ENSNARED

Sorcery and Science: Book 5

Ella Summers

ENSNARED

Sorcery and Science: Book 5

Copyright © 2015

Version: 2015.12.19

Cover art by Rebecca Frank

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Story Summary

Two rival empires, forged in technology, are racing to hunt down every piece of the magic Recovery Scrolls. Once assembled, these ancient artifacts will point the way to any sorcerer alive, no matter where they’re hiding.

Notorious assassin Jason Chanz knows who their first target will be: Terra Cross, Elite Prophet and the only friend he has ever known. If either empire gets their hands on her, they will drug and torture her until she uses her gift to serve them. To save his friend from a life of perpetual torment, Jason must find her first—and avoid capture himself, for he is their next target.

Isis really shouldn’t have agreed to help Jason find Terra. It’s only going to get them both killed—or, worse yet, captured and thrown into a Selpe prison. She just barely escaped her last incarceration, and she’s not keen to repeat the experience any time soon. Nor does she have any intention of ending up once again at the mercy of the ruthless Selpe soldier determined to make her his. She already has enough problems with the tempting assassin leading them to their doom.

Ensnared is Book 5 in the Sorcery and Science fantasy adventure series.

Chapters

ONE   Mind’s Prison

TWO   The Temple of the Veil

THREE   Sexy Pirate

FOUR   Precipice

FIVE   The Recovery Scrolls

SIX   Familiar Footsteps

SEVEN   Touched

EIGHT   The Magical Tapestry

NINE   Broken Prophets

TEN   Fallen Artifact

ELEVEN   Thieves and Assassins

TWELVE   The Wasteland

THIRTEEN   The Temple of Aurelia

FOURTEEN   Borrowed Power

FIFTEEN   Broken

SIXTEEN   Lake Portal

SEVENTEEN   Band of Children

EIGHTEEN   The Frozen Forest

NINETEEN   The Queen of Phantoms

TWENTY   Protocols of Everlast

TWENTY-ONE   Winter’s Gate

TWENTY-TWO   The Accomplice

TWENTY-THREE   Veronica Frostwater

TWENTY-FOUR   The Prisoner

TWENTY-FIVE   Crowned

TWENTY-SIX   Prophetic Whiplash

TWENTY-SEVEN   The Phantom Mind

TWENTY-EIGHT   Vengeance

TWENTY-NINE   Terra Cross

CHAPTER ONE

~ Mind's Prison ~

526AX August 16, Lord Adrian's Facility

THE COLD, SMOOTH tip of a gun prodded Isis forward, a warning against escape. She snapped her head around to glare at the soldier behind her. His knees did not buckle. His hands, firmly holding to the largest gun Isis had ever laid eyes upon, did not shake. He did not retreat in terror. No, no. The cocky bastard had the nerve to wink and blow her a kiss.

Isis’s lips buzzed with a suppressed growl. Most humans folded before the piercing stare of an Elition, but not the Diamond Edges. They seemed to think their hotshot status as the Selpe Empire’s elite killing squad made them immune to having their arms broken. Not that she was in any position to deal damage. Not yet. Metal clinked and scraped as Isis twisted her wrists inside the handcuffs.

“Now, now. That’s quite enough of that.” The Diamond Edge poked her with his gun once more, harder this time. The blue diamond at the center of the diamond-studded dagger-shaped brooch pinned to his chest indicated that he was the man in charge of this friendly band of six. “Keep moving, sweet tush. The boss told us not to kill you, but if you cause trouble, we will knock you around till you settle down.”

“I hear Elitions can heal fast, Saren,” one of his colleagues told him. Various pouches were sewn into his uniform. The team’s doctor. A killing doctor.

Another soldier drew his knife. The corridor’s dismal green-grey light bounced off the blade as he flipped it around in his hand. “I wonder how fast.”

“You are not to touch her unless she attacks first. The boss’s orders,” Saren commanded, his voice saturated with authority. He shot a hard look at the man with the shiniest black boots on the team. “That goes double for you, Brokdon. Keep your hands to yourself.”

Brokdon met Isis’s eyes and licked his lips, just as he would greet his next dessert. Gross. She drifted to the left, putting as much distance between herself and Brokdon as was possible in the narrow hallway. She only hoped he wouldn’t be assigned to watch over her cell. If he ever came near her, she vowed to herself that she would not hesitate to break both his kneecaps.

That’s about as far as she knew she could go. Killing people tended to make Elition Prophets, seers of the future, go mad. It was called Prophetic Whiplash, the aftereffect of abruptly ripping someone’s future out of existence. Given the continuous onslaught of foresights that wracked her mind, Isis wasn’t going to tempt fate. She was crazy enough already.

They came to the end of the hall, and Saren tapped and slid his finger across the display panel beside the door. A hollow mechanical grunt echoed through the empty hall, and the door clicked open. A wide smile on his face, Saren motioned Isis through.

“Ladies first,” he said smoothly.

Isis rolled her eyes. Ladies first indeed. They just didn’t want to leave their backs exposed to her. Not for the first time since her capture, Isis assessed the situation.

Six men, all taller than she was and built wider. A lot wider. She knew she was faster—and stronger—than they were, but her hands were bound and the passageway was too narrow. And they all had weapons, while she was unarmed. Her legs were free. That was something, at least.

Isis looked at an old overhanging lightbulb, mesmerized by its pattern of pulsing erratic flashes. Its feeble buzz hummed in her head, displacing the hollow echoes of soldiers’ boots. She took a deep breath and stepped forward.

She quickly ducked her head sideways, freeing it from the pressure of Saren’s gun barrel. She followed the movement diagonally backwards and lifted her handcuffed hands as one to catch a hold of the gun. As she spun to face him, she tore his weapon from his grasp and hammered it down hard on his shoulder. A heavy crunch told her she had broken some bones, and Saren lost balance. Isis aimed the gun at the cluster of Diamond Edges, shooting two of them in the kneecaps before their team leader had fallen even halfway to the ground. She lifted her leg and stomped her foot down hard into his chest, using the movement to spin her body around in the air and shoot the three soldiers still standing, each also in the knee. As the back of Saren’s head smacked down, she hopped over him and dashed forward to his collapsed teammates. She plucked the guns from their hands and pitched them down the hall. The entire sequence had lasted mere seconds, and the Diamond Edges hadn’t even put up a fight.

Sneering down at the soldiers, Isis stepped over their disabled bodies and set off at a jog toward the exit. She didn’t make it far. A knife sank into her back, cutting her escape short. She tripped forward and hit the ground face first. To her great shock, Saren lumbered over and ripped the blade from her with his unbroken arm. He rested his foot down on her in its place. Not only had he weathered the attack without losing consciousness, the bastard had thrown his knife into her back. The Diamond Edges were tougher than normal soldiers. She’d forgotten how much tougher.

Her cheek still pressed against the concrete ground, Isis watched the vibrant saturated colors melt from the scene like rivers of paint. She blinked, and the last remnants of the foresight dissolved before her eyes. She was still standing in the hall, six Diamond Edges at her back. Saren nudged her forward with the tip of his gun. With a heavy sigh, she complied. There would be no escape for her today, not if she wanted to avoid a knife in her back. Thanks to her Elition rapid healing, she would survive that—probably—but she knew from experience that getting stabbed was about as pleasant as a conversation with Lord Adrian, the influential Selpe territory leader, sinister schemer, and overall creepy guy.

Jason could have managed the escape, but she was not Jason. And besides, she scolded herself, he never would have gotten himself captured in the first place.

They had come for her on the night of Hayden’s coronation as ruler of the Selpe Empire. Unbeknownst to their new emperor, the Selpe Advisory Council, fueled by the conniving mind of Lord Adrian, had given Aaron and his Diamond Edges free reign to capture the assassin Jason Chanz. When Isis learned of their plans, she’d warned Jason, giving him the time he needed to slip away. Their prize ripped from their fingers, the Diamond Edges had turned their wrath on Isis.

For days, they had held her in complete solitude inside an Orion prison cell barely as large as the cot inside of it. Then, late at night, they had come for her, binding her wrists and tugging a sack over her head before pushing her up several flights of stairs and loading her onto an airship. The sack stank of chemicals and the handcuffs chafed her skin, but worst of all was not even knowing where she was. As the Diamond Edges were under Lord Adrian’s control, it seemed likely they had brought her to one of his holdings. But that didn’t really narrow things down by much. Lord Adrian’s territory was vast, the largest in the Selpe Empire, and as the empire’s most influential lord he had numerous facilities on both Selpe continents. For all Isis knew, she could be at the Southern Sea or the Western Seas.

She knew that if only she could get a message to Hayden, he would command Lord Adrian to release her. She’d been his bodyguard back before his father’s assassination, and the boy still had a sweet spot for her. But shortly after the coronation celebration, he and his brother Ian had flown off to tour one of the Hellean floating cities. They would not return for weeks. Isis’s chances of getting word to them were about as high as escaping that corridor unscathed. She was alone.

Her thoughts turned to Jason—and of all that she still wanted to tell him. As her mind sifted through their recent adventures in the Wilderness, she stumbled and fell. Her cheek scraped and burned against the concrete floor, and she blacked out.

* * *

526AX August 16, Lord Adrian's Facility

The dark chamber was empty and hollow, and it resonated with the echoes of sharp, impatient footsteps against its marble floor. Hints of moonlight streamed in through the high, angled windows, dancing across Lord Adrian’s face as he strode to the back, stopping just before the three wide steps that led up to a flat, backless sofa. A figure moved behind the shadows, draping one leg gracefully over the other.

“Why have you summoned me?” Lord Adrian demanded. “I have much to do and no time for your games.”

“Be silent!” the woman hissed, her voice sharp yet melodic at the same time. “This is more important than your silly experiments.”

“How did you—”

“That is of no matter. Know only that I know. I always know.”

The woman shifted her position on the bench once more. From her silhouette, she seemed to be wearing a long, form-hugging dress that spread into a full skirt with a thigh-high slit up each side. She wore heels high enough to be dangerous, and her hair fell long and straight down her back.

“And how is that?” he demanded. “And why have I never seen your face? What are you hiding?”

“No more than you yourself are,” she replied. “Now, pay attention. I want to speak to you about Isis.”

“The Elition girl?”

“She has not taken her Inhibiting Serum for three days. She is vulnerable.”

“How—”

“Lord Adrian, as I have said, I just know. Now, she will invoke her right to Elition counsel,” she told him.

“And then King River will whisk her away under the excuse of Elition jurisdiction,” grumbled Lord Adrian.

The woman uncrossed her legs and set her hands against her bottom, perching her chest forward.  “Don’t worry, you dear, conniving man. I will tell you precisely what you need to do.”

* * *

526AX August 16, Lord Adrian's Facility

Isis awoke with a jolt and a thump. As she pulled herself up from the cold concrete ground, back onto the equally hard stone cot, she tried to get her head around the flutter of images. A dark room. A shadowed figure. A man, Selpe perhaps? They had been talking about something. What was it? The picture, so clear just seconds before had already faded, like a dream.

Had it been just a dream? But it had felt so real—not turbulent enough for a foresight and far too linear for a mere dream. Besides, she didn’t dream in the same way that other people did. Everything she saw while asleep was tied to the tapestry of reality, no matter how loosely. Not that she understood most of what flashed through her head, but this she knew. Of course, she was probably just crazy.

Isis heard a click, and the door to the cellblock swung open. She was alone there. They wouldn’t have wanted to imprison an Elition near any others. Mysticism and voodoo would surely have ensued. Imagine that.

Footsteps, those of Selpe Diamond Edges, marched down the narrow hall and stopped outside the bars to her cell. Isis didn’t move from the bench, but she turned her head to look her captor in the eye. It was Aaron.

“Are you ready to cooperate?” he asked, his stance one of relaxed confidence.

“Send your men away,” she said.

Aaron nodded to them, and they filed out. When they were alone, he turned an expectant eye on her.

“Are you having fun playing prison ward, Aaron?” she asked drily.

“Come here, Isis.”

She stared at him for a second, then stood. The weak dose of Inhibiting Serum she’d taken to calm her mind after her encounter with Nemesis at Evergreen had left her body completely. Without it to tether her, she was trying to adjust to the dizzying whirl of her own active mind. She strode up to the bars, trying to conceal the unsteady motion of her steps, but Aaron must have seen something, for his hand twitched as though he wanted to lend it to her for support. He must have forgotten there were bars between them—and more importantly, that he had put them there.

“You know how I hate to see you like this,” he said in a lowered voice.

“Then let me out,” she challenged.

“I can’t do that. I don’t have the power.”

“Of course you do, Aaron. Who are you kidding? You could declare that I be released and that would be that. Which can only mean you don’t want to let me go.”

“It’s not so simple. I need to keep the Council’s support, Lord Adrian’s support,” he said through gritted teeth. “And so I must do what I must do. Now, Isis, when you were traveling with Jason Chanz and his bandits, did you learn anything that would be of interest to the Selpe Empire?”

“No,” she spat at him. “And King River instructed me to—”

“King River is irrelevant here,” Aaron cut in. “You are being charged with treason against the Selpe Empire, which puts you under our jurisdiction. Now, again. Tell me everything that happened when you were in the company of Jason Chanz. Start from the beginning and do not leave out a single detail, however insignificant as it may seem.”

Isis glared at him through the bars. “I demand Elition counsel, as is my right. I will say nothing until my counsel is present.”

“Very well,” Aaron replied with a grin. There was no doubt in her mind that he’d anticipated this.

She watched closely as he tapped the sequence to unlock the cell block door—red circle to yellow triangle to green circle to blue diamond—and Davin stepped inside, looking very serious.

Isis raised her eyebrows at him and lipped, “Davin, what’s going on?”

“I’d like to speak to Isis,” Davin told Aaron.

Aaron shrugged. “Be my guest. But, as you know, I have to stay here to make sure you don’t help her escape.”

“Whatever, just let me inside,” Davin said.

Aaron’s fingers danced across the panel once more, and the bars to her cell slid open. As soon as Davin was inside, he promptly closed them again. Davin nodded his head toward the far corner of the cell, and Isis joined him there, their backs turned to Aaron.

“Davin?” she whispered.

“It looks like the Selpes are using this Jason Chanz fiasco to keep you locked up in here. During his short time in Orion, he stole something from the Selpe Research Division. Then he bolted. Do you know anything about this?”

Isis frowned. “No. What do they think he stole?”

“Not think. Did. I saw the crime scene. The bodies of thirty soldiers were scattered across the archive stacks. Knife wounds mostly. Some died from the impact of being thrown. Probably a Phantom mind blast. There are few people who could have done that.”

“Perhaps it was another Phantom,” she suggested.

He shook his head firmly. “No. The cameras were melted from the inside. The windows were completely shattered. The floor had fissures. What can make fissures in marble, I ask you?”

Jason could. Davin was right. Only the Elite Phantom had the sheer raw power to carry out such devastation. Jason Chanz in a rage. Just what had made him so angry?

“What did he take?” Isis asked him.

Davin was so busy studying her expression that he missed the question. “What?”

“Jason. What did he take from the Selpes?”

“The Book of Memory.”

Blood dripped down Isis’s arms. She looked at her fists, which were clenched so tightly that her fingernails had punctured her palms. She relaxed her hands, wiping the dripping blood off on her pants. They were dirty already anyway.

“What are the Selpes doing with a one-of-a-kind Elition book?” she asked, working to steady her tone.

“It appears they were studying it, trying to understand its magic.”

“No.” She swallowed hard, pushing down the rage. “I meant, how did they get it?”

“I don’t know. I had no idea it was even missing.” His vivid teal-green eyes pulsed once as he looked at her again. “You know what this means, right?”

Of course she knew. It meant Jason was collecting the Recovery Scrolls, which together could show the way to any Elition alive. He was finally going after Terra Cross. The scene of carnage suddenly made a lot of sense. Jason was protective of Terra. No, ‘protective’ didn’t even begin to describe it. The drive to protect her made him downright murderous.

Davin echoed her thoughts. “He’s going after my sister. And he will cut through anyone who stands in his way.”

Isis said nothing. There was no point. It was all true.

“Ok.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s tackle one problem at a time. In the absence of Emperor Hayden Selpe, who cannot be reached at the moment—”

“Convenient,” grumbled Isis.

Davin did not pause to comment. “The Selpe Advisory Council has branded Jason Chanz a thief and named you his collaborator.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Davin shot her a hard look.

“Ok, I told Jason the Diamond Edges were coming for him, but I didn’t know he’d stolen anything. And I certainly didn’t help him kill thirty soldiers.”

“Of course you didn’t. But we have to prove that. I’m working on it, but in the meantime, you need to give them something—some bit of information—that will make your loyalties clear and draw suspicion away from you.”

“What does King River say to all this?”

“He went off on one of his secret trips right before Hayden’s party.” Davin frowned. He didn’t like being kept out of the loop. “So, he’s also unreachable at the moment. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for now,” he added, eyeing her hopefully.

Isis’s heart dropped to her stomach. She knew Davin’s affection for her meant he would do everything in his power to keep her safe, but he was not his father. Without King River to intervene, her chances of making it out of there unscathed had dropped significantly.

“Do you have anything on Jason Chanz? A weakness, perhaps?”

His words tore Isis from her reflective silence. “What?”

“That kind of information would be an excellent show of good faith on your part. So, what do you have?”

“Davin, no.”

“No you don’t have anything, or no you won’t share it?” he asked, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.

“Neither, ok?”

“He is not your friend, Isis. Jason Chanz is a conniving, manipulative, cold-blooded killer who uses everyone and everything to get what he wants, then spits them out when he no longer has any use for them.”

“As opposed to your Selpe friend there?” Isis countered.

Davin looked her in the eye, and his face grew red. He snatched a hold of her arm. “He’s gotten to you, hasn’t he? Just as he got to Terra.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Davin,” she replied, shaking him off.

“She fell for it too. We were only children, but he was exactly the same back then, even at the age of nine. His ‘I may be cold and egotistical on the outside, but I am a tormented soul with real feelings deep inside’,” Davin mocked in disgust. “That brooding routine. It’s pathetic.”

“You don’t know him.”

“Neither do you.”

Isis sighed. This conversation was going nowhere. King River and Lord Adrian would waltz together across the imperial ballroom floor before Davin ever had a rational discussion about Jason.

“Look, Davin, the truth is I don’t have anything to tell you. Jason is a remarkably skilled Elition.”

At that, he cringed.

Isis ignored him and continued, “But he is also a man and therefore not invulnerable. The Selpes don’t need me to tell them that. He has no magical weakness, nothing that will make him drop dead instantly.” She tried to laugh lightly, but it came out as more of a pained grunt. “Come on, this whole thing is ridiculous. Just pull whatever tricks you have out of your hat and get me out of here.”

“Feeling the burn of withdrawal?” Davin taunted.

“I’m handling it. Even if my head feels like it’s about to split open,” she sulked.

“I don’t know why you take that garbage anyway.”

“You wouldn’t.” Isis hugged her chest, trying to steady her jitters. “Now, if you really care about me, you’ll find some way to make the Selpes release me.”

“It doesn’t work like that. You need to give me something to give them,” he told her.

“For the last time, I don’t know anything about Jason Chanz!” she blared at him.

Isis looked over her shoulder, where Aaron had perked up at her raised voice. Great.

“Davin, I don’t know anything. You’ll have to think of something else,” she said in a hushed voice.

“Maybe not.” He set his mouth close against her ear and whispered, “Jason is after the Recovery Scrolls.”

“But how does any of this help the Selpes anyway?” She looked into his stubborn face. Once Davin had an idea in his head, he hung onto it for dear life. “Wait? You don’t mean to… Davin, you would sacrifice your own sister just to get to Jason?”

“Who said anything about sacrifice? Terra will never be in any real danger,” Davin said, turning to leave.

She caught his hand, stopping him in his tracks. “What are you going to do?”

“You let me worry about that. You wanted me to get you out, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Trust me,” he said, smiling.

He motioned to Aaron, who opened the cell door for him. And then after whispering, “Take care of her, Aaron,” to his friend, he left the cell block.

With Davin gone, Aaron stepped up to the bars, so close he could touch her. Then, with a wide smile, he said, “Now, where were we?”

His tone was light and pleasant, as though they had just been interrupted amidst smalltalk about the unseasonably cool weather.

“Try not to enjoy yourself too much,” Isis shot back and retreated to the bench, plopping a bit too hard down onto it.

“I can’t help it. Your company is most enjoyable,” he replied with his usual charming air.

Isis sighed. “Not now, Aaron. This is hardly the time.”

“Hardly the time? Why, this is the perfect time!” he declared. “I’ve wanted to have a long talk with you for so long, but you’re always rushing off. It’s almost as though you’re avoiding me.”

“Imagine that,” she said dully.

“Well, here we are now, and you have nowhere to run off to. Finally, we can talk. Just the two of us. Uninterrupted.”

Isis sat on her hands and rocked, brushing her shoes against the ground. “Then talk.”

He took a deep breath and turned in a tight circle before beginning. “So, Isis, it’s like this. You know how I feel—”

He was cut off mid-sentence by a familiar click. A blinding splash of grey-green light spilled into the hall as someone entered, and a moment later Lord Adrian came into sight.

“Aaron, I need to speak with you,” he said, puffing up his chest. He always tried to make everyone think whatever he had to say was the most important thing ever in the history of the world.

Aaron glanced sidelong at Isis with hungry eyes, then sighed and tore them away to meet Lord Adrian’s self-satisfied stare. He handed Aaron a page of paper to read. Of course they weren’t speaking. They didn’t want her to overhear. Elitions’ acute senses were no big secret. As he read, Aaron’s eyes grew wide, and by the time he had finished, they were both openly gaping at her.

“What?” she demanded.

“I must be going now,” Lord Adrian announced. “You will take care of this?”

“Yes,” replied Aaron.

Lord Adrian spared Isis one final smug smirk before he turned to leave. He looked like he had a most gratifying secret—which was stupid. Now that he’d shared whatever it was he knew with Aaron, it really wasn’t much of a secret anymore, was it? Silly Selpe aristocrat.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to leave our conversation for another day,” Aaron told her.

“I see,” she said slowly.

Whatever this was all about, it didn’t feel right. Isis had no sooner concluded this when the door clicked open once again and sharp, steady heel clicks echoed down the hall, followed by the heavier thunks of military boots. She caught a flash in her mind of the man’s somber face before he came around the corner. He was dressed in a white coat and carried a needle in one hand and a clear bottle of liquid in the other. The liquid was lavender-colored and flowed more thickly than milk. Whatever it was, Isis knew two things. First, that man was going to inject whatever mystery fluid he had in that bottle into her. And second, the thought of that frightened her to no end.

“Open the door,” the man instructed Aaron, then added, “Hold her,” to the Selpe soldiers.

Isis retreated as the door swung open and the soldiers filed in. There were too many of them. Had they always been so big? Their tall, muscular bodies filled her tiny cell, giving her no room to breathe, no room to fight. And her head hurt like never before. This was definitely not the time for this nonsense.

One of them stepped forward, and she threw him into his comrades, toppling them over. She hopped along the top of their fallen bodies, rushing for the cell door, but there was no space and no time. They grabbed up at her legs, upsetting her balance. Even as she fell against the opening in the bars, Aaron slammed the door shut in her face.

“Don’t fight,” he said.

Isis felt the fierce fang of a needle bite into her neck, and if she’d thought her head hurt before, it now exploded in volcanic agony. Her legs collapsed under her as a tidal wave of images crashed through her mind, splitting into a million directions faster and faster. She knew this feeling. She had experienced it before.

Somewhere. Somewhere. Past the fog of her memory to those days of her ‘episodes’, as the priests referred to them—those moments she had lost control and her power took her away from herself faster than she could get a grip on what was happening. She could not tame them; she never could. She didn’t want to be crazy, as so many Prophets were. It was inevitable, even after years of control, that they would eventually succumb to the madness within. And that was why she’d decided to bottle up her talent, to cast it away. All for the sake of sanity.

And now they were bringing her back there, back to the madness. No, I won’t let them!

Slipping, shaking, spasming, Isis crawled her fingers up the bars, pulling herself up high enough to stare Aaron, safe on the other side, straight in the eye.

“Help me,” she croaked.

“I…I can’t.”

“Tell them to let me go. You have the power,” she said with much difficulty. She was having trouble staying fully conscious. The prophetic mismatch of images was tugging on her, trying to pull her down into its turbulent stream.

“This will all be over soon,” he assured her.

Snapping her eyes open—they had begun to droop—Isis screamed out, “Aaron Pall, you get me out of here at once!”

And with that said, her mind slipped, and all distinctions between what was outside and inside herself came tumbling down around her.

CHAPTER TWO

~ The Temple of the Veil ~

526AX August 16, The Temple of the Veil

JASON CHANZ, ELITION assassin, lay in wait. Before him was a postcard-perfect scene, the sort that buried Selpe border town kiosks in idyllic embellishments of wild, unspoiled Elitia. The silver-green needle trees of the Elition kingdom of Mist Veil jutted upward in jagged zigzags, cutting into a sky painted a vivid gradient of indigo to carnation pink. The air dripped with fog, coating Jason’s face in a second skin of cool water beads. At an hour before dawn, the birds were calling out in morning song, and all the creatures of the world were awakening to the already steamy late summer air.

Not that any of this interested Jason in the slightest. He could not simply turn off his senses, but there was just one thing on his mind. It saturated his every thought, directed his every move, haunted his every nightmare. Terra Cross was missing. Her disappearance was nothing new—after all, she’d gone into hiding years ago—but it gnawed at him daily. She was Elitia’s most famed Prophet, a tempting prize long desired by the Selpe and Avan Empires and any other human with delusional fantasies of ultimate power. To them, she was a tool to be drained dry, but to Jason she was so much more. Terra was his childhood friend. His best friend. His only friend.

The Selpes, those desecrators of Elition treasures, had stolen the Book of Memory, just as Shade had told him. Jason didn’t know how the peculiar old Elition had found out about the Selpes’ theft, but he wasn’t surprised that he had. Shade always knew about these sorts of things.

The Selpes had hidden the Book of Memory away in some dark laboratory corner in their capital city of Orion. They’d then prodded it, scanned it, and exposed it to any number of odious chemicals in the hopes of uncovering the secret of its magic. It hadn’t worked. Naturally. And Jason had stolen the book from their vault before they could devise even more ways to taint its pages.

According to Elition lore, the famed Recovery Scrolls would point the way to any Elition alive, no matter how distant. Of course it wasn’t nearly so easy. The scrolls were rare, said to be one of a kind. And because they were powerful, not to mention dangerous in the wrong hands, they were split up into three volumes—the Books of Memory, Vision, and Prophecy—then hidden away at three temples scattered throughout Elitia. And just in case that was too easy, to unlock the texts one needed a key, the Stones of Resonance.

Now that Jason had the Book of Memory, tucked safely away in Eclipse behind portals known only to its residents, his quest to find Terra had led him deep into the Elition Wilderness. It was a land of old magic, a land where human technology failed to function. The Temple of the Veil itself, shielded by thick, golden-stoned walls, offered no easy entrance. The way was barred to intruders—humanly inaccessible.

It was a good thing Jason wasn’t human.

He scaled the smooth outer wall deftly and hopped down into the garden, setting down between a bed of pale green petaled flowers and one of lavender blossoms. Ingredients for serums? Sprinting silently, he came upon the back entrance—the old door used by none but the groundskeeper—and slipped inside. His destination was the library, the archives section. There he was sure to find his mark: the Book of Vision. Jason had already visited Viridescence, the continent’s northernmost temple, where it had once been kept, but it had apparently gone missing just six months ago. The winding, exasperating sliver of a thread of clues had led him here.

Jason concealed himself behind an open door as he heard two pairs of sharp footsteps approach. He glanced down the hall, where two white coats turned the corner and disappeared from sight. Doctors. Human doctors. He’d seen at least a dozen roaming the halls since entering the temple. The place felt like a hospital. This wasn’t normal. Something out of the ordinary was most definitely going on at the Temple of the Veil.

He passed the learners’ corridor, where the Elition school children, aged four to sixteen, had their rooms. All doors were ajar, allowing Jason a privileged glimpse into the abnormalites within. Several children twitched with convulsions in their sleep. Some as young as six were bound up tightly in medical bandages hardly able to contain the excessive blood loss. Others were fettered to their beds by heavy restraints as doctors injected them with thick needles. A few were fully awake, sharpening their fighting knives or dressing themselves in camouflage clothing.

Jason avoided an entourage of human doctors and Elition—no, make that Siennan—priests as he zipped into the library at the far end of the learners’ corridor. The archives, where he would find the Book of Vision, was no more protected than at any other temple. They, whoever they were, obviously depended on the high walls and remote location of their temple as their greatest safeguard. Arrogant fools, Jason thought as he tucked the book into his backpack.

The hallway was empty as he left the library and backtracked toward the exit. Well, almost empty.

“I don’t know you.”

Jason spun around to find a boy jutting his head out of one of the rooms. He was about ten, a couple years short of his Passing. His ribs were bound tightly, clearly broken. His eye was blackened and his face bruised. And his knuckles were wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. Still, he held his knife in his oozing hand, ready to head out with his classmates to the next training session. It was grotesque, even for Jason, who was no stranger to the monstrosities of the world. In fact, most people would attest that he was personally responsible for more than a few of those monstrosities.

“Go back inside your room, child,” Jason commanded, glaring at him as he phased his eyes as black as molten liquid.

His eyes were famous throughout the world, but certainly not in an admiring sort of way; no one had any desire to gaze upon them, for it would likely be the last thing they ever saw. So overpowering were his eyes, so petrifying, that no one ever noticed anything else about him—not even his hair, an unusual mix of three shades. Most of it was the color of melted butterscotch, but there were numerous strands throughout in both deep caramel and pale gold.

But not even that obsidian glare could distract the boy. He swallowed hard and repeated his words. “I don’t know you.”

Jason turned his back on the boy and continued down the hall.

“You don’t belong here!” he called out.

His words pounded through the hallway, resonating off the walls as if it were an enormous wind tunnel.

Jason didn’t have time for this. He quickened his pace, running at the head of the deafening sound wave. But even the world’s deadliest assassin, fast and stealth as he was, couldn’t outrun that. He hopped to a halt. A line of soldiers stood before him and a line closed in from behind. Avans. Ten in all.

Of course. That explained the Siennan priests. The Avans were after the three books, the coveted Recovery Scrolls as well. Jason’s lip curled up in a growl. They were looking for her. They had always wanted her. Terra.

He didn’t wait for the Avans to make the first move. Before they could so much as breathe, Jason landed two throwing knives in the chests of two adjoining men. He then slipped through the gap before the soldiers could close the break in their line. Now with all the Avans bunched on one side of him, Jason spun and unleashed a ring of another eight knives, each meeting its mark. When the last soldier had tumbled dead to the floor, he stepped over their broken bodies, collecting his weapons before dashing off.

But rather than returning to the exit, he threw open the dark wooden doors to the central chamber and walked inside. He descended the stairs to the circular sand pit at the room’s core. The white stone slab was at the moment clear. Jason took four glass vials from the suspended rack above and poured a mixture—green, brown, and red sand, with just a pinch of purple—upon the stone. With smooth, artistic swirls of his fingers, he drew spirals of color from the sand.

“Lana?”

A soft voice chimed in the chamber. “How did you know?”

“That you’d be waiting for my call? You always do worry,” replied Jason.

“Sisters are like that.”

“Listen, Lana. I have something very important to tell you.”

“You found the book?”

“Yes, of course I did. You know me.”

Jason could picture her clearly, rolling her emerald-green eyes.

“The Temple of the Veil has been infiltrated. It is under the control of the Avans. And they’re running some kind of experiment here,” he said. “On Elitions.”

She was silent for a moment, then said, “Jason, listen to me. I want you to get out of there.”

“I can handle myself.”

“I know you think that,” she replied, her voice shaking. “You have the book. Now come home and rest. You won’t be able to fight for Terra if you collapse from exhaustion.”

“I cannot remember that ever happening to me.”

“All right, my invincible brother. Then come home to stop Cameron from running off after you. He wants to find Terra every bit as much as you do. She’s his sister after all. And you left him behind.”

“Tell him if he takes a single step out of Eclipse, I’ll tie him by the ankles from the chimney of his house.”

Lana gasped, but she was probably just doing that for effect. She knew him well enough to not be shocked by anything he said. Or anything he did.

“Go easy on him, Jason. You know how he looks up to you,” she said.

“I know.” He sighed. “I’ll be back soon.”

“And Jason,” Lana said quickly. “Please don’t do anything rash.”

Jason swept his hand across the stone. The sand poured over the edges like rainbow waterfalls, plunging down through the floor grates that surrounded the slab.

Lana knew him too well. But she didn’t understand why he had to do this, how necessary it was to end this odious experiment, whatever the cost. He, Lana, and their little band were still Elitions, whether or not they were officially recognized as part of the kingdoms anymore. This was mercy.

Once outside, he paced before the entrance to the temple, then stopped. Then, setting gloved hands upon his cropped hair, he stared out with wide eyes at the gargantuan walls, seemingly unyielding. As his eyes blackened further, smoldering over, burning his sockets with cold fire, the stones began to buzz, then tremble. Finally, they collapsed into a heap of cracked and crumbled rubble, burying all inside.

CHAPTER THREE

~ Sexy Pirate ~

526AX August 17, Eclipse

LANA SNOW WAS as different from her brother Jason as a Rev refugee was from a Selpe lord. In fact, Everett found her to be very un-Elition. And that was a good thing.

Not that he hated Elitions. He liked young Cameron and thought Isis was amusing. But even though Jason Chanz had also joined in their recent trek through the Elition Wilderness, the assassin still gave Everett goosebumps. In fact, it wouldn’t have surprised him if Jason decided that things would be much simpler without a human in their hidden Elition village. And that would be the end of Everett Black, Rev mercenary. Everett was a capable sword fighter and a very good shot, but he had no delusions of actually surviving a duel to the death with the world’s most notorious assassin.

While not as menacing as Jason, most Elitions stuck closely to their own kind. Whenever Everett passed one on the streets of Eclipse, they gaped pointedly in his direction but said nothing. As he preferred being ignored to being attacked, he chose not to be offended. Elitions might look pretty, but every last one of them was trained to fight. This training combined with superhuman senses, strength, and speed meant Everett wouldn’t be picking a fight with any of them anytime soon. As an added bonus, every Elition came with extra abilities. Phantoms like Jason could toss opponents across the room with a mere thought. Apparently, they could also read minds, but Everett was trying hard not to think about that just now.

Lana had told him she was a Cipher, an Elition puzzle solver. That sounded pretty innocuous to him. And unlike many of her fellow Elitions of Eclipse, she even went out of her way to make him feel welcome. Each day after sunrise, she joined him for tea at his table on the wood-planked terrace outside the Eclipse temple.

“What?” he said in response to her amused smile that sunny August morning.

Lana had a tendency to study his face as though she were reading his history in it. Hmm, maybe a Cipher wasn’t so innocuous after all.

She lifted her maroon mug to her lips, hiding her smile behind the ceramic wall. “Nothing.”

Right. Her emerald eyes twinkled with a joke. He’d clearly missed the punchline.

“Spit it out, sister.”

Lana’s head tilted in confusion. “I am not your sister.”

“It’s just a—oh, never mind.” Everett shook his head and took a sip from his own mug. “I was wondering what is amusing you this fine morning.”

“Do you remember Aura and Harmony?”

Of course he remembered them. He’d fallen on the two women during the morning’s Rising of the Sun Dance, the complex sequence of gravity-defying stretches the Elitions of Eclipse performed to start each day. He and headstands did not mix. Aura and Harmony had the misfortune of being too close to him when he’d arrived at that jolly conclusion.

“I hope they’re not hurt,” Everett said.

“Naturally not. We Elitions heal fast.”

Fast healing, another item on the very long list of Elition super skills.

“Were they offended by my tumble then?”

“No.” She tried to blank her face, but unlike her brother, she hadn’t quite mastered the skill. A single chuckle broke through her lips. “They like you.”

“Sorry, what?”

“They like you.”

“Like as in like?”

Lana pressed her trembling lips tightly together and nodded. She looked ready to burst open with laughter.

“They think you’re a sexy pirate,” she told him.

“And you find that funny?”

She hugged her shaking shoulders and nodded vigorously.

Everett thought that over for a moment, then said, “Well, I suppose that’s much better than being called a stupid pirate.”

The tremors finally broke forth in an explosion of laughter. Everett looked upon her and smiled. That was precisely why he liked Lana. She did not view humor as a weakness to be stomped into oblivion.

“Jason,” Lana said, staring past Everett’s shoulder. She quickly gathered up the remnants of her laughter.

Everett followed her gaze. There he stood, looking as stoic as ever as he stared up the temple steps. Jason Chanz. His cold eyes were even blacker than his black clothing. They were blacker than his black knives. Most people would have taken one look at him and run the other way, but not Lana. She pushed her chair back and hurried toward him.

As soon as she reached him, Lana threw her arms open and embraced her brother. Jason uncrossed his arms and wrapped them around her. It was an uncharacteristically gentle gesture from the assassin. Lana squeezed him for a moment longer, then punched him hard in the shoulder.

Jason stepped back and blocked her next blow. He caught her hand around the wrist and waited while she shuffled her weight around in a futile attempt to pummel him. Everett moved to the edge of the terrace for a better look.

“Are you quite finished?” he asked once she had stopped moving.

She pushed back from him. “A day, Jason. Twenty-four hours.” She pushed an angry finger in his face. “That’s how long it’s been since you contacted me from the Temple of the Veil.”

“It’s usually much longer.”

Lana frowned.

“I have even gone months without checking in.”

Everett shook his head. Jason had no trouble killing people, but talking to them was another matter altogether.

“Jason,” she said slowly, then stopped to take a deep breath. “The last news I had from you was that you were in a temple full of Elition children being drugged and brainwashed into living weapons. And then nothing. For over twenty-four hours. It shouldn’t have taken half that time for you to get back to Eclipse.”

Jason looked her in the eye. The obsidian faded to very dark brown. “You were worried.”

“Yes.” She exhaled. “I was worried.”

“There was no need to be. I’ve been through far worse. I am no stranger to danger.”

“Precisely my point. I’m worried one time you won’t make it out at all.”

Jason squeezed her tightly. “Don’t worry. It’s been five years, and I have yet to be captured or seriously hurt.”

Five years as an assassin without incident. It was an impressive track record. Given the nature of their work, assassins tended not to last very long. All it took was a target with a better fighter for a bodyguard, and that was the end. And for one who worked alone as Jason did, it might just be a matter of numbers. A few good bodyguards could be enough to overpower him.

Or just one crazy, red-eyed Siennan named Nemesis. Everett had seen her fight Isis, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit he would rather run than go head-to-head with that demonic Triad. Even Jason seemed wary of her, and he wasn’t usually afraid of anyone.

“You may have survived your profession so far, but as I always tell you, dear brother, there is a first time for everything.” Lana sighed. “May I see the book?”

Jason pulled a heavy brown book stitched together with gold threading out of his backpack and handed it to her. Lana brushed her finger across the bumpy leather cover with reverence. Everett knew Jason had run off after a rare Elition book that would somehow help him find his lost friend Terra Cross. He didn’t know how this book would help Jason, but he could safely bet his extensive weapons collection that it involved magic. Elition things always involved magic.

“The Book of Vision.” She turned it over in her hands. “Do you want me to store it in the library with the Book of Memory?”

Everett had already figured out that Jason had stolen the Book of Memory from the Selpes when they’d been in Orion last week. Blaring sirens had gone off just as they were trying to make a stealthy exit—before the Diamond Edges could arrest them. The sirens were in response to Jason’s theft. Everett was still not too pleased about that.

“Yes, put it there for now,” Jason told her. “I have a lead on the Book of Prophecy. Shade says it should be at Precipice. That’s why I was delayed in returning here. I paid him a visit up in Knell Woods.”

Everett knew of Knell Woods. A few months ago, the kooky Elition who had hired him to rescue Hayden and Ian Selpe had told him to go there once he had the princes. Moments after Everett’s team had rescued the boys, Selpe soldiers had stormed the scene with their airship, so that had never happened. Everett wondered if the Elition he’d met in Cypress and this Shade was the same person. Not that he planned on asking Jason. The assassin wasn’t the sort of person to take kindly to speculation. Everett would be better off asking Lana instead.

“When will you leave for Precipice?” asked Lana.

“Immediately.”

“I’m ready,” Cameron called out as he trotted down the mud path toward them, dressed in outdoor trekking wear and loaded down with a bulging backpack.

Jason’s face shifted neutral, and Lana turned her head to hide a wide smile.

“It’s dangerous,” Jason warned him.

Cameron pouted his lips out in stubborn defiance. “I’m going.”

“You should let him go with you,” Lana said.

Jason glared at her. “You are not helping.” He turned to Cameron. “You don’t even know Terra.”

Cameron looked at Jason as though he were as dense as a stone. “And?”

Jason shook his head slowly, his face still unreadable. “Fine, you may come. But if you do anything foolish, I can and will send you straight back here.”

As Cameron nodded happily, Jason drilled a hard look into Lana. Everett figured this was as good a time as any to hop down from the terrace and join the fray.

“I’m coming too,” he announced.

Unlike Cameron’s declaration, Everett’s words did elicit a response from the assassin. Jason lowered his hand to one of this throwing knives.

“Why?”

That was a good question. Everett looked at Lana, then across all of Eclipse. As a Rev, he was a hunted man, and the Elitions of that town had given him sanctuary. That meant something. It meant a lot. He would help them out, reward or no reward. At least this once.

“Does it matter?”

“You are a mercenary. You chase bounties.” Jason’s eyes blackened. “And Terra has a very big bounty on her head.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred thousand Crowns.”

Everett whistled. Only Jason was worth more. Last he’d heard, it was up to half a million Crowns. But no one was dumb enough to try to collect on that bounty.

“Alive or dead?”

Jason didn’t even blink. “Alive and unharmed. They want to pump her full of drugs and force her to see the future for them.”

“How old is she?”

“Seventeen.”

Everett felt his stomach churn. No more than a kid in his book. They—whoever they were—would torture and drug her. Everett was not generally one to take jobs based on their moral merits, but even he had lines he would not cross. He wouldn’t sell a seventeen-year-old girl, whose only crime was a gift for seeing the future, into perpetual slavery.

“No,” he told Jason. “They won’t.”

That seemed to satisfy the assassin. He’d probably just read Everett’s mind. Awesome.

“Ok, time to go before Lana decides she wants to add herself to the number of people I must babysit,” said Jason.

Lana’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, I couldn’t do that. Then who would be left to stay behind and worry about you, Jason?”

CHAPTER FOUR

~ Precipice ~

526AX August 18, Precipice

EVERETT STOOD ATOP a rocky cliff, staring down. Way below, waves rolled up on the beach, foaming and swirling patterns in the gravel sand. Beside him, Cameron’s neck stretched out, peering over the edge in wonder. The crazy kid was probably fantasizing about jumping. Everett shivered as a bone-chilling breeze bit through his paper-thin shell jacket.

A few paces away, Jason glared at them, his arms folded across his chest. Thanks to the death march he’d set—and a little help from two portals—their trip to Precipice hadn’t even taken a day. So far, the journey had been uneventful, but who knew what lay within the spiky towers of the temple built into the drab grey rock face. Everett just wanted to sit still for a few minutes and eat a damn sandwich. From the way Cameron was stealing covetous looks at Everett’s backpack, he shared the sentiment. If you could count on Cameron for anything, it was his insatiable appetite. The kid was always hungry.

Everett reached into his bag and pulled out three packed sandwiches. Cameron accepted his gladly, gobbling it down as Everett offered Jason one. The assassin glared at the proffered food in Everett’s extended hand as though to say, ‘You come any closer with that sandwich, and I’ll strangle you with it’.

Everett shrugged and tossed the sandwich to Cameron, who finished it off with unabated fervor. When they’d both eaten—and Jason had glared a whole lot more—Everett brushed the crumbs off his legs and stood up. Jason turned his back on them and set off toward the temple, forcing them to scramble to catch up. A flock of seagulls swooped in on the crumb-coated rock they’d sat upon during their quick snack. The birds pecked and hopped, fighting over the sparse crumbs as though their lives depended on it. Looking around at the barren landscape, Everett was pretty sure they did.

