The Rise of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  Olivia's fingers curled more tightly around the creation I had given her—it had bloomed into a butterfly when she'd used it to sacrifice herself for me. “I think that it gives you pause.”

  Raphael smiled. “Origin Mages are such interesting creatures. They suck in the powerful like magnets too forcefully attracted.”

  “You are trying to make light of our friendship.”

  “Yes.” Raphael prowled around her. His gaze lifted to meet mine again and he smiled. He could see me. “I could kill it. That seed of trust you have in her. Crush it like a grain beneath a pestle.”

  If he could see and speak to me, then maybe—

  I called out for Olivia, but one of the shards immediately started to crack again.

  Olivia looked down at the butterfly for a long moment, then up at Raphael. Her smile grew slowly. It was tinged with darkness. Knowing. “No, you can't.”

  But she was speaking to him, she couldn't see me. I paced the edges of the vision, trying to figure out how to access it without breaking it.

  Raphael laughed, suddenly and incongruously, like so many of his actions. “Delightful.” He crouched in front of her. “I had that once, you know, that knowing. That someone would always be there. It was even truth, for a bit, but time savages all things.”

  “Or maybe you put your trust in the wrong person.”

  “Perhaps.” He moved suddenly and touched a finger to her forehead. “But if I plucked out some of you, replaced it with something else. Would you still be you? Would you want to be someone else, Olivia Price?” His voice was low and hypnotic.

  Her fingers curled around the butterfly and she swallowed with difficulty. “Before, yes.” They were playing some dangerous game of bravery chicken and she wasn't moving as he lightly tapped her forehead. “Now, no.”

  “You wouldn't invoke that same debilitating loyalty from my Butterfly, if you were someone else. I could break that link.”

  “I don't think it would matter. Not to her.” Fierce emotion underscored her words.

  I was nodding wildly and my hand was pressing against the barrier. Another shard gave an ominous crack.

  “No? What if I plucked out some of her? Made her into something more.”

  Olivia's eyes narrowed and her breath started exhaling faster. “I would pluck it right back.”

  “Oh,” he smiled and moved back. “So you want to keep her stagnant? Unchanging? But nothing stays the same. One can never go back.” His voice was mesmerizing and I could see Olivia fight against it.

  “That is the beauty of loving chaos, then, isn't it?” she said. “It's always changing, always fluid and unpredictable. You never have to just be, do you, Verisetti?”

  Raphael smiled, eyes dark. “Clever girl. Clever, clever girl. I'm going to enjoy pulling you apart.”

  He reached for her and I shouted. One of the shards flew forward and my voice echoed through. Olivia turned toward the sound and her gaze met mine. She opened her mouth, but the edges of the dream had cracked, a tunnel sucking it backward, sweeping the edges away into the vastness of space. I grabbed for the shards, arm shooting forward. A shard went tumbling from the center, the pressure pulling it all. My hand went through the opening.

  Pressure pulled at my hand. Pulled my hand. I set my feet, prepared to follow my hand through.

  “No, Ren!” Olivia's voice yelled. Her horrified gaze was looking at something to my left. Raphael's splintering gaze was narrowed on my ear.

  It was enough to stop me for a single moment.

  Something slithered faster than my eye could see down my extending arm and launched itself at them through the hole.

  The shattering dream vortexed completely with the breech, blowing me backward.

  Raphael reached up and snatched it out of the air, a shadow strangling in his hand. It started to curl around his fingers, then shadowy wings burst from its sides, extending faster than I could process.

  Rage overtook Raphael's expression. “You dare—”

  I was rocketed backward as the shards in the conical tip broke into parts small enough to be sand, then sent them splintering up like lightning toward me.

  I gasped for breath, jackknifing in bed.

  The clock enchantment on the wall read six a.m. Bellacia's tickertape scrolled madly with headlines of nightmares and visions and breaking space.

  Emptiness pressed in to fill all the spaces alongside the panic as I looked at the foreign ceiling. I wasn't in my room. I wasn't in our room. I was in enemy territory, and Olivia was in an enemy world.

