Assassin of Truths Page 10

  “I’m not saying it was Philip.” She cut me off. “He must’ve shared your jump schedule with the council. There is unrest within the havens. It started with the high wizard murders during Toad’s trial. There are many new high wizards. We’re not sure if we can trust them all. Tell no one about the mission I’m sending you on. Many lives depend on your success.”

  If the council was corrupt, I had to convince Arik to see the truth. He’d listen to me. See that we had to get the cure to the Mystik covens. Just then, I remembered something from when the council had questioned Bastien about Conemar’s disappearance. It was during the dispositions regarding our part in Toad’s escape from the gallows under the Vatican.

  “The disease is spreading to the havens, too,” I said. “Akua of the Veilig haven in Africa mentioned it at a hearing I attended.”

  The vials clanked against the counter as Nana set them down. “That explains why Arik has instructions from the council to bring a substantial amount of the cure to Asile. He was told it was for testing, but they wouldn’t need as much as they requested for that. They’d save the havens and not the covens. Merl would never have stood for such cruelty.”

  Merl had been the high wizard before Uncle Philip. He’d died during an attack on Asile. He and Nana had a little romance thing going before his death. By the sadness in Nana’s voice, I wondered if she missed him.

  “Why would the havens not want to help the covens?”

  Nana picked up a vial and inspected it. “When the Mystik world was first created, it was to hide the magical and unusual beings from human persecution. The high wizards in that time believed the havens and covens could live in harmony. But there were some xenophobic wizards who didn’t much like that idea. People in the havens were divided. Most wanted to remain connected to the covens, while a few wanted separation.”

  “The attacks by those rogue Mystiks didn’t help,” I said.

  “No, they didn’t.” Nana examined another vial. “Conemar was one of the wizards who wanted the separation. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was behind the attacks as a way to scare the havens into closing off the covens. The Wizard Council shut down Conemar’s movement in 1938 just after Gian’s death…or rather, disappearance.”

  Conemar had tried to kill Gian, but my great-grandfather had escaped through a trap into one of the Somniums, only to die during the battle on my front lawn.

  “Okay,” I said, wanting to move past the memory of Gian. “So when do I go?”

  She retrieved supplies off the shelf: gloves, syringes, tourniquet, vials, alcohol pads, and gauze. “We’ll test the cure on a volunteer first. Make sure it works. If it doesn’t, there’s no reason for you to go. When it’s time to leave, I’ll come for you.”

  Nana slipped on the gloves. “Have a seat.”

  “What about Afton?” I sat on one of the lab chairs at the counter.

  “I told her we were heading out soon,” Emily said. “She wanted to stay and aid Nana. Doesn’t want to leave the eight-year-olds. Been mothering them ever since we got here.”

  That didn’t surprise me. Afton loved kids. Whenever I needed someone to take over a babysitting gig for me, she’d step in. Actually, sometimes she would join me to help and not even want half the pay. But I couldn’t leave her. It was another realm, after all. What if she got stuck and couldn’t return to the human world?

  Nana’s face softened with an understanding smile as she tied the tourniquet tightly around my arm. “I’ll watch over Afton. She’ll be safe with me.”

  The needle gleamed against the light coming from the ceiling. A surge of anxiety hit me, and I shuddered.

  Emily grasped my hand. “Here. Squeeze my hand if you want. It’s just a prick. Won’t even hurt that bad.”

  I smiled at her. When I’d first met Emily, I thought she was an evil bitch. It wasn’t her fault. She had been controlled to do the horrible things she did to me. Her kindness toward me, and the whole taking care of me while I was hurt thing, showed she was trying to make amends. She was growing on me.

  As for leaving Afton here—though I’ve never seen her do it, and I definitely never wanted to witness it, Nana was skilled in the magic of Incantora, which gave her the power to make a person erupt in flames and burn from the inside out. She never let me down all my seventeen years, and I was confident she’d give her life for Afton. Knowing that didn’t settle the worry bubbling inside me.