Jason threw open the front doors of the temple and marched down the main hall. Elitions young and old scrambled to the side to clear a path for him. They ogled at his menacing black-clad form, strapped down with slick throwing knives and jagged daggers. His eyes smoldered with unfaltering determination, daring someone to stand in his way. Unsurprisingly, anyone who caught the receiving end of that stare hastily made plans to be elsewhere.

Everett and Cameron walked side-by-side behind him, dressed in black especially for the occasion. Everett had loaned Cameron a dagger for their menacing entrance. The kid held the weapon before him and made his eyes glow an eerie shade of icy blue, a trick he’d mastered by practicing day and night in front of a mirror for the past several days. Cameron was doing an admirable job of looking tough, and Everett hoped he didn’t dampen his victory by pricking his finger with his blade.

They marched right on through the door at the end of the hallway and came into a cavernous amphitheater. Golden light filtered through a tinted glass skylight, pushing back the gloom to usher warmth into the temple of Precipice. Rows of wooden shelves lined the walls, holding more books than Everett had ever seen before in his life. He scanned the shelves of multi-colored spines. This library contained thousands of books—no, tens of thousands. He hoped Jason’s plan to find the Book of Prophecy didn’t necessitate going through every row one by one. They would be holed up in there for months.

But Jason continued without pause through the library, leading them into a small back room. The room contained no more than a few sparsely populated bookshelves and a wooden desk. As Jason began poking around, an Elition woman pushed away from the desk. Her shimmering copper hair was drawn up into a high twist of cascading curls. She brushed down her indigo pencil skirt with indignation. Her ribbon-trimmed bell sleeves screamed Elition priestess, and the prim slender skirt and high-heeled pumps said librarian. The librarian priestess of Precipice.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

Jason ignored her and continued flipping through the books.

“Those are rare books you’re so casually tossing around.” She caught a falling book and set it neatly back into place. “Some of them are well over a thousand years old.”

The sentiment didn’t seem to impress Jason. He moved on to the stacks at the back.

She positioned herself as a shield between the books and the assassin. “You leave my books alone,” she growled and drew a slender silver dagger with a sapphire-studded hilt.

Jason stared at her until smoke began steaming from the dagger. The librarian gritted her teeth and held to her weapon for a few seconds longer. When she finally released it, her hand was red with blistered burns. The blade clanged against the stone floor, and Jason kicked it under a bookshelf.

“I know who you are,” the librarian told Jason, rubbing her hand gingerly. The burns faded back to unblemished skin before Everett’s eyes. “And I know what you seek,” she finished.

Jason paused midway through the shelf he was assaulting and looked at her. “Where is it?”

She pressed her arms against her chest and tilted up her chin. She didn’t withdraw under the weight of Jason’s stare, but Everett could tell she wanted to.

Not taking his eyes off the librarian, Jason slowly interlocked his fingers. Behind him, the books on the shelves began to vibrate. The librarian bit her lip. Three books shot out like bullets, thumping hard as they collided with the opposite wall. She clenched her fists and growled under her breath. The bookshelf spat out another five books. Two collided with each other and fell open upon the floor. One of them looked old—really old. Its yellowed pages were embellished with calligraphy ink swirls of brown, blue, and red.

As the book’s paper pages began to smoke, the librarian threw up her hands and screamed, “Stop!”

The smoke vanished, and Jason waited.

“You are a cruel man.”

“The book.”

“Do you have any idea which book you nearly torched?”

“The Sibyl Prophecies.”

“It is one of only two extant copies,” she said with great indignation.

He looked down at the book pointedly.

The librarian sighed. “The Book of Prophecy is not here.”

She spoke as though she’d suffered a great loss. Someone really loved her books.

“It was moved to another temple last week.”

“Which one?”

“They didn’t tell me.”

He studied her closely. Everett had noticed that Jason’s expressionless face only displayed that particular shade of expressionlessness when he was using his truth-seeking voodoo.

“How did you know I seek the Book of Prophecy?”

“I didn’t,” she replied. “They told me when they came to move the book.”

“They?”

“Some priests I didn’t know. They said there is a procedure in place to move around all the books should any of the three be compromised. After you stole the Book of Memory, the priests rushed here.”

Jason turned to Everett and Cameron, acknowledging their presence for the first time in minutes. “The Selpes had held the Book of Memory for who knows how long. It was already compromised. But it was not until I stole it from them that these priests came here for the Book of Prophecy.”

“Are you asking for our thoughts?” Everett asked him.

“Yes.”

Well, that was a first. “The priests didn’t know the Book of Memory was gone until then.”

“I assume the keepers of the other Elition libraries are as aware as you of the rare books under their care?” he asked the librarian.

She shifted her weight to stand taller. “I most certainly hope so.”

Everett looked at Jason and shrugged. “Apparently not, though.”

“Or it was an inside job,” suggested Cameron.

“A troubling thought. I’ve already rescued the Book of Vision from an Avan-infested temple.”

“Avan-infested temple?” The librarian paled. “Which one is that?”

Jason said nothing, and she did not ask again.

“So, how are we going to find the Book of Prophecy now?” Everett asked.

“I’ll think of something,” Jason assured him.

Everett knew better than to doubt the determination of an obsessed man. Particularly, if that man happened to be an assassin who could set him on fire without blinking an eye.

Jason looked at him. “Is there any particular reason you’re imagining yourself on fire?”

Everett shared his thought.

Jason’s eyebrow twitched ever so slightly, as though he were almost amused. Huh. Everett had thought only Isis capable of invoking an emotional response from the stone slate that passed as Jason’s face.

“Setting people on fire with Phantom magic doesn’t work especially well. There’s too much water in the body.”

Everett didn’t ask how Jason knew this. He really, really didn’t want to know.

CHAPTER FIVE

~ The Recovery Scrolls ~

526AX August 18, Precipice

JASON LEFT THE copper-haired Prior alone with her books and retraced his steps back down the main hallway. He could hear her sigh of relief from the temple’s front door. Priors loved their books—all except for Cameron, who preferred experiencing danger firsthand to sorting and analyzing memories of the past from a safe distance. And that made Jason’s job of protecting him all the more difficult.

“Do you always strive to make such a sinister first impression?” Everett asked him as they stepped outside.

“Yes.” What answer was he expecting?

Cameron snorted.

Everett kept his eyes on Jason. “Why?”

“It makes it easier to get people to do as I wish.”

“Well, you know what they say: ‘You attract more bees with honey than with vinegar’,” Everett told him.

“I do not wish to attract any bees.”

“It’s an expression.”

A silly expression.

“A metaphor?”

And?

Everett threw up his hands. “Oh, come on. Surely, assassins learn things beyond how to kill people?”

What an odd question. Assassins learn what they need to know to kill a target. In many different ways.

“Throwing knives is a far more useful skill than throwing metaphors in my line of work, Everett Black. And in yours too.”

“Be that as it may, you scared that poor librarian senseless.”

“She was more concerned for the safety of her books than for her own. And I would certainly not damage priceless Elition texts.”

“But the flying books. The smoke,” Everett protested. “What about that?”

“Merely a show. She treasures those books above all else. In order to get her to talk, she had to believe I was crazy enough to damage or even destroy them. That is where my ‘sinister’ reputation comes in handy,” he explained.

“There is just one problem with your argument,” said Everett. “You actually are crazy enough to do that and more.”

He and Cameron burst into gleeful laughter. Jason glared at them. They should have stopped, but instead they continued right on laughing.

Could it be that he was losing his touch? Jason made his eyes go black, and they nearly choked on their chuckles. No, it still worked. Good.

“So.” Everett coughed, then cleared his throat. “What’s the plan?”

“We have two options,” said Jason. “We can try to figure out which temple now holds the Book of Prophecy. Or we can first look for the Stones of Resonance.”

“The Stones of Resonance?” Everett asked, perplexed.

“Together the three Books of Memory, Vision, and Prophecy make up the Recovery Scrolls, which can be used to find any Elition alive. But in order to unlock the texts, we need something called the Stones of Resonance.”

“And where are these stones?” asked Everett.

“The Avans have them,” Cameron said, then looked down.

Jason turned his stare on him. “Explain.”

“When I was still at school in Black Moss, I read in the library that the Stones of Resonance were rumored to be buried nearby on the continent, so I thought I’d see if I could find them.” He looked at Everett. “That was right before we met.”

“When I saved you from those Avans?”

Cameron nodded.

“They mentioned that you’d stolen treasure from them.”

“Stolen?” Cameron hissed. “I found the stones! Then they demanded I give them up.”

Jason was unsurprised. Cameron always had possessed a knack for finding things, even more so than other Priors. And the Avans were thugs and thieves. Getting the stones back from the Avans could prove problematic, particularly if Nemesis was involved. He had only defeated—no not defeated, weakened—the Siennan Triad last time with deception and Isis’s help. And Isis had been on a strong Phantom Accentuating Serum at the time. Whether they could pull off the same stunt again was highly questionable.

“Was it Nemesis?” he asked Cameron.

“The ones I saw all looked human,” Everett offered.

“Those five Avans were soldiers. Thanks to Everett, they didn’t get the stones from me that day. A few days later, you joined us, Jason, and the Avan Spirit Reapers attacked. The one who carried me off would have gotten the stones then if not for Isis.”

Jason remembered. Isis had charged at a Spirit Reaper with nothing but a pocket knife to back her up. At the time, he’d thought her foolish, but he’d since learned she was Elition—and he’d seen her fight. It was doubtful she’d ever been in any real danger, even from an elite Avan soldier.

“Nemesis took the stones from me when she captured me a few weeks later outside the Dell inn,” Cameron continued. He kicked loose a plate of dried mud from the trail. “And the Delineation Scroll I had too.”

He must have stolen the Delineation Scroll, a magical map, from Black Moss. Jason tried not to dwell on the fact that in the past few months Cameron had lost two priceless Elition relics to the Avans. He swallowed and set his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“It’s of no matter.”

Lana would have approved, but Cameron looked perplexed at the gesture. Maybe Jason should have stuck to his usual frosty facade.

“Of no matter?” Everett cut in. “But you said that without the stones, the books are worthless.”

Jason thought back to the Temple of the Veil. “I have a sinking feeling the Avans are also after the Recovery Scrolls. They’ll be unable to use the stones without all three books, and I already have two. So it’s inevitable that our paths will cross, and we will reclaim the stones from their thieving hands when that time comes.”

Jason caught the scent of Phantom, and goosebumps rippled over his arms. Spice, leather, and metal—lots of metal—burned his nostrils. He turned to see Wrest march up the hill toward Precipice. Ambrose Selpe’s former bodyguard loved his knives. He wore so many that it was a wonder Jason could smell anything but metal from the man.

A silver-blonde head crested the hill, partially obscured by Wrest’s massive figure. Isis’s friend, Destiny. Jason’s fingertips buzzed with a hum of erratic energy, the resonance of Prophet. But there was more. He had the odd sense that Destiny was somehow connected to his quest for Terra. He had to speak with her.

As Jason stepped forward, Wrest’s hand slipped over a massive Everlast Ripper knife strapped to his chest. The ancient Phantom Extractor never did anything halfway—and that included picking out weapons.

“Wait. I mean you no harm,” Jason said, raising his hands.

Destiny’s violet eyes studied him for a moment, then she set a hand on Wrest’s emerging blade. He sheathed it but pressed his crossed arms to his chest, causing them to bulge under the pressure. Jason looked up at him. He really was a gigantic mountain of muscle. Not that it mattered. Jason knew he could take him in a fight.

“Any time, junior,” Wrest said with a wide grin.

Jason rechecked his mental barriers. Still there. He reenforced them anyway. His drive to find Terra had put cracks in his armor, cracks that an Extractor like Wrest could exploit to lift images from his mind.

Destiny stepped between them. “Now, now. We’re all friends here.”

Were they? They’d worked together just last week to expose the Selpe traitor who had plotted to kidnap the half-Elition heirs to the Selpe throne, but from the way Wrest was glaring at Jason, no one would have known it. The other Phantom was apparently under the impression that they’d yet to establish who was the dominant Phantom. That was what was causing the tension. Wrest’s tension. Jason knew who was dominant. He was the Elite Phantom after all.

“We, too, mean no harm,” Destiny told him. “Silas is just overprotective. It’s his bodyguard instincts kicking in. One can never be too careful with the infamous Jason Chanz.” She smiled. “Ah, forgive me. It seems that even I slip at times. Magus.”

“You are Isis’s friend, so you may call me Jason.”

“And you are hers, or is it more than that?” she asked with a curious smile. “In any case, then you may call me Ariella.”

“Ariella, I would like to speak with you for a moment.” He shot Wrest a hard look. “Alone.”

“I’ll be fine, Silas,” she assured him, for he had drawn his Bloodfire knife. It was a fast draw, one worthy of a seasoned Phantom. “Let’s take a walk, Jason.”

He led her up the hill, the path spiraling ever upward until they reached the vista at the top. Jason turned his back to their companions, still visible far below. The clash of the ocean waves would block their words, even from Phantom ears.

Ariella balanced her toes over the edge of the cliff and smiled as the cold breeze whipped through her hair, swirling it all around her face.

Jason watched the silver-blonde streamers and asked, “What color was your hair before your Passing?”

All Elitions went through a Passing around the age of twelve. It was the time their unique abilities fully surfaced and their physical features changed to the telltale Elition look. Mostly, that meant their eyes and hair took on vibrant tones, like the shimmering silver of Ariella’s hair or the violet glow of her eyes. But depending on the Elition adolescent, it could also mean sudden changes in height or muscle mass. Their skin also acquired a certain glow to it.

“What an odd question, but then they all say you’re a bit mad, don’t they?” She laughed softly. “It was not nearly so silver. Just blonde.”

“And your eyes?”

“They were blue.”

“And how old are you, Ariella?”

“I should smack you for that one, Jason Chanz, but I’m starting to get the feeling that this is more than idle curiosity. You have a purpose to everything you say, don’t you? I’m seventeen,” she told him.

His thoughts were churning, bubbling. “And you are a Prophet.”

“Yes,” she said slowly.

“You weren’t born the daughter of King Fathom and Queen Crystal of Zephyr.”

“No, they adopted me as their daughter ten years ago. Where are you going with this?”

“You are close to Davin Storm.”

Ariella shot him a perplexed look.

“I saw you with him at Hayden Selpe’s coronation party,” he explained.

“Davin is a friend.” Her tone betrayed a hint of regret.

“But like a brother,” he supplied for her.

Ariella’s chest, so tight with held breath just moments before, deflated as she succumbed to laughter. It was a while before she could pull herself together enough to look him in the eye.

“Not really,” she said. “Actually, I’ve been trying to get him to think of me as more than a friend for years. But not as a brother. Most definitely not as a brother. Along less platonic lines, if you know what I mean.”

No. The statement shattered his theory into a million tiny shards. “Are you quite sure—”

“That I’m not Terra Cross? That’s where you were going with this, right? Oh, yes. Quite sure,” she told him with a chuckle.

“Perhaps you don’t remember—”

“Elitions have crystal clear memories going back much further than the age of seven.”

“Of course.” As the truth of her words seeped through his skin, hope drained from him. It would have been too easy. It’s never that easy. “I had merely hoped that she was wandering around, out and about somewhere, not stuck in a dark room, alone and forlorn.”

“I have never met Terra,” said Ariella. “But from what I’ve heard, no one has seen her in a very long time. She’s supposed to be hidden away in some distant temple, hardly able to think straight enough to even function. A tragic fate for Elitia’s princess. I’m sorry, Jason. She’s crazy, and she is lost to us forever.”

Jason didn’t believe it. He’d written to Terra through the sand slates just over one year ago, and she’d sounded perfectly lucid. Terra had always struggled with her gift, but over the many years they had secretly kept in contact, she’d never seemed crazy. He didn’t want to think those times they wrote to each other were the rare cases when she’d been sane—or that she’d stopped writing because she had completely lost her mind. He couldn’t think that.

“I think Isis knew her,” Ariella offered, pity in her eyes.

Pity. It was an expression he’d never seen directed his way. Usually, it was fear. Or panic.

“Isis?”

“Yes, they were in school together. Here at Precipice actually.”

“I thought Isis went to school with you at Rosewater.”

“She was at Precipice before being transferred to Rosewater,” Ariella told him.

And yet she’d never mentioned this to him. Isis had known he was looking for Terra, and she didn’t offer even this tiny hint. Jason voiced the thought.

Ariella sighed. “As you know, Isis is very sensitive about her gift. She is deathly afraid of her own power. That’s why she’s taken the Inhibiting Serum for years. She doesn’t want to end up like so many Prophets who have lost their minds to the foresights. Like Terra. She doesn’t really talk about her time here, but reading between the lines, I believe Terra attacked her in a mad rage. Isis has this scar on her belly. Perhaps you’ve seen it?”

Jason tried not to read the suggestion loaded into the statement. But he had, in fact, seen the scar. It had stood out immediately to him, for Elitions rarely scarred. It took one of a few very potent and particular poisons to make that happen.

“Poison?” he asked Ariella.

“I don’t know. I only suspect that Terra attacked Isis, and shortly thereafter Isis transferred to Rosewater. You would have to ask Isis for the full story.”

“Would she share the story?”

Ariella’s eyes twinkled, and her lip twitched with amusement. “She might. With you.”

“Does she know where Terra is?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is Isis now?”

“I don’t know.”

Jason doubted that. “She is your kindred. Your best friend.”

“I left Orion at nearly the same time you did. Great exit, by the way.”

Great would have been stealing the Book of Memory without setting off the alarms. But as life so often reminded Jason, one could not have everything.

“Anyway, King River told me I needed some time off after the ordeal with Hayden and Ian Selpe. I would be shocked if he didn’t insist that Isis do the same.” She grinned. “Actually, I really thought she’d come to visit you.”

“I haven’t seen her since that night.”

“Well, if I see her, I’ll tell her you’re looking for her.”

Jason inclined his head.

“Though you should tread carefully,” Ariella warned him. “Once you took the Book of Memory, it became obvious that you were looking for Terra Cross.”

“I only need to get to her before anyone else does. Once she’s with me, she’ll be safe.”

“I’m not sure King River would see it that way, but since he is out of contact again, we cannot ask him.”

“Where does he go off to all the time?” Jason asked.

She shook her head. “If only I knew. I haven’t heard from him in days. Not since Hayden Selpe’s coronation.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Sorry?”

“King River told you to take time off, and yet here you are with Silas Thorn. As Precipice hardly makes the list of top Elition getaway spots, I cannot help but wonder what you two are doing nosing around here.”

“We are looking for Hayden and Ian Selpe and our friend Marin. There was an explosion in the floating city of Oasis while they were there. The Selpes have declared them missing, presumed dead.”

Jason’s nose twitched. “I smell a Selpe plot. Could it be that this did not end with the capture of Lady Cassandra?”

“Lady Cassandra escaped. And yes, it does sound fishy. This time, however, Silas and I are just hoping to rescue Hayden and Ian Selpe and Marin. Not uncover conspiracies. That can wait for later. As Silas is so fond of reminding me, there will always be conspiracies galore.”

Jason remembered Marin. He recalled that she was a clever woman, but getting even that much out of her had proved difficult. She’d been so terrified of him that she hadn’t spoken a single word to him, making an excuse to run off whenever he entered the room.

“You think you will find them here?” he asked Ariella.

“No. We’ve come here to pick up Leonidas Chase.”

“I thought the Selpe spy betrayed you.”

“So I reminded Silas, but he seems to think that Leonidas will behave as long as Marin’s life is on the line.”

Jason could not comment on that, so he replied merely, “That is for you two to determine. I don’t know the man.” He stepped away from the edge of the cliff, turning back toward the downward trail. “I wish you luck in your mission, Ariella Steele.”

“To you as well, Jason Chanz,” she replied, biting back a smile in a manner so like Isis that Jason nearly blinked.

CHAPTER SIX

~ Familiar Footsteps ~

526AX August 19, Eclipse

POINTY PEBBLES SLIPPED and slid beneath Cameron’s feet as he ascended the hill. As soon as he reached the ridge, he would be standing at the tallest point in all of Eclipse. An exhilarating jump below lay the lake, blue and cold in the autumn air. Cameron was nearly tempted to take the plunge, but the resulting drenched clothes would necessitate a trip back to his cabin. Though it lay on the edge of town, it was unlikely he could make it there and out again unseen. The residents of Eclipse were insufferable busybodies, gossiping about all day long. News of his movements would reach Lana, and she would be waiting on his front step. Considering that Cameron had made it his goal of the day to avoid her, that just wouldn’t do.

It’s not that Cameron didn’t like Lana. In fact, she was the nicest person in all of Eclipse. And that was the problem. She had a knack for convincing people to do things they really didn’t want to do. She would guilt you until you said yes, and you wouldn’t even realize how much you hated it until it was too late. This morning, she’d cornered him on the steps of the temple terrace. He’d barely finished his breakfast when she appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. She then preceded to talk him into joining her inside the temple for the day.

It had started as a plea for help in organizing the candles, then quickly digressed into Cameron sitting in the temple’s stuffy library being lectured to by two even stuffier priests. Apparently, Lana had talked them into tutoring him to the end of his abandoned studies. Based on their very green faces, they weren’t too pleased with the situation either. That might have had something to do with Cameron’s not-so-secret history of escapes and accidents. Perhaps they knew of the incident in the Black Moss library. No, not perhaps. They had to know. Everyone knew. One of the priests kept throwing nervous looks at the stacks, while the other stroked the book he was holding as though it were a newborn baby. The silly thing was it wasn’t even Cameron’s fault that the Black Moss library had caught on fire. Not that gossips ever bothered to get their facts straight.

Cameron crested the ridge and paused to watch the wind puff the dressing off a tree. Red and orange leaves looped and coasted toward the lake, sending out rings of ripples as they touched down on the sapphire surface. A breeze at his back, Cameron sat down and swung his legs over the edge. He pressed his hands against the rocky ground, sitting in silence until the rustle of familiar footsteps came up behind him.

“I knew you would come. Somehow I knew. Come sit beside me,” he said without turning.

“Cameron.” Her voice shook and cracked.

He was up and holding Isis’s trembling hands before he could even complete the thought that something was wrong. She hadn’t been taking her Inhibiting Serum—that much was clear—but there was something more. Her eyes, her hair—they were far more intense than what was normal, even for an Elition. She’d taken something to enhance her abilities. He looked into her eyes, which were wide with fear. No, she’d been forced to take it.

“What happened?” he asked with urgency.

Isis flinched as he set a hand on her shoulder. He moved in to get a closer look, but she pulled away. Holding to her arm, he slid the jacket off her shoulder. Beneath the thick leather was a large bruise. He followed the mark down her arm, where it fanned out in all directions like a twisted sort of watercolor painting. Cameron realized her clothes were stained with traces of blood and beneath torn fabric deep cuts dripped and oozed.

“What did they do to you? Who did this to you?” Cameron asked, feeling his anger simmer.

Her eyes trembled. She was traumatized. “Cameron…”

“It was the Selpes, wasn’t it?” he growled. They’d done this to her because she’d warned Jason that the Diamond Edges were coming for him. Then she’d distracted them so Cameron, Jason, and Everett could slip out of Orion unnoticed.

“It’s not important,” she replied. “Look, Cameron—”

He felt a jolt break through from her body to his, and he caught a flash of Aaron Pall, leader of the Selpe Diamond Edges. It was a strange sight, everyone and everything painted in colors too vibrant to be real. Aaron stood in the imperial palace ballroom in Orion, high above on the emperor’s pedestal, before the emperor’s throne. Someone lifted a crown onto his head, and the room erupted into applause.

“Ahh,” Isis murmured and stumbled away. She tripped and landed in a puddle.

Cameron reached out toward her. “What was that?”

“Aaron, being crowned emperor,” Isis told him.

“How did that happen?”

“Not did happen. Will happen,” she said. “At least, it seems very likely now. There’s no way around it, I fear.”

“But how Aaron Pall?”

“Aaron Pall will become Aaron Selpe.”

Cameron stared at her blankly.

Isis shook her head, as though to clear her thoughts. “Sorry. My mind’s a bit muddled right now.”

“Let me help you.”

Smiling weakly, she explained, “Aaron is Ambrose Selpe’s nephew.”

Finally, she took his extended hand and allowed him to help her to her feet. As her exposed skin touched his, another flash rushed through him like a cold shower. This one was different, though. Rather than the exaggerated colors of Isis’s foresight, everything was soft and subdued. It differed from his flashes of Memory, but Cameron knew it had to be a scene from the past.

Aaron stood with his arm across the doorway, blocking Isis’s passage.

“Don’t you know who I am?” he asked her.

“I don’t care,” she replied. “Now move your arm before I remove it.”

“You wouldn’t,” he challenged. “I know you don’t kill.”

“I don’t have to kill you to cause you an enormous amount of pain, Aaron would-be-Selpe. Yes, that’s right, I do know. Hayden told me you’re his cousin. Somehow, he’s gotten it into his head that you’re ‘pretty cool’, the poor kid.”

“Good kid,” Aaron smiled, then turned to leer at Isis.

His eyes shone sickly, as though he were mentally undressing her. Cameron felt like punching him. His palms sweating anger, he almost forgot that Aaron wasn’t right there in front of him.

Aaron leaned forward, his arms braced against the doorframe to show off his muscled torso. He pressed his lips dangerously close to hers and whispered, “Now, where were we?”

Isis took a step back. “Aaron, just let me pass. Why do we have to go through this every single time? One of these days, I really am going to have to hurt you. Then maybe you’ll finally get it through your head that we’re not meant to be.”

“You didn’t feel that way at Ribbon Falls,” he reminded her, looking really pleased with himself.

“Stop following me. Stop stalking me. Stop with this ridiculous obsession of yours. Just leave me be!”

“But, Isis, I love—”

“Do you even know what love is, Aaron?” she demanded. “In any case, it doesn’t matter. I do not share your feelings. Now let’s go before Ethan comes down.”

“Who’s Ethan?” Cameron asked her as the memory faded away.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, turning toward the lake—no, turning away from him.

It was awhile before she spoke again, and she didn’t look at him as the words fumbled uncomfortably from her lips. “I need to see Jason.”

“Oh,” Cameron said, deflated. Of course, she was there for Jason.

Usually so perceptive, Isis didn’t seem to notice the slump in his shoulders. She stared at him with turbulent eyes, gleaming like sapphires in the sun, and coughed. Blood splattered her hands and dripped from her lips. Cameron’s pulse pounded against his clenched fists. The stimulants flooding her blood should have enhanced her fast healing. What kind of sick torture had the Selpes come up with that could make an Elition with enhanced abilities cough blood?

“Now, Cameron. I need to see him now. It’s important.”

“How long has it been since you fled the Selpes?” he asked.

Isis flinched at the word ‘Selpes’, but she didn’t shy away from answering. “It’s been twelve hours. I haven’t stopped since I left Lord Adrian’s fortress. I must see Jason.”

“What’s so important that you marched your broken body here, nearly killing yourself in the process?”

He caught her as she stumbled forward. She muttered, “Terra,” into his ear before she passed out cold.

CHAPTER SEVEN

~ Touched ~

526AX August 20, Eclipse

IN THE PREDAWN light, Jason stood beside the central fountain of Eclipse. The large decorative faucet cast in the form of an outstretched phoenix spit a continuous stream of water into a basin that faced Silver’s front door. Inside, the healer of Eclipse tended to Isis’s lacerated body. Jason had caught only a glimpse of her when Cameron carried her into the house. That was late yesterday afternoon, and no one had emerged since. Shadowed figures darted across the curtained windows. Jason considered going in for a closer look, despite Silver explicitly banning him from the office. Apparently, he made the staff nervous.

“I wouldn’t,” Lana advised. “Silver may be easygoing most of the time, but he’s as fierce as a mother dragon when it comes to taking care of his patients. You know how he gets if his workspace is invaded.”

Jason realized he’d taken a step toward the house. An unconscious step, as though he were being drawn in there. He frowned and leaned his back against the fountain, trusting the cold stone to snap him out of it.

“I have to see her. She knows something about Terra,” Jason said. It came out more like an excuse than he’d intended. Assassins weren’t supposed to apologize for anything. Ever.

Lana’s dark brows lifted. “Are you sure that’s it? Or is there perhaps another reason your hands are shaking?”

Jason pressed his hands against the cold stone. Assassins were most definitely not supposed to suffer from shaking hands.

“Have you forgotten that before our father died, he made me swear to protect Terra?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten,” she replied.

“She’s my friend, Lana. You of all people realize I don’t have many of those.”

“Are we talking about Terra or Isis now?”

“Terra.”

Her lips spread into a smile. “Are you absolutely sure?”

He frowned. “I hate when you do that.”

“Ask questions?” she asked, clasping her hands together as she gave him an innocent smile.

“Ask the wrong questions.”

“Perhaps it’s these very questions that you should be asking yourself, Jason.”

“No.”

Chuckling, Lana slipped her hand into the water stream that shot out of the bird’s beak, rubbing the cool water between her fingers. “That’s my brother, the cold-hearted assassin.”

“You say it as though you don’t believe it.”

“You know I don’t,” she countered, flicking a few drops at him. Her emerald eyes were too wise for her years, but her grin was as girlish as they came.

He wiped the water from his cheek. “What is it?”

“You like her. Isis. You don’t want to see her hurt.”

“I would prefer if she didn’t die before she told me about Terra. She knows something.”

“Something she dragged her broken body all the way here to tell you. You, Jason. She asked for you.”

“Her actions speak for her feelings, not mine.”

Lana shook her head. “Come with me, Jason.”

“I’ll wait here until Isis is ready for questioning.”

Lana smiled again. No, she wasn’t fooled by his act. Even Jason himself was not fooled. He longed to see Terra after all these years, and yet he could not deny that he also felt compelled to remain there to make sure Isis would be all right. There was something unsettling about that. He’d always thought himself immune to the nonsensical sway of compulsion.

“Come join me for tea on the terrace,” Lana said.

Jason stared pointedly at the door to Silver’s office.

“She’s fine, Jason. All healed. Silver sent her out the back door a few minutes ago.”

“Where is she now?” he asked, following Lana around the side of the temple.

“You will soon see.”

Positioned in rows upon the square-shaped wooden floor in the center of the back garden, Elitions dressed in unitards performed a series of synchronous poses on their exercise mats. As the sun broke the horizon, they all rolled forward and extended up into a headstand. Their forearms cupped behind their heads in support, they reached their pointed toes high toward the cloudy sky above.

Then the bell chimed, signaling the start of morning tea, and they rolled down again—well, except for one who tumbled down and nearly collided with the people on either side of him. The man stood up, throwing an apologetic look at the two women. They giggled in response. Jason was surprised to see that the man was Everett. Since when had he started taking part in the Rising of the Sun Dance?

“Hey, Jason,” Everett greeted him as he joined them. Then he looked at Lana, a little dance in his step. “And? What did you think?”

“You’re definitely improving, though you almost flattened Aura and Harmony at the end. Again.”

“Oh, that? Yeah, that was intentional, of course,” he said.

“Don’t toy with their poor hearts, pirate.”

He grinned. “Remember, that’s ‘sexy pirate’ according to them.”

Lana snorted. “How about you wipe the sweat off your head, sexy pirate, and join us for tea.”

Jason ignored the rest of the dull exchange and turned his eyes toward the wooden deck below the raised terrace. Most of the mats had already been cleared away, but one person still remained, legs extended straight and steady into the air. Perfectly motionless in the headstand position—except for her gentle breathing—her pink hair spilled out over the grey mat. Jason would have recognized that hair anywhere, even with her back to him. Isis.

He hopped down to the deck and walked slowly toward her. As he stopped before her, her long eyelashes swept open and she stared him in the eye. Though her breathing was steady and her skin mended, her eyes trembled with the horror she’d experienced at the hands of the Selpes. A pit formed in his stomach, igniting his anger. He felt the sudden urge to kill every last one of them.

“You’re here,” he said, pushing down the fire flaring inside of him. He wouldn’t inflict an enraged Phantom on Eclipse. Especially not the Elite Phantom. The resulting damage would be…unthinkable.

Isis swung her legs back in one, fluid motion and landed neatly on her bare feet. Meeting his stare, she took a step back from him. His anger must have made his eyes go obsidian.

“I’m here,” she replied.

“You don’t look as bad as before. Um…what I meant was, you don’t look as bloody as when Cameron brought you in.”

She winced.

What the hell am I rambling on about? Jason chided himself. Most people don’t enjoy being reminded that they’ve been tortured.

“You look good,” he offered.

That elicited a smile, however weak. “Under Silver’s care, my wounds have completely healed.”

The physical ones at least. From the way her eyes were quivering, Jason wasn’t sure her fractured mind would survive this. Silver must have dosed her up on Balancing Serums, but it was clearly not enough.

Guilt mixed with the angry pit in his stomach. The Selpes had tortured her because of him. She had helped him escape, and they’d made her suffer for it. Jason was unused to the feeling of guilt. And he didn’t like it.

Isis managed a smile and reached for his hand, as though to comfort him. She’d been tortured because of him, and she was trying to comfort him. There were so many things wrong with that.

She squeezed his hand, and as her skin met his, her lids dropped and she shuddered. Unlike before, it was not a shudder of pain, but rather of relief, as though a cool ointment had just been spread over a hot burn. Her body rocked and she gasped.

“I’m sorry,” she spluttered, releasing his hand. Her cheeks flushed. “It’s just you’re so…so soothing. Being around you calms my mind. When I touched you, I could nearly forget… I know that sounds ridiculous.” She took a step back. “I apologize.”

“Don’t,” he whispered, closing the distance between them. He lifted her hand, pressing his palm against hers. “You’re in this situation because of me.”

As their hands touched, she drew in a deep breath. Her eyes flicked to his, then dropped in embarrassment. “Sorry.”

“No.” He interlocked his fingers with hers. “If this is what calms your mind, then it’s the least I can do to mitigate your pain.”

“Jason,” she breathed, lips trembling.

He felt himself pulled in toward her, struck with the sudden urge to kiss her. Lana was right. He did care about her. But it was far more dangerous than mere friendship, he feared. He stopped, his lips hovering before hers. Then he leaned over to whisper into her ear.

“Don’t be alarmed, Isis. Half of Eclipse is staring down on us from the terrace.”

She tried to shift her weight to look, but he matched her movement, blocking her view. In her current state, the sudden sight of several dozen pairs of eyes could send her into a panic.

“Wait,” he said. “We’re going to walk up there and join Lana for some tea. They will all be gaping at us.”

“They know what happened to me,” she muttered, shoulders drooping.

“Take a few moments to calm your mind. Then we’ll go up there. Together.”

“You won’t let go?”

“I won’t,” he promised, squeezing her hand.

He felt like never letting go of her. Not after what had happened the last time they’d parted ways. His mind scraping hard against every assassin instinct he had, Jason brushed his nose past her neck, his nostrils flaring with the scents of vanilla and strawberries. Isis’s scent. He brushed his lips against her ear.

“I want to talk to you later,” he said.

Her pulse thumped, the skin of her neck popping against his. “We are talking now.”

“We will go up there, and you can tell me and Cameron and Lana what you know about Terra.” He paused. “But I want to talk to you later. Alone.”

He stepped back to gauge her reaction and was disappointed to sense a hint of despair before she threw up her wall again.

“All right,” she said slowly. “I’m ready.”

Jason didn’t fail to note that she hadn’t actually responded to his words. Curious eyes tracked them as they stepped up onto the terrace. Isis kept her eyes forward, trying to ignore them. Jason made his eyes smolder black and turned them on their audience. The gapers all quickly found themselves with something better to do.

When they reached Lana’s table, his sister looked at their clasped hands. The corner of her lip twitched with amusement, but she said nothing. Cameron was sitting on her right side and Everett on her left. Jason slid onto the end of the bench and, still holding Isis’s hand, helped her squeeze in between him and Cameron. Lana poured them each a cup, filling their filters with different leaves.

“What’s with the hand-holding?” Everett asked Jason, grinning. “And helping the lady into her seat. It’s so…gentlemanly of you.”

Isis blushed, and Jason swallowed the urge to hit Everett upside the head.

“Silver’s Balancing Serums have proved insufficient. Isis’s mind is calmed by contact with me.”

Everett’s tea squirted out of his nose. “You’re calming?” He coughed. “You?”

“Apparently so,” Jason said, giving him a dark look.

The Rev took the hint and said no more.

“Isis,” Lana said, pushing a tea cup across the table. “Silver has instructed you to drink only fruit tea and to do so with steaming water and a touch of vanilla three times a day. No mint and definitely no alcohol. Keep to that regimen for the next month, and he believes your mind will settle.”

“What is this?” Jason asked, eyeing the mint leaves of his tea.

“You,” Lana said, tossing him a ginger cracker. “Are to drink Winter’s Mint tea and foods with a hint of zest, like ginger and cinnamon, in the hopes that they will infuse a bit of passion into your cold heart.”

“Is that Silver’s prescription or yours?” he said drily.

Her eyes met his without fear. “It was a joint effort. You’ve been too cold for too long, and it’s not healthy. There’s something to be said for loosening up once in a while.”

Jason eyed the cracker with suspicion. He was going to be alone with Isis later. This didn’t seem to be a particularly good time to be experimenting with ‘loosening up’. There was a reason Phantoms kept a careful check on their emotions. Their tempers were far too volatile to risk inciting.

“Sit back, drink your tea, and eat your cracker.” Lana tossed him a second cracker. “In fact, have two.”

Really not a good idea. Jason took a bite out of the cracker anyway. Lana nodded in approval. Jason decided that sticking his tongue out at his sister was not in line with the deadly assassin image he was trying to maintain, so he settled for a seething glare. Lana was unfazed.

Isis released Jason’s hand to lift her teacup, but subtly shifted her weight to be closer to him. Trying not to think about how her thigh was pressed against his, he decided this was a good time to get them back on track.

“Isis, if you are ready, could you tell us why you’ve come here?” he prompted her.

She tried to look calm, but Jason could make out the wince she contained half a second too late.

“The Selpes told me you stole the Book of Memory from Orion,” she said.

“I did.”

“Until they confronted me with this, I didn’t even know they had it.”

“Did they say how they got it in the first place?”

She shook her head. “No. But apparently they have experts on Elition lore working for them.”

“What kind of experts?”

“I’m uncertain. Perhaps scholars who have studied our texts and history. Perhaps just a few humans who have dyed their hair blue and sit around all day smoking dandelions.”

Cameron snorted in appreciation of her description. They all knew the sort. Some humans thought if they just made themselves look Elition and consumed enough of the right plants, they would become Elition. Fortunately, magic didn’t work that way, else Elitia would have been plagued by a plethora of fools.

“Whoever their experts are, they figured out the significance of the Recovery Scrolls. And the Selpes want them,” said Isis.

“Were the Recovery Scrolls to fall into the hands of the Selpes or the Avans, they could use them to track down every last Elition,” Lana commented.

“Right,” Isis replied. “I imagine they’d hunt down the most powerful Elitions. They would try to form their own version of Vib’s menagerie.”

The encounter with Vib’s odd Elitions had left Jason unsettled. Absolutely obedient and trained to attack as a swarm of perfectly coordinated killers, there was nothing natural about them.

“No, not nearly so harmless. The Selpes would create their own Elition killing squad, perfectly brainwashed to obey their every whim,” commented Jason.

“I thought Elitions were resistant to brainwashing and, um…” Everett tried not to look at Isis. “Torture.”

She looked down at her hands in her lap. Jason stroked a finger across her palm and felt a pleasant spark, like a bolt of energy had rippled through his body. She must have felt it as well because her back straightened. He took a second to consider what the strange phenomenon was. He’d never felt its likes before.

“Resistant, yes, but not immune. We’re quite susceptible to drugs—or even basic foods, as Lana has shown here. They could be used to weaken our mental resistance. Theoretically,” Jason added as Isis gripped to his hand like a drowning woman.

He didn’t know if she’d spilled any information while the Selpes had strung her up on stimulants and tortured her, and there was no point in bringing it up now. Her mind was shattered enough as it was.

Isis took a deep breath and continued. “Now the Selpes no longer hold the Book of Vision, something they are quite sour about.”

Her hand drifted up to her neck. She left it there for a few silent seconds before dropping it.

“They’ve employed the services of the Crescent Order to retrieve the pieces of the Recovery Scrolls.”

“Assassins?” Everett asked, looking significantly at Jason.

“They are foremost assassins, but they can also be hired for other perilous tasks. The more dangerous and challenging the job, the more likely the Crescent Order is to take it,” said Isis.

“Sounds like a bunch of masochists to me,” Everett commented.

“It’s about the money. The more peril involved, the more they can charge,” Jason explained. “The Crescent Order has made their fortune taking on tasks no sane person would.”

“Even you?” Everett posed.

“Jason is not scared of anything,” Cameron boasted, just as Jason said, “I am hardly the epitome of sanity, Everett Black.”

“Yeah, I’ve gotten that idea by now,” he muttered.

“We can assume the Crescent Order will come for the Book of Memory eventually,” Isis told them.

“That means they will come here to Eclipse,” said Cameron. “Will they be able to find us?”

“About half of their numbers are human. The other half are rogue Elitions, meaning they can see the portals. Eclipse is protected by masked portals, ones that only those who have been led inside can see.” Jason looked at Isis. “Led in while conscious. You were unconscious when we brought you in last month. Yet you still made it back here. How did you find us?”

“I…I don’t know,” she stuttered. “I could just feel where you were, Jason.”

A second spark popped along their joined hands. Jason dropped her hand, but the sensation remained. There was something bizarre going on between them. Phantoms could sometimes sense other Elitions, but it didn’t go in reverse. Isis was no Phantom, and she’d found him. It was almost as though they had joined somehow. The idea was laughable. True, in some of the old tales, a few Elitions were shown to have a special connection, though it was always some ritual that had joined them. A serum, an act… Jason tried to discard the idea. He hadn’t so much as kissed Isis, let alone done more than that. They were just silly tales anyway.

“Perhaps the magic that masks Eclipse is not as sound as we’d thought,” suggested Lana.

“Does anyone outside of the town’s residents know how to get to Eclipse?” Isis asked.

“Only you,” Jason replied. Or was she now part of Eclipse?

“Actually, that’s not true, Jason. Remember Spice’s band?” Lana said.

Jason hadn’t forgotten about Spice. He and four other disgruntled Elitions had abandoned Eclipse a few years after the people of Pegasus had fled there. The life of seclusion had not agreed with them. Just as Jason had not agreed with their putting Eclipse at risk by leaving with knowledge of its existence. He’d eventually hunted down and killed every last one of them. Lana had a point, though. The hunt had taken him years, and who knew if they’d spilled Eclipse’s location to anyone else in that time.

Jason only said, “That could be a problem.”

There was no reason to burden them with the details of his gruesome deeds. They didn’t understand the necessity of them the way he did.

“Perhaps the Crescent Order will save the hardest for last,” Isis said. “If it’s easier, they may track down the other pieces first. The Book of Vision, the Book of Prophecy, the Stones of Resonance.”

“We have the Book of Vision too,” Jason told her.

“Oh,” she replied. “Well, that’s good.”

“But the stones are with the Avans.”

“They’re after the Recovery Scrolls as well?” she asked him.

“Perhaps. Likely.”

She paled. “We’ll figure some way to get them from the Avans.”

“We?” Jason repeated calmly. And—he hoped—casually.

“You helped me rescue Hayden and Ian Selpe from Nemesis. I will help you now.”

She stared at him, never blinking. Jason was hit with the sudden desire that the others weren’t sitting right there beside them.

“Ok,” he said finally.

Isis nodded, then broke eye contact. “The Selpes know what you’re up to, Jason. They know you are looking for Terra Cross. They think they can get to her first.”

“They have gone too far. They have hurt Elitia too much. One way or another, this will not end well for them,” he declared.