  “Bad dreams?” a lilting voice said.

  I shuddered and pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to slow my rabbiting heartbeat with shuddering breaths. I let my body fall back down.

  Dreams. Just dreams.

  “Origin Mages have them, you know.”

  I jerked my hands from my face and rolled over sharply to look at Bellacia, who was leaning against the other wall, lower body splayed out on her bed, body language amused at my night terror. She had an Ambrosia stick in one hand and a tablet under the other. The Ambrosia stick was weaving slowly in the air. I had seen a number of the more expensively dressed students at Excelsine nibble them while they walked.

  “What are you doing up?” I asked harshly.

  “Some of us have to wake up to work no matter the hour.”

  I closed my eyes again.

  “Interesting whisperings across the layers woke me,” she said lightly. “The praetorians have been busy in the past few hours, I see.”

  Unease slithered through me.

  “Kaine and his shadows—how do they work?” The question was out before I thought better of it. Damn room in enemy territory during vulnerable times of the day...

  Silence answered my question, and I opened my eyes to see Bellacia sitting stock still on her bed, eyes narrowed on me. I saw her dim her frequency feeds to concentrate on me fully.

  “Why?” she asked. A beeping red light appeared on the corner of her tablet, but I had her full attention.

  I laughed shortly. “He made it my business to ask.”

  She was watching me, trying to figure out the story.

  “He's a rare mage, right?” I asked. “The scary kind. Yet he's walking around.”

  She looked as if she was deliberating whether to answer. “He's a Shadow Mage. If there wasn't a massive Department leash placed on him, people would have demanded he be put down years ago. Scary? No. He's the thing of nightmares.”

  “Yeah.” I pushed shaking fingers along my brows.

  “You are destined to meet more mages like him. No nice village life in the country for you. Monsters seek each other out,” she said with a smirk, chewing on her stick again.

  “Nice.” I let Will's bracelet encyclopedia fill in the blanks on Shadow Mages. Ability to manipulate shadows, can morph into and travel through connected ones... I shivered looking around at the dozens of shadows in the room and reminded myself that they had to be connected. “His abilities are pretty terrifying.”

  “Kitten, you have no idea,” she said, easily keeping up, used to knowledge being quickly and easily accessed. “However, it's not quite as world ending as a mage who can make the world collapse with a sneeze, no?”

  “I don't know, personal monsters that focus on an individual are a lot scarier than some vague world-threatening possibility,” I shot back.

  “Only for children,” she said sweetly.

  “Pretty sure adults are just as susceptible to your Siren suggestions.”

  “Not the worthy, strong ones,” she said. “And those are the only ones worthy of the power to make decisions. I weed out the others quickly enough in the media.”

  “You must be pretty popular,” I muttered.

  Her eyes glittered. She had a haughty smirk, but there was bitterness in her eyes. And I suddenly got it.

  I had observed her enough to understand. While Bellacia held tremendous influence in circles around campus and was unequivocally beautiful—an
d therefore sought as a companion—people didn't like her. They respected her, they liked her on their arm, but, well, Bellacia was a threat. A social, media, and personal threat, and she didn't attempt to hide it. Ever.

  She'd made those choices. I wasn't going to feel sorry for her.

  Much. A little thought of maybe if... No. God, she'd have me for breakfast.

  I closed that line of thought down with a deep breath and closed my eyes. More information scrolled through on Kaine's rare abilities. Riding shadows. Attaching shadows. The more powerful Shadow Mages were able to see, hear, and feel what the shadows did.

  I thought about my nightmare. About what it might be trying to tell me. My dreams often served up subconscious stew for review. My subconscious was obviously trying to work something out, what with the glass shards and the shadows and the butterfly.

  In the dim light, I held up my hands and looked at them.

  “What are you doing?” Bellacia's voice was far too interested.

  “I think he put a shadow on me this afternoon.” Dammit. I was too used to voicing thoughts in the middle of the night to Christian, then Olivia.

