19. Nineteen

nineteen

I plunged into an endless black, shadows and night streaming past me. There was no concept of up or down, making it impossible to get my bearings.

Strangely, I felt calm. The panic that should have been present in a fall through eternal night was absent. Peace and tranquility the only things that remained.

“Where am I?”

The words were hushed and muted against the vast, echoing silence. Like something heard underwater. A little indistinct. A faint bit garbled.

It was cold. A chill so extreme, my body had long since gone numb. Everything felt deadened. My nose, my feet, my hands. They were like rubber. There, but useless.

If I’d been human, I’d have to worry about frost bite.

“Is this his darkness?” I asked myself, staring around me in curiosity.

There was something about this place that made me think that was the case. Similar to the shadows Brin had used to pull us into Noctessa, but different.

Then there was what he’d said right before.

I had to “escape him .”

Given my situation, it was the only explanation that made sense.

At least this wasn’t likely to kill me.

I hoped.

That was the thing about ancients like him. They didn’t always have a good grasp on the fragility of the beings surrounding them. Something he considered easily survivable might annihilate a baby vampire like me.

It was the risk you took when you hung out with creatures as old as dirt.

I fell into a trance watching the shadows and darkness surge past me. Streamers that reminded me of black clouds parted around my body like vapor.

In the vast depths beyond, there were flickers of color. Quick flashes like the explosion of fireworks. As fleeting as them too.

Somehow, I found myself instinctively slipping into my other sight.

The colors that I’d only caught glimpses of bloomed into vivid detail. Their magnificence holding me spellbound.

Magic. Primal and ancient. That’s what I was seeing.

“Amazing,” I whispered.

Who would have thought the void hid such beauty?

Entranced, I stretched out a hand to touch a red strand of magic. It twitched and swayed, almost dancing as it floated closer. Like a pet eager for attention.

That thought made me hesitate. The realization that I had no frame of reference for what hid in the darkness was a sobering one. There were no Fae that were considered harmless. Even their smallest came with teeth and claws. Their affinity for mischief so well known that even humans had cautionary stories about how not to fall afoul of them.

The strand of red took the decision out of my hands a second later, nudging my fingers once and then more insistently.

Taking a chance, I grabbed hold. Pain blazed through me, freezing cold swept up my arm followed by a flood of scalding heat.

My fingers and hands prickled to life. Nerve endings woken from their deep sleep.

I screamed, the sound lost in the vastness.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

It hurt.

Like being set on fire.

I struggled to stay conscious. The floaty, detached feeling that usually heralded a trip to la la land encroaching.

To make things worse, the rest of the colors crowded close.

“Go away!” I shouted.

Again the sound was swallowed by the void, disappearing like a pebble tossed into a lake. Barely creating a ripple.

I thrashed as the aurora of colors infringed on my space. They drifted closer still. Bare millimeters separating us.

At my wit’s end, I screamed, “Alches!”

Why, I don’t know. He’d made no move to prevent Brin from tossing me in here. Even if he came, there was every chance that he might not intervene. He might simply decide to leave me to my own devices. A growth opportunity, as my grandfather had put it.

Still, in that moment, his name was the only one I could think of.

The darkness moved. An impression of wings spreading wide before a shape contorted into something else. Its appearance changed again. Then a third time.

“You’re not Alches, are you?” I guessed with a sinking feeling.

This was something else. Something that regarded me with detached curiosity.

I kept my eyes trained on the entity, instinct whispering that I was in danger. A splotch of ocher lurched forward, twining around my leg like a cat.

A pained noise whistled through my teeth. The only sound I let escape.

Agony lanced my shoulder a second later. The blue magic that was the source of the sensation twisted to face me.

Its appearance acted like an invitation. The colors converged on me.

I gritted my teeth against the pain, curling in on myself and hunkering down.

The entity simply watched as the colors took turns zapping me. I rode the waves of pain. It wasn’t until my throat was raw that I realized I’d started screaming at some point.

