In the Wake of the Wicked (Veridian Empire #1)

58. Rose

58

Rose

T he days passed in a haze.

Any note from Theodore, I promptly burned. I spent my time either with Leo or buried in the pages of my father’s Grimoire, pleading and praying for something to bring me closer to an answer. To figuring out how to end the Somnivae curse.

Perhaps refusing to face the emperor even though he was the empire’s best chance at freedom from the curse made me a selfish coward, but I couldn’t go back to that study. Not yet. Every time I got near him, he burrowed deeper into my head, erasing my convictions until I didn’t know what to believe.

And a small part of me still thought…what if he was right? What if he was doing what was best for the empire as a whole by making us stronger, giving us courage and pride and power? I couldn’t deny the way my magic made me feel or the newfound assurance I had in myself. All thanks to Theodore.

But when those confusions slipped in, when those emotions began to wedge themselves between my desire for justice and a better empire for everyone …that’s when I was the most frightened. That a single man in a matter of weeks could so easily twist my own beliefs .

I didn’t have to figure it out alone, though.

Leo stood by me through it all. Day after day leading up to the ball, he listened to my muddled thoughts, helping me decipher truth from lies. When I strayed too close to the edge, he walked me back to the line. When the ache to feel that electrifying magic hit its peak, he replaced it with a different yearning.

We’d grown close in those weeks before the attack on the Lightbenders, but it was nothing compared to the days since. I’d always thought my freedom relied on keeping myself untethered, on fading touches and distant words that meant nothing. But I’d never known such freedom and peace as I did when I finally let someone in .

It was as if all my pain, all my guilt and confusion and the shadows that were bottled inside of me no longer weighed as much as they once did. Leo was there to share it with me. When the dark thoughts pushed at my mind, when memories of my father or moments of self-loathing and anger threatened to pull me under, I didn’t shove them beneath the surface as I so often did in the past. There was someone who cared, someone who wanted to know every last part of me.

I wanted to know him, too. More than I’d ever wanted anything. I wanted to cut through the fabric of his heart and mind to carve out a spot for myself so he would always know he had someone who saw him, who desperately craved his light and his dark. His good and bad.

It was all beautiful to me.

A week had passed since my last encounter with Theodore, and I’d ignored four of his attempts to reach me. I knew if he truly wanted to see me—or throw me in the dungeons—he could have done so with the snap of his finger. The fact that he was giving me this choice, giving me a way to deny him, only succeeded in gnarling my thoughts even further.

I’d steered clear of Nox and Arowyn besides the occasional meal, throwing out excuses so I could study my father’s Grimoire. In reality, though, a part of me was already preparing to have to say goodbye to them. The ball was tomorrow night, and Lark had said the third trial would occur a couple of days after, and then…it was over. If we made it out unscathed, at least. We would all go back to our provinces, presumably never to speak again.

I couldn’t rip Leo from my heart even if I tried, but my friends…it would be wise to create distance. I should make the end easier to bear, do us all a favor and back away while I still could. Before it would hurt too much.

They, on the other hand, had other plans.

“Rose, open the door,” Nox called from outside my room, his loud knock making me jump from my bed.

I closed my eyes. “Now isn’t a good time, Nox.”

A rustle of wind brushed against my skin. “We weren’t asking.”

My heart leapt up my throat as Arowyn appeared beside me, arms crossed over her full chest.

I let out a flustered exhale and grumbled, “What did I say about doing that?”

She shrugged, then crossed to the door to let Nox in. His ear-length, wavy hair was perfectly mussed, the rings on his fingers glittering as he brandished a bottle of green wine at me.

“You’re not getting out of this one, darling,” he said. “We’ve only a few nights left to thoroughly corrupt one another, and you’ve been avoiding us all week.”

“I’ve been busy.”

Arowyn sank into the chair by my bed. “You’ve been a coward.”

I shot her a look, and she raised an eyebrow. “What? Scared one of us will beat you in the third trial?” she taunted.

“You know I don’t care about that,” I said, rolling my eyes and pulling a blanket over my legs to cover my father’s Grimoire.

“I know. Just trying to get you to admit it,” she said.

“Admit what?”

Nox threw himself onto the bed next to me. “That you love us,” he said dramatically, drawing out the words. “That you’re so heartbroken to never see us again that you’ve locked yourself away. ”

I nestled further into the raised pillow at my back. “You two think you’re so smart.”

