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I didn’t believe it. Refused to believe it, even though by the time we returned to the Ice Palace, the bodies of the two soldiers who had accompanied Pavel had been recovered. Later that same day, the bodies of the soldiers who had been with Lord Juul were discovered, though Juul’s body thankfully wasn’t among them. They were all laid out now in neat rows in the courtyard, covered in furs and floral tributes and awaiting burial.

Both my brother and his husband were still missing.

Tarrak was almost mad with rage, heartbroken over the loss of his men and his closest friend and advisor, Lord Juul. He sent word to his lords, ordering them and their men to his palace and readying his Elven army to go to war. What had happened between us that night in the lodge was shoved aside and forgotten for now, with neither of us in any state of mind to even think any more about it.

As for me, I knew my brother was still alive, and I believed Juul was too. Neither of their bodies had been found, and I didn’t think the attack on Pavel had been a random thing. The ogres had come far too close to the palace for one thing—a reckless and bold move. Either they had been watching to see Pavel’s activities and had decided that one of these weekly expeditions would be the perfect opportunity for attack—unlikely, because of the Ice soldiers’ daily patrols—or they had someone feeding them information from inside the palace. Pavel had become known throughout the Quendi Forest as a great wizard, the king’s wizard, and I thought it likely that Prince Adan had deliberately chosen Pavel for abduction. He would no doubt use him as a bargaining chip in this deadly game. He’d also want to remove him as a threat.

It took only a few days for Tarrak to assemble his men, and then they rode out toward Prince Adan’s stronghold. I had asked to go with them, sending him a note because I had been repeatedly turned away from his “war room” where he was making plans with his ministers when I’d tried to see him in person. I got his reply back right away, and it was short, blunt, and to the point.

No. Stay at the palace until I return.

The servant who brought it to me asked if there was some reply. A few things sprang to mind, but I knew better than to give them voice. I simply shook my head, put the note in my pocket, and went into my room to quietly begin making my own plans.

Glorfindel, who had been invited to go along on the expedition with the king as a replacement wizard, stopped by to see me the morning they left. He swept in past the servant who opened the door for him and stood looking down at me as I sat at my desk. As usual, he was beyond handsome in the black leather-looking uniform of the king, with the silver buttons and the epaulets that flared out over his well-formed shoulders and biceps. His hair was tied back from his exquisite face, and he gave me a rare look of concern.

“I heard that Tarrak isn’t allowing you to go with us. I’m sorry, Sergey.”

I shrugged, too full of emotion at the moment to risk speaking.

“You must know,” he said, “that he’s afraid for you. He doesn’t want to risk you.”

“I don’t think that’s his decision to make. Pavel is my brother and Juul is his husband. It’s my right to go.”

“I’m sorry, but it is his decision to make, as your king.”

“He isn’t my king. I’m human. Nothing but a ‘mortal boy,’ as he’s so fond of reminding me. I’m leaving soon to go back to my own world.”

“Don’t do anything rash, Sergey. We’ll find a way to get Pavel released. Juul too, if he’s still…”

“Alive? I think he is. Prince Adan knows how close Lord Juul is to the king. He wouldn’t want to give up his bargaining chip.”

“I hope so, for Pavel’s sake. I’ve become very fond of him over the last few months.”

“Pavel is easy to love.”

He gave me an odd look and then inclined his head. “If you do go against Tarrak’s wishes and travel back to your world before we return, be careful and take some guards with you as far as the Ice Poles. We have reports of the ogres growing bolder by the day. Prince Adan may have unleashed something here with those creatures that will be difficult to get stopped. The ogres are savage predators not easily governed. Given the chance, they wouldn’t hesitate to prey on the human population, as well as on the Fae.”

“Tarrak can stop them.”

A soft smile came over Glorfindel’s face. “Yes, I believe he can at that. Interesting that you should think so, what with you being so angry at him and all.”

I simply gazed back at him, refusing to let him bait me, and he smiled again and left my room. Later that afternoon, I watched at my window as Tarrak and his army rode out, hundreds strong. Even the stags were wearing thick, padded cloths on their sides and on their flanks and chests, as a type of body armor. The majority of his army waited outside the palace gates, but his own private platoon of soldiers waited for him in the courtyard, and they rode through the gates with some ceremony, looking fierce and barbaric and altogether glorious. Tarrak himself was like some god of the cold north wind, frozen in his grief and rage. He rode past my window at the head of the long column, the soldiers stretched out behind him single file. He had never come to say goodbye in the three days since we’d been back, nor had he given me any comfort. I began to think that everything he’d said to me had been a lie. Did he think because I was human and not as beautiful as he that I had no heart? No soul? I began to harbor bitter, dark feelings toward him.

