14. BAEL

14

BAEL

THE GROUNDS OF THE OBSIDIAN PALACE, EVERLAST CITY

T he monster in my head smelled blood.

The angry crowd pressed in around us, screaming curses and smashing their bodies against the semi-solid barrier that Scion had erected around us.

Over the heads of the mob, my gaze locked on Idris's manic smiling face. An involuntary growl escaped my lips, and I wrestled with myself, trying to hold the lion at bay.

I gripped Lonnie's hand so hard I was sure I was hurting her, but I couldn't force myself to let go. Instinct had taken over, and some irrational part of my mind screamed at me that if I let her go now we'd never see each other again.

"Bael!" Scion barked. "What are you waiting for? Fucking kill them."

I shook my head, struggling to focus on my cousin when the blood rushing in my ears had turned deafening. I knew what he wanted from me. I knew I should have acted immediately, but I was afraid that if I did, my body might give out.

I'd been spending increasingly more time sleeping or in my other form, trying to conserve what little energy I had, and using magic of this magnitude would undo any progress I'd made.

The answer was: I couldn't explain that. Possibly ever, but certainly not now.

Bracing myself, I gripped Lonnie's fingers tighter, and raised my free hand toward the crowd.

A different sort of tremor traveled through me, pulling power from the depths of my center. I gritted my teeth, and the closest row of angry courtiers fell. Those who had been pushing hardest against Scion's smoke screen, simply crumbled. They disintegrated on the spot, so far gone that even immortality couldn't protect them.

Lonnie gasped in horror, her hand flying to her mouth. "Stop!" she demanded.

I didn't stop.

As I knew and feared would happen, the moment I started I was unable to pull myself back from the edge of reason. Unable to fight the monster in the back of my mind who wanted to tear into the crowd, leaving no survivors behind.

"There are hundreds of them," Lonnie screamed. "You can't just?—"

I growled, cutting her off. I didn't want to be told that I couldn't kill them all. I could—I wanted to, even. The mob continued to surge and I destroyed the next row of courtiers. The irony wasn't lost on me that this darkness, this love of violence, was exactly what I'd just been accused of.

"Stop!" Ambrose barked, echoing Lonnie but with a much more commanding tone." If you kill them all it only proves that fucking bastard correct."

I came back into myself long enough to glare at him.

Ambrose had no right to comment on the morality of killing hundreds of people. None of us did. That was the one thing that Idris had gotten right—we were all murderers, but I didn't truly care anymore. They were threatening Lonnie, and for her I'd flatten the entire city if I had to.

"We have to go, now," Ambrose ordered.

"I'm not going fucking anywhere," Scion spat. "I'm going to tear that fucker limb from limb with my bare hands."

I growled in agreement. There were clearly two opposing opinions within our small group, both grappling for dominance. Scion and I would gladly kill first, and ask questions never, whereas Lonnie had found an ally in Ambrose, both of them fighting for nuance.

"No. We have to find the healer," Ambrose yelled nonsensically.

"What fucking healer?" Scion roared over the noise of the swarming mob. "I'm not going to?—"

He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence. In that second, Ambrose clearly decided he'd had enough.

He dropped his sword, evidently realizing he needed his hands free, and instead grabbed Lonnie's arm with one hand and Scion's shoulder with the other. As I was still clinging to Lonnie, I felt my stomach lurch forward, and then we were falling through compressed darkness.

In seconds, my knees crashed into hard stone. I tipped forward, entirely disoriented. My palms fell flat against the ground, and I panted, a wave of nausea washed over me and I choked, trying not to vomit.

It had been years since I'd been sick from shadow walking. The nausea and confusion lessened the more accustomed one was to traveling that way, and I'd been flitting in and out of the darkness longer than I could remember.

Squeezing my eyes shut for a moment to ward off the nausea, I sat up and looked around.

Where the fuck were we?

As I'd already known it would be, the clearing in the forest had disappeared. We'd left the mob and the remnants of the destroyed tents behind, and were now crouching in the middle of what looked to be a deserted road.

I looked around anxiously for Lonnie, and found her kneeling several feet to my left, her head in her hands. I couldn't tell if she was ill from the sudden travel, or holding back tears.

Likely both, I supposed.