CHAPTER EIGHT

~ The Magical Tapestry ~

526AX August 20, Eclipse

CAMERON WAS BORED. Bored and anxious. He wanted to set off to find Terra, but none of them had any idea where to go. The Book of Prophecy, the next piece of the puzzle, was supposed to be tucked away inside one of Elitia’s temples. The question was which one. And whether it was even still where it was supposed to be.

While Jason stood staring at a tapestry on the wall of the Eclipse library, arms crossed stiffly, Cameron and Everett sat on the dusty stone floor playing Wilderness, an Elition strategy game. Cameron looked through the mud-caked window and was just able to make out the distorted streaks of falling rain. It snapped and crackled against the glass pane, marking the passing seconds.

Jason had been staring at that tapestry all morning, and he’d gotten absolutely nowhere. Not that anyone was brave enough to point that out to him.

After morning tea, Lana had walked back to Silver’s office with Isis. It was only now, as lunchtime approached, that Isis joined them in the library. She stood in the doorway for a few minutes, watching Jason trace his fingers across the tapestry’s canvas surface. Small black picture symbols followed his movements, dancing about in loopy whirls, as though a tornado had blown them about. Every few minutes, Jason zoomed in or out of the canvas, and the symbols grew or shrank as others vanished or appeared. The tapestry looked like a very large Delineation Scroll, the famed magical map of the Elitions.

Isis stepped up behind him and set a hand on his shoulder. “Jason.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” he said under his breath.

“What doesn’t make sense?” Isis asked him.

He turned around and met her eyes, as though he’d just noticed she was standing there. “I’m trying to decipher the location of the temple that holds the Book of Prophecy. This tapestry knows where it is. If only I can figure out how to make it tell me.”

Isis moved in for a closer look at the tapestry. “Those are where you found the Books of Memory and Vision?” she guessed, pointing to symbols of a book and an eye.

“How do you figure that? The map is not even geographical,” Everett grumbled.

He looked hungry. Or maybe Cameron was projecting. He was absolutely starving, and instead of going to lunch, they were still cooped up in that dusty old library.

“Well, the book is history. Like the past, you know? So that’s where you found the Book of Memory. You see with an eye, so this eye is where you found the Book of Vision.” She hovered a finger over the symbol of a sphere. “This sphere looks like a crystal ball, which is associated, however erroneously, with prophecy. Hence, it’s where the Book of Prophecy can be found. Wasn’t that all obvious?” she finished, looking from Jason to Cameron to Everett.

Cameron was impressed. Jason appeared to share the feeling, but it was hard to tell with him. His face tended not to be particularly expressive. And Everett… Well, Everett couldn’t seem to get past the moving symbols on the tapestry.

“I take it that if you’ve already found two of the books, this tapestry can be used to find the third?” she asked Jason.

“So the priests claim. As I have yet to make sense of it, I remain skeptical,” he replied.

“You could have asked them to figure it out. Then we wouldn’t be missing lunch.”

Jason gave Cameron a stony stare. “They weren’t even able to get the symbols to move. Even their best Cipher proved ineffectual.”

“I think we’re going about this in the wrong way,” said Isis, moving within a hand’s reach of the tapestry. “The three books are named for the Elition gifts of Memory, Vision, and Prophecy. Perhaps only together can a Prior, a Phantom, and a Prophet solve the puzzle.” She turned to Jason. “Where did you find the Book of Vision?”

“The Temple of the Veil.”

“Ok, the Temple of the Veil.” She pointed at three symbols in turn: a cloud filled with tiny dots, a bundle of five silver-green lines, and a golden square. “The cloud is the weather. That puts it in the northern part of Elitia, where the air is overcast and moist. The five lines represent the evergreens of the Elition kingdom of Mist Veil, the vast area of never-ending forests. The square is the golden-stoned walls of the temple. Jason, please drag those three symbols next to the eye.”

He swept a finger across the tapestry, sliding each symbol beside the eye. They drifted slowly, their ink darkening from grey to pure black as they locked into place.

“Ok, now the Book of Memory. That was taken from Orion. Cameron, if you please.”

Jason stepped aside to allow him access to the tapestry. Isis indicated three new floating symbols.

“That is Lake Orion,” she explained, and sure enough the shape perfectly matched the form of the lake along the Selpe capital.

As Cameron’s finger touched the symbol, his skin buzzed. It continued to pop and pulse as he moved the lake beside the book symbol.

“The northeast wind that bombards the Orion Peninsula.”

Cameron slid the symbol of four diagonal lines across the tapestry until it bounced gently off the book.

Isis pointed to two horizontal swiveling lines with a blue dot at each tip. “And finally, the two rivers that flow from the west coast all the way into Lake Orion.”

Once again, the symbols darkened, and they and the book settled into place. The remaining symbols all across the tapestry continued to float and wiggle for a few seconds, then three darkened as everything else faded. Isis pushed them over to the sphere, and the dozens of faded symbols vanished completely from the tapestry, leaving only twelve.

“And here we have the location of the temple holding the Book of Prophecy,” declared Isis.

“Where?” Cameron asked.

The Prophecy sphere wafted between three symbols: a curvy pale grey line, a blue-green evergreen, and a picture of three steep spikes with two touching circles beneath.

“The grey line is the twisting coastline of the Strand of Aurelia. The bluish evergreen puts the temple in the northwestern part of the kingdom, close to Mist Veil. And the spikes could only be the peaks of Aurelia’s Crown. The circles are the Lakes of Almira and Yvonne,” she explained.

“Aurelia’s children,” Cameron muttered.

“Who is Aurelia?” Everett asked.

“Aurelia was an Elition queen,” Cameron told him. “Legend tells us that she sealed Elitia off from the rest of the world so that we could all live in our own peaceful world. But she’d only completed the first part of the ritual, the creation of the invisible pockets of Elition civilization, when the powerful magic she wielded cost her her life. As she died, she cried out, knowing that she had no heir to carry on her work and complete the ritual, which would create portals to travel between the distant pockets, connecting the Elition villages. Her tears became the Lakes Almira and Yvonne, out of which emerged the fully-grown twins. Her children.

“The first sight Almira and Yvonne’s new eyes beheld was the death of their mother. They vowed to finish her work and connect the now isolated Elition villages. So they spent years traveling, pinpointing every pocket. Finally, by the end of their long journey, they’d woven the strands of the portal web, completing the ritual their mother had begun.”

“How…impossible,” Everett commented.

Cameron shrugged. “It’s just a myth. A metaphor. And I’ve always thought Almira and Yvonne were not really Aurelia’s children, but more like fragments of herself split off from her as she died. Though that’s not how the tale goes.”

“Fascinating. I like your interpretation,” Isis said.

“The priests never cared to hear my version. They found it fanciful and preposterous.”

“That’s precisely what makes it interesting. And makes you a good storyteller,” she told him.

Everett was shaking his head slowly. “But not all Elition lands are hidden away in these pockets. Eclipse is, but the rest of Elitia is right out there in front of our eyes.”

“The Shroud that concealed the Elition lands was torn centuries ago,” Cameron explained. “Very few hidden pockets remain. Eclipse is one of them.”

Jason turned to Isis, pointing at the tapestry. “That was remarkable.”

The remaining symbols had locked back into place, and now color was quickly spreading over the entire surface of the fabric. Soon, it would look like any other tapestry.

“Thank you.”

“The Temple of Aurelia,” he said.

“So it would seem.”

“Do you know the best path there?”

She bit her lip. “There’s nothing truly direct. Is there a portal from Eclipse to Pegasus?”

“Yes. It will bring us to the forest between Rosewater and Chrysalis,” Jason told her.

“Ok. There’s a portal from the Pegasus coast to the Strand of Aurelia. We’ll have to hike a bit, but we should be able to make it to the Temple of Aurelia in a few days.”

Cameron perked up. “Then we can leave this afternoon.” After lunch, of course.

“We’ll be facing an elite order of assassins and the Avans, probably led by Nemesis. I think you should stay behind. It’s not safe,” Isis told him.

“What? No!” he shouted. “She’s my sister, Isis.”

Everett’s mouth gaped open. He looked from Jason to Cameron, smashing his palm against his forehead. “Sister. Of course. It all makes sense now.”

Oops. Cameron sighed. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.

“You are the son of the high king of Elitia.”

Maybe. Cameron sealed his lips.

“Sorin Storm, the missing Elition boy. You, my friend, are worth one hundred thousand Crowns.”

“I’m not a boy,” Cameron grumbled.

“A man then,” Everett said, giving him a congenial smile.

Cameron hoped he wasn’t already mentally spending the reward money.

Jason positioned himself between them, his eyes cold and dark. “Do we have a problem here, mercenary?”

“Actually, yes.” Everett’s eyes shifted from Cameron to Jason and back again. “I’m completely confused. What exactly is your name then?” he chuckled.

Jason stepped back. The tension melted off of Cameron’s body. Everett wasn’t going to turn him in. He’d become too intertwined in their lives. He wasn’t Elition, but he was one of them now. A man of Eclipse.

“It’s complicated,” said Cameron.

“Elition things always are.”

Cameron couldn’t argue with that. “I was born Sorin Storm, though I don’t have any memories of those early months. The Revs who found me named me Cameron. I decided to stick with it.”

“But you took on Storm for your last name?” Everett asked.

“The Revs didn’t know my lineage, and they didn’t bother making up a last name for me. I was just Cameron. I’d always wanted a last name. Everyone else had them. So when I found out who my family really was, I became Cameron Storm. Or, to be more precise, Mythos Cameron Cross Storm.”

“Long,” said Everett.

“Elition naming is designed to track family lines through the generations,” Jason told him. “That necessitates some complexity.”

“Where does ‘Mythos’ come in?”

“It’s my formal name, the one used with those not close to me,” said Cameron. “Elitions get a power name around the age of twelve, when we go through the Passing.”

“Passing?” Everett asked.

“Elitions are not born with all our abilities turned on,” explained Cameron. “Our senses improve gradually for the first decade of life, then by the time we reach adolescence, our individual gifts have surfaced. This is also the same time our physical attributes change, giving us a distinctively Elition appearance.”

“Like not-quite-human hair,” Isis said, twirling a pink-blonde lock around her finger.

“This time of physical and mental metamorphosis is highlighted by a ceremony called the Passing,” Cameron continued. “For every Elition twelve-year-old, there comes a day when he or she is summoned to the temple. It is the day each of us is tested.”

“What kind of test?” asked Everett.

Isis raised a trembling hand to her cheek. “A difficult one.” She dropped her hand quickly, hiding it behind her back. “But we do not speak of it.”

“To humans?”

“To anyone,” she replied. “Even to other Elitions. It is a deeply personal experience. The only other people who know the details of an Elition’s Trials of Passing are the priests overseeing it, and they are sworn to secrecy.”

“Based on the results of the Trials of Passing, the priests give us a power name that’s supposed to represent our abilities,” Cameron said. “Any Elition who hears the name Mythos will instantly identify me as a Prior.”

“Really?”

“Really, really.”

“As a very strong Prior actually,” Jason added. “The name not only identifies the talent but the strength of said talent.”

“Huh.”

“Jason is Magus. You may have heard Elitions calling him that,” Cameron said.

Everett nodded.

“Magus is a strong name. It is absolutely fitting for the Elite Phantom,” Cameron explained further.

“If you say so. They all sound much the same to me. I have a hard time even identifying the talent from the name.”

“Prophets are the easiest,” Jason told him. “They have names like Fate and Serendipity. Or Isis’s friend Destiny. Or…”

He looked at Isis. She bit down on her lip and said nothing. For a while, Cameron thought she would not, in fact, answer him.

“Oracle,” she finally whispered.

Jason stared at her. “That is a powerful name.”

This time, she actually did remain silent.

“Well, I think that’s all the Elition sociology I can absorb for this day.” Everett rubbed his temples, as though it hurt to think. “Or this year,” he added under his breath.

“Then let’s eat,” suggested Cameron. “And enjoy it while we can. Soon it will be nothing but sandwiches.”

Everett frowned. “I thought you liked my sandwiches.”

“I do. But not three times a day for weeks at a time.”

“You don’t have to come,” Isis pointed out.

“Yes, I really do,” Cameron insisted. He couldn’t just sit there while his sister was being hunted. It would drive him mad.

“It’s not safe,” she repeated.

“I think Cameron has handled himself quite well these past few months. Besides, he deserves to go, to finally meet his sister,” Everett voiced.

Cameron smiled. “Thanks, Everett.”

Isis’s smile bore icicles. “Yes, thank you, indeed.” She turned to Jason. “Jason?”

Cameron held his breath. For as long as they’d known each other, Jason had insisted that it was better for Cameron to be safe than to be free. ‘Safe’ to Jason meant high stone walls and posted guards. After the tenth or so time of tracking him down inside the Wilderness and depositing him back at Black Moss, he’d even threatened iron bars.

“It is his right,” Jason said to Isis.

When his shock had faded, Cameron grinned. Isis crossed her arms against her chest and sighed. She didn’t look by any means pleased that she’d been so overwhelmingly outvoted.

CHAPTER NINE

~ Broken Prophets ~

526AX August 20, Eclipse

THE STORM CLOUDS were nearly black when Isis came to see Jason at his cabin. Leaves rustled in the wind and rain rattled hard against his roof, the autumn sounds masking the steps of her approach. It was only the gentle tug at his mind that preceded the knock at the door. Jason set his book down on the side table and stood from the sofa.

Her dark silhouette stood framed against a smokey-grey sky as he opened the door. Isis must have retreated several steps back since knocking, and she now stood exposed to the rain. She wrung her hands and shifted her weight uneasily between her feet, oblivious to the shower of water droplets bombarding her hooded head.

Jason motioned her in and shut the storm out behind her. She dropped her hood, splattering the wall behind her. Her drenched boots squeaked and squelched, then came to an abrupt halt as she noticed the trail of puddles she’d left in her wake. Offering an apologetic half-smile, she didn’t move another step. Jason didn’t mention the trail of water streaming down her jacket onto the arm of his sofa.

“We need to talk,” she began.

At least on that they were of one mind. He said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

“Cameron shouldn’t join us when we set out after lunch. He should remain in Eclipse, where he’ll be safe.”

Not the topic Jason had had in mind, but he wouldn’t allow that to show on his face.

“As we discussed in the library, Eclipse may not be as inaccessible as we’d previously thought,” he said.

“Are you bringing the Books of Memory and Vision along?” she asked, looking at the books stacked beside his pack.

“Yes, once we’ve gathered together all the pieces of the Recovery Scrolls, I want to set off to save Terra without delay.”

“You are worried about her.”

“Yes.” He’d waited too long already to search for her, and now the whole world was after her. Time was pouring out all around him, slipping through his fingers. “Cameron is worried too.”

She sighed.

“Why don’t you want Cameron to come?” Jason asked her.

“It’s not safe. We’re up against elite assassins, and he’s untrained.”

“The assassins of the Crescent Order are good,” he admitted. “But I am better.”

She dipped the toe of her boot in the puddle behind her. “The Avans are on the trail too. Nemesis could be there.”

“We’ll deal with that problem when it comes.”

“That problem comes in the form of a fire-eyed insane Triad with enough power to take you on and every reason to hate all of us. We did thwart her nefarious scheme just a week ago.” She shivered. “And I’m pretty sure she’s one to hold a grudge.”

Jason pulled the jacket off her and threw it onto the coat stand. He pointed at the sofa.

“Sit.”

She didn’t even argue. Once she’d settled into the cushions, Jason tugged off her boots and wrapped a thick blanket around her.

“Thanks,” she said as he sat down beside her. “But I must tell you that this blanket is really scratchy. Don’t you have something soft and fluffy?”

“I am not a soft and fluffy sort of guy.”

“Of course not,” Isis said, biting back a smile.

She looked entirely too cute. Jason wasn’t sure how to act around her.

“Cameron,” she reminded him.

Jason really didn’t want to talk about that right now. He watched her release my hair from her ponytail. Pink-blonde locks cascaded over her shoulders, wet and glossy.

“What are you staring at?” she asked.

“I’m not staring at all. I am glaring with sinister purpose, as is appropriate for an assassin of my reputation.”

She snorted. “No doubt. And also keeping to your stealthy reputation, you are dodging the question.”

Because he’d not asked her here to chitchat about Cameron.

“I share your concerns. It’s a dangerous path, and Cameron has a knack for impulsively throwing himself in harm’s way,” he replied. “But if we don’t let him come with us to find his sister, he will never forgive us. Worse yet, he’ll run off after us anyway, get himself captured, and then we’ll have two people to save.” He met her eyes. “You know I’m right.”

She held his gaze for only a second, then looked away, her eyes nervous. It wasn’t an uncommon reaction to him, so Jason was used to it. Just not from her. She’d never shied away from him before. Just how deeply had the Selpes scarred her?

He reached forward, hoping to comfort her, but as their skins made contact, a spark shot from her to him, passing along a memory. She withdrew but not quickly enough. The picture was clear—that of Isis as she thrashed and banged herself against the walls of her prison cell, her eyes an enraged red. The Selpes had given her the drugs, so many that she went mad, but they’d not inflicted the wounds. That they’d let her do all by herself.

“Isis—”

“Please, don’t,” she whispered, retreating from his extended hand.

Jason bottled a growl. This was definitely not going as he’d planned. “I can help you.” Maybe.

She shook her head, and tiny droplets flew off her hair, sprinkling his shirt. “No, you can’t.”

“What happened to my presence being soothing?” he asked.

“It is.” She extended her hand toward him, then withdrew it twice as quickly. “Jason, you can’t imagine…” She shook herself. “No, we need to stay on track. There’s no time for distractions.”

Jason stretched forward, his hands reaching toward her. Isis matched his movements, sliding backward until her back hit the armrest, ending her retreat. Jason leaned over her until their noses brushed.

Her lips trembled, and she breathed out, “Stop.”

But her hand gripped his back, pulling him toward her. When Jason kissed her jaw, she gasped. He saw her nostrils flare, inhaling his scent. She looked dizzy, as though she liked what she’d smelled.

“Stop,” she said again.

Jason couldn’t. He wanted to kiss her, to taste her lips. He could think of nothing else.

“Terra,” Isis said.

“What about her?”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes, of course.” Oh. That. “As a friend, a sister.” He stroked his hand down her shoulder. “Not like this.”

“Cameron said you were engaged.”

And Cameron needed to keep his big mouth shut.

“Our fathers’ doing. A silly idea they had about uniting our families. That was a long time ago. It died with my parents.”

A wrinkle formed between Isis’s eyes. “So you don’t see yourself marrying her? Being with her?”

Jason couldn’t hold back the snort. “Marry Terra? No, of course not. It would be like marrying my sister. I love Terra, but I could never see her as anything but my best friend. I could never have romantic feelings for her.”

“Why are you looking for her? Why after so many years?” asked Isis.

“The Selpes and Avans are after the Recovery Scrolls.”

“No, that’s not it. You were already looking for her before, back when I was traveling with you. Cameron said you two haven’t seen each other in ten years, and you choose now of all times to go after her? Why?”

Jason wasn’t sure how to answer. Lana had wondered the same thing, and he’d evaded responding. In order to do so, he would have had to admit to keeping secrets from her for the past decade. But Isis was not Lana.

“Before Terra and I were separated, we exchanged sand slates,” he told her.

A portable version of the Elition temple sand pits, sand slates were linked in pairs. You could only communicate with the person holding the matching slate and in text only, but it worked over vast distances.

“They allowed us to write to each other over the years,” he continued. “But a year ago was the last time I heard from her.”

Understanding dawned on her face. “That’s why you’re after her now. You think something has happened.”

“Yes. We used to talk several times a week. Then, all of a sudden, she was gone. No warning. No hints. Something must be wrong. And now that the Selpes and Avans are both after the Recovery Scrolls, things can only get worse for her. Unless we find her first and bring her here.”

Isis tucked up her knees, putting a barrier between their bodies. She looked about two seconds away from bolting out of the door.

“I saw Ariella at Precipice,” he mentioned, hoping to hold her interest long enough to make her forget about running.

Her face lit up. “Did you? How is she? I’ve missed her.”

“She looked well. She was running around with that Phantom Wrest again, off on some perilous quest to a Hellean floating city.”

Isis chuckled. “She hates planes, and she’s going to step foot on a floating city? Silas is getting her into all kinds of trouble. He’s a bad influence.” Her eyes twinkled at him. “Sort of like you.”

Jason didn’t know how to respond to that, so he spoke his mind, “Ariella said you went to school with Terra.”

“Yes,” she replied cautiously.

“So you know her well?”

“Somewhat.”

“What is she like?”

“Jason, I fear you don’t want to know.”

“Tell me.”

Isis hugged the blanket to herself. “You wouldn’t know her. Her mind was lost long ago. She’s caught in a waking dream, all sense of reality lost. The problem hasn’t gotten better; it’s only getting worse. When I knew her… well, she would say and do things she didn’t remember later, or recall them only as dreams. There was a time she spent most of her days aware and alert, and fell only into short episodes of delirium. But those bursts grew longer, and the periods of sanity shorter.”

“Why hasn’t anyone done anything to help her?” Jason demanded.

“They’ve tried,” she replied. “Her power is simply too much for her to handle. I fear she’s lost to this world.”

“No. We wrote to each other over all those years. She’s fine.”

“Have you never considered that she only wrote during her good times? That she hid her turmoil from you so that you wouldn’t worry?”

“I would have known. I know her.”

“You’ve not seen her in ten years, not since you were children. Even when I was at Precipice with her five years ago, she was barely holding her mind together. You wouldn’t recognize her anymore. And she wouldn’t know you. Not in that state.”

“I would. And she would,” he insisted.

Isis sighed and lifted up the bottom of her shirt, exposing her abdomen. Just above her hipbone was a very long and thin scar. It glowed eerily in the dim light of the room. Jason traced it, feeling its unnatural smoothness. It was the scar Ariella had mentioned, the one he’d only caught a quick glimpse of until now.

“Your body was unable to heal this?” he asked her.

Isis recoiled. “Poison blade,” she told him. “Terra did this.”

He looked up from the scar to her trembling eyes. “Why?”

“During a fit of paranoia.” She covered the scar again, then set her hands onto his cheeks. Looking solemnly into his eyes, she said, “Her mind is gone.”

Then Isis stood up to gather her things and left. And Jason couldn’t even bring himself to so much as say goodbye, let alone get up to stop her.

CHAPTER TEN

~ Fallen Artifact ~

526AX August 20, Pegasus

LIGHTNING CRACKED, SPLITTING a tree nearly in half. Its splintered remnants plunged down and landed two meters from Cameron’s foot. He stepped back, mud oozing up as his boot sank into the soft ground. Covered in mulch and mud—and now a fallen tree—the trail was blocked.

“I think we should call it a day!” Everett bellowed over the storm.

Cameron nodded. By the time they’d left Eclipse, the rain had stopped there, but it was still drizzling in Pegasus. The drizzle had intensified to a hard rain. As the hours passed, the chilling winds had picked up. Cameron had shivered against the wind and suffered beneath the piercing rain, but he had no intention of being crushed by falling trees.

Oblivious to all, Isis was staring at the felled tree as though she wanted to scale it. She was insane. The satin-smooth trunk loomed over five meters high. She didn’t seem to realize that Jason was the only one there with even the slightest hope of getting over it. All day, she’d set a death-march pace, as though her life depended on making it to the next portal before nightfall.

“Isis,” Jason said, setting a hand on her shoulder

She jumped in surprise. “Yes, I know. It’s too high.”

Since her back was turned to him, Cameron wasn’t sure whether she was talking to herself or to them. But when she panned her head, searching for an alternate path, he caught the sparkling glisten of a tear upon her cheek. She wiped it hastily away, but it left Cameron wondering what she had to cry about. A pit formed in his stomach as the realization hit him. The Selpes had left her a broken person. After what they’d done to her, it was a wonder she was still acting even close to normal.

“It will soon be sundown. We need to find shelter for the night,” Jason told her.

“Dry shelter,” Everett added quickly.

Thunder roared overhead, and that seemed to finally snap Isis out of her trance. She looked at them, her wide eyes sparkling like sapphires. She gasped as she took in the sight of them, rain gushing down over their heads.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” she stuttered. “Of course we can’t continue on like this. I know of a place nearby. We should be there in a quarter of an hour if we can just get past this tree.”

She opted to go around the tree, then cut through the thick underbrush until they returned to the trail. Inside his boots, Cameron’s socks slushed. He really hoped they’d be there soon—and that Everett’s sandwiches were still dry.

The wind howled and pounded their bodies, making them fight for every step they took. All around, trees swayed and bent forward, their trunks threatening to snap at any moment. Cameron was soaked through to his underwear, which would make drying off beside the fire that night a fun experience.

“Here,” Isis’s voice broke through the cacophony of storm sounds.

They’d left the trail. Before them, a hill sloped downward. The drop was nearly vertical, but at the bottom was a large grey cave.

No, not a cave. It was too symmetrical to be a natural formation. Lightning flashed, and Cameron got a better look. It was a massive airplane. Its metal exterior discolored and coated with layers of green sludge, the plane must have been sitting there for centuries.

Everett’s mouth gaped. “What is that monster?”

“A crashed Xenen ship,” she told him.

“Xenen? You want us to go inside a crashed Xenen ship?”

“I don’t think they’ll be coming back for it,” she said. “This plane crashed centuries ago. It was flying overhead the day the Wilderness was born.”

“Sure, but still.” Everett chewed on his lip. “It’s kind of creepy. Like sleeping amongst the dead.”

“It’s that or sleeping out in the rain.”

Cameron decided to make the decision for him. He began to jog down the hill. He had no intention of spending the night in that weather. Very few remnants remained of the Xenens’ time in the world—here and there an odd bit of technology, but hardly anything big. They’d taken most of their planes with them, but the nature of the Elition Wilderness must have made the extraction of this one impossible. It’s hard to move something that big in an area where none of their machines even function. Some people said Xenen artifacts were cursed, but those were the very same people who also thought the Elition Wilderness was haunted.

Cameron stepped toward an opening in the plane. A tiny waterfall slipped down the roof, pouring over his head as he passed under the arched doorway. The ground was packed with wet mud and decaying leaves, concealing whatever floor lay beneath centuries of forest debris. A dim orange light flickered against the walls as Everett lit his lantern.

“Isis, Cameron, make a fire. Not too close to the entrance. We don’t want to be seen from the outside. Everett, you’re on meal duty,” Jason instructed them. “I’ll scout and secure the perimeter.”

To Jason ‘secure the perimeter’ meant setting up all kinds of traps that promised a gruesome death to anyone who managed to get himself ensnared. It also meant he’d have to go back out in the storm while the rest of them could dry off and warm up inside. Cameron didn’t mind. He was just happy that he wasn’t the one who had to go out in that storm. Most people preferred warmth and shelter. Jason didn’t seem to care either way.

“Over here,” Isis said, waving at Cameron. “I’ve found some sticks that aren’t completely drenched.”

He followed her deeper into the plane. It was massive. They took a left fork and followed a hallway for a few minutes to its end, gathering sticks along the way. Just a few weeks ago, they would have chatted and laughed as they worked, but the only sound in the hall now was the slow drip of water. Isis said nothing, and Cameron didn’t try to drag her into a conversation. Her face was pale and solemn, the carefree happiness ripped from her. It made Cameron want to punch someone. Preferably a Selpe.

They set up their sticks in one of the rooms close to the entrance, and Cameron went about starting up a fire. As Everett unpacked their food and blankets, Isis moved toward the door. She met Jason at the doorway between the two rooms. The two of them just stared at each other for a few seconds, Jason’s eyes steadily darkening. Isis blushed and retreated a few steps. Then Jason closed the door behind him and deposited his pack against the wall before joining Cameron at the fire.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

~ Thieves and Assassins ~

526AX August 21, Pegasus

THE NEXT MORNING, a hard shake startled Cameron into consciousness. Jason crouched before him, pressing a finger to his lips. He connected with Cameron’s eyes just long enough to make sure he was awake, then he dashed over to the closed door. Isis stood to one side and he to the other, their ears turned toward the entrance chamber. Everett was packing up their things and putting out the last embers of their fire.

“There are people outside,” he whispered.

Cameron rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Who?”

“We’re not sure. Someone got caught in one of Jason’s traps. I’m surprised the scream didn’t wake you.”

So was Cameron. He must have been more exhausted than he’d thought.

“Looters,” Jason announced.

“Humans,” added Isis.

“Fools,” Jason said.

Xenen technology was far more advanced than any used by the Selpes and the Avans. There were bands that made it their mission to track it down for sale on the black market. Since most of the abandoned technology lay deep within the Wilderness, the work required a special kind of idiot. Elitions didn’t take kindly to humans crossing their borders. And that went doubly so for looters.

“So what’s the plan?” Cameron asked.

“It is a band of ten men. I set only four traps, more as a warning than as a defense. I will take care of the remainders,” Jason decided.

Isis stepped forward, but he shook his head.

“No, not you.” Jason motioned Everett over, and they both pulled on their packs. “Everett and I can handle them.”

“Jason—”

“No,” he cut her off. “We both know you’re not a killer. You stay here and protect Cameron.”

Then before she could protest further, he and Everett slipped through the door and shut it behind them. As soon as they were gone, Isis began to pace from one side of the room to the other, a glower on her face. She’d only just completed her first loop when shouts sounded from outside. A few seconds later, Jason and Everett burst through the door.

“Time to go,” Jason told them. “The coast is clear but not for long.”

They jogged out of the plane. Cameron squinted as the blinding glare of the rising sun hit his eyes. The sky was grey and mostly cloudy, but at least it had stopped raining. Jason took the lead, scaling the steep slope in two strides. Cameron tried to imitate him, but his boots sank deep into the mud. He kicked free, but not before Isis and Everett had darted past him. Cameron pushed himself hard, closing in beside Jason.

“What happened?”

“The Crescent Order showed up. They scared off the looters. That gives us a few minutes’ head start until they come after us.”

“How did they find us?” asked Cameron.

Jason’s face hardened. “They have a Prior with them. And a Phantom. And a Prophet.”

“They can track us?”

“They can track us,” he repeated grimly. “Over land and through portals…”

His eyes drifted up in thought, but his pace didn’t slacken. His legs propelled forward, running so fast that the rest of them could barely keep up. And yet it didn’t even strain Jason. He could go at least twice as fast without breaking a sweat. It just wasn’t fair.

“Maybe, just maybe, we can evade them,” he said.

“How?”

“Just tell the others to follow me. And quickly,” he instructed before he shot off through the trees.

Cameron slowed his pace until Isis and Everett came in line with him.

“Where’s he running off to?” Everett said.

“He said to follow him. And to hurry.”

“Spectacular,” Everett growled, gritting his teeth as he picked up speed.

Isis slipped between them, dashing off toward Jason. The shuffle of boots through fallen leaves sounded behind them. There was no point in looking back. Cameron knew what he would see there: the stony faces of the assassin crew. The wind whistled in his ears as he wove through the trees. Leaves shuddered and branches whipped against his arms. He watched Jason and Isis leap down, falling out of sight. He slowed slightly, bracing himself for the drop. He fell two meters, not nearly as far as he’d anticipated, then shuffled his feet to an abrupt stop. Jason stood in the center of the small clearing, turning and scanning with his eyes. Isis was watching him. Cameron joined her, and Everett jogged up behind them.

“Jason, what are you doing?” Cameron asked him.

Jason continued his turn-and-scan pattern. “Looking for the portal.”

Cameron looked at Isis. “I thought you said the portal is near the coast?”

“It is.” She watched Jason closely. “But I don’t think he means that portal.”

“I don’t see any portal,” said Cameron.

“Neither do I,” she replied.

“You wouldn’t see it,” Jason told them. “It’s not like other portals. It’s more like a ghost of a portal, one Terra and I found years ago during one of our explorations. It seems to fade with each use. I’m not sure it’s even still here.”

“It had better be, unless you want to take on twelve assassins,” commented Everett.

Cameron could hear the synchronized strikes of boots on the path overhead. The Crescent Order was nearly upon them.

“There,” Jason announced, pointing to a slender red-orange maple tree.

Cameron couldn’t see a portal, but there was something odd about that spot. The tree didn’t appear entirely solid.

“You won’t be able to go through without me, so we’ll all hold hands,” he instructed, extending his left hand to Isis.

She paused briefly before setting her gloved hand in his. Cameron took his right hand.

“Our assassin friends are here,” Everett said, grasping Cameron’s other hand.

Whispering voices drifted down from the hilltop.

“They’re too late,” Isis replied.

“It’s just as well. I don’t much fancy killing before breakfast,” declared Jason.

He said it so matter-of-factly that it didn’t even cross Cameron’s mind that he could be joking. So he was surprised when Isis burst into laughter. It was the first genuine smile he’d seen on her lips since she’d escaped the Selpes. Cameron was so happy to see it that he didn’t dwell on Jason’s dark joke. If it even was a joke. Jason wasn’t known for his sense of humor.

They stepped through the portal Cameron could not see. A portal shift was instantaneous—one moment you were in one place and the next moment you were suddenly elsewhere. This was not a typical portal. The trees dissolved slowly, fading to white. The scent of saltwater stung Cameron’s nose, followed by the unstable feeling of pebbles shifting beneath his feet. Swirls of sand and water solidified before his eyes, becoming a beach. Green blotches became kelp washed up on the shore, and brown lines turned to driftwood.

“The Wasteland,” said Jason. “The next portal in the loop is just down the beach.”

“Loop?” asked Cameron.

“This is a portal loop, a string of gateways, that crosses all of Elitia. “As I said, the portals fade each time they’re used. If we’re lucky, the next one will still be there. It will bring us to Mist Veil, just across the border from the Temple of Aurelia.”

Cameron shifted his pack in preparation for the hike. It wouldn’t be long now before they reached the Book of Prophecy. And then Terra.

CHAPTER TWELVE

~ The Wasteland ~

526AX August 21, The Sapphire Shore

EVERETT WALKED ALONG the shore, which was composed of ninety percent rock and ten percent wet and gushy grey sand. Pebbles shifted beneath his boots, and a gust of cold wind battered him, piercing his jacket. The official name of this Elition kingdom was the Sapphire Shore, but it wasn’t hard to see why it was commonly referred to as the Wasteland. Rocky beaches, icy water, scant vegetation, and strong northern winds were a superb combination—for survival training. It wasn’t exactly a luxury getaway spot, but he’d been to worse places. At least there were no assassins chasing them here. The only assassin around was Jason, and as long as you talked to him as little as possible and didn’t do anything too stupid, he tended to just ignore you. Except Isis. He hardly ever ignored her.

Though the poor girl had survived Selpe imprisonment, the scars were undeniable. She didn’t chatter and prance about as she used to. It felt wrong to see her so reserved, but she seemed to be slowly warming up again. Ever since they’d arrived in the Wasteland, she’d spent the entire time walking alongside Jason, engaged in a hushed conversation with him. Everett had even caught her smile once or twice. Perhaps, she just needed time. Everett wouldn’t have thought Jason’s stony, expressionless manner to be the best remedy to return her to a state of carefree bliss, but she’d been drawn to him from nearly the first moment. Women rarely made sense.

Isis tapped Jason’s shoulder and pointed toward the ocean. Mostly cloaked behind a thick cover of fog, Everett could just make out the distinctive disc-like silhouette of a Hellean city floating high above the waves. It was a marvelous feat of technology, and a sight he knew well. There was one just like it above the Western Seas, near to the Rev territories. Like all Rev boys, he’d grown up staring up at Pallas, dreaming of one day setting foot on it. But the chances of that were slim. The Helleans didn’t let just anyone into their cities.

“No, not that one. Ariella was headed for Oasis,” Jason whispered to Isis.

“I’m worried about her,” she replied, looking up at him.

Jason held her gaze. “I know.” He stroked his hand down her arm. “She’ll be all right.”

Everett cleared his throat loudly as he and Cameron stopped behind them. Jason’s hand dropped.

“How about some breakfast?” Everett suggested, smiling.

Cameron nodded in enthusiastic agreement.

“There’s no time,” Jason said. “We’re not the only ones after the Book of Prophecy. We must get to the temple before anyone else does.”

His face was set. Everett could see that there would be no convincing the assassin, and he wasn’t going to risk losing any nonexpendable appendages by trying. They would just have to eat while they hiked. As Jason and Isis walked off, Everett quickly recovered two wrapped sandwiches from his bag. He kept one for himself and handed the other to Cameron, and then they were off again. No time had been wasted. Even a stingy assassin like Jason Chanz couldn’t complain.

But it didn’t take long before they did fall behind. Beneath a stone archway, Everett tripped over a broken fishbone and lost a few minutes dumping sand and tiny gravel out of his boots. While he was waiting, Cameron decided to relieve Everett of the burden of his half-eaten sandwich. The wind echoed off the walls, and Cameron gave him a devious grin.

“You know, they say mermaids toss fishbones onto land, hoping to ensnare lost travelers and drag them into their underwater dens.”

“Who says that?” Everett asked.

“The old stories.”

“Well, where I come from, mermaids are far more civilized. Instead of throwing fish skeletons at men, they bewitch us with their songs and, um…” He smirked. “Seashells.”

Cameron stared at him blankly.

“You know, the seashells they wear.”

The boy didn’t get it. He was hopeless. Everett really needed to find some friends his own age.

“Never mind,” he sighed. “So, are there any more tales about the Wasteland?”

“Sure,” Cameron said, the animation returning to his face. “Ghosts are said to float above the shore after dark during the high tide.”

Everett looked up the beach. Green goo and sea muscles clung to the rock cliff. Right now, the tide was low, but at high tide, the water probably covered the entire beach. It was a good thing they’d not taken the portal during one of those times. They would have popped up underwater. Everett wondered if Jason had known that when he’d pulled them through.

“Ghosts, you say?” he asked.

Cameron nodded vigorously. “Yeah, but for all we know, it’s just chimes in the wind.”

Everett smiled at the reference to the day that they’d met, when he’d fooled a band of Avan soldiers with a handful of chimes and a few arrows.

“Hey, do you see Jason and Isis?” Cameron asked.

They’d fallen far behind. The beach had come to an end, and Jason and Isis were nowhere in sight. Everett pointed to a narrow passage in the cliffs, just wide enough for one person to file through at a time.

“They must have gone that way.”

Everett didn’t think Isis would leave them behind, but the determination in Jason’s eyes did worry him. He wouldn’t put it past the assassin to go on ahead with the intention of swinging back around for them after he found Terra. Who knew how long that would take. And if what Jason said was true, that these portals were disappearing, then they could end up stranded on the dreary shore of the Wasteland. He ran up the beach and shimmied through the opening in the rock face. Cameron gasped as he came in behind Everett, pointing at a splattering of blood against the rocks.

“It could be from some animal,” Everett told him.

Cameron’s nostrils crinkled up as he sniffed it. “It’s Elition.”

Everett had forgotten they could do that. Jason could even tell from your sweat what you’d eaten for dinner. It was really creepy, and none of the Elitions seemed to get that.

Cameron held up a piece of torn black fabric. “From Isis’s shirt.”

“Anything from Jason?” Everett asked.

He couldn’t picture the assassin ever being hurt. He never lost his footing and never missed his target. The man was even immune to paper cuts.

Cameron picked one of Jason’s black throwing knives off the ground. “Do you think they were attacked?”

Everett hoped not. Anything that could hurt Isis and make Jason drop a knife was bad news.

“Look over there,” he said to Cameron.

A second piece of torn black fabric dangled from the corner of a nearby cluster of dull grey rocks, swaying in the breeze. Everett drew his dagger, Cameron held Jason’s knife, and they crept slowly forward. Everett tried to step softly, but he twitched at every scrape of his boots against the shifting gravel. His heart was pounding in his ears and his palms dripped with sweat. Yet he didn’t dare release his hold on his weapon to wipe his hands.

As they eased slowly around a colony of boulders, someone jumped out at them. Everett didn’t hesitate. He slashed out with his weapon, hoping to survive by dealing enough damage early on in the fight. A blade flashed up, blocking his strike, and Everett was surprised to see Jason’s cold eyes behind it. Isis had ducked down to evade the jab of his dagger. She’d been the one to jump out at him. Realization dawned and Everett groaned. She and Jason had played a practical joke on them.

“Boo,” Isis peeped with a sheepish smile, lunging sideways to slide out of the way.

“That was not funny,” growled Everett, his arms pounding from the impact of Jason’s strike. Their blades were still crossed, and his muscles were starting to buckle under the strain.

“I told you this wasn’t a good idea,” Jason said to Isis.

At least Everett and the assassin were in agreement about that.

“He nearly took your head off,” Jason added, glaring at Everett.

So, Isis jumped out at me, scaring me out of my wits, and I am to blame? Yeah, that makes sense. Everett decided not to voice the thoughts. Jason was fired up enough already.

“Jason, stop.” Isis placed a hand on his arm. “You’re hurting him.”

Jason withdrew his blade so quickly that Everett stumbled forward. As expected, the assassin did not apologize. He had stopped glaring, which Everett supposed was the best he was going to get from him.

“Whose blood was that on the rocks back there?” Everett asked them.

Jason nodded toward Isis.

“And the fabric?”

“Also hers. This dubious scheme was entirely her idea. She requisitioned my knife for it.” He held out his hand to Cameron. “Which I would like back now.”

With downcast eyes, Cameron set the black blade into Jason’s hand. The poor kid looked disappointed. He’d probably been hoping to keep the weapon to later practice throwing it at trees—Everett’s gaze slid over the beach—or throw it at the kelp, at least.

“So, now that you’ve all had your fun, it’s time to get going again,” Jason declared. “I can see the portal right against the cliff wall.”

Everett would hardly call a near heart attack ‘fun’, but he said nothing as he followed Jason to the wall. They all joined hands and stepped toward a portal Everett couldn’t see. If this was the next practical joke, his forehead would bang hard against rock.

But as soon as he felt the sickening churning in his stomach, that same feeling he’d experienced on the last portal jump, he knew it was no joke. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Jason was about as whimsical as a math equation.

The portal spit them out upon a high plateau enclosed by a ring of blue evergreens. They were far north, which Everett knew from the cold breeze that cut at his face and the thinly grassed, frost-kissed ground beneath his boots. Down below, two lakes sparkled in the morning sun, a shiny black-faced temple wedged between them. The Temple of Aurelia. Beside Everett, Jason reached out with his hand, as though to grasp it between his fingers.

No one spoke as they descended the forested hill, walking across a thick carpet of fallen pine needles. Cameron raced on ahead, the dense trees swallowing him up from sight. When they reached the bottom, he was nowhere to be seen.

“I’ll bet he’s playing his own practical joke now. Any moment now, he’ll jump out from behind some trees,” Everett commented.

The black temple was close now, and still there was no sign of Cameron.

“He’s gone on to the temple,” Jason told them. “I can feel him.” He frowned. “Whatever he’s doing, his resonance is blocking out everything else.”

No one questioned him. Everett had learned a few things during his time in Eclipse. One of these things was that you didn’t doubt the Elite Phantom’s ability to sense resonances—whatever the hell that meant.

“I guess he’s excited,” Everett said.

“Cameron is always excited,” Jason said cooly. “Isis.”

His tone was serious enough that even Everett turned to look at him.

“I need you,” he continued.

Isis’s mouth dropped, and Everett felt his do the same.

“At the temple,” Jason clarified. “I’ve heard that the Temple of Aurelia is protected by a series of trials. Trials that can only be navigated by a Prophet. That’s you.”

“My abilities are still somewhat suppressed. After my recent…experience, Silver thought it would be best for me to acclimate slowly. He has mixed a moderate Inhibiting Serum into the Balancing Serum.”

“I have an Enhancing Serum with me. It will boost your power of Prophecy,” he told her.

Wow, he’d come prepared for everything. Everett never ceased to be amazed by Jason’s brutal efficiency.

“Oh, Jason. I…I can’t,” she stuttered.

“You can and you shall,” said a shrill voice.

They’d reached the temple’s front gate, where Nemesis stood with a sneer on her face. She was pressing a knife hard against Cameron’s neck.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

~ The Temple of Aurelia ~

526AX August 21, The Temple of Aurelia

“NEMESIS,” JASON SNARLED.

“Wait,” Isis said.

