Crown of Briars Read online

  His shivering aura stirred again. Zoe stared at him.

  Oh… god.

  “You’re going insane,” she whispered. “You’ve taken too many things that don’t belong to you. You’re trying to undo it now.”

  Malcolm sighed heavily. “You were a blank canvas,” he said. “The ritual worked differently for you. I can still change it, perfect it… but I’ll need to start over, unstitch these failures first.” He shook his head, pained. “Such an awful waste.”

  Zoe pressed her lips together. She shook her head quickly. “I’m not helping you,” she said. “I won’t do that for you. I sure as hell won’t help you try and do all this again.”

  Malcolm laughed. There was a quiet instability to the sound that set Zoe’s teeth on edge. “Oh, Zoe,” he said. “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed seeing the world through your eyes — it’s like rediscovering the world entirely, every time I have the chance to teach you something.” He sighed again. “I have other options — more costly options. But I trust you more. You will help me. I know you — and now, I know what you value.” He gestured toward Dorian’s shivering form, and Zoe swallowed hard.

  His escape plan. This was it. It made sense, of course. No matter how many allies Zoe brought with her, there was nothing she could do if she needed Malcolm’s cooperation to save Dorian.

  “You left before I could teach you the other side of the game, Zoe,” Malcolm observed, with that pleasant, patronizing smile. “Today, I am playing the poison. Step one: limit your opponent’s time and resources. Step two: ensure that you can choose your battleground. Step three… complete your control.”

  The words hung in the air between them. Zoe closed her eyes. I’m a kid, she thought dully. A stupid little kid. I was never going to win against him.

  “Mange de la marde.” Zoe’s eyes flew open. Somehow, Dorian had managed to crack open his eyes; there was a feverish glint to the normal steely grey there. He fixed his gaze on Zoe, and she saw iron determination there. “Tue l’osti de criss.”

  Kill the motherfucker.

  Zoe shook her head at him, aghast. Malcolm paused — a flicker of irritation shot through his aura, and she realized that he hadn’t understood a single word.

  “Tu es empoisonné,” she stumbled haltingly. “Il peut te sauver.” You’re poisoned. He can save you.

  “I’ve… been fished?” Dorian gasped, deliberately misinterpreting her accent. He laughed, and Zoe’s mouth dropped open.

  “You — you’re making fun of my French right now?” she demanded. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Dorian choked on another laugh. “Je comprends,” he told her. I understand. “Tue le,” he repeated.

  Kill the motherfucker.

  “Broadening your linguistic skills, I see,” Malcolm observed. That hint of irritation remained. He suspected that Zoe was trying to one-up him, but his pride wouldn’t allow him to admit she might succeed. He inclined his head toward the door. “Shall we depart, before your lawyer does?”

  Zoe clenched her jaw. Tears blurred her vision. I’m not going to be the reason someone else dies. Just the thought of causing Dorian’s death, when she knew she could save him…

  He’d taken her in without question — given her a home, her first semblance of a family. She needed him in the world with her.

  I can’t do it. I’m sorry.

  “Let’s go,” Zoe said hoarsely. “Time’s wasting.”

  She walked past Malcolm for the couch, keenly aware of the nearness of his magic. She halfway expected him to reach out and touch her… but instead, he stepped aside to let her pass.

  Zoe knelt down next to the couch, slinging Dorian’s arm over her shoulders. He staggered to his feet, half-unwilling. It was clear that Dorian didn’t intend to do her any favors — he leaned his full weight upon her, and she had to stumble against the desk to hold him up.

  “I won’t play along with this game,” Dorian said wearily. “I greatly dislike the rules... and the stakes.”

  A tremor overtook his body. Zoe bit her lip, worried. “Couldn’t you be a stubborn ass just a little bit later?” she muttered.

  A ghost of a smile crossed Dorian’s lips. “Perish the thought.” His fingers tightened on her shoulder for a moment, and Zoe pressed her lips together. There was no hint of emotion in his aura… but for once, she thought, she didn’t need to see it there to guess. He’s going to delay this as long as he can. He wants to die before we get to the Path, so I don’t have any reason to stay.

