“Huh.” She tried to find the doorway, but there wasn’t a sign of it anywhere if they were coming upon the fallen stronghold from the other side. “So we just made a full circle around your world.”
“In a manner of speaking.” Leandras kept his head bowed and shot her quick sideways glances as they picked up the pace.
Jessica tried to ignore his gaze on her, but that was impossible now they were so close to returning. He wanted to know if she’d agreed to his proposal—if she could set aside all her anger and betrayal and give him one final chance to prove himself to the Guardian.
Wondering if there was a difference now in the fae’s mind between the Guardian and Jessica Northwood—like there had obviously been in the Laenmúr tent when he’d stripped down his walls and both their clothes—made the choice a hell of a lot harder.
She had to find a way to make sure he wasn’t feeding her more lies before she dove in and let him swear himself to her instead of the Dalu’Rázj.
If she let him swear himself to her.
She was insane for even considering it.
“I know you didn’t exactly have a plan for getting back to a door six feet off the ground when we got here.” Jessica spared another glance at the fae, and Leandras only nodded, scrutinizing the long form of the crumbled white stone getting steadily closer now. “I’d love to hear you say that’s changed now.”
“Yes.” He ran a hand through his hair and looked like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown himself. “We’ll build a new set of stairs.”
“That’s your master plan?”
Hearing the word “master” on her lips, taken completely out of context but still referenced by their tension-inducing dilemma, made them both grimace.
“Unless you can fly, Jessica, that may be our only solution. It won’t be manual labor if that’s your concern.”
No, that meant Leandras would be using whatever kind of magic he possessed to pull huge chunks of stone out of the ground and build a stairway to Earth on his own. All for the Guardian to ascend and walk through the Gateway ahead of him without knowing whether or not she’d give him the final chance he’d practically begged her to give him.
He would have begged, if she’d let him.
What kind of master couldn’t stand to see a fae who served them down on his knees?
The kind that didn’t want to be a master of anyone but herself. Obviously.
“Fine. DIY staircase, then.” Jessica nodded and quickened her pace, aiming to move around the very end of the rubble that had once been a bastion of hope and light for the magicals who’d stood against the Dalu’Rázj the first time.
Now, they were all just as screwed as Cálindor.
Probably.
“Wait.” Leandras stopped, and the urgency in his low voice made her turn around.
“It’s right here.” Jessica gestured toward the wreckage. “What are we waiting for?”
“Jessica, I’m...” He nervously licked his lips and scanned the empty wasteland dotted with gnarled trees—probably what the Laenmúr forest would look like in a few hundred years.
If, that was, the rainstorm hadn’t completely obliterated what was left after the Guardian and the Laen’aroth had absconded with the one thing trapping life in this world like fireflies in a jar.
“I’m rather concerned about what we may find waiting for us there.”
“Like an ambush?” She scanned the dead earth stretching in every direction too and shrugged. “We haven’t seen anyone this whole time. Maybe they’re just not coming.”
“Perhaps.” His brows drew together in a confused scowl. “But the fact we haven’t once been met with resistance is cause for suspicion. This has been...far too easy.”
She snorted. No, walking across an entire world—giving him the cold shoulder and eating cooked sentient mushrooms while he shot her baleful looks and couldn’t come up with any Leandras-y things to say—definitely hadn’t been easy. The constant warring with herself over the desire to leave him stranded and broken in the wasteland and the equally strong desire to throw her arms around him and tell him everything would be fine wasn’t remotely easy, either.
But he obviously wasn’t talking about all that.
“If these assholes wanna come down on us, they can try.” A small smile lifted the corner of her lips, but it didn’t feel nearly as reassuring as she wanted it to. Kinda hard when nothing reassured her right now, either. “But we’ve fought off attacks before.”
“Not from forces like these.” Leandras slowly lifted his glowing silver gaze to meet hers, looking like he’d just made another confession.
“And not with the rest of my magic returned. Besides the fight in the warehouse, and that was with everyone’s attention mostly focused on a big-ass spell for the reckoning. It’s different now.”
“Be that as it may, Jessica, I’m not...” He bit down on his lip and clearly couldn’t look at her for longer than five seconds. “I’m not certain how useful I’ll be under these particular circumstances.”
“Well, I guess we’ll figure that out when we get there.” With a shrug, Jessica turned around and headed toward the edge of the crumbled ruin marring the otherwise unnavigable landscape of death and destruction and hopelessness.
She had no idea what Leandras’ uselessness might look like. But after their fight with Colorado’s Laenmúr faction, he had an idea what Jessica was capable of now that she was a whole vestrohím and not some wannabe standup citizen with her greatest power locked up in a tin box in her underwear drawer.
The fact he didn’t mention her usefulness was a good start.
When they reached the end of the wall that had most likely served as Cálindor’s backside, Leandras grabbed her hand. Jessica widened her eyes and stared at his fingers around hers, which was fortunately enough to get the point across. He released her instantly, dipping his head again in apparent acknowledgement of his mistake, then whispered, “Allow me to go first.”
Well, at least he wasn’t barking orders anymore.
