The Darkest Magic

by Morgan Rhodes

  She sighed with what sounded like an edge of impatience. “You’re not going to kill me. You stopped yourself already.”

  “Once. I stopped myself once.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she said, the impatience in her tone even sharper now. “Are you in?”

  Her phone lit up and started to ring, and by the way Crys looked down at the screen, Farrell could tell it was Angus calling her back.

  This was going to be a very bad day, even worse than he’d already expected it to be.

  He glared at her. “Yeah, I’m in.”

  Chapter 21

  MADDOX

  Princess Cassia arranged lodging at the inn on the second floor of the tavern for everyone for the night. She promised that they’d talk more in the morning as she sent Maddox, Barnabas, Liana, and Al off with one of her henchmen to escort them to their rooms.

  As soon as he saw the henchmen disappear down the hallway, Maddox turned to Barnabas. “I don’t trust her,” he whispered.

  “Who, her?” he asked absently, his gaze focused on Liana as she slipped down the hall and into her room.

  Maddox glared at him. “No. The princess.”

  “In this life, trust can be earned by very few. Lucky for us, then, that we don’t need to trust her. All that matters is that we found her and that we now have a chance to make her see our vision for a better Mytica. I know we can win her over.”

  Maddox eyed him skeptically but remained silent.

  Barnabas gave him a smirk. “Perhaps you should lock your door if you’re so nervous. By the way, you get Al tonight.” He thrust the canvas sack at him.

  “Marvelous,” said Al, his voice sounding particularly muffled in the narrow hallway. “I will keep watch over you, young necromancer, and alert you to any dangers that may arise.”

  Maddox looked down at the bag in his hands and sighed. “Great.”

  “Good night then,” Barnabas said before ducking into his room, and with that, their conversation came to an end. Maddox crept into his room as well, a wave of relief washing over him as soon as he saw his warm, welcoming bed for the night. Despite how uneasy he felt about Princess Cassia and her seven hulking henchmen, all of them sleeping under the very same roof as him, he was pleased to find that sleep claimed him far faster than he ever would have guessed.

  • • •

  He dreamed of Becca Hatcher.

  “Maddox!” she cried out across a wide chasm that separated them from each other. The ground was black and dry and void of life, the skies dark and swirling with storm clouds. “Maddox, please! Help me!”

  Panicked, he tried to find a way across, but the split in the earth was miles wide in every direction and descended down into nothing but darkness. It was a place he’d never seen before, not even in his nightmares.

  Another scream drew his attention back to her. Grabbing hold of her was a man with pale white skin and eyes the color of a starless night.

  “Does this girl mean something to you?” the man shouted across the abyss to Maddox.

  Terror gripped his heart and squeezed. “Yes! She’s important to me—very important. Please don’t hurt my friend!”

  “Your magic is too dark for friends. Too dark, too old, and soon it will frighten everyone away, leaving you by yourself. Eternally. We have that in common, witch-boy. We have so very much in common.”

  “Who are you?” Maddox demanded, fists clenched. He tried to will his magic forth, hoping to render the man unconscious, but no matter how hard he focused, nothing happened.

  “Don’t you know who I am?” The man smiled as Becca slid, as if boneless, to the ground in front of him.

  Suddenly and with horror, Maddox realized that he was looking into a mirror at his own head-to-toe reflection, at his own black eyes. Becca’s lifeless body lay at his feet.

  He woke, clawing at the bed linens. Sunshine streamed in through the small window to his right. It took him several moments to clear his mind of the chilling nightmare, the first he’d ever had that didn’t include dark spirits tormenting him.

  “Becca,” he said under his breath. “I very much hope that your dreams are more pleasant than mine.”

  “Becca?” Alcander asked from his perch on the nightstand. “So that’s the name of the lass you were dreaming about? You were a sight during the night. So much grunting and groaning and tossing about. But I do not judge, for I was once a young lad like you.”

