Lichgates: Book One of the Grimoire Saga (an Epic Fantasy Adventure) (51 page)

“We make examples of traitors,” the Kirelm Blood said. His eyes darted over her once and he scowled before he lifted his Sartori to her cheek and twisted the blade. It drew blood and seared her as the blade’s poison bubbled and hissed in the wound. The agony stung and tore apart the veins in her cheek, but she refused to scream.

The Blood walked over to Helen and rested his sword on her throat. The girl’s lips trembled. Horror settled on her face. Her chest rose and fell, her neck tensed against the blade as the Blood hesitated over his prey.

“You have polluted our world, Vagabond. You have ignited millennia-old tensions that will fester into war. Therefore, it’s a given that you will die tonight. I can promise you that. But I want the world to know where your heart has truly been all this time—with the collective, or with yourself. You must make a choice. ” He pressed the sword harder against Helen’s skin. It sizzled. She whimpered.

“You must choose between your lover and your people. Whichever you choose, I will free. If you say nothing, I will rid Ourea of your kind completely, as it should be. Make your choice.”

Kara snapped her head toward the other vagabonds, but they didn’t look up from the floor. Her throat closed in her debate, making breath impossible. She glanced from her vagabonds to Helen, whose face was tense and wrinkled with fear as she bit her lip to keep the tears at bay.

“You’re running out of time, Vagabond,” the Blood said.

“Please, just take me. Let them all go, just take me.”

“That wasn’t one of your choices.”

He pressed the flat of the blade harder against Helen’s skin. The other vagabonds hung their heads, slouching deeper toward the floor as they accepted their fate. They knew what would become of them.

“It’s as I thought,” said the Blood. “You aren’t a leader. You can’t make difficult choices. Thus, I must make them for you.” He pressed the sword closer to Helen’s neck and drew a line of blood. Helen screamed and smoke from her burning skin billowed around her face. He lifted the sword and dug it into her side, beneath her arm. Her eyes went wide. She whimpered once before the life left her open eyes.

“No!” Kara shrieked. She forced her way to her feet, fighting the guards through the pain of the spiked shackles and the hissing wound on her face. One of them leveled her to the floor with a quick jab to her head.

Something pulled on the pit of her stomach and dragged her out of the Vagabond’s memory. A figure wrapped its white, wispy arms around her, locking her in place as she continued to twist and fight. She opened her eyes to a dark world and floated in the nothingness, her hair weightless around her face.

“Kara, be calm.”

She looked over her shoulder to see the Vagabond, his body nothing but wisps once more. The hood shrouded his face, but she was close enough to see the tortured wrinkles that contorted the corners of his eyes. He released her when she stopped fighting.

“I am imperfect,” he said. “That was the moment I realized, too late, what it truly meant to be the Vagabond. I was unfocused. In my love for Helen, I lost sight of my purpose.”

“How can you forgive Kirelm for what they did? How could you possibly care about yakona anymore?” she screamed at him, the rage from witnessing the ruthless murder still pulsing through her body, but the Vagabond’s voice calmed her when he finally spoke.

“Yours is a different time from mine. Blood Ithone didn’t kill my Helen, nor did his people kill my vagabonds. I won’t forsake the peace of Ourea for the misguided hatred of a few.”

“I—” She forced herself to swallow, and her heart settled. She hated his words, but he was right.

“You can’t hate all isen because Deidre stole your father’s soul. You can’t hate yourself because of the accident that took your mother.”

She shook her head. “So you did die in Kirelm. That’s why you didn’t tell me when I was there, because you knew I would have a prejudice.”

“Blood Morden, the Kirelm Blood of my time, didn’t kill me. He killed my people, but he didn’t kill me.”

“Then how—?”

“I asked my mentor, an isen named Stone, to seal my soul in the Grimoire. That way, I might be better prepared to help the next Vagabond learn from my mistakes. No one killed me. I sacrificed myself.”

“But,” Kara stuttered. “But Helen told you she would wait for you in the next life.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice almost too soft to hear. “But my task isn’t yet done. I chose the Vagabond’s duty, even though I didn’t understand what that truly meant until I lost everything. If my spirit is ever freed, I hope to find her waiting still.”

Kara covered her mouth and looked away, unable to process what he’d said. He’d chosen an eternity of slavery to the Grimoire over the woman he had loved and failed.

“Forgive yourself,” he said. “Forgive Deidre. Focus on uniting the yakona kingdoms and know that your father will be freed without your obsessing over revenge.”

He held out his palm and nodded toward her locket. She rubbed the golden oval on her neck with her thumb and glanced at the scarred groves on his fingers.

Her mom’s face after the crash flooded her mind: the glass, the torn metal, the blood. Her dad’s corpse on the floor of the rental house snapped into focus. She took a deep breath and shook her head, but the memories twisted in her mind until she unclasped the locket from around her neck. Then, there was peace.

She dropped the locket in his outstretched hand.

Light flared through the darkness once more. All feeling was gone from her fingers and her face, but she surprisingly did not care.

Sunlight trickled through Kara’s eyelids, making the skin glow orange. She batted her eyes open, wiping away the stinging surge of morning light as it hit her through a window nearby.

Across from her was a stone sarcophagus, its lid carved in the likeness of the Vagabond without his hood. His hands were crossed over his chest, and enclosed in his stone palm was the tip of a small, golden locket.