  “Impossible,” Bellacia said flatly. “Someone would have seen it—in that crowd, it is a certainty—and I've been over the footage. He didn't. He'd not be allowed to remain on campus. No one would let him remain. Even Stavros' largest cashed-in favor couldn't keep him here.”

  Not this afternoon, then. But tonight? Tonight, in the darkness, he could have slipped one onto me. Dare had sure thought he might have.

  During the chase, Dare had been doing everything he could to keep the shadows from me. And Kaine's voice in my ear had...

  My ear.

  I swore, scrambling out of bed. Neph's scarab hadn't been with me outside of the Magiaduct, and Kaine's shadow had whispered in my ear.

  That nightmare was trying to tell me...

  Oh my God. No. I looked at the red alarm on Bellacia's device that she was still ignoring while she was cataloging every move I was making.

  I grabbed the paper balloon and brought it to my lips, shakily breathing into the opening. It inflated, allowing the magic to swirl around inside the hollow, freeing it from the interior fibers. But only a fraction of the magic remained. My shaking hands lost their grip and the paper fell on my rumpled sheet.

  Not a nightmare. What had I done?

  I stumbled into my clothes, banging into multiple surfaces as I tried to yank everything on.

  “Where are you going?” Bellacia demanded. Her expression was guarded, her body tense—as if she thought I might just issue that world-ending sneeze right this moment. I saw her switch her feeds back on, and a weird expression immediately pinched her features. She started punching buttons and swirling magic in her palm.

  I grabbed the sweatshirt I had shed on the floor next to the bed.

  “Roommates,” she said haltingly, obviously trying to do multiple things at once—listening to something in her feed. “Are—”

  “I know,” I said harshly, lifting the precious, used balloon. “I'll be back.”

  She sucked in a harsh breath, gaze slamming up at me, lips parted. “Did you—?”

  Knock, knock.

  Bellacia's eyes widened and her gaze jerked to the door. I tripped in my panicked scramble, but regained my footing quickly. Sprinting to the door, I yanked it open.

  Dare stood in loose fitting sweats and a t-shirt, exactly as I had seen him the night before the competition. He was barefoot. “You aren't sleeping anymore,” he said. “Why?”

  Dare's eyes narrowed on something on the outside of the door. He slashed his hand downward. Sparks of magic flew from the wood.

  “Was it a nightmare spell?” I asked, somewhat desperately.

  But it hadn't been a nightmare. I knew this—more with every drawn breath.

  I yanked the origami balloon to eye level. The magic was still there, thin, so thin, but swirling. Still alive. Still alive. My heart beat in an overzealous staccato of panic.

  “No.” Dare gave me a pointed look, then one in the direction of where Bellacia was. I stepped back, trying, and failing, to act calm.

  He entered and shut the door.

  “Poor girl had a nightmare,” Bellacia said, chewing on her stick and leaning against the jamb to the bedroom. Her gaze was on the origami balloon, a calculating expression on her face. “And then you show up. How interesting. I don't think I've ever known you to visit a room in the middle of the night, Axer. What have you been getting up to these past few months without the grapevine knowing? I'm shocked.”

  He looked tired. It had only been four hours since I'd seen him last, and on top of everything that had happened on campus, he had put in nearly a full day competing against the best fighters in four layers.

  “You always have been rather stupidly confident in your own knowledge, haven't you?” he said dismissively, tired irritation making the words clipped.

  Her eyes narrowed. “What?”

  He turned to look at her fully, expression dangerous. “You should pay more attention to what Cam tells you. Play your games with the others, take your revenge on Leandred, but turn in this direction, and I will destroy you.”

  I looked anxiously between them.

  Bellacia laughed suddenly, but the look in her eyes didn't match the sound. “Oh, Ren, you become more interesting. You are just a tiny treasure trove of delight.” Her gaze never left Dare's while she said this.

  “Great. Can I speak to you...somewhere else?” I said to Dare, while looking at the workroom that I hadn't yet investigated.