“We are,” Arowyn responded. “I guess we also wanted to make sure you were still alive.”

Nox cut in. “And catch you up on the latest news. You’ve missed a lot in this cage of yours.”

I stared him down, tapping my finger against my side, neither of us willing to break, until…

I sighed. “Fine, what’s the latest news?”

He smirked. “Arowyn saw one of the architects sneaking out of Callum’s room two nights ago.”

“ What ? Why?”

Arowyn snorted. “Why do you think? She was either killing him, helping him, or screwing him, and I saw him heading to the training room yesterday, so he’s obviously not dead yet.”

“I wish someone would kill him,” I mumbled.

Nox handed me the green bottle of Luxe with a mischievous glint in his eye. “Drink up, darling. There’s a lot more where that came from.”

Arowyn leaned forward and snatched the bottle. “To our last night of normalcy,” she toasted, then took a swig. I laughed along with Nox, the sound unfamiliar to my ears after being tucked away for so many days.

Perhaps moments like this would be worth having to say goodbye.

Several hours later, Nox and Arowyn had their fill of Luxe and were experiencing the after effects of its exhilarating relaxation. I’d only had a few sips of the green wine, finding the idea of my mind being ripe for the plucking uncomfortable. Arowyn lounged on the ground against my window, where she threw her sharp little daggers at a spot on the wall across the room, striding to retrieve them every time she ran out. At first I’d protested, then realized…it was the palace’s room. Why did I care if she mutilated it?

Nox lay next to me on the bed, humming a hauntingly melodic tune I didn’t recognize. Every once in a while I’d catch his fingers shifting to sharp claws and back again. I couldn’t make out what kind of animal they belonged to. As much as I itched to ask, I didn’t want to take advantage of his alcohol-induced state if it wasn’t information he was willing to share.

“You’re awfully somber, viper,” he drawled. “What’s on your mind?”

I ran my tongue along my teeth, considering my words. My mind had been preoccupied with thoughts about the curse and magic. I’d gone through my father’s Grimoire and more books in the library than I could count, but nothing stuck out to me. I needed to see things in a new way, to approach it from a different direction.

“Have either of you ever discovered something new about your magic? Something you hadn’t known before?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Nox replied.

“I don’t know, just…something you didn’t think you could do before.”

He shrugged. “All Shifters learn as we grow. We don’t always take the same form as our parents, or anyone in our bloodline for that matter, so everyone has to figure it out as they go.”

Arowyn’s next dagger whizzed past my feet. “Striders are kind of the same. We have different levels of power, at least. It took me a while to realize I could do things others couldn’t.”

Nox glanced at her. “Very ominous. Do tell?”

“Everyone from Celstria can stride, but distances and how often you can do it vary. What no one’s really taught is how we leave a bit of our…essence, I guess, whenever we stride.”

“Your essence?” I asked, brow furrowing.

“Yeah. An imprint of our power. The stronger you are, the more you leave behind, and the more often you stride to a certain spot—say, your home—it’s like a nexus for your individual magic. And if you’re powerful enough…” Arowyn trailed off with a smirk, raising her hand in the air with her palm facing up.

A faint shimmer appeared before a small box materialized in her open hand.

I sucked in a breath. “Where did that come from?”

“My house.”

“In Celestria ?” Nox asked, mouth agape. She gave him a bland look, not bothering to confirm the obvious. Nox shook his head in disbelief. “How did you do that?”

“My essence is the strongest around my home since that’s where I use my magic the most. I can summon objects from there at will, if they have enough of my power in it.”

I blinked at her. “I’ve never heard of Striders having an ability like that.” Bethaly hadn’t mentioned it before, and none of the limited books I’d read on the other provinces even hinted at the possibility.

She smiled smugly. “Why do you think I was chosen as the challenger?”

“Well, aren’t you full of surprises,” Nox said with a chuckle.

“How did you end up figuring out you could do that?” I asked. “Did your parents teach you?”

“My mother said she did it once. She was walking home late one night near the Feywood Forest and someone jumped out of the trees and attacked her. She swears she wasn’t carrying a weapon, but she somehow ended up with our kitchen knife in her hand. She hasn’t been able to do it again since.”

