With a Golden Sword (DFZ Changeling Book 2), page 12
“She didn’t choose anything!” the archmage yelled. “You hijacked her! You think I believe it’s coincidence that you just ‘happened’ to show up with your golden sword not two weeks after her Merlin—her sworn protector—died? The Fenrir movie had been out for months! If the Wild Hunt was going to launch an attack, why didn’t they do it in the summer, when Fenrir’s popularity was at its height? Why did they oh-so-conveniently hold off their invasion until the DFZ was at her weakest?”
Victor arched the Hero’s perfect eyebrow. “Are you implying that I somehow triggered this heinous attack?”
The archmage didn’t reply, but a wind began to rise in the room. It blew right through the walls, so cold that even Valente’s icy gossamer shivered. Even Victor leaned back in his chair a fraction when the woman with the ghost cat on her shoulder stepped forward.
“Merlins are the voices and defenders of the Mortal Spirits,” she said in a voice as cold as the wind. “I don’t know if you had a direct hand in this or merely seized an opportunity, but Fenrir wasn’t the only thing that attacked the city that night. You waited until the DFZ was alone and took advantage of her weakness. Now, you’re kicking out the rest of us to isolate her further, but we will not let you! The Merlin Council will do its duty!”
The wind was howling by the time she finished, but Victor didn’t raise his voice at all.
“That is not for you to decide,” he said, smiling placidly as if the furious archmage were just another unruly client. “There’s a whole world of spirits out there who I’m sure are happy to take your orders, but this is the DFZ. She’s always done things her own way, and she’s clearly decided she has no more need for you.”
“Only because you rabble-roused,” the archmage snarled, but before she could get going again, the Peacemaker raised his hand.
“I can’t speak for spirits or mages,” the dragon said in a surprisingly soft voice, “but my pact with the DFZ isn’t something that can be revoked by changing her mind. You’ve convinced her to flip her laws completely, allowing blood mages while banning every other sort of magic, but you can’t make her ban dragons. Our allegiance was sworn on my life’s fire. This is my territory, Mr. Conrath. Your human rules have no bearing over dragon affairs.”
“Tell that to the city you let down,” Victor snapped, his temper coming out at last as he rose from his seat. “She trusted you, her Peacemaker, to defend her peace, and you failed. You couldn’t do anything to stop Fenrir. I could. That’s why I’m the Hero, and you’re just another monster.”
“Watch your tongue, mortal,” growled the tall dragon with the big sword.
“You’d do better to say that to him,” Victor said, pointing at the Peacemaker, who looked angrier than Valente had ever seen him, even in the pictures that were supposed to make him look scary. “The age of dragons and monsters is over. It’s humanity’s time now. We’re the ones who make the Sea of Magic churn and create the spirits you’re all so fond of speaking for. The only reason any of you have power is because we allow it, so maybe it’s time for the serpents to watch their snouts. Don’t you agree, archmage?”
The woman clenched her hands into fists as the cat on her shoulder arched its back. “I will never agree with such a self-serving, egomaniacal—”
She cut off when the Peacemaker caught her arm. A second later, Valente felt why. The whole tower had started to vibrate, shaking the metal plates that paneled the outside like a rattlesnake’s tail. Valente hadn’t been a mage even before he stopped being human, but he still felt the warning loud and clear. Everybody did, and Victor’s smile grew insufferable.
“That’s right,” he said, his blue eyes shining. “This is my city now, so unless you wish to face the DFZ’s wrath, I suggest you remove yourselves from her presence.” He sat back down in his chair with a smirk. “Thank you for visiting. I shall take your opinions under consideration.”
The big dragon tightened his grip on his sword. The terrifying wind was still howling, sending chills through Valente like someone was stomping on his grave. Victor’s hand tightened on their link as the tense silence stretched, and for a moment, Valente was sure his master was about to order him to charge right through the glass.