Through the haze, I became aware of a pattern. They never brushed against me in the same place twice. Every time they chose new, unbroken flesh. Each lance of pain crescendoing before receding. And when it did, something new flooded in. Like a forest devastated by a fire before experiencing new growth. The old burned away so something new could flower in its place.

Right after that realization, I became aware that each encounter hurt less and less.

They were helping me. Their touches leaving me stronger than I’d been before.

My body was coming alive. Something within expanding into the spaces that experienced the renewal.

My abyss. It thirsted.

This was what Brin had meant by becoming. I was in the midst of a metamorphosis into something else.

Something dark and beautiful. Powerful and strong.

With that glimpse came a knowledge I didn’t stop to question. By instinct I grasped one of the shadows closest to me, pulling it.

Its edges began to rip. Light filtered through the tear I’d created. Not stopping to question myself, I threw myself forward and through it.

And once again, I was falling.

This time the plummet was short. A mere span of seconds before I landed sprawled on a floor of cold, hard stone.

“I can’t believe that worked.”

My ribs protested as I pushed myself upright. The sight that greeted me had a raw laugh scraping my insides.

What was that saying?

Never trust a Fae.

Sound advice if I ever heard any.

That “window” Brin had left led to a prison cell. An oubliette if I wasn’t mistaken.

Carved out of stone, the room possessed only one exit. A hole far above my head over which iron bars had been placed.

I shifted until my back was resting against the nearest wall. “I’m trapped.”

There would be no escaping. Even if I could somehow reach that hole—and that was doubtful since it was over fifteen feet off the ground and the walls had spells embedded in them to deter climbing—it was unlikely I could budge the grate covering the exit.

The only way out of this cell was for someone to let me out.

“Hello! Anybody up there?”

I nodded at the resounding silence that answered. Yup. Just as expected. There was no one around. No one probably even knew I was down here.

“Great.” I slumped against the wall. “What now, self?”

I couldn’t let Brin have the satisfaction of winning. Staying put like a good little girl until he decided to let me out wasn’t in my nature. I just had to figure out how to escape. That was all.

I quirked an eyebrow at the pool of shadows waiting in the corner. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas?”

His black fur did an excellent job of allowing him to blend into the dim gloom hanging around the recesses of the cell. If I hadn’t sensed his presence, I never would have spotted him.

The shadows shifted as Alches laid down, watching me with alert eyes as he propped his head on his paws and tilted his ears forward to show he was listening.

“That’s all you have to say?”

I don’t know why I expected anything more. If there was one thing the realm guardian had been consistent in, it was his unhelpfulness. At this rate, he might as well have stayed away.

At the very least, he could do something about his friends.

I glared at the ceiling. “Why is it always birds?”

There was a whole flock of them up there, hovering in midair as they perched on something unseen. Their beady little eyes staring. Always watching.

I shuddered. So creepy.

Dismissing them from my thoughts, I focused on Alches. “Is this a test?”

It wouldn’t make me happy, but I could understand if it was.

Instead of answering, Alches rose to slip from the shadows and fully materialize in my cell. I was silent as he padded over and stopped a foot away.

Before I could say anything, he started to retch. Loud hurking sounds that would have propelled any dog owner into action.

I was no different, coming to my feet by instinct. Though there was no carpet to drag Alches off of.

A second later, he regurgitated a solid, slimy looking mass onto the ground.

“Ew,” I said in disgust at the sight.

Vomit was something I’d never handed well.

Upon closer inspection, I discovered that the thing he’d brought up was a brown, leatherbound book that looked familiar. It was the Fae relic that had attached itself to me a few years ago. No matter what I’d done to dispose of it— toss it in a river, drop it down a ravine, burn it—it always found its way home again. Each time reappearing on my dresser looking no worse for wear.

It wasn’t until Alches ate the damn thing that it had stayed away.