She locked her hands around Jason’s arms, restraining him. Nemesis, that fiend of violent, fiery red-orange hair and turquoise eyes, was still holding a knife to Cameron’s neck, after all. Isis didn’t want Jason to provoke her. Nemesis didn’t much like either of them, and she would use any excuse to hurt Cameron.

Cameron appeared uninjured, though the blood had drained from his face, leaving him pale as a ghost. His ice-blue eyes stared forward, shaking with fear. He’d once been Nemesis’s prisoner. Isis wondered what the mad Triad had done to him. She felt her fists clench up.

“Temper, temper, my dear,” Nemesis warned, her smirk widening as she shook her finger at Isis. “And as for you,” she said, turning to Jason.

He was shifting his weight forward. She glared at him, her eyes looking as though they would boil over. He countered with a cold obsidian stare. Watching Jason and Nemesis was like standing before a burning meteor shower.

“Let’s have none of that. You should listen to your little girlfriend, Magus. It would be a shame if my hand were to slip and cut this sweet boy’s throat,” Nemesis simpered.

As if to prove her point, she lifted the sleeve from Cameron’s shoulder, exposing skin broken by a timeline of still-healing cuts. She really was insane. How many times had she cut him in the last few minutes?

“Now, my dear, you pretty little Prophet,” Nemesis said to Isis, her voice simmering with sugar-coated poison. “You will kindly lead us through the trials.”

“As I said, my abilities are currently suppressed,” Isis said.

“Yes, of course. I was paying attention to your superficial chatter, after all. Just take the counteragent Magus offered, and all will be well. No. Stop. Not you. I want your hands where I can see them,” Nemesis warned Jason. She glared at Everett. “You, human! Give her the serum. And hurry along with it. I don’t have all day.”

Jason nodded toward a small pouch hanging from his waist belt, and Everett slipped his fingers inside. The short, slender flask he pulled out held no more than a single mouthful of golden, fizzy liquid. With Nemesis’s eyes locked on her, Isis took the flask from Everett and drank it down in one gulp. It tasted far mintier than her Inhibiting Serum, and there was an after-flavor of alcohol too. She felt it take effect instantly. A warm wave washed over her body. Her limbs began to tingle and her head spun. Everything around her became at the same time very clear—ultra high contrast—and very blurred, as though she were seeing things play out a few seconds before they actually happened.

“Jason?” she asked woozily.

“Sorry. I had to make it strong. I didn’t know how much was needed to counteract the effects of the Inhibiting Serum, especially with how long you’ve been taking it,” he replied. His voice echoed in her head.

“It’s more than enough,” she hiccuped, feeling rather drunk.

“Marvelous,” shrilled Nemesis. “Now lead the way.”

“At least give her a moment to adjust,” Cameron protested. “We don’t even know what dangers lie within.”

“Very well,” Nemesis said, shoving him toward the door. “Then you can lead.”

Isis planted her hand on the closed door, blocking the way. “No, wait. I can handle it. I’ll lead.”

She turned her back on Nemesis’s arrogant smirk and Jason’s blackening eyes. Pushing the door open, she stepped into the dark hall. The wall torches that lined both sides of the corridor flared up. Isis threw out her arms before anyone could take another step forward.

“Stay here,” she directed and continued forward alone.

On her next step, she caught a future flash of over-saturated flames as they burst up from the floor, consuming the immediate space around her. She launched herself up and flipped around in the air to face the entrance where the others still waited. She landed at a safe distance, just as fire shot up where she’d stood mere seconds ago.

The second flash came—one of long spears that jutted forward from both walls, designed to stake anyone standing within its spiked web. Isis rolled on the floor and slid out of range as the foresight became reality.

Her mouth tasted strongly of blood, the result of biting her lip. And it tasted of alcohol, the aftertaste of a foresight. But she had no time to catch her breath before the third flash split through her body. Two swinging pendulums, heavy and spiked swung out from both sides, slid past each other. One, two, Isis dodged back, and down, then sprinted out of range.

The fourth flash followed. Loose, heavy rocks showered down from above, erupted from below, and catapulted out from both walls. Moments before they all collided with a grinding, resonating bang in the middle, Isis had sprung forward.

She now stood near the end of the room, steps from the wheel she knew she’d need to turn in order to calm the traps still roaring behind her. The fifth flash hit her. The front door would slam shut and the floor rise up, teetering back and forth at extreme angles until everyone was swooped into the traps still fuming between them. As she felt a gentle buzz beneath her boots—a buzz that she knew would magnify into the turbulent seesaw floor of her foresight—Isis did a forward flip, and she landed with such force with her hands around the wheel that it turned, silencing the room’s terrors.

Isis viewed the others, waiting at the entrance, upside down, then pushed herself up and over to stand atop the wheel. She couldn’t help but smile as she stood high up there, relishing in the power she’d for so long tried to repress. It was truly exhilarating—so much so that she forgot, if only for a moment, how dangerous it could be.

In an instant, Jason was beside her, looking her over with his penetrating eyes. “Are you ok?” he asked.

“Fine—no, great. Actually, I feel amazing,” she had to admit, stretching out her arms and turning on the spot.

“If you enjoy your gift so much, then why did you take the Inhibiting Serum for so long?” he wondered.

“It’s easier. The gift of Prophecy is a turbulent one, full of its ups and downs, which often come without warning. I don’t handle the downs so well,” she told him, more than a little embarrassed.

“Then you are weak,” Nemesis derided her. “Of course, we already knew that, didn’t we? Your eyes tell all. You are weak. Weak and naive. The horrors of this world will tear you apart.”

Nemesis sneered and pushed Cameron roughly in front of her into the next corridor, which had just opened before them.

“Come on, let’s go,” Jason said to Isis, extending his hand.

She could tell his mind was elsewhere, strategizing how he could get his hands on the Book of Prophecy before Nemesis did.

As Isis’s hand met Jason’s, she felt a jolt that carried her away on the wave of foresight. She saw him, standing opposite her, resting the tip of a knife lightly against her collarbone as he said, “You betrayed me.”

The next foresight overlapped, pushing the old one out. Jason stood before her, so close their bodies were practically touching, staring into her eyes. His hands were cupped around her own, which held tightly to a swinging chain. His lips brushed past hers, burning her as they just missed contact. She knew this foresight. She’d seen it before.

Jason stepped back from her, breaking the connection. That was enough to pull Isis out of the stream of images, at least for a time. He touched his lips, then looked at her with bewildered eyes. He’d seen it too.

“We must hurry,” he said, before she could speak. He turned his back to her and hurried off down the corridor.

“What’s the matter with him?” Everett asked.

“Yes, well, you know Jason.” Extending her arm, Isis added, “Help me, would you? The initial high is starting to wear off, and I seem to be a bit woozy now.”

She knew she was deflecting, and Everett’s face said he did too. He allowed her to lean against him for balance anyway.

The walls of the hallway were shifting in and out in blurred sequence, and the ceiling felt far too low, like it threatened to crush her head down into the floor. Images, hints of things to come, jumped into her head, then out again before she could process them. Not that she was trying to process them at all. It was giving her a killer headache. She was way out of practice. Perhaps Nemesis was right. Perhaps she really was just pathetic.

They stepped into a large amphitheater chamber at the end of the last hallway. Shining down from the domed ceiling of glass, the final rays of warm light poured inside as the sun prepared to set for the day. A large fire blazed in the center of the room, and beside it stood a stone pedestal, a heavy book with a deep red-brown cover upon it. The Book of Prophecy.

“Don’t even think about it, Magus,” Nemesis warned as Jason leaned toward it. She looked at the Avan soldiers who had just entered behind Isis and Everett, closing off the exit. “Now, the other two books,” she said, snapping her fingers impatiently toward Jason. “And the stones,” she added to her soldiers.

Jason exchanged glances with Cameron, then took the books from his bag, handing them to Nemesis with a chilling eye. One of the Avans dropped a small canvas pouch in her hand. Her aura bleeding satisfaction, Nemesis set the items onto the pedestal beside the Book of Prophecy and began to look them over with barely suppressed fervor.

The weight of her untamed power finally caught up with Isis. Her legs collapsed beneath her. Everett barely had time to catch her before she fell hard against the stone floor. Forgotten in Nemesis’s reverie, Cameron hurried over to her.

“Are you all right? Did she hurt you?” Isis asked, looking up into his wide eyes.

“Nothing I can’t handle.” His voice shook. “But you. You aren’t well.”

“My own fault. I should never have become such a stranger to my abilities,” she said.

“Finally,” Nemesis’s voice echoed throughout the chamber. “Finally, I have the Recovery Scrolls. All the pieces are mine. Terra Cross is mine.” She shot Cameron a nasty, menacing glare. “And now, Cameron Storm, I will find your dear twin sister.”

Infuriated, Cameron jumped at her, but his heroic effort fell short when he was tripped and tackled to the floor by Avan soldiers. A short distance away, Jason threw five Avans off of him with a Phantom mind blast, but another five were already there to take their place.

Isis watched Everett spring up, throwing his body at Nemesis as she took the Book of Prophecy into her hands. The book slipped through her fingers and fell into the fire, where its pages burst into flames.

But when Isis looked again, Everett was still beside her. She felt the band of her foresight snap around her, and he sprang forth in fast motion. Nemesis shrieked in anger as the book’s pages burned—and time slowed down to normal again.

“You stupid human!” she screamed at Everett and threw him hard against the wall. “You have ruined everything!” She looked to her Avans, and with eyes now blazing an infuriated red, growled, “Kill them all.”

Everett stumbled to his feet, and Nemesis lunged at him. As Jason released a flurry of black knives into the air, distracting the Avan soldiers, Everett took off running. Nemesis dashed out of the chamber, close on his heels.

Toppling Avans, Jason hurried over to Isis and set his hand on her sweating forehead. “You’re running a fever.”

“I’m fine,” she replied.

She pushed herself to her feet, but her legs immediately collapsed from under her. Jason caught her before she banged her head against the floor. He eased her down slowly, leaning her against a step.

“But you have to help Everett,” she insisted. “He’s trying to draw Nemesis out of here, away from us. She will kill him.”

“Stay with her,” Jason instructed Cameron.

Isis watched him sprint out of the room, then looked up at Cameron, who was crouched down beside her.

“Cameron, could you bring me some water?” she pleaded.

Cameron frowned. He didn’t want to leave her.

“Please, Cameron. I need to neutralize the effects of the stimulants before I go into a mad fit…again.”

Looking like he’d just swallowed poison, Cameron trotted off in search of water. It was a low blow, but it had to be done. Her head still spinning, Isis crawled her way up to her feet, climbed the steps, and peered into the fire.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

~ Borrowed Power ~

526AX August 21, The Temple of Aurelia

WHEN JASON FOUND Nemesis, she was throwing Everett against the black stone walls of the temple’s exterior, lifting him as though he weighed no more than a sack of feathers. Jason was not surprised. The Triad was strong—not as strong as Jason, but she had other skills that made him wary of picking a fight with her.

He took a moment to assess the situation. Though her journey to the temple had surely been long, she didn’t appear worn out. In fact, her eyes blazed redder than blood, pulsing with a wretched, powerful energy. Leaves crunched and melted to ash beneath her boots, the sick odor of burning decay singeing his nostrils. The short spikes of her orange-red hair stood on end like an agitated cat. When she drew her Bloodfire knife, Phantom flames burst to life upon the blade. Wow, she was pissed.

Unfortunately for Everett, he was the recipient of her boiling rage. The Rev lay in a crumpled heap on the ground, moaning softly as he cradled a broken leg. He leaned awkwardly on his side, blood soaking his shirt. Jason suspected fractured ribs. Everett had been lucky. Nemesis could easily have snapped his neck. The sadistic fire in her eyes told Jason she wanted to make him suffer before she ended him. Perhaps that would provide just the distraction Jason needed. Or not.

“Not another step, Magus, or I will kill the human,” Nemesis warned. Apparently, she could multitask her madness.

“Do as you wish.” Jason slipped two throwing knives into his hands. “The human is nothing to me.”

Shrill laughter, the crack of exploding glass, erupted from Nemesis’s lips. “You may have a reputation for being cold-hearted, but we both know that’s merely a mask. Inside, you are as weak as the rest of them.”

Disapproval lathered her words. Her eyes flicked to the freestanding wall, the one that enclosed the temple grounds. Chunks of stone exploded from it, and like a rocky waterfall, they buried Everett. She shot the pile of rocks a disdainful glare, and while her eyes were turned, Jason used the chance to launch the two knives at her chest. She picked them out of the air as though they were books on a shelf—then tossed them aside.

“Really, Magus, you should know better.” She clicked her tongue. “My mistress wants you alive, and I would hate to disappoint her.”

From what Jason had heard, Sarah Avan, empress of the Avan Empire, was nearly as mad as her pet Nemesis. The two of them had recently gone to a lot of trouble to ensnare Jason. That hadn’t worked out, but if Empress Avan had told Nemesis not to kill Jason, that would cripple her in a fight. Maybe even enough for him to defeat her. Nemesis bascially always aimed to kill. Jason wasn’t sure she even knew how to fight any other way.

“I have no interest in being your mistress’s latest pet,” he told her.

He kept his eyes locked on her, but with his mind he reached for the rocks burying Everett. Most Phantoms—and Triads as well, it would seem—needed to actually look at the object they wanted to propel. Jason was free from such hindrances.

“A shame,” she said with poisoned sweetness, pouting out her red lips. “You would have made a good pet.”

With inhuman speed, Jason drew two more knives, aiming for her chest and thigh. Nemesis darted aside, evading them easily, just as Jason had expected. He used the distraction to launch the storm of stones at her.

That attack she did not dodge. The stones hit her hard, pummeling her with the force of a tornado. The rocks thumped against flesh and drew blood. A lot of blood. The bombardment would have killed a human. It would have knocked out most Elitions. But Nemesis stood there stubbornly, gritting her teeth and taking the beating with the constitution of a boulder. Jason had never seen anything like it before. He whirled the rocks around her, unrelenting in the attack, yet still she stood. His strength began to fade, the rocks slipping from his mind. One after the other, they dropped to the ground, piling up around her. Sneering, she navigated over the rockfall, her steps unwavering. Dressed from neck to toe entirely in crimson, the blood hardly showed. The only hints of it were splashes across the rocks and the line of bloody bootprints she left upon the gravel ground.

“My turn,” she growled, spitting blood.

As she stepped forward purposefully, her eyes flaring, Jason considered his options. The rocks had done little more than infuriate Nemesis. She was too resilient. He needed something bigger, something she could not shake off so easily. He eyed the temple. If it were to collapse on top of her, it was unlikely that even she could withstand that. Unfortunately, he was too depleted right now to take down something that big. Not to mention Isis and Cameron were still inside. And despite the fact that he didn’t see eye to eye with King River, he had no intention of demolishing every temple in Elitia. One had been more than enough for him. He did actually regret destroying the Temple of the Veil. Yes, it had needed to be done, rotted as it was with the seed of Avan corruption, but that didn’t make him happy about it. And then there was Needle’s Weave. The old temple had fallen as he stood just outside its walls. That time, it had been the combined firepower of Nemesis and the Selpes which did it in. Elition temples were falling like rain all around him. But not today.

Jason focused his energy, gathering it into a point. Nemesis was approaching with a twisted smile upon her lips, savoring each step. The closer she was, the more punch the release would pack. He would wait until Nemesis was within an arm’s reach. He would grab her closer, pressing his hand to her chest, shooting the Phantom energy straight through her heart. She wouldn’t bounce back so quickly from that.

Nemesis was just three steps away when she clenched up her jaw and shot off into the forest, disappearing behind layers of evergreens. Jason knew he shouldn’t run after her, but he was thinking about it just the same when two men and a woman—all dressed in black and all loaded with enough blades to comfortably arm four times their number—emerged from the trees. The Crescent Order. They’d found them. Jason mentally counted off nine more assassins closing in fast.

Every instinct he had was telling him to fight or flee, but instead he swept Everett up and ran back into the temple. Where he would be trapped. The assassins were already surrounding the temple.

Jason gritted his teeth and hurried into the amphitheater chamber. A trail of broken glass led up to the podium, where Isis stood, her back to him. Arms braced against the gigantic bowl where the fire burned, she stared into the flames. Jason pushed through air heavy with the sharp sting of Winter’s Mint and the softer scent of milk. On the other side of the fire basin, Cameron stood, his mouth wide as he also stared into the flames.

“We have to go. Now,” he told them, his voice harsh and rough.

Isis turned, her sapphire eyes burning with blue fire. Something was wrong. Just minutes ago, her eyes had sparkled brightly, brilliant as stars from the effects of the stimulant he’d given her. But this was different. Her eyes never burned. They never oozed raw power. That was a purely Phantom thing.

“What have you done to yourself?” he ground out.

“It was…necessary,” she said, tendrils of Phantom energy lashing out with her every word.

How was this even possible? Sure, an Elition could temporarily borrow some Phantom powers by taking an Accentuating Serum, but not like this. No serum was that potent. If Jason hadn’t already known she was a Prophet, he couldn’t have told her apart from a natural Phantom.

He buried the thought. Later. Right now they had bigger problems.

“Jason,” Cameron said quietly.

They didn’t have time for this. “Come,” he said, sinking power into the command. “The Crescent Order is here. We have to get out before they trap us in here.”

“The Book of Prophecy,” Cameron began.

“Is gone,” he cut in. What was the matter with the both of them?

Isis motioned him forward. Aware of the seconds slipping by, Jason ascended the steps to the podium and looked into the fire. There lay the Book of Prophecy, its pages slowly melting away. But that’s not what Isis and Cameron were staring at. Their eyes were fixed on the flaming letters, hovering just above the open book.

“The Shroud,” Jason read.

“An echo of Nemesis’s spell,” said Isis.

“The Recovery Scrolls are destroyed. Everett threw the Book of Prophecy into the fire before she could finish,” Jason said.

“Apparently not.” Cameron nodded toward Isis. “Isis pulled the remnants from the fire with her mind.”

“How much Phantom Accentuating Serum did you take?” he asked her, his mind racing.

She hiccuped. “Enough.”

He pointed toward the fire, where the words were already dissolving. “So, this means Terra is—”

“At the Shroud,” she finished for him.

Jason pushed that to the back of his mind, saving it for later. He wouldn’t be getting anywhere close to Terra if they didn’t get out of there.

“We’ll have to run,” he told them. “Back to Eclipse.”

Isis shook her head. “The nearest portal is too far away. And it doesn’t take us to Eclipse.”

“Not that one. We’ll take the portal loop.”

She didn’t ask him how he would find the nearly invisible portal while running full speed through the woods, and Jason appreciated that. It’s not like they had any better option anyway.

“Cameron, do you have the other two books and the stones?” Jason asked him.

Cameron tapped his backpack.

“Good, then let’s go. Isis, can you carry Everett? I’ll distract the Crescent Order. Head for Lake Yvonne, and I’ll catch up with you there.”

“No,” she said. “You take Everett. I will distract them.”

“Isis, there are twelve highly-skilled assassins waiting outside,” he said sharply.

“And what am I? A helpless lamb?”

Jason reached for patience—and missed. “No,” he growled. “But they fight to kill. So unless you’ve been keeping even more secrets from me, you are ill-equipped to take on a dozen assassins.”

She flinched but did not stand down. “You’ve expended too much power already. We have no choice. I must deal with the assassins.”

He wiped the trickle of blood from his nose. “No way.” It was suicide. And she’d been through too much already.

“Yes way.” She jumped down the stairs, heading for the exit. “Or would you rather argue with me about this until they come inside?”

Cursing himself for wasting his energy on Nemesis, Jason caught up with her. Cameron jogged to Isis’s other side. Ahead, blue-green light shone in from the temple’s open door.

“I’ll go first,” she told them, pausing before the threshold. “Follow ten seconds later. Run for the lake and don’t look back.”

Jason set his hand on hers, and a spark rippled across his arm, electrifying every nerve in his body. The blue fire in Isis’s eyes intensified, going molten. Jason felt his own eyes darken in response. He stared at her coldly, waiting for her to blink. She did not.

“This is so weird. Just like having two Jasons,” Cameron commented in a whisper.

“Or two Phantoms. It must be the serum,” Jason said. “She’s reacting just as a Phantom would.”

He intensified his stare, the obsidian ice burning his eyes. Still, she did not blink. It was infuriating.

“Isis,” he warned. Baiting a Phantom was unwise. And most especially the Elite Phantom.

She allowed her lids to drop and shook herself. “Sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”

Phantom power had come over her, a power so potent that he could still feel the burn of its taste on his tongue. Never before had he felt such raw energy from another Phantom, and Isis wasn’t even a Phantom. Certainly no serum should have been able to do that to her.

Isis took a deep breath and stepped outside. Jason heard the whistle of flying arrows and knives, followed by a tsunami of power that nearly knocked him off his feet. Isis had directed the burst outward, toward the assassins, but some had seeped back. Jason adjusted his hold on Everett in preparation to sprint. Behind him, Cameron pushed himself back up to his feet.

They shot out of the temple, darting between trees and fallen assassins who were just beginning to stir. Jason pumped his legs faster, setting a new pace. He could hear Cameron’s stunted breaths not far behind him. Good, he was managing to keep up. As they cleared the edge of the woods, a second wave barreled out, causing the evergreen needles to shudder. Jason skirted the lake, his eyes looking for the tiny flicker, the smallest shift in the landscape that signaled the door of the portal. He and Terra had once hopped along the portals in this loop, but that was long ago. Jason hoped he could still find the way in.

Wind swept his shoulder, and then Isis was there, running beside him. Her eyes still burned, but the flame in them was going down. She had used up most of her borrowed Phantom power and soon she’d crash. They would need to find the portal before then. He’d not yet regained enough power to carry two people, especially not with a band of assassins on his heels.

A knife flew over his head. There was no time to look back, but Jason could sense a single Elition behind them. The Phantom. He had the strongest resistance to the energy Isis had been throwing around. Two more Elitions broke through the forest. Inside, more were stirring.

They were running out of time.

“Isis,” Jason said.

She understood the question. “Sorry. I’m dry. The best I can throw at them right now is a joke.”

“No need.”

He’d spotted the sliver in the air and broke off toward it. Isis and Cameron matched his stride. When they were within five steps of the portal, Jason clasped his hand around Isis. She snatched a hold of Cameron, and Jason pulled them through the portal.

They tumbled out into the center of Eclipse. Jason felt the remaining drops of residual magic drip out of the portal loop, and the whole thing snapped shut behind him like a rubber band. A flare of energy hit him, soaking through his pores. His heart beat faster and faster, burning as his body greedily lapped up the power. Ancient power, he thought to himself as the last of it pulsed into him, knocking him off balance. He stumbled, and his face hit the ground.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

~ Broken ~

526AX August 21, Eclipse

AS EVERETT REGAINED consciousness, the first thought that came to his mind was a silent plea for narcotics. He didn’t need to open his eyes to know that Nemesis had torn him up real bad; he could feel it with every piercing thump of his pulse. Besides the leg he couldn’t move—hopefully only because it was clamped inside a cast—both his abdomen and chest felt like they were very slowly being eaten alive by flames. Someone had slopped warm goo across the entire front side of his body, which under the circumstances was doing a pretty decent job of combating the flesh-on-fire feeling. Only every other second did he think about ramming his head through the wall just to end the pain, a morbid fantasy he was thwarted from fulfilling by his utter inability to sit up.

“He’s waking up,” a smooth, even voice said over him.

Everett recognized it as belonging to Silver, the healer of Eclipse. His spirits lifted instantly. He was not awakening to find himself inside some dank hovel. With Silver there, he knew he was in capable hands. Though Jason probably had the knowledge to tend to his wounds, the assassin was more familiar with tearing bodies to pieces than he was with putting them back together. Everett shuddered.

The thought of Cameron patching him up unsettled him even more. The kid had enough good intentions to saturate the world twice over, but he couldn’t grasp the purpose of things like disinfectants and clean bandages—basically irrelevant to Elitions but pretty damn important to infection-prone humans. Cameron had once offered to treat one of Everett’s knife wounds with a torn strip of shirt soaked in rum. So, no to him as doctor. No and no again.

Isis was probably the only one of Everett’s three travel companions that he’d want anywhere near his wounds. During their travels together, she had often tended to his injuries. For over a year, she’d worked for the Selpes as a bodyguard, which granted her an understanding of human physiology uncommon amongst Elitions. His body’s inability to instantly seal deep lacerations elicited neither perplexed looks nor snide comments from her.

“Is he healed?” Jason’s voice asked.

“His bones have been set and his cuts sterilized and wrapped. As for healed, that will take time,” replied Silver.

“How long?”

Silver paused before answering. Everett could hear the smile on his lips when he said, “Why, Jason Chanz, is it possible you’re not nearly as heartless as you carry on?”

“I assure you I am every bit as heartless as I carry on,” he said cooly.

“I see.”

Silver didn’t sound convinced. Everett was. Very few people were important enough to Jason to elicit an emotional response from the assassin. Everett was sure he didn’t have the honor of making that very short list.

“I ask because I’ve planned this job with him on the team. I need to know if I must alter these plans.”

And there it was. Assassins were nothing if not pragmatic.

“Since when is rescuing Terra Cross a ‘job’?” Silver asked.

“Since that day ten years ago when my father made me swear to protect her. Considering that those were the last words he ever spoke to me before going to his death, I figure I ought to respect his wishes.”

Silver sighed but said nothing. From listening around Eclipse, Everett had learned that Jason’s parents had once ruled the Elition kingdom of Pegasus. Then, a decade ago, they’d died. Everett knew they’d had a falling out with King River. He wasn’t sure why, but it seemed to have something to do with the Selpes. After that, the Elitions of Pegasus had fled to Eclipse or to other hidden camps deep inside Elitia.

“Terra is also your friend, Jason,” said Lana.

When he heard her voice, Everett made an effort to open his eyes and sit up. It took a few seconds for his eyes to focus, but they finally did. The rest of his body was less cooperative.

“Please remain still. Quick movements may tear your stitches,” Silver warned, setting a hand on his forehead. “Your fever has subsided. The serum I gave you must have banished the infection that was setting in.”

“That sounds…good,” rasped Everett. Unlike his voice, which sounded terrible.

“Well, I guess that answers my inquiry,” Jason said, his black eyes meeting Everett’s. “You look awful.”

Blunt as a blow to the face. Apparently, social niceties were not taught at assassin school.

“I feel worse,” Everett said.

“I will adjust my plan accordingly.”

“No need. I’ll come with you.” Everett once again tried to sit up. A stream of burning pain split across his right side, but it died down once he’d propped himself up with some pillows. That must have been Silver’s serum at work.

Jason glared at him. “No, you are a liability in your current state.”

“A liability?” protested Everett. He’d been called many vile things in his years as a mercenary. A liability was not one of them.

“And we don’t have time to wait for you to recover,” Jason finished, as though Everett had said nothing at all.

“Now just see here—”

A warm hand squeezed his arm. Lana’s hand. “Jason’s right. You need to stay here and rest. If you go out now, you’ll just get yourself killed.”

Everett thought she sounded like she actually cared what happened to him. But maybe he was just imagining things. He had hit his head quite hard. He looked up to meet her eyes, but she’d already turned away.

“So, new plan.” Jason looked over his shoulder. “Isis, do you think you could carry a few more blades on you?”

Everett hadn’t even realized Isis was there in the room. She stood beside the next bed, her arms extended back to lean against the wooden frame behind her. Though she had no wounds, her face looked as pained as he felt. Not long ago, he’d heard her laugh again. She must have had a relapse. Perhaps the return to Eclipse had brought her back to thoughts of why she’d come there in the first place.

Everett knew the feeling. It was how he felt every time he thought about Hope. Once the capital of the free islands of the Revs, the city now lay in ruins, destroyed by the Selpes. It had been three months since the attack, and Everett relived his guilt every day. He should have been there. Somehow. And he should have done something to stop them. It was an irrational guilt, and he knew it, yet it remained with him, unshakable.

Everett paused on the thought. Guilt. That is what he saw in Isis’s eyes, that same stubborn insistence that she could have done something to stop the Selpes when they’d taken her. Perhaps, she was asking herself why she’d not fought them all off. The poor girl. She was torturing herself.

The Selpes. Everything always seemed to come back to the damn Selpes.

“How about just one really big sword?” Isis asked with a weak smile. It didn’t reach her eyes—eyes that trembled with sadness as they looked at Jason.

“You’re far too cute to pull that look off,” Everett teased her. Or tried to anyway. It was unlikely his scratchy voice was very comforting.

“He’s right,” Jason agreed, not a hint of teasing in his monotone voice. “The look fits Ariella, but we’ll need something else for you. How are you with two swords?” His eyes panned across the length of her arms. “Perhaps, dual Versatiles, each blade about fifty centimeters in length.”

Isis nodded. “Yes, exactly that. I was first tier with dual Versatiles at Rosewater.”

The statement sounded impressive enough, and something that resembled respect flickered across Jason’s eyes before it was swallowed up by cold obsidian.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“You look like a dual swords fighter,” Everett told her.

Isis looked to Jason for confirmation. Everett tried not to feel offended by the gesture.

“He’s correct,” Jason agreed. “Your arms are balanced, the muscles equally proportioned. And you have demonstrated that you’re both agile and ambidextrous.”

“Like when you caught all those arrows the Avans were throwing at you inside Crag Pass,” Everett remembered.

“Or how you handled the trials at the Temple of Aurelia,” added Cameron.

It seemed the whole crew was in to check on him. How touching. Everett leaned forward—slowly—and waved at Cameron. Standing on the other side of Isis, Cameron grinned back.

“I have a set of twin Versatiles that should fit the role. Come with me when we leave here, and I’ll give them to you,” Jason told her.

“Role?” She looked perplexed. “Just what is your plan, Jason?”

“To rescue Terra.”

Isis let out an exasperated sigh. “More specifically.”

“To rescue Terra while looking as imposing as possible. Wherever we go, no matter how many portals we take, the Crescent Order is right there behind us. I don’t know how they’re tracking us, but I have the feeling that after we leave Eclipse, it won’t be long before they find us again. They’ve assumed the role of predators chasing their prey.” His words, slightly clipped, suggested he didn’t like the idea of being the prey. The assassin had obviously grown accustomed to always being the predator. “We need to make them rethink their foolish confidence. In short, we should dress the part.”

“Is their confidence so very foolish? They are twelve elite assassins, including some with rare Elition gifts, and we are but three. The odds are certainly in their favor,” Cameron pointed out.

“You could always remain here,” Isis said.

Cameron shook his head vigorously and sealed his lips. So, Isis hadn’t given up on trying to leave him at home. Everett knew she was just worried about Cameron getting captured by the Selpes. After her own recent run-in with them, who could blame her? But the hurt was obvious in his eyes.

Isis tore her frustrated gaze from Cameron to look at Jason. “What is involved in ‘dressing the part’?”

“Skimpy bikinis?” Everett suggested, remembering the time outside Gemma when she’d distracted three thugs in order to steal a document from them.

Isis nearly smiled. “Whereas the assassins might be temporarily dumbfounded by the sight of us running barefoot through the woods in skimpy swimwear—”

“Especially the sight of Jason in skimpy swimwear,” Everett inserted with a chuckle.

Jason raised an eyebrow. Cameron snorted.

“—it’s too cold for such shenanigans. Where we’re going, there’s sure to be snow,” Isis finished.

“Where are you going?” Everett asked.

“You insisted on dragging your broken body out of your sickbed, and you didn’t even know where we’re going?” Jason asked.

Everett had gathered that they’d determined Terra’s location, though the Book of Prophecy had burned. Actually, he’d been the one to push it into the fire. As far as he knew, there was only one Book of Prophecy in existence, so hopefully the Elition people wouldn’t hold it against him.

“Sure, I figured it was somewhere Elitiony.”

“That’s not even a word,” Cameron protested.

“Is.”

“Is not.”

“Is.” Everett stuck out his tongue. “I just made it so.”

Cameron returned the gesture.

“And you wanted to bring Cameron along,” Isis said to Jason, shaking her head.

Jason allowed himself a sigh, a rare show of emotion from him. “Fitted coldsuits and lots of metal.”

“What?”

“The answer to your question. Dressing the part involves gearing up to an appropriately threatening level. That means formfitting coldsuits and lots of visible blades on all of us.”

“Like Silas?” Isis asked, finally smiling.

“The bodyguard does know how to dress the part,” agreed Jason, somewhat reluctantly.

Isis’s grin widened. “I’ll tell him you said so the next time I see him.”

“I would really rather that you didn’t,” Jason said. “He might think he can start another staring contest with me.”

Staring contests of dominance were an essential part of everyday Phantom life. It was quite perplexing actually. Even more so than all the magic.

“What’s a coldsuit?” Cameron asked.

“A Hellean innovation. It’s like a wetsuit but for the cold,” Everett explained. “For subzero temperatures actually.” He cranked his stiff neck toward Jason. “Where did you say you’re going?”

“I didn’t.”

Ok, then.

“To the Shroud,” Isis piped in.

Everett gave her a blank look.

“It’s an Elition asylum.” Cameron’s tone was glum. “I still don’t understand what she’s doing in such a horrid place.”

“Agreed. It’s an unwise choice for a hiding place. They will drive her mad there.”

“Jason, she is mad,” declared Isis.

Jason crossed his arms against his chest and said nothing.

Isis sighed, then looked at Cameron. “Most people don’t know what the Shroud is, and it’s virtually inaccessible. That makes it one of Elitia’s better hiding spots.”

“Eclipse is better,” said Cameron, and Jason nodded.

“The Shroud’s common name is Winter’s Gate,” said Isis.

“The temple of Tundra, one of the three Elition kingdoms on the Western Continent.” Cameron shivered. “It’s cold there. Really cold.”

“It’s nearly September.” Isis’s eyes drifted up in thought. “The blizzard season has already begun.”

Once again, Cameron shivered.

“Perhaps your seven years in the subtropical climate of Black Moss have made you lose all tolerance for the cold?” she posed.

“I’m going, Isis,” Cameron nearly snarled.

“Jason wants to set out in the next few hours. Our journey will take us deep into the frozen tundra.” She looked pointedly at Cameron, who seemed to be doing his best not to shiver again. “From Eclipse, we’ll take the portal to North Mist Veil. From there, we’ll hike north to a portal in the Frozen Forest. That will bring us to the Western Continent at the kingdom of Everlast, right on the cusp of the Tundra. Then we have a long, cold hike before we reach Winter’s Gate… Is there something wrong, Jason?”

Jason had drawn one of his knives. He slowly slid it back into its sheath, as though he hadn’t meant to draw it in the first place. It was clear he was agitated. They were fortunate he hadn’t thrown the knife at one of them. Jason tended not to miss his targets.

“Are you sure this path is the quickest?” he asked Isis.

“Well, no. It’s not,” she admitted. “There’s one portal that leads directly into Winter’s Gate, but you really don’t want to take it.”

“Why not?” inquired Cameron eagerly, rubbing his hands together for warmth. Just the thought of colder climates was making him shiver. The poor kid was doomed.

“Because,” she said. “Its origin is inside the Gateway.”

“The hall of portals at the Elition palace at Laelia?” Cameron asked.

She nodded once.

“You’re right. We don’t want to go anywhere near there,” Jason said. “The Gateway is under constant watch, and as I remember, there are always Selpe soldiers stationed at the palace.”

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“Then we’ll go with your route,” he decided. “We will discuss further arrangements at lunch.”

“I hear they’re serving pumpkin soup at the temple today.” Cameron smiled, drifting toward the door. “With crusty rolls.”

Everyone had that special thing that perked them up. For Everett it was rare knives. For Isis, pretty jewelry. He didn’t know what got Jason excited, though he had a sinking suspicion it involved copious helpings of bloodshed.

Cameron’s thing was food. The boy ate like a horse but had the metabolism of a hummingbird. He was always hungry.

Jason watched Cameron leave, then caught Isis’s hand before she followed. “It’s still half an hour until lunch. You should practice with your new swords if you are to wield them against the Crescent Order.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Nonetheless, meet me on the training field behind my house. We will train briefly before lunch so we’re ready to set out early this afternoon.”

Isis nodded and walked toward the door. Everett was impressed that she hadn’t cringed at the mention of training with Jason. He didn’t seem like the type to go easy on his dueling partners, no matter how cute they were.

“She’s hurting Cameron’s feelings,” Everett spoke up when Isis had left.

“She means well,” said Lana. “She doesn’t want to see him hurt.”

“She had me promise to send Cameron away immediately at the first sign of danger,” Jason told them.

Lana’s eyes widened. “Someone got you to agree to something? You?”

“Spare me the sisterly teasing, Lana.”

Lana had a point. Jason was not easily swayed, nor did he make promises—except maybe to his dead parents. But he’d been a child back then. Everett was smart enough not to voice his commentary. Jason put up with it from Lana because she was his sister. He had no such association to guard him from Jason’s wrath.

“Isis is…persistent,” Jason said with agitation.

She was also one of the few people who could elicit an emotional response from him.

“She’s still jumpy from her time as a prisoner of the Selpes,” he continued. “I didn’t think it wise to upset her further.”

A smile broke out on Lana’s lips. Jason rolled his eyes at her, the normal response from a big brother. Not normal for Jason, though. His facade was starting to crack.

“The point is moot,” he said when Lana’s smile refused to fade. “Isis is, of course, making the giant assumption that Cameron will actually cooperate. Which he won’t. As evidenced by his fifty-two escapes from Black Moss, he will do whatever he wants, no matter what anyone says. I have never seen anyone with so little regard for his own life, except—”

“Except you?” Lana cut in.

“Except I can take care of myself,” said Jason. “Now, I should be going if I’m to train with Isis before lunch.”

As Everett watched him walk outside, he hoped Jason wouldn’t choose that training session to take out his annoyance on her.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

~ Lake Portal ~

526AX August 21, Eclipse

AFTER CAMERON HAD eaten three bowls of pumpkin soup and five crusty rolls, he and Isis headed over to Jason’s house and knocked on his door. He had the coldsuits waiting for them. And that’s when the fun part came. They had to actually squeeze into the skintight suits. Personally, Cameron felt they were a bit too tight. The fabric hugged the wearer’s body, leaving no curve of anatomy to the imagination. Whichever Hellean designer had come up with the idea had an odd sense of humor. Thankfully black was every assassin’s default color of choice. Skintight suits in white would have been a million times worse.

While Jason usually didn’t ornament himself with so many weapons, this morning he seemed to have taken a page out of Silas Thorn’s book. The various blades were all black, blending into his suit, but their near invisibility didn’t make them weightless. Isis helped him secure the knife-bearing straps across his chest. She closed the final buckle, but her hand lingered there. Biting her lip, she backed up, ostensibly to check her handiwork, but it was clear she just wanted to gawk at Jason. The suit emphasized the musculature of his torso, the rise and dip of every muscle stenciled out in crisp detail. Cameron had known Jason was fit, but in that outfit he looked nearly as ripped as the massive Silas Thorn. He looked like an agent of death—which, come to think of it, he actually was.

Though she’d been jittery of late, Isis’s eyes betrayed no fear as she gazed at Jason now. Instead, they sparkled with a sort of womanly appreciation. Could this be what people referred to as ‘bedroom eyes’? No woman had ever looked at Cameron in that way. Maybe because he had only marginally more muscle than Isis. Who was a girl. But no matter how much Cameron ate, he couldn’t seem to keep any weight on. Not with his metabolism. Everett swore by the muscle building ‘magic’ of pushups. Maybe he would try that out.

Jason had met Isis’s stare, his obsidian eyes smoldering as they followed the curves of her coldsuit. Cameron had pointedly forced his eyes to glaze right over her. Isis was his friend. It just felt wrong to ogle at her. Clearly, Jason didn’t share this reservation. Everyone—Jason included—claimed he was a stone cold assassin, but Cameron wasn’t buying it. Not for a minute. Not when he could look at Isis like that.

Cameron squirmed in his second skin. If he didn’t do something, they’d never get out of Eclipse that day. The two of them would just stand there all afternoon, staring at each other until the sun went down. Not that they would ever dare to do something as crazy as closing the twenty-centimeter gap between their bodies to finally kiss. No, they’d rather make eyes at each other all day, making everyone around them uncomfortable.

Cameron cleared his throat loudly.

That snapped them out of it. Isis bent over to pull on her fur-trimmed snow boots, and Jason swung his bag onto his back. Isis didn’t have to wear a pack. Instead, she’d strapped the twin swords from Jason onto her back. The blades were long and straight, the handles each tipped with a pommel, and from each pommel hung tassels. Isis had told him an accomplished sword master could use these tassels to keep a hold on the swords amidst any number of complex and very cool-sounding movements during combat. She’d also barked at him to watch his fingers because the blades were double-edged and damn sharp.

“Ready?” Isis asked, purposefully diverting her eyes from Jason.

She didn’t even wait for them to answer. She just opened the door and walked out. Cameron looked at Jason, who for once had no insightful commentary to share. They followed her through Eclipse and down the trail to the lake, where they would take the portal to North Mist Veil. The air was heavy with silence, as though the cold had frozen not just their breath, but their words as well.

When Isis reached the lakeshore, she stopped. Leaving her back to them, she stared out at the water, her eyes tracking a family of ripples on an otherwise glassy surface.

“The portal is in the middle of the lake,” she said. The words were spoken in coarse monotone, those of a person who had grudgingly accepted a most unpleasant fate.

“It certainly makes entering Eclipse through that portal interesting,” Cameron said.

“When you plan to return the way you came, it’s advisable to keep your boat anchored there,” Jason lectured.

“That doesn’t help when I didn’t go out through that portal in the first place,” Cameron pointed out.

Jason’s face was so expressionless that Cameron knew he must be irked. You could crack rocks against that humorless granite block.

“Which of the fifty-two times you ran away from Black Moss are we talking about?”

Cameron had escaped the confines of his dull former school fifty-two times in the seven years he’d lived there. Cameron saw that as an accomplishment. Jason saw it as a mortal failing.

“From what I recall, I entered Eclipse through that portal on escape numbers ten and thirty-four. On number ten, someone had been kind enough to leave a boat out there. On thirty-four, I had no such luck. I dropped straight down into the lake. In January no less. I swore off the portal after that. Who makes a portal over a lake anyway? I felt like an ice cube for two whole days. Simply dreadful, I tell you.”

“I am familiar with the feeling,” Jason replied cooly.

It took a few seconds of suffering under that icy glare before Cameron got it. “It was your boat?” he asked.

“It was my boat,” Jason confirmed.

A few notes of laughter burst from Isis’s lips before she clamped them down. She covered her mouth and tried to pretend no such thing had just happened.

Jason was not amused. “Something funny?” he asked her.

She shook her head but kept her hand firmly over her mouth. Cameron dared a chuckle. Jason turned two dark eyes his way.

“You shouldn’t encourage Cameron’s behavior, Isis,” he chided, handing her an oar. He handed Cameron the other one.

“Care for a quick match?” Cameron whispered to Isis, raising his oar.

Rather than lifting her oar in response, Isis raised only a skeptical brow.

Behind them, the crunch and scrape of wood against rock came to an abrupt end as Jason slid the front of the boat into the water. “It’s too early in our journey for you to already be seeking out trouble, Cameron. ‘Quick’ is right. She’ll have you on your back in five seconds.”

“I’ve been practicing,” Cameron said defensively.

“Have you now? With whom?”

“Lana.”

Jason’s lip twitched. “My sister may be frightful at times, but she’s no warrior. What did she do—toss scented candles at you?”

“Don’t be mean,” Isis told him. She turned to face Cameron, her oar raised. “I will fight you, Cameron.”

She waited for him to make the first move. He swung the oar toward her head, but she ducked with agile grace. As she dropped, she thrust out with her oar toward his right shoulder. Cameron hopped back, pleased he’d managed to evade her. He realized too late that she’d anticipated just that. She swung the other end of her oar around with the speed of a Phantom, hooking the paddle behind his airborne feet. She pulled forward, and Cameron fell flat on his back.

“Three seconds actually,” she told Jason, planting one end of the oar against the ground.

Something not unlike amusement danced across his eyes before they hardened. He extended his hand down to Cameron.

“I guess that will teach me to pick a fight with someone who can foresee my every move,” Cameron grumbled, standing.

