CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

KYRION

F or a long time, I knew nothing but darkness. Then I was dimly aware of voices muttering and hands hauling me from one location to another and then, strangely enough, propping me upright . . .

I woke with a start. My eyes snapped open, revealing a large, jeweled, sapphsidian eye staring right back at me. I jerked to the side, but my mind cleared, and I realized where I was: lying on the floor of Vesper's mindscape.

I slowly sat up. Pain erupted in my jaw, my head spun around, and it took me several seconds to shove all that hot, throbbing discomfort to a distant corner of my mind and wall it off behind a psionic shield. Slowly, the pain died down to a more manageable level, and the familiar eyes, flowers, and doors snapped into focus.

Why had I woken in here? In the past, I had only been able to enter Vesper's mindscape when she was in trouble and reaching out for me. A rueful grunt escaped my lips. Perhaps the truebond had pulled me in here because it knew I was the one in trouble this time.

I grabbed hold of a black vine and pulled myself to my feet. The blue-moon peony on the vine bobbed up and down, as if it was a Regal lady bowing to me. I released the vine and turned around in a slow circle, but the room was just as I remembered from all the other times I'd been here. I still didn't know why I was here, but perhaps I could get a message to Vesper.

I went over to a large door with an upside-down sapphsidian eye embedded in the dark gray stone. I'd gone through this door before, when Vesper had almost suffocated to death on the Dream World . Back then, the door had been standing wide open, but right now, it was closed. I ran my fingers all over the door, exploring the eye, along with the crescent moons and stars carved into the stone, but I didn't find any triggering mechanism, and the door remained firmly shut.

I drew back and glared at the upside-down eye, which twinkled with a knowing light, as if it could sense my frustration and was openly mocking me.

"Bloody seer power," I muttered.

The eye just twinkled again, a little more brightly than before, as though laughing at my cursing its existence.

I spun away from the unblinking eye. Perhaps I could open a different door and send a message to Vesper that way, although asking her not to try to find me was pointless, since I would have ignored any such message from her. No, Vesper was going to try to rescue me, and I needed to give her as much information about our enemies as possible.

I prowled around the room, hoping to get a glimpse of Esmina and Pollux or at least discover a clue about where they were holding me through the other doors, many of which were open. Memories played in several spaces, including Nerezza Blackwell calling Vesper a useless child . I grimaced. I'd seen that memory before, and I had no idea how Vesper endured such a vile thing constantly playing in her mindscape like a hologram that refused to be shut off.

I moved past the memory of Nerezza and studied the images flickering in the other open doors. Vesper taking part in the Techwave battle on Magma 7 . . . Vesper fighting Julieta Delano in the weapons lab at Quill Corp . . . Vesper and me kissing in the training room on the Dream World . . .

A smile curved my lips. I liked being in Vesper's memories, especially the happier ones, although the knowledge wasn't helpful right now.

Since none of the open doors held any clues, I tried the closed doors, but none of them budged. Either Vesper needed to be here to open the doors, or I just didn't have the necessary power right now, given that I was still unconscious from Esmina's chemicals and Pollux's punches.

I ended up in front of a door that featured the House Caldaren sigil of an arrow streaking upward through a cluster of stars. I'd forced my way through this door the night I'd saved Vesper from suffocating, but it was once again closed. It probably wouldn't budge either, but I tried it anyway.

To my surprise, the knob turned easily, and the door swung open with a low, ominous creak .

For a moment, darkness filled the space, but then a light flared, and a memory flickered to life. In the doorway, my mother sat on a bench in the Castle Caldaren garden, carefully pruning blue-moon peonies and then sliding the flowers into a crystal vase. Desdemona was pale and weak, and she had to stop every few minutes to rest, but she doggedly snipped one flower after another.

Shock rippled through me. This wasn't one of Vesper's memories—it was one of mine .

