Ensnared (Sorcery and Science Book 5) (21 page)

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.”