Hidden Power (22 page)

“Will we be able to do that one day?” asked Aurora hopefully. 

He looked down at her and smiled. “Sure, in about a hundred years or so.”

    “So soon?” she chuckled. Instinctively, they reached for each other’s hands. He forgot, for a moment, their enchanted connection, the entwined courage that gave them such great, and unexpected, power. But only for a moment, then the power surged through their pores, their cells, their veins, their fingers. More powerful than before, it almost knocked them apart.

      “Whoa,” she said, slipping her fingers from his. “I’m not sure if we can do this much longer.”

      “Me either,” he said, wriggling his fingers. “And I want to do it a lot longer.”

      She inched closer and Kayne pulled her the rest of the way, a sizzling crackle filling the air around them. “How long do we have before we’re due in Ythulia?” she asked.

He risked a kiss, finding her chin upturned and willing. “We should definitely get there by tonight,” he said, between feathery brushes against her electric lips. 

“You heard Iragos, he said he’d have ‘dinner’ waiting.” They shared a glance. “He didn’t say anything about lunch…”

Aurora stood, in a white cloak of her own, next to Kayne. Before her sat eight mages, four of them representing the dark arts, the rest representing the light. 

They sat behind a high crystal table, curved to look like a crescent moon lying on its side. They wore the maroon cloaks of mages, exquisite gold animals patterned in the finest thread all over the silken material, silver hair flying around their majestic heads.

Humbly, Aurora tried to swallow and found she could not. Facing the mages, she found herself powerless before them. She looked around the room with her eyes, never moving her head. 

Along the crystal walls, thick and rough but clear to the enchanted eye, torches flickered, illuminating the high walls and crystal ceiling dozens of feet above their heads. 

The place was an echo chamber, every whisper of fabric, every shift in the seat, every whisper reverberating up and around and around. She was afraid Iragos and the rest of the Council of Bright Orders could hear her very thoughts, though Kayne assured her they couldn’t.

He stood next to her, careful not to touch her. Or look at her, for fear that their very glance could send sparks of power between their nervous faces. For the last two days, Aurora had been trying to find her way around Mage City. Now it was time for Iragos to introduce her to the Council, and he did so with his usual aplomb.

Standing from behind the curved table, Iragos bowed to the left, then the right, then the center, where Kayne and Aurora stood. 

“Ladies and Gentleman of the Council,” he said formally, “it is my distinct honor to introduce our newest squire, Aurora Turnleaf.” He paused dramatically, silver hair swirling around his head, as the other Council members regarded her coolly. 

“Why is she standing with Kronos’ squire?” asked a dark mage with wild red hair flowing around her face.

Iragos nodded toward her. “As you know, Druella, Kronos has been banished and Kayne, his squire, has no Master. I have submitted an application to the Council to take on Kayne and Aurora together, under my tutelage, to finesse the special power they posses.”

There was great rumbling amongst the Council, with the dark cursing the light and a general unpleasantness. 

“We’ve never allowed two squires to train together before,” offered one mage with concern in his voice. 

“Let alone two with one Master,” said another, nodding toward the rest of the Council.

Aurora glanced at Kayne, who turned, at that very moment, and winked. It was uncertain, but tender, and flooded her with relief. 

Iragos quieted the crowd and said, “I’m sure when you see what they have to offer us, my fellow Council members, you will agree I’ve made a wise choice. Now, Aurora? Kayne? If you would be so kind as to merely… hold hands?”

Kayne looked at her, the hood of his white cloak up and whispering against his freshly cut hair. He looked chiseled and handsome now, at home in his squire attire, in Mage City, in his element. She felt out of place in her own cloak, hood up, hair freshly scrubbed and tied back, throat dry and hands trembling.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, reaching out to her. “Really, they need to see it. They want to see it.”

“Here goes nothing,” she murmured, reaching for his extended hand. The power surged immediately, a loud “fizzle-thump” crackling through the air and extinguishing the torches along the wall, one by one, with a dramatic flickering of light and whispering of ash. 

They went out, one by one, but no matter. Despite the powerful force between them, the violent shock of skin upon skin, the brilliant, hot white and blue power ball surrounding their hands lit the entire room in a way even Aurora hadn’t seen before.

Even above the crackles of power that flickered between them, Aurora could hear the gasps of the Council members. She risked a glance and saw half of them standing, all of them leaning forward, or toward each other, whispering and pointing and generally marveled.

“And this is with no training,” Iragos explained, stepping out from behind the giant crystal table and joining Aurora and Kayne in front of the Council. 

“This is raw power, generated by and between two enchanted teens, one who never knew she was enchanted until last week! Imagine the power these two might possess, for dark and for light, under my tutelage. That is why I am requesting your acceptance of my application, dear Council Members.”