Now it was back.

I lifted my eyes from the harmless looking book to the realm guardian. “What do you expect me to do with this?”

Alches offered me a doggy grin, complete with a lolling tongue and slightly slobbery jowls.

“That’s not an answer.”

He woofed once before turning and padding into the shadows, leaving me alone without an explanation. Again.

I looked down at the book, half expecting it to take on its human manifestation. Instead, it lay there. Inert. Cover face-up. Innocuous looking.

Too bad I wasn’t the inexperienced vampire from when we’d first met.

Fae artifacts were never benign.

I edged closer as letters appeared one by one on the cover.

“H.U.R.R.Y.U.P.D.O.L.T.”

An insult. How terribly original.

“Do you realize what you’re covered in? I’m not touching that.”

The letters faded, new ones appearing an instant later.

“WATCH IT, DUMBASS.”

“You’re not very good at negotiating, are you?”

Despite my words, I reluctantly picked up the book, trying to limit contact as much as possible. My gag reflex kicked in the moment the slime coating its surface touched my skin.

“Oh God.” I gagged. “So gross.”

“DON’T YOU DARE. I WILL END YOU.”

I dry-heaved a couple more times before I got myself under control. Breathing lightly through my nose, I tried to ignore the viscous gunk smeared all over the cover as I opened the book to a random page. It didn’t really matter which one. I’d discovered through trial and error that the information in the book wasn’t set. It shifted and changed based on the relic’s mood.

As expected, an entry appeared on the page I flipped to. Along with a photo featuring my father’s siblings.

My gaze lingered on the medusa, my aunt Callie, the friendliest of those I’d met. She looked out of the page with a dangerous expression. Her head snakes reared back to strike.

The rest of those in the photo were equally menacing. Don, horns curling from his head and tentacles falling like locks of hair around his face. Astrid, as beautiful as a star in the sky. Owen who dwarfed the rest of his siblings, two tusks protruding from his lower jaw.

As interesting as the photo was, it was the words beneath that caught my attention.

“The most influential of Noctessa’s first generation still living.”

“You’re forgetting Brin. I’m disappointed Book. I thought you guaranteed accuracy.”

“I’ve forgotten nothing. Brin, the youngest, the betrayer, the lonely hero. His image hasn’t been captured since the realm’s fall. As such his status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed.”

“It seems your information is out of date. Brin is very much alive. I’ve seen him. Spoken to him.”

He was my father.

That part I kept to myself.

I’d always sort of thought Book was omnipotent, knowing everything as it happened. It seemed that wasn’t the case which had me wondering how he got his information.

Leaving aside my doubts, I tilted the book to read further. Halfway down the page, I found something relevant to my situation.

“ Shadow slipping—the method of using the shadows to slip from one place to another. A rare ability thought to have developed due to the dangerous nature of the realm.”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“Only the first generation is thought to have possessed this ability. It’s considered the primary reason there is a kill-on-sight order out for any Scattered.

“Noctessa’s dungeon is one of the few places impervious to this ability’s use.

“Of course, this would pose no problem for a magic breaker.”

I narrowed my eyes at the book. “You’re assuming an awful lot right now.”

As the book so kindly pointed out, only the first generation was capable of shadow slipping. Last time I’d checked, I wasn’t part of the first generation.

“You never know until you try.”

“Very inspirational. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Though he was right. It couldn’t hurt to try.

It’s not like I had any other options. There was also Alches’s behavior. He must see some potential in me. Otherwise, why else would he leave the book with me?

Slipping into my other sight, I examined the oubliette’s walls.

Gold lines converged into existence, covering every inch of the cell to form an intricate cage from which I doubted there was any escape. They were delicate and thin looking as they curved and intersected in a pattern that was as beautiful as it was treacherous.

“This must have taken years,” I murmured, setting a hand on the wall.

Not to mention a shit ton of power.

