Page 7

Chapter 7

Karus

“ Beets ?” I scowled at the array of food in front of me, curated by the one and only Clairannia .

“ Yes , Karus , beets. Every one of these foods feeds your body which feeds your babe.”

I glanced at Figuerah . She sat across from me next to her companion, Nyeimah , with a face contorted in disgust.

“ Just don’t eat too many of those,” Clairannia continued, digging into a plate full of the breakfast I wish I was eating. “ Beets can stain your teeth and make your pee pink.”

In a tinge of nausea, I covered my nose and mouth for a moment. “ There’s no concern of eating too many, Clairannia . I’m not sure I’ll be able to eat them at all.”

I picked up my fork and moved around some of the other foods on my plate. My eggs had been scrambled with spinach, my strawberries had been chopped and mixed in some kind of tangy yogurt, and a vegetable hash had been fried in the form of purple potatoes, beets, onions, and carrots.

Not a single cinnamon bun graced my plate or the table. Not even a gravy and sausage meat pie.

I had months left of this.

Exhaling swiftly out of my lips, I stabbed a forkful of beet and potato and brought it to my mouth to chew, closing my eyes to get it down while catching up to the conversation of which route was best to take to the Attatok Mountains . Our new channelers were still there, waiting for us to arrive.

“ I don’t think so, either,” Figuerah was saying. “ Going too far east is risky. We should take the Carrow Road to the west of Hyrithia . It’s not as straight of a journey, but it’s definitely safer.”

Clairannia asked, “ When is Revich returning from retrieving Mychael ?”

I forced a swallow from the mush in my mouth. “ Later tonight.”

She filled her fork full of cheesy eggs and continued, “ Have you discussed which of the channelers here you’re taking with you to the mountains?”

I speared a bit of egg on my fork, trying to convince myself to eat it. “ We’re bringing all of them.”

Clairannia sputtered, “ All six? Why ?”

I laid down my fork in defeat. “ There isn’t enough time. We can’t waste the weeks we’ll be gone now that I cannot travel through Rev’s portals. We’re adding so much time onto the journey, and they need to have some training before we return with the new channelers from the mountains and the Spire . I offered for Rev to go without me, but he refused.” I took a sip of my tea. At least Clairannia had let me have that with sugar and milk, just as I liked it. “ I know it’s unusual, but they’ll have to train with us outside of Felgren .”

“ All of this is unusual,” Figuerah added. “ Two Barons . One of them a woman.” She shook her head, sipping her own tea. “ I for one, don’t mind the upheaval of tradition one bit.”

Clairannia nodded. “ I’m just surprised, that’s all. In another month or so, Karus , you should be feeling better—like your old self. I can come to you as far as Lythglyn , but then I must get back to the Spire . I’ll see you there in a few weeks anyway.”

I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. She tilted her head to mine, and I kissed the top of her thick black hair.

She lifted her head with a contagious grin. “ Now , let’s start discussing the nursery.”

* * *

My brother and I walked the paths of Felgren in silence.

All the other channelers were either nursing headaches from drinking too much at the celebration the night before or nursing the ones who were sick.

Surprisingly , Philius informed me he hadn’t had anything to drink, even though drinking had been his favorite pastime when I’d reunited with him just months ago in Hyrithia .

Our boots crunched over pinecones and dry needles along our path. We hadn’t chosen a destination—only a decision that we needed to clear some of the silence between us.

“ Are you—” he began, just as I started, “ It’s okay?—”

We chuckled and fell back to the quiet.

I cleared my throat. “ You go first.”

“ Congratulations ,” he offered, folding his arms across his chest.

The noon sun beat down over the cloudless sky, filtering through the shifting leaves of the trees. The welcome shade cooled our path in a reprieve from the late spring, which stubbornly refused to give way to summer.

I gave a snort, saying, “ Thank you. But I know you have much more to say than that.”

“ You haven’t been listening to what I’ve been saying.”

“ So say something I will listen to, Big Brother .” I grinned up at him, a good six inches taller than me.

