Chapter 44

The sun was bright in the sky above the academy, the iciness of the day lightened by its efforts despite the frigid cold which refused to be spirited away by its presence. Frost clung to the branches in The Wailing Wood, making an ice rink of the paths that criss-crossed campus, and my breath rose in fog around me as I ran.

I sped through the trees towards King's Hollow, keeping an eye out for anyone who might spot me and double checking that I wasn't being followed.

It was early, dawn only recently breaking across campus. I'd left Seth asleep in bed in Aer Tower. No one knew I was out here or who I was meeting, and I intended for it to stay that way.

A crack of a twig made me halt, my eyes scanning the space between the trees where the morning light cut through the canopy in slanted shafts. Another crack came right ahead, but the back of my neck prickled, telling me the danger didn't lie in front of me but behind.

I swung around, the rush of air announcing the arrival of another Vampire, and one I knew as well as the sky. My brother Hadley pounced on me, but I was ready, my arm flying out and catching him right across the chest, throwing him to the ground. He coughed out a breath, glaring up at me in disappointment.

"You'll never be faster than me, Had." I flashed my fangs in a grin, offering him a hand to help him up.

He took it, throwing a glance into the trees as he smoothed his dark hair back self-consciously.

"Who's out there helping you distract me?" I asked in a low voice.

"Athena," he said her name like it belonged to a deity, and I didn't miss the possessiveness in his voice too. As if summoned to him, she emerged from the shimmering light between the trees, her brown hair streaked with purple and her large eyes giving her the appearance of something innocent, but I'd seen her fighting in her Wolf form and knew she was no such thing.

"What are you doing out here so early?" I asked them, and they both shared a look that told me they'd been up to something.

"You're not the only one who's busy helping out in the war," Hadley said with a gleam of mischief in his eyes that reminded me of the times we'd gone on adventures on our family grounds as kids. There was a river that hugged the southern boundary and I had a keen memory of making a raft out of branches with Hadley, the two of us squashed together on the thing with plans of sailing away on it. We'd made it about five feet before it had sunk, and we'd dragged ourselves onto the muddy riverbank laughing our heads off in the dirt. Those innocent days seemed so far away now, like that kind of carefree life was no longer reachable. But I seriously hoped I was wrong about that. Maybe on the other side of this war, we'd find ourselves in the mud again side by side with hours of freedom ahead of us.

"Who's putting you to work?" I asked. "Washer?"

Athena shuddered. "No, thank the stars. We're making a weapon."

"Who's we?" I asked, intrigued.

"Us, Xavier and Grayson," Hadley answered. "Gus Vulpecula had a schematic from Lionel's office at the Court of Solaria showing plans to build magical weapons that can be fitted onto the backs of Fae when they've shifted."

"And at first we thought we could use the plans to make our own," Athena said. "But we don't have the time or the resources for it. So instead, we've come up with a weapon that can disable all of Lionel's weapons. We're calling it a defuser."

"How does it work?" I asked excitedly.

"It sends out a pulse that could potentially fry them all," Hadley said. "But…" He ran a hand down the back of his neck. "We're struggling to find a power source strong enough to do it. We've been charging all kinds of crystals and adding them to the defuser, but nothing we've tried has the strength it'll likely need. Lionel could have made hundreds of those weapons for all we know."

Concern flickered through me at the thought of another immense threat added to Lionel's already terrifying army.

"And the range is another issue," Athena said, and I noticed the darkness under her eyes, telling me they'd probably been up all night working on this. "So far, the defuser only sends out a pulse that travels ten feet. It won't be enough."

I frowned. "Have you tried adding clear quartz or maybe even jade?" I suggested. "They should help with amplification."

"Yeah, but by Grayson's calculations we'd have to have a mountain of the stuff to take down a whole army wearing those weapons," Hadley said, and I sighed.

"Keep working on it," I encouraged, wishing I had more to offer.

