Synergist

by Chloe Adler

  “Amaya?” Sabin calls out.

  I stop. “Sabin?”

  “Keep singing, please.”

  I do as he asks and continue to descend the last flight of stairs into a large room. Candy’s hair illuminates a wall ahead of me, where Sabin is shackled at his neck, wrists and ankles. Sabin, the man. The corporeal man.

  “I’m so sorry,” he sobs.

  “For what?” I place Candy’s hair on the floor before running to his side. I try and pry open the shackle at his neck, then one of his hands. They don’t budge.

  The frigid cold of the blob above, of Azotar, creeps up my legs and wraps around my torso with its blackened, smoky fingers.

  “Sabin is mine.” Azotar’s voice is thick, like it’s speaking around a mouth full of marbles. “Brought you here, to me, so the king can never return.”

  His voice starts siphoning air from my lungs, the same deadly chill leeching into my bones again.

  “Keep singing!” Sabin calls out from the wall.

  Azotar laughs, a hollow sound that pings off the walls over and over again. “You can’t save yourself.”

  But I do as Sabin instructs. I’ve nothing to lose. I can barely force air from my lungs but I use the tiny bit that remains to push out another verse of the song. And when I do, the rheos shift and warm. I’m able to take in another breath, and Candy’s hair brightens on the heavy metal floor, melting, sharpening, reforming into a blade.

  I use the new breath in my lungs to push out another verse, louder this time. Azotar’s smoke fingers retreat enough for another breath. Another verse. The farther he retreats, the more I’m able to sing until I’m toasty-warm again and he’s melted back into the walls, apparently gone.

  “Quick, get out of here!” Sabin cries. “Save Harlesque and yourself!”

  In his corporeal form, he is indeed a beautiful young man, with skin the color of moonlight and yellow eyes as bright as the sun. His hair shines like Candy’s, silvery tresses pouring past his shoulders. “I’m not leaving without you.”

  “But I don’t deserve to live. I’m the one who led you here. To him.”

  “What? Why?” I inch toward him, snagging Candy’s hair as I do and holding it in front of me.

  “Harlesque. For years I’ve followed her. Azotar promised to make me corporeal so I would have a chance, so maybe she would love me in return.”

  I hold the hardened hair blade out, pointing it at his face. The temptation to leave him here to rot is difficult to ignore. But I understand his motivation. Even though my brain says I want nothing to do with Vasily, Bodhi, Arch, Forrest and Cedar, I can’t turn my heart off. I can’t turn away, especially from Vasily.

  I shake my head to clear it. Regardless, if they did imprison Candy, they have no chance with me. And Candy deserves a chance at happiness. Maybe Sabin is the man for her. He threw me under the bus, but now, at least, he’s willing to give his life for the woman he loves.

  “Kill me. I deserve to die for what I’ve done.” Sabin closes his eyes. “Tell Harlesque that I have always loved her and that I always will. Please take care of her.”

  “Open your eyes.”

  As soon as he does, I slash at his neck with the knife. He winces, but the knife just slashes through the shackle around his neck. He gasps with relief. With my other hand, I grab his silver hair and saw it off at the nape of his neck. He lets me, doing nothing. When I’m done I slash off one of his wrist shackles and turn my back to him, picking up the song where I left off, singing my heart out to keep the monsters at bay.

  He gasps. “Your voice, it’s so beautiful.”

  I mount the stairs, still singing, Sabin on my heels.

  Together, we pry open the hatch.

  “Sabin!” Candy cries out.

  “Help us out.” I stretch up my arm and Candy tries to yank me up, but she’s not strong enough.

  “I can’t.” She’s straining hard, her face contorted in the low light of my blade.

  “Here.” Sabin crouches, then leaps up and out of the hole. He lies on his stomach and reaches down for my hand.

  I’m reaching up to clasp his hand when the ice-cold finger of Azotar grabs me by my waist and drags me down the spiral staircase.

  “No!” Candy screams into the darkness as Azotar spirits me away in a blur of speed.