He shook his head and his black coils bounced in the movement. He rubbed his face, and I once again thought of Heimlen . I’d guess I always would every time I saw the blackened hands of my brother. The residual evidence of the Black Fever , which had almost killed him, swam down his wrists in a spill of black ink against his mahogany skin.

I looked away quickly. The last thing I needed was to linger on a subject which made me furious.

“ Be careful.” He paused. “ No , you won’t listen to that. Be smart.”

I laughed into the breeze, pushing his shoulder lightly.

“ I mean it, Karus . I see that you won’t leave Revich? —”

“ Baron Revich ,” I interrupted, only concerned about my companion’s title when it came to my princely brother using it.

“ Fine — Baron Revich . You’re less likely to come back to Hyrithia with me now, but please, Karus . Be smart. Think all of this through. You passed the conduit trials, you passed the Baron trial.” He glanced at me with a smirk. “ I knew you had all of that in you, but the Blightress …” he trailed, his eyes furrowing along with his mouth.

“ What do you know about her?” I pulled at a long blade of blooming grass along the path.

“ Nothing before I saw the Blight . Only what you’ve told me anyway.”

I remembered that day. Philius had been asking to see the Blight which had played a hand in the disease that had killed countless channelers in Hyrithia . The look on his face at the edge of the endless abyss in Felgren had been so strange.

I let the silence continue to fall as we walked.

He finally cleared his throat again and said, “ I heard her that day. Or really, she heard me.”

“ What ? ” I cried, turning his body to face me. “ Why didn’t you say anything until now?”

“ I wasn’t sure at first. But I went back.”

“ Dammit , Philius !” I heaved a sigh and rubbed my eyes, ready for a nap. “ We told you not to go there without us.” I glared at him, putting my hands on my hips. “ Have I told you the story of how the Blight tried to take me once?” I gestured in its general direction in Felgren where it had slowed to a snail’s pace in growth, but still consumed hundreds of acres. “ It is dangerous and powerful. Just like her. Talk about being smart,” I lashed.

“ I know, I just… I had to be sure. When you and Revich —” He paused and corrected, “ Baron Revich took me, I asked the Blight what it had stolen from me. But I only asked in my mind. I just was…wondering, you know. Ever since I was sick and you were taken…nothing has been right.”

I stepped forward and pulled him into a hug, not wanting him to see the tears that brimmed in my eyes. “ What did you hear back?” I murmured into his shoulder.

He gave my body a quick squeeze and let go, turning back to the path and motioning for us to keep walking. “ I thought I heard a voice in my head. I thought I heard the word nothing , but I wasn’t sure.”

“ What about when you went back? When did you go back?”

“ A few days before the party. After you’d passed your trials, and I knew for certain I would never be able to convince you to come back to Hyrithia with me.”

He kicked a rock and was silent for another moment. I didn’t push. I knew the best way to help my brother was to listen. All our lives we’d both been told what to do, where to go, and who we were, but none of that had been true for me. So , I waited. I waited for Philius to tell me his truth.

“ I’ve always been the future king,” he started. “ A placeholder until my future queen bears a little girl. I was fine with that. I accepted it. Then you were taken. Nothing made sense anymore.” He shrugged. “ You’re my sister. You were always supposed to be there, too. I thought maybe you’d become companions with Geyrand and have babies of your own.”

I kept my mouth shut and stared out at the line of trees.

“ I know. I know you didn’t love him like that, but I guess in my head, I just assumed everything would fall into perfect place like we were told, and when it didn’t…” He sighed, moving to sit on an old stump of a fallen tree off the path. “ I felt like such a fool. One minute you were gone, the next we were told you were dead, and I couldn’t save my sister from the circumstances of her being taken in the first place, so… I turned to drink. A stronger man would have found another way to cope.”

I sat beside him, smoothing out my black skirts. “ You didn’t have the support you needed, Philius .” I elbowed his arm. “ But you do now.”

He glanced to me in a frown.

“ I mean it. You have me, and you have your fellow channelers who have really warmed up to you the past few weeks, considering what you were like when you got here. You have Baron Revich as well. You may not particularly like each other, but he does care about your future, and he does believe in you. I believe in you.”