The focus needed to create something like this went beyond anything I’d ever seen.

Even staring at it for too long left me dizzy and disoriented as the pattern blurred. It looped in on itself, giving me the optical illusion of falling into it.

I blinked, looking down to get my bearings.

The book was still open to the passage where I’d left off. A new paragraph had written itself while I was distracted.

“Be on your guard. Shadow slipping is highly dangerous. More than one Fae has become lost in the attempt. Never to be seen again.

The space between is deep and unending, marked by fearsome creatures never seen or imagined.

Be careful not to bite off more than you can chew.”

I grimaced. “Now you tell me.”

After I’d already mentally committed to this asinine plan.

However, the new information didn’t change the reality of the situation. Unless someone managed to stumble over me down here, I wasn’t leaving until Brin let me out. Who knew when that would be?

Liam and Connor would still be alive decades or centuries from now. I couldn’t say the same for my family.

I wouldn’t let myself be trapped here. Risk or no risk.

While I was lost in thought, the book flipped to the next page. An image of Inara, blood running down one side of her face came into focus.

I slammed the book shut before I could see more.

“ Coward.”

I tossed the book into the middle of the oubliette. “Careful—or I’ll let Alches eat you again.”

This time there was no pithy response. Rather an image engraved itself on the cover. That of a fist with the middle finger raised.

“Real mature,” I huffed, giving the book my back to concentrate on my task—escaping.

How was I going to do this?

The book had opened my eyes to the possibility of shadow slipping, but it hadn’t offered any clues on the methodology. All I had to go on was my one experience shadow slipping with Brin.

It wasn’t much. Then again, I’d done some miraculous things on less.

For now, I’d concentrate on unraveling the spells covering the oubliette’s walls. That had to come first. Everything else was meaningless until they were down.

Facing the nearest wall, I activated my other sight again. It was just as complicated and exhaustingly complex as it had been under my first examination.

There were two ways that I knew of to unravel a magic working. The first took the longest. You concentrated on one spot. Teasing the snarled knots of magic until you could gently pull them apart. Much like you might if you had a tangled ball of string.

The second was faster, relying more on brute force than anything else. With that method, you sucked away the power behind the working to render it inert. It required a lot of concentration. Willpower too. If you wavered even a tiny bit, the spell would rebound. A dangerous situation that could leave me brain dead or comatose.

For what I was about to attempt, I had a feeling I would need both methods.

Moving closer to the wall, I hovered my hand just over a spot where several patterns intersected. I was careful not to touch, afraid of setting off the built-in defenses.

Mentally, I prodded the spell.

The magic lashed out. A lance of blinding pain speared my temples.

“Ouch. Shit. Fuck. Damn.”

I backed away, cradling my head as a throb took up residence behind my eyeballs.

Someone had booby trapped the oubliette’s spells to deter magic breakers like me

“Brin,” I growled.

I could see his trace in the weaving. Somehow, he’d managed to tweak the spell. Just enough to hurt and not permanently damage anyone who tried to mess with it.

Tossing a glare at the wall, I gave into my need to pace back and forth. “Quite the boy scout, isn’t he?”

His level of preparation was frightening. As was his ability to anticipate what I would do next. Either the man was a genius tactician or he understood the way I thought.

Probably a little bit of both.

I stopped to face the wall. “Be as stubborn as you want,” I told it.

He had no idea how much I could endure when the word “no” or “you can’t” came into play. It was my greatest superpower and my biggest weakness.

Going at the pattern headfirst might not work. But what if I came at it sideways?

Earlier Alches had been both here and in the shadows at the same time. One foot in two worlds, so to speak. If I could do something similar, it might blunt the rebound effect.

Book had said I couldn’t travel from here using the shadows. A rule I suspected didn’t apply to realm guardians. But nothing was said about halfway sliding into them like Alches had done.

It might just work.

There was a rustle of movement from behind me.