He was already planning to take the mage down first. She was the smallest target, but arguably the most dangerous. The dragons would just smash him, but that wind felt like it could erase him from existence. He wasn’t looking forward to any of it, but at least he didn’t think he would survive. That was a win by Valente’s current rock-bottom standards, but just when the doomed fight seemed a foregone conclusion, the Peacemaker turned and started walking away.
“The DFZ has been my friend, home, and ally for twenty-five years,” he said, not even bothering to look back at Victor as he marched toward the door. “I will not let you goad me into fighting her. We will find another way, but this is not over, blood mage.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, little dragon,” Victor said. “It’s been over for weeks. But do give my regards to your mother. Unlike you, she can read the shifts in power, and she’s been quite eager to do business with the new Hero of humanity.”
It was hard to see from behind the two-way mirror, but Valente could have sworn the Peacemaker’s jaw twitched at that. He didn’t say anything, though. Just walked out of the room.
His furious-looking brother followed a few seconds later, stomping and spitting smoke the whole way. The archmage left last, glaring at Victor with the fury of something much bigger than herself. In the end, though, she followed the others, slamming the huge door to leave Victor alone in his office.
He slumped onto his desk as soon as it was over. Behind the mirror, Valente paused. He’d never seen his master look so spent, but he’d never seen Victor go face-to-face with two dragons and an archmage before, either.
“Stop lurking and get in here.”
The command landed hard enough to make Valente jerk. The pain that followed made him miss the days when Victor would just text his orders. He never used to hammer like that for every little thing.
Valente supposed he’d brought that on himself when he’d become “disobedient.” His only regret on that score was that he hadn’t done it sooner, but he wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take. Victor had already pried him out of his hiding place and marched him into the room, forcing every movement until Valente’s gossamer was quaking.
“Fetch my pills.”
Valente turned and walked to the safe set into the opposite wall, his bloodstained gloves moving silently as he opened the key-coded lock to reveal an orange prescription bottle with Victor’s name on it. This, too, was new. He’d never seen his master take his own pills, but Victor looked as desperate as Lola used to. He actually got up from his desk to meet his Rider halfway, snatching the bottle out of his hands like an impatient child.
“We need to move faster,” he muttered as he ripped off the cap and tapped a pill—a golden one, not red—into his palm. “The mob’s love is strong but fickle. Everything must be in place by the time Alberich arrives. If we miss this window, I won’t have enough time left to line up another.”
Valente went still at that, and his master sneered. “Don’t get excited,” he ordered as he slapped the golden pill into his mouth. “You tied your fate to mine a long time ago. I held up my end of the bargain. I freed your family, or what was left of them. Now it’s your turn.”
He paused to pour himself a glass of water from the carafe that was always on his desk, and then he went back to the window, looking more like the dazzling Hero with every step as the golden pills worked their magic.
“Miracles don’t come for free,” he said, taking a sip from his glass as he watched the crowds piling up in the square below. “You used to understand that. You used to be grateful. But the changeling ruined you as she ruins everything. It’s the nature of her cursed kind. They do nothing but show you what you can never have, but you should know better than anyone that dreams change nothing.”
He glanced back at his Rider with a Hero’s smile. “There is no escape for you. Your only future is at my side, so I suggest you put more effort into helping me ascend. Because if I fail, you’d best believe I’m taking you down with me.”
He narrowed his eyes to sharpen the words, but Valente did nothing. His master often threatened him like this, never realizing that the Rider didn’t fear death as he did. If Valente had had his head and the voice that came with it, he would have told Victor to hurry up and do it. That sort of comment might have ended him up like poor tongueless Orlando, though, so Valente embraced the silence, staring at his master with the Rider’s eyeless gaze until Victor turned away.
“Jamie’s already sent the next list of targets to your phone,” he said, sliding his pill bottle into the pocket of his red jacket. “Try to do a better job with this batch. I know the Hero’s hard to compete with, but you need to catch more headlines. Sending a message doesn’t work if no one reads it.”
