Ayla
The Archives were held in a secured wing on the main floor of the Hub. Doctor Harlowe and I took the elevator from the Training Rooms’ sub-level and to the main floor to meet up with my family, then Doctor Harlowe led us all through the secured door and into Archive Room Five. We’d been scouring records ever since—Doctor Harlowe included.
Now, five hours into our search, my eyes were blurry from scanning the computer screen in the cubicle I’d claimed, my backside had gone numb from sitting, and I was wishing someone had thought to bring food.
I leaned back in my padded office chair and rolled the kinks out of my neck. “Any luck?”
Mom flopped back in her chair in the cubicle next to me and rubbed her weary eyes. “Not so far.” She peered over the divider at my dad, who was in the cubicle directly across from her.
He shook his head. “Nothing here, either.”
I turned to my other side to ask Grandpa, but chuckled when I found him asleep with his head on his arms. When I leaned closer, I could hear him softly snoring.
“Nothing there either, I’m guessing,” I said to Mom.
She laughed. “Doctor Harlowe?”
We all glanced around, but the doctor was nowhere in sight. He had been in the cubicle beside my dad the last I checked.
I stood up. The four other cubicles in the small Archive Room were empty, as was the small table by the door. “Where did he go?” I hadn’t seen or heard him leave.
The door slid open and Doctor Harlowe rushed inside, looking more frenzied than I’d ever seen him. “Here!” he said, then plopped a thick, dusty book down on the table, holding his hand between the pages to save his place in the book. “Come look. Hurry.”
Mom, Dad, and I all rushed over.
“What is it?” my dad asked.
“I found a mention of a bond-spell in one journal from Veylden—it told of a ceremony to sever the bond, but referenced an obscure ArcFae ritual as the means of doing so. When I cross-referenced that ritual, I got a result from an old Mountain Fae historical text, smuggled out of Lower Fae by Upper Fae operatives during the ending of the last war. This book.” He gestured to the one on the table. “Stored in the physical archives, down in Room Nine.” With a dramatic flourish, he flopped the dusty book open. “Inside, I found this.”
When the plume of dust settled, I fought the urge to sneeze and leaned in to look. My breath caught. “It’s Quinn’s vision.”
There, in an ancient-looking, hand-drawn illustration in colored ink, was the exact scene Quinn had described, down to a shirtless male ArcFae standing over two people bound to a table with their wrists tied together—only it was two sallow-looking Fae tied together on the table, rather than myself and Kaizyn. Rings of magic were shown flowing between their chests and the ArcFae’s, and the bound Fae’s mouths were contorted in what looked like horrified screams.
Mom gasped as she peered at the drawing over my shoulder.
“Wha—” Grandpa sat up, rubbed his eyes, then stumbled over to see what the commotion was. “What’s the—Oh.” He stopped as he took in the drawing.
Dad slid up behind me, grasping my shoulder. “It’ll be okay, Ayla. Take a breath.”
I hadn’t even realized how close I was to passing out from shallow, rapid breathing until he said that. I forced a slow, deep breath, letting his voice calm me. It would be alright—We would figure this out. Wouldn’t we?
Mom pressed her hand to her chest. “How do we stop this?” she asked Doctor Harlowe.
He shook his head. “I don’t think we can… And I don’t think we should.”
I gaped at him. “What?”
He tilted the book toward me and pointed at etched symbols in the bottom-right corner. Some kind of Fae writing.
Grandpa leaned in, peering closer, as I glanced up at Doctor Harlowe.
“What does it say?” I asked.
Grandpa straightened suddenly, his eyes wide and excited as they locked on mine. “It’s not a sacrifice, Ayla—it’s a cure! This is the ceremony to break the bond! But—”
At his sudden pause, my heart plunged from soaring down to my feet in an instant. “But what, Grandpa?”
He glanced at Doctor Harlowe. “That’s a complicated rune.”
Only then did I notice the intricate symbol charred into the wood of the table the two people were bound to.
“I know,” Doctor Harlowe replied.
“There’s no living runist here at the Hub talented enough to pull that off.”
“I know,” Doctor Harlowe said again.
The two men met gazes for a moment, then Grandpa turned to me. “I know now why Varias was in Quinn’s vision. He—Etcher—may be the only living runist skilled enough to pull this off.”
I stared at him for a moment. “He’s actually a runist? I thought that was just his cover, and he was really an ArcFae.”