  “Your voice!” Sabin calls down, a whisper, but it’s enough.

  I sing again with all my heart, belting out the song from my youth—nonsense rhymes and silly verses about a fairy princess who slays a dragon. When Azotar’s grip loosens just a tiny bit, I pray gravity is on my side for once and I jump. I jump as high and as hard as I can, sailing up through the center of the staircase, like a cannonball. The cold fingers of Azotar follow me up but as soon as I fly past the opening in the grate, into the room with my friends, Candy and Sabin haul the grate shut. The fachan can move through walls, so I don’t stop singing.

  Japheth, Candy and Sabin are standing, facing me, fear twisting their faces. So much for relying on them to get us out of here. The chamber’s wall begins to move again, flowing like mercury, shrinking the room’s diameter. I slip off one of my pink Converse tennis shoes and hold it out to touch the encroaching wall. The shoe gets sucked in. Completely into the wall. Gone. Fuckshit, I loved those shoes.

  Well, if my shoe went through the wall, then maybe we can too.

  “Candy, Sabin, on Japheth now.”

  Sabin leaps up and reaches down to help Candy, setting her in front of him.

  A hissing emanates from the wall, and one of Azotar’s blackened fingers snakes out toward us.

  I hurl myself precariously onto Japheth’s rump, then scramble on until I’m facing backward. I lean forward to hold onto his tail. “Japheth, go, through the wall. Now!”

  I twist my head around as Japheth leaps for the wall. What the hell was I thinking? A long black tendril shoots out from the wall behind us straight for my face. I hold my breath, bracing myself for impact, but we pass right through the wall and out into a bright, sunny day. The tendril doesn’t follow.

  Japheth’s wings sprout from his back, and in a moment we’re soaring through the air, back toward the dense forest of Calixto. I swivel around on the abada’s rump and clutch at Sabin to keep from falling.

  I press my lips to his ear to be heard over the roar of the air. “Can you get us back to Earth?”

  He nods.

  I lean to the side to eye Candy, but she’s gone.

  “Where’s Candy?” I scream.

  Sabin shakes his head and turns toward me. “Vanished as soon as we passed through the wall.”

  “Vanished where?” Bile rises in my throat.

  “Back to Earth, I hope.”

  “But why? How?”

  “She’s bound to the king.” He says it like that explains everything. Which it most certainly does not.

  “Then how did she come here with me in the first place?”

  “Could be several reasons. When you two first traveled here together were you physically joined?”

  “Yes but . . .”

  “Because you’re a synergist, you should have brought the king back over, but since you were physically connected to Harlesque, she came with you instead. She acted like a surrogate for the king and since Tara is her natural birthplace, I’m assuming that’s why she stayed here.”

  “What about after I returned to Earth?”

  “When you returned, she was imprisoned in the fachan’s lair.”

  “So?”

  “Physics works differently inside the monolith.” He shrugs. “I’m not saying I have all the answers. These are educated guesses.”

  “Fair enough, that may be all we have right now. Well then, here’s a question you can answer without guessing . . . why won’t Vasily set her free?”

  Sabin’s chest rises and falls beneath my hands. “Japheth, we can walk from here.”

  The abada touches down on the moonscape, and I scoot back so Sabin can dismount. He brings his kne
es up to his chest and jumps, pirouetting midair to land back on Japheth, facing me.

  “The laws here are different, Amaya. As a child, Harlesque stole something from the prince. As the prince regent, he above all others couldn’t disobey the laws of the land, of his father, the king before him. He had two choices: kill her or enslave her. He chose the kinder option.”

  “Really?” I cross my arms over my chest.

  “There’s a way to set her free. I’m the one who told the king of it. It’s why he brought her to Earth.”

  “And that would be?”

  “If someone outside of Tara falls in love with her and she with them—a true love, boundless in form and completely mutual—then her enslavement will end. But this person has to be on Earth, she has to be on Earth, so he can take her as his wife and take her bond from the king in so doing.”

  Well isn’t that just peachy. “So basically she gets traded to a new master?”