Valente didn’t know how he could be more terrifying than he already was. But the orders were still coming in at maximum strength, and his body bowed before he could stop it, spinning Valente toward the door like a leaf on a string. But just before his consciousness was overwhelmed by the knight’s compulsion to obey, Victor stopped him short.
The Rider jerked to a halt. Then he spun again, his body bolting back to its master’s side. He made it with less than a second to spare before the door opened, and Simon walked in.
If Valente had had his head and the eyes inside it, he would have sworn they were broken. The last time he’d seen Simon was when he’d visited his house with Lola. Later, when everything was over, he’d heard that Victor had locked his apprentice in a mental prison that had only two exits: total obedience or death.
Valente had been certain the mage would choose death, yet here he was, walking right into Victor’s office like he belonged. His face was gaunt as a skeleton’s, but his dark eyes were as sharp as ever as he placed a red pill on Victor’s desk.
“That was quick,” Victor said, sounding impressed despite himself as he picked up the pill to examine it. “When did you arrive?”
“Just now,” Simon said, not even looking at the Rider as he took a seat on the edge of Victor’s desk to spare his emaciated body the effort of standing. “Jamie was late getting me discharged, so I made that one in the hospital and thought it’d be better to bring it straight to you. What do you think?”
“Not bad,” Victor admitted, rolling the crimson pill between his fingers. “But I expected no less from my protégé. It’s still not quite right, though.”
Simon scowled. “What’s wrong about it?”
“It’d be easier to show you myself,” Victor said. “Follow me to the workshop. I’ll guide you through it step-by-step.”
“I look forward to the lesson,” Simon replied with a humble bow. “Thank you, master.”
Valente was so shocked he couldn’t even move to follow Victor as the two mages started toward the door. It just didn’t seem possible that Simon—Simon, the man Lola had worked herself to tears trying to save—would be acting like one of Victor’s bootlicking mages. He was still staring stupidly when Victor glanced back at him over his shoulder.
“You are dismissed,” he told the Rider casually. “I will be with my apprentice for most of the morning. I expect you to have cleared your list by the time I contact you again.”
If Valente hadn’t already been speechless, that would have done him in. Fortunately, his body, ever obedient, nodded for him, keeping his vision locked on the ornate carpet until his master and his apparently reformed apprentice vanished through the door separating Victor’s penthouse from the normal, non-secret elevators.
Chapter 9
Lola spent the next three days trying to reach her sister.
It wasn’t any more successful than the last three weeks, but she was so desperate to save someone that she threw herself all-in. She tried shaking. She tried yelling. She tried dousing them both in ice water. She tried sleeping with her body pressed up against her sister’s to see if she could spark a shared dream like the one she’d had the night she’d slept with Valente. She used her gossamer to turn the entire room into a replica of Fenrir’s pit to see if she could re-create the circumstances that had let her slip into her sister’s mind the first time.
She tried everything she could think of, and none of it worked.
“I don’t get it,” Lola moaned, flopping down on the bed beside her sister, who still hadn’t moved so much as a finger. “I’ve stuck my magic so far down her throat that I’ve tickled her toes, but she doesn’t even twitch.” She pressed her face deeper into the guest room’s ridiculously soft sheets. “Maybe Alberich really did eat her soul.”
“That’s not how it works and you know it,” Tristan said from the chair in the corner, where he was drinking a mug of something green and foul-smelling that he claimed was an old fairy cure-all. “Human dreams are like milk. You can suckle at the teat until it runs dry, but you can’t climb inside the udder and drink milk that hasn’t been made yet.”
Lola grimaced at the disgusting comparison, but she was glad Tristan was up and about. This was the first time she’d seen him since he’d gone to sleep after his raid on Alberich’s barrow. He still looked exhausted, but he’d traded his banged-up armor for a white leather bomber jacket, sheer white mesh tank top, skin-tight acid-washed jeans, and a pair of silver-studded boots, which seemed like a sign of recovery.
