A Lonely Magic (23 page)

Fen raised her head to call Luke’s name, to tell him to stop, but it was already too late. Two men rounded the corner in front of them.

She froze. A burst of agony exploded on the back of her leg and raced up her body, tearing around her, engulfing her in thorns and needles. Tears sprang to her eyes. Holy shit, it hurt. She gasped, but swallowed her scream, and turned, pressing her back against the wall.

They would walk on by, she prayed. They wouldn’t see her. Her ivy was protecting her, even though it hurt, hurt, hurt.

Her eyes were closed so she didn’t see what happened next, but she heard it.

A soft thud, a hard thud, a groan of pain and a scrabble of feet against the floor.

“What the—” Those wheezing words were from Luke.

“Get him inside, quickly.” The snapped order was in a cold voice, one she didn’t recognize.

She forced her eyes open, still trying to hold back the scream although the agony was easing.

The two men were dragging Luke into her room. She’d never seen them before. They looked innocuous, mild-mannered. No tattoos, dark hair, dressed in simple clothes, they barely even looked Sia Maran. Just plain old ordinary guys. But the grim look on the face of the man who held Luke under the arms, set lines about his mouth and eyes, was somehow as threatening as the blank expression on the man who’d offered her the choice between pills or a bullet.

Fen stuffed her hand into her mouth to choke back her cry.

Oh, help.

Oh, help, help, help.

The door closed behind them and Fen took the first breath she’d managed since her initial gasp.

She needed to get help.

She turned and tore down the hallway.

Remy would be in the kitchen. It was his favorite room. He was always there. He could—do what? He could call the guards, she told herself. The city had guards. Surely this was the kind of thing they were there for.

She burst through the door into the kitchen and skidded to a halt.

The pool of blood on the floor hadn’t reached the door.

The flush of a panic attack rushed over her, hot, cold, hot again, heart racing, and then, as if a wall of bulletproof glass slid down between her and the world, it shut off.

The blood was red, she noticed. Not the deep green she’d seen from Luke. Weird. Maybe she had been hallucinating that night or maybe it was the light. Her thoughts felt remarkably clear as she sidestepped the blood and peered over the table that stood in the center of the room, as calmly as if she did this kind of thing every day.

The knife in Remy’s chest was one of his own. She recognized it.

“Why?” she breathed. “Why?”

“Contingent upon previous information provided,” the surreally calm voice of Elfie whispered in her head, “along with current situational factors, probability that the two men observed are of the Val Kyr nears eighty percent. Assuming that your question relates to the knife currently residing in Remy Dar Elle’s chest, it may have been used to divert suspicion from the Val Kyr. They are known to kill with their hands and feet. Should they wish to disguise a murder in Syl Var, it would be an efficient means of diversion.”

“That’s Remy,” Fen whispered. A maelstrom of emotion surged behind her wall, battering it with grief and fury, but she suppressed the feelings.

“Yes.” It was undoubtedly her imagination—Fen understood now that data access patterns were tools, not people—but she thought Elfie sounded sad.

“We need to get help.” Fen spoke so softly that someone standing two feet away wouldn’t have been able to make out the words.

“The guard stationed in the Trimaji Causeway is closest.”

Fen nodded. She knew him. He had been her reluctant captor the day she’d escaped the castle. She and Luke had talked to him more than once in the past few days because he and Luke were age-mates. Security was his first score—the way he would spend his twenty years from forty to sixty—because everyone had to do one score in security and he’d wanted to get it over with. He was counting the days until he could move into farming.

And if the stories Luke told her were true, he wouldn’t last two seconds up against two Val Kyr willing to kill to get what they wanted.

“Probability he can rescue Luke?” she asked Elfie through cold lips.

“Alone? Zero.” Elfie’s response was matter-of-fact. “He will die.”

Fen wanted to touch Remy’s cheek. To close his jacket around him. To move him out of his own blood so it would stop staining the gorgeous fabric that he had so loved.

Instead she stepped backward.

The pool of blood still spread, but she was oblivious to it.

She needed her crystal.

She wasn’t wearing it. Even around her neck, her nervous habit of playing with it meant she kept inadvertently sharing her thoughts. Gaelith had promised to teach her control, but she hadn’t had the time.

If she got her crystal, though, she could use it to call help—real help—so much help that these stupid, stupid, stupid, fucking Val Kyr would regret they’d ever messed with her.

The glass surrounding her was cracking.

That was probably bad.

She felt like she was floating as she made her way back down the hallway, as if her feet didn’t touch the ground and the air didn’t resist her movement.

She’d have to open the door. They’d see it. Would her ivy be enough to hide her from them if they were looking directly at her?

But they hadn’t shown any signs they’d seen her before. She’d been invisible to them. She’d open the door a crack and try to slip in. If they were questioning Luke, they might not notice.

And, oh, God, if they were hurting him?

All she needed to do was get across the room to the table by the window. The moment she got her hand on her crystal, hell, her fingertip on her crystal, she’d be screaming for help so loudly every crystal receiver in Syl Var would get a headache.

And it didn’t matter if the Val Kyr heard her or realized where she was—the damn town was five miles across and the gliders were crazy fast when they wanted to be. Kaio would be with her within minutes.