  Morta came into the lab. Behind her, two men guided a rolling bed with an older man lying on the mattress. There were sores around the faery’s mouth, and his face was flushed with a fever.

  The needle pierced my skin, and I flinched, clenching my teeth. Nana filled a vial with blood. After the third tube, my stomach got queasy. Morta must have noticed and, using her cane for support, brought me a glass with a vibrant red liquid inside.

  I took the glass from her. “What is this?”

  “Fruit juice from berries that grow here in the Fey realm.” She hobbled to a nearby chair and eased herself down on it.

  Nana carried the vials holding my blood over to a worktable with flasks and other glass containers, along with an apparatus I didn’t recognize, a microscope, and miscellaneous lab equipment. She snapped on some rubber gloves and picked up one of the vials with my blood. Morta brought her a beaker from another glass refrigerator.

  “What’s that big metal tank over there for?” Emily asked, spinning around on the stool.

  Morta glanced at it. “That’s to do a bigger batch of the cure. We’ll use it to make a vaccine later.”

  Nana picked up one of the vials of my blood and poured some into the beaker. My blood swirled in the clear liquid as she mixed it with a glass stirrer. She put some of the cocktail into a small bottle and screwed on a rubber top. Morta handed her a syringe. Nana took it, punctured the rubber with the needle, and pulled back the plunger, filling the barrel with the mixture.

  “Shall we see if this works? We don’t want to keep our volunteer waiting.” She held the syringe, needle up, and carried it over to the sick man on the table. I looked away as she shot him up with the stuff.

  Emily hopped off the stool. “Now what?”

  Nana removed the rubber gloves and tossed them onto the worktable. “We wait and see if the patient gets better.”

  “How long will that take?” I asked.

  “A night, possibly,” Morta said. “That is, if it works as the other cure had.” Morta’s cane hit the floor as she shuffled across the floor. Thud-scrape, thud-scrape, thud-scrape. She was out of breath by the time she reached the patient. “You may return him to the infirmary,” she said to the two men attending him.

  “Can we try the cure on Dag?” I asked, remembering his hopeful eyes. “He’s bad, and I’m worried he’ll …” Die. I couldn’t say that word for fear of making it come true.

  Nana pushed a strand of her silver hair away from her face. “Once we see how our volunteer does, we’ll give it to him right away.”

  When the men had left, Nana leaned against the counter in front of me. “I believe we have something else concerning to discuss. Afton mentioned your magic changed. You were able to create a fire, ice, and stun globe.”

  The nightmare of the incident in New York ripped through me like a jagged knife. “After I’d killed the Sentinels with Veronique that day in New York, I think I absorbed their globes.”

  “That is curious.” Nana went over to several books lined on one of the shelves against the wall. The spines were old and tattered and in a foreign language. She pulled one out and flipped through the pages.

  Emily and I exchanged confused looks.

  “Nana, what are you looking for?”

  She stopped on a page and ran her finger down the length as she read. “This is one of the Fey’s medical books. There’s a section on Sentinels. I know there was something about power transfer in here. Now, where was it?”

  Power transfer? That must have been what happened.

  Nana cleared her throat.
“It says here that in cases where there is a longer Sentinel gene strand, the subject may attract power when he or she kills another Sentinel. When the power leaves the body of the dead, the dominant Sentinel absorbs it.”

  “Has this happened before?” I asked.

  “Yes. It was a regular occurrence in the beginning when the Fey created the Sentinels, before they had found the correct mix of wizard blood in the formula.”

  “What else does that book say about us?”

  “It mentions that the Fey chose to create Sentinels from a mixture of human and wizard DNA,” Nana said. “They wanted their magical knights to have an affinity for both worlds. They send the magical mixture out into both worlds every eight years. It seeks fetuses with a rare genetic mutation from both worlds and infuses the unborn with the magic. Once the babies are delivered, its match grows in the Garden of Life.”

  Emily hoisted herself onto the counter. “That’s creepy. What kind of mutation?”

