Chaos’ head snapped to the side, as if he heard something, although Nessa and Melissa hadn’t.
“We must hurry,” he said with urgency. “They are near.”
“What do I do?”
“Stand by the mirror,” Chaos instructed, waving her forward. “I have already started the spell. All it needs now is to be completed.”
“By the mirror,” Melissa muttered nervously as she went to stand before the flickering lights.
From his pocket, Chaos removed a rolled up piece of paper. It was too dark to read down there, but that didn’t hinder him. Just as he had earlier, he lifted it to his nose and inhaled. Barely above a whisper, he began to chant, reciting the words on the paper, the spell. They were lost on Nessa, who only heard the occasional one, but even so, she could tell that the language of which he spoke was ancient and held great power.
The lights flared, suddenly blinding. Nessa knew what happens next.
“May the Gods be kind and protect you both,” Chaos said as he finished the incantation.
And then, with a crackle and a flash, Melissa and the baby vanished through the mirror.
Chaos stood in silence, staring after them for a long moment, then he shook himself, standing as straight as his hunched back would allow.
“Now for the hard part,” he grumbled. He dropped his walking stick to the ground, and it landed with a sharp clatter that seemed too loud in the quietness of the underground room. Chaos rubbed his hands together, clicked his fingers, and raised his arms, palms out, aimed at the mirror.
Something happened. A charge filled the room, heavy and static, making it feel alive. Then, with a mighty crunch, the mirror fractured and shattered into a million pieces. Silvered glass rained down, hitting the floor with delicate sounding pings. With the air still vibrating with power, Nessa somehow knew that the mirror wasn’t the only one that had been broken.
She also knew that she wasn’t in the present.
Nessa was in the past. Again. She was sure of it.
∞∞∞
Nessa awoke with a gasp. At first, the darkness was the same as that of the waking dream’s, but then she became aware of the soft mattress beneath her hip and the dragon curled up beside her. She relaxed when she realised that she was back at Orm’s, and not completely alone either.
The curtain over the doorway twitched as someone went to leave.
“Hunter?” she called, still groggy with sleep and a little disorientated by the lingering grip of the waking dream.
He turned around. “You’re up,” he said, surprised. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” Nessa assured him, sitting.
“Oh.” He appeared relieved. “I was just seeing if you were alright, and to bring you this.” He held out a plate that was piled high with food. “Thought you might be a bit hungry. I didn’t think that you would be asleep.”
Nessa leaned back, settling against the wall. “I’m not asleep now.”
“No,” he said, going over to her. He held out the plate and she took it, setting it down on her lap. Nessa looked at it, but couldn’t see what was on it. It was all just a dark shape.
Hunter noticed. “Here,” he said, slipping out in to the hallway. He was back a second later, holding the hallway’s candle. “It’s not the best, but it will have to do.”
“It’s fine,” Nessa murmured. She saw that dinner, at least she presumed that it was time for it to be considered dinner, consisted of a rustic sandwich. Ham and cheese in a homemade bun. “This is lovely.” She began eating although she wasn’t particularly hungry. She supposed that it just gave her something to do.
Hunter placed the candle on the floor and clambered onto the bed next to her. He picked up Aoife and placed her on his lap, much to the little dragon’s irritation. Even so, she quickly settled down, curling up into a ball again.
“Orm was going to dish out his specially imported smoked sausages,” Hunter said, “but then he discovered that I had fed them to your dragon.”
“And how did he handle that revelation?”
“Well, that’s kind of why I assumed you’d be awake. I thought the shouting would have even roused the dead. You must have been out for the count.”
“I suppose I must have been.”
“There were death threats and everything.”
“Death threats,” Nessa murmured thoughtfully. “I’m almost sorry I missed all of that.”
“Mmm. He was so angry, he actually had me fearing for my life.”
“Impressive.”
“Yeah.”
“Aoife liked them, though, if that’s any consolation to him.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Oh dear.”
Sandwich finished, Nessa leaned across the bed and put the plate on the floor. When she sat back, she was closer to Hunter, her arm gently touching against his. Neither of them moved. Then, feeling rather forlorn, Nessa sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. Hunter held himself still, as if he feared that the slightest twitch might scare her away, as if she was a skittish animal. Then, ever so slowly, he relaxed, and Nessa loosely wrapped an arm around him, her hand finding its way into his, their fingers twining together.
The solitary candle did little to illuminate much of the room other than a small ring around it. The light barely reached them, giving them the sense of privacy, of secrecy.
“How you holding up?” Hunter asked, voice barely above a whisper.
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” Nessa confessed.
“That’s understandable.”
“Is it?”
“Sure. You’ve had a lot happen to you in the last couple of weeks. You know, since you came here.”
“An awful lot,” Nessa agreed.
“And it will take time for you to sift through all of it and see how you feel.”
“Time,” Nessa murmured. “That’s the one thing I don’t really have much of.”
“Oh?”
Nessa sighed. “You see, this is where things get a little messy.”
“Intriguing.”
“My mum, at least the woman who I thought was my mum, is expecting a baby.” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, although she didn’t quite succeed. “I want to be there for her when she has it, you know, to support her and stuff.”