“You must have been surprised the first time it happened,” Nox mused.

“Eh, I was, but I went along with it. Learned how to use it to my advantage. I think a lot of us look at our magic as something stagnant, but really, it’s always changing. I’m sure Shadow Wielders like Lark had to learn how to make their shadows take different shapes, and Illusionists find new ways to make the mind see what they want.” She gestured lazily to my bag of charms sitting on the dresser. “Even your spells. You’ve probably done the same ones all your life and one day you wake up and realize hey, maybe this spell can also do something else.” Her words were slightly slurred from the Luxe, but still, they resonated with me.

She made an interesting point. What if there was a spell I’d been using for years, but only for one certain purpose? I experimented with new enchantments often—that was how I’d discovered my dual protect and attack charm, and my compulsion one, and all the ways dandelion leaves could modify a spell. I’d been searching for new spells, new charms, thinking something as powerful as what Theodore did had to call for a type of Alchemy I’d never heard of. But maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe there was a way to change the concept of a spell I’d seen before and make it work in a new way.

“Why all the questions?” Nox asked me.

“I’m trying to learn more about you so I can beat you in the third trial, obviously,” I quipped.

“I knew this was a bad idea,” Arowyn said, picking up the empty bottles. “She’s plying us with alcohol.”

I snorted. “Pretty sure tonight was your idea. I’m an innocent bystander.”

“I don’t think the three of us have ever been innocent in our lives,” Nox said, laying his head back on the pillow beside me. “We wouldn’t be here if we were.”

Arowyn and I exchanged a glance. “That was awfully…dark,” she said.

Nox drummed his fingers on his chest, those sharp claws coming out once more and pricking through the material every time they landed on it. Four small beads of blood bloomed at the surface. “When you’ve seen what I’ve seen, been through what I have, you realize this tournament”—he brandished his hand, talons retracting—“must be some sort of punishment from the Fates. A penance for who we are.”

My eyebrows knit together. I’d never heard him talk like that. He was always so charming, so carefree, except for the rare times he’d brought up his past. Did he really believe the words he was saying? That he was here for a cosmic punishment?

I swallowed hard. “I think that’s enough Luxe for one night.”

“I’ll help him get back to his room,” Arowyn offered, standing and lugging him from the bed. “I thought this stuff was supposed to make you relaxed. What a downer.”

The three of us said goodbye, Nox’s eyelids already drooping as the pair left my room and made their way to their own chambers. The night had certainly ended more drearily than I’d expected. But I was reinvigorated to explore my father’s Grimoire after the conversation about magic, eager to brainstorm new functions for spells I’d used before.

A tap on the window made me jump from the bed and hurry over to unlatch it. Leo crouched at the sill, his eyebrow raised.

“I see I wasn’t the only guest here tonight,” he said.

I laughed. “Were you spying on me?”

Stepping through the window, he tugged me to him and glowered at the door. “I got here a few minutes ago and have been waiting for them to leave.”

I wound my arms around his neck. “Do I sense a bit of jealousy?”

His body felt stiff and strained pressed against mine, and a slight scowl was still on his face. Fates, he really was jealous. The thought made me smirk as I rose onto my toes and brought my lips to his neck, lightly kissing along the sensitive skin. I breathed him in and let out a hum. I always loved how good he smelled, like sandalwood and vanilla.

His limbs slowly began to relax. “Still jealous?” I murmured, trailing my nose on his jaw.

“That’s not the word I’d use.”

“Good.” I placed another kiss on his neck and leaned back. “That was Arowyn and Nox. You have nothing to worry about.”

Recognition lit in his eyes at the names. “I didn’t realize Nox was so…pretty,” he said grudgingly .

“Not my type,” I said with a wink. “I prefer my men tortured and brooding. And with tails,” I added, then tapped my lip. “Which Nox might have, actually.”

With his hands at my waist, Leo pulled me closer. “You’re incorrigible.”

“And I have a feeling that’s your type.”

His lips met mine in a sweet kiss that had me melting into him, quickly turning heated as he gripped me tighter.

“Wait,” I groaned between kisses. “I want to tell you something.”

“I will kill him,” Leo growled.

I laughed. “Possessive is a good look on you. Don’t worry, it’s not about Nox. You know I’ve been trying to find some new spell or magic to break the curse, and so far there’s been nothing. But what if there’s something we missed?”