Iragos bowed, deferentially, closing his hands together in front of his maroon cloak. “That is why I urge you, I beg you, to bend the rules this one time and allow these two squires to train together…”

The dark mage with the red hair, the woman Iragos had called Druella, stood regally, silencing the Council with her mere presence and stern expression. Aurora felt a flicker in the power between her and Kayne, like a blip or a surge, as if Kayne was afraid of her – or possibly even hated her. 

Or maybe it was just Aurora’s gut reaction to the vile woman.

Druella turned to them, scowling, and said, “And what promise do we have that you won’t merely manipulate these two, Iragos? That you won’t take advantage of them for your own twisted ambition to try and seize the Council’s power for your own?”

“You mean like Kronos did?” Iragos replied with a wide and knowing smirk, causing the dark mage to scowl. “The fact is, Druella, if it weren’t for these two, Kronos might very well be ruling this Council as we speak.
If
he allowed the Council to survive, that is.” 

Iragos advanced on Druella, smiling slightly as she flinched and took one unconscious step back. “There is no telling what he would have done,” he continued, voice firm and thundering through the hallowed halls, “given complete power over the orb. Thanks to these two, that orb rests where it always will: the Cavern of Secrets. I think if we are to defend ourselves against another Kronos, or
the
Kronos, these two are our best and brightest hope…”

Later, as the Council sat behind closed chambers, discussing Aurora and Kayne’s fate, she sat opposite him in the dining hall, sipping on root tea and tearing off tiny crumbles of a sage muffin. 

“What did he mean, do you think?” she asked, watching Kayne shuffle his food around his own plate. Neither of them, it seemed, were very hungry.

“About what?” he asked, hooded eyes suggesting he knew exactly what she meant, but was merely afraid to say it out loud.

“What Iragos said, back there in the Chambers, about Kronos… escaping.”

Kayne sighed and pushed his tray away. His hood was down now, spilled around his shoulders, as was the custom when dining or in one’s own room. 

He looked so striking with his freshly shorn hair, his jagged jaw line and pure green eyes, she had to force herself to breathe. “I suppose he means that, no matter where they’ve got Kronos locked up, anything is possible with a dark mage of his power and… cunning.”

She swallowed, pushing her tray away as well. Slumping back in her crystal chair, she fixed Kayne with her own gaze. “And they’re expecting the two of
us
to stop him?”

He smiled, dazzling her with its intensity, and leaned forward. “Why not?” he asked, bluffing with his cockiness. “It’s not like we haven’t done it before.”

She scoffed, leaning forward as well. The dining hall was mostly empty, but she knew they couldn’t kiss. Not like this. Not here. “But that was before we knew any better,” she reminded him. “Now? I’m not so sure I’m up for Round 2.”

“That’s what squire training is for, Aurora,” he said, leaning back to look at her admiringly. She loved when he did that, and could think of no better way than to spend the rest of the evening.

Or, for that matter, the rest of her life…

Far beneath the bowels of Mage City, deep below the lands and hills and valleys of the Land Below, Kronos paced in his cramped cell. Gone were his cloaks and his finery, his hood and his velvet slippers. Now he wore dirty, damp rags, his left ankle chained to the wall of his cell.

Something dripped in the hallway, constantly, into a dank, moldy puddle below. He paced as far as his leg chains would allow, or about halfway to the door of his cell, then turned and paced back to his stone cot, carved out of the impenetrable wall of his cell.

His salt and pepper hair no longer flowed around his head but merely slithered around his face, as if still wet though it had been days since his captors allowed him to bathe.

Outside his cell door, stationed at all times, half a dozen Guardians stood sentinel, thick in their natural armor, unblinking in their distrustful gaze. Having stolen the Orb, he had disgraced not only their position but, having been charged from birth with protecting the orb, their entire race. 

Now they watched him like a hawk, hoping – just hoping – Kronos would try to escape. The Guardians would love nothing more than to tear him to pieces, savoring every moment of his pain.

Kronos vowed to never let that happen. Nor did he intend to squalor the rest of his life chained to a wall. No, Kronos had magic on his mind. Dark magic. 

For what the Guardians, the mortals, or even the enchanted in Ythulia didn’t understand was how powerful dark magic could be when one dwelled within darkness.

The longer Kronos stayed below ground, hidden from the sunlight, isolated from others, the stronger his power grew. One day, he knew, he would be powerful enough to break free. 

It might take months, it might take years, or even decades, but Kronos could wait. He quite enjoyed the darkness, but forced himself to scowl for the benefit of his captors.

After all, if they thought he was enjoying himself, they might decide to take him somewhere closer to the light. And that just wouldn’t do. Not for the plans that Kronos had in store, not only for the Guardians, but the Council of Brightness.

To say nothing of the sniveling young runts who had put him there: Kayne and Aurora. For those two, he had special plans. Very, very special plans indeed…