  Nana crossed her arms over her chest. “Some mutations cause diseases in people. This one isn’t harmful. It just enables the fetus to absorb magic.”

  My arm was sore from where Nana had drawn blood, and I rested it on the counter. “Why don’t the Fey just grow their own knights in that garden?”

  Nana closed the book. “They tried but failed. Faeries were resistant to the magic.”

  A young faery girl came in and stood by the door as if waiting to speak to Nana. Her back was straight, her brown hair pushed behind pointy ears, and her hands stiff by her sides.

  “We’re done here,” Nana said. “Go and rest. It may take a few days to produce an ample amount of the cure. This is Nysa. She’s your host while you’re in the Fey realm and will show you and Emily to your rooms.”

  “Follow me,” Nysa said and exited the lab.

  “Sounds good to me. I could sleep for days.” I stood and headed for the door Emily held open.

  “And Gia,” Nana said before I left. “Remember, not a word about our plan to Arik.”

  “Yeah, got it.” I closed the door behind me.

  I’d always been able to trust Arik. He was the leader of our Sentinel band. We might be at odds with each other, but we had been battle partners. When he discovered I’d gone against his orders—and he would find out—all my attempts at regaining a friendship with him would crumble.

  But I would risk it all to save the sick Mystiks and faeries in that infirmary. To save the covens. To save Dag.

  Chapter Eight

  The ceiling leaked in the dark room. My nose and ears felt like ice; I pulled the rough covers tighter around me. It was strange that the temperature had changed so drastically. Since arriving in the Fey realm, it had been a perfect seventy-two degrees. I sat up when a door creaked open.

  I wasn’t in the same room I’d gone to sleep in.

  “Your Highness,” a deep man’s voice said behind the flame of a candlestick in his hand. “You asked to be awakened with any news from Asile.”

  “That I did,” Athela said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. I was in the head of Royston’s mother, my ancestor who’d lived hundreds of years ago. She was an enchantress, hijacking my dreams ever since I’d entered the Mystik realm, showing me things from her past. Things she felt I needed to know to help her son destroy the Tetrad.

  The man turned his back as Athela crossed the cold floor, a flimsy nightgown flowing around her legs and her blond hair swaying against her waist. She grabbed a thick, red robe from a chair and slipped it on.

  “What have you heard?” she asked, her voice shivering a little in the cold.

  “Taurin’s sons have been murdered. The whereabouts of the Chiavi are unknown. Mykyl—” The man cleared his throat. “Your father’s body rots while the people of Esteril celebrate his crucifixion. Shall I send an army to retrieve it for burial?”

  “No.” Athela tied a gold rope around her waist and stared into a distorted mirror. She was older than the last time I was in her body, most likely in her forties. “All is how it should be. My father betrayed our people. Betrayed me. Let them have their revenge.”

  The anger Athela had for her father mixed with my sadness for her. She never felt the love from her father that I had from Pop. It must have been hard growing up with a father as cruel as Mykyl.

  Why am I here? I thought. What does she want me to know?

  The man kept looking back at the door. “As you wish, Your Highness. We must leave. You are no longer safe here. The uprising sends an assassin to your door as we speak.”

  “Very well,” she said, turning from the mirror. “Alert Cadby. We leave tonight.”

  His eyes went back to the door. “The council has sent Cadby to a Somnium for your son’s murder.”

  She covered her mouth with a shaky hand. “He was wrongly accused. My son is not dead.”

  “There is no reasoning with the Wizard Council,” the man said. “They fear the uprising. Those who want to overtake the human world won’t stop until you are dead. Taurin’s vision of two separate worlds won’t last. It is only a matter of time before those who want to rule all will rise.”

  “My death will shock them all. It will cause the people to vote for a just high wizard to lead the council.” Athela grabbed bottles filled with what looked like insects and herbs. She opened a leather-bound book that I recognized. It was the ancient spell book that Nana had found and Emily now used.

  It was her book.

