Arabella stared out the window of the room she and her husband shared and studied the skyline of Lux. The scene she had witnessed with children born in the Realm of the Gods revealing themselves as Caretakers to the Resurrection Cultivators of Orchid and Hyacinth seemed to underscore as a whole everything she had been thinking all along. There was no way that team of Defenders could have done evil deeds. Period.
Yes, the question still remained of what had really happened, what Armand had really done, but she already knew enough to know the False King had been the truly evil one. He had turned his son into an Other, and his vile poison continued to threaten to ruin more lives. It could well get Alloran killed; if not out of necessity by the Cultivators, but by that . . . thing he had joined.
She looked to where he slept in their bed, and her stomach churned as she saw anew the healing welt across his face. He had endured so much on her behalf. It was time she took action herself, and grabbed for the bravery to do what was needed. If she could find out everything, could confront Alloran with what he had been so afraid to see, then maybe there could be a chance to save him.
She walked over to his side and leaned down to lightly touch his lips with hers. He reached for her without waking and she stepped back out of reach. She grabbed her cloak to swath it around her shoulders and then tugged up the hood as she hurried from the room. At the least, she knew she was safe where she was going. She did not at all feel safe in the 'base' where she had been.
* * * * *
For once, the house was mostly empty. Tasia did not mind at all, since it meant the introvert half of her ambivert tendencies happily absorbed the quiet in order to recharge. Only Beth and Raine were home with her, but both had ensconced themselves in their room with snacks to watch a film theatrical on the Visuality. They only had one of the devices, and it moved from room to room based on need, though it usually stayed in the family room. Tasia had control of the family room for once and was able to easily and contentedly lose herself in her story. She was almost done with it, in fact.
Anira slept in her bra as usual and then suddenly lifted her head on a questioning squeak. Tasia stopped typing and looked down at her and then sensed a presence outside the house. Someone knocked on the door a moment later. She frowned a bit as she walked over to look out the spyhole, and a chocolate brow lifted. She opened the door and looked at the cloaked woman on her porch for a moment before stepping back to let her in. "Come in, Arabella."
Arabella did so but could not stop her nerves. She had never been in such close proximity to someone whose power could be felt in the air. The legendary sorceress whose arcanistry rivaled the Apexes for scale and scope. Knowing she was also the Lead Defender of her generation only made her more unnerved, despite the fact that they were technically related through their husbands. "I . . . that is . . ."
"Take it easy." Tasia conjured a blanket and offered it. "You're shivering and almost edging into shock. Don't make me call the doctors I know. You're not in a den of lions who will eat you for dinner. If you're here under a peace flag, then I'm willing to listen." She leaned against the hall table as Arabella removed her cloak and hung it up. "What do you need?"
She swathed the blanket around her shoulders and felt better. "Your protection." She could tell she had startled Tasia for the other woman's brows lifted in surprise. "Please."
"Protection? From what?" Tasia's eyes suddenly narrowed sharply and a sort of predatory danger lifted around her. "From Alloran?"
"Gods, no! Ran would never hurt me." She had to smile. "I suspect our mates are very alike, Your Highness. They bluster and huff and threaten to do something drastic if we're too reckless, but they would sooner die than ever hurt us. Honestly, the most dramatic thing Ran has ever done is throw me over his shoulder." She saw Tasia grin, and felt a grin rise as well. "Uh-oh. You too?"
"It was both impressive and a little sexy given the circumstances, but I was so pissed at him that I didn't acknowledge that until later." Not for the first time, she found it a damn shame she and Arabella had to be enemies. She had the feeling they could be good friends. "Drop the formalities and call me Tasia. And let's get something warm into you." She led the way into the kitchen. "I'm fairly sure that your hubby won't be happy with you being here because I suspect you're here without him knowing."
"Correct on both counts." Arabella sat at the table and watched curiously as the sorceress made both a cup of coffee and a cup of tea. "You don't drink coffee?"
