sorcery and science 04.5 - masquerade (8 page)

“It’s fine, Jason,” Terra said.

He turned away.
No, it isn’t fine. There’s nothing here for us.

She set her hand on his shoulder. “They will have serums at Rosewater.”

Jason didn’t feel much like going back to Rosewater, but he turned and walked into the hallway anyway. The portal was down below, refusing to shut up in its nagging call out to him. They went down and cut through a library of books that looked even older than Eclipse was. Row after row, stack after stack, the full bookshelves didn’t seem to end. Finally, they came to a door. It led to a room stuffed with boxes of old junk—moth-eaten robes, broken plates and cups, candles, hundreds of woven baskets…and two slender slates. Jason pulled them out of the box and looked them over. He drew a circle on one of the slates, and it appeared on the other.

“What are those?” Terra asked.

“Sand slates. They’re a pair. With them, we can always talk to each other, no matter where we are.” He held one of the slates out to her. “Here, take it.”

She turned it over in her hands.

“Just don’t let anyone find out,” he told her. “Because if they do, they’ll take it from you.”

“So just our little secret?”

“Yes.”

He unzipped her backpack and tucked the sand slate inside, then she did the same for him. Their packs now loaded, they continued to the other side of the room.

“It’s here. On just the other side,” Jason said as they stopped before a door.

He opened it to find a room no bigger than a closet. In fact, it looked hardly big enough for the two of them to fit inside.

“Cozy,” she said, squeezing through the door with him.

As they passed into the closet, Terra tripped over his foot. The dark underground corner of the temple dissolved, and they tumbled in a mass of intertwined limbs, hitting a wooden shed. Still twisted up with Terra, Jason looked up from the muddy ground into the face of his father.

~ 6 ~

516AX April 18, Chrysalis

JASON QUICKLY DISENTANGLED himself from Terra and stood up. The portal had brought them to Chrysalis.

“Do you know what trouble you two have caused?” Father sighed, closing the door to the shed. “No one knew where either of you were. Rhys sent out search parties to look for Terra, but they found nothing. Lana just told me what you two have been up to these past few months—yes, Jason, your sister is not stupid.”

Jason had never thought that she was. “I’m just surprised she didn’t tattle.”

“Lana cares about you, Jason, even though you could be a good deal nicer to her. She only told me now because she was worried about you. Rhys doesn’t know, thank Aurelia for that,” he added. “I was about to go out and look for you two myself.”

Terra stood up and stepped forward. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”

“No, it—” Father froze as he really saw her—the torn clothes, the dried blood, her ghostly pale face. “What happened to you?”

“Siennans,” Jason said, recounting the events of the afternoon.

Father listened in silence, wrinkles rippling across his smooth face, then dissipating again. “We’ll deal with this later. First, let’s get you fixed up, Terra. You look like you won’t last another minute without a potion. An Energy Serum should do the job until a healer can take a look at you. Come with me. I have just the thing.”

“Um…could you not make it so…” Terra’s voice drifted off.

Father caught her before she hit the ground, and he carried her toward the house. “Don’t worry. I know about your condition. I’ll mix it suited to a Prophet.”

Eltition children before their Passing didn’t typically need serums customized to an ability, but like Jason, Terra wasn’t typical. A generic serum on her would do nothing—or maybe even make her worse.

“Reduce the stimulating element by half,” Jason told his father. “Terra is sensitive to them.”

“My, my. You sure are protective,” Father commented with a satisfied smirk.

“Jason is a good friend,” Terra said. “He’s always looking out for me.”

“Let’s hope your father comes to see it that way,” Father replied as he set her down on the sofa.

“King River doesn’t have a problem with me. His problem is with you,” Jason told him, sitting beside Terra.

“That’s true,” Father agreed and walked off to the kitchen.

He returned a few minutes later with an Energy Serum that smelled of citrus, vanilla, and a hint of chocolate. He handed it to Terra, who gulped it down eagerly. By the time she set down her empty glass on the table, color had returned to her face. She rested her head on Jason’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

“She looks better,” Father said. “Now she should take the portal home to Laelia.”

Eyes still shut, Terra took Jason’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

“She needs to rest. Just for a bit.”

