by Emma Glass
“There doesn’t appear to be any clear dissent,” Mattias Blackburn observed. “Then, for now, I see no reason for us to interfere with the human’s life. But rest assured, Lord Craven…” He leaned forward with a bold, imposing stare. “You will be asked to bring her forward for questioning… or made to, should it be necessary.”
As I met his gaze with a respectful nod, I found it hard to revel in my fleeting victory. That is, not with the collective attention of the world’s leaders, all turning to me again menacingly…
21
Elliott
Preoccupied with wrath, I barely acknowledged the gatekeeper as I descended the stairs.
The vampire lords and their unspoken threats would have to wait. It was far more pertinent that I rally with Nikki – she’d been conspicuously hard to find in the castle today. I’d given up and just had to visit the council before we could confer.
When I pushed out into the atrium, my boots took me straight towards the proper hallway. My steady strides turned to a run as I dove down the dim passageway to the round platform of raised node clusters, stepping onto the second from the left and waiting for the teleportation to activate.
Seconds passed.
When the chrysm didn’t flare, I was honestly taken aback. I stepped off of the node and tried it again. Nothing happened.
Irrational panic grasped at my throat. I could feel it – something was wrong, and it wasn’t just with the malfunctioning node…
Furiously, I stalked my way back into the main atrium and clasped my hand on the closest attendant’s shoulder.
“What is the matter? The node to Craven Keep isn’t functioning.”
She didn’t flinch, keeping herself busy with her work. “Lord Craven, we sent those details to you days ago. Eighteen of twenty-five transporter nodes – including the one to Craven Keep – were marked for full deactivation today. We anticipate several hours of chrysm maintenance.”
My jaw dropped. EIGHTEEN? But that’s almost the entire teleportation array! There wasn’t time for arguing this; I quickly composed myself.
“When did this start?”
The attendant briefly glanced at a clock. “The system is offline, effective one hour ago.”
“Why am I only hearing of this now?”
Without skipping a beat, the other attendant shrugged. “Silas made it clear that he’d tell you. If he hasn’t, then that’s a tremendous breach in the chain. We can’t have the royal family unaware of temporary breakdowns in major transportation. Both Ladies Craven have confirmed debriefing… were you not informed of scheduled repairs?”
I was beside myself with fury, but I couldn’t blame the high chancellor for this one. Half the time, I don’t even bother listening to him, I reminded myself bleakly. There’s no way that I can confirm he hasn’t mentioned this to me…
“Shall I file a revocation order for Silas?”
“No,” I shook my head. “Forget him. I have to reach my private quarters now. If the castle only has seven operational teleports… which one of my chrysm nodes will get me the closest?”
They shared a brief glance before returning to their workflow. “Second chamber, center node.”
I turned and bolted for the appropriate spot. Once reaching the node, I hopped on the circular platform and waited for the familiar column of red, brightening light to slowly overwhelm me…
The teleportation hub vanished from sight.
Instead, I was standing in a hidden closet, built specifically for the purpose of moving across the castle undetected. I pushed my way out, raced down a hallway, made a turn, another turn, and pushed out through the large gates…
No, I gasped.
I stood at the edge of the bailey, staring nearly halfway across the castle at Craven Keep.
Dropping to a knee in the dirt, I ignored the peculiar looks I earned from passing servants and tradesmen. Pressing my fingertips down into the moist ground in front, I focused on my breathing and coiled my muscles…
With a sudden dash, I burst forward.
When I raced across the castle this time, Clara wasn’t clinging to my back in wondrous laughter. Fearful intuition fueled every pounding footstep as I bolted up stairs, dove around wall-top guards, slid over or beneath obstructions, and maintained the fastest speed I’d ever run in my life.