“ The Blightress said she can train me.”

“ What ! ”

“ When I went back, asking in my mind who was speaking, she revealed herself. She told me that the Black Fever had brought us closer as channeler and the origin of magic and that she wants me to come to her white stone palace and train.”

“ What the fuck , Philius !” I jumped up and faced him, my temper raging. I didn’t even attempt to control it. “ You’re just telling me this now ? Why did you wait so long? What did you say to her?”

He lifted his hands as if to placate me. “ I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I really am. I just needed to process what I’d had learned about myself and that woman.”

“ Process ?” Shoots of green, long and spindly, shot out from the base of the fallen tree, reaching toward the sky in new life fueled by all the power I now held as Baron . I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, taking several long inhales. My brother still sat, smartly keeping quiet.

I tilted my head back, letting the feeling of warmth and love wash over me.

Rev .

He’d felt that little outburst of anger and was sending his love back to me through our bond.

I took one more breath and nodded, biting my lips together and addressing Philius again. “ What did you say back?”

He warily glanced at the shoots of saplings still slowly growing at his boots. “ Remind me not to make you really angry.”

“ What did you say, Philius ?” I repeated through my teeth.

“ I asked who she was. She told me I already knew.”

I rolled my eyes.

“ Then , I asked her why she’d want to train me at all since I don’t seem to have strong magic.”

“ And ?” I huffed.

He shrugged. “ She said I do… I’m just not training with the right person.”

I laughed sardonically. “ Oh , really?” I glanced toward the north as if I could see her there in her swampy forest and palace of white stone. “ Did you tell her no?”

“ No .”

“ Philius .”

“ It’s not like I plan to actually do it. But I thought maybe I could get more information out of her. Maybe I’ll learn something we can use in this plan of yours to get to her heart and destroy it. So , I asked her where I could meet her if I decided to accept her offer.”

My nostrils flared and red petals of demorte flower bloomed at my feet.

“ She said I could just open my mind to her and she’d be there to listen to my answer. I don’t have to be near the Blight to speak to her.”

I frowned. “ You can speak to her in your mind at any time?”

“ That’s what she said.”

“ Have you tried?”

“ No .”

“ Try it. Right now.”

“ And say what?”

I bit my bottom lip, staring down at the crimson blooms around my boots. “ Ask her what she wants out of training you. Tell her you don’t want any harm to come to your sister.”

He rubbed his face and bent forward on his knees grimacing up at me. “ I just ask that in my own head?”

“ If she’s really there, you should be able to tell. Like a little space inside that doesn’t belong to you alone.”

He quirked a brow.

“ Just try it, Philius .”

He scowled and closed his eyes.

I waited in the silence, chewing my bottom lip.

After a few minutes, his body rose, quick and ridged.

There she was.

Keeping his eyes closed, his face tightened into furrowed brows and a deep frown.

A few minutes more and his eyes flashed open, the golden hue large and brilliant in the midday light.

He opened his mouth to speak then closed it again, looking to the north as I had just done.

“ Tell me,” I whispered.

“ She knows. She knows all of it. Your plans—everything.”

“ Fuck ,” I swore, ignoring the concern radiating to me through Rev .

“ Fuck is right,” he agreed.

* * *

“ And so I said, ‘ Humans need more time to think about things, but I’ll ask.’ and then I flew here to tell you, and that’s been my morning. What about you, Karus ? You seem angry or something.”

I wished I could fly as fast as Moria .

I wished I could portal.

It would be so much easier if I could just create a portal like Rev and transfer across Felgren back to the Fortress in an instant. Better yet, I wished I could portal like the Blightress with no restrictions on how many beating hearts could go through. I reached down to grab more of my black skirts as I ran, cursing myself for not bringing the lumens with us.

“ I’m sorry, Moira ,” I huffed in response. “ I’m going to have to speak to you more about this later. I need to get to Pompeii .” She flew at my shoulder, keeping up with my jog back down the path Philius and I had walked. He’d stopped calling for me to wait for him and was now just keeping pace behind me.