Father looked at him, and his emerald green eyes shifted lighter for just a second before darkening again. “That won’t make it any easier, Jason.”

Jason clenched up his jaw in stubborn defiance, and he held tightly to Terra.

“I know how you feel.”

Jason very much doubted that.

“But we just have to wait it out. You two shouldn’t be sneaking around like this. What would Rhys do if he found out?”

“Found out what, Edward? That you’ve tried to kidnap my daughter?” King River’s voice bellowed from the open doorway of the winter garden.

At the sound of her father’s enraged voice, Terra jerked into full consciousness. Jason held onto her to keep her from falling off the sofa. King River’s incensed teal-green eyes followed the gesture, clearly misinterpreting it.

“Now, Rhys, let’s not jump to conclusions,” Father said, his hands raised. “I have no intention of kidnapping Terra.”

“From where I’m standing, it certainly looks like you do.” He reached toward Terra and pulled her behind him. “She’s my daughter, Edward. She’s innocent. Leave her out of this. Your fight is with me.”

Father sighed. “I have no fight with you.”

“Davin told me Terra disappeared from the library. Did you have your son kidnap her?” he asked, glowering at Jason.

Jason glowered right on back. “She came to me at the falls.”

“Lies!” hissed King River.

Jason had never seen him so angry.

“He is telling the truth,” Terra said, stepping toward Jason. “Jason and I have been meeting at Ribbon Falls every day after school . We’re friends. This has nothing to do with you two or your stupid fight.”

King River stared down at her in silence for a moment, then took hold of her arm and pulled her toward the door. “We’re going. Now. You’re never to speak to Jason or any of his family again. Do you understand me?”

“I don’t want to go,” Terra protested, breaking free.

“Terra,” King River began.

As he took a secure hold of her, tightly around the forearm, she screamed out and collapsed to the ground. Jason ran to her, darting past the two fully grown men as though they weren’t even there. He rolled Terra over, releasing her face from the fluffy fabric of the throw rug on the floor, and shook her gently. Her eyes snapped open, and she locked her hand in his.

A flood of images flowed into him. It was a horrid collage of blood and death, and his parents were at the center of it all. He saw the figure of King River, entering the palace at Chrysalis in the middle of the night, surrounded by a horde of Selpe soldiers, who bashed through doors and windows and screamed out insults. Jason’s mother was stabbed and fell, followed by his father, and the Selpes walked over their bodies and spit on them.

Suddenly, the cord was cut, and the flood of images stopped. King River had managed to pull Terra away from Jason, and he was carrying her off. As he left, he called out, “This outrage will not go unanswered, Edward!”

Jason and his father stood there, watching King River drag Terra toward the portal. Then they sat on the sofa and said nothing until Mother came into the house much later, just as the sun was setting on Chrysalis.

“What happened here?” she asked them.

Her words snapped Jason out of the trance that had begun the moment Terra streamed her foresight into him.

“The Selpes are coming,” he said, facing them. “And they’re going to kill you.”

~ 7 ~

516AX April 18, Chrysalis

IT WAS PAST supper time, but Jason hadn’t eaten. None of them had. Lana sat in the corner of the room, reading a book by candlelight. Jason, though, couldn’t just sit by calmly, not when he knew what was coming. So he was pacing. It was less effective at calming his nerves than throwing knives, but Mother had forbidden him from doing that inside the house. As though that was something they should be worrying about on the eve of their deaths. Jason wondered if his mother would lift the ban when the Diamond Edges stormed the house.

Half an hour into his aggravated pacing, the door opened.

“Where have you been?” Jason demanded. They’d been gone too long, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was coming. A storm? Diamond Edges? The destruction of Pegasus?

“Pegasus is enormous. Do you really think calling the entire kingdom to arms can be executed in a few minutes’ time?” his father asked.

“Especially when you are asking them to rise up against the high king,” Mother said. “Such a thing hasn’t happened since the days of the Siennan uprising. And look how well that played out for them. They had to leave their kingdom behind. No Elition in Pegasus wants to suffer the same fate, Edward.”

