“N-no!” Lucia struggled against the invisible choke hold he’d trapped her in. “That’s . . . not . . . why . . .” She tried to get the words out, to explain herself, but she didn’t have the breath to speak.
His expression held no kindness at all. “You already made your plans for me very clear in your dreams. Still you know nothing, child. You would rather believe a monster’s rant than your own eyes and ears. And now you’ve put me in quite a predicament. My fellow immortals believe you to be the salvation for which they’ve waited a thousand years. Little do they know you’re nothing but a disappointment.”
With the shreds of strength she still possessed, Lucia summoned her own magic. Clenching her fists, she conjured fire, the blazes jumping high from both of her hands as she glared at the man who’d just thrown her around like a rag doll. Remembering Alexius’s most important lessons, she placed all her focus on absorbing rather than resisting Timotheus’s magic. With a mighty heave, she inhaled the air magic that held her to the wall, and as the grip on her throat began to loosen, she found that stealing this immortal’s magic was nearly as easy as smelling a fragrant rose from the Auranian palace courtyard.
Moments later, her feet were back on the ground.
She watched him warily, her fists blazing. “You assume the worst of me, and I can’t say that I blame you for that. But did you ever see me kill you in your visions?”
“I will douse your pathetic flames,” he said, ignoring her question. A small tornado of air now swirled around his hands.
“And I will steal your air and use it to smother you, right before I set you on fire.”
The barest edge of worry slid through his gaze. The realization that this immortal feared her fueled Lucia’s confidence, and her fire magic burned brighter.
“Kyan has taught you much,” he said.
“Yes. More than you realize even now. And here I thought you knew everything.”
“I’m flattered you would think so.”
“Don’t be.” Lucia focused on reining in her darkness, then doused her flames. “I didn’t come here to kill you.”
He cocked his head, the only sign of his surprise. “Then why have you come, sorceress? How is it possible that you’ve come? And where is your good friend?”
Again, Lucia’s eyes began to sting, and she was horrified to realize that she was about to start crying. She forced herself to hold back her tears, knowing that the success of this meeting depended on her staying strong.
“Kyan is dead,” she said, holding tight to her resolve. “I saw who he really was—what he really was—and I realized I was wrong. All this time, I was wrong about him. I was wrong to help him. I didn’t know he wanted to destroy the world.”
Timotheus’s expression hadn’t changed at all. “Perhaps not, but you knew he wanted to kill me. And you agreed to help him.”
“I’m not here to kill you, I swear it. You were right to warn me.” She slid her hand over the cool purple stone on her ring. “If it wasn’t for this ring, I’d be dead. It shattered the monstrous form of fire he’d taken on, and then next thing I knew . . . I—I was here.”
Lucia went on in a steady rush of words that left no space for a response, telling Timotheus everything she could about her time with Kyan. She told him of their journey into the Forbidden Mountains in east Paelsia, where they’d found the crystal monolith hidden beneath a sheath of black rock. The monolith was full of power—power Kyan wanted to use to draw Timotheus from the Sanctuary. In Kyan’s imagining, Lucia was to drain his magic, as she’d done with Melenia, making him vulnerable and easy to kill. Then Kyan and his elemental siblings would be free of their crystal orbs forever, with no elder immortal alive to return them to their prisons.
Lucia told Timotheus that she had felt sorry for Kyan, who had been used for his magic for all his existence. Who yearned to have his family by his side and the chance to truly experience life.
“But that’s not all he wanted,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper now as she reached the end of her story. “He saw weakness in all mortals, weakness that disgusted him. He wanted to burn it all away, to reduce everything and everyone to ashes, so the world could begin again as part of his quest for perfection. The other Kindred surely want the same thing.”
Finally, she looked at Timotheus, expecting to see a mask of shock on his face. But all that she saw in his eyes was weariness and understanding.
“I see,” he said.
Feeling bolstered by his gentle response, Lucia went on. “I assume the blast of magic that killed him triggered something in the monolith and that it was the monolith that opened a gateway that led me here. When I realized where I was, I knew I had to find you. You’re the only one who can help me.”
“Help you with what, Lucia?”
She felt the shameful spilling of hot tears down her cheeks. “Help me make amends for all I’ve done,” she croaked, surrendering to her sobs. “I’m sorry . . . I’m so, so sorry. I was wrong. And I . . . I nearly did help Kyan destroy everything. There would have been no world left, thanks to my stupidity. No safe place for my child to grow up.”
Timotheus was quiet, regarding Lucia with curiosity. “Your child?”
Lucia sniffed, her surprise at his reaction working to calm her sobs. “My child. Mine and Alexius’s.”
Timotheus blinked. “You’re pregnant?”
Lucia wiped her eyes with the sleeve of the borrowed robe. “You didn’t know? You’re the one who hinted that this was the cause of my fading magic. You told me in our last dream together that Eva’s power faded when she was pregnant with a half-mortal child. You must have foreseen this!”
Timotheus blinked once and then sat down heavily on the pure white chair by his side. “I foresaw nothing like this.”