The door to her room slammed open in front of her.

“We were too late.” The words were a growl, the man who said them older, someone Fen didn’t recognize, his eyes deep-set, his scowl fierce. “Take care of him. We leave no witnesses.”

Fen’s hands curled into claws. She wanted to leap on him. To tear his eyes out, to rip at his throat with her teeth. But her body wouldn’t move. Her muscles had congealed, solidifying into useless mounds of butter. If he glared at her, she’d melt.

But she was invisible.

He stalked past her, cursing under his breath. His robe, she noticed with some weird hyper-observant part of her brain, was solid gold satin, covered in gold embroidery, dazzling with crystals, and tipped with the slightest hint of brown at the bottom left edge.

Remy’s blood, the detached observer in her mind told her. Luke’s would still be red. Or green.

The thought turned her body from butter into motion.

She slid sideways along the wall and to the door, peering inside.

The other man was on one knee next to Luke, his face expressionless. “On it,” he said. He held a knife in his hand, one of Remy’s, the biggest.

Fen stared. She didn’t recognize him. His face belonged to a stranger. She’d never seen him before. But his hand… the hand holding that knife? She knew that hand.

She’d seen it before.

She recognized it with the kind of scintillating clarity that impending death drew over an image.

That hand had held out a pill bottle to her.

Fen gasped. She couldn’t help herself.

The man’s head whirled around and he stood, the knife at the ready.

He looked nothing like the man who’d tried to kill her. He looked… bland. Invisible. White bread. The guy who’d tried to kill her had been gorgeous.

This guy—not so much.

But the hands were the same.

Fen clasped her hand over her mouth, feeling nauseous.

Luke looked grey. His head was bruising already, blood—red blood—trickling from it in a steady flow, his eyes closed, his face missing all of the energy and vibrancy that she so loved.

She had to do something.

She had to stop the Val Kyr.

There must be something…

His eyes scanned the room, moving from window to door, back again, up, down, like the trained predator he was.

Fen spotted the exact moment he saw it.

She looked down.

She’d stepped in Remy’s blood. It must have been when she backed up, when she turned and ran away from his body. But she’d tracked the blood from the kitchen to where she stood and there was a noticeable spot of red on the floor in the doorframe.

The Val Kyr stared at it. A muscle moved in his jaw. He looked up again and although his gaze did not directly hit Fen, it felt like it came far too close.

Fen wanted to sob.

All she needed to do was step forward. Ten steps. Just to get to her crystal. But any movement and he would find her. He would hear her. Any movement and she was dead.

No movement and Luke was dead.

She took a single step forward.

His gaze was on her.

Did their eyes meet?

Fen didn’t know. Her eyes were on his but what were his eyes saying? Did he see her? Did he not? She couldn’t tell.

And then he leaned down and placed the knife next to Luke’s head. “Done,” he called out.

He straightened and left the room without looking back.

Fen couldn’t move. When she could, she dashed for her crystal. Fumbling for it, she touched the rock within the copper.
Kaio
, she thought, as loudly as she could.
I need you. I need you now.

Ouch.
The responding thought was rueful and she could hear a grumble of other words underneath his.
What is it? I’m—

Before he could finish his sentence, she pictured Luke’s grey face.

—on my way.

Illusions

Gaelith
, Fen tried next.

Not now, child
. Gaelith’s reply sounded distracted, a faint murmur of thought, as if she were far away or sound asleep.

“Luke’s hurt,” Fen said, tears springing to her eyes as she clutched her copper-entwined crystal harder. “I don’t know what to do.”

Oh, dear, not the gliders?
Gaelith still sounded far away.

No, not the gliders
, Fen responded. She crouched next to Luke. Blood streaked down the side of his face, matting his hair. What had those bastards done to him?

I’m afraid I’m in the midst of delivering a baby at the moment, but I’ll come as soon as I can.
Gaelith’s mental voice sounded stronger, as if her attention had turned to Fen.

Fen swallowed hard. She wanted to say that soon would not be soon enough, but what did she know? Maybe Luke would be okay. Maybe it just looked bad. But damn, he looked bad.

“Elfie, can you help me? What should I do?”

“I don’t know.” Elfie sounded almost as distraught as Fen felt. “Healing is a specialized score. It is not Library Level One. I am aware of resource materials, but I cannot access them without a healer license that I do not have.”

A license? Fucking magic-users. What good was it to be able to transform a bedroom into the complete princess suite if you couldn’t heal the boy you liked?

Should I try to help him?
Fen thought to Gaelith.

Not magically!
The warning came in so loudly that Fen winced. Underneath Gaelith’s sharp tone, she caught a blend of other voices, a quiet chorus of responses.

The door to the room burst open. Surprised, Fen reached by instinct for the knife still lying on the floor next to Luke but before her fingers even brushed against it, she relaxed, sitting back.

“Piripi,” she said with relief. It was Luke’s friend, the guard. “What are you doing here?”

“I was sent.” He was gasping as if he’d run the whole way to Remy’s from the security station on the Causeway. He rested his hands on his knees. “What happened? Are you all right? Is Luke…?”

“I don’t know,” Fen said, miserable again. She reached to brush Luke’s blood-sodden hair off his forehead. “He’s breathing, I think, but…”