Such a Daring Endeavor (40 page)

“Anytime now,” says Gwynn, tapping her foot.

Warwick rounds on Ren. Ren runs, but the other man is quick. He catches Ren by the back of the shirt and thrusts him down, holding him to the ground with a knee to his back.

“Warwick,” Ren says. His cheek presses to the drafty floor. He struggles, but with his hands still chained, he can’t push against the other man’s weight. “I know what it’s like—the control. Try to fight it. We have a way to help you.”

“Quiet,” Gwynn snarls, but Ren ignores her.

“Wake me up. Help me wake, and I can get you out of here. My sister is strong. She has power I’ve never seen before; she can get you out of here, away from her.”

“You are awake.” Warwick points the gloved hand in Ren’s direction. “And sorry, but I do what she wants me to.”

Familiar darts spear out from the gloves, spitting out to strike Ren in the shoulder, the ribcage, one in his hip. Ren seizes instantly, cringing at the stabbing pain and elevating from the floor just enough. At the same moment the jar in the machine glows.

Instead of hitting the floor, Ren falls through it, landing in a space so enclosed he has no room to so much as ease a scratch.

“Hey!” he says, shouting. Hands at his sides, he manages to turn them, to slap the solid walls around every side. The ceiling above him tapers to a point, like he’s enclosed in some kind of box. And here he thought the dream she trapped him in was confining.

Strangely enough, he can hear Gwynn and Warwick.

“Did it work?” Gwynn demands as though speaking with a hand over her mouth. A large face is at the window before Ren. Long lashes blink. Ren would know those eyes, even despite the majorly enlarged version of them. They’re Gwynn’s eyes. And they’re massive.

He’s been shrunk? How is this possible?

He calls his magic, beckoning it up, willing it to stream to his hands, but an all-too-familiar stream fizzles through the empty strait in his bones. His stomach squeezes against a sudden onset of nausea. Not again. She took his magic. Trapped him here.

But how? And more importantly, why?

Gwynn’s outsized face breaks into a smile. “You did it?”

“It worked,” says Warwick, his reply muffled, like hers, as though Ren is listening to their conversation through a set of earplugs.

Gwynn lets out a squeal, muffled through the red glass surrounding every side of Ren. “Get him back out here. That’s the other part of the test.”

“I don’t know if the tears—”

“Do it!” Gwynn shrieks. “Arcs may want their subjugates released on occasion. I know I would,” she adds with a laugh.

She shrank him. Stole his magic and enclosed him in something small, small enough to fit in a pouch or a pocket. A way for Arcaians to carry subjugates with them. The green stone in her palm. Ren thought nothing of it, but the way she gloated at it and vowed sardonically to take good care of Jomeini…

She did this to the maiden wizard too. Ren lets out a bottled roar and pounds against his cage.

Several seconds later a lurch pulls Ren’s stomach, and he’s on his knees in Gwynn’s palace bedroom. Sweat drips from his temples and along his shirt, sticking it to him. He can’t explain the weird sensation. He wants to collapse. To hug the floor, to savor the breathing room, the small amount of freedom that’s been returned to him.

“What did you do to me?” he asks once he has enough energy to. He’s trembling, shaking, sweating, and the strain of changing size is too much. What is going on here?

Wake up,
Ren tells himself. Wake wake wake. Get him out of here. If he can contact others in their dreams from here, then this has to work.
Ambry, Talon, Shasa! Someone get me out of here!

He glances up to see a small red crystal in Gwynn’s palm. She kneels in front of him, clasping it between her thumb and forefinger. A two-inch ruby, faceted, and something he might once have admired.

“Like your prison?” she asks.

“You—you put me in a gemstone?”

“Brilliant, isn’t it?” she says, grinning. She tosses it into the air and catches it again. “This is something inconspicuous. Who would think to suspect jewelry held the citizens soon to go missing?”

“Except that soldiers don’t wear jewelry,” Ren mumbles.

Behind her, Warwick chuckles. Then at receiving a glower from Gwynn, he coughs as if trying to play it off.