Craven Keep seemed to rise ever higher as I rushed towards it, as if it were defiantly mocking me. No point in waiting on the elevator, I realized. Fastest way is to go back the way I came before…
The fact that I couldn’t read the hearts of any of the passing guards added insult to injury. I have to take better care of her, I told myself. Once I know that she’s safe, I’ll do everything within my power to keep that the case…
My thumping footfalls finally brought me to the base of the tower’s ascension. I dove onto the nearby battlement and sprung up onto the round wall of Craven Keep. Keeping my momentum, I rushed up the outside edge of the stone. There was no ignoring the strain on my muscles as I desperately raced higher and higher, rushing up around the tower in the same spiral as I had when she was riding on my back.
With one powerful burst, I lunged up towards the closest sill of my bedroom. Fortunately, the window was open, so I didn’t even have to break the glass to get in.
“Clara?” I called for her, shoving through the drapes and bolting into my private suite. “Clara, where are–”
I froze in place. Broken glass and ripped pages were scattered across the den. They showed the signs of a clear and evident struggle, leading from the dining table to the staircase door, swinging on its hinge. From where I stood, the swaying door revealed the unconscious and strewn bodies of Wilhelm, Viktor, and Assara.
Hopelessly, I sank to my knees in the debris. “Clara…” I groaned in agony. “How could this…? Who could have…?”
The slightest glint caught my attention.
I grabbed a piece of glass and lifted it before my eyes. There, on several of the broken shards, a few droplets of blood…
Wait… this can’t be human blood.
Holding the jagged shard close to my nostrils, I inhaled deeply… and pulled back, looking at the jagged glass in my hand in veiled horror. Needing complete certainty, I brought the chunk of glass back to my face and inhaled even deeper.
My darkest suspicions were confirmed.
I recognize this scent…
Dropping the shard to the floor, I rose angrily to my feet. Clara had been taken, but the struggle revealed to me who it was. Better still, the node network was mostly inactive – there was only one suitable place to quietly hold her hostage…
22
Clara
The dungeon cellar stank of rot and mildew as I tried to work my wrists out of the bindings.
My captor glanced over at me. Rubbing salt in the wound, her face was the picture of sympathy. “No need to bother with all that, little human…”
Dropping to a squat in front and playfully tapping my gag with a finger, Nikki Craven gave me a mad smile with wide, innocent eyes. “You’ll only chafe yourself trying to escape them. Really, it’s for the best that you don’t try to fight this.”
I couldn’t stand the guiltless look on her face. It was my blind naiveté that kept me from seeing the truth all along. Elliott hadn’t trusted her since she’d arrived; he’d tried to warn me that his sister was a deranged, unstable lunatic and a threat.
If only I’d listened, I thought sadly.
Apparently satisfied, Nikki hopped back up and strolled across the room. As she peered into the hallway, I noticed that she kept nervously scratching at the inside of her wrist.
She’s been doing that since we got here, I quietly observed. The pale skin of her wrist was almost bloody now from her restless scratching. For the first twenty minutes, I had been hopeful that she was just afraid of being caught. But I’d noticed her increasingly erratic behavior, and realized that I’d been wrong about that, too.
Nikki wasn’t afraid of being fou
nd.
She wanted to be found.
The vampire’s anxiety came from impatience. As she constantly paced the dungeon, I watched her nervous tics and twitches.
“Shouldn’t be taking this long,” she grunted. “Why is it taking this long?”
I shuddered to think what she could possibly be waiting for. Nikki turned to me, pausing in the middle of her unhinged, back-and-forth striding. “Clara, you’re smart. Why is this taking so long?”
With my voice muffled, I settled for glaring at her and deadpanning the best ‘…Seriously?’ look that I could manage.
“Oh,” she chuckled cheerfully. “Right… the, uh…” Nikki chirpily pointed at her own mouth. “The gag, duh! I mean, how could I possibly forget about the gag?”
If I get out of this mess, I furiously thought, I’m going to freaking strangle her.
There was no telling how long I was trapped there with her, bored out of my mind. But when I finally heard echoing footsteps, coming from somewhere down the hall, it occurred to me that perhaps the crippling, mind-numbing boredom was the better option…
“Lady Craven, you’ve done well.”
