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“On top of that,” Kasha said, putting her now empty plate on the seat next to her before leaning back and stretching, “It’s a pain in the ass to decipher the answer. The answer comes as a series of projected imagines that sometimes are so steeped in symbolism you need to get a damn prophet to untangle the meaning of it.”
“Last time we tried to use The Eye, I’m not sure if our sacrifice wasn’t good enough or we just messed up the translation, but we ended up stranded in the Court of Wrath for weeks,” Dossidian laughed, “Never thought I would have a penchant for dung-lizards but when you're stranded in the desert long enough you’ll eat anything.”
“That,” Amon interjected, eyes shining with amusement, “Was definitely due to the fact that you offered The Eye a pair of dice in exchange for an answer to where the Prince of Wrath had hidden your sabers.”
“Hey, those dice were lucky. They won me a lot of money over the years. What’s more valuable than that?”
“You gave The Eye dice?!” Kasha exclaimed, punching Dossidian in the arm. “We wandered the Vermilion Desert for two weeks on a wild goose chase because you thought it would be happy with dice?”
Dossidian grinned and shrugged, “Come on it wasn’t that bad. It was a great team building exercise and it worked out, I ended up getting my sabers back.”
“Yeah, because Amon finally caved and paid Prince Sirocco your weight in emeralds for them,” Kasha grumbled, glaring at him.
“As enjoyable as our trip to the Court of Wrath was, I don’t plan on repeating it this time,” Amon said, the humor fading from his voice. My heart sank, as it suddenly occurred to me why he might have requested my company on this trip to The Eye.
If he needed to trade something valuable for whatever it was he wanted to learn, what could be more valuable in this world than The Origin’s daughter? The question spilled out of my mouth before I could stop myself. I began trembling. So much so that Meredith quietly took my coffee from me so I wouldn’t spill on myself.
“You’re not going to… you’re not going to give me to The Eye, are you?” I asked, my voice cracking. Everyone in the room went silent. Both Meredith and Conrad stiffened next to me, Kasha and Dossidian looked at me with something close to pity on their faces. Amon, for a moment, looked as if he was in physical pain at my question, before his expression softened.
“No, Raven. I am not going to sacrifice you to The Eye.”
“Then why are you bringing me with you?” I didn’t want to go see this Eye. I didn’t want anything to do with this.
“Because, I have decided how you are going to repay me for the life debt that you owe me.” He held my gaze as he paused. A shiver ran down my spine.
“You are going to help me wake The Origin.”
9
The room erupted into exclamations from both the magick folk and the daemons.
“That’s impossible,” Meredith stated nearly in unison with Kasha.
“Yuh mad,” declared Conrad, Dossidian just started laughing.
“Origin spare me, Amon, you’ve had some ambitious ideas in the past, but this one takes the cake. How do you plan to wake Aleites? For one, unless you have forgotten, he and Elvira were frozen in stone in their palace, which Ash Nevra now occupies.” He started counting off on his fingers, “Two, there is no known way to wake him, and daemons have tried. The Court of Envy had their prophets working on it for months in the beginning unless you’ve forgotten. Three -”
“I am well aware, Dossidian.” Amon said cooly, cutting him off from what I assumed was about to be a very long list of reasons why this wasn’t a good idea. “We are all very familiar with the prophecy that predicted Raven’s birth would be triggered by a Nightshade. That same prophecy also insinuated that Raven will bring peace back to the dominion and balance the worlds on both sides of The Veil.” He glanced up at Meredith and Conrad, smirking slightly. “We know there’s truth to that, considering how much our magick folk friends have involved themselves in our business.”
Conrad snorted at this. Witches, wizards, Obeah men and women, shamans, and spell casters all over the world from my side of The Veil committed themselves to maintaining balance. They had a global governing body called The Board that oversaw such matters.
Conrad was not yet a member of The Board, but he was in training to take over for his grandmother. That was how we had originally met. He had been given the task of finding me and ensuring that I stayed out of the hands of the daemons who would seek to use my power to disrupt the balance.
Though that hadn’t gone exactly as planned, at least I was being held in Amon’s court and not Ash Nevra’s. Where Amon seemed to plan to use me as a pawn in his dangerous game of chess, Ash Nevra would more likely kill me on sight, to eliminate me as a threat. Kieran served Ash Nevra, Queen of the Court of Lust, and self-proclaimed Ruler of the Dominion.
In an attempt to steal my power for herself, she had sent Kieran and his dark fire mage, Marcus, to kidnap and torture me. Part of the torture I had endured at the hands of Marcus had been designed to ‘open me up,’ to find my daemon. Thankfully, it did not work. I had survived. If I were to be captured again, I didn’t think I'd be so lucky. Ash Nevra would just end me; of that I was fairly certain.
Kasha nodded, but still looked perplexed. “That still doesn’t answer how you’re going to wake up The Origin, though.”
“I don’t know yet.” Amon replied, “That’s why we’re going to see The Eye.”
Kasha rose an eyebrow at that. “What could you possibly offer The Eye that could be worth that kind of knowledge?”
Amon paused again, and I couldn’t tell if he just enjoyed getting a rise out of them, or if he was still unsure, he was making the right decision.
“I’m going to give it Bond-Breaker.”
Both Dossidian and Kasha leap to their feet. Dossidian’s face was red with rage, and Kasha’s was stark white.
