AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter5
Phaedron
EVERYTHING GOES ACCORDING TO PLAN
She’s cute, Ithronel’s magician sister. This would probably be easier if she wasn’t.
With a sigh, I tug a leaf from my hair and attempt to forget about the way Alindra smiled at the flowers I created. Or how quickly she composed herself after I crashed into her bedroom with a portal that busted apart like a cheap cookpot in a bonfire, and how she knew exactly how to sneak through the palace in the darkness.
She’s cute and competent, damn it. It’s a combination I’ve always appreciated, brains along with beauty.
I drum my fingers on my thigh as another round of voices rumbles into the canyon. This is the most heavily protected group of magicians I’ve ever seen. By my rough estimate, there are at least three soldiers for each magician.
What in the nine hells are Grathgore’s magicians facing that would warrant that kind of protection? I raise my eyes to the canyon walls as something calls out, shrill and piercing, from somewhere in the vast emptiness high above me.
Voids, that open, gaping sky makes my skin crawl. When the sun rose this morning as I jogged up the road toward shadow-shrouded mountains that actually did look quite a bit like the strange map Alindra’s magic created, that brilliant, searing sky made me feel almost naked. And once the road reached the mountains, I thanked the stars for the meager coverage of the scrubby trees and the towering canyon walls.
Those stars, though. The stars had been every bit as breathtaking as I’d remembered, even though they made my heart ache. I hadn’t wanted to see the stars again without Rowan by my side, and watching those sparkling sentinels trace their silent paths across the heavens without my brother to witness them somehow made his absence hurt even more than the first night we’d spent without him, the first time Arryn and I had eaten dinner together in stony, painful silence, our eyes fixed on the empty space filling Rowan’s seat.
I rub at the dull throb in my chest, then swat at something buzzing beside my ear. Voids below, I did not miss the insects of the Worlds Above. Not once.
The bushes in front of me rustle. A man with a strange silver necklace and a look on his face that suggests he might be considering eating someone alive bursts into the canyon. I wrap illusions around myself, then hold my breath. I’ve never been able to fully vanish, and not for lack of trying. But I can sometimes deflect attention with a little ripple of illusion in my wake, something to grab the corner of your eye while I slide past. It’s never worked with Rowan, of course, but it has helped me slip out of a bed or two.
“Damn the stars,” the man in black growls. “I can’t see a thing in here.”
The woman behind him cringes when he speaks, and anger curls inside my stomach like flames creeping along parchment. I have little patience for men who make other people cringe like that. For men like my father.
The woman comes to stand beside him, although she still won’t meet his eyes, and now I can see the rest of them. The group of men and women who must be King Grathgore’s magicians force their way into the canyon, pushing branches out of the way and pulling their cloaks free from tangling vines. They look like a pretty sorry lot, even for magicians. I could almost believe the soldiers are here to force them into this canyon.
Someone gasps. Magic ripples through the air, rolling off the man in black like heat from a furnace. I have enough time to wonder if this is the anomaly, and if so how in the nine hells we’re going to get inside it—
And flames explode from the man’s hands.
I fall to the ground, dragging my illusions with me. Two birds erupt from the bushes in front of me, their wings beating frantically toward the sky. The undergrowth hisses and crackles as smoke billows up, following the fleeing birds like the hungry jaws of a predator. The man in black laughs as his flames devour the undergrowth.
Great. This guy’s a real winner, then.
I keep my face to the dirt as the man in black blasts a path through the canyon, leaving smoldering devastation and terrified animals in his wake. The other magicians follow him warily, at a distance. I watch their shuffling feet and bowed heads, until finally, I see a cloak I recognize.
Alindra is the very last magician in their group. Clever. I watch her slowly pick her way through the smoking ruins of the bushes and vines that had filled this canyon, and then I ease myself upright and slip after her.
Voices drift through the air as I follow Alindra, trying to stay behind whatever vegetation is left. One voice in particular reverberates off of the stone walls, sharp and masculine, and I’d be willing to bet a whole stack of gold coins it belongs to the asshole who just torched everything green in this canyon.
King Grathgore’s magicians seem to be spreading out around a single dead tree, a massive pine whose naked spire reaches almost to the top of the canyon wall. Ribbons of smoke drift through the air, tangling around the hooded figures. The air feels thick with magic, an old, unpleasant sort of magic that mixes with the smoke until it tastes like blood in the back of my throat.
My muscles ache, and my missing arm throbs with a sort of pain I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to. Using magic is exhausting. I’ve been wearing my illusion arm for weeks now, so holding that magic has become almost second nature, but creating my illusion arm on top of diffusing the light around my body is new, and honestly, I’m not used to using my magic for sustained lengths of time. My illusions have been little more than a cheap trick for my entire life. Something to break out for a laugh and then put back away once the moment has passed.
My lips twist as I glance down at my illusion arm. Some part of me hates it, for all that it looks quite convincing. Some part of me is always going to hate it, this constant reminder of my greatest failure. Of the only time when I was truly tested and found horribly lacking.
Rowan’s voice chimes up from the inside of my skull again, surly and bitter.Fuck it, my brother snaps, just like he always did, even when he was far too young to be using language like that.
And he’s right, of course. Fuck my discomfort. Fuck the fact that my illusion magic has to change. Everything else changed when the monster from the Kingdom of the Summer crashed into our world and damn near killed me, and so what if I have to drag my aching, exhausted magic along for the ride?
I let out my breath in a long, thin hiss, then send a tendril of magic toward Alindra. I turn it into a flower, something tiny and spectacular blossoming at her toes. It’s an old trick, one that was highly effective with the trekkers from the Crystal City who’d come to the World’s End seeking adventure and seduction.
Alindra’s entire body stiffens. Slowly, her gaze travels along the smoking ash of the canyon’s floor. I let the illusion hiding me unravel, then make another flower bloom in the ashes right between my feet. When Alindra sees me, her eyes widen in the shadows of her hood.
I smile at her. Alindra’s face contracts like I’ve just smacked her. Smoke rises in the magic-thick air between us, obscuring her body. I step out of the clump of trees, trusting the sudden gust of smoke to hide me. At the same time, Alindra steps sideways. I have long enough to wonder just how bad of a sign it is that she didn’t return my smile, and then Alindra is in front of me, wreathed in smoke, and stars help me, I don’t know what she’s expecting now. We’ll step through the portal, she said. We’ll walk through as the magicians are closing it. I lift my head, following Alindra’s gaze into the smoke.