“So you can meet with whoever’s trying to ambush us and lay out a new plan? I don’t think so.”
“That is completely—” He puffed out a sigh and looked over his shoulder, just to check they wouldn’t be jumped from behind. “Here.”
He whipped his hand like he was shaking out one of his ridiculous pocket handkerchiefs, and with a flash of silver light, an empty canvas sack appeared in his hand. He flicked it once with his other hand, and a heavy bulge appeared in the bottom of the sack before he offered her the whole thing.
Jessica eyed the bag warily. It looked like a bag she’d seen in some gruesome Renaissance-period movie—the kind the bad guy tossed at his adversary’s feet before a severed head rolled out across the floor. “What is that?”
“The artifacts.” Leandras nodded at the bag. “All three. The Madraqór, the Heart of Ithríl, and the Umur’udal.”
“You didn’t hand them over before.”
“I do hope you won’t hold it against me for not wanting to be left without my quarry in the middle of my dying homeworld. Without you.” The fae swallowed. “But we’re here now. And if there happens to be a contingent of Hakali forces waiting for us to attempt passage through the Gateway once more, I would much rather leave these in your care.”
Jessica studied his pleading eyes and cocked her head. “The Dalu’Rázj wants these artifacts just like he wanted the coin.”
“Yes. But it’s more than that. If I’m captured and punished for my failure when he comes to collect, as it were, I’m... Well, quite frankly, Jessica, I’m expendable. The Guardian is not. You are not.”
Even as he said it, she couldn’t bring herself to take the canvas sack.
He seemed to realize this, so he set it on the dusty ground at her feet and nodded. “I’ll alert you if the coast is clear.”
“Yeah, alert me if it isn’t too.”
His lips twitched, then he nodded curtly and slipped around the corner of
the wide stone wall to head for the Gateway floating six feet in the air and surrounded by nothing but ruin.
For a moment, Jessica didn’t move. She pressed her back against the wall and scanned the open landscape in front of her, but most of her focus turned to listening for anything that would prove Leandras wrong—the murmur of low voices, the multi-toned snarl of the Dalu’Rázj’s voice, the mutter of Leandras himself under whatever old-school magic tied him to the big bad motherfucker who’d turned this entire world into a warzone.
Those two words exchanged like a secret code.
Vem-da’án. Roth’akán.
There was nothing.
Jessica stared at the canvas sack at her feet, then dropped into a squat and pried open the top.
Sure enough, there they were. The purest-black orb of the Madraqór, its internal light as the seed of the Naruli’s crystalline tree lighting up the bag with insane power. The Heart of Ithríl, which she hadn’t managed to see after Leandras had ripped the thing from Mitra’s chest with his bare hands. It seemed pretty fitting that the oblong stone the size of a softball was a deep blood-red. And the Umur’udal, whatever it was, still wrapped in tanned hide the way Ocaiye had offered it.
No tricks from the Laen’aroth. Apparently, all he’d given her was the three artifacts that could either raise the Dalu’Rázj to his full power or give the Guardian everything she needed to stop that from ever happening.
And his trust that if he didn’t make it out of here in one piece, Jessica would, and she would somehow know what to do with the items they’d almost died multiple times just to retrieve.
She grabbed the sack and settled it gently in her arms. The artifacts were surprisingly light, but she cradled them like they weighed so much more.
In a way, they did. The weight of two entire worlds was in her hands, not to mention what would happen to them if she failed.
That could still happen, whether or not she decided to take Leandras at his unfailingly treacherous word one final time and give him this last chance to prove himself. But with the Laen’aroth at her side, her chances of not laying waste to everything that still stood against the darkness of this world—her chances of not dying, especially—were probably a lot higher.
Whatever happened next, she hoped she wasn’t making the worst mistake of her life.
If it was, it would be the kind of mistake for which there was absolutely no chance of redemption. For either of them.
Chapter 16
Jessica stepped cautiously around the corner of the white stone wall and peered into the dark shadows of the fallen rubble beyond.
There was no sign of Leandras.
That could literally mean anything at this point, especially with the Gateway door still hidden by the giant boulders they’d used as a last-minute changing room for the fae to gift her with a ridiculous illusion of Xaharí fashion.
She clutched the bag of artifacts tighter and made her way from shadowy crevice to overhanging chunk of stone that looked like it could fall and crush her at any second.
Then she found him. The fae man stood out in the open, staring up with wide eyes and his mouth hanging slightly open in surprise. His arms hung at his sides, but both fists glowed with purple light, like he was prepared for the fight he’d expected all along.
Not a good sign when they were hoping to get back through the Gateway with as little bodily harm as possible.
Jessica stayed where she was, trying to find the target for those glowing purple fists of his, but nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. So she emerged from her latest hiding place and slowly snuck toward him.
Leandras finally noticed her presence and whirled on her, both hands raised and ready to strike. He obviously realized it was her before the damage could be done—or at least attempted—and sighed heavily. The glowing light around his fists snuffed out. “Jessica.”
“Turning your magic on me isn’t gonna do us any good,” she muttered. “So I’m guessing there’s no ambush.”