  “It’s not like that,” Maddox grumbled, embarrassed now—and embarrassed that he was embarrassed. But if nothing else, this did help to clear his mind some more.

  Still shaken by the dream, he got up and dressed. His shoulders ached from sleeping on the coarse straw mattress in the tiny room, which was far less comfortable than sleeping outside on the ground. With Al in his sack, Maddox descended the rickety stairs to the dark and currently vacant tavern. Shutters were drawn over the windows, and only a few candles and lanterns lit the cavernous room.

  Then he saw Liana already sitting across from Cassia at a table behind a wooden pillar. Liana greeted him with a smile.

  “Sleep well?” she asked.

  “Mostly.” He glanced at the princess. “Good morning.”

  Cassia nodded. “And to you as well.”

  He swept his gaze over the room. “Where are your large, hulking friends this morning?”

  “I asked for some time to speak privately with you all. My friends don’t like it very much when they’re not close by.” She smiled. “They worry about my safety.”

  “I get the feeling that you can handle yourself quite well,” Liana said.

  “True enough.” Cassia eyed the sack that Maddox carried. “You may free your bodiless friend from his canvas prison. We have this establishment all to ourselves this morning.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Maddox drew Al out of his sack and gently placed him on the table, then took a seat himself.

  “Good morning, Your Highness,” Al said cheerily. “I would bow, of course, but, alas, my current condition prohibits that.”

  “So incredibly fascinating,” Cassia whispered. She leaned closer to peer at him. “How do you feel?”

  “Surprisingly, I feel fine, princess. But I hope to feel much better very soon.”

  “Really? How so?”

  “Oh, let me tell her, would you, Al?” Everyone except Al turned to watch Barnabas enter the tavern. He approached the table and pulled a chair up to the end of it. “Al was Valoria’s scribe for quite some time. We have hope that he’ll provide us with some inside information that will help us bring about her swift demise. Should he prove his worth, we will see what we can do about reuniting him with his body.”

  “I did help you find the princess,” Al reminded him curtly.

  “True,” Barnabas said.

  “You can do that?” the princess breathed, now regarding Maddox with unmasked awe.

  “My son is incredibly gifted,” Barnabas replied before Maddox had a chance to respond, then gestured at the head on the table. “As you can see.”

  Maddox stared at him with both shock and a sudden sense of warmth. Did Barnabas realize that that was the first time he’d referred to him so openly as his son?

  “He certainly is.” The princess glanced at Liana. “Are you Barnabas’s wife?”

  Liana laughed very long and very hard at this. “Hardly,” she said once she’d finally recovered. “I like to think I have finer taste in men than that.”

  Barnabas frowned at her while the rest of the table tried hard to suppress their laughter. “I don’t find this quite as humorous as you all.”

  “Just speaking the truth,” Liana said cordially. “Nothing personal. But I can tell you wouldn’t make a very good husband. You’re too . . . oh, I don’t know. Too guarded, perhaps. And much too jaded when it comes to love, obviously.”

  “Guarded, perhaps, but I am not jaded.” Barnabas shook his head, groaning. “And I think we’re done discussing this and other things that ha
ve no basis in reality.” He turned to face Cassia alone. “Princess, thank you for giving us the chance to speak with you. Once again, I am so very glad to see that you are well.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Do I seem well to you? Appearances can be deceiving.”

  “I know you’ve gone through a great deal in these last several years.”

  “You’ve put it extremely mildly, Barnabas. Three years ago my adoptive family was murdered, and I barely escaped with my life.” She glanced at Al. “Perhaps, as Valoria’s former scribe, you were already aware of this.”

  Al sighed. “I’m afraid that I was. The goddess made many decisions that I vehemently disagreed with, but I hope you know that I had nothing to do with them, nor was I complicit. Please find it in your heart to forgive me, princess. To argue with the goddess on any subject is to volunteer to face her wrath.”

  “As you can see,” Maddox said. “Al did face her wrath. That’s why he’s only a head.”