“It must be why I can be here. Right? I’m mortal, but the baby . . . my baby must be half-immortal.” She shook her head. “Which I don’t really understand, since Alexius became mortal when he exiled himself.”
“Exiles still have magic within them in your world, even though it begins to fade the moment they leave here. That, combined with your magic . . . it is possible. But I don’t understand why I didn’t see it before today.” His gaze snapped to hers as he scrambled to his feet. “I used my magic on you. I could have hurt you—hurt the child. Are you all right? Do you need to sit down?”
Lucia shook her head. “I’m fine, really.” She slid her hand over her flat belly. “It’s very early still. I’ve been sick several mornings, but that’s all.”
Timotheus gave the smallest of smiles. “You were right to come to me.”
Finally, she relaxed the last bit of tension she was holding in her muscles. “I’m glad you agree.”
His rare smile fell quickly away. “Kyan is not dead.”
She stared at him. “What?”
Timotheus held out his hand. A moment later, a flame sprang up on his palm. “Fire is eternal. It cannot live or die; it can only be contained. Kyan is fire magic. And if fire magic still exists, then so does he.”
Lucia pressed her hand against her open mouth, her just-calmed heart back to pounding once again. “What do we do? How do we stop him?”
“Contain, not stop. He must be imprisoned again.”
“How?”
He didn’t answer her. Instead, he turned and moved toward the large windows. Lucia quickly followed him.
Just then, a horrible thought occurred to her. “Kyan believed you’re the only one who can imprison him again. But you don’t know how, do you? Eva may have, but you don’t.”
She watched his shoulders grow tense beside her as he remained silent, keeping his gaze fixed on the Sanctuary beyond the city walls.
“All this time . . .” she murmured, trying to contain the shaking frustration growing within her at not having all the answers she needed readily available to her. ?
??All this time, I thought your vague hints and enigmatic riddles were meant to annoy me, to toy with me while you waited for the exact right moment to strike. But now I see why you couldn’t tell me anything real. You really don’t have all the answers.”
“Far fewer than I’d like to have,” he gritted out.
“We’re in great trouble, aren’t we?”
He glanced at her next to him. “Yes, we are. Like you believed of me, I believed that you might be the one who knew how to stop this magic that threatens to destroy us all. That Eva’s vast knowledge had somehow made its way into your stubborn mortal mind.”
Timotheus had a great talent for making nearly everything he said sound like an insult. Lucia chose to ignore this one. “It didn’t. At least, not yet.”
He nodded. “I know your ring is powerful. Eva used it when dealing with the Kindred, and she was never corrupted by them.”
“Corrupted . . . like Cleiona and Valoria. I have my own vision and I saw it—I think I saw what happened. They touched the orbs and . . . the magic”—she shook her head, trying to understand—“it . . .”
“Possessed them,” Timotheus finished for her, nodding. “Changed them, and cast them away from our world forevermore. After the great battle a thousand years ago, the Kindred were lost between worlds. And lost they remained all these centuries—until you entered the time line. Melenia too was corrupted, but in a different way. For all her claims of power and intelligence, when she touched the amber orb, the being who now calls himself Kyan was able to communicate with her. He manipulated her into doing his bidding.”
She could barely believe his words, but after getting to know the fire god, they made a sickening kind of sense. “She claimed she loved him, that she’d waited for him for all these centuries. But when they were reunited, he cast her away like she was nothing to him.”
“I’m not at all surprised. Fire can’t love; it can only consume.” He considered her for a silent moment. “Because of your ring, Kyan will be in a weakened state. You must find his amber orb before he regains his strength.”
“I never saw the orb in the first place.”
“Still, I would guess he would keep something so important like that with him. That orb is one of his few weaknesses, and to allow it into anyone else’s hands would be to open the opportunity for imprisonment. Therefore, you must find it. The first place to search would be the site of your battle.”
She nodded stiffly. “Are you certain about all this?”
“There are no certainties in situations like this, I’m afraid,” he admitted.
“So I’m learning. Especially about Melenia.” She refused to feel any sympathy for the heartbroken immortal, but she now understood her on a deeper level. She hadn’t become a goddess like Cleiona and Valoria. Her corruption had resulted in an addiction to Kyan, making her into a tool for him to use and manipulate and, when he no longer needed her, to cast away like rubbish.
Alexius hadn’t cast Lucia away, but she knew very well what it felt like to be used and manipulated.
“Melenia was smart and resourceful before her corruption, long before she turned against Eva,” Timotheus said. “She was one of the few left who knew the secret I must keep about this world. The secret that keeps me trapped here.”
“What secret?”
“The leaves,” he said. He drew one from the folds of his cloak, a single brown leaf, crumpled and dead. She took it from him, and it disintegrated with the slightest bit of pressure in her grasp.
She shrugged. “Dead leaves. It happens.”
“Not here. It’s a sign, a small one, that the magic is fading. Even with the Kindred found and scattered across Mytica, it’s too late to stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“This world . . . what’s left of it . . .” He paused, and when Lucia was certain he wasn’t going to continue, she followed his gaze out toward the greenery beyond the city arches, hills, and valleys that seemed to go on forever.
