Page 24

Chapter twenty-four

An Evening Star

A lone in my room, I searched for that fragment. I dug deep, searching through feelings I hadn’t felt in decades, sorting through the ignored trauma of my past, the pain of watching those around me age while I remained the same, the dawning of my understanding that I was truly different, truly other. The doubt, the ignorance, the fear of myself, of who I was. Tears streamed freely down my cheeks, my fingernails punctured half moon holes into my palms, my jaw ached. Even so, I searched.

Because I had to find it. I had to examine it again, to find a way through it, to figure out what it was and why it was a part of me, a part buried so deep there was no chance of extricating it. I had to understand why it felt like I had in the mortal plane, different, other, alien. It was within me but it wasn’t me. So who was it?

“Get ready,” Ursa said suddenly and my eyes snapped open to find her standing at the foot of my bed, watching me.

Her arms were crossed, her lips set in a grim line. I wiped the tears away and then the blood off my palms and wondered how long she had been standing there, how much she had seen. I threw my legs over the side of the bed and stood, already padding toward my washroom.

“Where are we going?” I asked. “It’s late.”

It was. It had been three days since breakfast with the Lord of the Court of Friends and Lord Koa had long since departed the Bone Court to return to his own. I had spent every waking moment since training or searching for that fragment within me. One was proving far more successful than the other.

“There’s someone who lives in the city, someone we trust,” she told me. “If anyone can help you access your physical magic, it’s her.”

My eyes snapped to her momentarily while I washed off my hands. Then I turned back to the foaming soap and finished my task, wiping my hands on a towel nearby.

“Just let me change and then—” I started but Ursa cut me off with a wave of her hand.

A moment later, I was wearing a brown racer back tank and matching leggings, the look I had worn during all of my hand to hand combat training. The King had claimed I didn’t need to know how to fight but Ursa had insisted. I thought it was just her way of justifying cutting me up some more in the training room, coating that obsidian floor with my blood in vengeance for our other training drills when I invaded her soul. But it was strengthening me. I wasn’t the thin wisp of an academic that I had arrived as. My muscles were becoming more toned, my stomach flattening, my curves more pronounced, more feminine.

“We don’t have time,” she snapped. “Let’s go.”

Before I could object, she reached for me and we were hurtling through contorted darkness, away from the palace and toward some undisclosed location in the city. I stumbled on the other side, taking a few steps down the cobblestone road behind me, gasping in the frosty night air.

“I hate that,” I growled, gritting my teeth against both the nausea roiling through me and the frigid air creating goosebumps on my exposed skin.

“It’s the quickest, safest way to get you out of the palace,” Ursa snapped, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me quickly from the alley in which we had emerged. “Gemini Morningstar wards against anyone shadowstepping right into her home but the alley by the pub nearby is fair game.”

“Morningstar?” I croaked, rubbing my arms to keep warm as my breath froze in front of me. “Who—”

“My aunt. Father’s sister. And one badass Fae.”

My eyes widened as we stepped out of the alley onto the wider cobblestone road beyond. We were indeed outside of a pub. I could hear the loud jeering of drunken men as they whistled at the women making the rounds inside, clapping each other on the back and laughing in deep, booming voices. One man stumbled outside, still holding a pint, and fell face first into a freshly piled snowdrift, his ale spilling out and dribbling down the side, turning the snow a deep gold.

I looked above the shutters of the tavern and saw the sign, beaten and faded, swinging in the faint arctic breeze. The Evening Starr. A play on the royal family’s name and a hint at what could be found inside.

“She trained me,” Ursa told me, still talking about her aunt, the elusive Gemini Morningstar. “She trained all of us and she can train you, too. I’m sure of it.”

Ursa led me onward, toward a large and looming house at the end of the road. If we were in the mortal plane, it would be the kind of home that started rumors among the neighbor kids, the kind of place that everyone would assume was haunted simply because of the dreary color scheme and the lack of proper landscaping. It wasn’t the immaculate manse that I had expected for the sister of a King. It was a modest home, two stories and thin. The land around it was fenced as if to keep any loiterers out and I wondered what happened if one tried to shadowstep into a place that was warded against it as Ursa and I passed through the physical gate. The surrounding air shimmered as we passed and I glimpsed a glowing, magical shield enveloping the house and its grounds as we entered.

“Aunt Gemini takes her privacy seriously,” Ursa explained, noting my observation.

“How does your father have a sister?” I asked, suddenly realizing something else as well. “I thought the succession rites—”

“Gemini was thought dead already at the time of my father’s succession. She only came to light afterwards and then she bent the knee and promised not to usurp him.”

“Thought dead? Why—”

But the sound of the front door swinging open interrupted us. No one, however, stood on the other side. Eerie haunted house indeed.

“Come on,” Ursa instructed and then we hurried along the path, up the steps, and into the foyer. Once inside, the door slammed shut tightly behind us and I tensed.

“Is this the mortal?” a disembodied voice asked from somewhere to our left. I whirled to find a woman emerging from a darkened room, her dark eyes heavily lidded, bags beneath them. Her long dark hair was graying, frayed and tied behind her in a loose knot.

“Yes, Aunt Gemini,” Ursa spoke with a tone of respect I thought she reserved only for her father, the King.

Gemini Morningstar looked over me with a shrewd eye, crossing her arms and glaring at me as if I were something insignificant, hardly worth her time.

“Explain to me, dear niece, why my brother deems it wise to train our enemy’s heir,” she said.

“Hope for a new generation?” Ursa guessed with a shrug. “The king’s intent is not for me to reason out.”

“No, you just follow his orders.”

Ursa bristled.

“Come, dear, let us see what you can do,” Gemini said and led me further into the dark house.

