Rise of the Magi (18 page)

While the pink sisters muttered to one another, I did my best to block them out and concentrated, instead, on Nix’s breathing. In. Out. Long and deep. Light flared across my skin like golden lightning, engulfing me completely. It took effort, but I slowed my heartbeat to match Nix’s steady one, letting it sooth me like a gentle clock, counting down toward calm. When my body and mind reached that ultimate stillness only deep meditation or extreme grief could bring, I began pushing out tendrils of my energy into him.

I found nothing but quiet and shadowy emptiness. No mind. No soul. No consciousness.
Dammit, is he dead?
Gallagher had said Nix remained inside his thick skull somewhere, so I had to dig deeper. Blind in the darkness, I pushed onward. The farther I went, the more my senses dulled and the less aware of my body I became.

“Nix?” The hollow sound of my voice died the instant it left my mental lips. Not willing to give up, I moved downward again toward a glimmer of something in the distance. A few more bellows of his name returned no answer. When I came to the point where another inch farther would wrench me completely free of my body, I stopped. Listened. A tiny sound came back to me. Could it be him? Brígh freaking out in the real world? A figment of my imagination? My conscience telling me I was insane to go farther?

With everyone at stake, I couldn’t afford to play it safe. If Nix was home, I intended to knock his damn doors in, no matter what it cost me. I left my body behind, travelling as pure energy toward the twinkle below. The sound grew in volume as I neared my goal. Nix cried out in a voice so hoarse he must have been screaming for hours.

When I hit the small bit of light, it exploded around me.

Silence.

I blinked and squinted.

“I can’t believe you came for me.” Relief radiated loud and clear from Nix’s scratchy voice.

What? No curses or racial slurs? No snark?
Limbs rigid and ready for a potential fight, I gazed around, barely focusing on the dim form in front of me. “Yeah, well, believe it, dick face. When you find out why I’m here you might not be so glad to see me. You’re going to tell me what you did to Liam and the others. Now. And if I don’t like your answer, you won’t be breathing for a moment longer than I choose.”

His gasp almost sounded genuine. “So their trick worked. I tried to stop it, but … fuck.”

“Don’t play with me, Nix, because I’m so not in the mood. Did the Magi suck you into helping them all those years ago when you disappeared? Are you working for them now?” I tried to creep into his mind to find out what I wanted to know, but I’d have had better luck pushing against stone with a cooked noodle.

A few moments of panted breaths filled the silence. “I don’t remember what happened to me in that week I went missing when I was sixteen. I’d almost forgotten about that.” His sigh held exhaustion and a small hint of fear. “And there’s something wrong with me right now, Li, so don’t waste your energy. I’m locked up so tight I can’t even penetrate the ward. Do you think they did something like this to me when I was young, and made it so I couldn’t remember?”

“I was hoping you knew the answer to that.”

He came nearer, his form solidifying only slightly so that his shoulder-length white hair and striking blue eyes came into focus. “When I felt Gallagher trying for me, I started screaming for him to stop, but I’m guessing he couldn’t hear me. The Magi booby-trapped me and laid me out on a platter, knowing you’d bring me here to Iress. At least, that’s where I assume we are. It was Gallagher who released whatever they spelled me with the instant he entered my mind.”

Well, shit.
“Are you saying that even if the witches hadn’t done whatever they did to reveal the Magi’s realm to us, I still would have found you in the woods?” I’d considered that a small victory in the greater war.
Silly me.

“One of their psycho kids brought me through the portal to the human realm, concealed us with magic and waited, knowing you’d come eventually. God, they are … my mind feels scarred after being with them for … I don’t even know how long it’s been. You can’t win this one, Li. I’m sorry about everything, what I said, how I acted. I know what you can do, how powerful you’ve become since changing us all, but you’re still no match for them.”

I edged closer in an attempt to study Nix’s face. Gaze lowered, he stood there, but I found no hint of deception no matter how much I squinted.

