Treason: Book Two of the Grimoire Saga (a Young Adult Fantasy series) (56 page)

Kara grinned. She’d been about to say that she wasn’t expecting a hug from him, which seemed so informal for the captain. She wasn’t surprised in the least by his presence.

Instead of correcting him, she said, “I’m glad to have you, then.”

Twin poked her side. “So what’s been going on? You’ve been gone for months! We’ve gotten bits of news here and there, but not—”

Demnug’s smile faded. His hand reached for his sword. “Kara, you smell—uh—different.”

“I have a lot to tell you both,” she admitted.

Demnug glared. “How do we know you’re really Kara?”

“What are you talking about?” Twin asked.

“She’s an isen,” he said.

Twin screamed and took a step back. “What…Kara! No!”

Kara suppressed a sigh. “No one stole my soul. It’s me. Like I said, I have a lot to tell you.”

“Get Remy!” Demnug yelled over his shoulder.

“Remy?” Kara asked.

Demnug nodded. “He’s an isen hunter, even better than Braeden. He said he discovered a way to show an isen’s true form. That way, we’ll know for sure.”

“Bloody hell,” Stone muttered.

A Kirelm with thick black wings—this must have been Remy—walked over, eyeing Kara and Stone all the way. His hand rested on a sheathed sword. He sniffed the air.

“They’re definitely isen,” Remy said in a deep voice.

“Can you see if this is their natural form?” Demnug asked.

“If they behave,” Remy said.

Kara rubbed her eyes. “What do I need to do?”

“Just don’t move,” he answered.

She straightened her back and watched him, making an effort to contain the barb in her palm. If she could have her way, she’d rip the thing out.

Remy set his hands on either side of her face. She suppressed a shudder. The last thing she remembered was looking up at him with raised eyebrows, waiting for something to happen.

The next thing she knew, she was on the ground, retching. Pain racked every inch of her body, burning down to her bones as she coiled around herself.

“What the—” She tried speaking, but retched again instead.

“That is truly the Vagabond,” Remy said over her.

Soft hands wrapped around Kara’s shoulders. Someone pulled her upright and swept away the hair from her face.

“Shh,” Twin said in her ear.

Kara opened her eyes, but everything blurred. It took several minutes of blinking away the water in them before Kara could regain any sense of composure.

“What the hell did you do to me?” she asked.

“It’s the only way I know of to force an isen into its—sorry, his or her—original form. I subjected you to an intense wave of pain by separating your muscles from your bones in a way that is then instantly healed to—”

“Never mind. I don’t want to know right now,” Kara said, waving him away.

“Very well. You’re next,” Remy said with a nod to Stone.

Stone grumbled a string of curses. “Look, if I have to do this, I want Kara to see what happens if the isen is not in his original form. I’m going to change form, and none of you are permitted to lose your minds over it. Are we clear?”

Demnug and Remy nodded.

Stone stood up straight. The skin on his face peeled and cracked, dripping away like wax to reveal the young man he’d become in the Glasgow club the night Kara discovered she was an isen.

Twin and Demnug gasped, but Remy didn’t move. If he really was as good an isen hunter as Braeden, this was nothing new to him.

Remy placed both of his hands on either side of Stone’s now-disguised face. Stone took a deep breath, but he didn’t do it fast enough.

The skin on his face split. He screamed and grabbed Remy’s hands, but the isen hunter didn’t let go. Stone’s borrowed face splintered, breaking apart with the
crack
of shattering glass.

Remy released him. Stone fell to the ground, retching. He curled his arms over his head until his breathing returned to normal. No one went to comfort him, but Kara figured he’d swat her away if she tried.

“Now you know,” he said without moving, his voice muffled.

Kara turned back to Demnug, who sighed with visible relief.

“
Now
can I tell you all what happened?” she asked.