“Those of upper ranks are decorated. Why not award them with medals made of precious stones—?”

“That contain people,” Ren says sarcastically.

She shrugs. “How else can we carry everyone with us when we need their magic? Can you imagine the power we’ll have once we have access to everyone’s we’ve taken all at once? Warwick will insert this machine into Stations all across the country. And then we won’t need to worry about the problem of what to do with so many subjugates. We’ll have them with us all the time.” She grips the gem in her hand.

“You’re insane,” says Ren, attempting to push himself up. “You have to let me go.”

Gwynn crouches to his side, guiding her face to meet his. He can’t believe he ever thought her attractive. “Why, so you can go tell your witch sister and her band of misfits all about my little plan? I don’t think so. You’re staying with us, Ren.”

A
sudden coldness makes its way behind my sternum and fingers up into my skull. My hand pats the cot as if searching for flaws in the fabric, but even if there were any, my thoughts are so scattered I’d never see them. Ren disappeared. Ren…

“Where is he?” I finally manage.

“Where is he?” Shasa repeats in disbelief. “You did this!” She bares her teeth in frustration and shoves the cot toward me. The bar clotheslines my waist, stealing my breath.

“Hey!” Talon shouts.

“What did you do?” she demands.

Talon intercedes. “Watch it,” he says.

“She fried him with that crystal dollop. She used us to—”

I can’t believe she’s going there. “You think I did something to him?”

“Do you hear yourself?” Talon cuts her off. “Look at Ambry’s face. She didn’t
do
anything.”

At least Shasa has the decency to look ashamed. She glances around, peering below the table, below the other cot, upending the chairs as though Ren left some kind of hint behind. “Then where is he?”

“Get out,” I tell her.

“Excuse me?”

“I know you hate me. The fact that you think I’d do anything to hurt my brother tells me enough. But he’s my
brother
, Shasa. How dare you accuse me of anything? Get out of this room.”

Her mouth drops. “I—” She looks to Talon, but he skewers her with his glance.

Pouting her lips, she wheels around and storms out.

I rest a hand against my abdomen where she shoved the cot into me. “I didn’t do that—I didn’t make him disappear.”

“I know,” Talon says, resting a hand on the wall. “I could feel how hard you were trying.”

Then why couldn’t she?
I brush away the thought. She hates me. Nothing I do will change that.

Words fail me. My teardrop didn’t work. Not only is Ren gone again, but if I can’t get the teardrop to work with the help of Shasa and Talon, how do I even stand a chance breaking that spell?

Ren touched something inside me in my dream. He looked right at me, and I knew he saw straight into me, my hopes, my fears. He strung out my soul, straight to the core of me, just like we planned. But it was nothing like I anticipated.

In that look it was as though he untangled the gnarled mess of confusion and denial Nattie’s prophecy left me with. He affirmed what I worried I’d never be capable of; he saw something in me that I couldn’t see in myself, and then he held it up for me so I could see it too.

He said I was the people’s hope. That I would fight because they couldn’t. I heard Nattie say something similar, but to hear it from Ren, to
feel
his belief in me. Goosebumps crawl up my arms just thinking about it. He helped me turn things precise, alert, and personal. And now he’s gone.

“Where do you think he is?” I ask.

“Jomeini must have gone to Gwynn. There’s no other explanation for it. The question is, why?”

“I doubt she did it with the intention of helping her,” I say. “But right now, we have to get to her. What if Gwynn stole her magic, Talon? What if Gwynn forced her to tell what we were doing?”

“Jomeini left the room of her own accord,” he says. “I was too worried about you to notice, but you’re right. The sooner we get to her—”

“And Ren.”

“And Ren, the better.”

I push past him and thunder down the stairs. Talon’s footfalls join mine, and he stays close as I punch through the front door, ready to run back to Valadir if I have to. Stars speckle the moonless sky above, and a cool breeze sweeps over my agitated skin.

I can’t believe Jomeini would betray us. Something else must have happened.