  The thought sent a roil of panic into her stomach. Malcolm was still watching, waiting. Zoe felt the edge of the situation hanging over them. Simon would be there soon, any moment. Somehow, she had to make this work.

  The answer came to her mind like a lightning bolt.

  “Dorian,” she said. “J’ai un secret pour toi.”

  The lawyer paused, long and considering. Fevered grey eyes met hers, suddenly clear and calm. “De quelle valeur?” he rasped. Of what value is your secret?

  “Very valuable,” Zoe whispered.

  The Lady of Briars had given the deepest secret of her heart in the hopes that one day Dorian might tell her what Zoe knew.

  “Malcolm a tué Rose Leclair,” she said softly.

  “That,” Dorian breathed quietly, “is very valuable indeed.”

  Zoe felt the moment that the magic took hold. She’d often found herself adjacent to Dorian’s peculiar lack of aura before — but never had she been the direct target of its power before. It extended toward her, winding her soul in silence and stillness. The truth of her words was weighed, considered… and exchanged. She became aware of a great and terrible debt owed to her in the place of those words, whispering at the back of her mind.

  On any other day, at any other time, Zoe would have quavered at the feeling of that power brushing up against her soul. But she didn’t have the luxury for that right now. Her mind whirled, trying to pick out the proper French for what she wanted — but she knew the jig was up as Malcolm’s dark eyes turned furious. “Give me the true name of someone who can save you,” she blurted out instead.

  Many things happened then in quick succession.

  Blood dribbled from Malcolm’s hand, plinking softly onto the floor of the office. A bitter, pungent scent swirled through the air, strong enough to cloy at their lungs. Dorian coughed on the words about to leave his tongue, gasping for breath. A bright and terrible kaleidoscope reached out for them from across Arcadia, assaulting Zoe’s Witchsight with a riot of crazed and clashing images.

  Dimly, Zoe felt the wards on the office contract as someone entered. Simon, she thought, though she couldn’t pick him out among the din.

  Tendrils of that blazing faerie madness closed around Malcolm — and then around Zoe and Dorian. Zoe buried her face in Dorian’s shoulder, clinging to his empty aura in pure desperation while the tempest swirled around them.

  Somewhere in the midst of that storm, she felt Simon’s glow. His hand brushed against hers, firmly closing her fingers around a tiny, familiar golden compass.

  Zoe screamed his name.

  And the world tore in half.

  Chapter 12

  Everything was alive.

  A choking array of imagery and colors assaulted Zoe’s Witchsight. The scent of fresh rain and spring lilies overwhelmed so much at first that she thought Simon had to be nearby — but as she opened her eyes, she realized that she’d been set down in a wild patch of white lilies.

  All around her, flowers bloomed. Roses and jasmine climbed over great green trees that were taller than anything Zoe had ever seen in the real world. Snatches of a strange green sky filtered here and there between the leaves and petals; a bright, otherworldly sun hung still in the sky like a bauble pinned to a canvas. Wind whispered through the trees, but there was an unnerving quality to it — the feeling that if one listened just closely enough, it might be trying to say something intelligible.

  Everything was alive. And everything hurt.

>   Zoe turned, curling her head into her arms with a pitiful moan. She felt as though she’d been squeezed into a ball and then unfolded again. Her stomach threatened to empty itself of the little bit of tea she’d had that morning. Worse still, her mind cringed back from the sheer unearthly splendor of the world around her. Too-bright sensations assaulted her from every direction, clawing at her awareness. The hard surface of Simon’s compass pressed against her hand, cool and steady… but the warlock himself was nowhere to be found.

  Nearby, another groan penetrated her misery. Zoe cracked open her eyes again. Dorian’s normally-dignified form was laid out across a painful-looking bed of roses. A few red scratches stained his suit, mixed with the faint shadow of Malcolm’s wicked poison. His skin had gone even more deathly pale than before.

  Zoe crawled toward him, doing her best to ignore her body’s protests. Partway there, her stomach finally buckled and gave up its miserly contents. As she heaved and gasped for breath, the hard reality set in.