Clearly thinking along the same lines as I was, Scion's angry shout echoed my thoughts. "What the fuck! Where did you take us?"

He'd gotten to his feet—evidently not as affected as I felt—and was marching toward Ambrose. Ambrose also stood, looking slightly pained. As I watched, he wiped a bead of sweat from his hairline with the back of his hand, before he schooled his expression to one of blank indifference.

"I would have thought you'd recognize shadow walking," he snapped at Scion.

"Don't give me that shit," Scion growled. "How did you do that? I've never heard of anyone bringing three others with them through the shadows at once."

"I'd rather not discuss it now," Ambrose said flatly. "We haven't traveled very far. We need to keep moving."

I got to my feet, my nausea finally subsiding enough to move. "You want us to run, you mean?" I barked angrily. "We don't run. Other people run from us."

"Which is exactly the problem," Ambrose said, his tone maddeningly calm and cryptic.

"So you're just expecting us to let that fucker go?" Scion yelled.

"For now, yes." Ambrose turned his back on us, walking a few paces down the road as if he could somehow trick us into following him. "Believe me, I know far better than you how this will all work out."

"Enlighten us, then" Scion yelled after him. "Your powers are working again? Fine. But we're not going to just follow blindly. You're not Celia, we don't take orders from you without even knowing why."

Lonnie got to her feet. "Perhaps we should wait to have this discussion until we're not in the middle of the damn road."

All three of us stopped and turned to look at her. Guilt washed over me. She was supposed to be our first priority always, and yet Ambrose's sheer presence had shoved such a deep wedge in the dynamic Scion and I had spent years cultivating that we were all but ignoring her.

"Are you alright, little monster?" I asked automatically, darting forward to steady her. I clasped her face in both palms and scanned my gaze over her, checking for injuries.

"Not particularly." She smiled weakly. "But I'm not hurt, if that's what you mean."

I nodded. Indeed, she looked shaken, but unhurt. Her face seemed pale, and her hair was a tangled nest, though that could hardly be considered unusual. I let her go, and she took a few steps in the same direction that Ambrose had gone.

Within seconds, she stopped and bent down. Her hands shaking, she tore several feet off the bottom of her long flowing skirt, tying the excess fabric around her waist like a belt.

"Where are you going?" Scion demanded, jogging after her. "We don't even know where the fuck we are."

"We're barely a mile from the castle," she said, the surety clear in her tone. "I used to walk this road nearly everyday. Look:" She turned around and pointed over our heads.

Behind us, the tall dark spires of the obsidian castle rose against the dark sky, only illuminated by the reflection of the moon on the mirrored stone. From here, I couldn't hear any sounds of battle, or see any obvious signs of unrest. We were barely a mile away, and yet it felt almost as if we were in another world entirely.

"Come on," Lonnie said again. "We should keep moving. You're all loud enough to wake the dead, and the last thing we want is for anyone in this neighborhood to recognize us. Believe me, they won't be welcoming. We may as well have stuck with that mob in the clearing for all the difference it will make."

If anyone but her had suggested it, I was sure we'd all stand here arguing indefinitely. Instead, we followed her lead.

As we walked, I too recognized our surroundings. I'd never spent much time in Cheapside–the human village on the outskirts of the capital–but I'd been here enough that it was familiar.

"Why would you bring us here," Lonnie asked, turning her head to address Ambrose.

"I'm not entirely sure," he told her. "It was the first place that appeared in my mind, and past experience has taught me that the first place I can think of is usually where I'm supposed to be."

Scion coughed, muttering something under his breath. "Fucking condescending prick."

Ambrose ignored him, and we were silent for a beat, darting toward the center of the village. In a way, moving felt good. Like we had a purpose, even if we weren't going anywhere except away from whence we'd come.

Our feet echoed against the worn cobblestone streets as we made our way deeper into the heart of the city. The grand buildings that once lined the main roads were now replaced with smaller, shabbier homes crowded together. Each building's exterior was marked with years of wear and tear, giving them a weathered and neglected appearance. Some were even abandoned, their broken windows and doors hanging off their hinges.

"Before when you said we needed to find a healer, were you serious?" Lonnie asked Ambrose.

He cocked his head at her. "Very."

"Good. Then I know where to look."

