Veil of Thorns

by Gwen Mitchell

  Vika sat on the edge of the fountain, and Bri joined her. “That’s one thing the Synod got right–they know the value of theatrics. If we want people to believe we are more powerful, to follow us instead, we must project the image of power at all times.”

  “Follow us?” Bri gave an awkward laugh.

  “I am not jesting,” Vika said testily. “By now you must understand what we are.”

  Bri blinked at her, unsure what was the right answer. This felt like another test.

  Vika’s long, swanlike neck shimmered as she turned her head to gaze at the dream tree. “Agamede… Boudicca… Circe… Hekate… Himiko…”

  Bri tilted her head in thought. “Deities?”

  “Legends.” Vika’s head whipped around to regard Bri with fervor, as if she was offended on behalf of them. “Warriors. Queens. Saints. There’s at least one in every corner of the world, wherever people once bathed in the magic of a Skydancer at the height of her power. They are our sisters, wrongly written out of history, relegated to the sidelines or made the villain when their power—our power—used to be the driving force behind the rise and fall of kingdoms! What do you think we’ve been brought together for, Bri? At last we have the chance to right a great wrong in the fabric of Fate.”

  Vika’s smile made even the dream tree seem dim. She squeezed Bri’s arm, then released her. “With your sight, we can find our third.”

  Bri stared into the dark, water of the fountain, fathomless, as if it merely swallowed all the light that should reflect off it.

  Could it be that simple? Vika wanted Bri to become immortal because she didn’t want to be alone? She wanted sisters. A coven to balance her powers. Despite all her–many–flaws, Bri’s heart ached with phantom pang of that same loneliness. She had felt that alone after Ce-Ce and Tara’s accident. Well before that, if she was being honest. Until Astrid and Kean had taken her back in. But now she was looking into a mirror of her own future. Astrid and Kean would die, and she would live on without them. For centuries. Possibly forever…

  What had she done?

  There is no turning back.

  Bri shook herself free of the panic trying to strangle her. She would always have Lucas—but that was little comfort now, knowing he’d betrayed her. Tricked her. Might have even been manipulating her emotions this whole time.

  What if he doesn’t even love you?

  She shoved that voice viciously to the back of her head, though it made her gut ache. That was precisely the slippery slope that had driven Vika a hair’s breadth from madness. To Vika, Bri was an island in an ocean of loneliness and suspicion.

  And she could use that.

  Now that you’re a monster, you better start acting like one.

  “Once we have our coven, what then? What great wrong are we supposed to make right?” Bri asked, trying to sound curious.

  “The Synod.”

  “What about them?” There were a great many wrongs there–enslaving entire races for one thing–but Vika’s attitude toward Kinde and Hohlwen didn’t seem to be much different.

  Vika’s indulgent chuckle rang through the cavern. “Their very existence. They are slowly choking the magic from this world. They are not meant to control so much of it. That power should rest with us.”

  Vika stood and waved her hand over the fountain. The black water froze to ice and broke apart into bricks. The bricks shifted, creating an opening. She stepped onto the ice and descended a few steps down the spiral staircase that had revealed itself and held out her hand. “Come, I have something to show you.”

  Bri climbed up on the bench.

  “Briana,” Lucas barked. Warning snapped in his voice like a sheet in the wind.

  She ignored him and ascended the fountain.

  I am not afraid of her, she answered in his head, stepping onto the ice and taking Vika’s hand.

  Black wards sizzled as she crossed them. She was blind on the other side and had to use her Second Sight to navigate through the tunnel, following Vika’s silvery silhouette. As they went deeper, a sub-audible hum of power lapped at her from the walls. Even from its hiding place, the mirror’s answering buzz made the back of her skull tingle.

  When they reached the bottom, they crossed another set of wards, stronger and reinforced with a concealment spell woven in a way unfamiliar to Bri. She paused to marvel at its intricate beauty.

