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A NEW DIRECTION
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DESPITE WHAT GRIFFIN had said, Jasper was not going to give up the chance at finding something, anything that would help him save Savara. Whoever had written these books and infused them with this perverse magic was hiding something important. Every good vault has an even better lock, he thought. What Griffin had underestimated was how much he cared for Savara and how far he was willing to go if it meant keeping her safe. He’d prick his finger over every page of every book in this damned library if it meant protecting her from whatever in this world was out to get her.
He picked up the first book and smudged a bloody thumbprint onto the page, watching as the jumbled words transformed before him.
***
BIG TOG SUMMONED ONE of the maids again, this time whispering the task briefly in her ear and sending her on her way. He dug into his desk and pulled out a small sketch of a face. Black ink on white paper, marking out the artistically softened features of a man who looked almost exactly like him, but younger. He contemplated it fondly before handing it to Savara.
“My son,” he began. He plucked a knife from his desk and turned it in his hand as he spoke. “We are not so different, my little duck. I once felt lost in this grand expanse of world. There was even a time when the darkness called out to me too, though not the way it does to you, I imagine.” His eyes sparkled as he said this. His lips curled into a vicious smile that sent shivers down her spine. “I was young and foolish in those days, and I would’ve given my soul to anyone who would’ve picked me out of poverty. When the darkness called, I answered. I promised something I hadn’t yet had in exchange for my rule of Osiir, able-bodied soldiers who fight with fire.” Her mind suddenly travelled back to the night in the forest when Jasper spoke of caged Argia headed into battle. “I got what I had always wanted, control of the city, but when the darkness came back, it took what I had promised, and more.”
“Your son,” she realised.
“...is kanala, brilliant in battle and destined for greatness.” Big Tog unhitched a heavy breath. The grandfather clock at the end of the room punctuated the silence between them. Finally, after a long train of thought, he spoke again. “I know what you are, child. There has not been one like you for an exceptionally long time.”
I wonder why, she thought as the points of her mouth fell into a shameful frown and echoes of the screams from the night in the forest swelled in her head. The sensation appeared too readily in her palms of slow beating hearts and a thirst for blood and chaos. I am a monster.
“You have a gift,” he added, relishing the word. “You should embrace it.” Big Tog grinned again, his golden bite catching the light from around the room.
Some gift, she thought, remembering the version of her that used to spend entire afternoons with Jasper on the beaches back home, with twigs in their hands pretending to have magic. In the past few weeks, she’d discovered she was an orphan (officially), a princess (and sole heir to the Argia throne), a bad friend (considering that Jasper had hardly looked at her since she’d almost gotten him killed), and last, but not least... a Blood Daemon. From a stagnated, dead-end life, to a life with far too many paths, and still... I don’t belong.
“Before I tell you what you must do, I have one final surprise,” he said. As he spoke, a knock came from the door. A young, scrappy-looking boy no more than sixteen entered the room, held by the collar by the same man who had brought her here. “Thank you,” he added. The man bowed and, with a distinct look of disappointment on his face, returned to the door. He didn’t bother to acknowledge Savara as he dipped out, quickly shutting the door behind him. “Do you know why you are here, my boy?” Big Tog asked. The boy shook his head nervously. “Good.” Big Tog turned to Savara and beckoned her over. “Feel for his heart,” he said. “Use those beautiful powers of yours as you did on my men.”
Savara blinked. Her nerves tensed, suddenly sensing the malice in his tone. She did as she was told, calling out for them. They were slow to rise, but eventually, she managed to coax them out until she caught them, taking a feeble hold of the young boy’s heart.
Big Tog nodded as he looked at the boy, whose eyes had widened with fear. “Kill him,” he said with the same cold disinterest as a chef teaching an apprentice to dice a steak. The young boy’s face blanched, his feet frozen in place as his knees trembled.
Savara shot a nervous glance at Big Tog, whose face lacked the emotions needed to be human. “You never said I’d have to—” she stuttered.
“Kill him,” Big Tog repeated irritably.
But Savara refused steadfastly. He took her hand, lacing her fingers into his own, which held a knife aimed at the boy’s chest. Savara tried to pull away, but he was too strong. Her muscles trembled under his force. Just as the tip touched the boy, the thing inside her rumbled to life. In her palms once again, she felt the lives of the two people around her. Every breath, every heartbeat, even the space their souls occupied in their bodies. It was intoxicating.
Savara stayed his hand, as she had done before, but when the power began to call for blood, she hesitated. In that brief moment of doubt, the knife plunged into the boy’s chest and deeper still into his heart. His trembling body slunk to the floor, his face whiter than the marble tiles around him. Savara dropped to his side, holding him in her arms, attempting to warm his already freezing body and keep the spurts of blood from escaping his chest. Big Tog simply moved back to the desk to clean the knife.
