Edge of Pathos (The Conjurors Series Book 4) (10 page)

“I want to find a
safe way for travel between worlds. Someday,” Valerie promised.

“The promises of a
child who has no idea how she would achieve such a thing. Do you have a plan to
unite our worlds?” Gabriel spat.

“Not yet,” Valerie
said.

“She has been
elevated to a position of power because she is a vivicus, but she will never
lead us back to Earth. She doesn’t even know that her own brother is helping
the armies of the Fractus to defeat the Fist!”

Valerie was too
shocked to hide her reaction. She didn’t doubt Gabriel’s words were true, and
the revelation almost shut down her mind, making it impossible to find the
words she needed to win the hearts of the Illyrians. Next to her, Elle and Will
drew back in shock.

“You can see that
I’m right. No doubt her heart is in the right place, but she is not special.
She is not a true leader, but a vivicus whose mind will soon be stripped of its
consciousness by her power. Is it wise to chart a course with her?” Gabriel
said, his eyes flashing with triumph as he stared Valerie down.

“We will find a way
to stop the Fractus, with or without you. And when we do, there will be time to
investigate how to open up relations between the worlds. All those who come in
peace will be welcome,” she said, but her words were lost in the roar of
chatter that followed Gabriel’s speech.

She had already been
dismissed by the Illyrians. Silently, Elle and Will led her away from the
conch.

“You need to hurry
to the surface,” Elle said. “Gabriel could take away your temporary immortality
at any time.”

Valerie didn’t have
to be told twice. She raced to the surface, with Elle and Will right behind
her. She burst to the top seconds before her tail vanished. She swam to the
shore, which thankfully, was close by. She didn’t recognize the beach of the
little pond they’d arrived in.

“Where are we?” she
asked the twins.

“You’re in luck.
We’re in Arden. You’re about as far as you can get from Silva, but there’s an
entrance to the cities in the trees around here. The People of the Woods will
give you quick passage home,” Will said.

“He gave you time to
make it up without a struggle. It’s more than he gave Mom and Dad,” Elle said.

“He didn’t want
anyone to find out you’d been treated badly. It would undermine his case,” Will
replied.

“I don’t think I
changed anyone’s mind,” Valerie said, shaking the water out of her short, wet
hair.

“How could Henry…”
Elle began, but Valerie cut her off with a short shake of her head.

“I owe it to him to
give him a chance to explain,” Valerie said. “Maybe there’s more going on than
we know.”

“There has to be,”
Will said.

Valerie took a breath
and changed the subject before the anger that was brewing in her toward her
brother showed on her face. “The merpeople will never be our allies.”

“Mom used to say
that the Illyrians were falling away from their old ideals. They hunger for
knowledge and forget what’s really important,” Elle said.

“I hope that we’ll
still be able to keep our edge without knowledge from the Akashic Records,”
Valerie said.

“You’ll still get
the information you need,” Elle said. “Will and I aren’t experts, like the
Illyrians who were helping you before, but our parents taught us the basics.
And the spell that will be placed on the Illyrians won’t apply to us, since we
never took the vows that everyone else had to when they embraced their
immortality.”

“That means we’ll
have to move back,” Will said thoughtfully. “But it’s time, isn’t it?”

Elle nodded, and
Valerie wondered if they were also talking telepathically, like she and Henry
often did. It was extremely irritating for the person outside the conversation.
She’d have to remember that.

Thinking
of Henry stirred her anger even more. It was time to go home. Henry owed her
answers, and this time, he wasn’t going to wriggle out of them.

It took Valerie the
rest of the day to navigate her way back to Silva. Elle and Will helped her
find the tree she needed to climb, and the People of the Woods were happy to
escort her to the platform she needed to float back to Silva, but not before
taking the time to visit with the wounded and consulting with the council of
leaders, who were at loose ends without Elden’s solid presence to ground them.

Her responsibilities
fulfilled, she finally got on her way and floated down, landing in the woods
near The Horseshoe. A day of travel hadn’t calmed Valerie down. If anything, it
had given her anger time to fester. She didn’t bother to close her mind to her
brother, so her rage must have been blasting across the Globe.

He was waiting in
the garden when she arrived, and he wasn’t alone. Gideon, Cyrus, Thai, Dulcea,
and Jack were with him, watching her with confusion. Henry must have gathered
them there, hoping she wouldn’t confront him in their presence. She didn’t
care. They could all hear what she had to say. She slammed the gate behind her.

“I’ve racked my
mind, trying to think of one good reason that you could be helping the Fractus.
But I can’t think of a single one! So tell me, Henry, what could be so
important that you’d put the lives of thousands of humans and Conjurors at
stake, risk the fate of two worlds?”

Henry’s eyes were
desperate as he answered her. “Kanti.”

Henry opened his
mind to her, and all of the secrets that he’d been hiding for the past few
months flooded in. Valerie tried to process the information, but it was coming at
her so fast that she could only absorb it in flashes.