  Torches lit all around them. Bri dropped her Second Sight and found herself standing in a circular, low-ceilinged cavern about twenty feet across. A clear crystal altar stood before them, and upon it was a book with a cover made of rough, grey leather. Silver runic designs etched into the cover and spine pulsed with a familiar otherworldly glow.

  The divan!

  It took every ounce of her control to keep the exuberance she felt from showing on her face. The tingling at the back of her skull grew stronger, like a firehouse bell right at the top of her spine. She felt the vibrations in her fingertips and rubbed them together to keep from reaching for the book.

  “This,” Hedvika said, walking up to the altar, “is my piece of the Hirune. The Synod seized all of the most powerful relics of the Legacy. All but three, which they cannot possess, because the Hirune cannot be possessed. They are wild magic, forged in another dimension, perhaps by magic itself.”

  She beckoned Bri forward, an impassioned gleam in her eyes. “They choose their own guardian.”

  She petted the cover of the book lovingly.

  The runes pulsed softly in response, the pages ruffling ever so slightly, making a sound like a cat purring.

  “They speak to her, and her alone. At one time, my sisters and I possessed two of them–this book and the mirror. I’m sure the mirror will come to you now that you are in your full power. There is also a crown.”

  The mirror? Bri fought to keep her hands from shaking.

  Vika knew about the mirror.

  As if it was listening, the faint buzz at the edge of her psyche grew momentarily louder, and panic made her skin clammy.

  Vika gave her a quizzical look, so she let her eyes swirl white and blinked as if coming back from a vision. “And what happens when these relics–”

  “The Hirune,” Vika corrected.

  “The Hirune are brought together?”

  Vika sighed dreamily. “Who can say? Legend tells us that when magic first settled on this plane, it was too powerful a force to exist here wholly and would have torn our natural world apart, so it fractured into three pieces–the Threefold Path. Each piece of the Hirune channels one aspect of magic. The power to control the material, ethereal, and astral. United… they could remake reality.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ryder sat on the edge of the fountain watching Lucas repeatedly test the ward around Vika’s secret chamber. Emil had disappeared through the vines into Vika’s private wing, leaving the two of them in the courtyard. He’d searched the shadows, but found no hint of Bri’s or Vika’s light, which meant they were behind wards even the darkness could not penetrate. So, he’d returned to keep the wolf company and await their return, which he was beginning to regret.

  “You do know the definition of insanity, don’t you?”

  “I’m trying something different each time,” Lucas growled back.

  Ryder held up his hands in an innocent gesture. “Just checking.”

  “Any idea where they’ve gone?”

  “Yes, I enjoy the grating of your impatience so much I’ve decided not to tell you.” Ryder glanced at the statue a few feet away, but his gaze skirted away, his hand instinctively covering his chest in response to the hollow ache there. “I had no idea that stairwell was even there.”

  “What if she’s hurting Bri? Torturing her?”

  He tsked and shook his head. “She wouldn’t do that without an audience.”

  Besides, she needs her for something. He wished he knew what.

  Lucas growled again.

  Ryder stared him down. “This new bond has made you even more of a
pain in the ass.”

  Lucas roared and punched the ward, causing a ripple of black sparkles to erupt around his fist. “It is not the bond, it is the fact that she believes I betrayed her.”

  He rolled his eyes. Here comes the pity parade. “You did conspire with her enemy, wolf.”

  “I know,” Lucas snarled. “But I can’t bear her thinking she’s all alone right now.” He sat down beside Ryder and scrubbed his hands over his face. “I should be by her side.”

  “I think she can hold her own.”

  Lucas looked at him sideways, curious despite his own crisis of conscience.

  “I’ve never seen anything so glorious,” Ryder continued. He couldn’t disguise the hunger in his voice, even if he’d tried, so he didn’t. Bri had shone in his vision like a star, a pinprick viewport into Ordiri itself, and his entire being had throbbed with the need to taste her. To climb inside her and bask in that light. “She’s far stronger than Vika.”