“You’re an idiot,” Book declared, running a hand through his hair to leave the curly brown mass disheveled.

“Look who finally decided to stop hiding behind ink and vellum,” I drawled, the majority of my attention still focused on the spell.

Book folded his arms across his chest. “I had no choice. You’re going to get yourself killed. What kind of idiot decides to shadow slip five minutes after learning of its existence?”

“Aren’t you the one who brought it up?”

“Yes, but I didn’t think you’d actually do it.” At my incredulous look, he rolled his eyes. “At least not before learning the basics and considering all the pros and cons.”

Did he not know me at all?

Done with the conversation, I turned back to the wall. How was I to do this?

Shadows. Shadows. Shadows.

When thinking about them hard enough didn’t work, I paced to the nearest corner. Furthest from the dim light spilling in from the hole above where the shadows were at their densest. Closing my eyes, I offered myself up to them.

A second later, I collided with the cold hard stone of the wall.

“Ouch!”

Pain spread across my nose and the part of my face with which I’d collided into the stone surface. My pride smarting, I backed away, trying to ignore the peals of laughter coming from behind me.

“That was amazing,” Book gasped with tears in his eyes. “You actually thought you could simply walk into shadow and let it take you.”

“It works for Alches,” I mumbled.

Book wiped tears away from the corners of his eyes. “The hound is a being as old and powerful as this realm. It won’t work the same for you as it does for him.”

“How do you suggest I go about this then?”

A cagey look formed on Book’s face. “It’s easy. To slip into shadow, you must first call them to you. Think of it like donning a piece of clothing. You pull them over your head and let them settle into place. Once you’re in the shadow, you simply ride the wave and envision where you need to go.”

“That’s it? That’s your big advice?”

It was every bit as nonsensical as I’d expected. I felt ridiculous for thinking he’d have something more to contribute.

Footsteps sounded above.

“Looks like someone felt your tinkering. If I were you, I’d get moving. Noctessa has a rule about uninvited guests. They kill them.” Book arched an inquiring eyebrow at me. “Do you think they’ll make an exception for you?”

It depended on who was up there. If it was someone I knew, maybe. But from what I’d heard, the king had brought in a lot of new blood. None of whom were likely to recognize me.

“Tell me how to do this,” I hissed.

“I’ve already told you. Call them.”

Cursing under my breath, I faced the corner that had already seen me make a fool of myself.

Come to me.

Nothing happened. There was no sign of movement as the person making their way to my prison cell began to hum. A cheery little ditty that did nothing for my concentration.

“Better hurry,” Book mouthed.

I concentrated harder, glaring intently at the shadows. For a moment they seemed to move. A tiny squiggle. As if something inside them was alive.

“Little rat, little rat. You should have picked a better spot to invade than a dungeon.”

There was a clink from the prison door above as my visitor unlocked it.

I focused, pouring every bit of my attention into that shadow. This time I barked the command with the same authority with which my drill sergeant had told an entire platoon to drop and push until he told them to stop.

The shadows writhed, sliding toward me.

That’s it. Come to mama.

A thud came from behind me. Then a startled gasp.

“Aileen?”

My aunt’s eyes were wide as her gaze darted from me to the shadows now creeping across the ground in my direction.

“Stop—it’s dangerous. You don’t know what you’re doing!”

It was far too late for that. They’d already answered the call. The process, once begun, was effortless. Like tipping over a cliff. Once you went past a certain point, there was no way back.

The shadows wrapped around me. Color leached away from the world; Callie’s snakes slowly losing their brilliance. Like an old photograph faded by time.

“Damn it, child.” Callie whirled and slapped a hand against the nearest wall. A word fell from her lips, power cracking the air in a thunderous sound.

The shadows ripped me out of time and space just as the golden net of the cage flared and then disappeared.

Belatedly, I realized there was one crucial piece of the process that I’d forgotten about. That whole envisioning thing.