“I believe those are the wisest words that have ever come out of your mouth,” Jason said. “You’ll need to get quite a bit faster before you can negate the Prophet’s advantage. Shall I demonstrate?”

Isis set her oar in the boat. “I had quite enough of a beating this morning, thank you.” She hopped in after it, her landing pushing the boat gently from the shore.

Cameron scrambled to follow before an icy swim became necessary. Jason waited a few seconds, then leapt. By then, the boat was nearly three meters from the shore, and he landed softly inside, hardly jarring it at all.

“Showoff,” murmured Cameron as he began to row toward the portal.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

~ Band of Children ~

526AX August 22, North Mist Veil

THEY ENTERED NORTH Mist Veil at the western border, close to the Frozen Forest. The fog and copious tree cover meant there was little to see, but Cameron knew they were deep within the great forest that extended from the southern end of Mist Veil up to the continent’s northern tip. The evergreen trees grew dark green in the south, but up there in North Mist Veil and the Frozen Forest, those of the blue-silver variety were more common.

Cameron spotted their path, a partially overgrown dirt trail that led north. All around them, the needle tips sparkled white, and the ground was coated in a layer of pine needles lightly dusted with frost. Harsh rays from the rising sun cut through the trees at irregular intervals, casting surrounding sections into shadow. As they set off down the trail, a shrill howl split through the forest, echoed by a chorus of predatory cries.

“Wolves,” said Jason, drawing two throwing knives.

Isis drew her twin swords. “Everett sure would have loved it here.”

“Which part? The trees? The beasts?” Cameron grinned. “Or the mystic ambience?”

Isis chuckled.

“Considering how much Everett Black loathes the Wilderness, it is a wonder to me that he was so adamant on dragging his broken body out of his sick bed to join us out here,” Jason observed.

“Maybe we Elitions have grown on him,” said Cameron.

“One of us certainly has,” commented Isis.

Cameron snorted in agreement.

“What do you mean?” Jason asked, a hint of confusion gracing his typically expressionless face.

“You can’t be serious, Jason. Assassins are supposed to be observant,” Isis said.

“I am.”

“Then surely you’ve noticed.”

“Noticed what?”

Isis turned to Cameron. “Is he serious?”

Cameron couldn’t really tell, but Jason didn’t play games. That would require a desire to have fun. “I think so.”

“Everett is helping us because he wants to impress Lana,” she told Jason.

“Why would he…” His face grew dark as an eclipse. “How long has this been going on?”

“From the beginning, I think.” Cameron looked at Isis for confirmation.

She shrugged. “I wasn’t around for much of it, but yeah, I think so.”

The ice in Jason’s eyes would have made the ocean freeze solid.

“I don’t think anything has happened yet,” said Isis.

“Yeah, they seem to be at the point of mostly just making eyes at each other from a distance,” Cameron agreed.

“I don’t want my sister making eyes at anyone. And most especially not at a Rev mercenary.”

“Everett is our friend,” Cameron said.

“You would feel the same if she were your sister, Cameron.”

Cameron had nothing to say to that. He didn’t even know his sister.

Isis set a hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Is it not enough if Lana is happy?”

“No.”

“You sure are being immature about this, Jason.”

“As I said, she’s my sister.”

“And has your sister never dated anyone?”

“Not to my knowledge. And I was hoping it would stay that way. Indefinitely.”

“Everett is a good man,” Isis said.

“He is not as we are.”

“He may not be Elition, but he’s not like most humans. He seems to be doing his best to blend in with everyone in Eclipse. He wants to understand us. And he’s my friend. Or do you have a problem with that too?” Cameron asked him.

“Has he ‘made eyes’ at you as well?”

Ew, gross. Cameron shook his head.

“Then I’m fine with your friendship.”

“This isn’t about Everett at all, is it?” Isis said. “This is about sharing those few people closest to you.”

Jason glared at her in response.

“Everett wants to impress Lana, but that’s not the only reason he was so ready to come along. He wants to contribute, to be part of a group. A family.”

Her eyes shook with sorrow, and a slow tear slid down her cheek.

“Isis…” said Cameron.

She brushed the tear away and forced a smile. “And maybe he also wants to get on your good side in the hopes that you won’t kill him when he makes a move on your sister.”

“He has helped us, and he’s useful in a fight,” Jason admitted. “Even so…” He growled. “I have this sudden urge to kill something. Right now.”

“You might just get your wish,” Cameron said, pointing forward.

Six pale grey wolves, each the size of a large bear, burst forth from the trees, sprinting forward with grim determination. When Cameron saw that their teeth were bared, he drew his own weapon from his pocket.

“What’s that?” Isis asked.

Cameron shook the padded handle to the left, and a sectioned rod slid out. He shook it again, this time to the right, and the other side extended until the staff was nearly as tall as he was.

“A fighting staff,” he told her. “Jason decided I would have a hard time cutting myself with a blade-less weapon.”

Patronizing as the statement was, perhaps Jason was right. At least in this case. Just a few hours ago, he’d nicked himself fingering one of Jason’s throwing knives.

“Suddenly, the boat oars make sense,” commented Isis.

“Let’s just hope the wolves don’t prove as capable opponents as you, Isis,” Jason said.

Cameron doubted the wolves would even make it to him—not with the way Jason fought. He’d already positioned himself at the front, cutting off Isis too. She looked at him, then at her swords, as though she were considering poking him in the back to get him out of her way.

She never had the chance to act. The wolves ran right past them, swallowed up by the forest once again. It was then that Cameron realized the wolves were not the hunters. They were the hunted. But what would scare a pack of gigantic predatory wolves?

The trees rustled, and seven children ran out of the trees and stopped in front of them. They were teenagers, all within a few years of one another, and every one of them was Elition. Dressed in a mismatch of black and camouflage greens—a look somewhere between assassin and soldier—the children’s eyes gleamed like predatory cats, the colors exaggerated even for Elitions. Their hair, too, blazed in shades too brilliant to be natural. Every single one of them was on stimulants. A lot of stimulants.

Cameron had never seen anything like it. Wait, no, he had. Back in the lair of Gregory Vib, that mad scientist who had bred himself a small army of eerie Elitions. Could this be his latest ‘menagerie’?

Beside Cameron, Isis was apparently reliving the very same memory. She shivered and shifted her weight. “Déjà vu.”

Without a word, Jason launched his two knives at the children. The front one, a girl with teal eyes and copper hair pulled up into a high ponytail, plucked both easily from the air and shot them back as her comrades circled around. Isis pulled Cameron out of the knives’ path. She threw a worried look at Jason, who was already surrounded by four of the glowing-eyed children.

“Can you handle Sunshine there?” she asked Cameron, indicating the daffodil-haired girl who was closing in on him.

At his nod, she swung out one of her swords, trying to corral the two approaching boys away from him. She managed to get them all the way to a ring of split trunks before the whoosh of an incoming sword reminded Cameron that he should have been paying attention to his own opponent. He blocked the swing with his staff and tried to throw the girl off balance. She sidestepped with agile grace, smiling as a tiger would greet its future lunch. Her sword rose up, striking forward again and again. Cameron met the attacks, but each block sent him another step back, until he was nearly trapped against the trees.

An ear-splitting scream of pure anguish ripped through the forest. Cameron followed the sound to Isis, who was crouched down low, holding to Jason. Shock hit Cameron as he realized Jason’s body was dripping blood from every limb. His head hung limply, the back of it supported against Isis’s chest. Despite her tight hold on Jason, there was still a sword in each of her hands. She bared her teeth as six Elitions—no, seven, for Sunshine had joined her brethren—closed in on them. All of them trailed streams of blood behind them, staining the white ground red with every step that they took. As their hot blood hit the frost, it steamed and dissolved. Even Elitions would go down if you drew enough blood, but though they seemed to be as bad off as Jason, they continued to close in on him and Isis as though they didn’t feel the pain at all.

The children were within three steps of them when a horn rumbled—long and deep—from within the forest. As one, the Elition children turned and ran off back the way they had come. Their footsteps were light, and soon Cameron couldn’t hear them anymore. He hurried over to Isis and squatted down before Jason.

“What happened?” he asked her.

Her lips trembled, frozen in terror. Cameron shook her shoulders. In response, she tightened her hold on Jason and pointed her swords at Cameron. She looked ready to skewer him.

“Isis?”

She met his eyes, and the trance lifted. The weapons wilted from her hands. “They moved as one, attacking again and again. He was moving so fast that they couldn’t touch him. But the two I was fighting slipped away, and one got in a blow. Then another. And another. There were too many of them and they coordinated their movements too well, as though they were one mind. They left him no space to evade. I went along their back, slashing them up one by one. But they ignored me, as if I were nothing but a mosquito. And they kept up until Jason fell.” She gripped hard to Cameron’s arms. “This is all my fault.”

“No, it’s not.”

Isis’s eyes flared a blue brilliant enough to rival any enhanced Elition’s. “I shouldn’t have let those two get away from me. I should have done more damage. I should never have—”

“Stop,” rasped Jason, his cracked lips parting only slightly as he spoke.

In an instant, her eyes settled down to their usual sapphire. Following his lead, she helped him to sit up.

“Jason, you—”

“I’m fine,” he said, standing on his own.

She rose. “But your wounds—”

“Nearly healed. There was no need for concern. I am a Phantom after all.” He placed a hand on each of her shoulders and met her eyes. “It’s not your fault.”

“But had I—”

“Enough,” he cut her off harshly. “There’s no time for guilt. We need to get going.”

Jason retrieved his knives from the ground and continued down the trail. From the quick pace he set, Cameron knew he was trying to put as much distance between them and the Elition children as he could. In Cameron’s book, that was a pretty enormous reason for concern. Or all-out panic, for that matter. The Elite Phantom did not just simply run away from a fight, nor did he end one incapacitated on the ground.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

~ The Frozen Forest ~

526AX August 22, The Frozen Forest

HARD RAIN FELL upon the Frozen Forest, washing away the last remnants of the icy dew. It had been over two hours since their run-in with the band of Elition children, and Jason’s wounds had finally closed. Usually, he healed nearly instantly, but the fifty-six lacerations had taxed his body, the healing process burning through all his energy reserves and then some. After eating through half of their food to little effect, Jason had drunk the Enhancing Serum Lana had packed for him. The stimulants had corroded some of his usual self-restraint, but he hoped the risk of losing his temper was outweighed by the need to be in top fighting condition. Who knew what else lay before them.

After meeting those children, he couldn’t help but think back to Vib’s menagerie—and, more recently, the corrupted Temple of the Veil, where Avan scientists had been conducting vile experiments on Elition children. There had to be some connection there, between the three incidents, but he didn’t have time to chase down that path. All that mattered right now was Terra. He had to save her before she fell victim to a far more sinister scheme. A few stimulants were nothing compared to what the Selpes or Avans would do to her if they ever got their hands on her.

They would torture her until her fragile Prophet mind cracked, then once she was broken, they would drive her further into madness by forcing her to foresee all manner of bloodstained events. Over and over, they would push her into the future, and when they’d at long last scraped all usefulness from the foresight, they would catapult her into the next. They would use her gift to plan their wars, battle after bloody battle. Jason would not allow it, not as long as he drew breath.

Beside him, Isis walked, a glum air hanging over her. Her eyes scanned the trees, ostensibly to seek out threats. Jason was not fooled. Ever since the incident with the children, she’d been avoiding eye contact with him. She seemed neither angry nor frightened of him. In fact, in his weakest moment, as he lay semi-conscious on the ground, he vaguely recalled how she’d burst through the children’s line and run to him. He also remembered her fierce snarl as she shielded him with her body. Her reaction was almost primal—beyond thought and reason—in her drive to protect him.

Very different from her aloofness now. She’d even positioned herself so that Cameron was walking between them. Before her incarceration by the Selpes, she’d always been warm toward Jason, even flirtatious at times. From the moment of her return, however, she had teetered uncontrollably from hot to cold. It was as if her emotional core had been kicked off balance. Jason had been worrying about Terra going mad; perhaps he should have been worrying about Isis too.

He didn’t want to torment her further—he knew she had more than enough of that from the Selpes—but he had to be sure she wouldn’t lose it out there. Their mission, as well as their lives, depended on her not succumbing to madness.

So he asked, “Are you all right?”

Her hooded face remained forward, raindrop rivers slipping down the sides. For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t answer. But she did.

“Yes,” her voice creaked.

As she turned to look past Cameron at him, Jason saw tears had fallen down her cheeks, mixing with the rain. Slowing his pace until Cameron was ahead of them, he adjusted his walk so that he was nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with her. They walked side-by-side for several minutes, until she finally broke the silence.

“You could have died.”

“Unlikely. I am tough to kill.” He turned his head to look at her. “And from your protective growl, I have a feeling you weren’t going to let anyone do me harm.”

Not so long ago, she would have blushed. This time, she paled.

“Even so, it was fortunate that they decided to leave,” he added.

“I’ve been wondering about that,” she said slowly, as though she had to force every word from her lips. “They had us cornered. Why would they just leave? And who were they?”

Jason was considering whether to share his experience at the Temple of the Veil when the resonance of twelve minds ripped through his body. The Crescent Order. They’d just emerged from the portal into the Frozen Forest. That portal was an hour’s hike away, fifteen or twenty minutes at a fast jog, which was likely the assassins’ pace of choice. Jason’s usual range for sensing people’s resonances was less than half of that. The Enhancing Serum was really working its magic.

“What is it?” Isis asked.

His pace had not slowed, so she must have seen something on his face. He prided himself on masking his expressions, but she’d always been able to read him well. Too well.

“The Crescent Order is near. We need to pick up the pace if we’re to make it to the portal before they find us,” he declared, loudly enough to draw Cameron’s attention.

Cameron snapped out of whatever daydream he’d been lost in to moan, “Any faster and we’d be running.”

“Then we’ll run,” said Jason, setting the new pace.

It was a brisk run, nearly a full-out sprint, but it didn’t tax Jason. He took that as a sign that he had, in fact, fully healed. For over an hour they ran between trees. Tiny droplets dripped off a needle-woven canopy to patter against their hoods. The path began to trend upward, and just as the mostly-cloaked sun reached its zenith, they came to a small clearing of patchy trees. The muddy hill before them was steep and peppered with trickling stones. Jason didn’t lose a step as he ascended the slope. He heard the light tap of Isis’s footsteps, and she pushed even with him. They made it halfway up the hill, and still her pace did not slow. Jason nodded in approval. It seemed he had worried for nothing. Clearly, Isis was tougher than she looked. She wouldn’t be falling into madness any time soon.

He’d no sooner had the thought when Isis lost her footing on a mossy rock and fell backward. Jason caught her hand, but her momentum was too great. They slid and tumbled all the way down the muddy slope, landing in a puddle. Jason had shifted his weight to soften her landing. That meant his back hit the ground, while she landed on his chest, protected by the cage of his arms.

“Why did you do that?” she demanded, moving to stand. She grunted in frustration a few times, then a voice said in his ear, “Let me go, Jason.”

He realized his arms were still around her, holding her against his body. She’d been struggling futilely against his hold, not gaining a millimeter. The thought satisfied the Phantom in him. He held on for one more second, briefly giving into the drive to show her that he could—then he released her.

Isis scrambled to her feet, cringing as she looked down on him. “I’m sorry.”

He stood in one fluid motion. “For what?”

“For the slip. For taking you down with me.”

“I rather enjoyed it,” he told her.

“But you’re completely covered in cold sludge,” she said, mud smacking the ground as she wiped her hand across his chest.

Her fingers slipped over a cut in his suit, and he felt a biting jolt that had nothing to do with the cold. He slid his hand over her arm, displacing sludge.

“As are you.”

“I’m sorry for the slip,” she apologized again.

“It’s unlike you to fall.”

“My mind has been turbulent since…” Her eyes looked away as her words drifted off.

“Don’t think about it.”

“Jason, I…”

“Don’t think about it.”

Jason set his finger under her chin, pushing it up until she met his gaze. He traced his hand across her cheek, brushing the wet hair from her face.

“What should I think about then?” she asked, her lips trembling.

“You need to push the unpleasant memories from your head by focusing on something else. Something more immediate.”

“Like how wet and muddy we are right now?” she laughed lightly, leaning forward.

“For instance.” He could feel his eyes phasing, growing darker. “See? It’s working.”

“Hey, are you two all right?” Cameron’s voice called down.

Jason paused a breath’s distance from Isis’s lips. Her eyes still on his, searing him with their heat, she stepped back and turned toward the hill.

“We’re fine,” she told Cameron as he jogged down to them. “Just a bit muddy. Perhaps now would be a good time to take a short snack break over a fire to cool...uh, warm up.”

Jason didn’t fail to catch the slip, but he only said, “A quick break only. We cannot afford to have the Crescent Order catch up with us.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

~ The Queen of Phantoms ~

526AX August 22, Everlast

A GUST OF wind swirled across the frozen plain, kicking up spirals of dancing snow. They turned and twirled in time to the whistling beat, funneling into white columns that sparkled like millions of tiny diamonds.

Cameron could hardly appreciate the show, just as he could hardly feel his fingers. Even his two layers of gloves were no match for the cold kingdom of Everlast. His coldsuit, despite the paper-thin fabric, was doing an adequate job of warding off frostbite. Cameron wished the Helleans had thought of making gloves from the same material.

Though Jason’s suit had been compromised by slashes from several dozen knives, his face betrayed no hint that the cold affected him at all. Isis had patched the slits in the fabric as best she could before the portal jump, but that couldn’t have provided any more insulation than Cameron’s inadequate gloves. Maybe Jason had built up a resistance to the cold by running laps barefoot through the snow. Cameron snorted. He wouldn’t put it past him. Jason took his training very seriously.

“Is something funny?” Isis’s muffled voice asked through the thick scarf wrapped over her nose and mouth.

“You mean besides my frozen fingers? No, not really.”

The scarf was the color of cream and really accented her eyes as they twinkled at him. Cameron was happy Jason was too far away to join in on their exchange. His response would have included phrases like ‘hardship makes the body stronger’ and ‘pain is the path to excellence’. Thankfully, Isis hadn’t used Cameron’s complaint as an opportunity to yet again tell him he should just return to Eclipse. In fact, she hadn’t mentioned it in a long time. She was probably too distracted. Maybe her body didn’t like the cold any more than his did.

“What’s that?” Cameron asked, pointing toward what looked like a group of people standing under a rare cluster of scrawny trees.

Isis cupped her hand over her eyes and looked out. “Trouble.”

“The Crescent Order?” he asked, his pulse quickening. Well, at least that pumped some blood into his hands.

She shook her head. “No. Everlast Elitions. They’re somewhat…temperamental. They aren’t always welcoming to outsiders, even other Elitions.”

“So why are we heading straight for them?”

“I don’t know. They aren’t really in our path. The wisest course of action would be to go around the castle.”

Cameron was about to ask which castle she meant, when the snowy winds subsided enough for him to make out ivory stone walls just beyond the trees. They were thick and high, imposing enough to make even a blizzard think twice before attacking the city-sized castle.

Isis pulled her scarf more tightly around her face and pushed forward. They fought against the wind, stopping only when they reached Jason. He stood a few paces from the Everlast Elitions, locked in some kind of staring contest with them. Isis waited for him to acknowledge them, and when he didn’t, she voiced her suggestion to go around the castle.

“No, look at the sky. A snowstorm is brewing.”

Cameron and Isis followed his hand, looking across the plain. The pale grey sky was indeed growing whiter by the minute, and the wind had picked up significantly even in the half hour since they’d jumped over to Everlast.

“It will be upon us by nightfall, and it will take us far longer than that to reach the temple,” Jason continued. “It would be foolish to sleep outside in the storm.”

“Surely, you’re not suggesting that we stay here?” Isis said in shock. “Haven’t you heard the stories about the Elitions of Everlast?”

“Heard and lived it. I visited them once.”

The slight edge in Jason’s voice suggested it hadn’t been a pleasant experience.

“What happened?” Cameron asked curiously.

His eyes remained locked in a staring contest with the front man. “They attacked me. I won.”

Isis reached behind her back. “And you aren’t afraid they’re still bitter about that?”

“No, they respect strength and power.” Without turning, Jason caught her hand before it closed on the hilt of her sword. “I wouldn’t do that unless you plan on challenging a band of Phantoms.”

Isis dropped her hand. “They’re all Phantoms?”

The man seemed to have given up on outstaring Jason, but he was motioning for the other guards to surround him, Cameron, and Isis. Cameron struggled not to turn at the soft crunch of footsteps on snow behind him.

“No, but many are, including most of the queen’s guard. Last time we met, I left on good terms with them, but try not to provoke them into a game of dominance, Isis.” Jason spun his finger, indicating for Cameron and Isis to turn until they were all pressed back-to-back. “They’re Phantoms, after all.”

“Yes, I’m familiar with the type,” she said, cracking a smile.

Jason crocked a snowy eyebrow at her. “No. Not like these Phantoms. Follow my lead. Both of you,” he added with a harsh sidelong look at Cameron.

Yeah, because it was all his fault that people were always trying to capture him. And it had nothing to do with the Selpe bounty on his head. Or that he was the rogue son of Elitia’s high king.

“Of course,” Cameron said, knowing there was no reason to provoke this particular Phantom.

The castle gates creaked open, and the head Phantom guard motioned them to follow him inside.

* * *

526AX August 22, Ice Palace

Snow swirled in on their heels, dusting a helping of white crystals across the cavernous hallway before the Phantoms could shove the double doors shut behind them. Reaching over five meters high and made of thick wooden slabs, the doors looked anything but lightweight. Add the barrage of a brewing blizzard, and it wasn’t all that surprising that it took four Elitions to close them. And four Phantoms at that, Cameron reminded himself.

As they followed the leader of the guards down the hall, ice crunched and cracked beneath their boots. It was warm enough in the hallway that the crystals had slowly begun to melt, forcing Cameron to watch his step carefully, lest he slip and fall hard on his rear end in front of their hosts. He doubted such a fumble would endear him to them. Jason had said they respected demonstrations of strength, not clumsiness.

“Just out of curiosity, Jason, how many of them did you defeat last time?” Cameron whispered to him.

“Five.”

“All Phantoms?”

“Yes.”

“All at once?”

Jason nodded.

“Wow.” The words popped lightly out of Cameron’s mouth. “And what started the fight?”

“They challenged my claim of being the Elite Phantom.”

Oh. Not good.

“I provided a demonstration.”

Of course he had. Telling the Elite Phantom he was not the Elite Phantom was about as smart as cutting your own head off. Cameron scrunched his face up, trying to imagine how one would even pull off such an idiotic maneuver.

“I trust you didn’t kill any friends of our would-be hosts?” Isis spoke up softly.

Jason favored her with an inscrutable eyebrow twitch.

“Ok, ok.” She held up her hands. “Just making sure. You do have a penchant for running in knives flying, Jason.”

“And for incinerating your enemies with your smoldering stare,” added Cameron.

Jason glared at them both.

“Yeah, that one,” Cameron said, nodding. He used the motion to look away. Jason’s stare sure was disconcerting, even though Cameron was mostly sort of sure he wouldn’t kill him.

“As it appears you two are not taking this seriously, I think it best that I do the talking when we get to the great hall,” Jason declared, his eyes cold.

“What did we do wrong now?” Cameron asked Isis.

“Tried to lighten the mood?” she suggested, shrugging.

“Silence,” Jason directed them as another set of double doors opened in their path.

These were made of black-brown wood, each engraved with white markings—three snowflakes over a castle fortress, the emblem of Everlast. The great hall was three times higher than the voluminous hallway they’d just walked down, extending upward as high as the castle itself. Sparkling chutes of sunshine poured through a grid of slim windows sprinkled along the outer walls. Even as they stood there, Cameron noticed the light was fading, succumbing to the night and the force of the mounting storm outside.

Air whistled past his ears as a torch flamed up on the wall behind them. Cameron nearly jumped out of his boots at the sensation. No one stood beside the torch. This was Phantom power at work.

The flames of the two torches on either side of the first puffed into existence. They were followed in turn by the next two. And the next. All the way down the sides of the chamber. With the birth of each new flame, a breeze brushed across Cameron’s skin, until the hairs on his head stood up rigid as icicles. The faint blended scent of gas and burning wood that had accompanied the first flame grew with the lighting of each new torch. By the time they were all lit—all those hundreds—the smell was almost suffocating.

Jason was staring straight ahead, so Cameron directed his eyes that way too. Three wide wood steps led up to a raised platform, where a woman sat with her legs swung over the arm of a…throne was the most fitting word for the chair of twisted wood, Cameron supposed. It had been fashioned from the most gnarled of branches from a dozen different tree species, in colors ranging from speckled white to near black. A scarlet red cloak draped over her legs, rippling over the edge of the throne like a bloody waterfall. It was complemented by the thick braid of black hair—darker than night itself, with a tendency toward indigo—that coiled out from her snow-white, fur-trimmed hood and down over her shoulder. With her startling electric blue eyes and skin as pale as the tundra on her doorstep, she really did look like the queen of winter.

“Jason Chanz. You have returned.” Her voice, melodious and potent, echoed through the hall as she stood.

“All rise for Her Majesty Queen Gale, sovereign of Everlast and queen of Phantoms,” the head guard boomed out.

Cameron wanted to point out to the man that his address was excessive, as everyone in the room was already standing, but he didn’t think Jason would appreciate the comment. His emotionless face had hardened, the Elite Phantom in him likely irked at the line ‘queen of Phantoms’. He looked up at the queen, his eyes turning obsidian as she returned the unblinking stare, hers phasing to an even more intense blue. Isis’s eyes took on a dark look of their own as she watched the exchange.

Jason waited until the female Phantom—an oddity in itself—looked away before he inclined his chin in a subtle acknowledgement. “Queen Gale.”

She descended the first stair, her red cloak kissing the floor as she moved. “I wonder…” she began, taking the next stair. “…what it is that has brought you back here.” She stepped down the final stair, walking forward until her nose was almost flush with Jason’s. He didn’t even flinch.

Queen Gale was no small woman. She and Jason stood eye-to-eye in height, two sets of unblinking, penetrating Phantom eyes. It was kind of creepy actually.

Isis cleared her throat loudly. Queen Gale kept her eyes locked on Jason for a few long seconds before disengaging to assess his companions. The hint of a sneer that graced her full lips told Cameron she wasn’t impressed with what she saw. The queen was good-looking, but that disparaging smile completely turned him off to her.

“Last time we met, you did not keep such…interesting company,” she said, turning a far brighter smile on Jason. “I was under the impression that you always work alone.”

“Mostly. Not always.”

“Of course, of course. But surely any mission you take on is far too dangerous to bring children along. These two appear to be such fragile creatures, not up to the sort of rigorous activity a Phantom relishes. Would it not have been better to leave them behind?”

Isis glared at the queen with unfettered abhorrence. It was so unlike her. Cameron had seen her happy and he had seen her sad, but he had never seen her borderline murderous. Until now. If looks could kill, by now Isis would have boiled and then burned the queen to a crisp for good measure. Cameron felt an acidic tingle in the air and quickly closed his hand around Isis’s.

Queen Gale was trying to provoke them into an outburst. She wanted them to take the first misstep. She wasn’t even being subtle about it. And usually Isis would have been the level head pointing this out, reminding them all to remain calm. Queen Gale must have really gotten under her skin.

“My mission necessitates their assistance,” Jason said, shifting his body so that he stood as a wall—physical and visual—between the two women.

“Tell me of this mission,” the queen prompted in a fierce purr.

“I cannot say,” he replied. “I ask only that we be allowed to stay for the night and then use your portal to Winter’s Gate tomorrow morning.”

Cameron hadn’t known of this portal, and a quick glance at Isis told him she hadn’t either.

“I agree.” Smiling widely, she added, “On one condition.”

Still holding to her hand, Cameron felt Isis tense up.

“You agree to a duel with me. If you win, you and your traveling companions will be our guests for the night, and we will lead you to our portal in the morning.” She held up a finger, and her smile grew. “But if I win, your companions must go, and you will be my guest here for the next month.”

“Jason, I don’t think—” Isis began.

He pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her protest. “Agreed,” he told the queen.

Queen Gale clapped her hands once and smirked at Isis. “Excellent. You may select one blade.” Her eyes slid over the armory of weapons strapped to him—or perhaps more likely, as Cameron was starting to think, the muscular body that had been sculpted by an endless barrage of training sessions, clearly defined by the skintight fabric of the coldsuit. For only the ten millionth time, Cameron found himself wishing he were Jason.

“Jason, this is a bad idea,” Isis told him as he turned to hand her the leather straps of knives he’d peeled off his body.

He selected his weapon—a Wing knife with a sapphire-studded hilt and a blade about as long as his forearm—then draped the last weapon belt over her arm. “Do you think I will lose?”

“Even you don’t win all the time.” She paused as he began to nod, her eyes narrowing. “This is no time for jokes, Jason.”

Jason looked at Cameron, his face as blank as granite. “Who’s joking?”

“Cameron?” Isis asked.

Cameron shrugged. “I’ve never known Jason to lose.” Well, not before the fight with the band of children. “But it’s not like he ever brought me along anywhere.”

“I will not lose,” Jason assured Isis.

“If you do—”

“I won’t,” he repeated.

“But if you do, you will be stuck here for the next month, entertaining that…that harpy,” she spat out, glaring at the queen.

Clearly, her insults needed work.

Jason stepped to the side so that Isis could no longer see past him. She persisted in trying to bore a hole through him for several seconds before she turned her head up to glare into his eyes instead.

“Careful,” he warned her. “You’re playing with fire there, Isis.”

“I don’t care about your silly Phantom staring contests,” she ground through her teeth.

“Are you ready to begin, or do you want to send your child companions out of the hall first? Phantom fights can be a lot to take in for gentle minds,” Queen Gale’s voice lilted, sweetness tempered with fire.

Jason turned toward her and declared, “I’m ready.”

As the guards ushered Cameron and Isis off toward the wall, Jason and Queen Gale lifted their blades in preparation. The queen had selected a Wing knife similar to Jason’s, set with diamonds rather than sapphires. Blue and white, the two swords’ gemstones sparkled in the firelight as the fighters circled around each other like two tigers in the heated prelude to the fight. Queen Gale thrust up the hand not holding her knife, flinging her cloak high into the air. Cameron was so mesmerized by the silken ripple of waves across the crimson fabric that he nearly missed the start to the duel.

Queen Gale opened with a diagonal slash so quick it would have taken a slower opponent’s arm right off before he could even move to block. Luckily, Jason was no common fighter. The thundering clash of metal against metal meant she’d put as much power as speed into the attack. She sure didn’t waste any time warming up.

Pushing up hard with his blade, Jason threw Queen Gale off of him. He took a swift step to the side, then followed with a swing toward her shoulder. She slithered out of reach. She was quick, but Jason was quicker. As she evaded his knife, he thrust out his arm. A burst of Phantom energy, more focused and volatile than wind, split through the air and hit the queen hard in the stomach. It catapulted her back ten meters at breakneck speed, so fast she was little more than a blur. Boots ground into stone as she kicked off the back wall, the force setting off eruptions of tiny rocks and a sprinkling of fine dust. Queen Gale landed in a neat crouch, grinning at Jason as she rose. Behind her, the wall was newly decorated with twin intertwining webs of tiny fissures.

She lashed out with her own Phantom burst to hit Jason square in the chest. As the invisible energy made contact, the spasm of his muscles was eerily visible through the coldsuit. He managed to hold his ground for a split second before being tossed back. That moment of resistance slowed the burst down enough that Jason was able to use the wave to launch himself into a backward somersault, draining the last of its energy.

His feet had only just touched down when he sprinted forward in a burst of speed, closing the open space between them within a split of a second. Queen Gale was waiting for him. Her blade whistled five staccato notes as she greeted him with a series of crisp slashes. Jason dodged each one, then hopped back far enough to focus on the hand holding her knife. The metal began to glow deep red. The queen smiled and struck out at him. Jason parried and advanced with an attack sequence of his own. The strikes blended together into a continuous barrage, forcing her to hold securely onto her knife, its metal by now smoldering orange. Queen Gale gritted her teeth, stubbornly holding onto the pain. The stench of burnt flesh wafted through the hall.

Jason didn’t let up, striking faster with each successive move. The clinking chime of metal against metal crescendoed. Their swords were two intertwined streaks of unbroken silver swirls, dancing between them. Slowly, the queen’s blade glowed lighter. When it reached bright yellow, it burst from her hand and slid across the floor. Jason turned his wrist to thump her in the nose with the blunt end of his knife handle. As she stumbled back, Jason whipped around behind her and pressed the edge of his blade against her throat.

“Yield,” he said.

A stream of blood trickled down Queen Gale’s face, dripping from her broken nose. She grinned.

“Yield,” he repeated more forcefully, pressing his blade closer.

She slid her tongue slowly across her bloody lips, as though she relished in the thought of being skewered by him. “I yield,” she finally said.

Jason released his hold and walked over to Cameron and Isis to reclaim his other weapons.

“Perhaps you would consider a rematch?” the queen suggested, a hopeful gleam in her eyes.

Jason had only just finished beating her bloody, her hand was hideously burnt, and she already wanted more? She was sick.

“Some other time,” Jason replied, turning his back to Isis so she could secure the last of his straps.

Isis gave the back of his head an agitated glare but buckled the belt across his back.

“Of course.” Queen Gale nodded, giving his body a penetrating once-over that would have made anyone but Jason flush.

His face remained blank. “Please show us to our rooms.”

The delighted cackle that burst from her lips threatened to split Cameron’s skull open.

“Oh, no. You’re not getting away that easily,” she purred. “You will dine with us tonight at a banquet in your honor, Jason Chanz, Elite Phantom.”

Somehow, Cameron didn’t think attendance was optional.

CHAPTER TWENTY

~ Protocols of Everlast ~

526AX August 23, Ice Palace

THE BANQUET IN the great hall lasted late into the night. Every time Isis thought it was nearly over, Queen Gale called for another course to be brought to the tables. By midnight, Isis was very full and many hours overdue for her appointment with her pillow. She swallowed her yawns and suffered her exhaustion. She couldn’t leave yet. The Everlast Elitions were sticklers for protocol, and they would take such an action as an insult. Even more importantly, Isis refused to leave Jason alone with the queen, who looked like she wanted to devour him much more than she did the offering on her plate. All night, she had nibbled only small morsels from her supper, foregoing eating in favor of hitting him with an unceasing barrage of chatter. Since Jason was a sparse conversationalist at best—as a rule, he responded to questions with stony-faced silence—the queen was doing most of the talking for the both of them. She didn’t seem to mind.

Isis did. Queen Gale was strong, stunningly beautiful, and a superb fighter. She wore power around her like that luxurious red cloak, oozing tendrils of Phantom energy behind her as she moved. While not equal to Jason, she was good. Too good. She was certainly more than skilled enough to make Isis look like an utter fool should it come to a fight between them. Which it would if Isis didn’t stop fantasizing about leaping over the table to stab the queen in the hand with her fork. A Phantom might just take that as a challenge.

Finally, Jason stood, peeling off the hand Queen Gale had kept glued to his arm the whole night. “Now we must rest. Tomorrow we leave early.”

Expelling a woeful sigh, the queen nodded to one of her guards, and he led them into the hallway. Queen Gale gave Jason a little flirtatious wave—and Isis a smug smirk—as they left the great hall.

The guard stopped in a dead-end hallway. Without a word, he pointed out three adjoining rooms, then left.

* * *

526AX August 23, Ice Palace

As soon as Isis’s head hit the pillow, she was wide awake. She tossed and turned for half an hour, hoping to ease into a sufficiently languorous position. Eventually, she gave up on that idea. She slipped on her boots and opened the door into the hallway. The howling chorus of the snowstorm pounded on outside. Inside, it was hardly warmer. Her breath puffed out in frozen clouds, and she shivered in her black tank top and hip-hugging shorts. Perhaps trotting around the freezing halls in her sleepwear in the dead of night hadn’t been such a brilliant idea after all, though it had hardly seemed worth pulling on the coldsuit again. It took a good five minutes of tugging—and preferably the assistance of another person—to get the thing on or off. Before going to bed, she and Cameron had helped each other unzip, but there was no need to bother him again.

Jason had stalked off to his own room. Apparently, he didn’t need help getting out of his suit. Or maybe he was just going to sleep in it. He did believe in maintaining a constant state of battle readiness. For all Isis knew, he slept with his boots on. She felt her cheeks go warm. She shouldn’t be thinking about how Jason slept.

A stream of light crept out from under his door. Isis stood in front of his room for several minutes, her eyes following the twirling engravings. It didn’t take long for the cold to penetrate her core, freezing her from the inside. Her teeth began to chatter, and she decided she should either just knock already or try to find sleep in her bed. She was turning to leave when the door creaked open, and Jason’s head popped out.

“Isis? What are you doing here?”

“You mean, besides freezing? I really don’t know. Sorry to bother you.”

His hand caught her wrist. “You’re unsettled.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted.

He studied her face for a moment, then spread the door wider. “Come in.”

“What?”

“Sleep is evading you, and you’re going to get sick wandering the halls dressed like that.”

She blushed. She hadn’t thought she’d actually be talking to Jason in the middle of the night dressed in little more than her underwear. Before she could squirm away in embarrassment, he tightened his hold on her wrist and pulled her inside, shutting the door quickly behind her.

A fire was blazing in the corner of his room, warming the air to a tolerable temperature. Isis darted to it, rubbing her hands over the flames. A warm hand tapped her shoulder and she turned to find Jason there. Her eyes widened as she noticed for the first time that he was wearing hardly more clothing than she was. He was pretty well covered on the bottom with black pants that hung loosely down, brushing the tops of his bare feet. On top was another matter. His upper body was completely bare, and Isis couldn’t help but stare at the contoured muscle of his chest, a masterpiece of athletic prowess. She curtailed the urge to trace her finger down along the lines. He probably wouldn’t appreciate such audacity.

“Drink this,” he said, handing her a steaming mug. “Queen Gale had it sent over for me, but you look like you need it more than I do.”

Isis realized that maybe he was still awake—and half-naked—because he was anticipating a nighttime visit from the queen. She tried not to shatter the mug as she took it from him.

“It’s spiced honey,” she said. The mixture was a stimulant for Phantoms. “She’s hoping to drug you.”

“I noticed.” His lip twitched. “But honey is a soother for you. Maybe it will help you sleep.”

Suddenly, Isis didn’t feel a whole lot like sleeping. More like charging into the queen’s chamber and throwing the mug at her face.

“Careful there.” He pried her fingers from the mug, which had already split a few hair-thin cracks.

“I don’t like her,” she declared, glaring at him.

“I hadn’t noticed.”

Was that supposed to be a joke? She couldn’t tell. Jason’s face had remained neutral, his mask perfectly in place. It made her want to throw the stupid mug at him too.

“Did you notice that she does like you?”

He inclined his head. “Naturally. Queen Gale is not a subtle woman.”

Isis wondered if Jason liked that. For all she knew, he had a thing for blunt and domineering women. Women who could blow holes in solid rock with their minds were not easy to come by.

“I don’t like her.”

“You mentioned that already,” said Jason.

Isis began to pace. “She’s pushy and overbearing and…” She swiveled to face him. “Are you on a first name basis with her?”

It shouldn’t have really bothered her, but it did. The Selpes and Avans referred to him as ‘Jason Chanz’, but they didn’t understand Elition ways. Elitions all called him by his power name, Magus—all but those few close to him. Isis was glad to be counted among them. Queen Gale’s address to him was too intimate. It didn’t sit well with her.

“She seems to think so,” Jason replied. “I didn’t think it prudent to point out her breach of etiquette. Not to an Elition of Everlast. You know how sensitive they are to the slightest misstep in protocol. She would be most offended to hear that she herself had erred.”

Isis continued to pace, his words doing little to soothe her rage. “Since we got here, she’s been doing nothing but strutting around you, pushing her damn perky breasts and shapely butt in your face at every opportunity.”

“I had no idea you were so diligently cataloging her physical attributes.” His eyes pulsed in what could have been amusement. “Perhaps you were hoping to be the recipient of her lavish advances yourself.”

Isis stopped to punch him hard in the arm. He didn’t even wince. Her hand, on the other hand, felt as though it had hit a boulder. Ouch.

“This isn’t funny, Jason,” she growled, shaking out her throbbing hand. That would teach her to punch him. He was surely made of granite.

“You’re jealous.”

She glared at him. “Yes.”

“She is nothing to me.”

“Oh.” Isis slouched with embarrassment. “Ok, now that that’s cleared up, I’ll just…”

She started to turn toward the door, hoping to leave with some scrap of dignity, but Jason locked his hand around her arm. She struggled to pull away from him—and failed to move a single millimeter. Damn. She’d already forgotten he was a granite rock.

“Let me go.”

“No.”

“Jason, I’ve already humiliated myself enough for one night. Please, just let me go,” she pleaded.

He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t let go. Instead, he raised his other hand to her. She winced in anticipation, but he only traced it slowly up her arm, searing a trail of fire into her skin.

“You’re cold,” he said softly.

Isis closed her eyes and took a deep breath, forcing herself to remain completely still. Jason followed her contours over her shoulder and up her neck to her hair. As he brushed loose strands from her face, she opened her eyes to two smoldering pools of deep obsidian. His body was pressed against hers, so close that she could feel the pop of his racing pulse—from multiple places. He held out a hand, and she timidly intertwined her fingers with his. As their skins met, she felt that usual spark, the pleasantly violent jolt that tingled through her body whenever they touched. Isis arched her back, pulling away. He pulled her back to him.

“Isis,” he whispered, their lips nearly brushing.

Her heart was pounding so hard in her ears, and she struggled to catch her breath. “Jason, I have to tell you—”

“Shh.” He stroked his hand down her neck and along her collarbone. “No talking.” His lips graced her jawbone, burning his brand into her skin.

Isis struggled to think, to push past the haze of her distracted mind, but all she wanted was to pull him in closer. She brushed her finger across his lips—lips that should be kissing her. Jason’s eyes pulsed pure black, and she felt his hand slip round her hip and slide down her thigh.

Three resounding knocks thumped on the door. Jason ignored them, his lips moving in to kiss her once, ever so lightly.

The knocks sounded again, this time louder. Jason swore under his breath and released her. Cold flooded back to Isis’s bare skin, chilling her to her very bones. She wandered toward the fire as Jason opened the door. Isis didn’t bother to listen in; she didn’t care who was there or what they wanted.

“Get dressed,” Jason said brusquely as he walked up to her. “We need to go to the great hall. It seems Cameron has offended our hosts, and we now have to convince them not to kill him.”

Fear hit Isis like a sheet of ice. “What happened?”

“Apparently, he snuck into the kitchen and pilfered a plate of cookies. Our hosts feel insulted at the breach of protocol. He should have asked them to be served. To do otherwise is to suggest that they are inadequate hosts who cannot sufficiently feed their guests. He knew this, and still he did it, all because he wanted to satisfy his craving for a midnight snack.”

Isis shook her head, her hair bouncing across her shoulders. “No, this is all my fault,” she told him.

“How? You didn’t sneak into the kitchen. You were here the whole time with me.”

As he spoke, Jason began to pull off his night clothing and slip into the coldsuit. Isis turned away, blushing both at his reminder of their time together and the utterly casual way he was stripping in front of her, as though it meant nothing.

“Before I went to bed, I was praising the cookies we’d eaten earlier this evening, saying I wished I could have more of them before they whisked them away,” she said over her shoulder. “I should have known Cameron would sneak into the kitchen to get me some.”

“It’s not your fault that Cameron cannot follow instructions and behave himself,” Jason replied.

He set his hands on her shoulders to turn her around to face him. Isis was surprised to see he already had his coldsuit on. It hadn’t taken him five minutes or anyone else’s help for that.

“All right, let’s get your suit on, then hurry to the great hall,” he said, strapping on his weapons.

“So, you don’t think the queen will appreciate my outfit?” Isis asked. She’d tried to be funny, but her voice just came out flat. She didn’t feel much like joking at the moment.

“No,” was his blank response.