“We aren’t seceding from the rest of Elitia, and we aren’t fighting them. We’re fighting the Selpes to save Elitia. We need to sever ties with the Selpes now, before there’s nothing of Elitia left to save. It has already gone too far. They’re after Jason. And they’re after Terra. Sooner or later, Rhys will wake up and see this. Then he will band with us. It won’t be Pegasus against Elitia. It will be all of Elitia standing united against the Selpes, the Avans, and anyone else who would try to do us harm.”

“If it were only a matter of captivating an audience, Edward, you would get the job done as well as any Enchanter. Sadly, there’s a lot more to it.” Mother shifted her gaze to Jason and Lana. “I trust you two remember Silver?”

An Elition man with silver-blue eyes stepped into the house. Silver, the most revered Apothecary in all of Pegasus. He was the one called upon to heal things Elition bodies could not. He also made the best Sunshine Serum Jason had ever tasted. But he wasn’t there to mix up drinks for them today.

“Silver is going to show you to a camp in southern Pegasus,” Mother said. “Many of our best fighters are there. They’ll protect you.”

“They should be protecting
you
,” Jason told them as Lana walked up beside him. “Terra’s foresight showed your deaths, not ours.”

Lana nodded. For once, he and his sister were in perfect agreement.

“For this fight to be won, we must stand our ground. We must uphold morale. Chrysalis is the symbolic heart of Pegasus. If I were to flee before the fight even began, we have already lost in the eyes of our people,” Father said. “But you should go with them, Danielle.”

She took his hand. “If you stay, I stay.”

Jason glared at them. “You’re both so stupid. The Selpes are coming. Terra’s foresight—”

“Jason, you know better than to put blind faith in a Prophet’s foresight. Particularly when that Prophet happens to be a seven-year-old little girl. The future is malleable. It is what we make out of it.”

“And you are making your graves out of it,” Jason told his father, anger burning his eyes.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he said to the distant sound of a few dozen pairs of marching feet. “They’re here.”

Father peered out the window, then turned back to Jason. “It seems you were right.” He looked at Mother. “They’re close, on just the other side of the lawn. We have only a few minutes.”

She took her own peek through the window. “There certainly are a lot of them. Perhaps we should run after all.”

“Perhaps we should,” he replied, his eyes shifting briefly to Jason and Lana. “But we aren’t going to.”

Then Mother pushed them toward Silver. “Take them through the portal at the pond,” she told him. “We’ll hold off the Selpes.”

“No, I can fight.” Jason cut around Silver. “With me here, you’ll stand a better chance.”

“Perhaps,” Mother allowed. “But then your sister and Silver would stand no chance.”

She tapped her finger on the window pane, pointing at a second, smaller cluster of soldiers in the woods. There were only a dozen of them, but they were blocking the path to the portal. Mother was right. Neither Lana nor Silver was a fighter. Without him, they wouldn’t make it to the portal. And they couldn’t stay here. Jason could hear additional groups of soldiers moving through the woods, closing in on the house. This was nothing less than a perfectly orchestrated slaughter.

And Jason wasn’t strong enough to stop it.

“Jason, before you go, I need you to promise me something,” Father said. “I need you to promise that you will always protect Terra.”

Of course he would. She was his friend. And he might never see her again.

“I also need you to promise to find and protect Sorin.”

Terra’s twin had been kidnapped when he was just a baby. No one had seen or heard anything of him since. That promise would be a whole lot harder to keep.

Father cupped his hands against Jason’s cheeks. “Promise me. No matter what, you will protect them.”

“I promise.”

“Good, now run. Get Lana and Silver to the portal. We’ll try to keep the Selpes off your backs for as long as we can.”

Jason stood before his father, completely frozen for the first time in his life. Father pushed them toward the back door as he and Mother went out the front to meet the Selpe death squad. Jason ran behind Lana and Silver, throwing knives at soldier after soldier. But still they kept coming, swarming the grounds of Chrysalis until there was nowhere left to run.

Jason saw the portal. Lana and Silver were nearly there, nearly safe. He just had to buy them a little more time. Spinning around, Jason launched every last knife still on him in quick succession. The Leaves shot out like a ring of metal teeth, chomping down the soldiers in their path.