I'd seen this same image of my mother when I'd been having breakfast with Lady Verona in the topiary garden yesterday, and then again when Vesper and I had been talking in our suite last night. But why would Vesper's mindscape show me one of my own memories? Even though we were bonded, I had never been able to use her seer abilities with any success. Most of the time, Vesper's power flared like a bright silver star before abruptly winking out. Perhaps the chemicals Esmina had dosed me with were impacting our bond.

The memory kept playing, and I watched my mother prune peonies until she had a beautiful bouquet. Footsteps crunched on the crushed-shell path, and a thirteen-year-old boy came into view—me.

I grimaced. This was the day I'd yelled at my mother for not fighting back against Holloway. At first, I'd stomped away, but I'd been so ashamed of my actions that I'd returned to apologize.

Sure enough, teenage Kyrion tiptoed over to the table. A wicked gleam of black appeared, and a scorpion scuttled out of some peonies that were lying on the table. Kyrion darted forward and used the wooden sword he was clutching to smash the scorpion.

"Bloody scorpions," I muttered, my words perfectly in sync with those from my younger self.

"You should go inside. You might get stung again." Teenage Kyrion looked at the flowers on the table, anger flaring in his eyes. "Or better yet, get rid of the peonies, and plant some flowers that don't attract scorpions."

A few days earlier, Holloway had siphoned off my mother's magic, leaving Desdemona weak and shaking, but she'd still insisted on picking some fresh peonies, and she'd gotten a nasty sting. The scorpion's venom had further weakened her, and I'd been terrified she was going to keel over and die in the garden.

"The scorpions love the peonies as much as I do," Desdemona replied. "The scorpions will always be a danger, and they could always sting me."

"But?" Once again, I spoke along with my younger self.

"But you can't be afraid of the possibility," Desdemona said in a serious voice. "You have to let go of your fear, Kyrion. I let go of mine about being stung. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to pick this wonderful bouquet. Doesn't it smell divine?"

She nudged the crystal vase over to his side of the table. Even out here in Vesper's mindscape, I could still smell the peonies' spearmint scent. Bittersweet longing washed over me. I had spent so much of my life remembering how horribly my mother's had ended that I had all but forgotten about moments like this. Even then, with the shadow of Crownpoint looming over her in the distance, my mother had still found joy and beauty.

"Besides," Desdemona continued, "scorpions aren't the only things attracted to blue-moon peonies."

She tilted her head to the side. A mammoth butterfly was now flitting around the bouquet, its black-and-blue wings flickering and flashing with a beautiful iridescent light. But the strangest thing was that I felt like my mother was talking about something else entirely, something far more serious than getting stung by a scorpion. After a few seconds, Desdemona's head turned to the side, and I could have sworn she was staring right at me, as though she could actually see me standing in Vesper's mindscape.

"You have to let go of your fear, Kyrion," my mother said again, still staring at me. "Otherwise, you'll drown in the darkness and never embrace the light."

In the doorway, my younger self frowned and glanced in this direction, although I got the sense that he couldn't see me and was only viewing the rest of the garden as it had been that day. "Who are you talking to?"

Desdemona turned back to him, a soft smile on her face. "You'll see one day. Now, help me get these flowers inside. Your father will be home soon, and I want to brighten up the library for him . . ."

The memory flickered and faded away, and the door slowly swung shut. I stood there, rooted to the floor, staring at the House Caldaren sigil. One by one, the stars winked with light, then the arrow itself. I blinked, and the light vanished.

Why had Vesper's mindscape shown me this memory? And why had my mother seemed to realize exactly what was going on? Had Desdemona known I would be standing in this very spot one day, thinking about her truebond with my father?

Something jabbed into my neck, and hot chemicals zipped through my veins. Vesper's mindscape melted away, replaced by muttering voices.

Once again, my eyes snapped open, and Pollux's face swam into view.

The former Hammer lightly slapped my cheek, reigniting the pain in my jaw from where he had punched me earlier. "Welcome back, Arrow."

I growled and surged forward . . . but I couldn't move.

My body was in an upright position, with my back against a rough rock wall and my arms down and slightly out to my sides. Plasticuffs anchored my neck and wrists to the wall, and gray bricks had been stacked over my chest and most of my legs, as though I was being entombed.