An hour and a half later, Kara had explained everything to the small group which had assembled in the mansion’s war room on the first floor. They all insisted she sit in the head chair when they first came together, but many now glared at her, having learned the truth. Twin and Stone sat on either side of her, while Demnug settled into the free seat beside Twin. Remy took the chair by Stone. A myriad of yakona she didn’t recognize sat in the other seats around the table. The room’s doors stood open so that Kara faced a crowd of vagabonds. Some sat on the stairs, others on the floor, but all of them stared at her with mixed expressions of fear and respect.

Flick sat in her lap, purring in his sleep as she scratched his ears. Richard was off trying to get a Grimoire to one of Twin’s names, but would be back in a few days. Kara wondered how he would react to her news.

“And he, too, is an isen?” a Lossian asked, nodding to Stone.

“Yes.” Kara rested her elbows on the table so that her hands hovered just in front of her lips.

Remy piped up. “Have you stolen any souls, Vagabond?”

“No, nor will I ever.”

“So you say,” quipped an Ayavelian standing along the wall.

“You can doubt me. I don’t care. Deirdre stole my father’s soul, and I will never force anyone to endure that slavery. It’s wrong.”

“So you would really lead a mortal life?” Stone asked.

“Yes.”

Murmurs raced through the crowd.

“I still adore you,” Twin said with a smile.

Kara hid a small grin behind her hands and mouthed a hidden “thank you” to her friend. She cleared her throat before addressing the rest of the table.

“If you don’t want to be led by an isen, you are free to leave. It’s been hard for me to accept, but it doesn’t change what I’m here to do. I’m the Vagabond, and for one reason or another, Twin trusts each of you to share this responsibility with me. If you leave, I ask only that you leave your Grimoire here so that we can replace you.”

No one moved. But before Kara could let out a sigh of relief, a Hillsidian woman stood and made her way to the table. She unclasped the pendant from around her neck. Its stone glowed blue as she placed the necklace on the table.

“I’m sorry, Vagabond, but I too lost someone to an isen, and I can never forgive your kind for my loss.”

Kara nodded. “I think you’re wrong to judge us, but I can’t stop you. We’ll miss you, but you’re free to go.”

The woman took a deep breath and walked out of the hall without catching anyone’s eye.

“Anyone else? It’s now or never,” Kara said.

A Lossian stood, followed by a Kirelm and three more Hillsidians. Each laid their pendants on the table beside the first, spoke their apology, and left. Kara’s jaw tensed more with each vagabond she lost. She hoped she wouldn’t lose any more. She closed her eyes and rested her face against her closed fists.

“The rest of us will stay with you,” someone said from the crowd.

Kara looked up to see the hall and war room still full. She let loose a relieved sigh. “Thank you all for not giving up.”

A Kirelm in the hallway stepped forward. He nodded to Kara in a respectful bow before he spoke.

“The Vagabond’s name was slandered in my town, but my parents always told me the truth of what he actually taught. He wanted peace, but he mostly wanted to remind us that we were once great. With our unity in Ethos came an era of power and understanding. I joined you to bring that back, and I will follow you to the death so long as you never waver from it.”

A chorus of agreement rippled through the room in hushed voices. Kara sat up straight. She had no idea how to respond.

Another homeless voice spoke up from the crowd. “The rumors of the vagabond’s army gave me hope that we could once again achieve greatness.”

More murmurs. More consent.

Demnug grinned. “We’ll follow you, Kara, because you still want to help the Bloods even after all they put you through. You still want to mend Ourea when most would have left its people to their pettiness, and that is commendable.”

A Hillsidian at the table nodded. “I’m here because the Bloods have lost their way. You can remind them that this war they fight is for peace, not for glory.”

“This war was never about peace,” Kara replied softly.

The room hesitated. Everyone watched her in a lull that suffocated the sound from the room. But there was no use denying it anymore. Fearing the truth wasted time. She had to embrace it, warts and all.