“That doesn’t sound messy.”
“No, when it’s put like that, I suppose it doesn’t. But I have to admit that I wasn’t kind to her when the pregnancy was announced. You see, it isn’t papa’s child. It’s my half-sibling, as I was led to believe. Mum had an affair; fell in love with another man and... When papa found out that she was pregnant with another man’s child, he lost it. He was so angry, furious. Mum and I were kicked out. He didn’t want anything to do with either of us ever again. It broke my heart, hearing him say that. I blamed mum, and I… I suppose that I was horrible to her. Since papa didn’t want anything to do with us, we were forced to move up north, in with mum’s, for a lack of a better word, lover.”
The words were spilling from Nessa of their own accord. “I hated it there. It was the complete opposite to what I was used to, to what I had grown up with. I’m a city girl, born and bred. The remote countryside was an alien world to me. And the man, mum’s new love, the baby’s father, I didn’t like, not at all. I held him accountable, you see. I felt that he was just as responsible for what had happened as mum was. They were both to blame, I guess, but not in the way I originally thought.”
Nessa cringed at the memory of how she had behaved. “I had a lot of time to myself in Ironguard. In that time I did a lot of thinking, and I came to see the truth of things between my parents, and I now understand something. What mum did wasn’t as selfish as I had first thought. Her new man loves her, I see that now. He loves her with all his heart, and she loves him back. Love is an honest thing, I think, and I cannot blame either of them for it. Not now, though I wish I had seen it sooner. I’ve made it difficult for them, and I want
to set things right between us, especially before the baby is born.”
Hunter was meditative, absorbing her words. “I find it hard to imagine you being horrible to anyone.”
“I was. It was hard on her, losing papa and dealing with the pregnancy. She was ever so ill the first few months. I could have helped her out more, but I didn’t. I was spiteful and selfish.”
“You were hurting,” Hunter corrected her gently. “The man who raised you threw you and your mother away. No one would be thinking straight after that, not for a time at least. No matter how you act, a mother’s love never fades, not completely. No matter how you behaved towards her, your love for her never lessened. She would have known that.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
“You can’t.”
“I do,” Hunter argued. “And the fact that you now feel guilty about everything and wish to make it up to her tells me that you were just reacting to the situation. Your actions were not malicious. That speaks volumes.”
“It does?”
“Yes. So I suggest that you relax a bit.”
“Words of wisdom?”
“An order.”
Nessa shifted, just a little, and looked up at Hunter, finding him gazing down at her. “I am a horrible person though.”
Those amber eyes of his met hers. “What makes you say that?”
A week. That’s how long they had known each other, and it was a week that had made everything start to change. The lines that had been so defined to her had now become blurred. Nessa wasn’t sure where she stood anymore. Did she listen to her heart or her head?
“Because,” she murmured, “for all the wanting of making things right between me and mum, a growing part of me wants to stay here a little longer.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
And then it just happened.
Nessa wasn’t quite sure how. One second they were staring into each other’s eyes, and the next, Hunter’s lips were pressed against hers, warm and soft. Was he the one to move first? Was it her? In any event, she found herself not wanting it to stop, and her heart began to jump in a skittering dance.
Quite suddenly, Hunter pulled back, looking just as surprised as Nessa felt.
“I didn’t...” he whispered.
Someone cleared their throat and whatever Hunter was about to say was abruptly forgotten as they turned to the source. Nessa was mortified to discover that Orm had poked his head around the curtain doorway and was staring at them, smirking.
“Well well well,” he said. “What do we have here?”
Nessa’s cheeks burned red, and she realised that Hunter had an arm around her waist, tucking her up against him. How had that happened without her noticing? She scooted back, and Hunter’s arm slid away.
“What?” Hunter demanded, glaring at his friend, flustered.
Orm gave them an owl-like blink, slow and knowing. “We’re needed downstairs.”
“Why?”
“There’s trouble.” Orm retreated, his footsteps sounding on the rickety stairs.
Hunter gave a long suffering sigh. “I di―”
Nessa hopped off the bed and began tugging on her boots. “We should go down and see what that’s about.”
“Right.” Hunter coughed. “Of course.” He rose and went over to the door. “I’ll... umm... Just go down, then?”
Nessa nodded as she tied the laces. “Sure. Yeah. I’ll be down in a sec.” She couldn’t bring herself to look at him just yet, not with her lips still tingling.
“Right,” he said, leaving, slowly making his way downstairs.
With him gone, Nessa breathed a small sigh of relief. What the hell am I doing? she wondered. Did that actually happen?
Yes, yes it had. Her heart fluttered in her chest as confirmation. She pressed her hands against her cheeks, feeling them burn against her cool palms. Damn it, Nessa. What do you think you’re playing at?
It was a momentary lapse of judgement, surely?
Right.
That’s what Nessa told herself. It was nothing more than a momentary lapse of judgement. Reciting that in her head, Nessa squared her shoulders, ordered her cheeks to stop being so damn pink, bundled Aoife in the messenger bag, and went to join the others.
In Orm’s shop, she found him and Hunter there, and even more worryingly, Chaos as well.