I thought he wouldn’t so much as glance in my direction as he left the yard, but I saw him turn in his saddle and look at my window as he passed. I stepped back out of sight—if he could be stubborn and perverse, then so could I, even if it killed me not to give him one last look. If God had gifted me with such beauty as he’d seen fit to gift him, I would have made it as hard for him to leave me that day as it was for me to watch him go.

The very next day, I got up early, took the bag I had packed the night before, and headed to the stables. I found Violet, Pavel’s big stag, at the end of a long, empty row of stalls. He was nosing disconsolately through a small bunch of flowers someone had given him, along with some table scraps of vegetables from the kitchen. His ears perked up right away as he heard me come to the door of his stall, though his expressive eyes gave me a sad, disappointed look when he saw I wasn’t Pavel.

I went inside to talk to him, telling him of the journey I wanted to take to find Pavel and asking his permission to take him along. He stared steadily back at me as if he understood, and I thought perhaps he did. I warned him of the dangers we’d face and that we might not make it back home again, but he still seemed anxious to go, stamping his feet and blowing out his breath through his nose. I saddled him up, stowed my bag and some food for both of us that I’d stolen from the kitchen into his big saddle bags, and we left the palace before the sun rose much higher in the sky.

I headed toward the Ice Poles, in case anyone happened to be watching. Once I was out of sight of the palace, I turned Violet’s head toward the east, where I believed Prince Adan’s stronghold to be located. Pavel had once showed me on a map he had in his study and told me that Adan lived there with his mother, an ancient Elven female, who was reputed to be something of a witch. He said that from what he’d heard about her, the magic she had wasn’t vast or powerful but consisted of ancient spells and potions that were still sometimes effective. Tarrak had never been overly concerned with her magic, but I think that may have been a mistake.

As for myself, I had decided to stop fighting the idea of having Infernal Magic and just accept it for what it was. Until I managed to get Pavel back, I'd use whatever skills I had. Afterward, once I left the Quendi kingdom, I'd never do magic again.

Before I left the palace, I had gone back up to the turret room and looked for the little shabby book on the bottom shelf—the one that I’d thought was a primer for doing any kind of magic. After the debacle involving the rabbits, I had given Pavel my promise I wouldn’t take it out to look at it again, but I opened it for the first time in a couple of years, hoping Pavel would understand. I sat at my old table to look through it, and soon discovered it wasn’t a primer at all, nor had it been written by a child, as I had once believed.

Instead, it was a book written by a man named Archimed. He had written that name on the first page of the book, if I had just bothered to look. It briefly described on its opening pages a history of Archimed's magic. He could barely write legibly, but I gathered from what he said in those first few pages that he had demon ancestors, and his magic had come to him through them. He had only written down a few of his spells, and those focused, like most Demonic Magic, on destruction, harming, cursing, and otherwise complicating the lives of other people. The intention was always to gain riches or fame or somehow to better the magic user, or in this case, himself. One of the people he’d harmed must have eventually retaliated, or else one of his spells had gone terribly wrong, because the book ended abruptly after he had detailed a little of his plans for a spell he called “Skeleton.” He never got a chance to add the actual spell or any details about it, to my relief, as my imagination filled in the blanks.

The other pages, however, did offer up a few Infernal Magic spells, which called for some kind of blood sacrifice in order to work properly. This sacrifice had to be offered to the Demon Lords and then the user needed to ask them for their help in the success of his spell.

There was no way I was going to sacrifice an animal or anything else, so again I used a little of my own blood to make the spell work. I decided to use the spell Archimed had called “Cloaking.” According to what the warlock had written, the spell “always” worked and would, for a time, make the user literally invisible to the outside world.

That meant I might be able to hide myself, which would work perfectly. I could sneak past Tarrak’s army, find a way into the castle, and then locate where Prince Adan was holding Pavel and Lord Juul. It sounded easy. In theory, anyway. That first night on the trail I decided to do a small test to see if it could possibly work.

The thing I’d learned about my magic was that even though I made mistakes, and even though I came at things a bit sideways and slanted sometimes, things still seemed to happen. Though not always in the way I had planned. Maybe that was due to Pavel and Glorfindel’s theory that I was using Infernal Magic with the words to traditional High Magic spells. Or maybe it was just me. But no one, not even Glorfindel, had been able to wake up old King Gratin until I tried my spell on him. I was kind of proud of that, though it had almost gotten me killed for being a Necromancer. Anyway, the point was, maybe I wasn’t quite such a disaster at magic as I’d believed.

