In time, I match my breathing to his. I close my eyes for ten heartbeats. I still have weeks left of D&D to play, and weeks left of the mural to paint. And despite Addison’s enthusiasm and pep, she hasn’t yet reached out to schedule my next interview.
I remind myself that I’m cradled in the arms of a gorgeous, shirtless man who wants nothing more in this moment than to feed me strawberries and pet my hair and take me on pretty walks. I can save the worrying for later.
“Okay,” I say, touching his cheek and drawing him down for a kiss. “Okay.”
Chapter
Twenty-Three
They had tried everything, but it was useless. The orb wouldn’t work.
“Went through all of that trouble,” Morgana huffs, her tone sharp with frustration, “and we haven’t got a godsdamned clue how to use it.”
The women stand together and watch their companions lunge in an awkward dance before them. Loren strums a little jig, swaying from side to side as colorful motes of light flash and bounce around his head. Kain stalks in a circle around him with the orb clutched between his clawed hands. Every few steps, he thrusts the orb forward toward the bard at a different angle. But no matter what, Loren’s magic merrily persists.
Jaylie pinches the bridge of her nose. “There must be something we’re missing.”
Morgana squints up at the sun, blazing bright in a cloudless sky. It’s a beautiful day again, now that the party has camped as far from the cave as possible while still keeping Shira’s tower in their sights. “Maybe there’s some sort of ritual to it? Or a magic word?” The dwarf clutches her beard. “Hells, you don’t think we’d be so unlucky as to have it just quit working once the creature’s dead, do you?”
But Jaylie’s caught on her earlier suggestion.A magic word.“Most spells do have a verbal component of a sort,” she muses aloud. She gestures at Loren, who’s currently sticking his tongue out at an increasingly frustrated Kain. “He accesses his magic through music. I pray to my Lady.” She frowns. “But I haven’t a clue what beholders do.”
She beckons the boys over. Loren comes to stand close to her side, and Jaylie presses her lips together to keep from smiling. Since the events of the cave, he’d barely let her out of his sight. When they had made camp the night before, she’d caught the reflection of the fire dancing in his eyes as he watched her unblinkingly, as if concerned she’d crumble to dust again.
“Kain, would you hold thatjustthere, please?” Jaylie guides his wrists until the orb is held extended before him. “Thank you. I’m going to try something.”
It’s not a spell she’s done before, but she’s seen clerics at her temple conduct small rituals to reveal the magical properties of holy artifacts. This dark sphere is the furthest thing from holy, but she hopes the trick might work nonetheless. Plucking a gold coin from her purple leather pouch, she flips it into the air, where it catches the sunlight and gleams a dozen different colors as it spins. It lands in Jaylie’s palm, and she slaps it against the top of her free hand, revealing Marlana’s winking face. Jaylie beams.
Please, my Lady,she prays.Show me the way.
Rainbow light arcs between her palms. As Jaylie spreads her hands outward, the magic stretches from her fingers like the delicate skin of a bubble. Jaylie holds her hands above the orb, peering through the colorful oily sheen of the spell like a looking glass.
She gasps as information floods her mind, flashes of memories playing out between her hands.Glorvalk.The word rings in her head like a bell, and she sees an adventuring party pinned in the sick green glow of the beholder’s central eye.Glorvalk.Anobsidian tower, stark against a stormy purple sky and held aloft in the air by magic, crumbles to the ground under the monster’s green gaze.Glorvalk.While laughter shrills in the background, a wizard’s skin disintegrates to ash, leaving only his bones as the magic keeping him young fades away.
“Glorvalk,” Jaylie says. She tastes sulfur in the back of her throat as she speaks the word aloud. “Glorvalkis the word that will activate it.” Kain straightens immediately, his great horns whistling through the air as he swings toward the priestess.
On cue, the orb begins to glow, casting Jaylie’s features in poison green. She tries to summon up a quick light spell, but the magic fizzles out. Loren claps his hands together excitedly just as Kain bursts into rumbling, thunderous laughter.
Loren looks up at him, bemused. “What’s so funny?”
Kain pretends to wipe a tear from his eye. “You’re kidding. Glorvalk? That’s embarrassing.”
“Oh?” Jaylie posts her hands on her hips.
Kain’s mouth twists into a smirk, showing just the barest hint of one long fang. “In the devil’s tongue,” he says dryly, “glorvalkmeansbehold.”
Faced once more with the friendly exterior of Shira’s vine-covered white tower, Jaylie wonders again whether to abandon their plan of attack and simply knock. It’s even more welcoming up close. There are wrought iron gates fashioned in friendly curlicues, an array of rosebushes surrounding the tower’s base, and a gold door knocker held in the cheerful grin of a chubby gargoyle. All things considered, it’s adorable. Jaylie thinks that maybe, on the inside, there’s a little sign that readsLive, Laugh, Lich,a cheeky nod to the greatest form a dark wizard can take.
But none of that stops Kain from thundering up to the gates, the orb-capped wooden staff held in his fist. With some makeshift crafting on Morgana’s part, the orb had been attached to a fallen branch as tall as Jaylie. Experimentally, Kain presses one clawed hand to the gates. They don’t budge.
“Glorvalk,”he intones.
It sounds much better when he says it.
Glitter rains down from the iron as a warding spell that neither Jaylie nor Loren noticed dissolves to nothing. Kain bares his sharp teeth in a grin. “Follow me, little ones.” The muscles of his back strain as he holds the glowing staff out in one hand and unstraps his axe with the other.
As the party advances, Jaylie half expects to see the charming display of flowers and vines wilt under the beam of green to reveal the dark truth beneath the pretty illusion. But while the orb does successfully disarm the glyphs and alarm spells hidden in the vegetation, the beautiful greenery remains the same. Jaylie can’t help but admire Shira’s natural green thumb as they pass a peach tree, perfectly pruned and ripe with dozens of pink and orange fruits.
On the wind, Jaylie catches the tinkling sounds of chimes and laughter as they approach the tower’s entryway—though the sounds are coming from the garden toward the back. As Kain raises his axe to slam through the purple-painted wood of the front door, Morgana hastily shakes her head and points: off to the side, under an archway of trellises heavy with roses, a dirt path leads in the direction of the voices. Loren places one hand on Kain’s forearm and steps through, leading the way with Jaylie trailing after him.