“ I wish you had wings, Karus . Maybe you just haven’t grown them yet. You’re part fae after all, and fae tend to change, you know. Over time we become new.”

I scrunched my face, glancing at her above my shoulder.

“ It’s true!” she giggled. The sound echoed through the trees. “ You have fae blood, so maybe you’ll grow some, and we can fly through the forest together, or,” she gasped, “maybe your parasite will be born with them!”

I glanced at her again, relieved to see the tall black towers of the Fortress ahead. “ My what ?”

“ That thing you’re growing. It is a parasite, isn’t it? Clairannia said it would take parts of you and consume them.”

I slowed to a walk, instinctively pressing a hand to my belly. “ Moira ,” I puffed, “that’s not…that isn’t...” I rubbed my face. “ You and I need to sit down and have a real talk about this. But not now. I’m sorry, my friend, but I really need to speak to Pompeii .” I nodded toward the front doors of the Fortress . “ Meet me here before dusk?”

She shrugged. “ Sure . Bring? —”

I waved her off. “ Yes , yes, bring bread and butter. I will.”

She waved at me and then fluttered to Philius , flying around his head several times while he failed to swat her away. Her laugher lit again before she flew off in a streak of shimmering wings.

“ She’s annoying,” he puffed, catching his breath.

“ She’s particular,” I retorted, waving at Pompeii who stood on the black stone steps in his usual green livery. “ Go inside and gather the other channelers in Viridis for me, would you?”

“ I want to hear?—”

“ No , Philius . I don’t know what this is and cannot risk you hearing what I’m about to say.”

He scowled but nodded. “ It’ll be hard to get Rell and Renn out of bed. They’re probably still green.”

“ Help them then. You know what they need.”

“ Alright . Best I can do is get them to Viridis in forty minutes, but they might be uselessly hungover today.”

He nodded to Pompeii and headed up the stairs into the Fortress .

“ Baron Karus ,” Pompeii greeted, offering a hand to help me climb the steps. “ You’re quite flushed. I came as soon as I felt your call.” He grinned and whispered conspiratorially, “ You’re getting better at this Baron - Overseer communication, you know. I was only tugged halfway out of my chair this time.”

I chuckled, taking his hand, though only out of politeness. It would be a while before I needed help climbing stairs. “ I’m glad I didn’t send you to the ground like before. Let’s head to the study. I need to speak with you on something urgent.”

He waved me in first through the massive wooden doors of the Fortress . I strode across the foyer in haste to the study Revich and I shared. A few of the servants dipped their heads toward me, addressing me as Baron . I smiled at each warmly, though still feeling a bit out of place with the title.

Pompeii followed me into the study, and I moved behind the desk. I opened the leather-bound book I was currently using to journal my time as Baron , finding the next blank page. I motioned for Pompeii to sit across from the giant oak desk.

“ I hope everything is alright with Baron Revich and Mychael ,” he started, lowering to the chair.

“ They are just fine and will return together this evening as planned.” I dipped my quill in the bottled black ink and wrote the day’s date at the top of the page. “ I need to ask you something strange.”

He rose a brow, but nodded.

“ It’s important that you do not ask me further questions. I cannot answer them. You will understand why in just a moment.”

“ The mystery is intriguing, Baron .”

I bit my lip. “ I am going to say this once, and then you and I will not speak of it again until I can speak to Revich . Do you understand?”

He nodded. “ Of course.”

I glanced to his chest where I knew a dark bruise remained from the disease that had almost killed him just weeks ago. We called it the Black Lung —a disease that had spread from the Blight which I had grown from the Blightress’s Blight in Viridis .

“ I want you to search your mind and tell me if you can feel something that does not belong. Then , I want you to try to speak to it, but only in your own thoughts.”

He frowned. The black kohl across the lids of his honey golden eyes puckered in the movement. I’d never seen him this unnerved.

He took a deep breath, nodding in acceptance of his task.