"Never had a taste for it. I'm also not a stimulant junky, which I suppose is just as well since the healers have put me on a non-stimulant diet." She rolled her eyes. "I daily channel arcane forces of the universe and they're worried about my son absorbing stimulants." She put down the coffee in front of a shocked Arabella. "I suppose that was clear enough, but I'll spell it out anyway: yes, I'm pregnant. I'm due in about five months."
Arabella's stomach clenched warningly. "Oh no. If Ran had known, he would never have attacked you!"
"Hon, he technically wasn't aiming for me to begin with. He's been trying to avoid that like crazy. He hasn't been succeeding, sure, but that's mostly my fault because it's hard to avoid dragging me into the messes my friends end up in."
Arabella looked down at her hands. "Still . . . I'm sorry." She closed her eyes tightly and then opened them in surprise as she felt Tasia cover one of her hands gently. She looked up and was startled to find the other woman kneeling in front of her with a smile. She looked . . . like a goddess. Even the baby dragon visible in her shirt didn't take away from the image; in fact, it helped. "Can you forgive me?"
"There's nothing to forgive." She sat down on the chair beside Arabella. "Beth is one of my dearest friends, and she welcomed you into our group. I can do no less. Besides, we have a lot in common. Dark haired, overbearing, and overprotective husbands are just a tip of the iceberg. I also have Empathy amid my many other gifts and skills and issues." She put a slice of lime in her tea and watched it float. "I think we need to clear the air here. It has become patently obvious to me that Alloran has been thinking we were the bad guys in what happened on Aria."
Arabella nodded. "Alloran and I had left Aria just before things happened. It wasn't even a month later we got a message saying that the king and queen had died, Romalia had been declared unfit to rule, and Armand was desperately trying to find a way to Activate himself as a Ruler to save Aria. I knew that was a lie—Armand did not have a Seed—but Ran loved his father, so like so many times before, I said nothing. When we finally made it back, it was to discover Armand dead, Aria rejoicing in such a thing, and Rodi sat as the True Born King—though he was already working on Deactivating his own Seed to Activate his sister to rule in his place. We heard about the Resurrection Cultivators and the prophesized sorceress of Liena's lineage and how they had killed Armand. Alloran became so enraged. I couldn't help him. I had no control over my gifts then and I was just . . . overwhelmed. On the edge of breaking down entirely."
Tasia dropped her head into her hand. "Oh for gods' sake, Armand! As if you didn't force us to deal with enough shit, you had to set this up to fall on our plate?" She straightened her back. She had vowed to never look back at those events, but there was no choice. "Belle, Armand murdered his parents, tried to murder his sister and nephew, and stole the throne as a False King whose lack of magic and majik alike began to choke and stagnate Aria until by the time we arrived she stood on her last breath. Lest you think I'm kidding, I will also point out that Armand had planned for his ascension very carefully by finding me—the Lead Cultivator of my generation—and attempting to kill me when I was a child."
Arabella went white. "No."
"Yes. He had seen my entire team and knew we would rise to defeat him, so he tried to stop it by targeting us and freezing our Seeds, and in my case, trying to kill me. I drowned, Belle, and only Aria's intervention from a distance saved me. My lungs were shredded and sewn back together—and that's not a metaphor. He attacked all of us Resurrection Cultivators except for Rhya, Leslie, and Rachel. Roughly twenty years later, we gathered of our own will and he sensed a threat. He stole us to Aria in hopes we would die, but Aria herself had placed a stake in these events. She thawed our Seeds and helped us Activate." She took a hard breath. "It was terrible. Everything. I had to force myself to evolve into a sorceress. I had to shatter my own soul and put myself back together. Rodi and I . . . we struggled so damn hard to resist what not just Aria but also Iris and all the gods and goddess wanted. We were accidentally betrothed and then even more accidentally married. I had to throw away my pride for him. He had to find a way to see hope for us."
"I . . . I think I'm going to be sick," Arabella managed.
Tasia touched the coffee she held and turned it into tea. "Drink."