* * *

526AX August 23, Ice Palace

Isis and Jason walked down the hallway side-by-side, suited up against the cold and loaded down with steel against the Phantoms. They were flanked by six Everlast guards, who spread before the double doors of the great halls and opened them to allow Isis and Jason to enter. As the guards followed close upon their heels, Isis saw Jason’s finger twitch. He hated to have anyone at his back—most especially armed men who had every reason to be angry with them at the moment.

The tables brought in for the evening banquet had been cleared away, an effortless task for a castle full of Phantoms. Queen Gale lounged once again with her legs swung over one arm of her twisted throne, her cloak draped over her body like a curtain of blood. Cameron stood a few steps away on the raised platform, shivering in his thin pajamas. At least he had a top and a bottom and both were long. In his hands, he held a silver platter with a sparse arrangement of three cookies atop a bed of crumbs and tiny chocolate chunks. So, they’d made him stand there with evidence in hand, for all to see. Queen Gale did love making a big show of things.

“Did no one think to keep him warm?” Jason spoke to the echoing room.

Not waiting for a response, he marched right up the platform, pulled a folded blanket off a nearby chair, and wrapped it around Cameron’s shoulders. He took the platter and set it into the queen’s hands, who viewed him with a look of complete fascination.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded of her.

“The boy was caught stealing from the kitchen. As though he didn’t get enough to eat after one of my banquets. How ever shall I live down the shame of such an insult?”

Her words were harsh, but the twinkle in her eyes told Isis she was just playing it up for effect. When it came to dramatics, these Everlast Elitions were as bad as the Selpes.

“I’m sure you’ve survived worse,” Jason replied coldly.

“Naturally. I am no newcomer to this world,” she said with a congenial smile, raising her eyebrows at Isis. “Still, a queen must keep up appearances. As you know, Elitions are such idle gossips. Word of this slight would reach the ears of the other kingdoms’ rulers.”

Isis doubted it. The only people who knew about this incident were the queen’s guard and the three of them. The Everlast Elitions wouldn’t broadcast it, and Jason wasn’t about to alert anyone that Cameron was anywhere but safely tucked away behind a protected portal. Cameron certainly wouldn’t volunteer the story of how he was dragged in his pajamas before the queen of Everlast for trying to filch a plate of cookies.

“They would take this incident as a sign of weakness,” Queen Gale continued. “I would lose their respect. That is, unless I dealt out a suitable punishment.”

Jason’s eyes narrowed. “What sort of punishment?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, leaning her cheek against her hand. “Seven years of servitude ought to do it.”

“No.”

“Would you rather I cut off a hand? Those take awfully long to grow back, you know, and I hear it’s quite unpleasant.”

His glare could have frozen a volcanic eruption solid. “Select something else.”

Her full lips spread into a smile. “Well, I suppose I could be convinced to reduce the punishment to banning him from use of our portal. And he would have to leave my castle at daybreak, of course.”

Which meant they’d have to trek out across the storming tundra tomorrow morning. Or Cameron would have to turn back and go home to Eclipse. Jason seemed to consider the proposal.

“You and your…friend are still free to use the portal.” The queen looked past him at Isis, her stare razor-sharp. “Though I suggest you send the girl home. The Tundra will swallow up such a sweet and innocent treat.”

Oh, fabulous, another staring contest. Isis held the queen’s gaze.

Jason moved to make himself a visual wall between them. “Your price?” he asked.

With Queen Gale, everything seemed to come with a price.

“Nothing too painful, I assure you. Maybe you’ll even enjoy it?” she added, smiling. She reached out and tapped Jason in the chest with her index finger. “You will spend the remainder of the night here, in the great hall. Entertaining me with your witty tongue.”

Queen Gale stood, sweeping her cloak behind her as she stepped forward. Bare skin peeked out from behind the red curtain. Beneath the cloak, the queen wore nothing but a lace-trimmed silk camisole and short lace shorts that made Isis’s nighttime outfit look like a full-length gown. Crisscrossed satin slashes climbed her bare legs, ending in bows just below her knees. The queen of Everlast was standing before them in her naughty lingerie.

“No,” Isis ground out.

“Yes,” Jason told Queen Gale.

“No,” Isis repeated. The queen was clearly interested in Jason’s tongue for something other than its wit.

“Since when does Jason Chanz make decisions via committee?” Queen Gale asked with piercing sweetness.

“I don’t.” He looked coldly at Isis. “Take Cameron back to his room. Try to warm him up. The queen will have a cup of hot chocolate sent to his room.”

“Of course.” Queen Gale smiled, the satisfaction positively sticking to her lips.

The guards encircled Isis and Cameron, nudging them toward the exit. The double doors closed with a resounding thud, leaving Jason alone with the queen in the great hall.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

~ Winter's Gate ~

526AX August 23, Ice Palace

THE NEXT MORNING, the storm was still going at full force. The castle walls creaked under the bombardment of snow and wind, but they hadn’t held up for centuries simply to be taken down by a mere August blizzard. But that didn’t mean it would be prudent to trek through the storm. They could wait it out in the castle, but that could take days, even weeks. Jason couldn’t sit idly by that long, not when he knew Terra was nearly within reach. Not when he knew what manner of people were after her. Besides, the queen had made it clear that Cameron was no longer welcome in her castle—an overreaction to be sure, but it was what it was. If Cameron had to leave anyway, there was no point in waiting around in Everlast.

At the rate the queen was provoking Isis, it wouldn’t be long before she snapped and got herself banned as well. That would be…inconvenient. Winter’s Gate was a labyrinth of tunnels. If he broke in, it could take hours to search for Terra. By the time he made it out of there with her, there would be someone waiting—the Crescent Order, Selpes, Avans, or even Elition guards sent by King River. The priests at the temple would notify him immediately if there was a break-in. Even Jason couldn’t sneak along unnoticed forever.

No, he needed to be invited in, and for that he needed Isis. No one would invite a notorious assassin inside a temple secretly housing Elitia’s insane.

Just before dawn, Queen Gale had fallen asleep on her throne, allowing Jason to slip out of the great hall. He kept to the shadows in the corridors, a task made easy by the early hour. The wall torches had long since gone out for the night, and the windows let in only darkness—especially with that storm brewing outside.

Jason found a staircase zigzagging downward and took it. He’d never visited the castle’s sand pit, but he figured it ought to be on one of the underground floors. That’s where it could be found in most Elition temples and castles. The castle of Queen Gale proved to be no different. Half an hour later, Jason had contacted Lana in Eclipse, asking her to send someone competent to wait for Cameron in the Forest Frozen, right at the exit end of the portal they’d used to jump across to the Western Continent. Queen Gale’s head of guards would escort him to the portal entrance on this end. Jason had promised the queen that if any harm came to Cameron, he would cut off the heads of all her guards and hang them on the barren walls of her great hall. It was the sort of threat a Phantom would appreciate—and take to heart.

When Jason returned to the great hall, Queen Gale was gone, and Isis was waiting outside. For a passing second, he wondered whether she’d cut the queen’s throat while she slept. The idea faded as quickly as it had come. Isis was no assassin. She’d never killed anyone, whether or not they deserved it. She even felt bad about hurting her sparring partner during training. That mental block—her inability to deal damage—was the only thing holding her back from being as accomplished a fighter as Queen Gale. Or even better. On the other hand, that same block made her the compassionate soul she was. She should hardly try to emulate a vicious cutthroat like Queen Gale…or, even worse, a cold-blooded pragmatist like him.

Leaning her shoulder against the doorframe, Isis watched him with cool detachment—a far cry from the woman last night, who had come to his door in her underwear. Like Jason, she was fully dressed in her black coldsuit. She wore twin Versatile swords on her back and held a torch in her hand.

“The queen left to put on some clothes,” she told him. “The guard who’s supposed to show us to the portal will return shortly. If you can bear to leave without saying your goodbyes to her, I suggest we go as soon as he’s back.”

There was no edge to her tone—no jealousy—nothing but grim determination. Good. She was trying to distance herself from any emotions that would incite her to attack the queen.

“Do you need to eat first?” he asked her. He didn’t, but she’d often reminded him that others didn’t appreciate the habit of skipping meals for the sake of efficiency—and that he should at least ask before pushing them to get back on the trail.

If she appreciated the gesture, she didn’t show it. She didn’t show much emotion of any sort, in fact. Considering she was one of the most expressive people he’d ever known, that was odd.

“No, let’s just get on with it,” she replied, sounding about as thrilled as she would be at the prospect of yanking a bullet from her own flesh. “I’ve put some hot tea for us into your pack. We can drink it after we go through the portal. No need to offend our hosts by drinking our own beverages under their roof.”

There was no time for further words, for the guard turned around the corner and ushered them down five underground levels to the portal entrance.

Five levels beneath the surface, thought Jason. And Cameron had grumbled about the lake portal of Eclipse.

* * *

526AX August 23, The Tundra

Isis patted her hands together a few times. Unlike in Everlast, no blizzard was blowing across the Tundra—yet—but the cold seemed to finally be catching up to her. She walked behind Jason and zipped open the top pouch of his pack.

A red canister appeared beside his shoulder, and Isis’s voice said, “Here, drink this.”

“What is it?”

She zipped up the pouch and walked back around him, holding a white canister in her hand. “Something to keep you warm. I brewed up some fire mint tea for you. It has just a little kick to keep your blood pumping. Good for keeping warm. And for keeping an alert mind.”

“Fire mint, you say?” Jason unscrewed the lid. “Why not?”

An explosion of hot mint cascaded across his tongue. The drink appeared to work instantly. It was well below freezing outside, but he felt a warm tingle in his fingertips and a fiery burn in his chest.

Isis watched him drink, then asked, “How’s your tea?”

“A bit more than just ‘a little kick’. But I suppose I could use it. Out here especially.”

Isis nodded in silence, then lifted her own canister to her mouth.

“What’s yours?” he asked.

“Strawberry vanilla tea. No kick. No bite. Just as Silver ordered.”

He surprised himself by speaking again. “Have you been carrying these around since Eclipse?”

“No,” she said. “I stored the dry ingredients in a small box but only added the hot water this morning. After last night, I decided it might not be a bad idea to ask the kitchen staff for the water. They seemed happy to oblige. In fact, they said…” Her voice drifted off. She pressed her lips together. “I apologize. I was boring you with my babbling.”

Jason hadn’t thought he’d listened with anything other than interest, but his default expression did tend to confuse others. They frequently translated the neutral expression accompanying his request to pass the salt as a ‘give it to me or I’ll slash your throat’ glare. Isis usually read him better than most, but she hadn’t been entirely herself since her escape from the Selpes. She could go from happy laughter one second to wallowing in despair the next. That was extreme, even from a Prophet.

A Prophet with a sound mind, anyway. Jason’s thoughts drifted to Terra—and to Isis’s statement that his friend had gone completely mad. He could not believe it, but even if it were so, he’d find a way to lead her back to sanity. All that mattered right now was getting her out of that asylum and back to the safety of Eclipse.

* * *

526AX August 23, Winter's Gate

It was an hour past sunrise when they reached the gates of Winter’s Gate—the Shroud—but the cloudy murk of grey that filled the sky blanketed out most of the sunlight. The round and squat structure resembled a gigantic slate-grey snail shell. It was so completely monotone that even the arched entrance blended seamlessly into the rest. Still, drab as it was, the building stood out dramatically against the frosted nothingness of the white Tundra.

Jason motioned Isis forward, and she stepped ahead to take the lead through the front doors as he filed in behind her. From the other end of the hallway, a priest with indigo eyes and wrinkled robes noticed their entrance and hurried to greet them. Isis lifted her hat and unwrapped her scarf to expose her face, while Jason remained cloaked in shadow behind her.

“Welcome to Winter’s Gate, the temple of the north. What brings you to this remote place, fellow Elition?” the priest greeted Isis.

“I have come here, to the Shroud,” she emphasized. “On a very important matter.”

“The Shroud? No, you must be mistaken. As I said, this temple is called Winter’s Gate,” the priest stated. His tone was steady, but Jason could feel the skip in his heartbeat.

Isis stepped up closer to the priest and in a lowered voice said, “King River sent me regarding a very special resident you have here. Shall we speak somewhere more private?”

That was the plan they’d devised—for Isis to pose as King River’s messenger as Jason remained silent and cloaked in case his infamous face was recognized. The frazzled priest seemed to buy it. His body relaxed slightly, and he showed them down a side corridor. From there, he split off the hall several more times. Jason memorized every turn they took, just in case.

Finally, they came to a dark corridor. The rooms on either side were open and empty.

“People have been seeking her out for the better part of a decade, you know, but she’s been hidden away all that time. She came to us, the best hiding place of all, one-and-a-half years ago,” the priest recounted with melodramatic flair, as though he were performing in a play. “No, they’ve never found her. They don’t even know where to look, you see. Well, I guess you know since King River arranged the whole thing. But no one else does, I can assure you.”

Jason considered this a remarkable miracle given how much this priest liked to blabber. He seemed like one of those people who talked just to hear himself speak.

“Why are all the rooms in this hallway empty?” Isis asked.

“Not all. She’s in the one at the end,” the priest told her. “As for why, her nightmare screams were disturbing the other patients. It’s actually quite common here, if you can believe that.”

From his amused face, this witless priest actually thought he was being funny. It took all the restraint Jason had not to kill him right there. He took a deep breath and unclenched his fists behind his back. His head was buzzing and he felt uncharacteristically out of control. He suspected Lana’s so-called ‘diet’ was the culprit. He’d been feeling a crack in his self-restraint ever since she’d enveloped him in that harebrained scheme of hers. Well as soon as they were back in Eclipse, he would tell her precisely what he thought about her meddling. One simply didn’t mess with a Phantom’s self control.

“She’s quite a talent, though,” the priest continued. “A Prophet, you know. Into each generation are born but a handful, and very few escape the insanity that comes with the gift. Some hold out, even make it to adulthood, but the foresights eventually catch up with them, driving them positively mad. Ah, and here we are.”

As the priest turned to set the key into the door, Jason glanced at Isis, who was noticeably distressed. It was no wonder with the way that idiot priest had been throwing around insanity so carelessly. He was behaving as though he were giving a museum tour, sharing nothing more than an interesting tidbit of the temple’s long history.

The door swung open, and they peered into the dark room. Jason had been waiting for this moment—imagining it clearly—for years. Today was the day he would finally be reunited with Terra.

“And now, I give you Terra Cross,” the priest declared with a dramatic sweep of his hands.

A figure stirred and stood from the cot. She stepped toward the light, her legs wobbly and uncoordinated. It was unlikely that she’d experienced many opportunities to use them over the past year. Her dull grey clothes were tattered and her feet shoeless. Her hair fell to her waist in limp golden locks, and her lifeless blue eyes faded into her pale, bruised skin. She looked both like and unlike the Terra he remembered, but of one thing Jason was certain.

“This is not Terra Cross,” he proclaimed. Her resonance was all wrong.

“What?” the priest said, agitated and nervous. “Of course she is. King River’s aide dropped her off here one-and-a-half years ago. I was there.”

“That may be so, but this is not Terra,” Jason repeated.

“Then who is she?” the priest asked.

The man genuinely believed it was Terra. Jason could read it in the colors of his mind. Yet another layer of deception woven by King River.

Jason closed the door on the fake Terra. “Just a decoy. Nothing more.”

He returned back down the hall toward the entrance, cursing what a waste of time the entire expedition had been. When they got back, he was going to do what he should have done all along: capture King River and torture the man until he revealed where Terra was. No more convoluted plans involving hidden temples and mystic scrolls—mystic scrolls that didn’t even work properly, no less. No more journeying across half of Elitia. No more nonsense. He wasn’t made for that sort of thing anyway. Straightforward, to the point, and ruthless—that was his way.

He looked at Isis. Her agitation had been growing since they’d set foot inside the temple, and at the revelation that Terra was not in fact there, she’d been driven to the verge of a nervous breakdown. Not exactly the state he needed her in if she was to help him in his plan. Though it was unlikely she would allow him to harm her king, perhaps she could at the very least get him to where he needed to go. That meant he would just have to leave her in the dark until it was too late to turn back. But he really didn’t want to have to kill her. Not after all they’d been through together.

“Isis, where’s the portal to Laelia?” Jason asked her.

She bit her lip. “Why?”

“Because we’re taking it.”

She studied him closely for a moment, her eyes trembling.

“Isis?”

“Too many guards. Not a good idea,” she muttered, whether to him or herself he did not know.

There couldn’t be so many guards at the Gateway. And there had already been too many delays. This would end today, once and for all.

“Please, let’s just go. Now,” she pleaded.

A bullet shot past Jason’s ear, tearing into the stone wall behind him. Selpe soldiers stood in the open doorway, clogging the temple’s exit. Jason threw Isis around the corner. He poked his head out just long enough to launch knives at the front two men, then jumped back. He repeated the motion three more times, topping it off with a few Phantom mind blasts. The soldiers screamed and cracked as their numbers diminished, but still they pressed on. Bullets hammered into the stone walls, flinging free bits of sharp rock.

Isis crouched with her back to the wall, flicking her hands against each other.

“Hey, Isis,” Jason said, shaking her by the shoulders. “They won’t hurt you again. I promise. But you need to pull yourself together. We have no way out now but through the portal to Laelia. You must lead us there.”

She peeked around the corner at the soldiers, muttering, “Stupid Selpes.” She took a deep breath, then slid her back up the wall until she was standing. “Follow me.”

Jason took a moment to launch a final barrage of knives at the soldiers, hoping it was enough to cover their retreat. He then followed her down another corridor, which spilled out into an open courtyard littered with overturned chairs. Isis locked the door behind them and stepped out into the icy air. Storm clouds were moving over them. It would only get colder from there on out.

Isis extended a shaking finger toward a cracked pot. Jason’s eyes honed in on the spot of distorted air.

“The portal,” he said.

When the locked door behind her buzzed, Isis jumped so high she nearly banged her head on the thin glass ceiling. The Selpes—what remained of their numbers—would be upon them in seconds.

“Well, I guess we don’t have a choice,” she grumbled and disappeared through the portal.

Jason followed her through. When he came out on the other side, he nearly tripped over Isis. She was standing in the middle of the circular room, completely encased by a solid ring of Selpe soldiers.

Jason assessed the scene. Forty men, possibly more. Only six Diamond Edges. Between him and Isis, they might be able to take them. She would just have to get her hands a little dirty.

The thought had no sooner entered his head when Jason felt woozy. His head spun and his legs collapsed beneath him, sending him to the floor. Swirls of color and light danced across his eyes, and he felt as though a weight were on him, pressing him through the floorboards. He’d been drugged. He looked up at Isis through blurred vision. She had drugged him.

His mind flashed to the tea, those seemingly harmless sips she’d offered him. Its duplicitous elements had lain in wait through that hour in the cold, primed to strike the moment his body jumped to warmer surroundings. She had always meant to bring him here, to Laelia. She hadn’t escaped the Selpes. They had let her go. From the moment she had returned to Eclipse, she’d been scheming and plotting, putting everything in place to ensnare him, to deliver him into the hands of her Selpe masters.

“I’m so sorry, Jason. I had no choice,” Isis whispered, her teary eyes staring down at him as he passed out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

~ The Accomplice ~

526AX August 23, Orion

WINTER’S GATE WAS a complete mess. Ariella had survived the city of mechanical menaces in the air by jumping out of it. And she’d survived the blizzard on the ground by running into the temple and barring the doors shut behind her. She’d expected a sanctuary. What she’d found were pools of blood and a graveyard of fresh, unburied corpses. The bodies were of Selpe soldiers. She wasn’t sure if she should be more unsettled by the presence of dozens of Selpes in a remote Elition temple—or of whatever had massacred them.

And then she learned that it had been Jason. Jason had killed the Selpe soldiers. Isis was with him, and Ariella had missed them by only a few hours. But she couldn’t worry about that right now. She had to tell King River what had happened to Hayden and Ian Selpe. And to Silas.

“The Selpes have already given up Hayden and Ian for dead. The official line remains it was an accident in the Oasis lab,” he told her as she finished her report.

They were standing in his apartment inside the Orion imperial palace. King River stood with regal grace. Ariella was poking the corner of his carpet with her boot.

“They could be responsible,” she said.

“Perhaps, but all we know at this point is that someone—maybe Lady Cassandra—hired the Helleans and the Crescent Order to get Hayden and Ian through that portal to…another world, you say?”

“According to one of the assassins, yes. And I think Silas knew it too. There was something in his eye as he turned to go through the portal, as though he didn’t expect to see any of us for a long time—if ever again.”

“And still he went after them.” King River nodded, the hint of a smile on his lips. “Good. If anyone can keep them safe, Silas can. Wherever they ended up.”

“You don’t believe they were brought to another world?”

“I’m not sure what to believe. Such things are mentioned in our old tales, of course, but those are stories of long ago. I cannot say whether they were meant to be literal accounts or just metaphors.”

“Silas told me that he's been to another world,” she said.

“Has he? Well, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, Silas is very old. He’s seen things that few Elitions currently alive ever have. Or ever will.” King River folded his hands in front of him. “We just have to trust that Silas will keep Hayden and Ian Selpe safe and help them find their way back here. In the meantime, I don’t think the Selpes need to know that the brothers are anything but dead. It wouldn't stop what is happening here now, and if any of them were responsible, they might try again.”

“And what is happening here?” She was almost afraid to ask.

The faint smile crumbled from his lips, displaced by a grim scowl. “The rulers of the Selpe territories will soon be convening to select the next leader of the Selpe Empire.”

“The territory rulers? I thought the Selpes followed a line of succession,” said Ariella.

“They do, but in this case there are two individuals with an equal claim to the throne,” King River explained. “Ambrose Selpe’s niece and nephew, Veronica Frostwater and Aaron Pall. They are the two candidates the territory rulers must choose from.”

She tried to keep her voice steady as she asked, “Aaron Pall?” She could feel time creeping slowly toward that frightful foresight, the first of many nightmares.

“Yes, he's Ambrose Selpe’s nephew,” King River told her. “Veronica Frostwater is an accomplished mistress of manipulation with many allies. She was the clear favorite. Until today, when Aaron pulled suddenly into the lead.”

“What happened?” Though she'd foreseen Aaron on the Selpe throne, she could scarcely believe it would come to pass.

“Aaron would claim it's his charm that is finally winning them over. Really, it is his repugnant schemes,” Isis said as she entered the room. Her ponytail was lopsided and caked with dirt and blood. What remained of her bodysuit gripped her body in black strips, as though it had endured a thousand lacerations.

Ariella reached out to embrace her, but Isis only recoiled, avoiding her eyes altogether. She noticed that her friend was also avoiding eye contact with King River. And she was keeping a good distance from Davin, who had walked in behind her.

“What’s going on?” Ariella looked at Isis. “I just came from Winter’s Gate.”

Isis’s shoulders slouched, as though a tree had just fallen upon them, burying her alive—but just barely alive.

“They said you were with Jason. There were dead Selpe soldiers everywhere. What happened there?”

Isis’s pained expression said she'd rather be set on fire than talk about it.

“My son has done something horrible,” King River declared with a hard look at Davin.

“How is this my fault?” he growled. “I didn't tell Aaron to send thirty Selpe soldiers to Winter’s Gate.”

“No, you only allowed fifty into the Gateway,” countered King River.

Fifty Selpe soldiers in the Gateway, waiting there for Isis and Jason the moment they came through the portal. Ariella wasn’t sure even the Elite Phantom could fight his way out of that. She turned toward Isis, but her friend had retreated to the corner. Her back was pressed against the wall, which seemed to be the only thing keeping her on her feet.

“Isis,” said Ariella. “Where's Jason?”

A tear slipped from Isis’s eye.

“Isis?”

She shook her head. “Gone.” Her voice shook and cracked. She sat down on the floor and buried her face in her hands. “And it’s all my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” said King River, looking at his son.

Davin tilted up his chin, his face set with stubbornness. There was something defensive about the way he was standing, which meant he was feeling guilty about something.

“Is Jason…” Ariella couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. Or look at Isis.

“He’s in the Orion imperial prison,” King River told her.

Ariella released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding in. “Not dead then.”

“He might not be dead, but I am dead to him.” Isis wiped the back of her hand across her wet cheek. “It’s all my fault.”

Ariella reached out to her friend. “Isis…”

She said nothing, but her sapphire eyes trembled, pooling over. A few more seconds, and they would burst open like a split dam. She would be mortified to break down in front of King River and Davin, and there was no way Ariella would be getting any details out of her with them around. She considered her options. It would be really uncouth of her to ask the high king of Elitia and his son to leave their own apartment.

Ariella looked Isis up and down, noting the massive rips slashed across the black bodysuit stained with blood. She looked like she’d stepped straight off the battlefield. Even her hair was caked with mud and blood.

“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up,” Ariella said and scooped an arm around her, leading her toward the door.

Isis’s eyes darted between her and King River and Davin, as though she were considering the least painful of two deaths. She matched Ariella’s steps rather than pushing free of her hold. She’d either made her decision or decided it really didn’t matter. She looked like she just wanted to be left alone, but Ariella wasn’t playing along. Friends didn’t leave friends to wallow alone in their own misery. No, this would require a whole lot of chocolate-covered strawberries. They were Isis’s favorite. If anything could bring her back from the brink of devastation, they would be it.

Isis also had an apartment in the palace, a small unit with a view overlooking the rose gardens. Ariella led her there now, keeping her arm firmly around her shoulder.

“I don’t want to talk,” Isis said as they entered her room.

Ariella set her sword down on the stand beside the door. “Ok.”

“Ok?”

“Yes, ok.” She nudged Isis into the bathroom. “Maybe no one has been brave enough to tell you, but you’re dirty and gory. And you stink. I’m here to make sure you take a bath.” She turned the knob, and water began pouring into the tub. “And pronto. My nose is burning.”

Isis made a valiant attempt to laugh, but it came out as more of a tortured cry. Nonetheless, she peeled off the remains of her bloody outfit and stepped into the bathtub. For a long time, neither of them spoke again as Ariella helped her to wash the grime off. Streams of red and black poured down her skin, mixing with the soap bubbles. Ariella picked up a bottle of strawberry-vanilla scented shampoo and worked her fingers through Isis’s long hair. Once pale golden, her hair had brightened into a vibrant pink-blonde, the effects of going off the serum that had inhibited her powers and subdued her features to the point of making her appear almost human.

No one could possibly think this hair belonged to a human now, Ariella thought as she combed through the tangled locks.

Once Isis was clean and the bathwater gritty and brown, Ariella handed her a fluffy white towel. Then, as Isis dried herself off, Ariella raided her closet for clean clothes.

“That’s a running suit,” Isis protested as she was handed a magenta tank top and a pair of snug black tights.

“Does it matter? Do you have somewhere special to be tonight?”

Isis pulled on the clothes and a pair of fuzzy socks without another word, then set about drying her hair. By the time she reappeared from the bathroom, neatly dressed and her dry hair pulled up into a high ponytail, the bowl of chocolate-covered strawberries Ariella had ordered was there. When Isis saw them, her mouth dropped. She extended an eager hand, then pulled it back quickly.

“No, send them back. I don’t deserve them.”

“That’s fine.” Ariella plucked one from the bowl and lifted it to her mouth to take a big, juicy bite. A burst of sweet citrus tingled her tongue. “I ordered them for me.”

Isis’s bottom lip quivered, and she eyed the strawberry with lust. She walked over and sat down beside Ariella on the sofa. “You’re mean.”

“Oh?” Ariella arched a brow and held out the bowl to her. “Do you want one after all?”

Isis snatched the largest strawberry and finished it off in two chomps. “I still don’t deserve it.” She licked the chocolate off her lips. “Oh, I’m damned, Ariella.”

“It’s just a strawberry, Isis. Albeit dipped in chocolate.”

“Not the strawberry. Jason. It’s my fault he’s in that prison. I should have just said no. But I didn’t. I…I helped them capture him,” she choked out. “I betrayed him. He will never forgive me. I will never forgive myself.”

Ariella couldn’t believe Isis would ever betray Jason, not with how she felt for him. But something had happened, and she had. Ariella wanted to help her. She just didn’t think probing her for details on how she’d betrayed the man she was in love with was the best way to go about doing that. Not when it was that series of events which was so obviously tearing her apart. Ariella was about to steer the conversation around the issue when someone knocked. Isis gave the door the evil eye and stuffed another strawberry into her mouth.

“Do you want me to get it?” Ariella asked. “And send them away?”

Isis sighed and swallowed. “No. It wouldn’t do any good. He’d just waltz right in anyway.”

“He?”

Without another word, Isis stood and trudged toward the door. She extended her hand forward hesitantly, hovering it above the knob. Then, with a deep sigh, she opened it.

Aaron stood on the other side, one hand leaned casually against the door frame. He was dressed in an ink-black bodysuit, the collar and sleeves trimmed in pale blue, the pattern of a dagger printed across the chest. Skin-tight and stretchy, it was the athletic suit the Diamond Edges wore when exercising inside the sports building that adjoined the palace, a facility which opened its doors only to them and the Selpe nobility. Since it was unlikely that Aaron was wearing that garish muscle-accentuating outfit to win over the territory rulers, Ariella could only assume that he’d put it on for Isis’s benefit. The way he was leaning against the door frame, trying to subtly flex his muscles, only confirmed her suspicions.

Isis looked him over and seemed to come to the same conclusion. She crossed her arms and growled, “What do you want?”

“No need to bite.” A grin broke across his mouth. “Unless you want to.”

Isis replied with a stony glare.

He lifted his arms into the air. “Ok, ok. I was just coming to check on you.” He traced a finger along the magenta strap of her top. “Though I could stay longer. You appear dressed…for a workout.”

She slapped his hand away. “Not with you.”

His brows rose. “Oh?”

Ariella stepped out from behind Isis, and his smile faded.

“Oh, I see. Well, I suppose you could be keeping worse company.”

What exactly is that supposed to mean? Ariella frowned at him.

“Ariella is my friend. And so is Jason,” Isis added with a Phantom glare.

“Not anymore, my love,” he simpered. “The untetherable assassin Jason Chanz has been tethered. Elusive, cunning, deadly as he was, even he proved himself not immune to the siren’s charms. You. You have accomplished what no other ever has. You should be proud.”

The fight in Isis’s eyes died instantly, and she braced herself against the wall for support. “No, I’m not proud. I’m ashamed. How could you…make me a part of your scheme?”

“Without you, we never would have captured Jason Chanz. Drugging him. Brilliant! It may have been my plan, but you were the catalyst that made it happen.”

“Those soldiers at Winter’s Gate weren’t part of the plan.”

“Just as insurance, my love. We couldn’t have you getting cold feet.” Aaron stroked his index finger down the side of her face. “You look magnificent.”

“Well, I feel horrid,” Isis shot back, retracting.

“It will pass.” Aaron stepped forward into the room, brushing his lips against her ear. “That rogue will no longer trouble you. And even should he crawl his way out of that prison cell he so much deserves, he will never look at you in that way again. Not after you betrayed him,” he whispered. “You are mine now. Don’t forget that.”

Before Ariella could kick him out of the room, he retreated from the doorway. He reappeared a few seconds later with a large wooden trunk, which he set into Isis’s hands.

“Here are some things for later. The blue one is for tonight,” he told her. “And I’ll see you at eighteen-thirty in the ballroom. The nobility of the Selpe Empire hunger for details on Jason Chanz’s capture. I will do the talking.”

“I understand,” she replied quietly, setting the trunk down behind her.

Aaron nodded. “Now kiss me goodbye, and I will take my leave of you.”

As he tilted his face forward, Ariella expected Isis to slap it. Instead, she leaned forward to kiss him lightly once on his lips. His fingers locked around her waist and held her there for a moment, staring at her with hungry, exhilarated eyes. As soon as he turned to walk back down the hallway, Ariella closed the door and turned to face her friend.

“Isis?” When she didn’t respond, Ariella nodded toward the trunk. “What is it?”

Isis opened the lid and pulled out a long, dark blue evening gown that sparkled like a sky of stars at midnight. She draped it over the back of the nearest chair. As she peered into the trunk a second time, dread spread across her face.

“Isis?”

She only pointed into the open trunk, her finger trembling as though at any moment the lid would chomp down on it. Ariella moved in closer for a better look and found a neatly-folded white dress.

“Another dress?”

“Not just any dress.” Isis sighed. “My wedding dress.”

“Wedding…dress?”

“The night Aaron is crowned emperor, I will be married to him.”

“Married?” Ariella gasped at the realization of her second nightmare.

“Yes.”

“You sound awfully certain the Selpes will choose him.”

“Aaron is certain, and I…” Isis backtracked to the sofa and plopped down, throwing up a cloud of dejection. “I have come to realize that he always gets what he wants.”

“Do you love him?” Ariella asked her.

“Of course not. What a ridiculous question.”

“Then why…”

“It was part of Davin’s deal with him.”

Well, that explained King River’s outrage. He absolutely loathed the idea of any Elition being traded off to the Selpes like nothing more than some exotic sparkling trinket—and he had worked tirelessly to counter any such transactions.

But what would possess Davin to make such a deal? Much as Ariella tried to ignore it, it was obvious the prince of Elitia had feelings for Isis. No matter his ambition or his friendship with Aaron, he wouldn’t just trade her to the Selpes. There had to be more to it than that. A whole lot more.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

~ Veronica Frostwater ~

526AX August 23, Orion

AMBROSE SELPE WAS dead. Both his sons were presumed dead. And that left the Selpe Empire with somewhat of a predicament: who would take the throne? Names were tossed about here and there, including those of ambitious nobles who had taken the liberty to throw in their own for consideration. It had even been suggested that the Advisory Council be transformed into a Ruling Council and take the place of the emperor.

Preposterous idea, thought Aaron. The council members’ love of bickering would stall the empire in its tracks.

But when it came right down to it, there were only two real choices.

Lady Veronica Frostwater, daughter of Ambrose Selpe’s beloved sister Cordelia, had spent her life in the courts of the Selpe nobility, winning them over with her honey-coated compliments. She had an instinctive knack for knowing exactly what everyone wanted to hear and expressing everything they’d ever wanted to say in such a way they could never quite articulate. To the war mongers she was a hawk and to the peaceful spirits a dove. Everyone loved her, it seemed.

Everyone but Aaron, that was. And he just happened to be the other name up for consideration. Aaron Pall was the son of Ambrose’s not-so-beloved younger brother Gabriel, whose wildly unsuccessful attempt to usurp the throne ten years ago had cost him his own life, as well as that of Kira, his wife and coconspirator. The scheme had all gone down in a matter of days, so fast that the first Aaron had heard of any of it was already news of his parents’ deaths.

Adrian Greenwood, the empire’s most powerful lord, had used their deaths to push Aaron to greater ambition than ever before. Lord Adrian came to him with promises of greater wealth, power, and revenge against the men responsible for killing Gabriel and Kira Pall. All Aaron had to do was serve him.

As promised, he rose through the ranks quickly, ascending to the prestigious position of major and leader of the elite Diamond Edges, who in addition to being sent off on the most dangerous and difficult of missions and policing the regular Selpe military, were also under the direct supervision of Lord Adrian himself.

By this time, many were speaking of Aaron, publicly praising his skill and privately delighting in his bloody escapades. Some wondered if he wouldn’t be better suited for the cut-throat world of politics than the literal cutting of throats, but Aaron paid little attention to their whispers, at least for many years. He didn’t much fancy the dull life led by an idle court squatter like his annoying cousin Veronica. All that mattered to him was that he had the sort of status that made people quite willing to do whatever he wanted, which came in handy whenever he had to deal with self-important soldiers or any of those ridiculous turkeys who called themselves Selpe nobility.

As an added benefit, his position was a big plus with all the ladies—not that he’d ever had trouble in that department. Well, except with a certain stubborn Elition. But she was special. High-spirited, willful, and so downright frustrating that he felt like punching his fist through the wall—she’d turned him down. Multiple times even. But he was confident she would give up fighting him eventually. He was wearing her down; he could tell. He had tasted her sweet lips before, and he would do so again.

But there were bigger issues at the moment. Much as Aaron loathed the monotony that was sure to come with the title of emperor, he yearned infinitely more for the power it would bestow. He could change the Selpe Empire, lead it to the realization of its true potential. The thought was utterly intoxicating.

The Advisory Council would side with him. Lord Adrian had already guaranteed that. However, there was still the matter of the rest of the ruling nobles, most of whom seemed positively infatuated with Veronica’s supposed charm.

Speaking of the witch, she would be arriving shortly in Orion aboard her private luxury airship, a gaudy toy adorned with so much gold and diamonds that it was a wonder the thing could lift off the ground. After over a week of flying around the empire on her latest sweet-talking tour, Veronica had finally come to Orion to stalk everyone of any importance, bombarding them with her usual arsenal of compliments and flurry of silly air kisses.

“Aaron, darling, how are you doing?” she asked all too cheerfully as she clasped his shoulders with her black-gloved hands.

He tried to remember this was war, and she was the enemy, but it took all he had not to burst out laughing at her ridiculous outfit. She had selected a tight-sleeved peacock blue and green dress cut halfway up her thighs in front, exposing her knee-high, high-heeled shiny black boots, one tied with a blue ribbon, the other with green. The dress fanned out in cascades of heavy fabric, dropping to a long train that slithered across the ground behind her as she walked. From her shoulders rose what could only be described as a semi-dome of stiff, iridescent material, extending up to the base of her head. Her dark hair had been twisted and contorted into some indistinguishable shape and adorned with enough gems, feathers, and decorative combs for a dozen women. On the very top, situated in the nest of hair, was a gold wire-framed hat whose odd shape most resembled antlers. And it was draped with sagging strings of diamonds. Aaron was no stranger to the sways of fashion, but this outfit was outright ridiculous. Even by Orion standards.

“Veronica,” he nodded.

“Oh, you never were one much for conversation, were you?” she commented with a smile, taking his arm.

“No, I’m more of a ‘stab them and they’re dead’ sort of person,” he said drily.

At this, she giggled like a twelve-year-old. “Aaron, you are such a hoot. Really you are. Remind me to keep you around when I’m empress. I often find myself in need of a good laugh.”

“Assuming you become empress,” said Aaron.

“Well, that’s not really even a question, is it? Oh, Aaron dear, don’t you see? This whole proceeding is just a formality. What I mean to say is, who is better suited to sit at the head of the Selpe Empire: a refined, level-headed lady trained in the arts of negotiation and social nuances, or a hot-tempered boy whose last bath—forgive me—seems to have been taken in blood?” she posed, plugging her nose as she looked at him. “The choice is clear.”

Aaron didn’t respond, but as he left her at the entrance to the restaurant, he lifted his arm very discreetly and took a sniff. Sure, he’d just been working out, but he did not smell that bad. Even so, he would be showering before the gathering of nobles that evening.

* * *

526AX August 23, Orion

“She is nothing but a silly, superficial girl,” Lord Adrian fumed.

“But?” Aaron asked him.

“But she has nonetheless managed to win over the support of half of the Selpe nobility,” he admitted.

It was only two hours until the evening’s gala, when the forty ruling lords and ladies would meet to speak with Aaron and Veronica. It was the first of many social gatherings that would eventually conclude with the selection of the Selpe Empire’s new head. Lord Adrian had come to Aaron’s room fifteen minutes ago to discuss their strategy, but thanks to his incessant pacing he’d done little more than draw lines of scratches into the glossy cherrywood floor.

“The time I have spent working on this, putting all the pieces into place for you to take the throne, and that wretched woman…she…she…”

“She’s just better at it,” Aaron finished for him.

“Well, thank you for that,” grumbled Lord Adrian, running a hand through his silver-grey hair. “Yes, she’s better at it, ok? But she has done nothing else but garner support since Ambrose Selpe was murdered and his sons kidnapped three months ago. I, on the other hand, have had other things on my plate—like actually taking care of my territory. They don’t rule themselves, you know.”

“Where do we stand?” Aaron asked him.

“You have the support of the Council. Well, assuming that stubborn old bat Rosalind doesn’t abstain, as she’s been threatening to do. But I think you’ll get her. As for King River, who knows what he will vote. He doesn’t much like you—and he’s quite upset with the both of us at the moment—but from the way he speaks of Veronica, he dislikes her even more. So, I think you’ll get his vote too,” he replied. “As for the other nobles, the way it stands now you’re sure to get Rowe, Meadows, and Crimson. Their lands all border the Avans, and consequently understand the need for a strong ruling hand, not some wishy-washy missy who will invite Sarah Avan over for tea and biscuits.”

That was exactly the sort of thing Veronica would do. The two ladies would probably spend the entirety of their meeting comparing ridiculous hats. Aaron chuckled at the image.

Lord Adrian met the chuckle with a hard look. He obviously didn’t think it was the least bit funny. “You’ll also get Kempton,” he said. “He’s still quite upset about the attack on his capital city of Decia, but he’s pleased with the swift response you initiated against the Revs. The other twenty-five are still up in the air. Veronica has been working her charms on them, but I think you may still come out on top. News of the capture of Jason Chanz is beginning to reach my colleagues’ ears, and they are impressed. He was supposed to be uncatchable. I’m already working on making them think this was your doing.”

“It was my doing.”

“Yes, of course. We just need to make sure everyone knows it. They all live in fear of Jason Chanz. They will support an emperor who has proven himself both strong and cunning. You will need to convince them that you are one such man.”

“Thank you for your support, Lord Adrian. Now, I should start readying myself for tonight.”

Lord Adrian nodded. “As should I.” He turned and walked out of the room.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Aaron crossed his living room and passed into the bathroom. He stepped out of his sport shoes and walked barefoot across the cool marble surface. Rows of tiny square tiles in three shades of blue covered the walls, punctuated by a border of jet blue tiles at eye level.

He passed the hot tub, large enough to comfortably seat four. Set atop a low platform, the tub was the central point of the bathroom. A neatly folded pale blue towel was draped over the two layers of steps that led up to it. Aaron had lived many exhilarating moments in that tub—but not today. His destination was the shower. He had no intention of suffering hours of Veronica’s snide comments and upturned nose. That evening, no one would be able to fault either his appearance or smell. Perhaps, when this was all over, his beloved would join him for a dip in the tub. As he stripped out of his bodysuit and turned on the hot water, he smiled at the thought.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

~ The Prisoner ~

526AX November 4, Orion

SOFT FOOTSTEPS CREPT up behind Isis. Hands brushed past her shoulders, trying to lock her into a tight hold. She grabbed her assailant’s arm and flipped him over her shoulder. A loud smack told her that his back had hit the floor. Her foot found his chest, and she tore the blindfold from her eyes to find Aaron lying on the mat. He winked at her and pushed off his hands to jump up, but she kept her foot in place. He smacked against the mat a second time.

“This isn’t really working,” he commented, rubbing his head. “I think you need more than just a blindfold.”

“You’re the one who insisted that I spar with you,” Isis replied.

She released her foot and stepped back, but Aaron didn’t stand up. He shifted his weight to lean on one arm and rolled onto his side. As he looked up at her, a wide grin spread across his face. He licked the blood from his lips, which were still dripping from his last attempt to sneak up on her. His eyes shone with equal amounts of amusement and exhilaration. Trust a Diamond Edge to get a high off of being back-flopped.

“Yes, I did,” he agreed, extending his free hand up toward her.

Sighing, Isis grabbed a hold of his hand to pull him up. She released it as soon as he was on his feet, but it was not soon enough to avoid the squeeze he gave her before walking over to the weapon stands at the edge of the mat. He selected a coil of white rope, then returned to her.

“I am not a doll you can just play with as you wish,” Isis told him as he wrapped the rope around her hands, binding them together.

Aaron finished the job with a tight knot. “Of course not. You are a marvelous woman and a superb fighter.” He looked up from the knot and met her eyes with a warm smile free from his usual flourish of overdone confidence. “You just need someone to remind you of that.”

Isis hadn’t done much of anything since her return to Orion. For the past two months, she’d gone through the motions—done everything that was expected of her to fulfill Davin’s end of the deal. She’d been Aaron’s date at more parties than she could count, flashing hundreds of fake smiles at hundreds of members of the Selpe aristocracy. She’d stood silently beside Aaron, holding to his arm like a piece of Elition eye candy as he boasted to them of his triumph, the capture of the world’s deadliest assassin.

