Your Dimension Or Mine? (21 page)

“No!” both Mayir and Terrian said at the same time.

“I have to.” Turning her eyes to Mayir, she saw how he struggled with this. He knew what was possible if she went to Orion. But he also knew what was possible if she didn’t. And she would not let her nieces go through that.

Rubbing one of the arms that held her tightly, she watched her grandmother. “When is the exchange?” she asked again.

“He told Jane he would send someone to negotiate. No time was set.”

Nodding, she managed to turn around in Terrian’s arms and bury her face in his chest. It was so much worse than she expected, and she thought she had expected the worst.

“You should rest,” Mayir said in a somewhat kind voice.

Quickly, she pulled away from Terrian and shook her head. “No. I have to be ready for anything. I have to be able, not only to defend myself, but to deny him at the same time. My nieces are being held by a whacko who thinks it is fun torturing people. I will
not
rest until they are safely home with their mother.” Even if that meant losing herself.

She doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled her efforts to fight off magical power. There wasn’t enough room in the stone room, so she went outside and demanded the guards magically attack her from their posts. They turned to Mayir as if asking for his permission. With one nod, it started.

Excruciating pain. The attacks came at every part of her protection, some pounding, some slicing, some digging into it. But she would not give up. Terrian kept offering to help, but she refused. “I won’t have your help then, I can’t take it now.”

Hours upon hours of constant attacks without respite and, with a scream, she finally dropped to her knees and pounded on the ground. “HELP ME!” she screamed, actually hoping something in the universe would respond. Tears poured out of her eyes and blood poured from the numerous cuts and scrapes caused by the magic she was unable to push away.

“Arwen,” Terrian said in a hoarse voice as he never took a break from going any further than five feet away from her during the ordeal. “You do not have to do this alone. Please! Let me help you.”

Sniffling, she shook her head. “What would it help?” she asked sadly, looking up into his pain-filled face. “I have to do this on my own because when it comes down to me versus him, there will be nobody to help me. If I can’t do it now, I won’t be able to do it later.”

“There must be a way!” he exclaimed, shaking his head. His hair had come out of its binding many hours before and swung freely around his anguished face.

****

“Arwen, I command you to take a break.”

She turned to Mayir in fury. For over two days, she had practiced, only taking small breaks to eat and sleep. “It was you who told me I couldn’t take a break. And you were right! If I’m not prepared, he will…” She had a hard time articulating all the horrible things he could do to her nieces, but when he shook his head sadly, it hit her. The sad truth she did not want to face. “He won’t give them up until he has destroyed them, will he?”

“No, he won’t. Our waiting for his negotiator is just a tactic. He has time on his side, and he knows it. In the meantime, he will
play
with their minds.”

“I have to leave.” As Terrian began to shake his head, she shook hers in response. “Terrian, I have to leave Zeta and go somewhere where he can find me. If we wait for his terms, the girls will be worse off than dead, and I will have to live with the knowledge that I could…I could have stopped it,” she managed to choke out. “I need to know how to get to his realm.”

“No,” Abigail said, saying something for the first time since she had informed Ari of what was going on. “If he gets you in his realm, his power is stronger. You cannot go there, Arwen. You have to meet him somewhere neutral.”

She was exhausted, so tired she couldn’t even think straight, but she nodded anyway. Ari had already accepted her fate. In fact, she accepted it the moment she found out who he took.

She knew if she told them, they would fight her on it, but she saw no other way. She would accept the enslavement if he would deliver the girls safely to their mother.

From the sounds of it, her mind would be a thing of the past soon enough anyway, so she wouldn’t have to mourn the loss of her family and of Terrian for long.

If there was only a way to destroy Orion in the process.

Unable to move, she wasn’t surprised when she found herself in her room under the covers on her bed. Too tired to make a comment or even to care, she closed her eyes, the only thing she could see behind her eyelids were the sad eyes of a Darinthan male whom she had come to care for far too much.

It took another day before she was able to regain enough energy to get up, get dressed, and walk to the stone room. Strangely enough, she felt calm. Her mind had already decided. Today was the day, and they would just have to let her go. Terrian, Mayir, and Abigail looked up as she entered the room.