  Sabin’s jaw tightens. “Not traded. Loved. Respected. Honored. Freed.”

  “And where do you fit in?”

  “If I could be that man, marry her on Earth, we’d both be free.”

  “Does she know about this loophole?”

  He nods, looking away.

  So that’s why she was coming on to the brothers so hot and heavy. God, and I was such a jealous bitch about it when she was just trying to get out the only way she knew how.

  Between one breath and the next, the tree line appears. Japheth crosses from the moonscape back into the forested canopy of Calixto, and we dismount. The rheos scatter, flying into the trees, where I lose sight of them. “Thank you!” I cry after them.

  Zuri flies down from the treetops, tittering. “You made it back. Where’s Harlesque?” She buzzes around my face, landing on my shoulder. “You left her with the fachan?” She glares at me, her face reddening, and for a second I think she may bite me.

  “No,” Sabin intervenes. “She was with us until we left the craft. She must have been sucked back to Earth.”

  “Is the king here?” Zuri asks.

  I shake my head.

  “So how was Harlesque here without him?”

  “It has something to do with Amaya.” Sabin leans against Japheth.

  “Did you get rid of Azotar?” asks Zuri.

  “Not yet.” I sigh. “I’m not even sure how we escaped it, exactly. It was inches from grabbing me again, but it gave up the chase once we hit air.”

  “The fachan is confined to its craft,” Sabin says. “It cannot walk freely in Tara.”

  “But how the hell can it cause all of this destruction if it’s locked in that monolith?”

  Zuri rolls her eyes at me. “I told you that already, its gets others to do its bidding.”

  “Like me.” Sabin’s voice is soft—hopefully too soft for Zuri to hear.

  Zuri narrows her eyes at him. “Who are you?”

  “Never mind.” I grab Sabin by the arm. “He was imprisoned too.”

  Something zooms into my blind spot, and a moment before I can swat it, Paxil’s familiar voice rings out. “Don’t you dare!”

  Zuri glares at him but Paxil lands on my shoulder anyway.

  “You’re the human who almost killed my son?” Zuri swivels her glare toward me.

  “It was an accident. And I had no idea you were Paxil’s mom.”

  He laughs melodically in my ear. “Good to see you again, and thank you for saving the king’s niece.”

  “The king’s niece?” I look at Sabin, who rubs his face with his hands.

  “Did you also banish Azotar?” Paxil asks.

  “He’s still in his craft,” says Sabin. “We should get back to Earth now.”

  “And leave us here with the monster?” Zuri is practically apoplectic now. “So the point of all this was to continue letting us live under its tyranny of chaos?”

  “We’ll come back, with the king. We’ll fix this.” If it comes out as a whine, well, it’s been a hell of a day for days now.

  “How and when?” demands Zuri. “And who the hell are you?” she asks Sabin again.

  “He’s with me.” I narrow my eyes, giving Sabin my best get us the hell out of here look. He wraps an arm around my waist and vaults us onto Japheth’s back, tumbling an aggrieved Paxil off my shoulder in the process. Sabin leans down and whispers something into the abada’s ear.

  “Where are you—”

  “We’ll be back, I promise!” I call out as Japheth’s wings flare and he catapults us up through the trees and into the cloudless sky.

  “Great. Now what?” I clutch tightly to Sabin’s back.

  “I can take us back, as long as I’m with you, but why don’t you stretch that muscle yourself? You can do it on your own.”

  “How?”

  He shakes his head. “The same way I brought us to Earth in the first place and then back here. Intention. Visualization solidifies it, makes it real. I peeked into your memories, borrowed a few to take you back to your house. To get back to Tara, I pictured us here, imagining everything I could remember down to the finest detail.

  The mist and magic of Calixto. Trees stretching toward the sky, creating a canopy of bright green fronds dotted with bustling fae. The beauty of Harlesque’s smile when she thinks no one’s watching. The fragrances of lilacs, alfalfa and birch. I let the scents of the meadow and forest wash over me. I grasped onto the tug of the wind, interlacing its fingers with mine. I smelled the fragrant rose of Harl’s skin. My love brought me to her. Maybe with your love for the King and mine for her, we can both . . .”

