“You...” Mel’s cheeks flushed almost the same pink as her hair, and she wrinkled her nose.
“You look happy,” Cedrick said with a dubious smile. “Which is weird.”
Happy. She looked happy.
No one was going to say out loud she looked like she’d just had a hell of a night with a fae she still didn’t entirely trust. So yeah, happy was probably best.
“Let’s just get down to the super-important-discussion part before you draw any conclusions, okay?”
“Good idea.” Steve joined the others in the living room and sat in a beige armchair covered in lime-green polka dots. He gestured toward the last open seat—the armchair’s twin—which was oh-so-conveniently pulled out into the center of the room so everyone had a perfect view of the Guardian and her...happiness.
Jessica took a seat, shifting around a few times before giving up trying to get comfortable. None of this was comfortable. Especially when the first thing that popped out of her mouth was, “How did you two know about this?”
It was a dumb question to start this meeting with, but Boris and Reynaldo exchanged a knowing glance. The dryad looked far too big for the couch, his wooden flesh creaking as he brushed a loose bit of bark off his shoulder to join all the other bits of him flaking off on the furniture. Reynaldo just chuckled and clapped his hands together. “We are honored to have been invited, Jessica.”
“I let them know you were coming,” Steve added. “Your message made this sound like one of those important things you don’t want the members with the most knowledge to miss out on. I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s... Yeah, it’s fine.” Jessica nodded. “Probably a good thing, actually. So, um... You know, I’m not exactly sure where to start.”
“You called a meeting before coming up with an actual plan, huh?” Cedrick smirked and crossed one leg over the other. “Not surprising.”
“Okay, asshole.” She pointed at him and knew she didn’t look quite so menacing with a crooked smile breaking through her intended scowl. “For the record, I had no idea the bank could actually send texts from my phone. So if I seem a little...scattered, it’s because I didn’t have any time to plan this out.”
Mel folded her arms and grinned. “You sure that’s the reason you’re scattered?”
“Yes, Mel. I’m sure.” Jessica widened her eyes at her friend and forced herself to stay in that armchair instead of jumping up and running out of Steve’s house again like she wanted.
Leading wasn’t her thing. Bringing magicals together to ask their opinions on a fairly life-or-death subject wasn’t really her thing either. And getting grilled about her sex life that was no one else’s business would not be added to the list of new things she felt like trying out just for fun.
“So let’s move on. To...” Jessica wrinkled her nose and looked from one Colorado Laenmúr member to the next. “Like I said. I don’t really know where to—”
“Start with your journey through the Gateway,” Boris boomed, leaning slightly forward and sending a cascade of small twigs and slightly discovered leaves fluttering down onto Steve’s area rug. His emerald eyes glinted in his rough and still somehow extraordinarily kind face. For a talking tree. “I imagine there’s plenty there to prepare us for the purpose of this gathering.”
“Oh, yes.” Reynaldo nodded vigorously, his comically large eyes behind his thick spectacles scanning her up and down. “That’s an excellent suggestion, Boris.”
“Thank you.”
“We’ve been so eager to hear what’s happened over the last few days.”
“Immensely eager.”
“Right.” Jessica glanced at Steve. “I’m guessing you’re the one who told them about that too.”
Pressing his lips together in obvious amusement, the warlock simply nodded.
“The entire order knows by now,” Mel added quickly. “So...it’s not really a secret that you and Leandras left. We had no idea you were back, though.”
“Yeah. Surprise.” Jessica cleared her throat and spread her arms. “Okay. Uh...kind of a lot to cover, but here’s the general... Just let me get through this first, then we’ll get to the Q&A. Yeah?”
The five magicals staring at her either nodded or leaned forward in anticipation or both.
Yeah, Jessica wasn’t good at public speaking either, so this would be one hell of an experiment.
She took Boris’ advice and started at the beginning.
NO ONE SAID A WORD as Jessica covered the entire tale from the moment she and Leandras stepped through the Gateway together.