“How do you feel?” Terrian asked, rushing to her side.

“Ready.”

A strange shudder went through him, but he nodded. Pulling her in for a hug, he held her close. “I know why you have to do this,” he whispered to her, “but I still wish you would let me help.”

“I won’t let him get you, too.” The last thing she wanted was for Orion to get hold of a new toy and have that toy be someone she loved. She had the feeling he would torture him in front of her, and she would not be able to handle that.

Mayir watched her, but did not say a word. His face looked haggard, and she wondered if he felt as though he had failed. “It isn’t your fault,” she whispered. “You have done more than anyone else to get me ready.”

“It is my fault, but you will never know why,” he said with a sad smile. “I will send you to where he can find you when you have said your goodbyes.” Without another word, he turned and walked out of the room.

Terrian hugged her close. “This is not goodbye,” he said harshly in her ear. “You will see me again.” Pulling her head back, he kissed her roughly, passionately, showing her physically the words he dared not say aloud. And then, he was gone.

He released her, the pain in his face something she would remember until she could remember no more, and then turned and walked away, his shoulders slumped forward as he strode from the room.

Slowly Ari turned and looked at her grandmother. It was her plan to leave. It was her decision, and she accepted that as the adult she was. But in this one instant, she felt like a little girl who just wanted her Nana to take it all away. A sob escaped her throat and then another one.

Abigail strode forward and pulled her sharply into a hug.

She cried for a long time, letting every feeling she had loose as she held on. When the tears began to dry up, she said what she needed to say. “T-tell Cory and Jane that I love them, that I’m sorry I will never see them again. Let the girls know about their crazy Aunt Ari, okay? Please don’t let them forget,” she said with a sob.

“Nobody will ever forget you, Arwen,” Abigail said in a husky voice. “But don’t give up, honey. You can come back to us. Please, come back to us.” They held on for a few minutes more before Ari knew if she did not pull away now, she might not be able to.

A commotion in the yard made them both turn toward the door. Arwen’s heart sped up. The negotiator must have arrived.

Instead, Mayir, Terrian, and Verisha walked in the door.

“Verisha!” she exclaimed, happy he was back and alive for Mayir’s sake.

He looked at her, his eyebrows rubbing together. “You have been through too much already, young Arwen.”

“I’m glad you are back. Mayir was worried.”

He raised an eyebrow and looked at his father-in-law. “You must be slipping if you let someone know your true feelings.” He just got a glare in response.

“I am glad you are back, Verisha,” Abigail said with a forced smile. “Mayir wondered where you went. Once Arwen has gone, maybe you can tell us the tale?”

“Arwen is leaving?” he asked in surprise.

“She is going to face him.” Mayir’s words hung heavy in the air, and Verisha looked around in surprise.

“Then I came back at the right time. I bring information,” he said simply, “on how you can beat Orion.”

Chapter Sixteen -
The Contract

“Yes!” Terrian exclaimed.

“You know how to beat Orion? How?” Mayir demanded.

“Sit, sit,” Verisha said, magicking chairs out of the ether for all of them. “Do you want the long version or the short one?”

“Short one,” Ari said. “I have to go free my nieces.”

His head snapped up. “He has your nieces?” She nodded and a strange keening sound left his lips before it cut off. “What you need to know is there is a holding place where all magical contracts are kept if the purveyors of said agreements wish to have recourse if someone breaks it. This place keeps the magic intact, even if those who originally created it lose their ability to do so on their own. To place a magical contract within the archives, you must have within the contract a way of ending it at some point. Mayir and I assumed all these centuries that Orion would not have been stupid enough to place his contract there.”

“You found it,” Terrian said, his eyes darting to Ari’s with hope. “How does she get out of it?”

“It is a simple and not so simple thing. Written at the very end of the contract, obviously as his way of getting it recorded, was one line. ‘To end the suffering of those within the Agastion bloodline, the one he asks must deny him thrice.’”

Silence filled the room as Ari ran the words over in her mind. “What does that mean?”