I watched them in confusion, clearly having missed something. "What healer?" I hissed, leaning toward Scion. "What did he see?"

Scion just shook his head looking mutinous.

We carried on, deeper and deeper into the city. As we walked, my head began to pound in time with my footsteps. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the pain to subside.

The first time one of these short stabbing headaches had hit me was in Inbetwixt, after I left the battle at the pier and found Lonnie and Scion still alive.

The pain had hit me out of nowhere, so intense it almost knocked me off my feet. It had been throbbing in my head the whole time we looked for the inn, during that ridiculous interaction with the bartender, and finally hit its peak later that night.

In the morning, however, I'd awoken to find Lonnie missing and I forgot all about the pain in my head.

That was, until it returned with a vengeance.

After the fight with my father, the headaches struck again, this time accompanied by extreme nausea and fatigue. Deep down, I knew something was wrong, but I refused to dwell on it. Instead, I gritted my teeth against the pain, and forced myself to focus on the road in front of me.

To my slight surprise and admiration, Lonnie really did seem to know her way around this city. She led us straight down winding street after winding street, managing to stay in the shadows. We hardly passed anyone as we walked, and the few we did pass were either drunks, swaying on tavern steps, or else averted their eyes the moment they saw us, minding their own business with an almost fanatical precision.

Finally, Lonnie stopped in front of a shabby stone cottage.

"There's only one healer in this city worth a damn," she muttered. "It's been almost two years since I've seen her, but I'd be surprised if she doesn't still live here. Ciara has been here longer than I've been alive."

Ambrose nodded sagely. "Let's go inside."

"Don't you want to tell us what we're doing here?" Scion snapped, clearly unable to hold in his frustration any longer.

"I will once we get inside," Ambrose promised. "Assuming this is the right place. I'll have to see it to know for sure."

I raised an eyebrow, and felt my respect for Ambrose rise ever so slightly. Grandmother Celia had never been willing to explain her visions, no matter how many times we asked. If Ambrose was willing to share even a hint of what he was planning, that was a vast improvement.

"Stand back," Lonnie whispered. "Let me knock."

I heard her breath catch as she stepped up the worn wooden door and knocked three times. The voices inside stopped, and then the sound of footsteps clattered across the floor and the door flew open and a pinched-face human woman stuck her head outside. "We're closed!"

The beam of light from the door crossed the dark street, illuminating Lonnie's red hair like a flaming halo. I watched her back stiffen as she looked up at the woman in the doorway. "Oh, shit," she muttered, seemingly without meaning to.

The woman's face contorted with disgust as she looked down at Lonnie on the doorstep. "You!"

"Yes," Lonnie said resignedly. "Hello. I'd say it was nice to see you again, but I'd really rather not lie."

I almost laughed. I knew Lonnie was serious—she didn't want to lie and scald her throat—but as one might expect the strange woman took her words as an insult.

Her look of contempt morphed into one of anger. "What are you doing here? Coming to spread your curse even wider? Drawing the attention of the fae to good, hard-working people unlike yourself."

"I don't have time for this." Lonnie snapped. "Is Ciara here?"

"No!" the woman spat, trying to close the door in Lonnie's face.

"She's lying," Ambrose said passively.

The woman looked over Lonnie's head, seeming to notice for the first time that she wasn't alone. I watched the realization and then terror dawn in her eyes as she looked from Ambrose to Scion to me in turn. She went as white as a sheet, and promptly fled back into the house, leaving the door hanging wide open. The sound of another door opening and slamming shut followed, as if the woman had fled out a back door.

"I wish I could say that was surprising," Lonnie sighed. "But that woman has always hated me."

"Why?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"Because she draws too much damn attention," Another strange voice replied.

My eyes snapped back to the door. For a moment, I thought there was no one there, but then I saw the shadow. The tiniest woman I'd ever seen stood in the doorway. She was so short, she was nearly completely obscured by Lonnie standing in front of her. Still, her size didn't stop her from glaring at us with wintery disapproval.

"Hello, Ciara," Lonnie said, sounding like she was trying to hide a smile. "It's good to see you again."

The woman gave Lonnie a long searching look, then sighed, turning back around and heading into the depths of her house. "You're later than I expected," she called. "I assume you've come for the book?"