“Reaper turned her
to stone? Is she alive?” Valerie asked when she began to make sense of what she
was seeing.

“Yes, or so he
says,” Henry said.

“Hold up, wonder
twins,” Cyrus said. “What happened to Kanti?”

“Reaper kidnapped
her,” Henry said, sinking onto the doorstep.

Valerie could sense
his all-consuming panic now. How had she ever missed it?

“
Kidnapped
her? How the hell don’t we know about this?” Jack asked. “Haven’t you been
talking to her? I thought she was one of the four pillars!”

Valerie had known
that something was terribly wrong with Henry, but she’d stuck her head in the
sand, unable to face his pain while dealing with the loss of her father. But
hadn’t Henry lost his father, too? Then to have Kanti taken from him, who could
blame him for doing anything to save her? Her rage at herself nearly eclipsed
her anger at her brother.

Now that Henry’s
mind was open, his secrets spilled out in rapid succession. The meeting with
Reaper where he’d made the deal for Kanti’s life. Hours spent imbuing the
Fractus army with the power of darkness, draining him until he vomited up bile.
Nights awake, tortured by the thought of innocents who would be hurt because of
what he’d done. Three, no, four times he’d gone to Reaper, ready to say that he
was done helping him, but at the sight of Kanti’s beautiful, still stone form,
the words would evaporate on his tongue.

Last, she saw the
times that he’d gone to Babylon, standing on top of the tiers of flowers. He
hadn’t visited for peace. He’d been contemplating throwing himself off the
ledge and ending his ability to hurt anyone else ever again.

“You’d leave me?”
Valerie shouted, and Henry took a step back. “That’s a worse betrayal than
equipping Reaper’s army!”

Thai pulled her away
from Henry. “Take a breath. I don’t know what’s happening, but he’s suffering
enough.”

Valerie shut her
eyes and sat down next to Henry. Her arm brushed his, and he was as cold as
stone.

“You should have told
me. We could have found a better way, together,” she snapped.

“As leader of the
Fist, you ought to throw me in jail for my betrayal, since I know you don’t
have it in you to execute me, which is what I deserve. We’re going to lose the
war because of what I’ve done, and millions of humans will be enslaved, or die.
I’m a coward. I betrayed you, like my prophecy said I would,” Henry babbled.

“Someone please tell
us what’s going on,” Thai said, reminding her that she was the only one who
could see inside Henry’s mind.

“Reaper turned Kanti
to stone and would only change her back if Henry gave his army the power to
create a darkness strong enough to put out the light from our weapons,” Valerie
said, since Henry was mute.

She watched her
friends faces cycling through the emotions that churned through her. Cyrus and
Thai were frozen, stunned by her words. Dulcea’s lips were pressed with
disapproval, and Gideon shook his head. But Jack lay a hand on Henry’s
shoulder, and Valerie knew that he understood what it was to get caught up with
the Fractus.

“So we go get our
girl back,” Cyrus said, speaking first.

“Right now,” Dulcea
added.

Henry looked up then
and Valerie was flooded with his awe through their connection.

“Don’t you hate me?”
he asked.

“I’m mad enough to throw
you halfway across the Globe, but I could never hate you,” Valerie said
fiercely, and their friends nodded.

“It’s done. We
understand why you did what you did,” Thai said. “Let’s move on and fix it.”

“Kanti’s in the
Black Castle?” Gideon asked.

Henry nodded.

“Then we have an
advantage. The orb Valerie activated with Pathos when we rescued Darling will
dampen the powers of any Fractus in the castle. They may not even be aware of
its effect on them until it’s too late,” Gideon said.

“Even still, I’m sure
he’s got a million guards on her at all times, not to mention whatever portion
of his army is there right now. We’ll have to sneak in,” Jack said.

“We should talk to
Sanguina. She helped you last time,” Cyrus added.

This time, it wasn’t
up to Valerie to plan the battle. Without asking, her friends were crafting the
rescue mission as if they knew that she and Henry were too upset to think
straight.

“To think that I
once thought I could never forgive Sanguina for terrorizing me and my dad,”
Henry whispered, as much to himself as to his sister under the chatter of their
friends’ planning. “I’ve destroyed lives on a magnitude that she never dreamed
of.”

“It isn’t the same,
Henry. Then, when Sanguina was a vampyre, she was driven by hate. You were
driven by love,” Valerie said.

“And selfishness.
You’d never have made that deal,” Henry said.

Valerie considered
his words. “I don’t know what I’d have done if they took the most important
person in my life.”

“You would have
found another way. Or, if you couldn’t, you would have let Thai go,” Henry
said.

“I’m not talking
about Thai,” Valerie said, her eyes connecting with Henry’s. “If Reaper took
the most important person in my life, if Reaper took
you
, I might have
done the same thing you did.”

“No you wouldn’t.
But thank you,” Henry said, so softly that she could barely hear the words.

