by K. F. Breene
“Will you visit my brother’s grave with me? I want to pay my respects…and introduce you.”
I smiled up at him sadly. “It would be my honor.”
Epilogue
My shoes crunched against the brittle ground. A white, crooked line stretched across the sky to my right, a scar on the blustery, gray day. My danger sensors blared, warning me that something hunkered in the distance, watching us.
“Don’t worry about it,” Emery said, looking around before glancing back down at the map in his hands. “It’s harmless. We’ll hear it coming before we smell it, and that’ll be long before it’s a real danger.”
If he said so.
We’d just come out of the Realm, a magical place with an orange sky and gold dust floating around in the air. I was pretty sure I’d gawked at everything through wide-open eyes. Parts were achingly beautiful, rich with wild magic and twisted woods. Other parts had clearly been manufactured, apparently by elves, and wow, could they do better. They were horrible at mimicking nature. And still other parts were dark and treacherous, making Emery jittery as he tried to watch everything at once.
I’d felt the safest in those areas, though I had had no idea why. Probably insanity.
Three months had passed since we’d blown the Mages’ Guild wide open. And I meant wide open, literally. The spells I had pulled from the ground had felt destructive, but I didn’t understand the magnitude of the damage until I saw it again after the battle. Sides of buildings had blown apart. Sidewalks had crumbled. Debris thrown. The spell hadn’t crawled across the ground like I’d felt—it had chewed it up, showing the earth below.
Just two days afterward, in each place I’d planted a spell, a tree had budded, reaching up through the destruction. Emery’s buried spell had been similarly destructive, but instead of growing into a tree, it blossomed into a thorny sort of bush with black flowers. He wasn’t pleased.
As my friends had threatened, I was placed in charge of the rebuild, though it helped that I had a budget from the Guild’s huge coffers to see it done.
The first thing I did was level the place. Everything was taken out, including all the concrete. I had it hauled away to the dump, smoothed the earth over, and planted many more trees and flowers. It would become a sanctuary for all magical people, hosted and overseen by the mages. I wanted to develop a better rapport with other magical people. I wanted to create a community in Seattle that, hopefully, might carry over to other places.
Darius and Vlad called me naive. They called it an experiment. But with Emery at my side, defending my reasoning and my right to follow my vision, they let me go the untraditional route.
Next I’d need to fill the new Mages’ Guild. I was still developing a system for that, putting together checks and balances. Applicants would, for now, go through a screening process run by people I trusted. And some I mostly trusted, like Mary Bell. Lastly, they would get to me, and I would do magic with them, using the magic the goblin had probably regretfully handed over. Like Cahal could, I could use those to suss out a person’s inner qualities.
But that was getting ahead of myself. I wasn’t there yet.
I was here, in No Man’s Land with Emery, looking for the place his brother had been ambushed and left for dead.
“What would they be doing way out here?” I asked, covering my eyes with my hand to block out the sun. An outcropping of jagged rocks rose up about a hundred feet to our left. A strange creature crouched there, looking at us. I didn’t know what he was, other than he’d followed us into the Brink from the Realm. The land stretched out before us, flat and barren, with a few cactuses standing in clusters amid a couple of scraggly bushes. Far to the right appeared to be a town of some sort, with small structures braced against the pale sky. “It looks like desert, almost.”
“It is. My brother came through here on camel. I think.” He shook his head, walking diagonally right. “As far as I know—and it isn’t much, because the Guild tended to destroy evidence of the crimes they committed—he was headed this way to meet a magical prodigy. That’s what he’d told me, anyway. Before he left.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. He still had down periods, times when he just needed time to himself to reflect, but he’d climbed out of the depths of his despair. Now that things had calmed down for us, and he wasn’t so anxious about the future, he laughed all the time. He joked and smiled. It was as though a weight had been lifted off him.
“What’s…” He stopped next to a cactus and a circle of stones, looking down in confusion.
I joined him, immediately feeling the vibe of a sorrowful power stone, missing…something.