Technically, it wasn’t the entire tale. She didn’t mention Tabitha’s godson coming into the picture to take over as temporary steward for the most highly sought-after establishment in the state—probably even on Earth. Ben wasn’t affiliated with the Laenmúr, and his brain would probably fully explode if he was ever contacted by a bunch of magicals wanting to scour that brain for the bank’s secrets.
And, of course, Jessica didn’t say a word about hooking up with Leandras the first time in the Laenmúr tent. Or the second time last night in his temporary room just off the Winthrop & Dirledge lobby. Skipping over those parts was easy enough—except for the knowing looks Mel and Cedrick shot each other and then aimed her way, which was weirdly uncomfortable.
Not as uncomfortable as Jessica had expected.
The words tumbled out of her, and the only time she stopped was to ask Steve for a glass of water and wait to finish the tale until he returned with it. Just talking about what Xahar’áhsh had become had dried out her mouth like the Dalu’Rázj’s greed had dried out that entire world.
She didn’t hold anything back when she got to the part about seeing Leandras in his communicative trance with the Dalu’Rázj outside the cave that saved their lives, or how she’d wanted to leave him for dead in the middle of the Xaharí wasteland, or his desperate attempt to prove to her he had changed and still could by offering the Thon-Rothím spell as an alternative.
None of the magicals listening to her looked particularly surprised, shocked, or betrayed to hear the Laen’aroth—the fae they’d depended on since the beginning—had such screwed-up ties with the enemy. Apparently, Jessica was the only one who’d found that little nugget of truth to be a world-shattering revelation.
It made sense when she was the only magical in the last few months, maybe even the last few centuries, to spend as much one-on-one time with Leandras Vilafor as she had.
When she finished, her voice was hoarse and scratchy even after the last few gulps of water still in the glass. Admittedly, this was the first time she’d felt the urge to talk this much in a single sitting about anything, let alone an entire journey across a world that felt like months but had only lasted three days.
She set the glass on the floor beside the armchair and nodded. “So. I guess I wanted to call this meeting for a few reasons. The first is to tell you guys we have the artifacts. At first, I wasn’t sure they were actually what we needed to, you know, end this. But I have proof they can be used either way. Unless there’s something else we need that Leandras didn’t get, we’re ready to do this. Right?”
Steve sat perfectly still, his elbows propped on his thighs as he leaned over his lap, his steepled fingers pressed against his lips. With a quick inhale, he sat up and met her gaze. “I’ll spread the word. Give the rest of our chapter in Colorado the details first, and they’ll reach out to any others still waiting for the green light.”
“Okay. Good.”
“And the other reasons?” Cedrick asked, his arms folded and his legs kicked out in front of him on the loveseat. Which he shared cozily with Mel, and yeah, the irony of that wasn’t lost on Jessica at all.
“The other reasons.” She cleared her throat. “Just one, really. I want—”
“You want to know if performing the Thon-Rothím with Leandras Vilafor is worth the risk,” Boris rumbled. His entire bark-covered body shivered as he leaned forward on the couch, and a few more leaves
fluttered down around him. “And the reward.”
“Don’t interrupt her,” Reynaldo muttered, scoffing at his friend and gesturing toward Jessica. “Since when did you become the Guardian’s mouthpiece, eh? You suddenly start reading minds, you creaky old stump?”
The dryad fixed his friend with a wide-eyed glance, and Reynaldo cocked his head.
“He’s right,” Jessica intervened.
The gnome’s exasperated demeanor changed instantly, and he grinned at her. “Oh, yes, yes. Of course you would want to know if the Laen’aroth can be trusted for this final trial. Perfectly natural.”
Boris grunted.
“You still didn’t trust him before you two left,” Steve added. “Has that changed?”
“It...” Jessica blinked quickly, then stared at her lap. “I thought it had. When we left the forest with the Umur’udal, I really thought we were on the same page. Then it turned out his biggest secret wasn’t one he could keep anymore. I mean, sworn to the Dalu’Rázj? That kinda changes things.”