  “Had I not been aware of the horrible fate of your family,” Al continued, ignoring Maddox, “I would not have known where to instruct Barnabas and Maddox to start searching for you.”

  “I understand,” Cassia said. There was no blame or outrage in her eyes, only a faraway look of grief and sadness. “They never kept any secrets from me, you know. My mother, my father, my sister . . . they were so wonderful. For thirteen years they treated me as their own. They raised me, fed me, clothed me, educated me. Kept me safe from harm. All the time telling me stories about my true father, King Thaddeus, and how incredible he was. How brave and kind and that everyone loved him—before Valoria arrived and killed both him and my birth mother.” Cassia paused. Maddox worried that she might begin to weep, but instead she took a deep breath and went on. “She is evil.”

  “She is,” Barnabas agreed. “I am so sorry for your losses, princess.”

  “For so long I wanted to die as well, to join my family in their graves. I sat by those graves day and night, praying that they would come back to me.” Her eyes were on Maddox, who was regarding her intently. “You look like you understand how this feels.”

  He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I lost my mother. It happened very recently. She too was killed by one of Valoria’s men.”

  Cassia reached across the table and clasped his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you. Me too.”

  One of Cassia’s henchman approached the table and placed two trays down in front of them. On top of the trays were plates of fried quail eggs, smoked sausage, and ground roots cooked with onions.

  Cassia smiled down at the food and then up at the henchman. “Axel is an excellent cook,” she said to the table. “He feeds us perhaps a bit too well. I have grown far too large in the time he’s been with me.”

  “You’re just a slip of a girl, princess,” Axel said with a bow of his head, although his cheeks flushed at the compliment. “It will take much more than a hearty breakfast to put any real fat on your bones.”

  Again Cassia smiled at him and then turned to the rest of the table. “Axel and the others found me while Valoria’s guards were performing yet another sweep of the countryside. I was out by the graves, in danger of being found. They welcomed me into their homes, fed me, kept me safe. They knew who I was—they’d heard the rumors of what had happened to my family. Instead of handing me over to the goddess for a large reward, they chose to offer me a home here. They taught me how to fight, how to protect myself, and how to survive.”

  “The princess is a fast learner,” Axel said proudly. “She’s like a sister to us all.”

  “You know how to fight?” Liana said.

  Cassia raised an eyebrow. “You sound surprised.”

  “Well, it’s rare for a girl to learn such things,” Liana admitted. “Most men prefer to keep women helpless and reliant on their protection.”

  Barnabas grumbled. “And you say I’m the jaded one?”

  “I agree,” Cassia said to Liana. “It is rare, and I am fortunate. My men have treated me like a queen without a throne. I don’t deserve them.”

  “You need no throne to be our queen, Your Highness,” Axel said.

  She smiled at him again. “Axel was the one who taught me how to use a dagger. From there, I learned how to wield a sword. I can hold my own quite well in hand-to-hand combat. Considering what lies ahead for us all, this knowledge will be an asset.”

  “You are a true rebel princess,” Barnabas said with admiration.

  “A rebel princess,” she repeated, nodding. “I like the sound of that.”

  The door swung open. Another of Cassia’s large henchmen entered the tavern room with purpose and reached the table in a few large strides. He leaned over and whispered something in the princess’s ear.

  As she listened, her cheerful, composed expression faded and was replaced by something harder, more determined. “I see,” she said tightly. “Barnabas, Liana, Maddox . . . Al . . . this is Huck. He has been scouting nearby villages to learn the latest status of Valoria’s movements.”

  “Sorry . . . what?” Maddox asked.

  “For days there have been rumors that the goddess has been drawing closer and closer to Central Mytica with a small army at her back. Now those rumors have been confirmed.”

  “Oh my!” Al exclaimed. “It’s me! She’s come after me!”

  “What?” Liana asked. “After you?”