  Finders, Keepers

  “What the—” Sabin’s voice chokes off, torn from his throat and replaced with a scream. A long and loud one. My own voice joins his as searing pain, red and hot, shoots through my body. I let go but he’s holding onto me and we tumble down together to land with a thud on the floor of my bedroom at the mansion.

  “You did it!” Sabin rolls off me.

  I sit up and look around, half expecting to see Japheth and relieved when I don’t.

  The door to the room creaks open and a head peeks inside.

  “Amaya?” Arch’s voice lightens my heart and I bound toward him, but before I can throw my arms around him, he pushes me behind him and faces Sabin.

  “Who the hell are you?” he growls.

  Sabin throws his hands into the air. “Arch, it’s me.”

  Arch doesn’t wait for Sabin to finish, though. He rushes at the sylph and punches him hard in the face, knocking him to the floor.

  “Arch, get off of him, that’s Sabin.”

  “Sabin the deceiver.” Punch. “Sabin the traitor.” Punch. “Sabin the—”

  I leap forward and grab Arch’s upraised arm. “Stop!”

  Sabin’s not even covering his face, his nose fountaining blood. “I deserve it.”

  The door flies open again and the rest of the men enter, Candy in tow. “Arch, leave him alone!”

  Arch shrugs me off gently, then shakes his head. Candy rushes to Sabin and throws her arms around him.

  “Amaya!” Vasily stands in the doorway, his eyes bright with some strong emotion, his body straining toward me, mine leaning toward him in return. But in the next moment, he freezes in place, then packs it all away again, his face closing up like the sun retreating behind a cloud. “Welcome home. May I speak with you?”

  He looks amazing in his tight leather jodhpurs and boots. Did he leap off of Sequoia at the news of our return? I step toward him, hesitant at first. As I pass Bodhi, I give him a squeeze. He holds me tightly for a moment and kisses my cheek. Letting him go, I reach for Forrest next and bury my face in his shoulder. Cedar grasps my hand and kisses the back of it as soon as Forrest lets me go. “I missed you guys.”

  Vasily steps aside from the doorway, gestures me through it ahead of him. I leave the others behind and step out into the hallway. He stops for a moment, staring down at his boots as if debating something of great importance in his head. It’s all I can do not to leap
into his arms too, but waves of discomfort pour off him, keeping me at arm’s length. And I can’t blame him. Things didn’t exactly go well the last time we were in each other’s presence. But now that he’s here, right here in front of me, after everything that’s happened, I don’t know whether to kiss him senseless or kick him in the balls.

  After one awkward minute slips into the next, he finally offers me his hand. I hesitate, then grasp it.

  The king leads me down the hallway, back toward the atrium, down the stairs and up a flight of stairs across from mine, where the upstairs balcony doesn’t connect. It’s the first time I’ve been in the men’s wing. He leads me toward the back of the mansion, silent the entire way.

  We reach a large sitting room similar to the one outside my bedroom but easily twice its size. Instead of white, the furniture in the men’s wing is all black. A few game tables complete the setup, bumper pool and foosball. The king plays foosball? But no, this is the warlocks’ mansion, not Vasily’s. Them I can imagine playing foosball.

  He leads me to one of the couches and motions for me to sit. He drops down next to me, leaning against the armrest to face me.

  “Amaya. I wish you’d let me explain about Candy.”

  I shake my head. “Sabin told me. I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions without hearing the full story.” And I really am. It’s not a nice story—what passes for fairy justice is not okay—but Vasily isn’t the heartless slaver I assumed him to be.

  “Thank you for saving her.” His eyes, dark and intense, hold my gaze, his lashes long and thick.

  My eyes creep down to his mouth, the dark ripeness of berries that suddenly I want to taste.

  “If I’d lost you . . .” He looks away.

  “What do you mean?”