  “Don't leave on my account,” Bellacia said, expression even more calculating. “The items filtering through the outer feeds right now are appalling and engrossing. Nothing has hit the main waves yet, and I'm going to be piecing together the exclusives for the next ten minutes to be first.” Her smirk grew and her eyes narrowed. “And with such interesting insights too.”

  “Get your stuff,” Dare said to me. He was looking around the room, expression tight.

  “Now, Axer,” Bellacia said. “Curfew might have lifted an hour ago, but you know what the room spells require.”

  “And you have hit the load, haven't you, Bella?” He seemed to be saying something else entirely.

  He threw something toward her. She caught it midair, and pulled it against her chest. I couldn't see what it was, just that it was tangerine and asymmetrical.

  “I have indeed.” She smiled and tapped the wall, then took another bite of her stick, tightly gripping whatever it was he had given her. “Ta, for now, then. I'm going to be quite busy.”

  I returned to the bedroom and grabbed my bag—still packed. It even had my toiletry bag on top, and not in the bathroom, just in case Bellacia tried to stick some tracking magic in my toothpaste.

  It would be like swallowing a shadow.

  I shuddered, and followed Dare's swift exit from the room.

  Chapter Twenty-one: Kaine's Revenge

  “Tell me,” he said, as soon as we entered his room.

  I dropped into one of the club chairs that was only here when Dare was present. My bag thumped down on the floor next to it. I carefully placed the balloon on the armrest, staring at the magic thinly, and fitfully swirling inside.

  “Ren?”

  I snapped my gaze up. “What did you give her? Bellacia?”

  “A short term solution. Tell me what happened.”

  I raked a hand through my hair. “I had a dream. I thought it was a dream. Are...are you sure it wasn't a nightmare spell on the door?”

  “I'm sure.”

  I rubbed a hand over my eyes. “Check my ears?”

  He didn't even give me a weird glance at that, he came over and started running magic over them.

  “There was a shadow inside?” It was less a question and more a blunt statement, reading the obvious answer in my actions.

  I flinched. “Maybe. It...leaped through my dream.”

  His eyes unfocused. “The feeds are st
arting to report on a facility in the Third Layer that was destroyed. Julian said Marsgrove was in position and about to strike when Kaine jumped through. Fighting continues.” Each sentence contained a weighted pause as he rifled through reports. “Bellacia is already scooping and reporting as much as she can from her contacts, and making quite a few good guesses.”

  The place under my breastbone went cold and hollow. I lifted the flattened origami balloon. I could still feel Olivia, connected to me, but here was a visual reminder that the spell that I had connected to the place where she was taken was no longer in play.

  “Olivia is still alive.”

  “As is Verisetti. But they jumped location.”

  I closed my eyes. “And Kaine?”

  “Still very much alive and in pursuit. He...is very difficult to kill.”

  I opened my eyes and stared at the balloon.

  “Marsgrove still has a chance, Ren. He is tracking them right now.”

  “Does he have a chance?” I cupped the balloon. “I had their location. I gave it to Marsgrove. I gave it to Kaine.”

  “Yes.”

  I closed my eyes. “Marsgrove's not going to be able to find them again. He has been unsuccessfully chasing Raphael for years.” I thought on Greyskull's words on Raphael's ability to hide.

  “Marsgrove hasn't been chasing Verisetti with Kaine.”

  I looked sharply at Dare. “They are working together?”

  “Never. But they can, and likely are stealing intel from each other. Tracking the other. Piggybacking the information they find, trying to be the first one to Verisetti.”

  I touched my control cuff and the steel gray connection there that I always ignored and denied. I sent a pulse of magic through it. God, how the worm turned. I was sending aid to Marsgrove.

  “I should have gone,” I said.

  “You wouldn't have returned,” his voice was matter-of-fact, but distant, still listening to reports I couldn't hear. “You would have gone and Verisetti would now have you, or worse, Kaine.”

  “I can handle Raphael,” I said, knowing it was untrue. Raphael, of anyone, knew how to manipulate my magic and my emotions. In some ways, during that grief-stricken six weeks between Christian's death and my Awakening, he had made me into what I was.