  Perhaps strong enough to sate me once and for all, said the hungry voice inside. He choked it back down.

  “She will not make a move against Vika until she has that gods-forsaken book!” Lucas clenched his fists as he gazed longingly at the dark hole in the center of the frozen fountain.

  “And what of our bargain, wolf? We should move on her now, while we have the element of surprise.” Vika had been so anxious this morning. Distant, despite his every effort to please her. She’d seemed almost…nervous. That unsettled him, because Vika’s confidence was not just armor, it was like a second skin. If it was shaken, trouble was brewing deep within her. Trouble, and most likely pain and suffering for someone.

  “I will not betray Briana again.”

  The yawning darkness inside Ryder howled in rage.

  “Oh, I see.” He folded into shadow to appear on Lucas’s other side, cold acid dripping from every word. “You will take my payment given in good faith, and renege on your end to save your own hide. Who is the oath breaker now? I should have known you would betray me when you had the perfect opportunity to kill the bear and did not take it.”

  Lucas glared at him and began pressing on the wards again. “I will keep my word, but I will decide when. She wants the book, so we wait until she either finds it or gives up. I will not force her and drive another wedge between us.”

  “And what about her lover?” Ryder shot back, aiming at Lucas’s fears with a precision honed by centuries. “Isn’t helping her to get the book helping him to come between you?”

  Lucas went absolutely still but finally shook his head. “She would never forgive me if I stole that chance from her.”

  Damn these earthbound creatures and their sentimentality! Everything he’d waited for, bled for, starved for…all thrown away because of Briana’s attachment to a single, pitiful human boy.

  He gazed at the statue again as serpents of dread wrapped around that void in his core. Vika was casting him off, bracing for something, and he suspected it was something he’d overlooked. Or something she’d managed to keep hidden.

  He had a fleeting instant to wonder if there was a chance she had played him–lured him into her web without getting stuck herself. But no. He had seen into every part of her, inside and out. He lived inside her, through her, and she laid herself bare before him in the dead of night, a willing sacrifice on his table.

  You cannot fake that.

  Just as he could not utter a falsehood, so could he not be deceived by any who surrendered to the shadows. When she said she still loved him, needed him like air, he knew she spoke truth. Even if he had angered her, she would only punish him, because she could not let him go.

  Ever.

  She had already taken everything from him–everything except one thing.

  He was about to ask Lucas again if he’d spoken at all about that day in the mountain cave, about the priceless secret he carried, but the ladies emerged from the hole in the ice, and the wolf’s attention fastened to Bri with impenetrable focus.

  Vika led Bri across the wards, and Ryder knew he had missed his chance to take any more evasive measures.

  The chips are down.

  ***

  The book. The mirror. And a crown.

  Internally, Bri’s head was spinning with the implications. What if she was destined to form a coven with Vika and find their third? What if the Hirune was drawing them together, calling the pieces of itself together? What if her reunion with Lucas had only been a stepping stone to a much larger, greater destiny in the works?

  She could see each step in the mirror’s journey laid out like lily pads on a lake.

  It had come to Vivianne, chosen her as its guardian. She had found Lucas, and the demon had chased Vivianne’s soul and the mirror all the way to Bri, driving her right back to Lucas. To Vika. To the book. So many strands of Fate had bound her to this path… even Kean. What if she hadn’t come here because of Kean’s curse, but he had been cursed so she would come here?

  It would be excessively arrogant of her not to consider the possibility that Vika, who was a few thousand years her elder, might know more than she did about how the currents of destiny moved. Even without the sight.

  Bri felt like she was clinging to a tiny buoy in a great ocean of Fate now, and once again everything she thought was true had flipped upside down. For a fleeting second as they climbed the spiral stairs through the dark, she even wondered if she was actually living this, or was she caught in another vision or dream? She wished she could wake herself up.

  She blinked into the light of the courtyard and was immediately staring into Lucas’s pleading grey eyes.

  Briana.

