side for so long that it’s gotten quite boring. Oh, it was a challenge in the beginning to see what we could get away with, how many witches we could recruit to our covens or how many gates we could open successfully. But for decades now, there’s been no challenge to what we’re doing. Until you came along, of course.”