“It was always suspected,” Boris said, his branches creaking as a low moan of age-old wood rose from his entire body. He raised his twiggy fingers to scratch the side of his face, chipping off more bark and making Reynaldo snort beside him as the gnome dusted wood and small rootlike hairs off his shoulders and lap. “The Laen’aroth was also sworn to us, in a manner of speaking. The Xaharí tongue is all but lost in this world, but there are those of us who still remember.”
Reynaldo snorted. “Says the dryad who spent the last two hundred years studying a dead language.”
“It is not dead, my friend. Merely buried beneath the complacency of time.” Boris dipped his head toward Jessica. “Literally translated, the Laen’aroth is the Emissary of Light.”
Jessica snorted and looked around the circle of her old friends and admittedly a few new ones. “Seriously?”
Boris’ dry lips peeled back to reveal a smile of jagged wood-chip teeth among small rootlike white hairs. He was the only one who looked remotely amused. “There is a certain level of humor in it, but yes. That is the side of him we know.”
“No one can claim to know him,” Reynaldo muttered. “Not fully.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem.” Jessica folded her arms and felt ridiculous for how uncomfortable this conversation made her. “It’s one thing after another with him, and I don’t... I don’t know what to believe.”
Boris rumbled his assent. “It does sound as though you’ve come quite close, however.”
“Maybe.” She hoped the heat in her cheeks was just beneath the surface and hadn’t exploded into a full-on blush. Jessica didn’t blush.
She didn’t call meetings with members of a millennia-old magical order to help her figure out if she could trust the source of that blush before they made a final leap into victory or death, either.
Her mouth ran dry, and she almost reached for the glass again before realizing it was empty. “Has anyone actually done this Thon-Rothím? Or even seen it so I know what to expect?”
Steve, Mel, and Cedrick shook their heads. Boris sat back in the couch without a word, and Reynaldo blinked furiously behind his comically thick-lensed spectacles with a grimace. “That is not the kind of magic most of us would dare perform, Jessica.”
“Yeah, I kind of already had that feeling.”
“What kind of magic?” Mel asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Jessica wrinkled her nose. “Think the Shattering times a thousand. Probably.”
The witch’s mouth fell open. “And he wants you to help him do that to himself?”
“Plus bind himself to her instead so Jessica’s the new fae master number one,” Cedrick added, elbowing the witch lightly in the side. “Don’t forget that part.”
Mel shot him a warning glare and slowly shook her head.
“Guys, none of that stuff is lost on me. I just...” Jessica ran a hand through her hair and stared at the ceiling. For a guy who lived alone in a single-family ranch house, Steve the warlock kept surprisingly tidy digs. “Look, what I really need is for someone to tell me it’s a bad idea that won’t completely backfire in my face and ruin everything if I do it for a good reason. Because I’m completely at a loss here.”
“Do it,” Boris said.
She met his emerald gaze and frowned. “Just like that, huh?”
“Have your brains petrified with the rest of you?” Reynaldo slapped the back of a hand against the dryad’s barky arm and winced. “What would possess you to say such a thing?”
“The Madraqór.” Boris didn’t break Jessica’s gaze, and the strip of bushy moss on his forehead serving as an eyebrow lifted. Then again, it could’ve also been just a really hairy green caterpillar.
“What about it?” Jessica leaned forward, sparing a quick glance at Mel and Cedrick, who looked just as lost as she was.
“We dryad know our trees, Jessica.” A low, growling chuckle escaped the talking-tree magical. “Leandras was furious when the Naruli showed him to the Mahayál in the underworld, was he not?”
“Yeah. He completely lost it.” The memory of the fae man’s horror when they entered the brilliant, almost holy chamber housing the crystalline tree was all too clear. “Because that wasn’t part of their agreement, I guess.”
“No.” The branches sprouting from the dryad’s head shivered, making the few leaves still clinging to them whisper like dozens of unintelligible voices. “Because it wasn’t part of his plan.”
What?
Jessica blinked quickly and looked up at the dryad’s shimmering green eyes.
