With any luck, this would soon no longer be a problem.
“Arthur,” I said. “Do you trust me?”
I walked toward the king and held up my hand. A soft golden glow whirred around it. “Since we last met, I’ve become more powerful. Now I have the ability to restore life to people. I know the mortal injury that Mordred gave you is set to kill you when you leave here, but I think I can reverse its effects.”
Everyone stared at me in silence. Arthur’s gaze alone was a lot to handle. The king had a very powerful presence that could easily be intimidating. If I’d been any less sure of myself, I would have shied away from his intense blue eyes. But I was confident in what I was saying. I could restore his life and keep his fatal wound from killing him.
“How sure are you about this?” Arthur asked steadily.
“Very,” I responded. “In fact, it was Merlin who suggested it.”
Arthur’s eyebrows rose. “Merlin? He disappeared years before I was killed.”
“I know,” I said. “Daniel and I found him yesterday. I’ll give you a full recap later, but the gist is that he has engineered this part of the story. He wanted you to be pushed out onto the Lake of Avalon after being mortally injured because he knew you’d get sucked through a portal to Neverland. Then he came to me in my dreams earlier in the semester and convinced me to go to Neverland so we’d meet. Merlin was always planning on our storylines crossing because he hoped my powers could save you. He always meant for us to get here.”
“Have you even tried this before?” Ormé asked. “Restoring life to someone?”
“I saved our friend Jason just this morning. He was dead and I brought him back.”
“It’s true,” Blue said. “It was amazing.”
Arthur gazed longingly at the silver portal. Then he turned to Peter. “What do you think?”
I rarely saw Peter grounded. And I meant that both physically and metaphorically. The twelve-year-old nearly always had an air of fun and mischief about him—even when he was facing off enemies. And although fairy dust timed out after thirty minutes for everyone else, for some reason he could fly indefinitely so he always seemed to be zipping or hovering around because, well, why wouldn’t he?
But when Arthur posed his question, Peter landed. The kid’s face turned serious as he considered the choice. Despite the fact that he was a kid and Arthur was an adult, Peter was Arthur’s closest friend. After arriving in Neverland, Arthur had saved Peter and the Lost Boys and Girls from pirates and ended up moving into their camp. Since then, he’d taught Peter and the kids how to swordfight and had looked out for them—acting as a comrade and ongoing protector.
As Peter and the other kids on this island had no parents, with the age difference, friendship, and mentorship, I imagined Peter must have considered Arthur as some sort of father figure, even if he didn’t fully realize it. They had a bond that was clearly stronger than anything Arthur had with the other kids.
Peter shot me his own powerful look. Unlike Arthur’s, his fazed me a bit. Seeing that level of seriousness in an adult was one thing, seeing it in a child was another. He tugged on the long sleeve of his shirt and turned to Arthur. “You don’t belong here,” he said solemnly. “You deserve to go home. If Crisa’s offering you a way, I think you should take it.”
A long beat passed before Arthur pivoted around to face me again.
“All right,” he said. “It’s decided. Crisanta, how do we proceed?”
“We need to go through the portal now,” I said, checking my Hole Tracker swiftly. “It’s going to close in a minute. I’m guessing the second we leave Neverland and your mortal wound is no longer frozen in time, it will start to progress. So I’ll have to work fast when we hit the ground on the other side.”
“Then let’s go,” Ormé said.
One by one, the girls from the Gwenivere Brigade hopped through the portal. SJ followed and then Blue. Peter went next. When my turn came, I gave Arthur a reassuring nod. “I’ll save you, Arthur. I promise.”
“I told you once before that it’s not your responsibility to save everyone, Crisanta,” Arthur responded.
“Maybe not,” I replied. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t do it.”