“It means you have to say no to his request that you accept his enslavement,” Mayir told her. “Three times.”

“I’ve already said it once. Screamed it actually.” And it had hurt like hell. Could she deny him twice more?

“Does it have to be three times in a row? Or three times over time?” Abigail asked, leaning forward.

“I don’t know. The escape clause was short and gave no other information.”

“That’s okay,” Ari said, letting out a long breath. “The fact is, there’s a chance. Which is a thousand times better than what I had fifteen minutes ago.” She stood up. “But still there is no time to waste. Mayir, I need you to send me now.” She still felt fear. Seeing Orion again terrified her. But she also felt hope. From the sounds of it, if she said no three times…“Wait. Does that mean if I can say no three times all the females in my family are forever free from his control?”

Mayir chuckled. “It certainly sounds like it. The zoor must have added that line without thinking it through first. Good! First bad mistake he’s made.” He turned to Ari, an expression on his face she could not understand. “Ready?”

Slowly she looked around the room. Verisha watched her without an expression on his face, Abigail with hope, Terrian with love and worry. “I’ll be back,” she whispered, unsure if she believed it but hoping it would be true. The last thing she saw before the room disappeared was a single tear dripping down Terrian’s cheek, following the path of the scar that she never got the chance to ask about.

Bright light shown all around her, and she blinked, squinting to get her bearings. As she looked around, she was startled. “What are you doing here?”

“I will take the girls to safety.”

She hid a smile. He might never admit it, but she thought Mayir had a bit of a soft spot for her, probably hoped to help as long as he could. “Thank you.”
For everything.

He just nodded. “Follow me. We are on Drega Prime, an almost uninhabitable planet. This is the safest place to bring you as Orion should feel cocky about being here. Nobody to anger while he is being a zoor.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” she said as she followed him along an almost imperceptible path at the base of two hills. “What does zoor mean?”

He chuckled lightly. “It started out as a rather rude nickname for people from his realm, but over the millennia has come to stand for any being that has no goodness in them whatsoever.”

The area around them was barren. The hills were dead gray dirt, and she couldn’t see a plant in sight. “What happened to this planet? Obviously we can breathe, so there’s a decent enough oxygen atmosphere, but why are there no plants?”

“The peoples who used to inhabit this place destroyed it through their greed. They created poisons that destroyed their own land. Finally, they had to move on to another planet when they could not grow enough food to survive. They are currently destroying it now.”

“That’s kind of sad.”

He barked out a laugh. “Have you not noticed, Arwen, beings who should be intelligent tend to not be so when money or some sort of gratification is hung in front of their face? Even your own planet has its problems, hmm?”

Grimacing, she nodded.

They walked several miles at least before they came up on a large plain. Gray dirt was visible everywhere she looked. “We wait,” he said when she looked at him.

So this would be where she battled Orion. Would he bring the girls with him? Would she get to say goodbye before Mayir took them to safety? In a surprise act of emotion, he put an arm around her and squeezed. She winced as some of the hairs on the back of her neck caught on something, but the pain was negligible considering the action.

Before she could respond, the air seemed to
whoosh
around them and there he was. Standing fifty feet away, Orion watched the two of them. He was dressed in the same clothes he had worn in the coffee shop the first time she saw him. “I don’t want you, Mayir,” he said with a sneer. “Go home like a good little Fae.”

Mayir growled softly but did not respond. Ari decided it must be up to her. “He’s here to take the girls home to safety. As I won’t be able to,” she tacked on, hoping he would get what she wasn’t saying. Both Mayir and Orion turned and looked closely at her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to Mayir as she took a few steps away.

“Hmm,” Orion said, watching her. “But they are such good little assurances, my pet, though they are very annoying. How can three little humans be so incredibly loud?”

Her lips twitched, but she couldn’t really feel amusement. “Take it or leave it, Orion. Either bring the girls so he can take them or I leave now and you will never find me again.” It was as big a bluff as she had ever made in her life, but she hoped he bought it. When he didn’t move but kept observing her, she took a step back toward her trainer.