Page 19 of Bonds of Blood
Strange, and yet comforting, how it always burned with its own low warmth. Even stranger to remember that this was basically Aphrodite’s essence wrapped in a pretty little package. The ability to summon her — gods, what an unbelievable gift. I’d need to save it for when it really counted. No sense wasting that power on battles with basic guardians.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so enthusiastic about selling off the Blood of the Earth we’d harvested on our last trip. It would have been helpful for these fights, except that I’d found a buyer right in the academy, an older student alchemist who had already used the elemental gemstones to brew up some incredibly potent fertilizers.
Not exactly useful in the fight against Baylor, but that was something else we had to consider in the siege. None of the guardians he was sending out through the oriel were leaving behind bits of their essence, as if he’d found some way to hoard them for himself while pressing the attack on the Wispwood.
But a siege applied pressure both ways, didn’t it? Sooner or later, Baylor would have to run out of resources, too. Still, could we really afford to wait that long? The more we fought, the more we risked injury to our own people. Many were arguably too young to fight, volunteering out of pride and loyalty. And what about Satchel?
I glanced at my mother sidelong, more than willing to let her memory recover in time, and yet I had so many questions I wanted to ask. “Mom? Do you remember what it was that forced you into the Wispwell? Whatever it was that injured you so badly, I mean.”
She narrowed her eyes, her forehead creasing. “I honestly don’t have the slightest idea. But is it really all that important at this point? What I do know is that your father, yet again, placed us in a situation that severely taxed both his abilities and mine. If my injuries were grievous, imagine his.”
I never recalled seeing my father bruised and bloodied, and certainly never in a way that matched the timeframe of my mother’s illness. But harm could mean anything in the arcane underground — spiritual scars, wounds of an arcane nature, a festering of the magical essences. Mom had a point, though. Did it really matter anymore?
Sylvain stepped up to my other side, nodding as he gazed at the same staircase. “Is it almost time?”
“One moment blends into the other, does it not, Prince Sylvain?” Mom chuckled. “I can barely remember if it’s day or night, the way my insides burn. All I can think about is making sure my former husband gets his comeuppance.”
I cocked an eyebrow, stifling a laugh. “Funny, that’s how I’m thinking of him now, too. Former father, that is.”
Sylvain jogged in place, shaking off his wrists. “One hopes that we’ll be seeing said comeuppance sooner rather than later. Ember is worried sick about Satchel. I couldn’t imagine. I know I couldn’t bear it.”
I took his hand and squeezed it. Sylvain never took his eyes off the staircase, but he gave a single nod, squeezed my hand back.
“Truth is that I’m every bit as worried as Ember, but I’m holding out hope.” I thumped my chest. “Nothing here has changed. I haven’t felt anything actually sever between us. I have to believe he’s okay. And we’ll get word from the headmasters soon enough. Once they give us the go-ahead to enter the oriels? Baylor had better watch out.”
Mom cracked her knuckles. “I so look forward to the opportunity to punch my ex-husband’s teeth in. Perhaps we might even have time to formalize the divorce before I drown him on dry land. Our pact is dissolved, to say the least. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I think it’s time, gentlemen.”
Sylvain and I followed her up the stairs, and suddenly I was living out a parallel fantasy that had always lingered in the back of my mind. No matter how contentious my relationship had been with Baylor, I still held onto a grain of hope that we might some day plunge into danger together, side by side. It felt even better knowing I was striding into battle with my mother instead.
Our visit to the Oriel of Earth didn’t count. Baylor had used the trip as an opportunity to scope out what I could do. And he’d done it all under the guise of a father finally showing any kind of emotional curiosity in his affection-starved son’s growth. He never once showed his hand, only watching my every move. Very clever, the devious bastard.
A few spiral staircases up and we found ourselves in the Spire of Radiance. Half a dozen students glanced hopefully as we emerged from the stairwell, tired from battle and ready to be relieved. I recognized a couple of the older ones. One of them attended Bruna’s alchemy classes and was obviously a fan of her fighting style, lobbing explosive potions at the things pouring out of the Oriel of Earth.
The good news was that our side appeared to be holding steady. No real injuries apart from little cuts and scrapes, no visible signs of vulnerability apart from the exhaustion that came with so much physical exertion. But the bad news? The entities from the oriel wouldn’t stop coming. We were swapping in fresh combatants on the top of every hour, but how long could we really keep this up?
Baylor’s emerald chains throbbed around the frame of the oriel, keeping its forces bound to his command. If only we knew how to unbind them safely. I didn’t need to be told that something terrible would happen to the oriels and therefore the Wispwood if we tried to unchain them. Catastrophic, Cornelius said. How much worse could it get if we damaged the delicate glass from the outside? The headmasters needed to come up with something. Fast.
“Get some rest,” Mom said to the students, never taking her eye off the nearest elemental creature.Mama’s got this, I could imagine her saying, glaring down this strange beast, a preying mantis formed entirely out of leaves and brambles.
The relief was clear in the students’ shoulders, those final exhalations of tensely held breath, the synchronized slouches of gratitude and surrender. They broke off from the creatures immediately, nodding at me and Sylvain as they filed down the staircase.
“Are you ready, oh summoner?” Sylvain bumped shoulders with me. “The next hour, all for us.”
I shrugged. “I’d feel better if I knew for sure that Mom was healthy enough to be fighting these — oh. There she goes.”
In the blink of an eye Marina Wilde had transformed into the darkest aspect of water, a raging, roiling woman fashioned from crashing waves and furious ocean. In her undine form she swept through the Spire of Radiance, her extremities shaped into shrieking, spinning blades. Jets of water fired from her body with such incredible speed and pressure that she took down three of the leaf insects in a single blast.
Sylvain chuckled. “I don’t think we have anything to worry about. And look. Free leaves.”
He motioned, drawing on the leaves shed by the fallen creatures, launching them like knives and arrows, striking down a new moss giant even as it emerged from the oriel. It bellowed in fury as Sylvain kept up the assault, shredding its skin and flesh.
An eerie sound tinkled through the chamber, clear as water, like whale-song and the chatter of dolphins all at once, rising from the bubbling depths. It was my mother, the undine, laughing. She was enjoying herself. The water-woman tilted her head at me expectantly. Who was I to let her down?
But I was still going to be responsible about it, conserve my arcane essence. I thrust my hand out, the air around me charged with my will as I called on the smallest of my eidolons. My doves burst out of thin air in a blur of wings and feathers, beaks and talons gleaming silvery-white with magical empowerment. They headed for the portal, pecking and ripping at a second unfortunate moss giant. Thick green blood dripped like ichor from its new wounds.
I thrust out my other hand, calling on the second of my minor eidolons. A waist-high rift opened beside me, cold air spilling out of it as Old Man emerged from his corner of the world. At rest, away from the threat of danger, Old Man acted like the geriatric wolf that he was, padding and limping. But he knew that my summons always meant an opportunity for bloodshed, and he shot out of the rift with his fur bristling, jaws slavering, a wolf in his prime.
The undine I called my mother nodded in approval, laughing again as she launched more jets of water from the seemingly unending supply of her own body. Emboldened, empowered, and slightly afraid, I called on the last of my minor eidolons.