  Simon’s not here.

  Dorian is dying.

  I can’t save him.

  The panic set her stomach roiling again; she found herself dry heaving, desperately trying to regain control of her physical responses.

  If Simon wasn’t here… that meant that he was probably elsewhere in Arcadia. He was in whatever mad, disjointed realm it was that Malcolm had called to his aid. Simon was probably in a similar physical condition from the journey, incapable of protecting himself from whatever denizens waited there.

  Zoe buried her face in Dorian’s chest, gasping in shallow, shuddering breaths.

  I didn’t want this. I didn’t want anyone else to die for me.

  “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m… I’m so…”

  Dorian didn’t reply. For the first time since she’d met him, that cool, unbothered aura had responded to something: it was fading.

  “Lady!” Zoe coughed on the word, barely able to rasp it out. “Lady of the Briars!” The words echoed weakly — easily drowned out by the whispering of the trees.

  The Lady of Briars did not respond.

  Zoe reached down to grasp at the bandage on her wrist. She tore at it with shaking fingers, prying at the skin beneath. It didn’t take much effort to disturb the grisly injury that Vivienne had left there.

  “I’m not letting you die,” she rasped at Dorian, though she suspected he couldn’t hear her. “If I have to go down with you, I swear to god, I will.”

  She smeared a streak of blood across the pulse point at his neck, reaching out with what little remained of her magic. Underneath the surface, Dorian’s body had been nearly consumed by the shadow of Malcolm’s magic.

  Step one. Buy time.

  Zoe forced her will upon Dorian’s body, slowing his heartbeat. Through sheer stubbornness, she managed to make him relax; his breathing softened. Normally, his body should have fought her… but the ease with which she was able to set the spell spiked her worry.

  Stop that. Step two: isolate.

  Zoe searched for a way to head off the shadow… but the more she looked, the more her fear rose higher. No time. It’s gone too far. I can’t tourniquet his heart.

  She searched around herself fruitlessly, half-blinded by the radiant life of the Briars. She needed something, anything…

  Her eyes fell upon the roses that climbed their way up a nearby tree trunk, and she froze.

  What the hell is that?

  The roses had an aura. An emotion.

  Love, she realized. Some… some crazy person put love in these roses.

  Zoe reached out with her Witchsight, brushing against the emotion more directly. There was something at once so familiar and so foreign about it. It wasn’t the steady, golden glow of Simon’s love — but there was a spark of him in it somehow, all the same. As though someone had reflected his emotion, magnified it…

  “Rose,” Zoe whispered. “Rose Leclair.”

  These were her roses. Zoe knew it instinctively. Somehow, Rose had planted this garden here — the Lady’s favorite garden, Zoe remembered — and seeded it with her love for her husband.

  The faerie lords are connected to their realms. Rose taught the Briars to love… the Lady’s daughter is the one who infected her.

  Zoe forced herself to her feet. Painfully, she staggered over to the roses… and pricked her hand upon them.

  She called Simon’s image to mind: his smile, his thoughtful voice, the feel of his hair beneath her fingers. She remembered the awful, longing ache that his kindness had set in her soul, pouring every bit of her love and fear for him into the blood that seeped onto the rose thorns.

  “Please,” she whispered shakily. “Please do something. I can’t. I want to, but I can’t.”

  For just a moment in time, she felt the emotion within the roses respond, echoing her memories with some of their own.

  Simon’s touch on her face, the way he looked when he slept, the ring sliding onto her finger as he proposed…

  Zoe felt her knees hit the ground. She’d begun to cry outright now, she knew. She pressed her cheek against the rough bark of the tree trunk, breathing in the scent of those impossible roses — praying that those stolen memories wouldn’t be the last she ever saw of Simon.

  The wind’s whispers stilled.

  “What is this?” said the Lady of Briars, behind her. “What have you done to my flowers?”

  Zoe rocked back onto her heels, staring. The roses had blossomed an inch more fully. The love within them glowed just a hint more brightly, burning with a new urgency.

