Page 30 of What Is Dark Within Me

She picked at a thread sticking out of the couch cushions and decided Nicolas was still a bastard. “You could have told me all this from the beginning,” she said. “Why did you… why did you make a bargain with me?”

The smell of jasmine was heavy. Aleja could feel it sinking into her clothes. He turned away from the painting. In the shifting light, and the curls of mist sneaking in through cracks in the doorframe, his silver eyes looked ghostly.

“I’m not always so altruistic. Your great-great-grandfather and his brothers were willing to sacrifice their family members for fame and magic. I found it selfless of you, that you wanted power for your friend’s sake.” Nicolas opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking to the side. “But it’s more complicated than that. I didn’t expect the binding circle and—”

There was a knock at the front door and Nicolas sagged with relief, pushing aside vines in search of the knob. On the other side stood Catalina, with pale freckles of snow on her dark dress. Her lips were slightly blue as she pushed past Nicolas into the humid air of the house.

“That was fast. Did you find her?” Aleja asked.

“Dream time is different,” Catalina explained through chattering teeth. “I didn’t see your friend, and she couldn’t speak, but… I believe she is alive.”

Paola had once taken Aleja’s hand gently and told her she should prepare herself for the possibility that Violet was dead, but Aleja had never truly believed it, except in the small, dark place where she tucked away the emotions that hurt the most.

“So you found her—you—”

Catalina raised her index finger and Aleja shut up, like she was still three years old and interrupting some wisdom her grandmother was trying to impart.

“Aleja, hush. Time is short. You’ll soon forget where you are.” Catalina turned to Nicolas. “Violet is in the presence of an Otherlander. Something ancient. Something dangerous. Her dream felt fractured, somehow, as if it was only partially hers. I cannot tell you where she is, but I’m afraid she won’t last much longer.”

The vines coiled more tightly. Flowers that had been in full bloom moments ago folded themselves back into buds.

“Can’t you tell us anything? Anything at all?” Aleja said, struggling to keep her voice from cracking.

“Find the Otherlander and you find her. Go, mjia. We’ll see each other soon,” Catalina said, pulling Aleja in closely. Her next words were whispered into the curve of Aleja’s neck. “Trust the Knowing One. There is more to both him and this place than you know.”

“What does that mean?” Aleja said, but Catalina was already pushing her away, shooing her through the door.

“Go, go. Find your friend. I will be here when you return.”

* * *

Garm rejoinedthem at the bottom of the spiral staircase, sappy pine needles stuck in his fur as if he’d been running through the forest. “There you are!”

Aleja had so many questions for Nicolas that they had jammed up in her mouth, but Garm was a buffer between them. He trotted at Nicolas’s side as he took strides down the hall, and she realized she had no idea where they were headed. Even at this pace, it was hard to ignore the otherworldly faces staring at them from the paintings to either side of the hall.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“You are finally going to use those powers you bargained your love life away for. Garm, go assist Taddeas. Let him know I’m going to be late.”

Nicolas turned a corner and led her to a set of large double doors that featured another scene. There was something familiar about it, though Aleja was sure it wasn’t a reproduction of any piece of human art—at least, not any she had studied.

It showed a war, but there was no glory in the depiction. Dead bodies lay strewn across a battlefield. There was enough detail carved into the faces of soldiers to see the blood streaked across their faces.

“What is this?” she asked, hesitating before she ran her index finger along the back of a small dragon with an arrow lodged in its flank. The soldier slumped over the dragon’s neck wore a helmet with two horns curling from it. A human figure with a large mask resembling six wings that fanned around his face stood over them, a fiery sword in his hand.

“This depicts the first war in our history. A split among the Otherlanders, but it happened so long ago that whatever books might have illuminated the details have long since turned to dust. The doors have been here since this place was founded. Those who built these halls were, as we continue to be, the adversaries. The rebels. The villains.”

“Adversaries of what?”

He shrugged, pulling a key from an inner pocket of his suit. “The status quo. The powers that be.”

“What about when the powers are just? Are good?”

“We’ve yet to see that last for long. The Astraelis—those are the ones with the masks—and we in the Hiding Place have a difference of opinion about how Otherlanders should interact with our human neighbors.”

“So what?” she asked, crossing her arms and deciding she wasn’t going to take one more step into the room until Nicolas explained. “They were fighting over our souls?”

He turned to her, one eyebrow raised in amusement. “No. Souls are a human concept. They fought over knowledge. The Second—the original Knowing One, if you will—was a teacher to the earliest of your witches. He shared our understanding of magic with your kind; taught them spells, taught them how to call us, and how to defend themselves from us, should the need arise. The Astraelis did not take kindly to this and cast him and his supporters to what we now call the Hiding Place. But when the Astraelis realized the Knowing One had no intention of ceasing his relationship with humans, they decided extermination of him and his followers was their only option. Our side didn’t win so much as survive.”

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