She thought back
over the past weeks, her mind reeling as she adjusted to the fact that Henry
had been working for Reaper. “Why did you convince me to accept Reaper’s
ten-day truce?”

“I overheard him
talking to Zunya about transporting things, and I thought that it’d be safe for
you and the Fist to have a break from the fighting, even if it was only for a
little while. I didn’t know there was more to their plan, I swear,” he
promised.

“Come on now, you
two,” Dulcea said sternly. “We need your mindshare if we are going to rescue
Kanti before Reaper makes Henry do something even worse or takes Kanti’s life.”

“And we will rescue
her,” Cyrus said fiercely. “She’ll be okay.”

“I swear
it,” Valerie added.

“The Black Castle is
locked up tighter than the Justice Guild,” Sanguina said when Valerie and Henry
visited her on Earth later that day.

“No secret passages that
Reaper doesn’t use often, or doesn’t know about?” Valerie asked hopefully.

“The building was
originally constructed to contain anyone who abused magic on Earth or the
Globe, before the Fractus took it over,” Sanguina said. “The stable part of the
castle has one entrance and one exit.”

“What about the
unstable parts?” Henry asked. “That’s how Oberon escaped.”

“Very risky. And the
farther you go from the center of the castle, the riskier it is. But because
the castle is always changing, there are some ways in and out that are less
well guarded, since the Fractus are afraid to be in the parts of the castle
that aren’t stable. But finding them from the outside would be impossible.”

“Then we’ll have to
attack to get in,” Valerie said.

Sanguina shook her
head. “There are other ways to sneak in. Reaper mines an ore from one of the
mountains of Dunsinane for his weapons. It welds to dark magic well, and nearly
all of the Fractus’s weapons are made from it. One of you could deliver a
shipment of ore to the castle.”

“But won’t we be
recognized? Reaper’s mind is too powerful to be tricked by a simple glamour
disguise,” Henry said.

Sanguina nodded. “It
would have to be someone he’s never seen before.”

“That only solves
the problem of how to get one of us in. But we’ll need more people than that,
even if we’re careful,” Henry said doubtfully.

“I have
an idea,” Valerie said.

Two hours later,
with a rough blueprint that Sanguina sketched and her promise to join them on
their mission, Valerie and Henry returned to the Globe. Their house was empty,
even of Gideon, who was working with Cyrus and Leo to get weapons ready for
their team.

“This plan could get
us all killed. Kanti won’t thank us for that,” Henry said. “I’ve only got
another hundred or so of Reaper’s soldiers that I have to give the darkness
power to. What difference will it make?”

“Who knows? Maybe
none. Or maybe it’s the difference between winning and losing. Kanti won’t
thank us for handing over Earth to the Fractus in her name, either,” Valerie
said, and then regretted her words as she watched Henry’s face crumple.

“She’ll never
forgive me,” he said.

“Give her some
credit and some time,” Valerie said.

But her words didn’t
reach Henry. He had the faraway look in his eyes that she’d seen so many times
when she’d visited him in Babylon. How could she have left him alone with his
grief and pain?

The door opened, and
Gideon came in. Before speaking, he made them all a pot of Oberon’s tea and sat
down.

“We go at daybreak.
We dare wait no longer, but we also must be rested before we attempt the
rescue. Drink this, so you can find a night’s peace,” Gideon said.

Henry drank his tea
in one long swallow and then left for bed, absently chewing his thumbnail. His
mind was shut tight against Valerie’s gentle probing, and for now, she let it
be.

Valerie gripped her
mug and watched her mentor as she sipped the drink. “I hope you know how
grateful I am that you’re here to lead this. Fighting this war without you
would be impossible.”

Gideon shook his
head. “I am only one of your tools. I know you value me, but even without my
help, you would lead the Fist to victory.”

“I don’t know how
you still believe that, after all of the mistakes I’ve made,” Valerie said.

“Your errors were
made with pure intent. You have the intelligence, the skills, the magic, and
the heart to win. Right is on your side, and it will prevail,” Gideon said.

Warm and a little
sleepy from her drink, Valerie absently turned the Laurel Circle around and
around on her thumb, remembering how he had given it to her to teach her not to
be paralyzed by her fear.

“It’s gold,” she
said. “That can’t be right.”

The ring’s color and
temperature reflected how much fear ruled her, and after Gideon had first given
it to her, it was usually cold and dark. When had it begun to grow warmer?

“It must be broken,
because I’m still afraid of so many things.”

“The Laurel Circle
doesn’t change because you no longer have any fear. It is only showing you that
you are no longer ruled by it. Your decisions come from somewhere else,
somewhere better,” Gideon said. “That is how I know you are ready for anything
that comes.”

“Long as I have you
with me,” Valerie said, resting her head on her arms, unable to stay awake.

She
barely registered Gideon lifting her and carrying her to bed before she fell
into a deep and dreamless sleep.