“You warned me,” I say over my shoulder as I take the walk toward the garage. “You told me dreamwalking was a bad idea.” Solomus tried, too. That whole dream venture was to help Gwynn, and instead it backfired utterly and completely.

Talon opens the garage door. “It’s impossible to know what’s going on inside a person. You can’t have known what would happen,” he says, before drawing me close into his side. “Shh. Did you hear that?”

Croaking frogs stutter the quiet night. A branch to the right crackles. As if on instinct, Talon’s hand slides into mine, and he places himself between me and the sound.

A red-haired woman with pink eyes steps into the dingy yellow light from the bulb above us. She’s wearing a long brown trench coat tied by a sash at the waist, above bare feet. She lifts her chin in a manner I know all too well.

“Estelle?” I ask in amazement.

“Hello, Ambry Csille. Talon Haraway,” Estelle says in greeting. “You’re looking well.”

“You’re—what are you doing here?” I ask. “Where are your wings? And your sisters?” I peer behind her, curious for the sight of other women similarly dressed in trench coats. But she’s alone.

She ruffles her hair. “They are at the mountain, looking after Elodia. I’ve left Mirage in charge,” she adds, as though I should know which one of them that is.

She steps in, still regal and dignified. It’s bizarre to see her here, standing in the yard of a very ordinary house. It’s the last place I ever expected to see her. Talon’s face is wiped of expression, his usual cloak of indifference back into place. After her single greeting, Estelle ignores him, her attention centered on me.

“I’ve done you wrong, Ambry Csille, and I’ve come to make it right, however I can. You were right when you said not all battles needed to be fought alone. I will not leave you alone in this. I will help you stop that tyrant from using the tears.”

Talon presses my hand. I swallow. “Where are your wings?”

She turns to display her back. Her hair cascades down, hiding any signs of lumpy, concealed extensions. “Tucked safely away, out of sight.”

The front door to our left opens, and Solomus hobbles out, following by a sulking Shasa. Her eyes flit to our twined hands, but I don’t let go.

I glance at Solomus’s world-weary expression, at the tiredness rimming his eyes, and a new thought emerges.

“Estelle, would you take Talon and me to Valadir?”

Solomus clears his throat but says nothing.

“If you wish. But I can only carry one of you.”

Only one of us. Talon’s thumb scales across my hand, but he doesn’t argue. “Do what you need to do,” he whispers to me, his breath hitting my ear. “But be careful.”

“I will,” I say, meeting his shadowed eyes. “Estelle, you should know we’re going to Gwynn’s.”

A pause. I worry she’ll back out or worse, take off without me. But she doesn’t move. 

“I see.”

“I know you’ll want to exact your revenge on her, but she’s my friend. I’m asking you, if you decide to help, to allow her the chance to speak and hear her out. I still think there’s a chance she’s not herself. Can you do that?”

“And if she acted of her own accord?”

My insides shrivel, but I force the words out. “Then do with her as you see fit.”

It’s only fair. But hopefully it won’t come to that.

“I accept your terms,” Estelle says. “I will wait until you say the word.”

“Thank you."

I turn to Solomus, ignoring Shasa as much as possible. No doubt he will want to come, to get Jomeini. “It was stupid to send Ren to the dreamworld. I should have done it myself. And now I can’t be worried about you while we’re there, sir.” I don’t want to say it aloud, but without magic, Solomus may be nothing more than another target.

“I understand,” he says. “Go. Get them back.”

“And Gwynn,” I add.

Solomus’s lips downturn. “Ambry, I know you think there is redemption for your friend, but you must prepare yourself for the worst.”

I can’t hear that. “Gwynn is my best friend. If anyone can touch who she truly is, it’s me.”

“Very well,” he says, sounding resigned.

I turn back to Estelle. “We need to leave now. If you’ll take me to Valadir, I’d love whatever help you can give me.”

Estelle inclines her head, graceful as ever. She loosens the belt at her waist and drapes the coat from her shoulders, revealing a dark, silky tunic below.