A stone about the size of my fist sat in the middle of the circle. While it had likely appeared as mundane and innocuous as Emery’s Plain Jane, it now showed the effects of years spent in the desert sun. The effect was interesting, with unique color changes highlighting the little crags and flats.
“He…” Emery took a step back, his eyes glued to the rock. He glanced up and looked around before returning his attention to it. “He used to carry a stone about that size. Carried it everywhere. Like you do…” An incredulous expression drifted across his face as his beautiful eyes hit mine. “I didn’t know much about power stones at the time, just that they existed and I could sap power from them, but he…” His voice cracked and he put a fist to his mouth. “He had a favorite. This… Was it this one? But how…”
The creature hiding among the rocks, a bent thing with horns on its head and out of the sides of its mouth, watched us.
“How long has that creature been following you around?” I asked, not pointing, lest it decide that I was inviting it to fight. I’d had a similar experience with a minotaur on the way through the Realm.
Emery straightened up and turned, his eyes going distant. They focused quickly, and a look of knowing came into his eyes. He glanced back down at the rock and shook his head. “Couldn’t be…”
But his ragged sigh said he knew better.
“Years,” he said softly.
That creature, whatever it was, clearly knew enough about Emery—and his brother—to know he’d want this power stone. A misunderstood guardian angel of sorts, he’d built a shrine for it.
“The stone is sad,” I said quietly, looking at it. “It misses something. Or someone.”
Emery nodded.
“You should take it with you. Your brother wouldn’t want it left here. Not if it was his favorite. I’d hate for Red Beryl to be left on its own. Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky, however…”
He turned to me in a rush, putting his hand on the side of my face and tilting my head up. His lips met mine and lingered. Eventually he backed off just a bit so he could look down into my eyes. Then he sank to one knee in front of me.
“Penelope Bristol, will you marry me?” He took the ring box out of his pocket. “You can put the ring on your other hand and hide the engagement for as long as you want, but will you marry me?”
I smiled, elated. I sank down with him, throwing my arms around his neck. “Yes! And it’ll go on the correct hand. My mother can just deal.”
“That should make me happier, but…” He laughed, taking the ring out with shaking hands and slipping it onto my finger. This time, I let him slide it all the way down. It fit perfectly and vibrated against my skin pleasantly. “I love you. You are a gift that I don’t deserve, but will gladly accept and cherish for the rest of my life.”
He stood then, my hand clasped in his, and slowly bent for the power stone. Gingerly, he picked it up and turned it over, studying every inch. A tear leaked down his cheek and he quickly wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“You lost your brother. It’s okay to let go,” I said softly. “I won’t tell.”
He laughed. “I don’t care if you tell. I just know he would’ve made fun of me for it. Here.”
“No.” I didn’t take the power stone from his hand. “You’re—”
“I can’t feel their personalities. I take power whe
n I need it. I have no relationship with them. My brother wouldn’t have wanted it left here, no, but he certainly wouldn’t have wanted it in my hands. I got a thumping every time I snatched it and threw it in the yard. Or through a window. Or into a lake.” He sucked in a breath, his eyes glittering and his smile beaming. “He gave me a black eye when I threw it into the lake. It wasn’t even that far in…”
I took it from his hands, and my first impression was what the hell?
“It might need a moment to warm up to me,” I said delicately, and moved things around so I could stuff it into the largest compartment of my utility belt. Even then, I couldn’t close the flap. “This might need to go to Reagan. She’d have room in her fanny pack.”
Emery smiled as he rubbed my back, looking down at the circle of stones again before glancing behind him at the creature hiding in the rocky cropping. “I’d always thought it was waiting to kill me. I might’ve developed my keenest magic trying to get it off my trail.”
“In a weird way, maybe it was your brother protecting you.”
Emery barked out a laugh. “Yeah, seems about right. He was probably laughing down at me the whole time.”
I rubbed his back and laid my hand on the stone within my compartment. It gave me a get the hell away pulse. “All right.” I removed my hand.