Wait… don’t I recognize that voice…?
Nikki turned to me with a faint smile. “Little human here put up a bit of a fight, but I’m pretty sure she’s figured out her place now.”
Our mystery guest was still standing just out of sight from me. “Good, good… tell me, have you secured us a way out of the castle like I asked?”
“The chrysm nodes are keyed to the genetics of the royal family, and it just so happens…” Nikki came over to me and endearingly stroked her fingers through my hair. I shuddered at her vile touch. “…I’m the adoring little sister of the ruling vampire lord. I can take us away from the castle.”
When the figure finally stepped into view, my eyes widened in shock.
The sorceress? What’s Sabine doing here?
The traitor knelt down right in front of me. She studied my alarmed gaze with a disinterested, menacing glance. “Lady Craven, your plan is to merely teleport us out of Stonehold Castle with a restrained fugitive?” She frowned, turning over to Nikki. “We’ll never make it to the chrysm nodes before they capture us.”
Nikki shrugged, barely concealing a sly smile. “But don’t you have all kinds of wacky magical powers? Surely, you can do some sort of trick to make her invisible or something…”
Irritation flickered across the sorceress’s face as she checked the tightness of my bindings. “You have a tenuous grasp of how magic works. I don’t blame you; throughout the Eight Holds, most of the ruling families suffer that lapse in judgment.”
Nikki grinned. “Nope, I never went to any of those fancy schools. Turns out, holds usually take a lot of attention. Not really a lot of downtime for hobbies, you know? But speaking of the other families…” The deranged vampire’s eye twitched. “Bring me up to speed here, Sabine. Are we taking her back to your master, or what?”
Terror filled me. If Sabine has a master outside the castle… All I could do was hope that she didn’t serve one of the other vampire lords.
“My master? Well, that was the plan…”
“Huh?” Nikki seemed confused. “That kind of sounds very, I don’t know, past tense?”
“Well…”
Sabine wickedly smiled, stroking the backs of her knuckles along my cheek. I tried to pull away from her; the traitor wasn’t having any of that.
“Lord Azuzi is willing to pay a pretty coin for the human girl, but I daresay things changed when I discovered her magical resistance – then she told me that she’s a witch…”
My spirits completely collapsed.
Akachi Azuzi, the vampire lord of the Falvian Badlands? If that’s who she called ‘master’, I knew that I was as good as dead.
Nikki looked bored. “Oh?”
“There isn’t a creature alive that’s capable of resisting magic, Lady Craven. No… this human is worth substantially more to me than mere coin. A few associates in Selvara Karn will help me study her… then, after I remove her spell resilience and find a way to replicate it, we’ll have the biggest breakthrough since beginning the golden age of chrysm engineering.”
“Selvara Karn, eh? That’s across the world.”
I recognized the name from my time studying the maps. They want to take me to South America?
Sabine finally turned away.
“It would benefit us to put as much distance as we can between us and Stonehold. No doubt, your brother will hunt us for the rest of his life.”
“Actually, I plan to stay and cover your tracks. So long as you honor our deal, of course…”
“That’s wise,” Sabine noted. “It makes for a cleaner getaway, and you can keep your current life with none the wiser. But Elliott’s chase will be all for naught. Selvarra Karn is filled with some of the oldest magic in the world. The hold is bathed in mystique for a reason. Once I take this girl across the ocean and disappear into those ancient, tribal rainforests, he will never find us…”
Nikki nodded pensively. “Will Clara survive?”
“In all likelihood?” Sabine thoughtfully folded her arms. “No, probably not. But I just need her kept mostly alive for a few years…”
The sorceress turned back, staring at me like a master butcher, studying a cut of prized meat.
“My friends in the lands abroad are powerful black magicians, gifted in extraction. With their help, I should be able to keep her in at least a state of unlife until I can rip her magical resistance out. After that, I might very well sell whatever’s left of the human on the Forbidden Markets.”