“What’s left of it?” she repeated, not understanding. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“My fellow immortals panic at the sight of a dying leaf, all the while ignorant that it could be much, much worse.” He turned to her with a grim expression, and she met his gaze. “You need to know what could happen to your world. Look again at my beautiful Sanctuary.”
Lucia blinked, then turned once again to survey the pristine view. Only now, beyond the city, the greenery she’d admired didn’t stretch as far as before. A mile, perhaps two, beyond the city gates, the land turned to scorched and blackened earth. And, like a jagged cliffside, it then dropped away entirely. The blue sky had turned to a sheet of solid darkness, no stars to be seen.
The Sanctuary consisted of the city and perhaps a mile of greenery before all beyond it was destroyed.
“What happened?” she choked out.
“An immortal named Damen was created at the same time as Eva, but with the power to kill. He acted only out of a fiery need to destroy, just as the fire Kindred does. The only difference is that Kyan has no real choice over what he is and what he wants. Damen had a choice, and he chose to hurt us. To try to end us. And finally, so many years after his attack, there isn’t enough magic left here to sustain the little that remains of this dying world. Without the Kindred to replenish the life of this realm, the Sanctuary has wasted away to this mere shard, with only a fraction of my kind still in existence. I use my magic to conceal the truth from the others and to try to hold what remains of this world together for as long as I can.”
No one should have such a horrible burden all alone, she thought, sickened by the very idea of what he’d shared with her. “The Kindred. If the crystals are returned here, will that help you?”
He cocked his head. “It won’t fix what is gone, but it would save what’s left.”
Lucia nodded, feeling the resolve building within her. “Then that’s what I need to do. I need to find and imprison Kyan, wherever he is now, locate the other Kindred orbs, and bring them back here. Then my world and the Sanctuary will be saved.”
Of course she knew it wouldn’t be nearly as easy as it sounded.
Timotheus didn’t smile at this suggestion, but a sliver of hope flickered in his eyes.
“Are you going to say something?” she prompted when he fell as silent and still as his fellow immortals during his speech. “Or are you going to direct me to the nearest gateway so I can get back to the mortal world?”
“You must have heard me say earlier that I’ve disabled all gateways.”
She waited. “So . . . enable one again.”
“Without more elders, that will take time.”
“My magic could help you.”
“No. It must be mine. You must hold on to yours for when you next face Kyan.” He nodded, as if to himself. “You will stay here in the tower. Rest. Eat. Regain your strength. As soon as I can, I promise I will help return you to your world so you can attempt to do what is necessary to save us all—if that’s truly what you want.”
It was. Lucia had never wanted anything more.
CHAPTER 8
MAGNUS
LIMEROS
“Tell me, Father,” Magnus said, holding tight to the reins of his horse with his gloved hands. “Have you hidden my grandmother in a block of ice? Is that where she’s been all these years?”
The king didn’t reply to this, not that Magnus expected him to. He’d stayed silent for the half day they’d been traveling so far. They’d acquired five horses from the innkeeper before they’d left that morning, and they rode single file, with the king and Milo at the front, Magnus in the middle, and Enzo and Cleo bringing up the rear.
He preferred to ride in front of the princess. Without her constantly in view, he could think without distraction. So far, Magnus could tell they traveled east, but he had no clue as to their final destination.
He wondered if the four men trailing behind them knew?
When the king demanded a rest near a river, Enzo and Milo got to work building a small fire. Magnus slid off his horse and approached his father. He was disturbed that the man looked even worse than when they began—his face as pale as the snow they stood on, so pale he could see the blue and purple veins beneath his skin.
“Amara has soldiers following us,” he said.
“I know,” the king replied.
“Plan to do anything about that? I can’t imagine your new wife would be pleased to know you lied to her about the reason for this journey.”
“I’m sure my new wife would be surprised if I hadn’t.” The king nodded to Enzo and Milo. “Take care of them.”
The guards nodded, mounting their horses, and galloped off without delay.
Magnus knew perfectly well what “take care of them” meant, and he didn’t object.
“How much farther will we be traveling?” he asked.
“We’re headed to the Reaches,” the king replied.
Magnus’s eyes widened. “The Reaches? So it seems my block-of-ice theory isn’t that far off after all.”
The Reaches was a stretch of land close to the Granite Coast, consisting mostly of frozen moors and icy valleys. It was the coldest place in all of Limeros. The ice there never melted, not even when those in the west experienced the brief temperate season that they considered summer. There was only one village located in the Reaches, and Magnus assumed that that frozen little town must be where Selia Damora had been kept hidden all this time.
The king didn’t divulge more information. He turned his back to Magnus and went to the river to fill his waterskin. Magnus walked over to Cleo, who had her fur-lined cloak pulled tightly around her face.
“How do you stand this temperature for so long?” she asked him.
He barely noticed how cold it was. “It must be my frozen heart.”