Arabella did so, and the sweet but tart taste helped ease her stomach. "I always knew," she whispered, "that Armand had the potential to do evil. I didn't know he had already done it. I only very recently saw what he had done to Alloran." Her shoulders hunched. "Spikes inside his soul. Magnets for hate. He—he became an Other."
"Which is especially painful for you because you're a witch." Tasia found a smile when Arabella looked at her quickly. "Hey, I'm the High Priestess. I know every witch on sight, even if they're unawakened. You're in full possession of your majik, so there's no way I wouldn't know. Curious you ended up on Tav—even five thousand years ago from now, witches did not really spread beyond Blossom. Probably because this is the heart of the universe." She sighed. "Damn. You know, I honestly thought he was an Other myself, but I doubted myself because he was of the lineage of Aria. I've also been doubting all along there was real evil inside him. Something seemed off somehow, but I didn't have enough information to be sure."
Arabella nodded. "Ran is a good man. Truly. He is nothing like his father. But . . . he loved his father, was blinded to Armand's true nature. Alloran is a Dark core with a Metal Flower Element; no Shadow of any sort despite being of the Arian royal family. He is so easily blind to the obvious."
"Yeah, Armand didn't have any Shadow either. Only Cultivators of Aria get that, and he had no Seed. Also had the Dark core and maybe Metal element; it was hard to tell with all the evil power he kept using. Still, that lineage is prone to being blind to the obvious. Makes keeping them safe a damn pain."
Something in the way Tasia had said that made Arabella pause. Sensing it, Tasia pulled up her left sleeve to reveal her Flower Mark as a Defender. As dominant as the iris blossoms were, the black poppies could not be hidden. Arabella stared and then whispered, "You're the Defender Cultivator of Aria." Her shoulders hunched. "Oh, Ran. This mess is so much more than you realized."
"Is he finally starting to see the truth?"
"Yes, I think so. He trusts my gift, and there is good inside him. He's just scared, Tasia. Terrified. When he . . . when he tried to attack Hyacinth and Orchid, it was in the hopes of using their Life Orbs as a barter to . . . to get us free from the thing he joined with."
"And there we are." Beth walked into the kitchen and lightly touched Arabella's shoulder in greeting. She tugged out two chairs, and she sat in one while Raine sat in the other. She hadn't sensed Arabella until Tasia had begun her story, and then she and Raine had come to stand in the doorway and listen. They hadn't wanted to remember either, but if Tasia, who had hurt the most, could do it, then by the gods so could they. "So Alloran isn't pulling all the strings."
"No. He was desperate to save me and to get revenge. He thought destroying your parents would change the future and prevent what happened to me, so he somehow joined up with some . . . creature. Evil." She fought another shiver and burrowed more into the blanket. "It gave him all of the magic he has been using, and promised to give Ran what he wanted if he got Life Orbs."
"That explains why Dad sensed something off," Raine told Beth and Tasia alike. "He's hypersensitive to fluctuations of time-space, and is all but Sensing himself. He must've been picking up that Alloran used evil magic without being evil—which is a misnomer, to be sure. Even when parts of our team were corrupted, for the time they used evil they felt evil."
Arabella's eyes closed. "Please. Don't tell me . . ."
"Yeah, another antic of your asshole father-in-law." Raine leaned over and pressed a hand to Arabella's head. "No passing out or puking on the floor in this house. Healer's rules."
Her majik eased both ailments so Arabella could breathe again. "I'm sorry. I . . ."
"Am just hypersensitive as well." Beth smiled. "Trust me, you're in good company. We won't discuss the things I and Tasia and Ryan have had to weather. We'll come back to the evil stuff a bit later. Let's divert. You mentioned Alloran needing to save you. From what? What's been going on with you? I mean, the first we saw you was when you posed as Nelly, and we at least knew of you, so it did seem odd we had not seen you yet."
Arabella nodded. "To be frank, I had been unconscious. Majikally induced healing sleep for several years."