“Why?” she demanded, but Big Tog wouldn’t answer. She begged and pleaded with whatever was in her to save the boy, just like it had patched her hand, but the thing inside wouldn’t come. With a few more violent tremors, the life in him vanished. “Why?”
“To understand the contours of your special powers.”
“Why did you have to kill him?”
“If you were stronger, you would’ve stopped me,” Big Tog said candidly. “Besides, he was a rat. I have no sympathy for rats,” he offered when the body had grown cold. There was no remorse in his words. She finally understood why Griffin had wanted to protect her from him. He was a killer, a psychopath, a true monster. “This was a free lesson, my little duck: those you don’t kill get a second chance to kill you.”
“You monster,” she snarled. He only shrugged. Instantly the thrum of power returned. Savara hardly understood what she was doing when she turned her hands on him. From her bloodied palms extended an energy of its own will and mind in vicious purple tendrils of light. They charged forward, throwing Big Tog over his desk and sending papers and ledgers flying in all directions.
The random sheets of parchment drifted gently to the floor in her wake. Big Tog groaned from the other end of the room. A crystal turtle-shaped paper weight landed heavily at her feet. It shattered as it struck the ground, scattering shards of glass across the floor around her, like painfully sharp confetti for a distinctly macabre parade. What have I done? Savara stared down at her trembling, blood-marked hands.
“So beautiful.” Big Tog twisted to his feet and replaced a stray hair into his curling ram horns. “You see what you can do? You can grab hold of life, control it, break it with no need for the mess of blood.”
“I won’t! That’s not who I am.”
“How do you know? You were blessed for a reason. And what more glorious reason than that?”
“I don’t kill. It’s not in me to—”
“Say what you will, my little duck, but the same world that made me made you,” he said stoically as he brushed the dust off his suit. “As for our deal, hear this now and hear this good. I have received word that the missing Argia are headed to Idune. You will find them and bring me my son, and once you do, you will find the Prince of Shadows, and you will take his life, just as I have taught you.”
The rubies burned in her cold skin, finally filled with their deadly purpose. A promise made and a soul bound was now a sentence to be upheld. Anger rushed through her cheeks, turning them the colour of ripe cherries. “I would never have agreed if I’d known I’d have to—”
“Kill someone?” He glared at her with no signs of his former charming self. “You think you are the only one who has made a deal with the devil?” he growled. “One way or another, we all do, and the devil always demands his due.”
Tears streamed down her flustered cheeks. She had no idea how she was going to bring his child back, let alone kill whoever the Prince of Shadows was, but now her life depended on it. “Why me?”
His smile drooped, as he contemplated the knife again. “You are the only one who can.”
“Why are the kanala going to Idune?”
“The Prince of Shadows seeks something like what you were searching for in Osiir.” When she blanched, he added, “I told you I have eyes and ears everywhere, and unlike what Griffin may believe, he is not the only one with a decent grasp of history, and certainly not the only person you should trust.” The grandfather clock on the other end of the room chimed four. “The sun is almost up. They will begin to notice your absence.”
Savara didn’t thank him for his time, or his obscure lesson into her powers. It was the exchange of services, his in sharpening her sword, hers in wielding it for him. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind as she mounted the horse, teary-eyed and trembling. She and his second in command rode back the way they’d come, to make sure no trouble came to her because, as he put it, she was now valuable property—Big Tog’s valuable property. And yet, a different thought made its way into the swelling tide of her mind’s dialogue. She remembered his initial threat of killing her himself if she failed. What she now understood made the threat much more deadly: the deal they’d made, at its morbid core, was his blood for her own.
Near the end of their journey, the horses stopped suddenly, whinnying wildly, falling short of knocking her off.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, but the answer screamed back at her louder than any voice ever would. Billowing clouds of smoke rose above the treetops. The moonlight disappeared behind a dark cloud of black smoke. She jumped from the horse and ran as fast as she could back to the camp. Animals ran past her in the opposite direction, some she recognised from the stables. Her heart pounded like the hoofs of the stallions she’d left behind. She picked up the pace, once again feeling the sour taste of fear on her tongue and hoping she wasn’t too late.
***
THE APPRENTICE SIPPED his jasmine tea, watching the goings-on from the small café in the upper levels of Idune. The people here were just as idly ignorant as the ones in Osiir at how the world moved outside their precious gates. They continued about with their shopping and their outdoor martial arts lessons, completely unaware of the wars being waged just beyond their borders.
The waitress dropped off another sweet cake to accompany his tea. She smiled sweetly, but he knew she would soon forget his face entirely.
The knife at his side hummed.
The time was coming for their world to shift. He knew what had to be done, and what would happen when he did it, but that didn’t make it any easier. The Apprentice released a breath and took another sip of steaming tea. He decided to enjoy his last few moments of peace in this frivolous town. No matter what happened on the day of the solstice, nothing was going to stop him.