She hadn’t trained. She hadn’t socialized. She hadn’t even seen Ariella since the day of her arrival. She had eaten little and slept less. When she looked into the mirror, she saw only a ghost—a pale, thin ghost who would soon waste away into nothingness. Forget the blindfolds and the ropes. In another few weeks, Aaron would be able to blow her over with a simple sneeze.

“I don’t want to fight,” she told him. There was no fight left in her.

He set his hands on her shoulders. “You can do this.”

The blindfold fell over her eyes, blacking out the world. Isis heard Aaron’s bare feet track back several paces, then begin to circle around her. He was well-trained, moving more quietly than any human she had ever met. His steps would have been silent to human ears. Unfortunately, she couldn’t help but hear him, nor could she simply stand there and not fight, much as she wanted to.

She turned slowly, tracking the sound of his movements. For years, it had been drilled into her until it was instinct. Her heart rate picked up, anxiety racing in her veins. She was blind and bound. She was vulnerable.

Isis turned quickly to meet a rustle of movement, and just barely sidestepped Aaron in time. She heard him turn to stay facing her. Before he could move again, she lifted her bound hands, gouging him hard. She felt her thumb meet his collarbone, and he stumbled back.

“Good,” he grunted.

In a few awkward movements of her bound hands, Isis managed to pull the blindfold off her eyes. Aaron was doubled up, his face contorted with pain.

“Are you all right?” she asked, stepping forward. She hadn’t heard the bone break, but she had to be sure. It would be a lot more than her own life on the line if something happened to him.

“Fine,” he said, straightening slowly. He untied the white rope, his fingers lingering at her wrists. “See? I knew you could do it.” Smiling, he brushed the hair from her face. “There’s life left in you yet.”

“I should be going,” she said, looking away from his intense stare.

Aaron caught her arm as she moved away. “Wait.” He held to her until she met his eyes again. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For hurting you,” he replied.

Isis said nothing. She watched as he returned everything they’d used to the racks. She didn’t move until he tugged her forward.

“Hit me,” he said, standing before her. “Tell me you want to kill me.” His voice wavered. “Tell me you hate me. I deserve it all.”

Isis took a deep breath. The offer was tempting. “No.”

“No? Aren’t you angry?”

She shook her head. “I’m not anything right now. Not anymore. I’m just…numb.”

“I thought this would make me happy,” he said. “But it feels so empty. So completely hollow.”

“I have done everything you’ve asked,” she protested. “You cannot kill—”

He held up his hand. “I won’t hurt them. No one will,” he promised, cupping his hands around hers. “It’s not your fault. I can’t make you love me.”

“Then let me go,” she pleaded.

He stared at her for so long that Isis almost dared to hope he was considering it. “No,” he finally said. “I cannot. The thought of him with you…it makes me murderous,” he growled. “I am a horrible, selfish man. I want you all for myself. I’m sorry.”

She raised her hand to strike him—then froze. The eyes of a dozen Diamond Edges glared down on her from the windows looking over the gym. If she struck him now, she could hardly claim it was just training. Aaron followed her gaze up to the viewing area.

“Thanks to you, Jason will never forgive me for what I have done,” Isis said, lowering her hand.

“I know. And the horrible thing is that I don’t regret that part—not even a bit. I want him to hate you, so that he will not stand in the way of your loving me.”

“You are a monster, Aaron Pall,” she told him.

“I know.” He sighed. “I know.” He gave her a hopeful half-smile. “But you seem to have an unusual capacity to love monsters.”

“Jason—”

“Kills for profit,” he cut in. “And without remorse.”

“There’s more to him than that,” she protested.

“And there’s more to me too.” He leaned in to whisper against her ear. “You gave me a chance once before. Why can’t you do so again?”

She had put up such a thick wall between the two of them that she’d nearly forgotten how intoxicating the heat of his breath against her skin was. She felt herself arching forward, yearning to be close to him. Letting him slip past her barrier had been a bad idea. They could not be together, no matter how much she wanted it at that moment.

Isis pulled back. “Because it will only end in death and suffering,” she said, forcing the foresight images into her head. She and Aaron drenched in blood. A field strewn with the corpses of Elitions. It must not come to be.

“It seems to me like you’re not so numb after all,” he commented.

Isis looked down at her own clenched fists. “Congratulations, Aaron,” she said, tears of anger and desperation pooling in her eyes. “You’ve made me feel something.”

“And what do you feel?” he asked.

“Rage,” she snarled. “Complete and total rage.”

“It’s a start.” He moved in closer. “But I’d better get you back home before my men foolishly decide to jump through that window in an attempt to rescue me from your seething glare.”

He turned to give the Diamond Edges a parting wave, then wrapped his arm around Isis and led her from the gym. They passed more Diamond Edges in the halls. This sports complex was open only to them and the Selpe aristocracy, which made Aaron the closest thing to a friendly face in the entire building. Isis tried not to think about how good it felt to have his arm around her. Why? What the hell was the matter with her?

Numb, she reminded herself. Numb is safe. Anything else will push me down that path again. Back to that time when Aaron and I were close.

They followed an underground tunnel to the palace, perhaps not evading the bite of winter’s breath but at least avoiding the frost that coated every leaf, branch, and stone in the imperial grounds above them. Then it was only a short walk up the stairs and down the hall to Isis’s apartment. She looked at him, waiting for him to go, but he stayed firmly in place, his arm still wrapped around her shoulder.

“Aaron,” she said.

“I’m coming in,” he replied.

“Of course you are,” she sighed, unlocking the door.

As she stepped inside, she was met with the sight of a pink and orange dress hanging from the curtain rod of her balcony window. Sunlight streamed through the glass, making the dress glow like a sunset. Isis walked past the sofa to the window and brushed her hand across the translucent top layer of chiffon. The dress was held up on the hanger by two slender straps, each one such a dark shade of pink that they were nearly red. The color faded gradually lighter, reaching a shade of carnation pink at the waist, then continuing further down the full length of the skirt, darkening to vibrant orange at the bottom. The dress was a masterpiece, as much a work of art as an item of clothing. It was beautiful.

And Isis dreaded the very thought of putting it on. “Not another one,” she groaned.

“Tonight, we will be guests at the party at Lord Vencent’s estate on Imperial Lane,” Aaron said, stepping up behind her. “You will look stunning in that dress.”

Isis knew she would. She always looked good in whatever Aaron picked out. But that wasn’t the point.

“I don’t want to go,” she said softly, hiding her face behind her hands.

Aaron set his hands over hers. “I know. Neither do I.”

Isis turned around in surprise. “You? But you love parties. And you love the spotlight.”

“But I do not love Veronica Frostwater. Her presence kills the fun for me every single time.”

“I’m surprised you and Lord Adrian didn’t see to it that she met with an ‘unfortunate accident’.”

“Believe me, the thought did cross our minds on more than one occasion. Veronica certainly knows how to make a nuisance of herself,” he said. “But she has a lot of allies. I will never get their support by killing her. The nobles have to choose me over her. That’s the only way.” He gave her a resigned smile. “So until they make their decision, the two of us will just have to suffer through these parties together.”

“It’s the masses of Selpe aristocracy converging on me like hungry wolves that I’m worried about, not Veronica Frostwater. I’ve never even spoken to the woman. Somehow we’ve avoided crossing paths at every gathering thus far these two months.”

“Only because I’ve moved us to a different room every time she got close,” Aaron told her. “Veronica has had her eye on you. She’d love nothing better than to get you alone into a room with her, where she can whisper poisonous words into your ear, turning you against me. She is a viciously clever and manipulative woman.”

“She cannot turn me against you. Not as long as I’m not free to choose. I am your prisoner, Aaron,” she reminded him glumly.

“I wish you’d stop thinking of me as your prison warden,” he said.

“But it’s the truth.”

He frowned. “If you put a wedge between us, Veronica will use it to stab us both in the back. That’s what she does. She’s a shark. She can smell weakness a continent away, and she will exploit it. Remember that.”

“Fine.” Isis looked away from him. “I will play my part,” she told him. She kept her eyes on the dress, trying to lose herself in the soft streams of color.

“What happened to your rage?”

I buried it. It’s not safe to feel anything around you.

“It has passed,” she told him.

He set his hand on her chin, turning her face toward him. “I don’t believe you,” he whispered with a smile. “I think it’s still in there, waiting to come out. Along with a hundred other feelings.” He kissed her softly on her lips. “I know there are even a few somewhere in there for me.”

“Nothing you want to come out.”

He chuckled. “Perhaps not, but it’s a start. I would take hate over indifference any day.” He walked toward the door. “I’ll see you in two hours.”

“Aaron.”

He stopped in the open doorway and turned to look back at her.

“I don’t hate you for what happened,” she said. “I hate myself for going along with it.”

Then she closed the door quickly in his face, before she was tempted to ask him to stay. He would agree, the two of them would end up kissing again, and then she would forget why she shouldn’t be with him. Even if Jason now hated her, she still loved him. Trying to drown her pain with Aaron not only wouldn’t help, it was a recipe for disaster. She could not be with him. She must not be with him. Not if she didn’t want to become the bloodthirsty monster of her foresights.

* * *

526AX November 4, Orion

Lord Vencent’s Orion villa was far too close to the imperial palace. The walk took but five minutes, giving Isis little time to settle her nerves before they arrived at the front gate. Then again, a journey a thousand times longer would hardly have sufficed to calm her. It would only have drawn out the inevitable. She was entering into a nest of vipers—men and women who would love nothing more than to tear her apart limb by limb—and rather than flee or fight, she had to stand there, smiling while they gloated with glee over Jason’s plight. The only thing which made the experience marginally bearable was that Aaron had taken full credit for the whole thing, sparing her from the torture of the Selpes’ praise and congratulations for managing to ensnare the world’s most elusive target.

Aaron led her inside the entrance hall. A crystal chandelier hung from the high ceiling, twinkling with a pale blue light. It shone down on the white marble floors that covered the coat area and the wide curving staircase that led up to the next floor. The soles of Isis’s sandal-strapped stilettos were caked with chunks of compacted ice, so she walked carefully over the slippery smooth floors. Though Aaron had a talent for putting together an ensemble that looked good, he knew nothing about what it was like to actually walk around in it.

“Sandals. In November,” she whispered to Aaron.

He moved behind her in one fluid motion, as though it were a rehearsed step in a dance. “You look beautiful,” he whispered back, helping her out of her coat. He stepped back and smiled. “Just beautiful.”

“And now I’m cold,” she said, shivering in her sleeveless dress.

His blue-green eyes twinkled. “You have gloves.”

Isis straightened her thin white gloves so that they covered her elbows. “I feel warmer already,” she said dully.

He chuckled and lifted his arm. “It should be warm inside the ballroom.”

Isis linked her arm in his, and together they ascended the staircase. By the time they reached the top, she wanted to yank off those dreadfully uncomfortable shoes and toss them over the side of the bannister. Instead, she did her best to stick some semblance of a smile on her face and entered the ballroom.

As soon as they stepped inside, at least a hundred eyes turned their way. Isis looked past them all, allowing Aaron to lead her across the floor. She tried not to see the people, but she couldn’t help but notice the enormous fountain in the middle of the ballroom. Framed on all sides by golden platters of pretentious bite-sized food, interspersed with arrangements of orchids, the tiered fountain was as large as a bathtub—but instead of water, red wine rolled in streaming cascades from one pool to another. Apparently, Lord Vencent loved wine enough to make it the centerpiece of his entire party. The multi-tier chocolate fountain in the corner looked miniature by comparison—but far more tempting.

“You will find Vencent over by the cheese corner,” Lord Adrian said as Aaron stopped beside him. “You’d best go stroke his ego first.”

“Ok,” Aaron agreed. He looked at Isis. “Will you be all right for a few minutes?”

“Oh, she’ll be just fine,” Lord Adrian assured him. “Now, go to Vencent before he gets himself into a huff.”

“I’ll be right back,” Aaron promised Isis, pressing her fingers to his lips.

She watched him go, then turned her attention to the cracker stand, which was unfortunately blocked by Lord Adrian’s smug face.

“Young love,” he sighed with dramatic flourish. “How touching.”

The bastard. Isis resisted the urge to stomp down on his toes with her pointy heel and skewer his foot.

“Lord Adrian?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Stuff it,” she growled.

He lifted up a cracker sandwich. “Well, don’t mind if I do,” he replied with a smile and tucked the appetizer neatly into his mouth, licking his fingers for added effect before stalking off to find his next victim.

“That man truly is vile.”

Isis couldn’t see anyone else nearby, but the voice seemed to have come from the other side of the chocolate fountain. Surely enough, a moment later a bundle of feathers dyed in various shades of green and blue began to move from behind the cascade of liquid chocolate. Isis had thought it was just another garish room decoration. As it emerged, she saw the feather bundle was in fact the topping on a smoky grey velvet hat with a sloping brim that covered half a pale face. It was a woman’s face, her lips painted maroon, her cheeks blushed with metallic pink powder.

She stepped out from behind the table, presenting Isis with a full view of her dress, a hybrid of horse riding wear and evening gown. The skirt’s ruffled trim trailed long in the back but was drawn up short in the front, revealing a pair of skin-tight black tights beneath knee-high boots with decorative buckles up the front that clinked as she walked. The top of the dress was sleeveless and bright turquoise with two cream-colored ribbons sewn into vertical strips along each of her sides. A sapphire brooch rested against her collarbone, holding in place a shimmering midnight blue cape that trailed along the floor, swirling left and right like the tail of a sea serpent.

The woman stopped in front of Isis and turned up her face to look at her. “The infamous Elition bride,” she said with a sweet smile. “You are very pretty, my dear.”

“You seem to have me at a disadvantage.”

“Then allow me to introduce myself.” She extended her bejeweled hand. “I am Veronica Frostwater.” Veronica’s maroon lips cracked a wide smile at Isis’s unconscious step back. “I see Aaron has talked about me.”

“Yes.”

Veronica giggled. “What was it this time? Don’t talk to me because my words will poison you? Or don’t look at me because my gaze will turn you to stone?”

Isis almost laughed. Veronica was good—completely disarming, just like the big sister you wanted to tell all your secrets to. Even knowing this, Isis still struggled to keep silent.

“Yes, very pretty indeed,” Veronica said, tucking a stray strand of Isis’s hair back into place behind her headband. “I can certainly see how my cousin grew to be so infatuated with you. But Aaron always was such a rapacious fool, plowing through anyone who stood in the way of what he wanted. I’m sorry that you became a pawn in one of his schemes.”

“I’m fine.”

“And so brave!” Veronica exclaimed, spreading her arms to embrace Isis. “You poor, sweet girl. I know he forced you into this,” she whispered into her ear. “But let me help you. I can free you from him, once and for all. You can go back to your true love.” She stepped back and brushed a tear from Isis’s cheek. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“I…”

Veronica nodded. “I understand, dear. You’re a victim in all of this. Selpe politics are of no interest to you. You want to return home. To Elitia. You want to break Jason Chanz out of that prison and get the hell out of here. I would do the same. For love.”

Isis drank in her words, and they tasted as though they’d come from her own soul.

“My chance for love is gone, long since lost. But I can still help you find your happy—”

Aaron jumped between Isis and Veronica, displacing his cousin’s hand from Isis’s shoulder.

“Ah, Aaron. How lovely to see you again,” Veronica said in coarse monotone.

The smoothness she’d smothered Isis in evaporated from her voice like a popped bubble, and Veronica’s words shattered, her spell broken. Isis shivered, shaking off the enchantment. At least it had felt like enchantment. But Veronica was human. She didn’t wield any magic. Somehow, the knowledge didn’t lessen Isis’s feeling of being violated.

“Lady Veronica,” Lord Adrian said, rushing over to her with a practiced smile.

She inclined her head. “Lord Adrian.”

“I’ve been looking for you all over. Lexi, Keagan, and I are having quite the spirited debate, and we were hoping you could settle it.” He set his arm on her back, nudging her toward the other side of the ballroom. “You see, Keagan says that the East Sea is actually quite warm during the winter months, which he claims is due to the ocean current, but Lexi…”

“Are you all right?” Aaron asked Isis.

“Fine,” she said.

Aaron gave her a hard look.

“She’s just one woman, Aaron.”

“No,” he contested. “Veronica Frostwater is a demon.”

“I would hardly go that far. She’s harmless.”

“If she’s so harmless, then why do you need that?” he asked, pointing at the glass of wine Isis had swiped from a passing waiter.

Isis stared the wine down, but it refused to spill any useful answers.

“She got to you, didn’t she?” Aaron sighed.

“She is adept at picking out just what you want to hear,” admitted Isis. “As though she can read your thoughts. If I didn’t know better, I’d label her a Phantom Enchanter, a double classification nearly unheard of amongst Elitions and outright impossible amongst humans.”

“It’s nothing supernatural. Veronica’s gift comes from a lifetime of practiced manipulation,” he said, turning up his nose after a single sniff of her wine.

He set the glass down beside the cracker stand, then waved down a passing waiter. The waiter paused before him. The two of them engaged in an incomprehensible debate apparently over berries and spices. After what seemed like an eternity, the waiter scurried off. When he returned, Isis expected some sort of strange dessert, not another bottle of red wine. Especially not one that looked hardly different than the one that had previously sat on his tray. Even the label looked basically the same—not that she was in the habit of scrutinizing wine labels. Aaron, on the other hand, obviously was. His smile at seeing the new wine widened as he hovered his nose over his glass, inhaling deeply. And by the time he’d taken the first sip, he was practically beaming.

“So, now that I’ve spoken to our host Lord Vencent, we must exchange niceties with Lord Ansel, Lady Nerissa, and Lord Ilex,” Aaron said, handing her the second glass of wine.

Isis loathed ‘exchanging niceties’ with Selpe nobles who believed she belonged in a zoo. And Lord Adrian was staring at her from across the room, offering her the occasional subtle wink, as though the two of them had shared in some sort of great conspiracy.

“Do you have a list of names?” she asked Aaron, turning her back to Lord Adrian.

“Yes, Lord Adrian makes me a list for each event,” he confirmed. “He’s constantly visiting with the other territory leaders—with several each day, in fact. Once he has a few he thinks are amenable, he makes a list of people to visit at the next party. I’m supposed to charm them firmly onto our side.”

“It certainly does sound like you don’t want to be here any more than I do,” she said, remembering his earlier comment.

“These political games are a necessary nuisance.” He sighed and lifted his arm to her. “Let’s start with Lord Ilex. I see him over by the grill.”

Isis took a quick sip of wine, then set her glass down on the table. One sip was about all that she could handle before the alcohol catapulted her into a storm of foresights. She laid her gloved arm in Aaron’s, and he led her to the sizzling barbecue grill on the balcony.

* * *

526AX November 5, Orion

It was past midnight before Isis finally escaped the torment of Lord Vencent’s party. But she hadn’t truly escaped. Some other Selpe aristocrat with too much money and not enough time to spend it all was sure to host another garish event within the next few days. She found herself wishing that they would just pick Aaron already, if only so she could be spared any more of this.

Aaron brought her to her apartment door, where he lingered, staring at her with eager eyes. He leaned in so close that Isis could almost taste the strawberries and cream he’d eaten for dessert on his breath. Of course, he knew strawberries were her favorite. Aaron never did anything by accident. Isis closed her eyes, anticipating the kiss. But it never came.

“Come on,” Aaron said, grinning as he took a step back. “Let’s go inside.”

“I am going inside,” she replied, catching her breath. “It’s late, and you’re going home now.”

He took off his coat and folded it over his arm. She made a conscious effort to look away from his exposed arms.

“I ordered us a late night snack,” he said.

Isis had not drunk enough wine to fall for that. “Aaron, I’m tired, and it’s too late for these games.”

“You ate two crackers at the party. You’ve hardly eaten in weeks.” He held up her wrist. “And it’s showing.”

“I’m surprised you’ve noticed.”

“Of course, I’ve noticed,” he said. “And even more importantly, your seamstress has noticed. She told me today that she’s had to take in your wedding dress three times already. The woman was absolutely incensed. She’s under the misguided conception that I am starving you so that I can stand next to a frail waif on our wedding day. If she has to take in your dress one more time, I really think she’s going to jam those frightening scissors of hers through my thigh. So, please, have something to eat with me now.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“The basket’s already been delivered to your room. It’s waiting just inside.”

“Aaron—”

“There’s chocolate cake.” He grinned. “With strawberries on top.”

That did sound good. Isis’s stomach growled in anticipation. Aaron must have heard it because his grin widened.

“So, it’s settled then,” he said, leaning against the doorframe.

He had to know that stance accentuated the muscles in his sculpted, sun-bronzed arms—but hopefully not that she appreciated the view… No, she wouldn’t go down that path. Half the time, she couldn’t even stand the man. The other half, she couldn’t help herself around him. Aaron smirked as he noticed the admiration in her eyes, and Isis cursed her own absurdity. How was he ever going to leave her alone, infatuated as she inevitably behaved around him?

And she was infatuated. That much she could admit to herself. Aaron was a gorgeous, charming man who was actually a lot of fun—but she did not love him. It was just a crush. A crush that if given in to would lead to a bloody future.

But what did it matter how she’d get rid of him anymore, anyway, now that she was to be forever stuck with him in marriage? Perhaps, it was already too late for her.

Isis unlocked her door and went inside. She kept her back to Aaron, but she heard him shut the door after him and walk up behind her.

“Thank you,” he said. “For letting me in.”

“I didn’t have much choice now, did I?” she replied, putting ice into her words.

Her eyes found the basket, a dark woven piece with a blue bow on the handle. The alluring scents of chocolate and strawberries wafted up. Well, at least he hadn’t been lying about that.

“You’re angry with me,” he said, his fingertips pressing lightly down on her arms.

Isis kept her eyes forward—off of him.

“Say something.”

She said nothing and walked over to the basket to put some distance between them. She pulled out a container and opened it to reveal a gigantic slice of cake inside. She set it on the coffee table, then took up a fork. Maybe if she didn’t look at Aaron or speak to him, he would just disappear, leaving her alone to chomp down on the cake bite by bite.

If only she really believed that.

“You’ll feel better if you let it go.”

Isis looked at the fork in her hand. If she ‘let it go’, she just might end up stabbing him. Ha! That would certainly help matters. Like it or not, Aaron was the least of many Selpe evils. Isis saw the way Lord Adrian looked at her. And at the moment, Aaron was all that was standing between the lord of Greenwood and her ending back up in another dark prison, somewhere so hidden and guarded that no one would ever find her.

“Planning on stabbing me?” Aaron guessed.

Isis turned around—and found him far too close for comfort. “The thought had crossed my mind,” she admitted.

“The fact that I’m still standing here, not bleeding out all over your floor, seems to indicate that you’ve decided against that course of action.”

“For now,” she agreed, setting the fork down on the table.

“Then I’d better make the best of the moments I have left in this life.”

As he closed in on her, she countered every forward step he took with a backward one of her own. But the room was far too small.

“Stop,” she said as her back brushed to a halt against the silken-smooth wall.

“Why?” he asked, caressing her face with featherlight fingers.

She batted the offending hand away. “Just stop.”

Aaron was not deterred. With inflamed eyes, he pushed her hard against the wall, and his hands locked around her wrists, holding her securely in place. Isis could have broken free. That wasn’t even a question; she was stronger and faster than Aaron by far. But she found herself struggling against a total lack of willpower to do anything of the sort. She was reminded of their journey to Ribbon Falls over a year ago—and of his talent for making her feel as though she were someone else entirely.

“Wait,” she said, breaking her hands free. Her palms pressed against his chest, blocking him.

“No.” He leaned forward to whisper into her ear. “I have waited far too long for you.”

“But I hate you, Aaron.”

“You also want me.”

To deny that would have been an outright lie, so she repeated her previous statement. “But I hate you, Aaron.”

“Does it matter?” he posed, breathing hotly down her neck.

“It should.”

“I’ll take that as an invitation to kiss you then.”

Aaron’s kiss was wild and impatient, without any of the self-assurance that usually characterized him. And before Isis knew it, her lips had synched to his, and her hands were immersed in his hair, plowing through his soft pale locks. She couldn’t lie to herself. Kissing Aaron felt good—toe-curling, light-headed good.

But she couldn’t forgive him for what he’d done simply because he was a good kisser. Nor could she forget for a moment the warning message of her foresights.

Isis intercepted his mouth with her hand and said, “You need to go now.”

Aaron looked at her, his eyes twinkling with confidence. “You don’t want me to go.”

No, I don’t. “You need to go now,” she repeated, more forcefully this time.

He responded with a polished bow, then gathered up the coat he’d thrown over the back of the sofa. “Until tomorrow, my love,” he said as he left the room.

Isis plopped down onto the sofa. Her eyes fixed on the piece of cake, she tried to work out how she would avoid Aaron for the rest of her life.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

~ Crowned ~

526AX November 20, Orion

TWO-AND-A-half months after Ariella arrived bloodstained and battle-worn in Orion, the Selpe Empire’s territory rulers selected Aaron Pall as their next emperor. During that time, she’d seen nothing of Isis and little of Davin and King River. So she just had to wait in Orion, idly passing time she could have spent better elsewhere, like relaxing on a beach with Isis—sans Selpes and sans drama.

But Isis was trapped in Orion, and Ariella still didn’t know the full story. Even after all those weeks, no one was feeling any chattier about the events that had led to Jason’s incarceration, nor Isis’s part in it. So Ariella was more than a little shocked when her friend sent her a note the morning of the coronation, asking her to come visit her in her apartment.

“I kept hoping he would just forget about the whole wedding thing, but he’s too stubborn-minded for that,” said Isis. “The deliveries started yesterday evening. First it was the shoes. And then all kinds of jewels.” A grim look darkened her face. “This morning, it was lingerie. Aaron delivered that one personally, looking very smug about it too.”

“So that’s why you’re finally speaking to me again,” Ariella replied.

“I wasn’t ignoring you. Not really. I was just feeling…”

“Sad?”

Isis sighed. “Guilty.”

Ariella lay down beside Isis on the sofa and gave her a comforting embrace. “Well, I’m here now.”

“I’m glad.” Isis smile weakly. “I need you now, Ariella. More than ever. The wedding is happening tonight, after Aaron’s coronation. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up from this nightmare. But it’s real. And much as I want to blame Aaron, it’s as much my fault as it is his.”

Ariella squeezed her shoulder. “I doubt that.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done. The lies that I’ve told.”

“Perhaps not,” said Ariella. “But you can tell me.”

Isis sighed.

“Really. You can tell me anything. I won’t judge.”

Before Isis could speak, a knock sounded on the door, and she buried her face under a pillow.

“I’ll just get that then,” Ariella said, standing.

She swore to herself that if it turned out to be Aaron Pall, she was going to break his arm. She noticed her sword set against the wall by the door and picked it up. Or maybe do more than break his arm.

But when she did open the door, instead of Aaron she found a slew of women dressed in the Selpe blue imperial color. The lead woman, a slender figure with knee-high black boots beneath her pencil skirt, set her satchel upon the floor and looked Ariella up and down.

“Well, you’re a pretty one, for sure. And an Elition no less. How exotic of him. There will be a lot of broken hearts across the Selpe Empire tonight, but if Aaron Pall had to settle down, it would be for no less than a beauty like you.”

Ariella nearly choked on the bile that rose in her throat.

“What’s the matter, dear?” the woman asked. “Wedding jitters?”

“You have the wrong Elition,” she said, waving toward the sofa.

Isis peeked over the back edge, eyeing the caravan of seven women with as much trepidation as she would a battlefield of soldiers.

“Ah, yes. You do seem to be more his type,” the woman said with an approving nod.

Ariella didn’t know what she could mean by that, but she took it as a compliment that she was apparently not Aaron’s type. Isis seemed less pleased by the comparison. Maybe the woman had been turned off by the gigantic sword Ariella held in her hand. Aaron probably wasn’t the sort to pursue a woman who could behead him with a single stroke should he hazard to agitate her once too often. Isis certainly presented a softer appearance.

“I’m Zania,” the woman told Isis. “And this is my team. We’ll be getting you ready for your wedding tonight.”

“Thank you, but I do not require assistance.”

A horribly shrill cackle erupted from Zania’s maroon lips. “My dear, you may be beautiful, but I have never seen any bride more in need of my services. When we’re done with you, no one will question your right to be Aaron’s wife and empress of the Selpe Empire.” She flicked a hand toward Isis’s current outfit. “Or were you planning to face the empire’s ruling aristocracy in your pajamas?”

“I…”

Zania gave her a knowing smile. “I thought not. Ladies.” She waved a hand over her shoulder, and her six assistants poured into the room. “Let’s get to work.”

As the women circled around Isis like overly zealous vultures, Ariella cut through their ranks to hold her friend’s hand. Maybe she didn’t quite understand the madness that had befallen Isis, but she could do nothing less than stand by her side as all hell broke loose around them.

“I’m here,” Ariella whispered to Isis.

“Thanks,” she whispered back.

While the women prepared Isis for the ceremony, they gossiped shamelessly, almost as though the two Elitions weren’t even there. They chatted about Isis’s ‘perfect complexion’ and ‘eyes like gemstones’, crudely comparing her features to a long catalogue of women it was rumored Aaron had lured into his bed. Ariella even had to give the most garish of the women a menacing glare. She’d gotten it into her head to try to squeeze Isis’s rump, daring to compare it as one would produce at a farmer’s market. Luckily, the woman decided she preferred keeping her hand to continuing in her foolhardy comparison.

But Ariella kept listening to the women. She felt seriously out of the loop, and everyone knew beauticians were one of the best sources of up-to-date information in Orion. They rotated from villa to villa along the elite Imperial Lane, gathering and spreading gossip.

“Lady Lexi says Lord Adrian believed Aaron needed an added boost to win over enough nobles to be voted in as emperor over his cousin Veronica.”

“Veronica Frostwater?”

“Yep. You know her?”

“I’ve heard the usual gossip. Rumor has it her father left her and her mother to run off with an Elition woman.”

Ariella hadn’t heard this, but that certainly explained Lady Veronica’s very public dislike of Elitions. And it made her a poor choice for ruler of the Selpes. For the sake of Elitia, Ariella found herself actually glad that Aaron had won.

“A child was even born out of his affair.”

“Ethan,” muttered Isis.

Zania nodded. “Yes, Ethan Frostwater. So you’ve heard that story. But don’t you worry, my dear. Unlike Lady Veronica, Aaron is more sympathetic to your kind.” She smiled. “Clearly from his choice of bride. Hey, Julia, didn’t you hear something once about Aaron hanging around with that Elition girl with the turquoise hair?”

“Yeah, it was three or four years ago. But from the way he was trailing her every step, I’m sure nothing ever happened between the sheets.” The woman named Julia wiggled her thick eyebrows up and down.

The other women giggled. Ariella looked at Isis and rolled her eyes. Despite the useful nuggets of information, the beauticians’ gossip was all in poor taste.

“I wonder,” Julia began. “If anything ever happened between Aaron and Veronica.”

The woman strapping Isis into her lingerie snorted. “Ewww. They’re cousins.”

“And, Helen? Such rendezvous have been known to happen amongst the empire’s noble families.”

Helen swatted her lightly on the hand, but a smile crept up her lips. “Naughty girl. Don’t let them hear you speak so. You know how the aristocracy loathes having their dirty little secrets aired out to dry.”

“Well, Aaron would never fall for a superficial ninny like Lady Veronica. She’s lucky if his first act as emperor is not to see to it that she drowns in her own pool.”

The beauticians let out a collective giggle. They sounded altogether too merry at the prospect of another person’s demise.

“Those Diamond Edges are such naughty boys,” said the woman weaving the back ribbon closure of Isis’s corset together. She licked her lips. “Deliciously naughty.”

“Hush, girl. Keep your fantasies to yourself,” Zania snapped. “You’re speaking in front of Aaron’s bride.”

From what Ariella could tell, Isis didn’t seem to care. Or notice. She was too busy staring blankly at her newly painted toes to follow much of their chitchat.

“The word is our stud Aaron won the support of the Selpe nobility by capturing the Elition assassin Jason Chanz. Many of the ruling Selpe families have been victims of that Elition savage.”

“Don’t call him that,” Isis objected.

The women giggled again and patted her on the shoulder with copious winks. They didn’t seem to realize she’d been objecting to their description of Jason, not Aaron. As they brushed, painted, and dressed Isis, their loose tongues continued the outpour of gossip, utterly oblivious to her discomfort. The chattiest of the bunch, a woman with blonde braids, recounted a conversation she’d once had with Aaron. According to her, he’d spent the better part of a morning relaying in minute detail what Isis was to wear on their wedding day, all the way down to the trim of her dress and precise shade of her boots, white with a hint of pink undertone to match her hair. His attention to detail was shocking indeed, especially in someone who seemed happy to revel in his own lack of subtlety.

Isis bore the women’s presence in silence—and finally, hours later, she and Ariella were alone again. Ariella walked up behind her friend, who turned before a full-length mirror, her eyes wide with astonishment as they panned over her own reflection.

The wedding dress was beautiful. It cascaded into a train in back, and fell in front to the tops of her white, high-heeled boots in gracefully tapered layers of fabric. The entire folding and looping of the pale white skirt fabric, which had taken two women the better part of an hour, was truly a work of art. The neckline plunged into a deep V, but her exposed skin was not left unadorned.

There lay a necklace that dropped in long rows of strung white and pink diamonds. It matched the pair of drop earrings in her ears. There were no sleeves to the dress. Instead, it had narrow shoulder straps of gem-studded fabric; from them fell an array of beaded strings, neatly tucked and arranged so that they looped halfway down to her elbows. The chest of the dress was also sewn with subtle patterns formed from diamonds, and the waist pulled dramatically inward, held tightly by the wide satin ribbons that crisscrossed down her back.

Isis’s hair, parted on the extreme side of her head, swept across her forehead and pulled tightly upward into braided coils fastened at the back. The sparkle of the pink diamonds, along with the gloss of her lipstick, caused the pink undertone inside the blonde to pop forward noticeably. Ariella was certain Aaron had selected that color for this very reason. He seemed to be making every effort to showcase Isis’s Elition features, not hide them.

Never before had Ariella seen her friend so adorned and embellished. Much as she hated to admit it, Aaron had good taste. He’d clearly chosen Isis’s entire wedding outfit to augment not only her beauty but also her Elition features, a gutsy move that would leave many Selpe aristocrats seething with outrage. Despite everything else he was—and Ariella could think of more than a few colorful descriptions—he wasn’t ashamed to take an Elition for his bride. She couldn’t help but respect him for that.

A foreboding knock resonated against the wooden door. Isis looked to the clock, her eyes wary. It read fifteen minutes to eight. The coronation would start at eight. Isis retreated to the back glass wall and turned her back on the door to stare out into the garden.

“Shall I get it?” Ariella asked her when a second knock followed.

Taking Isis’s deflated sigh as a yes, she stepped across the wooden floor and opened the door to find Davin on the other side.

“It’s time,” he called past Ariella to Isis.

“I know,” she replied. Her eyes remained fixed on the garden outside for a few seconds longer, then she turned and set her arm in Davin’s, allowing him to lead her to her fate.

* * *

526AX November 20, Orion

The journey through the halls seemed to take hours, but it was over in a few short minutes. Ariella followed closely behind Isis and Davin. She felt her mouth drop as the doors of the ballroom spread open before them. The room had been embellished like never before—with flags from the upper level railings, roses down the banisters, and diamond-dotted ice sculptures between the tables—for this was to be a double ceremony. Moments after Aaron was crowned emperor, Isis would be married to him.

He already sat on a wide throne with blue silk cushions at the top of the stairs, looking down over everyone with a triumphant expression on his face. Beside him stood Lord Adrian, whispering into his ear, but as soon as Aaron’s eye caught Isis, he didn’t see anyone else. Ariella watched her friend’s arm tense around Davin’s, a final protest before she surrendered herself to a much unwanted fate. She wanted to tell Isis to run, to flee this life, but she knew there was no point. She wouldn’t abandon Elitia to the venom of Aaron’s wrath.

At sundown Aaron was crowned emperor of the Selpe Empire. Veronica Frostwater, his Elition-hating cousin, congratulated him, her words dripping thickly with poisoned honey. And as Lord Adrian placed the platinum and blue diamond spiked crown of the Selpe Empire’s ruler upon his head, she stared at him as though she would have liked to literally poison him.

With the first ceremony complete, Aaron extended his hand toward Isis. Pausing only to glance from Ariella to Davin to King River, she ascended the royally carpeted staircase. As she joined Aaron atop the upper level, she bit her lip against the collective stare of a few hundred eyes. Smiling smugly, her husband-to-be kissed her softly on the lips. Then he clasped her hands in his and nodded for the officiant to begin the second ceremony.

As the man spoke, Aaron watched Isis with the enthusiasm a lion would devour a long-stalked prey. Vibrant as her features were, now free from the Inhibiting Serum, her face was still unusually pale. She didn’t love him and definitely wouldn’t have married him had she not been forced into it. Ariella had to hold herself back from sprinting up the staircase to pull her friend away from that Selpe monster. It was a good thing she hadn’t brought her sword along.

As the ceremony progressed, Aaron slid a white diamond ring onto Isis’s finger—the symbol of their marriage—then set a platinum headband studded with blue diamonds atop her head—the symbol of her new status as empress. Finally, he leaned over to seal the ceremony with a kiss. When Aaron, his lips still locked to Isis’s, dipped her down for a little dramatic show, the spectators’ polite clapping burst into roaring applause, but even from her spot at the sidelines one level down, Ariella could read the pain in Isis’s eyes. He responded with his typical combo of a mischievous head tilt and a subtle shrug. The ladies in the audience nearly fainted. Isis looked away from him.

Merry music broke out from the band, and Aaron led his bride down the central stairway, his arm locked around hers like an iron clamp.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

~ Prophetic Whiplash ~

526AX December 11, Orion

THERE WAS BLOOD on Isis’s hands—fresh blood. Her eyes panned down her splattered arms, past her drenched hands, to the knife twisted inside her victim’s chest. As she looked up into the eyes of Veronica Frostwater, the ever-haughty woman simpered, then faltered and collapsed with a heavy thud to the floor. She was dead.

Isis clenched her eyes shut, trying to purge the memory from her mind. But it was no use. She had killed a woman. She had watched her die. And as she died, Isis experienced a jolt of Prophetic Whiplash, the culmination of all the things that would no longer be. Veronica’s essence, all that she would have done, sang out in a hurried melody of murdered potential, clawing desperately like a drowning animal for something, anything, to keep a foothold in the world of the living—and then was silenced.

The memory, on the other hand, would not be silenced. Veronica’s eyes. The knife in her chest. Isis’s bloodied hands. The montage of an unrealized future, vibrant colors melting away, leaving only black and white. It played over and over again through her mind, a dizzying carousel of death. Isis’s head spun and her stomach churned, and she staggered forward to vomit into the bushes.

“Are you ill?” Aaron asked from behind and set a hand lightly upon her shoulder.

“I’m fine,” she growled, wiping her mouth with her wrist as she stood up again.

But she was not fine. He had commanded her to kill Veronica. He had stolen her life from her. This was all his fault. Every last bit.

* * *

526AX November 21, Orion

“She is rallying support against you,” Lord Adrian had told Aaron the day after his coronation.

“I’m not surprised,” replied Aaron.

“She must be dealt with quickly, before things get out of hand. Before everything we’ve worked for is lost,” Lord Adrian insisted.

“Agreed. But I cannot kill her myself.”

“She lost. What she’s doing now is treason,” Lord Adrian declared. “You have the right.”

“No, I think it’s best if it appears her own supporters turned on her,” Aaron decided. “She does have compromising information on most of them, doesn’t she?”

“She wouldn’t have been such a strong contender otherwise. Sweet-talking can only get you so far. But if you want to make this believable, you will need a seamless kill, someone who will leave a clean murder scene so that we can plant the necessary evidence. You need a professional.”

“Don’t we have the world’s most renown assassin in our custody right now?” suggested Aaron.

“Jason will not help you, not if he hated Veronica above all others,” Isis told him.

Aaron stared at her for a moment, then said, “We will commission another Elition to perform the task then. I believe the one referred to as Chimera has quite a formidable reputation.”

“Forgive me, but I think we should keep King River out of this,” Lord Adrian spoke up. “The assignment of any Elition to a task requires his approval, if you remember, Your Majesty, and he will most certainly not approve. He doesn’t like assigning Elitions to fuel our so-called ‘infighting’. If I may, I do have another suggestion,” he said, turning to look at Isis.

“I really don’t like the way you’re staring at me, Lord Adrian.”

“My apologies, Empress,” he excused himself with a bow, though there was still the hint of a smirk upon his lips. She knew he didn’t like the fact that he now had to answer to an Elition, but he was entirely too giddy about something.

“I’m not doing your dirty work,” she declared.

“You do have the training.”

“I am trained to guard. I do not kill.” And I want to keep it that way.

“She’s the only Elition who doesn’t answer to King River,” Lord Adrian told Aaron.

“Use one of your own lackeys,” she growled.

Lord Adrian turned his silken smile on her. “Unfortunately, Your Majesty, as I am most ashamed to admit, the Selpe military no longer has adequately trained assassins. It’s an unfortunate circumstance of our alliance with Elitia. For over a decade, we’ve dedicated our own resources elsewhere, using Elitions for assassinations. But, as I said, King River has been particularly obstinate of late. He didn’t seem pleased by the deal your dear husband made with Davin Storm.”

Aaron’s hand clamped around Isis’s wrist, as though to hold her to him.

“Such things tend to happen when one of the parties involved isn’t consulted first,” Isis told Lord Adrian, but looked at Aaron.

In response, Aaron lifted up her hand and kissed it lightly, his blue-green eyes burning into hers. The heat of his stare beckoned her forward, but she resisted. She would not give in. She stared right on back at him until he chuckled and kissed her on the forehead.

“Shall I give you two a moment alone?” Lord Adrian asked.

“No,” replied Isis, just as Aaron said, “Yes.”

“No,” repeated Isis, peeling his hand off of her wrist.

Aaron shrugged. “Very well then. Continue, Lord Adrian.”

“Yes, by all means, Lord Adrian. Please, continue telling us how you wish to warp me into an assassin,” she growled. She wouldn’t mention how such an act would drive her to insanity. Maybe, they didn’t even know anything about that pesky Prophet weakness.

And she didn’t even want to think about those awful foresights of her bloodthirsty future self. It was already happening, step by step.

“Well, I suppose we could always send a Diamond Edge and see what happens,” Lord Adrian proposed. His tone left no question as to what he thought of that idea.

“I could tell you what would happen: disaster, plain and simple,” said Aaron. “Veronica has hired the Crescent Order to guard her. My men are not equipped to deal with six bodyguard assassins.”

“And I am?” gasped Isis.

“You’re fast. You need only render the bodyguards unconscious so that you may dispose of Veronica uninterrupted,” Lord Adrian said, as though he were being helpful.

“Thank you. I feel so much better about the whole thing already,” she snarled.

“My love,” Aaron began.

“Forget it. This discussion is over.”

But the discussion was far from over.

* * *

526AX November 26, Orion

“You’re going to have to kill Veronica Frostwater,” Davin told Isis the next week.

“Now you are involved in this, Davin?” she said.

“Aaron talked to me.”

“I’m sure he did.”

“He said you refuse to discuss this with him. That you leave the room any time he brings it up.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Look, it’s like this. Apparently, there is a line buried in the contract of marriage that the ascending empress must prove herself worthy.”

“Not that I was ever asked if I wanted to marry Aaron,” she commented.

“Yes, well, it’s an archaic practice, usually referring to the wife’s responsibility to bear an heir,” he explained.

She rolled her eyes. “Splendid.”

“But in this case,” continued Davin. “It’s being manipulated to force you into killing Veronica. Should you refuse, you will be dethroned.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad,” she replied.

“And convicted as a traitor, the sentence of which is death.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“For you and Father and me,” he concluded. “As this would be a breach of the marriage agreement, upon which all our lives were pledged.”

“Your friend Aaron is such a delightful man. He would threaten to kill his wife, his best friend, and a member of his Advisory Council just to rid himself of his annoying cousin.”

