A Baron of Bonds (Conduit of Light #2)

66. Karus

Chapter 66

Karus

THE IUMENTA TRIAL

I tumbled out of the portal.

They always seemed to spit me out, regardless of how I entered.

I fell to my knees, jabbing into sharp wood. A piece of it broke off, piercing my skirts and my skin. “Dammit,” I muttered to myself, pulling the three inch spike out of my knee.

“My, my, Karus, how have you already managed to hurt yourself?”

My blood curdled, and I glanced up quickly to see the black robes of the Blightress billowing around her. White hair, pale complexion—she still wore bright red on her lips, her nails just as black as the day I met her.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I rose, holding my wound.

“Such a way of speaking. Did he teach you that word?”

“Stop. You can’t be here. How are you even here? This isn’t real.”

She shrugged. “It’s true. I’m not really here, just as you are not really here. But that,”—she pointed at my bloody knee—“probably feels real.”

I sighed and lifted my skirts, muttering, “ Sarchio .”

Nothing. My wound stayed open, blood trickling down my leg into my laced boot.

“Spells don’t work here, child.”

I rolled my eyes. So that’s what Revich couldn’t tell me. I had to rely on my innate magic alone, not on spells I’d learned.

I pulled my trails of green forward, wrapping them around my knee in an attempt to stop the bleeding. It seemed to mostly work at least.

Letting my skirts fall, I looked around. I was standing in a massive room. Rough wood steps sloped gently upward and a curved ceiling was broken in places with beams of sunlight shining through to illuminate an enormous door ahead. Great branches of a tree wound along the door, spreading and tangling over the wood. Bits of grass and small, delicate flowers grew all over the wide stairs.

Without looking at her, I asked, “Why are you here?”

“I’ve not had the pleasure of seeing you perform much of your magic, Karus, as you were taken from me before you were born and insisted on leaving me when I brought you to my home.”

“You’re here to watch?” I scoffed.

She shook her head in that eerie, unnatural way. “I’m here to witness.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, already irritated with her presence. “I don’t want you to be here, just so we’re clear.”

“I can see that, Little Sprout.”

I pursed my lips, biting on them. “Why did you try to stop Revich? In Viridis. Why did you erect that wall behind me?”

It was a question I’d been wondering ever since that day. I knew Revich did, too.

She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “Simply to see if I could. I myself am a curious sort of creature, Karus. I wanted to know just how much of my power he holds.”

I turned away and looked up to the holes at the ceiling of the room, gathering my patience. It almost looked as if this trial was in a giant barn, and as I glanced behind me, the rest of the area was dark and difficult to see.

I took a cautious step forward, my knee more painful than I cared to admit. I followed the steps all the way to the door. I could see its hinges rusted over, and I wondered where the animals were supposed to be. This was the iumenta trial, but it looked abandoned.

Ignoring the looming presence of the Blightress behind me, I listened. I reached out for heartbeats, searching for something living and hiding in the room.

I sensed three of them, weak and small, each one somewhere on the door before me. I stepped back, searching the branches for any sign of life—something tiny, maybe young.

The slightest mewling caught my ear, and I jerked my head up and to the right, catching the flicker of a scaled black tail, tiny and pointed.

“There you are,” I muttered, looking for a foothold to climb the woven branches on the door.

I heaved myself up onto the one closest to the ground, grabbing ahold of another, beginning my climb, focused on that tiny, racing heartbeat.

My knee worked well enough, but ached already, and I wasn’t even through the first trial. I cursed my clumsiness as I slipped, catching another branch with my foot and pulling myself back up.

I reached the creature, my head peeking over one last branch to see what looked like a cross between a kitten and a lizard. All black, it had sharp claws and long, pointed scales at its chest and down its back, its face blending scales and fur. Its eyes were wide and orange like a cat with pink, fleshy ears that were so thin, I could almost see through them.

“Hello, little one,” I spoke softly, pulling myself to the branch with my arm for balance and holding my hand out for her to sniff. She did so and licked it eagerly, likely smelling bacon on my fingers.

“Should I take you down from here?” I asked, not expecting a reply and not getting one. She mewed again, this time sitting up and peering over the ledge. We were at least twenty feet up and the fall would be disastrous for us both.

She stood, her claws gripping the branch and mewed a third time, this one answered by her siblings. From that height, I could see them now, each having gotten themselves on a different part of this door, each far too small to be able to climb down.

“They are quite adorable, are they not?” The Blightress called up to me, standing at the base of the door.

I didn’t reply, turning back to the lizardous cat creature, whispering, “If Rev would allow it, I think I’d just bring you home with me. I stroked her scaled nose, hearing a purring rumble loudly in return. “Can I take you down? Is that what you want?”

She replied with a short meow, and I scooped her into the crook of my arm, bringing my magic underneath to help hold her in case she slipped. I began my slow decent down to the ground, thankful the other two were not as far up.

I set her down near the Blightress’s robes, glaring at her in a threat not to touch it before climbing to the left side, following the cries of the other two. Thinking I was clever, I reached the highest one first, letting her smell the grease on my fingers before snatching her into my arm and using my magic to lower her safely to the ground. I then climbed back down and stopped at the third on the way. By then, my fingers probably smelled more like her sister’s tongues, but she happily lapped them anyway and let me take her into my arms.

Back on the ground, I lowered the last of the creatures, dusting my hands and grinning. All three were now batting at each other’s tails, tumbling and biting.

“Aren’t you forgetting something, Karus?” The Blightress grinned wide, turning to look over her shoulder.

A low growl shook the wooden slats at the ceiling, more of them breaking and falling fast, shattering on impact as a gigantic black form rose from the dark side of the room.

My blood ran cold as the Blightress warned, “Where there are kittens, there is a mother cat close by.”