I watched him carefully as he closed his eyes, his back straight in the chair, his golden complexion warm in the beams of sunlight filtering through the window behind me. His neat graying hair had been pulled into a tight bun at the back of his head as usual, and his beard and flicked mustache were trimmed as neatly as ever. Pompeii had been a well put together man every day I’d known him, except for the few weeks he’d been slowly dying to the Black Lung disease.

I waited in bated breath as the seconds ticked by.

And then, there it was. The jolt of realization.

His eyes flashed open, his frown deepening as his eyes flickered across my face and then across the room. He swallowed and nodded to me slightly.

I gave him a nod of encouragement and he took a deep breath, closing his eyes again. A few moments later, he shot up from his seat with his mouth agape as if he was about to speak.

I shook my head.

He clamped his mouth shut, a tick rippling in his jaw.

“ Thank you, Pompeii . You may return to your duties.”

He cleared his throat. “ You are welcome, Baron Karus . I —” He stopped, pulling on the hem of his emerald green jacket embroidered in threads of gold. “ I will wait for your call.”

I watched him turn and leave in haste, closing the door behind him.

“ Such a clever Little Sprout . ”

I knew she’d be there, reaching out to me in my mind once I had figured out the truth.

I gulped. “ Can you speak into the minds of every magic wielder or just the ones diseased by the Blight ? ” I responded in my own thoughts.

“ Does it matter what I answer? ” she crooned. “ I know you well enough to guess that you’ll investigate further. ”

“ And what will I find? ”

“ I have a special…connection to those who’ve had the Blight living inside them. Think of it as a…parasite of sorts. ”

My heart raced. “ How dare you. ”

I heard her laugh as if she stood in front of me. “ Moira is such a funny little thing, isn’t she? ”

“ I’ve locked you away in my head. I know you cannot read my thoughts. ”

“ I once read your thoughts, Karus . Before you cleverly shut me out from them. It’s how I know you so well. ”

“ But you are in the minds of the fae? ”

“ I can enter the mind of any creature I’ve made. ”

I shelved that thought for later, replying, “ Lia ? ”

“ Ah , yes. My sister has not let me into her mind in several centuries. Perhaps you could talk her into remedying that for me? ”

“ She is clever as well if she shut you out centuries ago. ”

A slow grin pulled at my lips in the silence of her reply.

“ Do you really think this plan of yours will work? ” I could hear how she tried to hide her anger. “ Have you thought of what might happen if you succeeded? ”

“ You’d leave us alone and we could live in peace? ”

“ And you? If I am gone, what part of you dies, too? ”

I clenched my jaw. “ I’d gladly give up my power if it meant ? — ”

“ I do not speak of your power, Little Sprout . I speak of you. If you destroy the heart of the one who made you, you destroy your own. ”

“ You’re lying. ”

“ Perhaps . Though I have not lied to you since we first spoke. When I woke you from those terrible, terrible years, Karus . Ask yourself why I would choose to lie now. ”

“ To save yourself. And you did not make me. My mother and father made me. ”

“ Nonsense . I nurtured you just as much as Arah while you grew in her womb. I could nurture your own child if you’d like me ? — ”

“ You will not even speak of her. ” Black ink spilled over the page of my journal, toppled from my sudden rage.

“ Her ? ” She chuckled, “ My , my, how history loves to repeat itself. ”

She didn’t know. The Blightress didn’t know my child was a girl before I had accidentally said so. That was hope that what she said was true, and I really had blocked her out from my thoughts.

I took a deep breath. “ Neither of us are the replacement for the child you lost. ”

“ On the contrary, Little Sprout . This is more proof that you very well could be. Just think of all we could do together. I have no doubts she is very powerful indeed. ”

I shivered in the silence I let creep in. My hands, clammy and sweaty, closed the journal, and I rose in haste, covering my mouth. “ You will have nothing to do with her. I will never speak of her to you again. ”

I cut our connection before she could reply, flying out of the study door and careening right down the corridor off the foyer that led to our rooms.

I barely made it to the basin of our washing room before I retched into the porcelain bowl.