Emery stepped away, his gaze going to my utility belt. “Of all the things I expected, that wasn’t one of them.” He sighed, looking down at the circle of stones, and his arm came around me again.
“Conrad…I wish you could’ve met Penny. The two of you are much more alike than you and I ever were. You two would have gotten along great, but I probably would have been the odd one out.”
I hugged Emery tight. “He’s lying. I’d be the odd one out. Luckily, I’m used to it…”
Emery chuckled and exhaled a trembling breath, and I knew he was saying goodbye.
Emotion surged through me, adding moisture to my eyes. Slowly, he turned us, sad peace infusing his eyes. “I’ve really missed him,” he said, his voice quavering. “I’ll miss him always.”
“You have his memory. And now you have his moody power stone. You can guard those like treasures until you see him again.”
Emery hugged me tightly and nodded, before slowly leading me back to the scar in the sky, our entrance to the Realm.
Some amount of time later, which was impossible to tell when using the various paths in that strange, magical place, we stepped out into the countryside. Not the Seattle countryside, where we’d been staying, working on my training, and trying to work on the new version of the Mages’ Guild, but a foreign place with rolling hills covered in grapes and a dark sky dotted with pricks of light.
“Are we”—I hesitated to say “lost,” since Emery didn’t know that word unless someone else was leading—“taking a detour?”
“Just over here. I know I told you we’d go to a beach, but I thought maybe you’d like this place a little better.” He led me up a lovely stone path through fragrant rosebushes. A little stone cottage overlooking vineyards sat on a small hill. He brought out a rustic bronze key and fit it into the lock before turning. The rusty handle clicked as it flipped over, opening into a somewhat musty dwelling. He put his hand on my back and escorted me inside while he flicked a switch.
Light showered the simple accommodations—the round wood table, brick-red floor tiles, and a couple pieces of overstuffed furniture.
Magic flowered, hot and stinging, and I noticed someone sitting at the kitchen table, delicate fingers tracking the stem of a glass of deep red wine.
“Hello,” said Ja, the extreme elder vampire whom I’d accidentally roused from her stupor.
Emery shoved me behind him. “Watch our six,” he instructed me. “What are you doing here, Ja?”
Her smile was shy and sexy and predatory all at the same time. “I come to pay homage to a great player in the game. Please, make yourselves at home.” She gestured us toward the table, extremely hospitable even though it wasn’t her dwelling.
Emery didn’t step forward. “This is Darius’s house. Why are you in it?”
Her smile grew. “I just told you. Please, grab a glass of wine. Darius keeps the very best collection. Did you know he has secreted his bond-mate away from the world? Isn’t that strange? With a potent power such as hers, one would think he’d want to show her off.”
“Reagan has no manners,” I said, slipping around Emery and heading for the wine. I didn’t know much about Ja, but I knew when she was dangerous to us in the moment. She was controlled and calculating, which meant the danger she posed was more of a long, slow burn. “Darius needed to give her a boot camp,” I said, filling two glasses.
“I hope not. I found her crudeness rather charming. She embraced her barbarianism.” Ja draped her arm over the back of her chair, looking relaxed. The opposite of Emery. “I rather enjoy the world of today. No false pretenses. No subtle charades. Industrialized nations put all their feelings on display. It takes so much less effort to read people. What a haze I’d been in these last…” She glanced at the sky. “I can scarcely count the years. Hundreds, it must be.”
I sat gingerly at the table with my glass of wine. I put Emery’s in front of the open chair, hoping he’d take the hint and sit down to it.
“I heard all about the attack on the Mages’ Guild,” she said, her smile demure. “My, how the men in this day and age will gush in response to the simplest flattery. It’s almost boring. But the smell…” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve never been one for animals.”
Yikes.
I clasped my hands on the table, not commenting. What could I possibly say? She had an agenda, and I needed to let it play out. I’d met with Vlad a couple times. I now knew what most vampires were like. And also that Darius was way different than a normal elder. Why? No one would tell me, or else they didn’t know.
