AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Metal,” I whisper to Phaedron. “Do you have anything metal?”
Phaedron frowns. There’s a soft rustling sound, and then he leans forward again, this time with a gold coin trapped between his fingers. It’s one of the coins I stole from King Grathgore, of course. No matter how far I go, I can’t seem to escape the person I was.
“Will this work?” he whispers.
I nod, then hold out my other hand. Phaedron places the gold coin in it. I’d like to think his fingers linger against my palm for a moment, but he’s probably just making sure I don’t drop the damn thing. Magic churns in the back of my throat, making my teeth ache. I can’t destroy this spell, and I can’t keep it contained inside of me for much longer. But maybe I can chip off a piece of it, just in case.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
Phaedron stares at me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so miserable.
“Alindra,” he says, in a voice so low I wonder if I’ve imagined it. “I’m sorry.”
Sorry? For what? I open my mouth to ask, but the spell comes out instead, hissing, cold, and angry. Thick bands of magic snap around my mouth, around my throat and eyes. I pull the magic of Phaedron’s beautiful flower into my skin and use it like a blade, scraping off some of the spell as it slides back over my body, then funneling it into the gold coin.
The window of my conscious mind grows smaller and smaller as the spell loops around me. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to move my hand, to force my fingers to slip the gold coin into a pocket in my waistband. I’m like the grasshopper who moved the mountain, I tell myself as the world spins crazily away from me.
And then there’s nothing but darkness and the cold embrace of someone else’s magic.
Chapter34
Phaedron
DON’T MAKE ME DO THIS ALONE
“What in the nine hells are those?” Rowan asks.
The chains wrapped around his chest and arms rattle as he pulls back. I told my father Varitan that chains wouldn’t be necessary, and he gave me an expression that suggested he was contemplating new and exciting ways to hurt me. At least these are regular chains and not the kind that blocks Rowan’s magic. The kind that blocks Rowan’s magic are coiled in the bow of this little rowboat; Varitan made sure we both saw him put them in. That, too, is an old trick. He wants us to know things could always get worse.
“Shhhh,” I whisper to Rowan, although panic flutters inside my chest as I stare at the shore we’re rapidly approaching. “They’re horses.”
Horses. Always with the horses in the Worlds Above. The rowboat sways as it tugs us across the swells and toward a rocky, desolate stretch of beach where a man who doesn’t look particularly friendly waits with a group of horses. The massive animals are staring out across the waves like they’ve been bred and raised to devour elven bones.
Varitan turns back from his perch in the bow of the rowboat and glares at us, Rowan in his chains beside me and Alindra’s head on my knees to keep it from knocking against the wooden bench. Our father isn’t rowing the boat, of course; that would be beneath him. Instead, his magic is somehow propelling this wooden shell across a stretch of water that’s bigger and deeper than anything I’ve seen during the centuries I lived in the Lands Below.
My empty stomach rolls over itself, and I snap my gaze back up to the shore. Maybe horses aren’t so bad after all.
“Rowan,” Varitan says, making his youngest son’s name sound like a curse. “Such a pity, really. All that potential, lost. If you’d been raised here, under my tutelage, I could have made something out of you.”
Rowan snorts. He looks impossibly smug for a man wrapped in chains and missing an eye.
“Yeah,” Rowan says. “It’s a damn shame. You’re the psychotic shit-smear of a father that I never wanted.”
The rowboat shivers beneath us. I have a momentary vision of Varitan pulling the boards apart and just letting us all sink, Rowan in his chains and Alindra once again unconscious beneath my father’s magic, her brief moment of lucidity in the bottom of the ship that’s anchored behind us as beautiful and fleeting as a flash of lightning. My head swims as the rowboat dives down the face of another wave, and I force myself to suck in a breath.
“Are we supposed to ride those monsters?” Rowan says.
No one replies, so Rowan pushes ahead.
“Cause if so, dear Dad, you’re going to have to wake her up,” Rowan finishes.
It takes me a moment to catch up to what Rowan’s saying. I glance down at Alindra, then back up at the shore that’s rapidly pulling closer. The sky is growing lighter in that strange, slow way which means the giant ball of fire is getting closer to the horizon, and now I see saddles on the horses waiting for us. Just saddles. Either Alindra is going to have to wake up in order to ride with us, or Varitan plans on strapping her down like a saddlebag.
Varitan narrows his eyes as the rowboat smacks into a wave, sending a spray of cold saltwater over us.
“If she tries anything,” my father growls. “If any of you try anything—”
“Let me guess,” Rowan says, interrupting him. “You’ll kill us? Slowly? And very possibly painfully?”