"We'll figure it out," Athena said, her gaze alight with determination.

Hadley took her hand and the way he looked at her made me suddenly certain my little brother had fallen in love with a Capella, and my head was in a whirlwind of shit over that. There was something about them that called to the souls of Altairs apparently.

I clapped a hand onto his shoulder, squeezing in goodbye and he nodded to me before walking on.

I headed through the trees, charting the path to my destination and checking over my shoulder before making it to King's Hollow and pausing in the shadow of the huge oak.

I kept my silencing bubble up and cast an amplification spell on the area, but all was quiet. Not that I was taking any chances. I dropped to one knee and closed my eyes, placing a hand on the ground and connecting to the earth.

I pushed my awareness into the dirt, the tree roots, and up through the limbs of the countless trees around me too. There were small rodents, squirrels and even a fox pattering among the woodland, but none of them held a magical signature suggesting they might be Fae in shifted form. I was alone.

I released a breath then shot away from the Hollow, darting between the trees at high speed and racing for the edge of campus.

I hadn't told anyone about this. Not even Seth. Guilt stirred in my gut at the thought of it, but I couldn't keep denying my urges. I needed this. I couldn't resist it any longer.

The sound of racing footsteps reached me and I skidded to a halt, fallen leaves whirling around me as I disturbed them, a tornado of red, yellow and orange spinning between my legs for several seconds which stretched with the arrival of who I'd been waiting for.

I turned to face him as he sped into the clearing, my fangs snapping out at his approach, my muscles tensing automatically.

Orion burst from the trees in a blur of motion, colliding with me and knocking me to the ground where the two of us began to tussle playfully before I finally used a vine to snare his leg and heave him off of me.

"Took your time," I commented, wiping blood from the split lip he'd given me.

"I was with Blue," he replied, smirking at the fact.

I rolled my eyes. "Have you got it?"

"Yeah."

He jerked his chin and I cast a furtive look around before following him to a heap of moss-covered boulders with an aged willow growing from the top of the cluster, its fronds hanging down to obscure its trunk.

Orion pushed the fronds aside and moved beneath them. I followed, reaching out with my earth magic and encouraging two of the boulders to part, making an opening for us.

We headed into the secret space I'd created beneath the earth, the boulders grinding together as they closed at our backs to conceal all sign of this from the outside.

With a flick of my fingers, fires ignited in the hearth at the centre of the space and in the sconces lining the earthen walls.

There was a table of granite with two large and comfortable chairs either side of it, all hewn with my earth magic. Roots from the willow tree above us covered the roof of the cavern, their colour looking almost gold in the firelight, the crisscrossing patterns they made forming a decoration worthy of mother nature.

Orion glanced around at the room, taking in the dark metal rail that ringed the central fire, the stones which had been carved to resemble tiles lining the floor, then the deep blue and green furnishings which finished it all off and gave it a sense of homeliness.

"Show off," he muttered.

"I'm used to a certain level of comfort," I replied with a shrug, unapologetic. If we were going to be spending time in this place then I wouldn't leave it as some dank cavern.

"You're used to being a pampered brat," he teased.

"Don't be bitter just because air and water magic are inferior," I replied, earning a scoff from him.

We took our seats at the table and Orion placed the satchel he'd been carrying between us. I waited as he pulled out several old scrolls and a book so dog-eared and moth-eaten that I was surprised the entire thing didn't fall apart.

"I haven't so much as tried to open it yet," he confirmed, placing the book down carefully.

"Let me see if I can help it out a bit," I offered, reaching for it.

Orion nodded, but he winced as I picked it up. He'd constructed an air shield around the mouldering pages to try and protect them on the journey here, but it fell away as I picked it up. I'd expected a heavy tome, but the book was more like a journal in size and thin enough to let me know it couldn't be all that comprehensive. It flexed in my hand, the brown cover feeling like it might flake apart at any moment, the pages themselves tracing paper thin along their edges.