“You’re wrong, and I don’t think I believe you’re sorry in the slightest,” I said. “Saying the words isn’t going to cut it, not this time.” After putting enough distance between us to ease my survival instinct’s proverbial hand away from its sword, I sat down on the white ground, keeping an eye on Nix so I could react if he moved. “What do they want? Why take the men and not the women? Where have they taken them all?” I held onto my darkness by a thread, that sickeningly sweet lure beckoning my hands to choke the life out of Nix. Anything to ease the pain biting every inch of me. Only the sight of Liam safe and sound would take that away.

Nix’s form wavered, and his fuzzy hands disappeared into imagined pockets. “They never told me what they want, exactly, only that you were the key to their vision of the future coming into reality. As for where they are, I can try to take you there once we get out of here, but my memories are foggy since they took me. I can’t make any promises.”

“Do you remember anything about a pond?”

He straightened and paused. “Maybe. Why? Have you found something?”

“Again, I was hoping you could tell me.” I studied him for a moment longer, struggling to see through my own doubt to figure out whether or not it was founded. He seemed defeated somehow, lost. “How did they get you? Please tell me you didn’t go to them to spite me.”

A burst of his tired laughter slapped me in the face. “After we fought, I was so angry I couldn’t make myself go back to Dun Bray. I went north and found an abandoned cabin up there, where I worked off some frustration and just sat and thought about everything. When you … changed me and put out the call, I came—”

“Don’t lie to me!” My tone could have cleaved a rock in two, and I shifted forward, my fists itching for his pain. “I know bloody well you never came.”

Nix lowered into a crouch, his glowing, opaque form pulsing between dim and bright. “I swear to you, I tried to come. I was on my way. I even made it into Talawen’s wood, but a girl stepped out of the trees and caught my attention. I thought maybe she was hurt or needed help. She wore wolf skins and had long, shining black hair. Something about her made me stop and go to her.”

Tension sang through my arms. “A Magi.”

Had he really come to help with the Shadowborn? It had bothered me ever since that day that he hadn’t cared even a shred about me, or any of us. His grief over his father had been fairly new when we’d ultimately fought about my heritage, and I understood his hatred of the Unseelie after how they’d tortured his father. I could almost forgive the things Nix said to me that day. Almost.

“The instant I touched her, all the pain in me, all the grief, the heartbreak over losing you to
him
… she took it all away. Alseides was her name, I think. It was a big lie. I knew it was, but I wanted it, even though a little voice in my head screeched at me to run. Everything goes a little fuzzy after that, but I have flashes of memory from when she led me to their realm.”

I wanted to believe him, and hope launched me to my feet. “So, what now? How do we get out of here, so you can lead us to Liam and the others?”

Even with his face aglow as it was, I still caught the well-duh expression clear enough. “If I knew how to get out, do you really think I’d still be down here?”

17

I frowned at Nix, needing to know, and afraid to know at the same time. “If you could have warned us the Magi intended to take all of the men, would you really have done it?”

His white hair shifted like mist around his shoulders. “Despite what you might think of me, I’m not an evil bastard.”

It was a non-answer, but in such close proximity, as in literally inside his mind, I didn’t want to think about what could happen if I pushed him. “I never thought you were an evil bastard. Even after how you treated me when you found out about Donovan.” Laerni’s teachings rattled around my head, encouraging me to speak from my heart.
Yeah, yeah, shut up already.
I sighed and squared my shoulders to face him head on, arms relaxed at my sides to make my body language match the sincerity of what I was about to say. “You’re still a fae, and even though I don’t trust you, I still, for whatever reason, care about what happens to you.”

His nod and sad smile surprised me. “I don’t blame you for distrusting me. I would in your place. And I can’t tell you how much it means that you still care for me at all.”

He’s agreeing with me?
What happened to him to change his mind so drastically? Had the Magi done something worse to him than what he’d told me?

“Congratulations, by the way.” His ghostly gaze fell to my stomach. “Looks like you’re well on your way to becoming a mother. Bonded life looks good on you.”

“Don’t.” My doubt warred with that small place in my heart he’d once occupied, maybe still did if I was being honest with myself. I paced the confines of his mind looking for a way out, somewhere to get away from Nix so he wouldn’t try to crawl under my skin any deeper. “Don’t pretend to be happy about my choices. And I’m quite sure you think this child is an abomination no matter what comes out of your mouth, so just don’t.”