“Someone’s magic is extraordinary. Maybe more than one someone?” Sparks of fire danced in her dark eyes as she looked at me squarely. “You are a natural, you are a dual-mage, but…that isn’t all, is it?”
Silence was key. No facial expression. No clenched jaw or clasped hands. That failing, I could steal Emery’s approach and invite thunder clouds to roll across my face.
Her smile curved her lush lips. “Well. We all have secrets, after all. And Reagan most of all, I think. I had a suspicion. I now have a new one. Isn’t magic fun? So many intrigues. So many surprises. I’m glad I took a break. I was so bored before. But not now.”
“I would like to have a quiet night with my future wife, Ja. What is it you want?” Emery asked, and a sharp, heady burst of power filled the room.
Butterflies filled my stomach. Something about his assertive side unleashed his power. It danced with mine, spreading a tingling sensation through my body and dropping heat into my center.
“I apologize. Where are my manners?” She took a sip of her wine, closing her eyes to savor it. “Just this.” Her beguiling gaze hit me. “I am in awe of you, Penelope Bristol. I had intended to gain a little favor by sending you the absolute best in the business. The very best. Someone highly sought after and extremely hard to get. After calling in a few favors, I procured him.”
“Cahal,” I said, fitting it all together. “You wanted to make sure I lived so you’d have a shot at controlling me.”
“Oh no…” The predator in her flashed through her dark eyes. “Not controlling you, surely. Working with you. Helping you.” I didn’t believe her for a second. “But the druid refunded the deposit. Canceled the contract.”
I frowned at her. “What now?”
Her smile stretched, a thinly veiled blade. She wasn’t pleased. “You have an admirer, Penelope. Maybe a peer?” That was a probing question if ever there was one. She was asking about the magic the goblin had inadvertently donated to me.
“In fairness, I dragged him through situations that he wasn’t really able to work in,” I said. “We got trapped, and—”
“But
you came out alive. He should have taken the funds. But he didn’t.” She took another sip of wine, then licked her lips. It curled my stomach. “He formed an attachment to you. Which I find interesting. He hasn’t formed an attachment in years, I’ve heard. He’s long since given up looking for his natural pair…his way out of his profession. And yet, suddenly, he finds a heart with you?”
“I have a natural pair.” I pointed at Emery, still by the door. “I can’t have two. Because of the word pair. Which means two.”
“Yes.” Her eyes roamed over me. Seeing a riddle, I had no doubt. “Well.” She finished her glass of wine, sat for a moment to appreciate it, and then removed her delicate fingers from its stem. “At any rate, I applaud you on your victory, Penelope. It is well earned.”
She rose from her chair gracefully, nodded to me, half curtsied to Emery, and walked out the door.
He watched her as she disappeared into the darkness, and then closed the door and stared at the lock. He turned it, though vampires could open any locked door, and I could tell he was thinking about wards.
Yes, those would be going up.
“She sent him,” I said as Emery sat opposite his glass of wine. His shoulders were still tight. “We might have guessed.”
“Darius did,” Emery said, his tone dark. “At first he thought it was Vlad, but Vlad’s reaction didn’t fit. So the only one left, in his mind, was Ja. She has an attachment to you.”
“She thinks she owes me.”
“Never cash in on that debt.”
“Clearly she tried to force me to.”
A smile curled Emery’s lips. “Cahal must’ve known she would. He’s been around too long not to know how vampires work. He gave you a nod with his refusal to take payment. He gave you an out.”
“I owe him a great debt, not just for that, but for helping. We barely pulled through. Without everyone on our side…everyone, we wouldn’t have.”
He nodded and scooted his chair closer to me. “He didn’t have to help for most of it. He wanted to. We’ll send Reagan an expensive bottle of whiskey and put a note on it to say it’s a thank-you gift for Cahal. She’ll have to give it to him when he eventually shows up, if he does.”