  “Taurin’s sons and daughters will keep the peace for many generations.” She read one of the pages of the book. “But it cannot last. His or her time will end, and another ruler will take over. The council will want to use the Tetrad to bring the Mystik world out of hiding. To enslave humans.” She dumped the contents of the bottles into a mortar bowl and worked at grinding them with a pestle.

  A loud thump sounded somewhere in the castle, and the table shook.

  The man adjusted his stance, his eyes darting to the door. “The assassins are ramming the door.”

  She lit a match and set the crushed items in the bowl on fire. “They may kill me, but my spirit will not leave. I will send my own assassin. An assassin of their false truths.”

  Her eyes closed and darkness overtook me. She chanted something, and a brightness lit the back of her eyelids. A loud boom resounded through the room, and her eyes flew open. The man lay unmoving under rubble from the ceiling, blood staining his beard and the candle by his hand snuffed out.

  “Daughter of the Seventh, you are my chosen one.”

  Is she talking to me? A chill ran through my thoughts.

  “I’ve waited hundreds of years for you,” she continued. “I’ve cried thousands of tears for peace. It is up to you to guide my son in achieving what he is meant to do. You are the Assassin of Truths. Expose the evil choking the Mystik world. Destroy the weapon they mean to use.”

  The roof collapsed, crushing Athela. A tugging sensation overcame me as her soul departed her body. It was as if someone had pulled a plug and everything suddenly turned dark. I was left there alone and cold within her mind.

  Sadness hit me, so painful it cut through my soul. She was dead. And without doubt, I knew she would never enter my dreams again. She had shown me all I needed to know. It was her way of connecting with me, touching my heart so that I would understand her cause. So that I would do what she wanted. To expose the truth. To destroy the Tetrad. To finish what Taurin believed was the only way for the Mystik and human worlds to exist. One without the other. Separate. Because those with magic could control those without.

  “Gia, wake up.” A whisper tickled my ear.

  I opened my eyes. Emily leaned over me. Her pasty, heart-shaped face glowed in the spotlight of the moon coming in through a nearby window. It was warm again. Colorful crystals hung from the ceiling, and white sandstone walls surrounded me. The cushions on the chairs and bedcovers were various shades of blue. I was back in the bedchamber in the Fey realm.

  I hadn’t seen much of her the
last two days. She had been locked up in her room studying the ancient spell book.

  “You’re crying.”

  “Bad dream,” I said and noticed my messenger bag on the bed. “Thanks for keeping my bag safe.”

  “No problem.” She smiled. “Anyway, I found something cool in here.” She flipped open the ancient spell book to a page she’d dog-eared. “This is going to sound awful and somewhat barbaric, but hear me out. I found a charm that can hide things on a person’s body. Wizards used it to keep thieves from stealing precious gems and other stuff. It’s going to get tough carrying around the Chiavi everywhere without someone noticing. And considering both worlds depend on them not falling into the wrong hands, I think we should try it.”

  I sat up. “Go back to the part where you mention it’s somewhat barbaric.”

  She exaggerated a breath. “I have to brand them into your skin.”

  “What?”

  “That’s just a response, right? You did hear what I said.”

  “Yeah, I heard you.” My fingers went to the crescent moon scar on my chest. Nana Kearns had branded the charm on me when I was a baby. It shielded me from the Monitors. I could jump through any gateway book unnoticed. “My nana branded me once. She used a numbing spell on the area before doing it. Do you know how to do one?”

  The apologetic look on Emily’s face told me she didn’t know. “I’m not even sure I can do the branding spell. We can try one in a place not visible. See how it goes.”

  “How about some of Nana’s elixir?”

  She shook her head. “The lab was locked, and Nana didn’t answer when I knocked on her bedroom door.”

  Nana used earplugs while she slept. Even the smallest noise would keep her up.

  I stared at my hands.

  Come on, Gia. Toughen up. It would be hard to travel with a bag full of Chiavi clinking on my side. And it was better if they were hidden.

  “Okay, let’s do it.”

  She nodded and placed the book on the bed. “Where do you want me to put them?”