  Don’t, she warned, looking away from him.

  I’m sorry.

  Not now.

  I love you.

  Stop! She slammed down a mental shield between them so hard Lucas visibly winced and rocked back.

  “Serves you right, wolf. Wait your turn,” Vika taunted. “Bri and I have much to discuss.”

  Lucas took one step towards them, and a vine whipped out of the earth and coiled around his ankle.

  “You must establish dominance early, or he’ll never come to heel,” Vika whispered to Bri as they descended from the fountain. As if Lucas and Emil couldn’t hear her perfectly. When they were back on the ground, the ice turned to still, dark water again.

  “You’ve never asked me about my garden, Bri,” Vika said, gazing sidelong at the statue of the girl with the frozen tear on her cheek.

  Bri blinked in surprise. She had never considered this sculpture like the others. The garden statues were aged and weathered, partially overgrown with moss or eaten away by bugs, or partially growing out of a tree. This statue was carved of pristine black marble. She’d assumed it was simply decoration. There wasn’t a crack or pore to be seen. Every strand of hair breaking loose from her corona of braids was perfectly frozen, still blowing in a whispering breeze.

  She was so lovely, it made Bri’s chest ache. It wasn’t the sadness. She could relate to that, of course, but there was something else in her expression, behind that single tear, that Bri didn’t have words for. Something kindred.

  “I asked you who they were once, and you wouldn’t tell me,” Bri reminded her.

  Vika looked down her nose at Bri. “Yes. You asked the wrong question. You should have asked what they are.”

  Without thinking, Bri reached into the ether for the answer, her vision swirling white as she recalled all the snatches of memory she’d collected from the statues the past two weeks, the last few moments of their lives before they were cursed. She thought of her strolls through the garden, the image of each statue superimposing over the next in a fast reel. On their knees. Hands raised to the sky. Heads bent in prayer…

  Worshippers?

  No, that wasn’t it.

  Tribute, a voice that was not one but several woven together whispered in the back of her mind.

  Finally, the last image—the girl by the fountain–pulsed in her vision. Once. Twice. T
hree times. And the last puzzle piece clicked into place. The girl was gazing into the pool, and something she saw there made her sad. But what was she looking at? There was no reflection in the fountain’s dark water, just like there was no reflection in the mirror.

  Bri blinked at Vika and cocked her head. “They’re seers.”

  Vika covered her surprise—and was that a whiff of fear in the air?—with a long, pregnant pause.

  “But what did you want with them?” Bri asked, letting her eyes swirl milky again for effect.

  Vika’s ruby lips curled into a feline smile as she reached behind her back.

  In less than a heartbeat, Lucas had drawn his sword, cut himself free of vines, and was at Bri’s side.

  Vika narrowed her eyes at him as she held out a folded piece of heavy parchment. It was torn along one edge, as if it had been pulled from a book. “The spell you asked for.”

  Bri’s mouth fell open in shock and tears filled her eyes. She reached out.

  Vika pulled her hand back, one eyebrow curled in amusement as the page vanished. “But first, you’ll do one last working for me.”

  She looked from Vika to the statue, understanding dawning, and bowed her head. “Of course.”

  Such an easy trade, and she would have the means to free Kean. She wanted to jump up and down and squeal, maybe even kiss Vika–she was so happy! But she held it all in and stepped forward with a somber expression.

  “This girl had a vision right before she was cursed. She told me what she saw, but I want to know if she was telling the truth.”

  Bri nodded, curious now. “What did she tell you?”

  “I will not say before you tell me what you see,” Vika said suspiciously.

  Bri shrugged as if she didn’t care either way and reached out to caress the girl’s cheek. Her vision swirled white, and through the fog she saw a jumble of different memories, all perfectly preserved. Like with regressions, the memories that lingered with the statues after the souls were rended were usually the most cherished, the most traumatic, or else the freshest. She reached out to the closest one with her magic, and it rippled like the surface of a pool, playing out in her mind’s eye.