“No.” Scowling, he returned his attention to six feet up in the air. “But I wouldn’t necessarily say this is particularly better for our purposes.”
Jessica approached him with a frown and looked up at the Gateway suspended midair.
“Shit.”
The door that had dumped them out into Xahar’áhsh was still there. But where its outline had been lined in bright white light when they’d arrived, now it was rimmed in flickering green smoke. Thick tendrils of eerily green sludge trailed from the outline of the door, whipping and flickering like so many dark, consuming tentacles just waiting for their chance to ensnare and destroy.
It was the exact same blight that had covered the entirety of the bank when Jessica had come home from the epic fight at the warehouse for the second phase of the reckoning. The same destruction that had almost ended her and Leandras under the threat of the dungeon door in the upstairs hallway exploding from its hinges to unleash hell.
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’re almost out of time.”
“Yeah, that part’s obvious.” She lowered the sack to her side in one hand and gestured toward the door with the other. “I mean for my bank. The last time we saw this shit, that door almost exploded, and you slapped a rune on my neck.”
Leandras slowly turned to eye her with another smirk. “Your bank.”
“I...” She blinked quickly and frowned at him. “Yeah, it’s my damn bank. No one else is gonna claim it.”
Or if they did, they’d have absolutely no idea what to do with the annoying little building that had a mind of its own and a severely irritating sense of humor.
Damnit, she missed that voice in her head.
“I don’t believe the other side of that door is under any threat at this time,” Leandras replied. “Merely this side.”
“Then we need to get through it. Now.”
“One DIY staircase.” His smirk remained for a second longer before he dipped his head and turned away from her. “My pleasure.”
Jessica stepped back and watched him work. Even with the surprisingly light weight of the artifacts in her hand and the way home so close within reach, Jessica didn’t smile. She couldn’t. There was something seriously wrong here, and it wasn’t the flickering green scum around the Gateway or the still very real potential they’d be attacked here before they could ever get through.
It was Leandras.
He hadn’t argued with her. Hadn’t made some poorly-timed joke about her strange and highly essential relationship with the bank. He hadn’t even made a face at her when she’d practically barked an order to get going so they didn’t waste even more time staring at that floating door and trying to guess what its new coat of green doom really meant.
She stood right here with the bag of his oh-so-important artifacts in her hand, and he hadn’t even insisted she return them or tried to insinuate she wasn’t equipped to handle such an important sack filled with even more important magic.
Had all the fight seriously gone out of him?
Maybe she had broken him outside that cave. Maybe whatever made Leandras the fae his carefree, joking, annoyingly mysterious but still sexy self had been wiped aside when she’d pushed him for the truth and he’d had no choice but to hand it all over on a submissive silver platter.
This wasn’t the Leandras she knew. It also wasn’t the Leandras she’d wanted to kill before he’d repeated Ocaiye’s warning to her in a final moment of desperation.
That was nothing short of fantastic news for the Guardian. For Jessica, though, it was highly disconcerting.
If she agreed to help him with whatever severing his ties to the Dalu’Rázj entailed—including swearing those same vows to her instead—this wasn’t the Leandras she wanted at her beck and call forever.
She didn’t actually want him at her beck and call at all. She just wanted him to be real with her.
As she mulled over all the complicated, twisted intricacies of how the hell this was all supp
osed to work, the fae man seemed entirely focused on his task. He cast spell after spell on the massive chunks of toppled stone littering the barren land. One by one, the giant pieces illuminated in silver and violet light, shuddered, and lifted out of the dirt in which they’d spent at least the last few thousand years buried and forgotten before being called to this new task.
With his shirt burned up on a pile of bones halfway across this world, it was a lot easier to see how much strain the act of building a staircase out of a desecrated fortress really took. The muscles of his back and shoulders rippled and tightened as he raised block after block of crumbled stone, sweat coating his torso with a glimmering sheen. He walked back and forth, finding the best pieces for his real-life magical Tetris before settling them one by one in a jagged, tilted column. The thing didn’t look like it could support itself, let alone two magicals who would be running up it to open that door at the top and hopefully escape to safety.
Or at least a more reassuring version of safety than they’d find in this world.
When he settled the final boulder into place, the makeshift stairway stretched all the way up to the door. Those ominous tendrils of smoking green sludge lapped at the stone, but nothing had changed.
Apparently, they were home free.
“There.” Leandras approached her again, wiping sweat from his forehead before he ran a hand through his dark, damp hair. “Shall we?”
Jessica raised an eyebrow. “No offense, but that doesn’t exactly look...stable.”
“It will hold.” He pointed at the teetering tower, and the entire thing lit up with silver light, groaning and cracking like an entire lake freezing over at top speed. The slight sway in the stairway stopped, then the light disappeared. “For a time. Plenty sufficient for you to climb and make your return.”
For her to climb. Not them.
Jessica frowned at him. “You’re staying here?”
“You haven’t yet given me your decision, Jessica. I won’t push you for it, but if you believe it’s best to go on alone, I will not stop you.” He glanced at the sack in her hand. “You have everything you need.”
The Spellcast Gate (Accessory to Magic Book 5) Page 16