I leapt through the wormhole feeling certain of that. Why shouldn’t I? I was by no means diminishing the danger we’d dealt with, the sacrifices we’d made, and the trauma we’d endured. But my core group and I had always made it out because we were a great combination of unyielding and strong. I personally had saved plenty of people in the last few days alone, including a whole tower of imprisoned girls. I had restored life to myself and one of my best friends. So although I knew the odds would always be slim, if I played it smart enough and kept growing in power and strength, why couldn’t I save everyone? The answer: I could. And the people who kept telling me otherwise needed to be more optimistic.
I plummeted through the chasm on the other side of the wormhole, hoping that someday I would get used to the sensation of crossing this type of portal. Today didn’t seem like that day.
I fell through the dark, dirt-scented hole in time and space, banging my arm against a tree root. At the end of the fall, I was spat out above a large bed at the center of the Portalscape. I should have been getting better at landing, but I stumbled a bit when I bounced off the mattress and hit the floor.
I guess I was a little preoccupied with the fact that I’d just promised King Arthur of Camelot that I could heal his mortal wound and save his lif e. Yes, I felt confident in my abilities, but it was still a big thing to promise.
The familiar mist of the Portalscape hung around my shins, obscuring the floor and the bottom part of the fourteen unique doors that encircled this small, mystical realm.
Behind me, Arthur came through the ceiling and fell onto the mattress. My friends and I rushed over to him as he sat up and we were shocked. His face was six shades paler than it had been in Neverland. A cold sweat had broken out across his forehead. Blood soaked through the lower left part of his shirt.
Ormé gasped. “My king, you’re—”
“Dying,” Arthur coughed. He tried to stand but didn’t have the strength. He grasped his left side. “Mordred stabbed me from behind, in the lower back.”
The stain continued to spread. I could sense the life leaving his body, fast.
“Lie down and show me the wound,” I commanded. I hadn’t tried to restore life to someone as it was leaving them, but it shouldn’t have been any different than doing it when they were already dead. Right?
Arthur coughed and lay down on his good side, lifting his shirt. There was a lot of blood. I felt a tad nauseous but shook it off and focused.
“Crisa, hurry” Blue smacked me on the arm.
“Okay, okay.”
I closed my eyes and took a breath. Then my arms lit up like they’d been coated in kerosene and exposed to an open flame. With the Vicennalia Aurora drawing closer, my magic was becoming almost too easy to conjure.
I placed my hands on Arthur’s back over his wound, like I had with Jason. Arthur winced, but didn’t say anything.
Life.
Magic flowed through me and into the king, but the color did not return to his face. The blood continued to spread. It soaked into my hands, but I did not cringe. It was gross and moist and warm, but it didn’t bother me anymore. I was concentrating on what was most important.
Life, I commanded again.
I tried to harness my powers the way I had when resurrecting Jason—combining fiery emotion with my strongest will. The task required all my concentration. Using emotion made my abilities stronger but more unstable—opening the door to Magic Instinct. I didn’t want that; I wanted to be in complete control, which meant wrangling my abilities with as much focus as humanly possible.
Golden energy flooded out of me but I still didn’t see any change in Arthur. Then I glanced over his body and saw that the king had shut his eyes. His chest had stopped moving.
“Crisa!” Peter said.<
br />
“I know, I know.” I clenched my jaw.
Why wasn’t this working? What was different?
I thought back. Then I realized what was missing. When I had resurrected Jason, I hadn’t solely fixated on the task of giving life. I’d focused on his life specifically—my memories of him, how I felt about him, and who I knew him to be.
Straight up concentration and emotion were a part of this, but another part had to be personal because of what I was trying to restore life to. That what was a who. Giving life to a tree or a rock didn’t require much depth because they weren’t alive to start with. Jason and Arthur had souls. They had to be treated as more than objects that my will could manipulate.
I centered again and let the magic flow through me anew. I thought about who I knew Arthur to be. He was a brave man who was kind, noble, and strong. He was also smart and powerful and inspired others without even trying. It was no wonder that the people of Camelot still believed in him even though they thought he was long dead. I had only known him for a short while, but I knew that I would follow him anywhere. He was a true king in all the ways that both Rampart and my once-heir-to-the-throne brother could never understand.