I surged forward again, but the solid bricks didn't move. I reached for my psion power, intending to smash the stones to pieces with my telekinesis, but once again, I couldn't quite get a grip on my abilities.

"It's no use struggling," Pollux said. "I walled you up myself. It's an old Hammer trick. Interrogate your enemy and slowly brick him up in a wall if he doesn't cooperate. Most folks scoff at first, but by the time you start covering their faces and cutting off their air, they are all too happy to cooperate."

He grinned and slapped my cheek again. "Lucky for you, Esmina wants your pretty face out in the open. At least until your girlfriend shows up and gets a good look at you."

I swallowed a growl. The bricks over my arms, chest, and legs were heavy and solid, and I was too weak to break through them, so I stopped struggling and studied my surroundings.

I was anchored to a wall in an enormous underground cavern. The wall curved to the left and the right, but the chamber in front of me was wide open. Thick stalagmites jutted up from the uneven ground, while even larger, thicker stalactites dropped down from the ceiling.

Soft white lights embedded in the ground, wall, and ceiling brought out the dark purple stones that glinted here and there among the dull gray rock. Permaglass stairs and walkways connected one level of the cavern to another, looking like icicle ramps that had frozen underground. The cavern was cool, bordering on chilly, and my breath frosted faintly in the air.

On the far side of the chamber, a permaglass bridge ran past an enormous waterfall that tumbled down the surrounding rocks. Several lights were trained on that area, and more purple stones glimmered along the waterfall's frothing edges, giving it a dark, amethyst tint.

In some ways, the area reminded me of the lunarium mine Vesper and I had toured on Tropics 33. But this space seemed abandoned, and a thick layer of dust coated everything, including the permaglass walkways, which were streaked with grime.

"What is this place?" I asked.

Footsteps clacked on the stone, and Esmina stepped into view beside Pollux. "It's the place where people come to die, Kyrion."

She gestured to the side. Just beyond a permaglass barrier, the cavern floor abruptly dropped away, plummeting into a steep chasm lined with razor-sharp rocks at the bottom.

"I would tell you to watch your step, but you can't go anywhere, can you?" Esmina let out a merry laugh that echoed around the cavern, bounced off the rocks, and slapped me across the face.

"Why are you doing this? What do you want with me?"

"I don't want anything from you , Kyrion. I simply realized I was going about things the wrong way. It happens from time to time, even when you're a precog and can see exactly how everyone is going to act and react."

Pollux playfully poked her in the shoulder. "You owe me a hundred credits. I told you grabbing the Arrow and using him as leverage was the smartest play."

Esmina grumbled under her breath, but she pulled a tablet out of her pocket and hit a few buttons. An answering chime rang out from Pollux's tablet, and he tipped an imaginary hat to her.

A sick feeling flooded my stomach. "You kidnapped me to get Vesper to come here—"

Esmina waggled a finger, cutting me off. "Please. Save your breath, Kyrion. I already know exactly what you're going to say—that my plan won't work, that your precious Vesper will find some way to outsmart me, and blah, blah, blah, blah. Do you know what the problem with truebonded couples truly is?"

She answered her own question. "One of them always has a driving, undeniable compulsion to save the other, even if such a foolish, reckless action will just doom them both."

"Is that what Micah had? An undeniable compulsion to save you? Because that didn't work out so well for him."

Esmina retained her relaxed posture, but a muscle ticked in her jaw, betraying her anger. "Leland said Lord Aldrich and Lady Verona had been sharing stories about me. Well, let me tell you something that's not in the House Collier files."

She leaned forward, her eyes as cold and empty as green glass. "Micah was a fool for me, just like Vesper is a fool for you, Kyrion. And Vesper is going to die for you, just like Micah died for me."

Esmina stared at me a moment longer, then drew back and strolled away. Pollux slapped me across the face yet again, then followed her. The two of them rounded a corner and disappeared, although Esmina's words kept echoing in my ears.

She was right. I was nothing but bait, and Vesper was going to walk straight into the mercenaries' trap.