How the hell did this guy know what Leandras’ plans were?
Leandras’ words raced through her mind without warning, bringing with them the image of him sitting across from the table in Railen’s tent while they all went around the circle and spilled their guts to each other in Ahárra. The mage had asked if Tabitha knew of Leandras’ purpose. The pained, highly regretful frown that had contorted the fae man’s features when he nodded hadn’t meant much at all to Jessica. At that moment, she’d been more likely to write everything off as a multi-dimensional hallucination.
But now, Boris apparently knew the Laen’aroth’s plan too.
Which meant either Leandras had planted seeds of friendship—or at least alliance—in more than one magical placed in Jessica’s path to help her be what the Guardian needed to be, or he’d somehow managed to infiltrate the Laenmúr in this world and turn a few dryad toward the darker aspects of his purpose.
One of them being the dryad sitting across from her on Steve’s couch and grinning with a mouthful of hairy roots.
Chapter 23
Jessica’s pulse jumped up and galloped through her veins as she tried to keep her suspicion from boiling over and flatly asked, “How do you know what his plan was?”
“Oh, listen to you.” Reynaldo scoffed and turned on his friend. “You have lost your mind. Daring to know the Laen’aroth’s plans, which clearly weren’t what any of us wanted—”
“If you cease your endless prattling, gnome,” Boris roared, “you will understand!”
The gnome pressed his lips together and slapped both hands down on his thighs, staring straight at Jessica.
“What plans?” Steve asked.
The tree man took a deep, rattling breath as his woody parts creaked and groaned. “The Mayahál fully grown, as it is now, would have still been quite potent as a reagent, if Leandras did indeed plan to restore the Dalu’Rázj as his master intended. A single branch from that tree grown beneath the desecration would have sufficed. He did not ask for a branch.”
“No.” Jessica frowned, trying to put the pieces together. “He left the Madraqór with the Naruli before he came to Earth. A huge seed.”
“An unsprouted Madraqór may indeed grow roots and provide its own form of life,” Boris added. “Unplanted, un-nurtured, it is one of the most powerful reagents for trapping a living essence and keeping it from growing roots of its own.”
“So Leandras had already decided to betray his...” Mel grimaced. “You know. Before you guys ever went through the Gateway. He’d already changed his mind if he wanted the seed instead of a branch, right?”
Cedrick smirked. “You sound like you actually know what you’re talking about.”
She shrugged him off. “I’m totally bluffing. This is way over my head.”
“No.” Jessica shook her head and swallowed. “He couldn’t have changed his mind about that before we left. We got the Madraqór before... Well, before he died.”
“So weird,” Cedrick muttered.
“And you brought him back,” Steve added. “That was when things started to change, right?”
A lump formed in Jessica’s throat. “I think so. He said I’d changed everything, especially when I told him about Tabitha’s letter. You know, saying I could trust him.”
“Never underestimate a scryer.” Reynaldo chuckled. “I did that once. Biggest mistake of my entire career—”
A tiny branch whipped away from Boris’ flesh to crack against the side of the gnome’s bald head.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“Your past failures are not the focus of this discussion, former Steward of Hroom.”
“Well.” Reynaldo blinked furiously and cleared his throat. “No need to be rude about it.”
“Wait.” Mel lifted a hand for everyone to stop, frowning deeply. “If Leandras had no idea Jessica could...bring him back from the dead—”
“My mind’s blown,” Cedrick muttered.
“Yeah, me too, but I’m trying to talk.” The pink-haired witch shook her head, and the changeling beside her smirked. “Jess, if he didn’t know what you could do before you guys got this giant seed or whatever, it doesn’t make sense that he’d be so pissed the thing had grown into a tree.”
“I know.” Jessica grimaced. “Now you see the giant headache I’ve been dealing with for the last... Okay, pretty much since I met him.”
“I believe the Laen’aroth intended to keep his options open,” Boris added.
“What?”
The Spellcast Gate (Accessory to Magic Book 5) Page 24