“Life.”
I spoke the word aloud this time. My voice was calm and deep. The magic I produced was so strong that my arms quivered, and the glow was so bright that a few of the Gwenivere Brigade girls shielded their eyes. Then, just like with Jason, an enormous burst of energy ejected from my hands. It was bright and quick like an electric shock. The power shot me back several feet. Once the jolt was released, my magic glow ceased entirely.
I grimaced a bit as I got to my knees. The exertion of power hurt like heck, but I was too worried about Arthur to let that waylay me. I hurried to my feet and rushed back to the mattress, then waited for a horrible second that felt like a millennia as the king lay still. Suddenly, golden energy shot out of Arthur’s wound and the veins in his arms glowed. When both effects had faded, the color returned to Arthur’s face and he opened his eyes. They were bright and flickered with power. A temporary rim of gold shone around the irises.
We stared in stunned silence as Arthur sat up. He flexed his fingers and seemed to be mentally taking stock of his constitution. He pulled up his bloodied shirt slightly to reveal his healed injury. In place of the massive wound, there were thin scars that had sealed completely. Tiny golden glimmers dissipated around them.
I smiled with relief as SRB sparks cleaned the blood from my hands. Those same hands shook a bit from the pain I was holding in. Bringing people back to life took a great amount of energy and left me feeling temporarily, but aggressively weak. This time wasn’t anywhere near as bad as when I’d used my magic on the snake, since that action had been prolonged and involved a conflict of power as I struggled between fully unleashing and reining it in. But the pain was definitely more severe than it’d been when I’d resurrected Jason this morning.
Not that I was going to let it show. This wasn’t my moment. The ache and exhaustion would fade; Arthur deserved the group’s full attention.
The king pulled down his shirt and regarded me with reverence. “You are truly incredible, you know that?”
I wanted to play it cool. Heroes were much more intriguing when they acted like saving people was no sweat. Honestly though, I was stoked. Now it was official; Arthur was the third person I’d resurrected, including myself. Which meant I really could do this—at least for now. I’d only pulled off magical resurrection in the days surrounding the Vicennalia Aurora, so it was plausible that I was only this powerful because of the event’s effect on Pure Magic. But that was a quandary for another day. I was formidable for the time being and that was good enough for me.
“I’m having a good day.” I shrugged.
Arthur huffed in amusement. “As am I, thanks to you.” He looked at me with genuine fondness. “Crisanta Knight, I cannot express to you how grateful I am for what you have just done. You are a remarkable young girl and hero.”
Blue whacked me on the arm, grinning. “I wouldn’t overemphasize that. We don’t want her getting a big head.”
Peter suddenly zipped up next to me and pulled me into a side-hug. “Big head, big shmead. You’re even more crazy awesome than I thought!” He noogied the top of my hair and then flew over to Arthur. “How do you feel, man?”
“Stronger than I have in a while,” Arthur replied, standing up and stretching his arms.
“Well, this is excellent news,” Ormé said with a respectful smile. “Because we need you, your majesty. Now more than ever.”
She gestured to the gray stone door that led to Camelot. The silver and gold glitter around its edges shimmered. The door had the symbol of a cross in the center with a ten-pointed star in the upper right quadrant. Arthur bore the same birthmark hidden under the sleeve of his left forearm. He always kept it covered; I had only seen it accidentally the other day. I wondered about the meaning.
One of the Gwenivere Brigade girls opened the door, revealing a forest on the other side of the portal. The sunlight of Camelot spilled into the Portalscape and Ormé pivoted to Arthur. She knelt and bowed her head, as did her followers.
“Welcome home, my king.”
ortal-hopping was a fast-paced, but unreliable form of travel.
After we filed through the door to Camelot and arrived in the forest, we devised from our Hole Trackers and map that we were nowhere near the citadel. We’d need to take another portal, and who knew how many more after that.
