The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series) (24 page)

— 55 —

We reach the Black Gash at once too slowly and too quickly. The darkwater appears abruptly, like an oil spill across the landscape; the ground beneath our feet becomes sandy; the horizon is suddenly all jarring, unnatural angles of strange mountains hidden in the low clouds. The water—which is nothing like water—murmurs as it passes by our feet, no rush, no splash. It’s soft, seductive, absorbing the light at all angles.

Somewhere east—or simply to our right, perhaps—is the point where I must enter in order to find Trebor.

It’s a long walk—hours? Days? I can’t tell. I’m listening to the whisper of the darkwater at my left, and reaching out around us with my senses. Between the black energy of this world and the black river at my side, I feel like I might drown in darkness if I don’t keep my head above water.

“I feel strange,” Kyla tells me after a while, while Lykos hovers a few feet behind to keep watch.

“About time,” I say. “You haven’t seemed the least bit fazed by anything that’s happened since I left the hospital.” I scratch my forearm around the cast, wince at the pain from my touch. The skin is a halo of black and blue around the end of the plaster.

“Well, none of
this
bothers me,” she admits. “It feels…normal. Real. Which is good, I guess, because it
is
real.” Kyla inhales deeply, exhales slowly, thoughts flickering behind her eyes. “I just feel…I don’t know. Open. Alive. Like I didn’t know I’d been asleep, and now I’m waking up.” She gives me a small smile. “Waking up
refreshed
.”

“Really? I feel like I haven’t slept in days.”

“You barely have.”

“True.” I shrug.

She scratches her head. “So, are you going to tell me what’s going on with you and Trebor, or are you going to keep shutting me out?”

Ouch. “What do you mean?”

“Well, we are here, in a world full of demons, trying to rescue him. I know you wouldn’t do that for just anyone.”

“Yeah…” I shrug again. “He’s important to me. I think.”

“You think?” Kyla laughs. “Okay, Ana. Maybe you’re
not
holding back. Maybe you really are in total denial.”

I nod, coolly, but my heart twists.

“What about what Faye said?”

“What did she say?”

“Her translation of those Irin words you asked her about? I can only guess you heard that from Trebor.”

I nod, coolly, again.

“You’re not going to talk to me about this, are you.” She frowns.

I shake my head. “I don’t know what to say. I haven’t even been letting myself
think
about it, Ky.”

“Why not?”

“Because…I’m terrified.” Of losing him. Of losing myself. Of the fact that he’s not human—something all the more obvious now that I know he has
wings
—and what that might mean about me for even entertaining the idea of attraction.

Kyla looks at me, eyebrows raised, but doesn’t say anything for a while. She walks carefully at my side, hands in her pockets, thinking. Finally, she takes a breath and speaks.

“The summer I came out, I was determined to get a girlfriend. Do you remember?”

I nod, smirking. “You’re always determined to get a girlfriend.”

She smiles back. “The thing is, just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I was born with a fully functioning gaydar. For the most part, I was as clueless as anyone about who was straight and who wasn’t, although, the optimist in me assumes everyone is gay until proven straight.” She grins. “Anyway, I was determined to find a girlfriend—”

“And we all know what happens when Kyla is determined.” I smirk.

“—so I did what I had to do. I walked up to girls I liked, flirted with them, and tested the waters. If that didn’t give me a clear enough idea of where their loyalties lay, so to speak, I straight up asked them out.” She half smiles. “I had more rejections in one month than most people get in their entire lives. But I also have some of the best memories from that summer. I met some great girls—we had a good time. And it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t put myself out there.” Her smile slips away. “I had to risk a lot, Ana. Not just being rejected for a date, which is terrifying enough on its own. But I had to risk being hated for even letting my desires be known. Every time I went somewhere and met a girl I liked, I risked losing that place, those people, if I wanted to take the chance and get to know her better.”

She looks at me. “I don’t regret the choices I’ve made. I can’t, because if I’m hated for what I am, then at least I know who I shouldn’t call my friend. Simple as that. Most people would have called me crazy for the way I behaved, but other people rarely, if ever, know what’s best for you.” She grins and knocks my shoulder with her own. “Except for you and me. I always know what’s best for you. And you, surprisingly, always know what’s best for me.”