“It’s not Aaron. It’s that scoundrel, Lord Adrian, and he has no problem in seeing us all dead. You know how he feels about Elitions. He’s probably even hoping you say no, just to get a chance at taking us out. Don’t give him that chance.”

She sighed. “Curse it, Davin. They’re just going to keep pulling one outdated rule after another out of their ridiculous rule book. Next it will be, ‘We’ll invade Elitia if you don’t pop out one prophecy a week for us’, as though I’m some sort of chicken who lays fortune-telling eggs.”

Davin clenched his fists. “I’d like to see them try to invade Elitia.”

“You know what I mean,” she sighed. “This will never end. They will continue to manipulate us until I’m dead.”

He set a hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “No. I read through the entire section regarding marriage, all two-thousand pages of it.”

She gaped at him in shock.

“Don’t ask. It’s convoluted ludicrousness. In any case, this is the last thing they could get you on. Unless you murder Aaron in his sleep, you should be fine from now on out,” he assured her.

“So, just to be clear, I can murder him while he’s awake then?” Isis asked. She’d hoped to joke past the sinking feeling in her stomach. It wasn’t working.

Davin wrapped his arm around her and pulled her in closer, kissing the top of her head. “You’ll be fine. You’re the strongest person I know.”

Davin’s show of confidence notwithstanding, Isis felt far from fine. As the day of her scheduled assassination of Veronica neared, she grew increasingly anxious. She’d taken to wandering the palace gardens at night, hoping the chilly nights would numb her. But nothing could distract her. Even sleep was no sanctuary for her, as the foresight merely lay there in wait, ready as soon as her eyes closed to bombard her with horrific images of her future victim’s bloody end.

* * *

526AX November 28, Orion

Cape Midnight, Veronica Frostwater’s palace, was a seaside villa on the northeastern shore of the continent. It was from here that she was plotting her ascension. And here that she would be silenced.

Isis was flown in shortly after dark and dropped down into the ocean. Veronica, Lord Adrian had reported, had a highly paranoid sense of security. The only way in not fully protected by a convoluted security system was a tiny hole of decaying wall on the ocean side, deep under water. He’d bribed this information out of one of her disgruntled servants.

What this all boiled down to, a wetsuit-clad Isis thought as she slid her hips through the child-sized opening, was an uncomfortable beginning to a horrific mission.

There was a reason she’d never killed before, and it was not from lack of trying. As was to be expected with her fighting abilities, they had initially tried to push her through the assassin training track. She could do it all, complete every exercise—every exercise but one, that was. She could not take a life. As she stood opposite her defenseless victim, the advantage all hers, she had faltered. She had no sooner lifted her blade that she was assaulted with a tempest of broken images—then she collapsed into a fit of convulsions. The fading thread of a life once full of such potential melted away, leaving only the raw, cold picture of the victim’s last act in life: to die at her hand. There was a reason Prophets didn’t make good assassins, and she was no different. She simply couldn’t do it. The instructors at Rosewater had been fools to think otherwise.

Yet here she was doing it now, years later. She’d reasoned and pleaded and threatened to get herself out of the life of an assassin, but she hadn’t escaped this fate. Veronica’s Elition bodyguards were no problem, it turned out. Isis replaced their Energy Serum with a sedative, and five minutes later they were nothing but an unconscious heap on the floor. She moved into the next room, where Veronica sat at her computer, preparing messages to her supporters. Like a breeze, Isis was across the room in an instant, standing before her target.

“You,” Veronica hissed—then collecting herself, stood regally. “He’s sent you for me, hasn’t he? But you aren’t a murderer. I can see it in your eyes. It’s not too late. My offer still stands. Side with me, and I will set you free. I will free Elitia from the alliance. You can all live in peace.”

Isis’s heart ate up Veronica’s words—hoping beyond hope that they were true, that this woman could really free her—but she didn’t dare respond. Even if Veronica could help her, it was too late. She’d betrayed Jason, and he would never, ever forgive her.

Pushing back her grief, Isis struggled to remain still. After their last meeting, she should have expected this. Veronica Frostwater was an adept sweet-talker. Not that it made what was coming any easier. The security cameras were all out; Isis had seen to that upon entering the villa through the waterlogged basement. The Elition bodyguards were decidedly unconscious. And Veronica was there before her, incapable of defending herself, even if she’d had more than a letter opener at her disposal. Isis would have to do it now, before the flood of imagery hit her full force.

Her arm shot forward, plunging the knife into Veronica’s chest. Frozen, Isis did not move. She just waited for the inevitable.

“You…fool. You don’t know what you’ve done,” Veronica choked out melodramatically, then with her head held high, fell to the floor.

Veronica’s blood still stained Isis’s hands when Aaron’s Diamond Edges snuck onto the property, their movements now unhindered by the deactivated security system. They had to pry the knife from her clenched hand. As she stood there blankly, Isis had a vague sense that they were manipulating the murder scene, but her mind was too turbulent for her eyes to focus. Images of Veronica’s curtailed future were still flashing by at top speed when they whisked her away from the villa.

* * *

526AX December 11, Orion

Which left her back with Aaron, still haunted two weeks after her assassination of Veronica. Was she ill, he asked? He had no idea. She was sick and lightheaded and disgusted with herself and just plain angry. All that consoled her was the knowledge that her loved ones were safe. Well, most of them.

“Are you all right?”

Isis stood at the doorway of Ariella’s room, her hands gripping the frame for support.

“No,” she told Ariella. “No, I’m not. I need your help.”

Ariella embraced her. “Anything.”

As she leaned against Ariella’s shoulder, tears splattering them both, she tried to speak. But she couldn’t say the words. She could barely form the thoughts. She couldn’t believe what she was about to do.

Ariella wrapped her arm around Isis, leading her inside. She didn’t say anything. She simply gave her hand a friendly squeeze and waited for her to speak. And it was a long while before Isis did.

“Ariella,” she began, then staggered. She took a deep breath, collecting her resolve. “I’m leaving.”

She frowned. “What egregious act are they carting you off to perform for them now?”

“No, not like that. I am leaving them,” Isis emphasized.

There. She’d said it. She had no problem turning her back on the Selpes, but there would be consequences. They would brand her a rogue and try to hunt her down. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t stay any longer. She had to be free of them at last. The people she cared about here would be safe. Davin’s promise had been fulfilled. As long as she stayed away, the only life on the line was hers, and it was her life that she was trying so desperately to save. She didn’t want to be that person, that vicious killer from her foresights. Already, she’d fallen too far. She had to find herself again before it was too late. Before there was no going back.

“When?” Ariella asked.

“Tonight.”

“I see.”

“I will need to stay away. We…we might not see each other again.”

Ariella cupped her hands around Isis’s cheeks. “We will.”

“They will call me a rogue. And they will hunt me and anyone who helps me.”

“We’ll see each other again.” Ariella hugged her. “Human claims cannot keep us apart, my kindred.”

“But—”

“Enough. Now, how would you have me help you?”

“Not me.” Isis set a sealed envelope into her hands. “Jason. I think it’s about time he got to see Terra again.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

~ The Phantom Mind ~

526AX December 11, Orion

JASON WAS IMPRISONED in a windowless cell lit only by a dim, flickering green-yellow bulb. Every so often, a doctor surrounded by twelve Diamond Edges entered his cell and injected him with an overdone Inhibiting Serum, but besides that no one was allowed contact with him. They were afraid of him, of the tales that he could control their bodies and manipulate their minds. And they had every reason to be. Given the chance, he would kill every last one of them.

Jason knew his mind was not as sharp as it had been whenever it was they’d thrown him into that cell. Two months ago, maybe more. Time had little meaning there, separated from the natural rhythms of the world, his mind congested with a thick, oozing slop. The serum had left him with a perpetual headache, this infuriating buzzing around in his head. It intensified any time he pushed his brain to think—and became unbearable if he so much as even tried to use his gift, which was obviously the point. It was far from the solace Isis’s serum had seemed to bestow.

Isis. That silver-tongued Selpe loyalist. She’d betrayed him. Well of course she had. It had never been anything but lies coming out of her mouth. He’d been a fool to trust her. And when it came down to it, that was what peeved him the most. Not her lies, her deceptions, her skillfully-woven traps—no, it was that he’d fallen for it all. What had happened to him? When had his mind grown so dull and useless?

“Why are we moving the Elition wizard?” an anxious voice asked from outside his cell door.

“I heard the new empress asked that he be sent away. She doesn’t feel comfortable with him around,” replied another, clearly delighted to be sharing gossip.

“I sure can’t disagree with that. Have you seen the way he stares at us? He gives me the creeps,” Anxious said.

Delighted Gossip peered through the bars at Jason, who sat motionless on the bench. “You don’t have to worry about him. They inject him every day with something to sedate him. Look at him now, docile as an old house cat.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer not to look,” Anxious muttered, putting more distance between him and the cell as Jason turned his head to glare at the soldiers.

“In a few minutes, you won’t have to ever again,” Delighted Gossip assured him. “I heard they’re taking him to one of Lord Adrian’s special facilities.”

“What happens there?”

“No one really knows, but it’s safe to say he’ll either come back with his loyalties properly rearranged, or not come back at all.”

Jason caught a flash of Lord Adrian, that conniving Selpe nobleman with the ridiculously shaped goatee on his ridiculously long chin. Beside him stood an Elition, a young girl with electric purple hair. Jason’s stomach churned as a second flash flooded through him, that of Nemesis. He caught sight of the Siennan fiend as her brilliant turquoise eyes transformed to blood-red. She’d just learned something that enraged her.

Visions. The serum was wearing off, Jason decided as he tasted the spicy flavor upon his tongue. But not soon enough. They were coming. He heard the sound of footsteps walk down the hallway. Elition footsteps. There were ten of them, in addition to the twenty soldiers already crammed into the area just outside his cell. The Selpes were not taking any chances. The door to his cell creaked open, and the two soldiers who had just been talking stepped in, guns raised.

“Stand up,” Delighted Gossip commanded him.

“And d-don’t try anything, mister,” stuttered Anxious.

Jason stood slowly, and they walked forward with caution, restraints in their hands. Delighted Gossip moved to bind Jason’s wrists, but before he could even open the handcuffs, they were around his own hands instead. Pushing through the painful buzzing that had just revved up inside his head, Jason stepped forward. He looked at Anxious and snarled. He didn’t even need to exert himself further. His stare alone had caused the man to pass out cold on the stone cell floor.

This had all transpired in mere seconds, so the Selpes outside hadn’t yet realized what was going on inside. Jason managed to throw half of them into his cell and lock the door behind them before they’d even clued in. He bit his lip and bore the headache for the short time it took to dispose of the others.

A bigger problem now stood before him, blocking the exit. The Elitions. Leaning against the wall for support, he looked up at them. He didn’t think he could fight ten at once, not in his current drugged state. But to his great surprise, he didn’t even have to. They merely stared at him for a moment, then turned and walked out of the prison. One—a muscular Elition woman with a long blue-black braid that was swung over her shoulder like a whip—stayed behind to hand him a slim silken envelope with his name written in flowery cursive letters on the front. Then, without a word, she followed behind her comrades.

Jason wasn’t delusional enough to believe they were afraid. They were letting him go. As he fled the prison, he couldn’t help but wonder why, even though such speculations made his head hurt. However, one thing he knew without a doubt: the handwriting on the envelope was Terra’s. They’d written to each other for so many years that he couldn’t mistake it. Had she helped him? Jason longed more than anything to tear the envelope open that very moment, but first things first.

Slipping out of the palace at Orion was far too easy to even strain his mind. Alarms were going off every which way, blaring through the corridors, but the soldiers were clumsy and slow, and he evaded them easily. As he left Orion, the city lights went dark. It was his parting gift to the Selpes, the sabotage of their fusion reactors. It would take them days to repair, days during which they would face darkness and cold nights without light or heat. It was a mild punishment, but a suitable distraction.

The Selpes had yet to feel his true wrath, but it was Isis that his mind dwelled upon. She couldn’t hide from him. No matter how many Selpes he had to go through, she would pay for her deception. He was going to kill her. And this time there would be no talking out of it.

But first he would find Terra, whatever it took.

These two things he vowed, shaking her envelope, then he tore the paper open and pulled out a single sheet. Its blankness was punctuated by only a single line: ‘Meet me in Eclipse’.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

~ Vengeance ~

526AX December 13, Orion

IT TOOK JASON two days to get back to Eclipse, and by then he was a functioning Phantom once more. But that didn’t mean he was at full strength. Weeks of sparse sleep and little food coupled with the drastic methods he’d used to expel the last remnants of the Selpes’ Inhibiting Serum from his body had taken their toll. Still, he was more than a match for most Elitions—including Isis. Killing her would be easy.

Ever since he had blacked out at her feet in the Gateway, he’d anticipated this day—the day vengeance would be satisfied. Ever since that day and through all those dark weeks inside that Selpe prison hole, he’d been defined by a sole purpose. His mind had imagined the day he would kill her. He thought about it every waking moment—and most sleeping ones, for thoughts of revenge had even penetrated his dreams.

As soon as he caught Isis’s scent on the trail ahead of him, moving toward Eclipse, he found his desire to see Terra overshadowed by his drive to hunt down that traitor. Jason was so consumed with rage that the compulsion to find her overwhelmed him. He sped along the unbroken path, pushing himself to close the distance between them. He had to kill her. Not because she’d betrayed him. No, he wasn’t so naive as to be a stranger to betrayal. In fact, he’d lived his share of it in his twenty years. Her lies and games were irrelevant here.

It had taken him awhile, sitting alone in that dark cell, to understand the complete nature of his rage. The truth was he was angry because he’d allowed her to betray him, that he’d been so dense as to believe the silken-sweet lies that flowed from her lips. And all because they’d come attached to a pretty face. He was better than that. At least he was supposed to be. And he would be so again as soon as this weakness was…neutralized. Yes, neutralized. He liked the sound of that.

In spite of himself, he still often relapsed into thinking of her as the sweet girl that had been her persona. That wouldn’t do. She was an obstacle, that was all—an obstacle that would be dealt with shortly.

She made it to Eclipse just hours before him, already trotting forward to pursue her next scheme. Perhaps, she’d come for him. Or Terra. Anger slathered his body like sweat, penetrating his core, pushing him to the edge of rage. He broke out into a sprint, knowing he had to make it to Isis before he lost all control. In a rage, he would kill her quickly. And that was too merciful an end for that viperous siren.

But finally he was there, upon the doorstep of the house she’d taken in Eclipse, on this stormy night in December. It had just begun to rain cold, icy needles. He could hear the crackle and pop of a fire inside. He could hear her. Well, feel the masked hint of her resonance actually. Already agitated, she’d grown suddenly nervous. She knew he was there. There was no point in sneaking about. They would duel, and he would win. She was no slouch, that was for sure, but she could not make the kill as he could. And so she would fall.

Jason swung the door open and stepped inside, shutting it quickly behind him. She sat on a sofa before the fireplace, weighed down by a stack of heavy blankets. Her eyes turned and met his, and with a weighted sigh she stood. The blankets fell from her like layers of discarded skin and slid to the floor. The first thing Jason noticed were her eyes, a brilliant shade of sapphire-blue only an Elition could boast of—and they were deep, tormented, knowing. She’d killed since last they met. Her innocence was lost. He could read it there in her eyes, plain and simple.

So shocked was he by this revelation that it took him a few seconds to recognize what he should have noticed first. A diamond ring sparkled upon her finger, reflecting the light of three dozen candles.

Jason stepped forward slowly, his eyes still fixed on her ring finger, his mind still churning through this new information. With impeccable grace, she moved to meet him halfway. Her fluffy blue socks seemed to dance across the old floor; the warped wooden panels didn’t even squawk out the slightest hint of a creak.

“Jason,” she said cautiously, her arms open in peace.

He was about to open his as well, when he tensed. He’d fallen for that before. She was so disarming.

“What is this new trick of yours?” he demanded. “What have you done with Terra?”

“Please, let me explain,” she pleaded, her eyes watering over.

“How dare you use her in your Selpe scheme again,” he said in as icy a voice as he could muster. He chided himself that it sounded far less frigid than it should have.

He should have just thrown a knife at her before she could open that duplicitous mouth of hers. Bam, straight to the heart or the head.

No, he’d already deemed such a quick death to be too good for the likes of her. A knife to the liver was the way to go. The poison would pulse painfully through her body, bringing her to the brink of death before her rapid healing saved her. And then he could do it to her all over again. And again. An Elition could linger on in painful torment for weeks—even months—this way before the body eventually gave out.

“I will not listen to your lies,” he said, feeling his eyes burn black.

“I had no choice.”

He let out a cold laugh. “You don’t know how many times I’ve heard that before. Ten years ago, King River said that to my parents. And then he killed them.”

She cringed. “Please.”

“Pleading for your life now, are you?”

“No,” she said, straightening. “If you wish to kill me… But I don’t want you to think that I betrayed you willingly.”

“I suppose they threatened your life.”

“Yes.”

“And the lives of someone you care about.”

“Yes.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“And you don’t believe me.” She sighed.

“As I said, I’ve heard it all before.”

She looked at him with such despair that he had to fight the impulse to embrace her, comforting her until she could smile again. No, that was wrong. He didn’t want to see her happy; he wanted to see her dead. Forget her powers as a Prophet. She was the queen of manipulation. Even now, angry as he was at her, she could get under his skin and rile up his sympathies. She had talent, that was for sure. Talent enough to make even the Elite Phantom lose his head. But it would not save her this time. This had to end. He took a step forward.

She lifted her hands into the air. “Just listen to me, Jason.”

He took a second step. “Why?”

She backed up. “I want to explain everything to you. I want you to know the truth. To understand.”

He continued forward. He was trying not to stare at her eyes. They trembled, making her appear so vulnerable, so worthy of sympathy. He could not falter.

“I care for you.”

“Lies. Manipulations. That was all nothing but an act, all part of your plan to capture me.” He paused to consider a thought. “How far back did you scheme go? The day you came back to us in Eclipse, supposedly escaping Selpe torture?”

“They did torture me.”

Jason pressed on. “Or earlier yet? When you were revealed to be Elition? Even before that? Perhaps, it was your mission all along, ever since before we met at Lear.”

“We’d met before then, Jason.”

Jason studied her face, her emotions. She resonated sincere. Damn. She was the best liar he’d ever met. She could control the emotional flavor of her resonance. And she was deflecting.

“Who is he?” he asked, nodding toward her wedding ring. He could deflect too.

She flushed pink, far pinker than her pink-blonde hair. “Aaron Selpe,” her voice cracked.

“The new Selpe emperor? Your manipulation has reached new levels. How did you ensnare him?” He gave her an icy smirk. “Actually, from the way he was prancing about you, clearly on a mission to lure you into his bed, I suppose netting that playboy was not particularly difficult. Funny. I didn’t take you for that sort of girl.”

She glowered at him. “I’m not. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I was forced into all of this. Including my marriage to Aaron.”

“Marriage,” he spat, then collected himself. “So, that makes you the Selpe empress.” He bowed in mock fashion and extended his arm forward, as though to kiss her hand. “Your Majesty, is it true the imperial bedsheets are made of satin?”

“Stop,” she growled, batting his hand away.

But he caught her hand in his. And he began to squeeze. Hard. The cold bite of his now fully-obsidian eyes burned in his head, shifting everything into even greater focus. A rush of adrenaline hit him hard. He could hear the thump of her heart in his ears, and he longed to draw blood. He could taste the sweat of her anxiety in the air. If he didn’t start the fight soon, he would kill her too quickly. And that just wouldn’t do. She had to suffer.

“Let go.”

He squeezed down harder. “Make me.”

She moved faster than he thought possible of one who wasn’t a Phantom, and then she was all the way on the other side of the cabin. He followed, and a second later he was before her again. She deflected his hand as he moved to recapture her. Three additional attempts were neatly dodged.

“You are far too much trouble,” he growled.

He thought he caught that old twinkle in her eye, and she looked rather smug. “Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

Jason swung his leg behind her feet, attempting to upset her balance, but she hopped high into the air to avoid his kick. He frowned.

“Sure sounded like one,” she grinned.

Brushing off the unsettling feeling that she was enjoying this, he shook his head. Strange girl. He’d come to kill her, and she was teasing him.

“I missed you,” she said, the words unexpected.

He hated how she did that—responded to his thoughts as though she could read them. Such behavior from a Phantom Extractor was insufferable. From her, it was unnerving.

“When we’re together, it feels…normal.”

“You do realize that I’ve come to kill you?” he reminded her, but his tone was softer. Whether he liked it or not.

“I know you’ve come to try,” she challenged with an invigorated smile. “And once you’ve grown tired of that, we can sit down and discuss this like civilized people.”

Surely, she could not be serious. Jason watched as she took up a fighting stance. Yes, she really was going to do this. She actually thought she could hold out longer than he could.

“Might I remind you—”

“That you are the most skilled assassin alive.”

“And you—”

“Rarely aim to harm my opponent.”

“And I’m—”

“Fighting to kill. Yes. Can we get on with this already?”

Jason shrugged, he hoped indifferently. “Suit yourself.”

He tore down a coiled rope that hung from one of the curtains and lashed out at her with the chunky knotted end. She evaded him with the grace of a dancer, then caught the knot on the third swing. She tugged with inhuman strength, sending him a few steps forward. With a wink, she kissed him on the cheek and scampered around him to the other end of the cabin. Jason rubbed the cheek, which burned with her scent—then he turned around.

Her eyes were not so gleeful as he unsheathed his two Wing knives. Perhaps she’d never really believed it would come to this. Perhaps she’d been counting on her charm to save her. It wouldn’t. Not this time.

Jason crept forward, his knives alert. She was retreating slowly, hesitantly, looking around. There wasn’t much in the dilapidated old cottage. She took up the makeshift poker, made of twisted metal, from beside the fireplace and held it before her. As he attacked, she deflected, her arms wobbling under the force of his strike. She swiped the poker through the air a few times, shaking out the trembles.

Quickly, as she tried to steady herself, Jason struck again. She whipped the poker around with such uncanny speed that it slashed across his shoulder before he could deflect. Jason brushed a finger along his torn sleeve, and it came back trickled with blood.

She stared at him, completely dumbstruck, and he took advantage of her shock. One, two, he cut his knives forward, and each one met with one of her shoulders. She didn’t bother checking her skin for cuts. From her face, it was clear that she’d felt his blades surely enough.

She was retreating again, back into the corner by the fireplace. He had her just where he wanted her. Her eyes no longer danced. Her lips didn’t sing. She looked at him as though he’d just wounded her—not the obvious strike of the blade, but something deeper. She was sad, dejected, lost. Jason had only to lift his knives and—

“Jason, stop!” Cameron screamed, bursting through the front door. He jumped between them, shielding Isis.

“Get out of the way,” Jason snarled. He tried to maneuver his way around Cameron, but the boy held his ground.

“Put down your weapons. Let’s talk this through,” insisted Cameron, continuing to mirror Jason’s movements.

“There is nothing to talk about. She has betrayed me. Now, I will kill her.”

“She was forced,” protested Cameron.

“Not you too,” Jason growled. “She’s an exceptional manipulator. Don’t believe a word that she says. Now, move. This is not your fight. Step aside. We can talk later.”

“No.”

Jason lunged around Cameron with such speed that what happened next was totally unexpected. He froze in shock as he realized that his knife had not reached its intended target. Cameron had shifted his position to protect Isis. The knife’s hilt protruded at a crooked angle from his side. Jason looked from Cameron’s face, to his fingers clutched over the weapon jammed between his ribs, to the pink-haired dark angel he shielded with his free arm. This was getting aggravating.

“Why are you protecting her?!” Jason demanded.

“Because she is my sister,” Cameron stated through clenched teeth.

Shocked, frozen, Jason’s eyes widened. As they locked onto the face of Terra Cross, the second knife slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

~ Terra Cross ~

526AX December 13, Orion

IT WAS THE first time Terra had ever seen Jason drop a weapon. As soon as Cameron pulled the blade from his body and tossed it to the floor, she stepped forward to kick both knives away. She extended her fingers toward Jason’s face, then retracted them quickly, as though burnt by fire. It was the burn of guilt.

“Terra?” he asked, his voice cautious.

“Yes.”

There was no point in denying it any longer, not even to herself. Everyone knew by now anyway. A secret ten years old, and it had shattered in an instant. Not when Davin had come to her prison cell to tell her Lord Adrian and Aaron had found out who she really was; they’d kept the news a secret from the rest of the Selpes until after Aaron and Isis had wed. Not when her father King River had embraced her upon the steps of the Gateway as she cried out tears of pain at having betrayed her oldest friend. Not when Ariella had found out on the evening of her wedding. Not even when she’d confessed her true identity to her twin Cameron just hours ago. No, it only became real the moment Jason saw her for who she was. At that moment, Terra felt her mask split open and crumble to ashes all around her. Her barriers fallen, all pretense abandoned, she was exposed, unprotected, bare, raw.

As Jason’s finger brushed her cheek, he must have felt it too. His nostrils flared up, and he inhaled deeply, drinking in her resonance.

“Yes, I feel you now. Finally,” he whispered, pulling her close to him. “All this time, you were here right beside me, and I didn’t know.” He pulled back just far enough to look her in the eye. “You did an impeccable job of masking yourself, of covering up the perfume of your soul.”

It was a trick she had learned long ago when she’d abandoned her life as Terra Cross to become Isis Fontane. King River had told her it was necessary, that the Selpes and Avans were both plotting to kidnap her all for the sake of her gift. Throughout the years, this power had nudged her toward the brink of madness, lying in constant wait to give her that final big shove over the edge. It had already torn her away from everyone she’d ever loved. She’d long despaired that when that time came—the day she finally lost her mind completely—there would be no one left to catch her.

She and Jason had communicated over their linked pair of sand slates, but she’d never told him she was living a life as someone else. She had lied to him, to Ariella, to Cameron…to everyone she’d ever dared care about. The others might have forgiven her, but she hadn’t betrayed them as she had Jason. Once the shock wore off, would he resume his efforts to kill her, or would he simply turn and walk away, as though she’d never even existed?

“When you stopped writing, I thought something had happened to you,” he said.

“My sand slate shattered. I couldn’t repair it,” she replied.

By then, she’d written for nine years to Jason, and those moments at the end of the day, brief as they were, had kept her anchored to sanity. It had devastated her the moment the slate broke, but she hadn’t dared go to him. The Selpe Intelligence Network kept a close eye on all Elitions assigned to collaborate with the empire, most especially one working as their crown prince’s bodyguard. They would know if she went to visit someone as infamous as Jason Chanz. And they would wonder why.

Long ago, King River had warned her what would happen if the Selpes ever figured out who she was, and he’d been completely right. Somehow they had found out, but she couldn’t fathom how. The fallout was perfectly clear, however. Had they remained in the dark, Terra never would have been coerced into betraying Jason or ended up married to Aaron.

“But our paths crossed again,” Jason said. “We’ve been reunited for months and still you never told me. You never trusted me with your secret. Why, Terra? Didn’t you realize that I would do anything to protect you?”

“Had I told you, you would have taken me away to Eclipse.”

“That very instant,” he affirmed.

“You’d have abandoned the quest to save Hayden and Ian. The Avans would have gotten them.”

“You are more important to me than two Selpe boys.”

“Half-Elition boys. It’s bigger than the two of us, Jason. It was about the good of Elitia.”

“That sounds like a line from one of your father’s tired speeches.”

Terra scowled at him. “Leave my father out of this. You and he may not see eye-to-eye, but he’s always done what he thought best for Elitia.”

“Like murdering my parents.”

“That wasn’t my father. It was a group of Selpe soldiers under Lord Adrian’s thumb!”

“So he says, but I don’t buy it. My parents’ refusal to add their signatures to King River’s precious treaty with the Selpes was a thorn in his grand plans for Elitia. Funny how it all so neatly wrapped up for him.”

“Please, Jason. This is old business.” Terra sighed. “Let’s not dwell on it.”

“Would you rather talk about how you lied to me?” he demanded, his voice trembling with barely contained rage.

Terra withdrew from his arms. She’d never actually seen Jason lose his composure, but she knew he had. And she’d heard stories of the acts of enraged Phantoms. Such endings were never happy—and more often than not, a complete bloodbath.

“I’m sorry,” she peeped out.

“You betrayed me. You know that I eliminate any threat to me.”

“I know.”

“I swore to myself that I would kill you tonight, before you could manipulate me further.”

She nodded mutely.

“At the same time, I swore to my father that I would protect you.” Unblinking, unmoving, Jason’s eyes remained fixed on Terra. He tapped her left arm. “She I have promised to protect.” He tapped the other arm. “She I have sworn to kill. Protect, kill. Protect, kill.”

As he spoke, he repeated the motions, over and over again. Like fluttering wings in the wind, the contradictory words flipped back and forth in dizzying loops between their bodies.

Terra looked at Cameron and said glumly, “He hates me.”

This night, a thunderstorm was raging outside, throwing frozen hail pellets down upon the roof, but silence reigned inside the house. The percussion of a thousand drums hammered on beside the gentle crackling of the fireplace flames.

“You don’t know that,” Cameron replied, tracing a finger over the pink line of his newly sealed wound.

In a few more minutes, even the pink would fade into his skin, and it would be as though Jason had never stabbed him. Most people considered fast healing one of the best perks of being Elition. The truth of it was that as soon as raging Phantom tempers entered into the equation, it was simply a necessity of survival.

Terra helped Cameron tie a knot in his shirt to cover the noticeable slash in the fabric. “Jason is unparalleled in many things, not the least of which is to hold a grudge.”

“Perhaps only surpassed by my aggravation at being talked about as though I’m not standing right here,” Jason said.

Cameron shifted his weight to put himself once again between them. Jason snorted at the gesture.

“Cameron, go home. I will not kill your sister.”

“Or harm her in any way,” Cameron insisted.

“Of course not. The moment I even tried, my father would rise from his grave to give me a stern telling-off.” The obsidian in Jason’s eyes softened to a deep brown, and he extended his arm toward the door. “Now, go. Before the storm gets worse. I need to talk to Terra. Alone. I promise you she is safe with me.”

Cameron’s shoulders relaxed, but it was not until Terra nodded that he pulled on a cap and opened the door. A burst of lightning lit up his form as he sprinted home. Darkness and the steady tapping of hail against the ground reigned for a few seconds, then Jason shut the door.

“Explain,” he said.

As it was, Jason’s cold monotone was hard enough to decipher. With his back to her, Terra couldn’t read him at all. But if he really were on the edge of reason, she thought she’d have felt that. Or so she was telling herself.

“Six months ago, King River sent me out to the edge of the Wilderness, where I was to pose as a human guide to Everett Black. Everett had been hired by one of King River’s agents to find Hayden and Ian Selpe, for he saw the Selpes were doing little to reclaim the kidnapped boys. My first surprise came in finding Cameron with Everett, but that was nothing to the shock I experienced when you found us outside of Lear. After a decade apart, you did not recognize me.”

When Jason said nothing, Terra continued.

“We’d written, but it was not the same as seeing you in the flesh.” A tear slid down her cheek. “I’d missed you so much. I wanted to throw myself against you, to embrace my best friend as we hadn’t in ten years. But it wasn’t about what I wanted. There were two innocent boys to save and besides, my father had taken great risk in hiding me away from his Selpe allies. I would not sully his sacrifice. You yourself had often told me never to come to you, for your enemies would use me against you,” she reminded him.

“That is so,” he said, still not turning to face her.

“I wouldn’t allow anyone to use me to hurt you. I could tell you nothing. And I couldn’t go around hugging you at first sight either. It just might tip everyone off. So I bottled up my joy and put up my barriers so securely that even the Elite Phantom couldn’t break through. Later, when the boys were safely back in Orion, I thought of telling you that night on the balcony. But the Selpes had plans to capture you, Cameron, and Everett, so again I had to worry about other things. I planned to take some time off, to come to you in Eclipse once things had settled down and confess it all then—but obviously, that never happened. Aaron figured out I had warned you, and in his outrage, he had his Diamond Edges throw me into that prison cell. Before Davin could get me out of there, Aaron and Lord Adrian had discovered the truth of who I am.”

“How?” asked Jason.

“I have no idea.”

“Davin is friends with Aaron Selpe.”

Terra shook her head. “Davin didn’t know until Aaron told him. All those years, only my father and I knew the truth, and we never spoke of it, not even to each other.”

“I do not trust Davin Storm.”

“You two never did get along,” Terra recalled. “But in this, he is innocent. Trust me. Had he known I was his sister, he wouldn’t have made so many passes at me. If you’re going to blame him for something, make sure he actually deserves it. It is partially because of him that I was forced to betray you to the Selpes.”

At that, Jason turned around. His eyes were still definitely dark brown, but they were teetering on the edge of going black. “How?”

“Please, Jason, don’t judge him harshly. I myself am trying hard not to.”

“There is little chance of that. Davin has long since sat on my black list, and yet another example of his depravity will certainly not help matters. Now, explain his part in this.”

Terra sighed. She didn’t like speaking ill of her brother, but she couldn’t deny the role he’d played.

“As soon as Lord Adrian discovered who I was, he wanted to ship me off to one of his facilities. He was practically foaming at the mouth at the prospect of throwing me into some Selpe version of Vib’s Menagerie. He said to me often that my hair resembled rose petals. The thought of it just makes me shiver.”

Jason drew a knife and before Terra could blink, he’d thrown it at the far wall. The blade sank into the wood panel. “I knew I should have disposed of Lord Adrian long ago.”

Terra took a moment to allow him a few deep breaths. The past few weeks had clearly been hard on him, so much so that his self-control had cracked. And her story wasn’t helping matters. Perhaps, they should pick up tomorrow…

As though he’d read the thought, Jason turned his black eyes on her and ground out, “Continue.” His tone, saturated in frost-tipped fury, told her he would allow no room for discussion.

“Aaron had other plans. As you know, he’s a bit infatuated with me.”

“Infatuated means sending a woman flowers, not stalking her every step, tearing down everything that stands between him and his ultimate goal of possessing her. Aaron Selpe is a narcissistic sociopath, and he is utterly obsessed with you,” Jason declared. The wooden support beam he was leaning against groaned and trembled as his hold on it tightened.

“You’re jealous,” she said.

As Terra set a hand on his back, Jason lifted his shoulder, shrugging it off. For several minutes, he glared at the front door so intently that she feared it would explode from the fury of his stare. Finally, he spoke, so softly it was but a muted whisper in her ear.

“Yes.”

“Oh, no,” she said, setting her hands down on her hips. “You came here to kill me. You have no right to be jealous.”

“I fail to see how those two matters are related,” he replied levelly.

Well now, my assassin, it looks like our places are finally reversed. Maybe that will make you think twice next time about going along with Queen Gale’s obscene flirtations, she thought to herself.

Most of his mouth was turned away, but she did catch the hint of a twitch at the corner she could see. He’d heard her thoughts. Somehow. And he was amused. Terra cleared her throat and pushed on with her story.

“So, Aaron met with Davin to tell him who I was. Then, he promised that if I helped him to ensnare you, ensuring his rise to emperor, he would have the power to protect me from the other Selpes. But only if I married him. Apparently, the Selpes aren’t supposed to harm their own imperial family.”

“It seems Lady Cassandra didn’t get that message before she decided to have Ambrose Selpe killed.”

“Certainly not,” agreed Terra. “But with my secret exposed, Davin thought it was the best bet for ensuring my safety. So he agreed to Aaron’s proposal.”

“Without asking you first?”

“Yes.”

“Definitely on my black list,” muttered Jason.

“When Davin told me of his deal with Aaron, I refused to play any part in it. I didn’t want to be a pawn in their games. I would have run away rather than be their pet, and I would have risked death rather than betray you, Jason. But Davin didn’t give me the choice. He’d already agreed to Aaron’s terms. And Aaron’s terms had stipulated a little insurance to make sure I paid up.”

“What kind of insurance?”

“In order to save mine, Davin had to pledge his life and King River’s. From the time that Davin agreed to Aaron’s terms, they were confined to their apartment in the Orion imperial palace, under constant guard. I had one week to deliver you and myself into Aaron’s hands—or the Selpes would execute them both.”

Wood crunched beneath Jason’s hand. “That’s why you were so unhappy when you came to us at Eclipse.”

“I didn’t want to come to you, at least not on their terms,” she replied. “But I couldn’t allow the Selpes to kill my father and brother.”

“Davin is a fool.”

“He thought he was protecting me.” Terra looked down as she brushed her socked toes across the floor. “I’m sorry, Jason. I should have thought of something else. I wanted to tell you, but…I knew how you feel about both Davin and King River. You would have trapped me here for ‘my own protection’ and let them die.”

Jason didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. Terra could read it in his eyes. She was right.

“I’m sorry I deceived you, Jason. Every step of the way. When you chased after Everett and Nemesis at the Temple of Aurelia, I went to the burning Book of Prophecy. I took a Phantom-accentuating serum, using the borrowed power to create a false message. That Terra Cross was at the Shroud. That was where the Selpes told me to lead you.”

“You drugged me,” he said, his voice harsh. “I trusted you.”

She looked down, guilt crushing her heart. “I knew the Selpes wouldn’t kill you. You’re too valuable to them. I was sure I could find some way to get you out before they gave up on trying to bend you to their will. Lord Adrian is an arrogant man, and he loves a challenge. He said… No, he promised he’d break your mind with serums, and once you were broken, he’d—” She swallowed hard. “—make you his hand of death, unstoppable and his alone. His assassin. Lord Adrian desires Elitions, just as he hates us. He wants to submit us all to his authority. To dominate us in body, mind, and soul. To make us serve them.”

“I will never be a slave to the Selpes,” he declared, his eyes oozing black ice.

“I knew he wouldn’t break you so easily. But Lord Adrian was so sure. So boastful. I tried to feed his sick desire for domination. I told him you would never submit, and that only made him want to break you all the more. I knew that would keep him from killing you, at least until I could free you. But I needed time. I spent weeks tracking down every Elition who owed me a favor. I couldn’t help you directly, you see. That would be a breach of the agreement and put my family at risk. At last, I had everything in place. And then Lord Adrian nearly recked it all with his ridiculous scheme to have me kill Veronica Frostwater.”

Jason submerged from his seething rage long enough to ask, “Why did you kill her? You do remember that for most Prophets it’s mental suicide to kill someone?”

“I’m certainly no exception,” she agreed glumly. “Aaron and Lord Adrian got it into their heads that Veronica was gathering support for a rebellion and decided it would be best if she were to meet her end sooner rather than later. Since she’d employed the Crescent Order as her bodyguard detail, they furthermore concluded that only a specially-trained Elition would be successful in such an assassination attempt. As it seemed unlikely you would agree to take the job, Lord Adrian volunteered me to do it, and then he found some obscure clause in the Selpe marriage contract that would mean the deaths of me, Davin, and King River should I refuse.

“So I killed her. And paid the price.”

She was dealing with the Prophetic Whiplash. For now. But as her trembling hands could attest, her mind had suffered a substantial blow.

“When I got back, I set my plan for both our escapes into motion. I complained to Aaron that having you so close made me nervous. He was glad to be rid of you, so he had Lord Adrian arrange to take you away. Just before I slipped out of the palace, I asked Ariella to tell our Elition allies to join the Selpe soldiers who would be moving you from your cell. They disabled the security cameras in the entire prison and locked off your section from the others, trapping most of the prison guards behind closed doors. And they were to stand ready in case you couldn’t handle the remaining soldiers alone. I figured they’d given you an Inhibiting Serum.”

“They had. It wasn’t a problem,” he told her.

“Of course not,” she replied with a weak smile. “So there it is, Jason. I know it doesn’t absolve me, but I did everything I could to ensure you would be free again.” She reached out to touch his hand, but it still clenched around the support beam. “I’ve missed you.”

He turned his eyes, smoldering blacker than ever, on her. The scorching burn of them, as cold as a blizzard and as hot as the sun, made her stumble back. Before she could trip over her own feet, his hand clamped down around her wrist, locking her in place. His other hand detached from the beam and opened, raining out wood chips. He swooped it around her back, his eyes frightening as he pulled her in closer. His head brushed past her neck, his cheek settling upon her jawline. They were pressed so close together, Terra could feel the thump of his pulse. Not sure what to expect, she waited tensely, barely daring to breathe. Though she’d heard accounts of enraged Phantoms, being cheek-to-cheek with one was another thing altogether. They were as volatile as a predatory animal and many times more dangerous. All the promises in the world wouldn’t protect her if Jason snapped.

“I didn’t enjoy my time in that prison cell,” his teeth grated against her ear.

“I’m sorry.”

“Shush. I’m not done,” he snapped. “I also wasn’t pleased that you drugged and delivered me into a room of Selpe soldiers.”

“Jason—”

“Stop,” he growled.

Terra forced her lips to stop moving and tried to relax her tense posture. It was clearly only inciting him.

“Good.” He pulled back until they were nose-to-nose. “With all that said, I find myself unable to blame you. I’m just relieved to have finally found you.”

Terra exhaled all the pent-up air in her lungs, leaning into his chest. She nestled her face into his shoulder, allowing his scent to seep up into her nose, the mixture of spice and Winter’s Mint permeating her skin until her head was dizzy with it. Slowly, a warmth filled her, and she began to feel content. And, for the first time in a long time, safe.

Jason folded one arm around her waist, and he stroked the other hand slowly up and down her arm, her skin tingling from the contact. She crocked her head back to look at him and found that his eyes hadn’t lost their darkness. But rather than rage, she read only a protective watchfulness in them. Such a glower would have made even Lord Adrian think twice about coming closer. Terra relaxed back into Jason’s arm. It was nice to know someone had her back—someone who was scary enough to give the antagonists of her nightmares a few nightmares of their own.

Jason’s soft kiss caressed her cheek. As his lips swept across her jaw, trailing down her neck, Terra’s breath caught in her throat. She threw her head back and closed her eyes, turning so her mouth could find his. His lips brushed teasingly past hers, and then he kissed her—smoothly, leisurely. Her pulse beating like a drum in her ears, Terra clutched her fingers around his neck, trying to pull him in closer.

Jason pushed back, a twinkle in his dark eyes. “Get some sleep, Terra,” he said, flicking a strand of hair from her face. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Then he opened the door and walked outside.

Terra leaned against the doorway, catching her racing breath. She watched him slip untouched through the hailstorm and disappear into his house just across the trail from hers. Exhaling deeply, she settled herself and closed the door, for the first time in a long while not frightened by the prospect of tomorrow.

What's coming next? Shadowstorm (Book 6) is coming in early 2016.

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Books by Ella Summers

Sorcery and Science

1   Enchanted

2   Wilderness

2.5   Menace

3   Machination

3.5   Revelations

4   Skybuilders

4.5   Masquerade

5   Ensnared

6   Shadowstorm [Early 2016]

Dragon Born Serafina

1   Mercenary Magic

2   Magic Games

Dragon Born Alexandria

1   Magic Edge

2   Blood Magic [Early 2016]

And more books coming soon…

About the Author

Ella Summers has been writing stories for as long as she could read; she's been coming up with tall tales even longer than that. One of her early year masterpieces was a story about a pigtailed princess and her dragon sidekick. Nowadays, she still writes fantasy. She likes books with lots of action, adventure, and romance. When she is not busy writing or spending time with her two young children, she makes the world safe by fighting robots.

Originally from the U.S., Ella currently resides in Switzerland. She is the author of the fantasy adventure series Sorcery and Science and the urban fantasy series Dragon Born.

OJW Conversion -

Title Page

Copyright

Story Summary

Chapters

Mind's Prison

The Temple of the Veil

Sexy Pirate

Precipice

The Recovery Scrolls

Familiar Footsteps

Touched

The Magical Tapestry

Broken Prophets

Fallen Artifact

Thieves and Assassins

The Wasteland

The Temple of Aurelia

Borrowed Power

Broken

Lake Portal

Band of Children

The Frozen Forest

The Queen of Phantoms

Protocols of Everlast

Winter's Gate

The Accomplice

Veronica Frostwater

The Prisoner

Crowned

Prophetic Whiplash

The Phantom Mind

Vengeance

Terra Cross

What's Next

Books by Ella Summers

About the Author