“He’s both,” Doctor Harlowe said. “The LeyGuard skill in runing was learned from ArcFae, centuries ago. Runing, and its companion skill, the wielding of runes, were established as two of our core LeyGuard aptitudes after decades of studying under ArcFae allies and tutors. For LeyGuards, they are two separate skills, but not so for ArcFae. A talented ArcFae like Varias could craft and channel runes that even the best LeyGuard runists and wielders could only dream of pulling off.”
Grandpa turned to me. “Jordan told me Etcher had him wield a rune to sense into Beirthyr’s mind and free Beirthyr’s sear-bind from Sevryn’s trap. But Etcher—Varias—would have been fully capable of wielding those runes himself. His use of Jordan was likely to maintain his LeyGuard cover—and also because Jordan is indeed a powerful wielder, especially with his innate Fae magic added to the mix. Varias was already expending much energy maintaining the glamour that made him appear as an old LeyGuard. Wielding a powerful rune may have made his glamour slip, even momentarily—a risk he wouldn’t have wanted to take.” He gripped my hand. “Ayla, Varias really is our best hope of breaking this bond. There’s no runist alive who is more skilled.”
My heart lurched. “But you said we couldn’t trust him. You said he might have gone back to serving the Dark King!”
Grandpa gave my hand a squeeze. “I know. But this new information changes things. If you want to break your bond to Kaizyn before the Dark King finds a way to use it for evil, Varias might be our only chance.”
Silence fell over us.
Grandpa glanced down and traced a finger over the picture with his free hand. “He was evil, once—he betrayed his own people for the promise of power at the Dark King’s side. But then he saw the blood spilled for it, and had a change of heart. He asked me for a way to keep the darkness at bay, a chance to do some good to redeem himself. I obliged, and in exchange, he kept my secrets. We had an agreement—and I trusted him, so long as that vow held.” He looked up at me with concern. “The Dark King won’t be happy that Varias betrayed him, much less eluded him for so many years. Now that Varias is freed from the vow to me, the Dark King will try to get his claws in him again, I’m certain of it. I wish we had a better option for you, Ayla. I just don’t believe we do.”
My heart sank, for multiple reasons. As much as I didn’t trust Etcher—Varias—the thought that someone had tried to escape the Dark King and turn their life around for good, only to be trapped by the Dark King again in the end, was unbearably sad. “Can’t we do anything to help him?”
Grandpa sighed. “Unfortunately, I don’t think so. It was a miracle he escaped the Dark King’s clutches enough for us to work the vow the first time. I don’t envy Varias the punishment that’s sure to find him now, if it hasn’t already.”
I glanced between Doctor Harlowe and Grandpa. “So we’re just giving up on him? If we find him, and he wants to be free of the Dark King again, couldn’t we at least try?”
Grandpa smiled at me. “A minute ago, you didn’t trust him. Now you want to save him?”
I felt my face heat, but I didn’t care. “Yes—if we can. You said he wants to be good.”
Grandpa’s face turned serious. “His vow to me was the only thing that protected him from the vow he had already made to the Dark King. He can’t be freed without being bound to someone, Ayla. And while I’d like to think that a vow to me was a fair sight better than a vow to the Dark King, the truth is… neither one was freedom. I’m not sure what more we can do.”
I glanced between him and Doctor Harlowe. “There has to be something we can do.”
“Yes,” said Doctor Harlowe. “You can kill the Dark King.”
The weight of that settled on the room.
“Doctor Harlowe is right, Ayla,” Grandpa said softly. “Until the Dark King is dead, there’s no way to guarantee Varias can truly be free—if the Varias I knew is even still in there.” His gaze met mine. “But we can’t wait for the Dark King to be killed to do this ceremony. Every day that you are bound to Kaizyn is another day you’re both at risk—from the feedback-loop of the magic itself, and as targets. The way the new king of Teionyr feels about you is no secret to anyone…and until Jordan has children, Kaizyn is second in line for the throne. Killing either you or Kaizyn would kill you both, devastate Jordan, and possibly incapacitate the entire kingdom. The Dark King will quickly realize that, if he hasn’t already. It’s too big of a risk.”
I stared at him, my conviction for helping Etcher wavering under the weight of my fear. “So I just have to hope that an ArcFae who may or may not be under the control of the Dark King will actually use this torture ceremony to help Kaizyn and me, rather than betraying and killing us?”
“I don’t love the risk either, kid.” Grandpa dropped his hand from the book, then looked up at me. “But he did once make the choice to be good, even while under the grip of evil—and he was a great help to Jordan and Madison while they were trapped in Teionyr. He upheld his vow to me, and then some.” He squeezed my hand again. “We’ll just have to hope that’s still the part of him that’s in control. We may not be able to help him, right now…but he has the power to help you.”
My parents and Doctor Harlowe were all staring at me with concern.