I purse my lips and watch my feet moving over foreign sands, red dust rising with each step. I hear her. I understand her. But it doesn’t make me feel any more brave. “So, maybe what I’m feeling isn’t weird, or wrong. But I know Trebor’s going to leave, Kyla. He has to. He’s being hunted by his own people.”

“And you don’t think you can take that,” she understands. “Losing someone again.”

I nod.

“So you’re going to try to deny how you feel about him, to protect yourself.”

I nod again.

“And yet, here we are, in what is essentially
hell
, risking our lives and souls to rescue him.” She holds back a smile. “How’s denial working out for you?”

I elbow her.

She laughs. “I’m sorry, Ana. But look—you can’t just turn off how you feel. You have to own it, or else it will own you.”

Her words strike somewhere deep and vital inside of me, and for a moment I hear Trebor’s voice inside my head.
If I don't teach you to control your magic, it will find a way to control you.

I cock my head and listen. “We’re here,” I realize. Three white rocks glow in the dimness up ahead, near a gnarled, petrified tree.

“Hello, little girls.”

We jump and turn to the labyrinth of rocks on our right.

Ishmael is standing there, smirking, hands on his hips. “How about another trade?”

Lykos flickers to my side. “No more trades! Get gone with ya!”

The Zee laughs and strides forward. I move to step back, but Kyla holds her ground, fearless. I try to emulate her bravery, but my mind is running wild, anxiously trying to guess what Ishmael has planned, what new danger we’re about to endure, all the while acutely aware of the fact that Trebor is down there, in the darkwater, just a few yards away from us.

“You see, the water spirits who stole your Irin friend are not as simple as you believe,” Ishmael explains. “They do not take precious goods and leave them undefended, even if their storage unit is, itself, one enormous, impenetrable trap. They find land folk, like myself, and ask them to keep watch.”

“We’ll fight you,” Kyla assures him, her mahogany eyes burning. “And we’ll win.”

He raises his eyebrows. “And what good will that do, my dark and lovely friend? I will be gone, but you will have no way of retrieving your friend from the dark clutches of his nightmares.” He gestures dramatically to the Gash.

“I can find him,” I assure him. “I got us this far, I know I can find him in there.”

Ishmael gives me a sad smile, and continues, theatrical. “No one explained to you what it’s like in there, did they? The Black Gash is a prison made of shadows—the
darkest maws
—that will draw you in and swallow you whole. If you remain submerged for even a moment too long, you won’t know if you’re awake or asleep, dead or alive. And you won’t care, either.” His expression turns sinister. “No one returns from the bottom of the Gash. If you go down there without my help, you will be just as lost as your precious Irin.”

“That’s a lie,” Lykos growls. “You can’t do anything she can’t.”

“I can. I can ask the water spirits to let him go.”

“And why would the water
demons
do that?” Kyla asks.

“Because the Irin is nowhere near as valuable as the witch.” He smiles.

My heart sinks. I knew they took him to get to me. I should have never expected it to be so easy as just walking in and taking Trebor back home. I should have known.

“If you would give yourself over to the Zee, little Ouros, the water spirits will release him, and he will be safe.”

“You can’t,” Lykos whispers to me. “They’ll bleed you dry. They’ll take your body, and they’ll turn the shell of you into something horrible, something monstrously powerful, that the Irin could never defeat.”

Ah, and there’s that, too.

“It’s you or your man, little Ouros. You decide.”

Kyla looks at me, shakes her head.

I let out an unsteady breath. “I’ve already decided: I’m going down there to rescue him, and if I fail…then we’re both lost.”

Ishmael frowns, holds his right hand out at his side, fingers curling. “I’m afraid that’s not how it works. You have come into
my
territory seeking to
take
something. There
must
be a fair exchange. A trade
must be made!
”

“No,
Ishmael
,” I spit. “The water demons took something from
me
in
my world
, without making a fair exchange. And I’m here to take him back.”

The Zee scoffs. “Whatever happens in your land stays there. This is
my world
you’re dealing with. And if you will not play by
my
rules…” He smirks, but turns into a snarl as her raises his hand as if to throw a ball and whips his arm in our direction. Red knives of dark magic come streaming from his fingertips, cutting through the air, heading straight for us.