I thought I heard a faint, “I’m sorry,” as I strode as far away from him as I could get, darting glances at him over my shoulder to make sure he remained where I’d left him. He did. Thankfully. I should have been asking him more about the Magi, but I couldn’t bring myself to engage him anymore.

Liam
. I needed Liam like I needed air, to allow my lungs their full expansion. They hadn’t worked properly since the moment he’d disappeared. I needed his arms, his lips. His scent. Those blue eyes with pinwheels of yellow that could hypnotize me into a blissful oblivion with the slightest graze of his stare, one filled with amusement and naughty promises. The smile that made me a boneless fool, hopelessly, arse-over-teakettle in love with him. Mine. He was mine, and I was his. Always, until the end of all things. We hadn’t had our last moment together—I wouldn’t allow it—and I wouldn’t allow Nix to confuse me ever again.

I spent what seemed like hours searching for the way back to my body. Tension crept along my shoulders and down my back at the forced closeness to my former captain. I tried willing myself to go back to my body and succeeded in giving myself a headache. A thunderous one that pounded merrily on the underside of my skullcap. Why couldn’t I sense my body? I had a brief thought that Brígh might be doing all sorts of nasty things to it in her rage, before returning to the problem. Was I supposed to have left a trail of metaphysical breadcrumbs to follow back to myself? Descending had been so easy, all I had to do was fall, but there was nothing with which to climb out on, and I couldn’t remember the path back out. What I wouldn’t have given for a ladder or a rope. Or a map. Or Gallagher.
Please be okay, you old fart.

Too much time had gone by. If I didn’t get out, what would happen to everyone? What would happen to Liam? To Garret, stuck out there in my body
. Oh, Goddess, Garret!
I thought I’d left him in the safest place in the world, that I was only endangering myself
. Idiot!

I raced back and forth, muttering to myself and rubbing my imagined belly while Nix sat hugging his knees a few yards away. There had to be a way out. If Gallagher could do it, then I could. Arrogant or not, I had to believe I had it in me or I’d collapse and bawl my eyes out. I just had to figure out how, think outside of my normal physical parameters and consider that I was just essence, energy. Could I fly inside of his mind? Eyes closed, I imagined myself floating, but I never left the ground.

“Is there some sort of magic still here?” I asked. “Like what I feel every time I’m close to the Magi? Sticky and heavy, like a wet blanket. I feel something now, but it’s different.”

“Yeah. If there wasn’t, I could have woken up by now.”

Just effing peachy.
My frustration came out as a mental scream to Liam, falling on a link that went nowhere.

“What’s that?” Nix stood and faced toward my left.

I turned to find something waddling through the white, a ball of Light glowing brighter than the surroundings.

When it approached, I took an instinctive step back before realizing who it would be since the blob had sprigs of hair shooting out either side of her head. “Arianne?”

“Silly Lila got lost,” she said, her voice more like a twinkling of Christmas morning church bells than something that could come out of vocal chords.

I didn’t know whether to cry out of sheer joy or strangle Brígh for endangering the kid. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you, little one. Can you get us back out?”

She reached pulsing Light fingers for me. I scooped her into my arms, marvelling that she weighed nothing before realizing that her body was only a mental projection of her energy form and not really her.
Duh.

“Arianne? Is that you?” Nix moved closer, causing me to take a step back. “Wow, you’ve gotten so big.”

Arianne buried her face into my chest and clung to my hair. “Leave now, Lila. Leave now.”

“Yes, we need to go.” After a moment’s hesitation, I extended my hand toward Nix. “I think we need to be touching when she does her thing, whatever it is. A lot of telepathic stuff is like that, so better safe than sorry.” I’d rather have grabbed onto a grizzly with a hangover than him, and my expression must have shown my revulsion.

Even with his face wavering in and out, I could still make out the downward turn of his mouth and half-lidded eyes. “There was once a time when you liked my touch. What happened to us, Li?”

“What happened is that you decided some blood was better than others and that you valued power over love … not that I loved you, not really.” I had, sort of, but it never fully bloomed. Partly because I wouldn’t let it, and partly because it just wasn’t meant to be.