"No wonder you're so thin!" Raine scolded. She immediately went over to the fridge. "Keep talking. I'm listening. I'm just going to feed you something filling. I thought you looked a little malnourished. Majikal sleep can shut down everything and allow a body to survive on just breathing, but the body does start showing effects after too long."
A little bemused, Arabella shook her head. "I used to be much rounder. I miss that. I don't object to getting it back. Anyway," she sighed, "the sleep came on because of a complete overload of my senses. To start, let me say I'm from Tav. Yes, I don't usually have legs. I met Alloran right after he turned twenty-five. I'm a bit older than he is, actually. This was a few months before . . . before what happened did. He came to Tav on vacation."
"Did sparks fly?" Beth asked on a grin.
"To say the least! He made such a handsome swimmer," she said wistfully. She waved it off. "My family is a relatively high ranking one on Tav, holding titles and property alike. I said a little about it to Beth when I . . . attacked her. As I said, I didn't even know there was a name for what was inside me. I just knew I could feel everyone's emotions and sense events moving." She sighed. "My family, you see, prizes a lack of emotion. They think that emotion weakens you and makes you do stupid things. Unfortunately, I could feel everything they claimed they did not have, and as a child, I didn't know to keep my mouth shut."
Tasia winced. "I've suffered bullying and abuse from my peers. Family would be worse."
"There was no escaping. My situation was not aided by my eyes." She gestured toward them. "I was born blue-eyed like the rest of my family but then one eye turned green."
Raine glanced over her shoulder. "I take it you were not . . . entirely of your family?"
"If that's a tactful way of saying that my mother and father hated each other and were also sleeping with other people and my mother got pregnant, yes. So now I'm not entirely like my siblings, and I've got weird powers, and I keep telling them they feel things they say they didn't. I also embraced my own emotions. That might have been the worst of all." She sighed. "I learned to keep my mouth shut as I got older, but the damage had been done."
A little smile tugged at Beth's lips. "And then one day a handsome prince from another world showed up."
Arabella began to smile. "How terribly romantic that sounds."
"Am I wrong?"
The smile became a grin. "No. He didn't sweep me off my feet, per se, given we had no feet, but I'm fairly sure the water-based equivalent still applies." She gave a little sigh. "I had never had anyone love me, and I couldn't read him clearly anyway—which surprised me—so I didn't really believe it when he said he wanted to be mine."
"Empaths have a tendency to not notice if their soul mate loves them," Tasia offered. "I've often thought that was a sort of gift from the Goddess that allows an empath to still have that moment of joy in realizing they are loved. It goes away after that, and an empath instead becomes acutely attuned to their mate. On the other hand, an empath also instinctively tries to hide their emotions when they aren't sure if they're returned, so if you've got two empaths falling for each other, they might take longer than most to figure it out. Beth and her betrothed had that. Hid their feelings from each other so they had no clue until both decided to just admit the truth and jump each other. Now they can't hide anything if they try."
"I read Ran clear as crystal after we were lovers," Arabella agreed. "Before that, you're not wrong! He had sought me out at first because he was curious, having heard of me, but told me outright that he thought I was fascinating and he wanted to know me better." She sighed. "Of course, he had ulterior motives. He had decided right out that we must be soul mates."
"Unusual for a Dark core," Beth mused, "but does happen." She jerked a thumb toward Raine who was making a pot of soup. "Her mother is a good example."
"Trust me, Dad doesn't complain about that."
Again, Arabella smiled at the banter, but then it faded. "My family was not happy that Alloran proposed to me. I think . . . they wanted to kill me. I don't know why. Ran took me back to Aria where I met his family. We married there, and I . . . I began to worry. About Armand. Ran knew I was uneasy though not why, so we traveled to Celia for a while. A month later . . . well. You know the rest." She took a bracing drink of the tea. "Ran definitely did not help things on Aria after the fall. I was on the verge of breaking already, as I said. We went back to Tav to regroup, and my family found us—and attacked us. To this day, I don't know why they were so afraid of me. Everything finally overwhelmed me and I just could not endure. I went into the majikally-induced sleep, and it lasted until just recently when your grief awoke me, Tasia."