“Maybe we can find another way,” my mom said softly.
Grandpa shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ayla. I just don’t think we have a better choice. I’ll be by your side the whole time, but we’re going to have to risk it and find Varias. If he seems like himself, and I feel I can trust him, we can ask him to do the ceremony. Of course, we’ll also have to convince Kaizyn to agree. The ceremony requires you both.”
I turned away from everyone’s watching eyes and took a deep breath. Knowing we couldn’t free Varias from the Dark King’s hold before asking his help made this feel wildly reckless. I had just figured out how to control my magic, and now I was being asked to surrender control—to trust someone I barely knew, and to let them perform a ceremony on me that looked shockingly akin to torture in this drawing. Trust had never been my strong point, anyway, especially when it required surrendering my control of a situation. Already, I could feel the fear mounting inside me, awakening my ice magic. My fingers itched with a cold tingle, eager to protect me from a threat I wasn’t even facing yet. I wasn’t even sure I could do this. What if I panicked the moment they put me on the table? What if the feedback loop sent Kaizyn and I both into a cataclysmic shutdown, or my magic freaked out and hurt someone?
But then I thought of Jordan, and how I would feel in his position, if the person I loved and my adopted-brother-slash-heir-to-my-throne were both killed in one fell swoop. Every day I left this bond in place, I was risking that outcome—and now that I knew a way to undo the bond, I would be risking that by choice. I couldn’t do that to Jordan… and somehow that was an even stronger motivator than my concern for my own life.
Varias had risked himself to help Jordan when they were both prisoners. That good part of him had to still be in there somewhere. If we found Varias and he was willing to help us, maybe we could eventually find a way to help him, too.
I drew a deep breath, my magic quieting and the warmth returning to my fingertips as my fear morphed into resolve. I turned to face the others. “Okay. As long as Kaizyn is okay with it, I’ll do it.”
Grandpa pulled me into a hug. “You’re braver than you give yourself credit for, Ayla.” He pulled back and smoothed my hair. “This will all be over before you know it—the war, all of it. It’s all coming to an end soon, I can feel it.”
He smiled at me, but his words settled like rocks in my stomach. I could feel that it would all soon be ending, too—I just hoped that end was the happy kind, and not the kind where people I cared about ended up dead.
I looked at Doctor Harlowe. “The Hub’s on lockdown. Does that mean we can’t go right now?”
He nodded. “Once the imminent threat is past, the Hub will return to a semi-lockdown state, a typical post-crisis security measure. When that happens, I’ll inform Chairman Hart what we’ve discovered and let her know that you need special clearance to travel to Arcvale.”
“Could we train my magic some more while we’re waiting?” I asked him. “I want to make sure I—”
The archive room plunged into darkness—then piercing sirens split the air.
“Code Five,” a recording of Chairman Hart’s voice blared through the speakers above. “All personnel, activate your designated security protocols. I repeat: Code Five. All personnel, activate your designated security protocols.”
“What’s happening?” my mom’s voice shouted over the sirens as I blinked, struggling to see in the sudden darkness. “What’s a Code Five?”
A blue glow erupted from a runestone Doctor Harlowe had pulled from somewhere, illuminating a small area around us—along with Doctor Harlowe’s panicked face. “Code Five means the Hub is under attack.” He rushed to the door of the archive room and pressed his hand to the wall panel. “It’s not responding.” His eyes widened.
“Did someone cut the power?” I asked.
“The Hub has multiple layers of backup systems,” Grandpa said. “That shouldn’t—”
Doctor Harlowe, meanwhile, ran back to the table where he’d set his tablet and frantically tapped a few things on the screen. An image of his face appeared on it as he held it up, like he was using a front-facing camera. “Hello, this is Doctor Harlowe down in Archive Room Five. We—Hello?” He spun slowly to us, still holding the tablet with wide, frightened eyes. “It’s not going through. The signal’s blocked.”
My mom pulled out her cell phone. “No service. I swear I had a signal just moments ago.” She glanced up at my dad, and their eyes met with an expression that sent a chill down my spine.
Grandpa turned to me. “Ayla can send a message.”
Everyone stared at me.
“What?” I said, still struggling to think clearly over the blaring sirens and the internal panic.
“Ayla, maybe Jordan can get through from the outside and find out what’s happening,” Grandpa said.
It took me a second to realize what he meant. “Oh!” I pulled the stone from my pocket, pressed my thumb to it, and spoke the word to activate it.
“Please answer, Jordan,” I whispered. “Please.”
The others stared at me as the rune lit blue—then they all huddled around me as we waited for him to answer.
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