There was no telling in advance where the latest portal would deposit us. We simply had to charge on. The wormholes we used for the rest of the day either led to Neverland (a counterclockwise jump from Camelot), Cloud Nine (a clockwise jump from Camelot), the Portalscape, or Camelot itself. Each time we emerged in Camelot again, we’d reevaluate and see where we’d landed. And once we realized we were too far from the citadel to get there in time on foot, we’d move on to the next nearest wormhole.
Our team spent the remainder of the afternoon like that—jumping from realm to realm as we tried to find a portal that placed us close to the citadel. I started to get worried as the hours went by. Even with our odds drastically improved by the large number of wormholes appearing, portal-hopping was still completely based on chance. Our success wasn’t assured. But, lo and behold, at a quarter to five o’clock, we exited a wormhole from the Portalscape that finally let out somewhat near the desired destination.
We were by a large lake, which Ormé, Arthur, and the Gwenivere Brigade recognized as Scott Lake. It was only a few miles from the citadel and there was a free ferry across it that took only twenty minutes.
Can I get a woot woot?
As we made our way to the dock, Ormé warned Blue, SJ, and me to keep our heads down. King Rampart had marked us as high-profile enemies of the realm. Over the past few days, Wanted posters featuring the faces of my friends and me had been plastered across Camelot. I spotted several in shop windows throughout the marina. Citadel knights patrolled the dock too, so we needed to stay inconspicuous.
We merged into a big throng of people boarding the ferry and used the crowds as camouflage. I was dismayed to see Wanted posters in the stairwell of the ferry too, but our friends in the Gwenivere Brigade stealthily removed the posters when people weren’t looking. Thankfully the four-level boat was so packed that no one noticed us.
Soon we pushed off from shore and the vessel began to cut its way across the water.
“Everyone’s trying to get to the citadel for the Vicennalia Aurora,” one of the Gwenivere Brigade girls named Andrea explained as we squeezed past passengers to get to the railing. “There have been parties all week, but tonight is supposed to be something spectacular. Since Arthur died, the realm has been full of hardship and Rampart has made many people’s lives difficult. But the Aurora is a break in the norm. If only for one night, there is the promise that life can be full of fun and frolic.”
“Makes me feel kind of bad that Gwenivere’s i
nvasion is going to spoil it,” I commented.
“Hopefully it won’t.” Andrea shrugged. Her long brown hair was flecked with gold strands. She wore glasses with square, chocolate-colored frames that matched her eyes. “I mean, sure, there’ll be panic and people will be scared, but no harm will come to any innocents and the whole thing should be over fairly quickly.
“This isn’t so much an all-out attack as it is a coup,” she said. “Most of our forces have been getting into position over the last couple of days. A good number of our Gwenivere Brigade sisters have already taken out a selection of Rampart’s men throughout the citadel and have infiltrated his forces to make things easier for us. Our objective tonight is to fight our way past the guards at the entrance of the citadel, then get to the castle and eliminate Rampart as our allies aid us along the way. The civilian space in between the citadel entry and the castle is meant to remain as undamaged as possible. Both Gwenivere and Morgan were very clear on that.”
Ormé and Blue joined us at the railing holding a bunch of paper bags and to-go cups. The pair of them had gone to the snack galley to get us food. Meanwhile, Peter (who was restraining himself from flying) and Arthur had gone to the gift shop to buy Arthur a shirt that didn’t have dried blood on it.
I huffed to myself in amusement. In most places, a grown man in a blood-soaked shirt carrying a sword sheath would have drawn a few eyebrows. But in Camelot—where daily life was populated with monsters, magic hunters, and ruthless knights—not a single person gave him a second glance.
SJ had offered Arthur her SRB to remedy the problem, but he had declined. Despite how much magic had affected his life, he claimed he still liked to do things the old-fashioned way. I guess in all the years he’d had Merlin at his service, it was one of the ways he’d stayed grounded.
Crisanta Knight: The Lost King Page 7