  She turned to look at the Lady. Physically, the faerie lord was small and delicate as ever; her lavender skin and verdant green eyes were now painful to look at, though, and the flowers in her hair were in full bloom. At the center of her own realm, the Lady of Briars burned with power like a small sun.

  Zoe forced herself to stare at that sun, even as she felt her mind begin to shred away. She tightened her grip on the rose vine, digging its thorns into her palm to remind herself of where she was.

  “I need your help,” she croaked out. “Please.”

  The Lady knitted her brow. “Where is Simon?” she asked. “Why would he send you here alone? Does he wish you tangled in my thorns as well?”

  Zoe closed her eyes, but it didn’t help in the least. The Lady was still there before her, an eldritch power beyond her comprehension. “Simon is in trouble,” she managed. “Dorian is dying. Please.”

  The Lady’s power flared. Zoe found herself on hands and knees, covering her head with her arms — desperately trying to shield herself somehow from the sight. “Where is my son?” the Lady demanded. “Tell me now.”

  “I don’t know!” Zoe gasped. “He sent us here, but I think he was caught by something else. There was another Path to Arcadia, to another realm…”

  The Lady’s fury grew to magnificent proportions. The trees shivered around them. “My child is a fool,” she spat. “How many times must he harm himself for others? When will it be enough?”

  Zoe swallowed hard. The world around her had begun to melt into dizzying, disjointed images. Her Witchsight was driving her mad again — just as it had done the last time she was in Arcadia. She whimpered, pressing the heels of her bloody hands into her eyes.

  No, no, no, not now, not now…

  “Please,” she begged. “Please listen. I… I need…” Dorian. Dorian is dying. Zoe forced one cold, clear thought through her mind. “Dorian has your answer!” she choked out. “He has your answer, but he’s dying! You have to do something to help him!”

  The Lady’s fury cut away abruptly — felled by the sliver of black grief that still nested, coiled around her soul.

  “…my answer,” the faerie lord whispered. “The secret-keeper found the answer to my question?”

  Zoe nodded, unable to speak.

  Dorian’s cool, blank aura was nearly gone entirely. Only the faintest wisp of him remained, as the Lady turned her alien gaze upon him.

  Zoe
crumpled to the ground as the faerie lord turned her attention away, releasing her from the grip of her power. For a moment, Zoe simply breathed, trying to find something — anything — to ground her reality upon. Behind her, the roses glowed steadily to her Witchsight. She held them in her mind’s eye: a desperate anchor, a reminder of why she couldn’t lay down and give up her sanity.

  The Lady’s power curled around Dorian’s body like a vine. Her power flared again, more focused this time. Part of the shadow in his blood drew from him, like water into roots. The vibrant green of that vine withered and decayed — but the Lady continued drawing forth the shadow, leading it along the leash of her power.

  Carefully, Zoe pried her hands from her eyes and looked with her physical senses. There was hardly a difference, in Arcadia… but it gave her the courage to force herself forward, to watch the process unfold.

  The shadow pulled back from the Lady’s power suddenly. Dorian jerked and gasped as it tried to retreat back inside of him. The Lady narrowed her eyes — then, with a contemptuous flick, she pruned away the long, thin stream of shadow she had pulled from Dorian’s body, dissolving it in the direct glare of her mantle.

  The remainder of the shadow — lessened, but hardly ended — curled back up within the lawyer’s body. Dorian’s eyes flicked open, still glazed and feverish.

  “My answer, Secret-Keeper,” the Lady whispered. “I have paid for it in full. Tell me now.”

  Dorian shuddered. The words thrummed in the air. That blank, silent aura rippled, as though the Lady had plucked at his soul.

  His lips moved, but his voice was weak. The Lady leaned in, breathless, and he was moved to repeat himself. Zoe didn’t hear the words he spoke… but the Lady of Briars straightened slowly, her green eyes alight with a keen and violent focus.

  “And where is he now?” the faerie lord demanded in a soft whisper.

  Dorian shook his head weakly. What little strength he’d regained seemed to desert him, as he closed his eyes once more. The Lady’s magic had bought him some time, at least, Zoe noted with relief… though how much time, she wasn’t sure.