Page 46 of Pawns of Fate

“Ahh, you hadn’t realized.” Lysander propped his hand underneath his chin.

“I’ve got the recipe for a monster army, if I want.

Just missing one ingredient: the mana flow required to control all of those monsters at once.

” He jerked a thumb at the star crystal pillars behind them.

“I’ve got the mana, the monsters, and the spells, but I can only manage so many monsters at a time.

And they can’t be too large. Anything more powerful than a couple of drakes or trolls, and I lose control. ”

Rose’s jaw dropped as she realized the implications of Lysander’s words. He’d caused so much damage in Uddedin, so many difficulties for the swamp campaign. And he wanted to control more monsters?

He continued, “It’s enough to cause trouble, certainly.

I could have kept your husband busy in the swamps for years had Syzman not found the control spell.

And the Ojoh still have their hands full trying to recover from the attack on Uddedin, which is helpful for me.

Keeps them away from here. Of course, it was better when they were distracted with your in-laws, but no war can last forever. ”

“What?”

Lysander let out a condescending chuckle. “I manipulated the Ojoh into that little war with the Sharps over trade routes. All it took was a few dead bodies and malicious rumors.”

Rose couldn’t believe Lysander’s plans had stretched that far.

“Stop looking so surprised. I needed to keep the Ojoh busy so they wouldn’t snoop around here and interrupt my experiments, especially when I needed to be at the swamp location. Teleportation is wonderful, but even I can’t be in two places simultaneously.”

Rose fought the urge to run, to cry, to scream. Panic clawed at her neck, up and down her spine. She was trapped with a madman capable of controlling monsters, shadows, and god knew what else.

But she needed to stay calm. She needed to play along, to learn more. It was her only chance of escape .

“What does that have to do with me? Why kidnap me and Nicholas?” she asked.

“You’ll increase my mana flow, obviously.

I took Nicholas for motivation.” A slight frown crossed his features.

“I did try a few other options before I settled on kidnapping you, Rose.” Was that regret in his voice?

Rose couldn’t believe it—not after everything Lysander had just admitted to.

“Tried to see if Kagon could shape shift into a dragon, but we’ve never managed anything more than a snake.

Not that it’s a useless form, if it weren’t for his venomous precision, we’d never have gotten the spell runes onto all those monsters. ”

“Why would you try to turn your friend into a dragon? You’re insane!”

Lysander scoffed, frustration decorating his face. “If you knew what Kagon and I were truly up against, you’d think differently.” Fear played at the corner of Rose’s mind, but she decided to press the conversation anyway.

“No, I wouldn’t. Monster armies? Dragons? Those are the ravings of a madman.”

He snarled and grabbed Rose by the wrist, dragging her over to the pillar of star crystal and pinning her against it with his shadows.

Panic exploded into her stomach as the tendrils began to press on her neck.

She strained against them, but it was useless.

She’d pushed too far; she should have just complied.

Now, Lysander was going to strangle her to death.

“Lysander,” Kagon’s voice called from beside Lysander. When had he arrived? Rose hadn’t heard him at all.

Kagon put a hand on Lysander’s shoulder. “She won’t be able to access the aural plane if she’s afraid of you. I could smell her fear from miles away.”

Something softened in Lysander. He and his shadows let go of Rose. She fell to the floor, gasping for breath.

“Take her back,” Lysander snapped. “We’ll resume tomorrow.” He melted into shadow, and Rose was alone with Kagon.

The druid led her back through the cavern in silence. Rose wanted to ask him a thousand questions, but found the words stuck in her throat as she grappled with the fear and despair Lysander had caused.

“I’m sorry it had to be this way,” Kagon mumbled remorsefully.

Suspicion bloomed in Rose’s mind. Kagon had just saved her from Lysander’s tantrum, but he was an accomplice to the kidnapping, and he’d clearly been helping Lysander for months, if not years.

Still, a small, more rational part of her thought that it wouldn’t be a bad thing to stay on Kagon’s good side and have his pity.

She thought about how he’d saved her from the twiddletoads back in Onanish.

Certainly, Kagon was motivated to keep her alive for Lysander’s schemes.

But still. He had kept her alive once already.

Why couldn’t he do it again? That thought bloomed into the wild hope that if she garnered enough of the druid’s sympathy, she and Nicholas could work with him to take Lysander down entirely.

It was just a sliver of hope, a tiny, fickle flame. But it was all Rose needed .

Rose tethered her senses to the aural plane, intending to ease Kagon’s state of mind with her magic. The hope in her chest made accessing the plane easy, but Lysander’s spell actuated and almost caused her to snap the tether from the shock. She could see so much more.

Vapors of mana, like a living thing, twisted and slithered around Kagon’s bestial life force.

And that was only the start. The star crystals, she understood their name with a new depth.

Blooms of mana, tiny galaxies of light, overwhelmed her senses and drew her in.

She could gaze forever and never see all of it, just in this little section of the cave.

The urge to go back and gaze on the larger cavern, with the pillars of crystal, pulled on her mind.

“Lady Rose?” Kagon’s voice snapped her senses back to the physical plane. He was shaking her shoulders. Had she fallen down? So much for her plan to manipulate his emotions and garner his empathy.

“I’m sorry, Kagon. I need to rest.”

The druid’s lips thinned with concern. He helped Rose to her feet and led her back to the cavern where she and Nicholas were kept tied up.

Rose clung to his arm the whole way—partly because she felt lightheaded.

But also, she wasn’t ready to let go of the wild hope that she could turn Kagon away from Lysander.

But the biggest reason was that her mind reeled with the possibility that Lysander was right. If Rose really could manipulate the flow of mana, what came next? How would she and Nicholas ever escape if she were forced to make their captor even more powerful?