Chaos was the younger, more monstrous version of himself. His glacial blue eyes landed on her as she moved over to them, the scars deepening and looking even more ghastly, if that was at all possible. His horrifying batwings were tucked neatly against his back, the talons peeking above his shoulders, and his face was grave.
“They are here,” Chaos said. “They have come for you.”
A shock wave ran through the shop. None of them were able to fully digest the news. Instinctively, Nessa’s hand went to her bag, resting on Aoife. Shadow’s promise of returning for her echoed in her mind.
“Who has come?” she found herself asking, hoping, praying that she was wrong.
She wasn’t. It was worse.
“Margan and Shadow,”
It was like being punched in the chest. “Both of them?”
Chaos inclined his head. “And their beasts.”
“Beasts?”
“Their dragons,” Hunter muttered, troubled.
“Dragons,” Nessa repeated. “They have dragons. They’re Dragon Riders?”
Nods all round.
“Both of them?” Nessa was horrified. “That’s not possible, is it?”
“It is,” Orm said. “They are both Riders, and have been for many years. They are the Riders for House Sliðen and House Īren. Their dragons are mature and powerful. You are no match for them. We are no match for them. At least not yet.”
The revelation slowly filtered in, and Nessa recalled her first meeting with Margan, when he had pulled her through the mirror. His hand, which had since been bandaged, had born a mark. A scar, Nessa realised, which was not dissimilar to her own. Shadow; she had seen his, although it had been twisted and stretched. She hadn’t yet put all the pieces together, but it began making some sense to her.
“What do we do?” Nessa asked, panicked, searching for an answer.
Orm sighed, running a hand over his head in thought. “We need to go.”
“Go where?”
“Away from here,” he said, coming to some kind of decision. “We need to get as far away as we can from Margan and Shadow. Then we’ll decide what to do next.”
“We’re all going?” Nessa was surprised. “As in you and Chaos?” Both of them nodded, although Chaos looked less than pleased at the prospect.
“We can’t very well have you and Hunter gallivanting off by yourselves, now, can we?” Orm said. “You two clearly need chaperones.”
Nessa’s mouth fell open and she went bright red. Hunter shot his friend a warning glare, which was promptly ignored.
“We need to hurry,” Chaos growled. “They are nearing the city.”
“Which way are they coming from?” Hunter asked.
Chaos turned his head to the side, as if he was listening to something from a great distance. “The southern entrance.”
“We’ll leave through the northern tunnels,” Orm said.
“That way is like a maze.” Hunter frowned. “We can’t risk getting lost.”
“We won’t get lost,” Orm sighed. “I know that way like the back of my hand. And anyway, it will be nigh on impossible for them to follow us if we go that way. Their dragons won’t fit through the tunnels. If they want to follow us, they’ll have to do so on foot. In which case, they risk getting lost, giving us extra time to leg it.”
Hunter nodded his head in approval. “Sounds like a good plan when you put it like that.”
“I’m so glad,” Orm said dryly.
Hunter scowled.
“Stop bickering,” Chaos snapped. “They have arrived at the cave’s entrance. They will be upon us soon.”
>
“Oh no,” Nessa whispered. Her worst nightmare was becoming real. Shadow without a dragon would have been bad enough, but Margan and two dragons coming to retrieve her as well? The thought of them getting their hands on her made Nessa’s blood turn to ice.
“Come,” Orm said as he strode over to the front door. He held it open and ushered them out, locking it behind him. “I bloody expect it to be in pristine condition when I return,” he muttered as he pocketed the key. “I’ve paid next month’s rent in advance.”
“Pristine condition?” Hunter mocked as they set off. “Are you expecting someone to come and clean up while you’re away?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The place is a mess.”
“It’s a shop,” Orm argued. “It’s meant to be filled with things.”
“You’re a hoarder and use the shop as a front for your bad habit.”
“Lies. Malicious lies.”
The banter came to an abrupt end when they entered the main cavern. It was bedlam, a city in alarm and confusion. Thousands of people rushed to-and-fro, arms filled with belongings, panic on their faces. The city was being evacuated with no clear order, and instantly Nessa and her companions were swept away with the wave of people. They didn’t fight against it, and just went with the flow.
Orm, with his impressive height, towering above most people by at least a head, led the way, cutting through the crowds with ease. Chaos helped too, since people endeavoured to stay as far away from him as possible once they caught a glimpse of his scarred eyes and huge bat-like wings. Orm took them along the cave’s wall, heading, Nessa presumed, northward.
They were quick in reaching the far end of the cave, and looming before them was a dark fissure that stood like a gaping mouth in the stone. A handful of people disappeared into it, but other than that, no one ventured near, preferring to leave via a couple of larger tunnels opposite in a mass flood.
They had just reached it when Chaos raised a hand, gesturing for them to stop. They skidded to a halt, hardly daring to breathe. Then they noticed it.
The earth beneath their feet trembled.
Gently at first, but with growing strength. Soon loose rocks began to rattle and the stalactites above shuddered.
House of Fear and Freedom (The Wyrd Sequence Book 1) Page 31