  “She must have heard that I’d . . . that my head had disappeared. I’m sure Her Radiance has regretted . . . well, what she ordered to be done to me. The guilt must have been tearing her apart, stealing her sleep and haunting her days. She wants to help me, restore me, give me another chance. This is wonderful news!” Al blinked and, in the silence that followed, shifted his eyes from Barnabas to Maddox. “I mean, that evil creature must die, and of course I will help you in any way I can.”

  Maddox tried to remain calm as he willfully ignored Al’s self-centered ramblings.

  “She’s after us,” Barnabas said, giving voice to Maddox’s thoughts.

  Cassia nodded. “When we first heard the rumors, I assumed she was coming to finish what she’d started with me. But the more I think about it, the more I know—as well as she does—that I’m no competition for her. She doesn’t fear me enough to leave her palace to come after me herself. But you . . .” She stared across the table at Maddox. “You are another matter altogether.”

  “You think the goddess fears me?” he asked quietly, his nightmare of the man with eyes like midnight echoing in his mind.

  “I think she would be unwise not to,” Cassia replied.

  “Perhaps it’s true,” Al said. “Perhaps Maddox is the only key you need to defeat the goddess. His magic—”

  “No.” Barnabas cut him off. “That’s not the answer. I have the answer, princess, and forgive me for laying out my plan in such haste, but it seems our circumstances have changed. The answer to all of our problems lies with the southern goddess.”

  “Just say the name,” Liana said. “Cleiona. This is no time for misunderstandings.”

  Barnabas winced. “That name leaves a rancid taste in my mouth.”

  Liana rolled her eyes.

  “It could work,” Maddox said, nodding. He was pleased that Barnabas seemed more open to this idea now. If need be, Maddox would be more than happy to combine his magic with the southern goddess’s to destroy Valoria.

  If Cleiona didn’t destroy them first.

  “My plan is for you to join us on our journey south, princess,” Barnabas continued. “Together, we can convince Her Goldenness that we are earnest.”

  Liana shook her head. “I’m less inclined to think this plan will work. Why put the princess in such peril, with only us to protect her?”

  “Agreed,” Axel said darkly. “The princess will go nowhere without me.”

  “Or without me,” Huck added, his arms crossed over his hulking chest.

  Barnabas glared at Liana. “I was hoping I’d have your support on th
is.”

  She glared right back at him. “You have decided on this course of action without fully considering all the dangers it presents. What if the goddess refuses to listen to a word you have to say? What if she incinerates you on sight and uses her air magic to blow your ashes away?”

  “She won’t.”

  “Oh no? And why not?”

  “Because I’ve met her before. She’ll give me a fair audience.”

  Liana rolled her eyes. “You think you’re that memorable of a man?”

  “In a word? Yes. Let me handle Her Goldenness. And if you have a problem with that, then you don’t have to come any further.”

  “Perhaps I won’t.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “Stop it,” Maddox snarled. “Can we focus, please? For just one moment? I’m so sick of the constant fighting between you two.”

  “Agreed,” Al said. “Just kiss each other already!”

  Liana looked at Al with shock as Cassia watched them both, a fresh and genuine smile on her face.

  “Apologies,” Cassia said. “But hearing you all squabble . . . it makes me think of my family. That’s what you are, whether you realize it or not. A family.”

  Barnabas gave her a forced, polite smile as he turned to her again. “Princess, my offer still stands. I would be honored if you would join us as we go to request an audience with the southern goddess. I cannot guarantee we will be received graciously, but I feel that this is a vital step we must take to reclaim your rightful throne. Will you join us?”

  Cassia went quiet, regarding each of them in turn as she leaned back in her chair.

  “I will agree,” she said finally. “On one condition.”

  Maddox watched Barnabas try to suppress a grin. “Of course, princess. What is it?”

  “I need to show you something. Come with me, all of you.”

  They followed her out of the tavern and down the road until they reached another stone building that looked like a shop but had no sign hanging above the door. She bowed her head quietly as she placed her hand on the door handle. She took a deep breath and glanced over her shoulder at Maddox. “I feel as if my prayers brought you here, and I know now that you can help me. That you’re the only one who can.”