“She’s probably just dug down deep,” he said, holding out his mug so one of his low creature servants—who looked like frogs wearing top hats today—could refill it with another ladle of sludgy green liquid. “She’s spent her entire life in a magical sleep. Perhaps she doesn’t understand yet that waking up is an option?”
Lola had worried about that as well. “Have you ever seen this happen before?”
The fairy pursed his lips. “Depends on what you mean by ‘this.’ Preserving humans by enthralling them in enchanted slumber used to be common practice. I once kept a princess asleep for a hundred years to help her avoid a particularly upsetting marriage, but I’ve never heard of putting someone under as a baby and keeping them that way for their entire life.”
“Why not?” Lola asked bitterly. “Seems like it works pretty well.”
“But it doesn’t,” Tristan insisted. “The whole point of keeping humans around is to feed off their dreams. Enchanted sleeps are normally used to suspend a mortal’s life until you’re ready to use it, kind of like putting your dinner in the freezer. But a human who’s been asleep her entire life would be useless.” He nodded at the girl buried under the blankets. “Even if the body grows, a mind that’s been kept isolated in slumber is basically still a newborn, and baby dreams hardly count as food.”
Lola pushed herself up with a sigh. “Maybe that’s what’s wrong. What if she’s not waking up because she’s stuck as a baby?”
“We’d absolutely hear something if that was the case,” Tristan said. “Have you met a human infant? They’re not what anyone would call quiet.”
“I’d be happy if she started screaming at this point,” Lola said, rubbing her hands over her face. “If she doesn’t snap out of this soon, she won’t be able to resist Alberich when he shows up to take her back.”
“I don’t think that’s going to make much of a difference,” Tristan said darkly, staring into his cup. “Awake or asleep, no human is a match for the Nightmare King. I just hope Victor really is as dangerous as you’re always insisting. We’re going to need him to take a very big bite out of Alberich if any of us are to have a chance at surviving this.”
The bleakness in his voice made Lola wince. Tristan hadn’t exactly been peppy since he’d come back from his disastrous search for Alberich’s head, but she’d never heard him sound so worried. Not that any of them had reason to be optimistic at the moment.
Morgan had been out hunting on her own since Alberich had told them he was on his way, so Lola wasn’t sure what her status was, but unless the queen had eaten enough to ramp herself to godhood in the past three days, it wasn’t looking great. She hadn’t heard a peep from Simon since she’d left his death, either, but she’d spotted him standing behind Victor during the Hero’s evening address, so his plan to worm his way back into their master’s trust must still be a go.
That was good, Lola supposed, but even knowing that Simon was setting him up for a backstab, she didn’t like that Victor was getting more help. He certainly didn’t need it. Thanks to the news media’s breathless coverage of everything Hero, Lola knew Victor’s blood mage army was getting bigger every day. The US, the dragons, and the Merlin Council were making all kinds of noises about curbing his rogue military power, but so far as Lola could tell, no one was actually doing anything. Meanwhile, the situation in the city was deteriorating by the day. Victor’s followers controlled practically the whole DFZ now, but the one Lola was really worried about was Valente.
Even the Black Rider couldn’t grab headlines from the Hero, but the few stories Lola had managed to catch whenever she was forced to take a break from beating her head against the silent wall of her sister were insane. They made Valente sound like an absolute monster. She wasn’t sure if there was any truth to the bloody tales or if Victor was just trying to give people more reasons to cling to his Hero, but she hated it. She hated all of this.
Her already clenched fists twisted tighter in the bedsheets. She’d focused all of her efforts on her sister because she loved her and because she was the only person Lola could still reach. But she’d pushed harder than she’d known she could these past three days, and it hadn’t changed a thing. She still felt just as doomed as she had when Alberich first showed up, or when Valente told her he was planning to die, or when Simon insisted on going back to Victor. The only difference was that, back then, she’d still had time to work on a fix. Now, though, Lola had nothing.