“This unity between the kingdoms is temporary unless we do something drastic to change their minds. For Gavin, this is revenge. For Aislynn, this is blind conviction. For Ithone and Frine, this is sport. Each has a different agenda, one that will dissolve once Carden is dead.
If
he dies. Their lack of faith in each other might be their biggest weakness. He isn’t above exploiting that.”

“So what do we do?” Twin asked.

“I don’t know,” Kara admitted.

The room hushed, but Kara didn’t try to fill the silence. She didn’t know the answer yet, and she wasn’t going to rush into one now. She would come up with something, but she needed time.

Eventually, a conversation began about training and supplies, but Kara couldn’t focus. She stared out the window, lost in a string of dire thoughts.

Was there any point to this? Any hope? Her mind drifted to Adele and Garrett. They had been punished, possibly to death, for helping. And now, Kara understood why Verum opposed their intervention. They had trusted her, and that made them open targets. She doubted she would see them again.

“Kara.”

The voice snapped her from her musing. No one sat in the chairs anymore. Twin pulled herself onto the table a short ways off, a few wrinkles of concern around her eyes.

Kara laughed. “I really checked out there, didn’t I?”

“What were you thinking about? You looked so sad.”

“I don’t really want to talk about—”

Twin laughed. “Seriously? You dragged me away from my home and assigned me with a next-to-impossible task of creating an army, which I achieved—with flying colors, might I add. I think I get to hear the answer.”

“I seem to recall you begging me to bring you here, actually.”

Twin shrugged. “Details.”

Kara grinned, but it faded away. “I don’t know if this is worth doing, Twin. Everything—and I mean everything—seems so hopeless. The Bloods turned against the muses and tried to enslave me. I really am starting to wonder why any of us should care anymore.”

Twin stared at her feet, which hovered above the tiled floor, from where she sat on the table. Her eyes glazed over.

She furrowed her eyebrows as if she was deep in thought. “Ourea has always been a dark place, Kara. I’ve never felt safe. I’ve never known what it meant to live without fear, not even in Hillside. I feel safer here in the village than I ever have anywhere else in my life, but we can still be found. You said Gavin knows where we are. We can use the lyth’s powers to hide the temple for a while, but not forever.

“We vagabonds are a part of this now, and we have a chance to make things better. Maybe we can make the world a little brighter before we die. At least, that’s why I’m here. I’ve always wanted to make people smile. But for the first time in my life, I’m powerful enough to do more. I can help change things. You empowered us, Kara. Don’t give up. The rest of us need you to believe, or we’ll lose faith completely. We may have Grimoires too, but there is only one true Vagabond.”

A smile crept across Kara’s face—slowly at first, but it grew into a grin. She shook her head, stood, and wrapped Twin in a Magari-bear-hug. It made her think of her dad, so she hugged Twin tighter.

“Thank you,” Kara whispered.

Twin hugged back. “Of course. We’ll figure this out.”

“And we’ll leave the world a little better for it,” Kara agreed.

Deirdre slunk behind a tree and held her breath. The fragrant scent of a bed of nearby hyacinth flowers swirled in her nose. Their scent would mask the lilac and pine aroma for which isen were known. She’d chosen this field because she needed cover.

The forest creatures carried on around her, oblivious to what she was about to do. And if that air-headed Ayavelian Blood would only
show up
, she wouldn’t be stuck waiting.

But Deirdre could wait. She’d waited this long for her revenge, and soon—so soon—she would have it.

She adjusted the Hillsidian sword strapped against her back in a sheath that kept it from touching her. She shuddered, remembering what the hilt had done to Carden’s hand. It hadn’t healed completely, either. It never would, even for all his body did to counteract it. She didn’t want to touch that sword until absolutely necessary.

“General Krik?” a soft voice asked from somewhere nearby.

Deirdre let herself breathe. She grinned. Niccoli’s lover was finally here.

Skin flaked and cracked as Deirdre donned the appearance of the general Aislynn somehow trusted. She had no idea why; the man was an idiot. It only took a flirty eye and a few beers in a bar to lure him into a false sense of security. He belonged to her after four pints.