I pressed my magic into the book, working to bolster the integrity of the parchment with my earth magic but careful not to alter it at all. If I used too much power then any information held within might be lost.

Orion held his breath as I slowly strengthened the binding, firmed up the cover and gave the pages just a little more substance.

Once I was done, I placed it down between us.

"Adequate," he deadpanned, and I gave him a cocky look, knowing the intricate magic I'd cast was far more than that. But he'd never been one for compliments in the classroom, and it didn't look like he planned on handing them out anytime soon.

The title was faded and there looked to be a blackened stain on most of the front cover which could have been soot or smoke damage, but I could just make out the words.

Of Coven Lore.

"This is from the Blood Ages?" I confirmed, a prickle of unease running through me.

Those days might have been countless years in our past, but all Vampires were forced to acknowledge the shame of it – the reality of what our kind were capable of when abusing the full strength of our Order forms. Not to mention the way it had very nearly resulted in the annihilation of our kind when the rest of the Fae rose up in force against us.

Vampires had been the enemy in that long-ago war, and only the treaty brokered in the very final days of its completion had saved our kind at all. A law had been coming into place demanding the death of all Vampires upon their Emergence. If that had happened, who could say whether either of our family lines would have survived? The two of us never would have been born.

"I'm not condoning any of what was done back then," Orion said, shooting me a hard stare like he needed to confirm my intentions too.

I straightened my spine. "I didn't suggest you were."

Silence fell thickly between us. Reading that book was breaking a law, but it wasn't that which held us back. The knowledge we might find in there could be precisely what we needed, but it wasn't something we could ever unlearn. Once we knew its secrets, we would both be responsible for keeping and protecting them. In the wrong hands, all of this could be far more dangerous than either of us probably appreciated.

"I heard that in The Waning Lands there are covens in the wilds. They prey on the chaos of the Endless War which rages across their continent and are left unchecked and lawless," I said. "There are some who believe they will rise from the shadows they skulk in and be the ones to finally end the war out there – creating a new regime not unlike that which ruled Solaria through the Blood Ages." Maybe I was stalling for time, or maybe I was trying to talk us out of this, but it felt like I needed to say it either way.

Orion frowned. "Nothing about The Waning Lands is truly known to us," he said. "I am very suspicious about any rumours that claim to come from that hellish place – they have been entirely locked off from the world within their prism of magic for over a hundred years. Nothing and no one goes in or out of there, so how do these rumours make it across the sea to us at all?"

I nodded, my mind too occupied with the war that raged throughout Solaria for me to spend any real time considering what horrors went on within The Waning Lands. All I knew for certain about them was that I was fucking glad that prism was in place and kept all of the heathens who lived there inside it. The last thing we needed were power-hungry Fae from across the east seas looking too long in our direction. Whoever sealed that place off from the rest of the world did us a favour by all accounts and I was more than happy for it to stay blocked off indefinitely. One kingdom's problems were more than enough for us to be dealing with.

"Fuck it. We've come this far." I reached for the book, but Orion's hand shot out and he caught my wrist before I could turn the page.

"Whatever we learn within this book, whatever temptation we might find in the power the words whisper of, swear to me we won't ever use it beyond what we must do to win this war," he demanded, his eyes dark with trepidation over what we were doing, and the tempo of my pulse told me I was just as nervous.

"I swear it, brother," I promised him. "I want this knowledge for one reason alone. And when Lionel Acrux lays dead and rotting in the ground, I will put all memory of this information out of my head and never think of it again, let alone use it. I bowed to the True Queens and I have no desire to turn traitor."

"Then let it be learned, and used, then forgotten," he agreed, offering me his hand.

I took it in my own and the power of that oath clapped between us, the stars binding us to our words.

I swallowed a thick lump in my throat, my pulse thundering in my ears as I dropped my gaze to the innocuous looking book once more.

Then I opened it.