Elliott’s sister glanced over at me again with that same, pitying glance of sympathy. Especially after their casual chat, I want nothing more than to slap that stupid look right off her face…
But I’ll never get the chance, will I?
“Well, consider me satisfied,” Nikki tilted her head in a maniac grin. “Think I’ve heard enough. Let’s make the magic happen.”
The traitorous sorceress heartily chuckled. “Lady Craven, such a way with words you have. From the moment you first approached me, I had a feeling you could be an interesting partner… let’s make the magic happen, indeed.”
My eyes were glued to Elliott’s sister. I sensed something suddenly very different about her, and it captivated my attention.
Nikki sadistically grinned.
“Oh, I was being very literal, Sabine…”
With a quick, rolling motion of her wrists, she clicked both sets of fingers right after the other. In an instant, bright symbols flared up around the room, all over the walls and floor.
The sorceress glanced around in total panic.
“Binding sigils? But… how?”
When she noticed her partner’s triumphant grin, she was blatantly furious. “Nikki? How can you possibly… what have you done?”
My eyes weren’t on Sabine anymore.
Nikki Craven struck fear in my heart; within just a few seconds, her entire demeanor darkened in complete fury, only made more sinister by her tenuous grip on sanity.
“I’ve spent countless decades wandering this hold in a beggar’s disguise. Do you honestly think I don’t know how to spot a sleeper agent?”
Her voice dropped to a menacing growl at Sabine’s stunned expression. “Don’t act surprised. Did you honestly think that you’re the only one? I’ve discovered, tracked, and punished traitors from nearly every hold. But of course, only Akachi Azuzi would be daring enough to try and put a converted traitor on the Isle of Obsidian…
“I love my brother, but Elliott was a damned fool to give out an open invitation to the castle. His fear for Clara’s safety blinded his judgment. Believe me, I saw somebody like you coming from kilometers away. All I had to do was get here first and bide my time until you showed up…”
Sabine furiously growled, throwing up her hands to cast a spell. To her great horror, nothing happened; she snarled in blind rage.
“We could have made a fantastic team, you and I! The incredible things we could have done! But you just had to throw it all away, you stupid, deranged, miserable little–”
The maddened vampire dove for her before she could finish. The two of them crumpled down to the ground in a barrage of flinging fists and biting fangs. I could barely tell who had the upper hand – but the sister of the vampire lord had kept the element of surprise on her side all along, and she’d quickly overwhelming the real threat.
It stunned me how well she’d played her role.
While the two were distracted, I tried to work my wrists out of my bindings again. Of course, it was an exercise in futility – but I still had to try.
Sabine managed to get the advantage. With a swift kick, she sent Nikki across the floor. It was just enough time for the sorceress to scramble to her feet, erasing a few chalk sigils with her sleeve.
Nikki flung herself to her feet and rushed my betrayer again, tackling Sabine into the wall with a furious roar. The sorceress slid down the surface and launched herself back, pinning Nikki against another wall as they battled.
To my horror, I realized that their grappling against the walls was brushing away more of the chalk. The evil glint in Sabine’s eyes told me that she noticed this. Clearly, Nikki did not. She only continued to take every opportunity to punish the sorceress against the stones. Blinded with fury, she didn’t notice how their physical fighting was slowly wiping away all the sigils…
I tried to warn her, but all that I could manage were mumbled shrieks. If they kept this up, half of them would be gone soon – and there was no telling how many it took to bind Sabine’s power…
They threw down near me again. This time, the fighting brushed against me, and I felt myself slowly slide down the wall and wipe away yet another of the binding sigils. As I panicked into the gag in my mouth, my bound body slammed down hard against the floor.
The last thing I saw, as my face pressed into the stone, was a familiar shadow in the doorway. Elliott Craven was here, startled by the sight. But to my complete horror, his murderous glare was focused entirely on his sister…