“Get down!” I dive to the side, knocking Kyla to the ground with me. Simultaneously, I try to access the magic—magic I’ve used only a handful of times before. My senses expand and contract, taking the heavy, dark magic of Sheol into my body, my bones. I try to focus, but my head spins.

Almost before we hit the ground Kyla is sitting up, dagger flashing in her fist. Ishmael is practically on top of us when she throws it.

But he dodges, catching the blade only with his shirt, and strikes Kyla hard across the face, knocking her down. He twists, raises a boot to kick her.

“No!” I scream, and lunge for him.

I take him out at the legs, bringing us both to the ground. Ishmael clutches a fistful of my hair, uses its leverage to throw my weight off of him, but I grab his arm and pull him with me in a confusion of limbs.

The gold of the dagger hilt glints just out of reach. I roll towards it, scrambling onto my knees. His boot swings out, catches me in the stomach—my breath flees—and when I reel back he punches me in the face—my world tilts and spins.

But the impact throws me closer to the knife.

Sprawled on the sand, I watch him kneel, begin to stand, summoning a fireball of magic in his hands, turning towards Kyla. My fingers close around the hilt of the knife and, still breathless, I haul myself upright and fling myself forward.

The sharp angle of my shoulder nails Ishmael in the back, but when we fall he’s quick to twist, rolling his weight on top of me. Grimacing with rage, his yellow eyes burning bright, Ishmael grabs my throat, choking me, throttling me, crushing me under the weight and strength of his arms—

It’s like a movie, like it’s happening elsewhere, when the blade of the dagger connects—when it slips—
easily, effortlessly
—between his ribs. He seizes, rears up, stares in confusion at the gilded handle protruding from his side. But it happens much faster than in the movies. There’s much more blood—blood blossoming from the wound, blood saturating his clothes, blood dripping onto me. He
gags
on blood as it burbles into his punctured lung, up his throat with each choking gasp until it’s dribbling from his mouth, down his chin, red flecks of spittle spraying across my face.

And then he collapses on top of me, dead.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t move, and I can’t breathe. I can’t speak.

I think I’ve died, too—at least a part of me has.

But then a shadow falls over me, looming. “So we meet again, Anastasia.”

Nikolai’s electric blue eyes smile at me from the darkness.

— 56 —

“What do you want?” I can barely whisper, still lying on the ground. Although, I do not say it at all—I think it. This all must be a dream.

“To offer assistance.” He smiles, and his eyes crinkle, and for some reason, the earnest expression on his face reminds me so much of my father that it hurts. “You’re breaking down now, because of this moment,” he explains, coolly. “It will taint you for the rest of your life, the fact that you killed a man in cold blood.”

“He was going to kill Kyla!
And
me!” I justify, but I know it’s not enough, not right now, not for me. I took a life. Maybe the life of a Fallen, a Sura, but a life, nonetheless.

Nikolai knows that. He cocks his head, raises his eyebrows. “I can undo this, if you’d like. There is a fraction of a moment of life left inside him yet, and that is all I require to heal him. All I ask is that you come with me in seven days time, and let me teach you.”

I frown, shaking, breathing hard and shallow as he lays this impossible choice before me. “I can’t. I have to save Trebor. I have to make sure Kyla is okay.”

“You can do that. Ishmael will not awaken until long after you’ve completed your task.” He smiles, a tenderness in his eyes that almost holds back the madness there. “It is yet another option to avoid that foreseen future, my little Annabel Lee.” He touches my forehead, sweeps the blood-flecked hair from my eyes. “Which I would like to help you avoid by all means.”

I shake my head, unnerved by his touch even as some part of me wants to lean into the comfort of hands more powerful than my own. “I can’t just leave. My father needs me. Trebor needs my help, even once we get home. And if I Fall, it would kill him. He would think it’s his fault.” I shake my head again. “I can’t accept your offer, no matter how terrible I feel about this. I just have to live with it.”

Nikolai raises his eyebrows, and sighs. “As you wish, Anastasia. Until we meet again.”

And then he vanishes.