"Four years," Beth repeated in horror. "Asleep for four years?!"
"She's lucky it wasn't longer," Raine pointed out. "Holy crap. Almost thirty years of empathic static and scars and no one to help you train and control? Belle, you could have well slept for a whole decade if it weren't for Tasia being a Spiritual Healer and High Priestess. It wasn't so much her grief that woke you, but the power carried in her grief." She carried over a bowl of soup and put it in front of Arabella. "Eat."
She did not argue. The spicy soup actually tasted very good, and felt more filling than she expected. Half a bowl proved enough. She pushed it away after and sighed. Tasia had been waiting patiently, but she finally leaned forward. "Belle," she asked softly, intently, "what creature did Alloran join with? We've known all along there had to be something more behind him, that something gave him that magic he used. If we're going to save Alloran, we need to know what we're facing. We need to know why we are summoners who have to restore Tananeen. If it was not important in this war, it would not have happened now. Anything you can tell me will help me put it together."
"I don't actually know much. Just that it is . . . a terrible thing. I didn't meet it. Just felt it. Something slimy and disgusting and . . . unnatural." She huddled into the blanket again. "It creates those Gensomes by—by tearing off bits of itself." She drew a long breath. "I only once heard it called by name. It was called Splice."
Though Striker and Haeth had been sitting quietly on a chair together, just listening, the sound of that name sent them both into what looked like a full panic attack. Both let out chilling cries that sounded more like screams, and their power began to rise up hotter and hotter around them. They had lost all control, and dragon magic began to shoot through the air.
"Get out of the way!" Tasia snarled. She shoved Arabella toward the family room and then grabbed Beth and Raine to shove them as well. She planted herself between the door and her dragons and spread her arms wide to form a physical barrier. "Haeth! Striker! Please hear my voice!"
Not even her Mystic voice could pierce their frenzy, and a window shattered. Wind gusted in and swept Tasia's hair into a more chaotic tangle than ever. Anira crawled out of her shirt and almost fell to the floor before her wings worked properly. She flew toward her parents but Tasia reached out and snatched her from the air. She was just in time; Haeth's flailing claw raked down her arm.
"Stay back!" she ordered when Beth and Raine started forward. They did as she commanded, and her eyes went gray. A majik circle cast around her and the three dragons, and she reached out to snatch her two eldest from the chair. She held them to her heart over their struggles and fought to tame them without breaking the circle. She dropped her Coda form to help, and the surge of her dragon power released a ripple that went through the circle only to immediately amplify into a shockwave of what felt like a blend of elements.
Time itself seemed to slow down for a moment as the wind died, though her hair continued to ripple. The circle began to go counterclockwise and took time in reverse. The broken window reset and the claw wounds disappeared. Haeth and Striker calmed and burrowed closer against their mistress, yet she did not see them. Her eyes saw nothing except the Sight that had torn through her mind.
Splice.
An immortal demon who had once been a dragon. He had been consumed by evil many millennia before and now devoured dragons as his source of power. He had become almost a god among dragons himself. Only the King of Dragons could defeat him for only Tananeen had the full, raw force of dragon power needed to erase the corrupted demon. Splice both hated and feared nothing more than Tananeen's majikally-enhanced descendants. If he had not known before that Tasia was the last and most powerful member of that lineage, he would know it now as soon as the shockwave reached him. She and her friends were the only thing between him and the utter destruction of all that lived.
She suddenly collapsed to the floor as the circle disappeared. The other three women instantly ran across the room to kneel next to her. Haeth and Striker were unconscious as well, and only Anira seemed perfectly fine by the display. She crawled across the floor to where Tasia was lying and laid down with her little body tucked against Tasia's cheek. Raine watched her and began to suspect there was more to the baby than met the eye. She was a hatchling and yet she had not fallen susceptible where an Elder had? Just what role was she playing in this drama, and why had she chosen that moment to hatch?
©Stacy J. Garrett. Do not reprint or redistribute without permission.
No comments:
Post a Comment