I followed her through narrow hallways, past room after room, and realized that some magic was at work here, making this place much larger inside than it appeared from outside. It was a manse, some ancient ancestral home complete with dusty old paintings of long dead royal Fae and their families. Or maybe they were still alive. It was hard to tell with immortality.

We reached a larger room at the end of the hall. It was in the shape of an oval. Its walls were made of windows that opened into the night sky beyond. A greenhouse sat nearby, a path to which led right up to the only door in this room. It reminded me of what the mortals might call a sun room but this one seemed more fitted to worshipping the moonlight than basking in the sun.

Gemini Morningstar positioned herself a few feet in front of me and waited.

“Show me,” she said simply and I complied.

Narrowing my focus, as I had before, I delved into her soul. I found that impenetrable wall around her core, like all the other powerful Fae I had encountered had, but before that, her surface. It was still, calm, and dark, much like her home. There was no trace of any emotion here. No anger, no sadness, no happiness. Nothing. Wrinkling my brow in confusion, I withdrew.

“An empath,” she said simply. “How incredibly rare. Tell me, girl, what did you find?”

“I—nothing,” I confessed and Ursa pushed slightly off of the wall she had been leaning against in surprise.

“You cannot fight an empath,” Gemini said and I knew she was teaching her niece at the moment. “Because fighting an empath is fighting yourself. Silencing yourself, your baser emotions, shielding the ones that matter. You will not overwhelm an empath, not forever, but you can kill her with quiet.”

I shuddered at the choice of words but Gemini was smiling as she turned to face me again.

“So try something physical,” she commanded. “You cannot hurt my soul. So pierce my body.”

“I can’t,” I told her.

“You can try, can you not?”

And so I did. For hours. I focused, I employed every method they instructed, imagined every scenario they detailed for me. Nothing worked. Gemini was about to tell me she was convinced I could not utilize physical magic because of my mortal heritage when Ursa interrupted to inform her I had shattered a glass in my room. Then the old woman watched me with renewed interest.

In the end, our attempts utterly exhausted me so Gemini instructed us to return in a week to try again. She would research what existed of my “condition” and have a new training regimen ready when we returned.

Discouraged, I followed Ursa from the home, pushing through the gate and back onto the city street beyond. The tavern was even more raucous at this hour, the patrons inside growing louder the more they drank. I was in a foul mood. What little hope had bloomed within me at the possibility of accessing my physical magic with the help of this ancient Fae had vanished. So now I stormed through the streets, a few steps ahead of Ursa, with a scowl.

“We will try again,” she was assuring me, though I could tell that she was just as disappointed as I was. “Gemini is the best trainer in the realm. She will have answers. She will—”

She was cut off by the sudden appearance of a dozen men in flowing green robes as they emerged from the darkened alleys around us. The light from the tavern slanted over the road, illuminating Ursa’s stunned expression as they arranged themselves in a circle surrounding us. With a flick of her wrist, Ursa’s daggers appeared and I shrank against her, searching the souls of the men around us. Hints of fear overwhelmed by an honorable sense of purpose. These were soldiers. Ursa palmed a blade.

“I wouldn’t do that, Princess Morningstar,” a familiar voice spoke from the darkness.

Ursa went completely still as Lord Koa emerged from the shadows, hovering just outside the circle of his men.

“Hand over the hostage and we will not hurt you,” he told her.

“Over my dead body,” Ursa spat.

“It didn’t have to be this way,” he replied, raising his hands as he shook his head.

Vines from nearby fence posts, shutters, and potted plants reached toward us, snaking along the cobblestones and stretching out to meet us, clawing at our heels. Ursa raised a boot and stomped down on one, sending her blades spinning for another that was only inches from my face. I reeled back but one of the vines caught me, pushed me upright. I scrambled forward, spinning around to see Ursa throwing her blades at rapid speed, faster than I could have imagined.

In a matter of seconds, those obsidian daggers had cut through three of the largest vines, slashed the throat of one soldier and hurtled towards two more who were scurrying out of their way. She took a moment, between knife throws, to slam her hands down to her thighs. A cloud of darkness rose around her, obscuring the fight, making it difficult for the soldiers to flee. But still, those vines reached. One of them had me by the wrist.

I slashed out with magic but I hadn’t mastered the physical forces and nothing happened. It pulled and dragged me with it, kicking and screaming. I lashed out again and this time, the vine cleaved deftly in two. I blinked at it as it slithered away, part of it still wrapped around my wrist, in awe at what I had accomplished. But then Gemini stepped forward out of the shadows, hands raised, and I realized I hadn’t done anything at all.

In a moment, three more soldiers fell, choking on something I couldn’t see but, when they turned purple and fell to the ground, unmoving, I noticed the wisp of black smoke escape their lungs at their dying breath and turned to find Gemini watching them, her head held high.

Ursa was locked in battle with Lord Koa, having successfully distracted him long enough that those vines were no longer reaching for me.

“Run, girl,” Gemini hissed, throwing out her hands to block another soldier that was hurling my way.

I didn’t have to be told twice. I ducked under her arms and sprinted past the tavern, hearing the sound of Lord Koa roaring in fury as I disappeared into the dark alley.

I couldn’t shadowstep and I did not know where I was but I kept running, my feet pounding against the pavement, turning away from any opening at which the fight grew louder, nearer. I resurfaced on a main road after a few twists and turns in the alleys and found it utterly deserted. I turned and followed it up the slight incline toward the hill on which I knew the palace sat. If I could only get to the gates, they couldn’t reach me. Not there.

I took two steps and then stopped, chest heaving from all the running. A figure had appeared right in front of me, only a foot away. I faltered back a step, nearly tripping on a loose stone. Cassiopeia’s eyes were wide and full of sorrow when she reached for me.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and then her warm hand gripped my cold wrist and I didn’t even have time to scream as the world below spun away from us.