Pavel had been afraid the Infernal Magic would corrupt me, but I didn’t have the same desires as many people seemed to. Maybe because I was brought up for the second half of my life so far in such amazing luxury that I didn’t crave riches—I already had them. Maybe it was because I knew beings who were naturally glorious without even trying, so I didn’t really desire glory for myself because it would only ever be a poor imitation. The only thing I really wanted—even though I knew I couldn’t have it—was a life with Tarrak. But that was a lost cause.

I guess it was selfish, after all, to want to condemn him to a long life of “misery” as he’d called it, after one day, far in the future, I’d be gone, but the heart wanted what it wanted and mine needed him for however long it could have him.

Part of the problem was I didn’t believe we would have lasted that long anyway. Surely, he’d come to his senses and realize he had somehow formed a weird fascination with me and tell me it was over now and to leave him alone. It would break my heart, but I was fully prepared for it. There was an old saying that a cat might look at a king, but he shouldn’t expect the king to look back. My king had looked, against all odds, but I couldn’t expect it to last for long.

Another large part of the problem was that I still had trouble believing what Tarrak had said about living “in misery” after I was gone. The man could literally have anyone he wanted. People who were far more handsome and accomplished and more intelligent than I could hope to be would break down his door once I wasn’t around. I thought, instead, that it was probably just a way for him to let me down easy after he’d seduced me. Maybe he was even feeling a little guilty about it because of my relationship with his best friend. Anyway, I was angry with him. He had an itch and he’d scratched it—end of story. For him, anyway.

I’d had another idea about the Sword of Light and who to give it to. Tarrak hadn’t seemed all that interested, after all, and I suspected it was because he didn’t truly believe in it. He’d seen King Gratin, but maybe he’d thought the old man was just stringing me along or he was a demon deceiving me. At any rate, I no longer felt any need to give the sword to Tarrak. In fact, I had an idea about how I might use it—or the promise of it—to rescue my brother.

By late afternoon, I had stopped at a spot not too far from the Ice Poles and my old village and gone as far off the trail as I dared. I didn’t want to get lost in this huge forest. I made a small fire and fed Violet his supper, though I had little appetite for mine until I saw whether this spell would actually work. I had no plan for what to do if it didn’t.

It wasn’t much of a spell really. The little book had simply directed me to sit before a flame, offer up my sacrifice, and then call on the Demon Lords to help. I wasn’t sure what words to use but finally decided to make up my own.

“I call to the Lords of Darkness, you Demon Lords. I offer you this blood sacrifice for you to hear me now and come to my aid .”

In the book, there were a lot more of the silly words that I was beginning to suspect Archimed made up. I suppose he thought it didn’t much matter, and maybe it didn’t at that. All that fancy Greek and Latin I’d heard both Pavel and Glorfindel use in High Magic probably wasn’t any better. After all, why couldn’t magic users just speak their own language? It would probably accomplish the same thing. Why did putting the spell words in Latin make it so much better? I never heard that the Romans were known for their magical abilities, in particular.

Maybe it was just that the words helped a magic user to focus. Anyway, since it didn’t matter to me either and no one was around to hear me, I included the silly words I had copied from the old book. “Liri, liri, pine. Tiri, tiri, dyne. Liri, liri, oak. Cover me like smoke!”

Nothing happened at first until I remembered I had forgotten to offer some of my blood as a sacrifice to the greedy, apparently bloodthirsty Demon Lords. I pulled out my dagger and made a small cut on my forearm. Then I held my arm over the fire to drip a little onto it.

Maybe the Demon Lords liked the blood or maybe it really was the awful rhymes. Maybe they just liked hearing Archimed—and now me—make fools of ourselves. At any rate, the damn thing worked. The fire blazed up and a smoke-like haze enveloped me. I looked down at my hand—and it had disappeared, along with the rest of me. To prove it, I went over to Violet and stood right in front of him. He seemed to sense I was there and lifted his nose to smell the air. But he didn’t actually see me—I was sure of it. I was pretty sure he didn’t even see the smoke either, though I still could. His eyes remained unfocused, and soon he lost interest and began chewing the vegetables I’d brought him. I wasn’t sure how long the spell would last, so I sat by the fire for another two hours, just waiting. Gradually, the smoke cleared, and I began to materialize again, and soon after the process started I was back to normal again.

I was so excited I could barely rest, but after a while, I settled down next to Violet, covered myself with my furs, and fell into a deep sleep, not waking until the first rays of dawn lightened the sky. After a hasty breakfast, I saddled Violet again, and we began to ride toward where I thought Prince Adan’s castle was. If I was right about the direction, I knew I should be there within a day’s ride.