It wasn’t until she slunk against the coffin that she saw the black lump of Braeden’s boot sticking out from around the corner. He lay on the ground, his skin gray and smoking in his natural, Stelian form, and he mumbled in his sleep.

She sighed with relief and moved to sit beside him, unafraid. A wave of exhaustion flooded over her. Everything, right down to her toes and fingers, ached. A tired impulse made her curl against him and close her eyes. After a short while, the only sensation was the rise and fall of his chest with each deep breath. Not long after that, she was fast asleep, and the world faded away completely.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

TENSIONS

Braeden woke in a tomb, his last memory nothing but a flare of light. The shadow demons had dissolved into the brightness as it engulfed everything. Now, he faced a coffin laid out in a stone room with a single, square window. Light flooded the room in sporadic rays, illuminating bits of the floor and leaving the rest in shadow. He clenched his fist and shifted into his Hillsidian form, pushing his back against the wall. He stopped when his hand brushed someone else’s soft, warm skin.

Kara lay beside him, curled on her side and cuddled close enough that her cheek pressed against his leg. She murmured something and slid her hand under her head when he moved. A row of deep gouges in her bloodstained arm became visible. The wounds had scabbed around the edges but were still red in the center.

A breath caught in his throat, and he wrapped his fingers around her arm, already forgetting the coffin and stone tomb. Heat pooled in his hands as he focused what energy he could spare on the bloody scrapes, and it wasn’t long until her skin glowed white where he touched her. The broken blood vessels and bruises began to blur and heal, slowly closing up the gaping holes. She whimpered. He held his breath, waiting, but she didn’t wake up.

Four round scars, each just one shade lighter than her skin, dotted her arm. He rubbed one, wondering if he should wake her or just let her sleep, but something glimmered from across the room and caught his eye as he debated.

Her satchel lay on its side by the sarcophagus, its flap open. Flick’s tail peeked out from a corner of the bag, which moved up and down with the small animal’s steady breaths. The Stelian amulet was half-hidden beneath the furry creature’s bushy tail, its black stone glinting in the muted sunlight.

Braeden walked over and knelt beside the amulet before he could question himself, his fingers hovering, uncertain, as he deliberated whether or not he wanted to know what the stone would reveal. Carden’s words haunted him.
“Look into her eyes as the light fades. Once she’s dead, look down to the stone to see the only world that wants you.”

His fingers twitched where they hovered. It didn’t matter how much he’d trained with Adele or how far he’d come in his ability to control himself—if the amulet told him that he belonged at the Stele, it meant that he had accomplished nothing.

He grabbed it.

Gray smoke bubbled and twisted from the black depths of the stone, fueled by his touch. It thickened, pooling in dark layers until the throne room of the Stele appeared in the haze.

His jaw tightened. He dropped the amulet, letting it fall with a clatter on the stone floor instead of hurling it through the glass window like he wanted to. He stood in a frustrated huff and ran his hands through his hair, glancing back to where Kara slept on the floor. He sighed in defeat. No matter how much he fought it, the Stele chased him. It would never let him go.

He noticed a single door at the end of a short hallway and pushed through it into the sunny day outside. A set of stone stairs led to a paved courtyard, which was lined with a thick forest. Small, paved walking paths split and wound from the clearing into the woods, and a few cottages lined the intersections. Each stone-faced house was thatched with a straw roof and had a smattering of glass windows.

The village was nestled in a valley, and mountains scraped the sky in every direction. There were no weeds or cracks in the stone, and nothing had collapsed or rotted in the thousand years it had been abandoned. It was as if time had left the Vagabond’s small world alone.

A three-story house stood at the other end of the courtyard, directly across from the tomb. Its porch wrapped around to the back of the mansion, and large, imperfect stones covered any part of the house that wasn’t a door or a large window. A rocking chair on the porch moved on its own, swaying back and forth even though the trees were calm and still.

This is it. This is the Vagabond’s village. Adele didn’t do it justice with her description.

Braeden sat on the first step of the tomb’s stairs. It wouldn’t be right to explore without Kara. This was her home to discover.

His mind drifted back to the amulet, and his stomach churned with self-loathing. He belonged with Carden, even after everything he’d done to escape that fate. Anger and frustration boiled along his skin, like steam. He took shaky breaths until the heat faded and he regained control of himself, but a buzzing sound continued in his ear even after his head cleared.

His fingers reached into his pocket and fiddled with a small talisman before he realized that he’d touched it. There was still dirt on it from when he’d dug it back up after its twelve years of isolation, and he pulled it out without really looking at it. His eyes glossed over.

“You kept the key to the Stele?”
The memory of Adele’s revolted expression made him cringe.

He sighed and hung his head in shame, rubbing his temples. He hadn’t kept it; he’d buried it by his waterfall in Hillside and left it, forgotten it.

“But you didn’t destroy it, Braeden. That’s all that matters.”

He flipped it over in his hand. No, he hadn’t. He’d never unearthed it again to try.

The small, black charm had been carved into the likeness of the Stele’s coat of arms. It fit in his palm, its black jade thorns interwoven in a small square. Though it had nothing to do with Carden’s hold over him, keeping it confirmed what he subconsciously knew: someday, he would go back.

The buzzing in his ear grew louder, snapping him from his thoughts. The noise was like a fly droning just out of reach: incessant and annoying. It was a sensation that had only ever plagued him whenever Carden was near, but he ignored it. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that this time, it was just severe and unyielding guilt.