“And hundreds of Alchemists before us? I highly doubt it.”

“No, not something new . Something we already know, but that can be applied differently.”

“So, modifying a spell?” he asked, dropping his arms as I pulled away to grab my father’s Grimoire.

I nodded. “Kind of like how you changed the transformation spell when you were younger. That was a spell for transforming objects, but you went beyond that—you figured out how to transform living beings.”

He pressed his lips together. “I wouldn’t exactly recommend doing that again.”

“I know, but that’s just the basic idea. It’s how I created the spell that attacked the snow leopard Shifter that night. I combined multiple protection charms that ward off unwanted presences into something that will literally backfire on your attacker. There are so many ways to use our magic. We’re only limited by our own minds.” Excitement built as I fingered the Grimoire, the urge to create and experiment flowing through me.

For a split second, I saw my father with me. The father from the portrait Theodore gave me that still sat on my nightstand. Theodore said he was studious and passionate, eager to explore his magic and revel in new theories. I felt him here, in the echoes of these worn pages. Saw him pushing his thin glasses up the bridge of his nose. His kind smile and curious eyes.

He would be here, if he could. Guiding me and searching with me. Celebrating discoveries. Practicing our magic.

I squeezed my eyes shut, my fingers gripping the leather binding. Fates, I wanted that. I missed him, even this nonexistent idea of him, so viscerally it felt like a knife through the chest.

Leo’s lips pressed into my temple as his arm wrapped around my back. “I wish I’d known him,” he said, nodding to the book. “The man who raised such a brave, resilient woman.”

I smiled lightly. “I don’t know about that.”

“I do.” His hand played with the bottom of my shirt, fingers grazing my skin as he spoke. “Look at you. Refusing to accept the way we’ve known Alchemy to work for centuries just to find a way to keep me from my fate. Your determination inspires me, Rose. It humbles me. To think that you believe I’m worth all of this…” He let out a soft breath that washed over my cheeks and made my heart constrict.

“Zareleon Aris,” I said firmly, setting the book down and turning to face him. “You’re wrong. This is not your fate. We make our own fate. There are no laws of magic I won’t push, no boundaries I won’t cross to prove it. I think there’s a reason Gayl has wanted you to stay hidden. I don’t understand why he’s known the truth this whole time and has let you live. I was so blinded by my connection to him and the world he showed me that I believed his motives were altruistic, but now…” I exhaled loudly, my forehead scrunching as I tried to put my jumbled thoughts to words.

It had been nagging at the back of my mind, but my yearning to prove myself worthy of my father’s past had made me ignore the warnings. Made me far too trusting of the emperor’s words.

“I think there’s more we don’t know,” I finished. “More he’s hiding from us. And protecting you, not allowing Gayl to keep ruling this empire with his secrets… that’s worth everything .” I put both hands on the sides of Leo’s face. “ You’re worth everything.”

His gaze burned into me, swallowing me. Slowly, he lowered his forehead to mine, his shoulders releasing tension as we stood there.

“Thank you,” he finally murmured.

My lips quirked up. “You don’t have to thank me,” I said, repeating the sentiment he’d shared with me multiple times now. “That’s what friends do.”

He laughed and took a breath. “So these ideas of yours. Where do we start?”

“Well, are you up for some light reading?”

“The night is young. Put me to work, little wolf.”

We grabbed my packs of charms and climbed onto the bed with the Grimoire resting between us. “Back to the basics,” I started. “Curses. What do we know about them?” I thought about my first conversation with Lark and how she’d interrogated me over this. Maybe she’d been on the right path after all.

“They’re spells that cause harm,” Leo said. “Or are accidental consequences of powerful magic. Either way, the results are damaging.”

“What are some you can think of?” I asked, flipping through the pages.

“The sleeping curse, of course. There are many others that inflict physical pain. Blindness, skin afflictions like boils, breaking bones, suffocating.”

I eyed him. “You seemed to think of those pretty quickly.”

“I have to use what’s at my disposal when stopping attacks in the capital,” he said, his lips set in a grim line.

I contemplated the examples he gave. “Some of them are temporary and will go away after a while, but some of them have to be stopped by the person who cast it,” I mused. “Such as when I cast the spell to steal the breath from Callum’s lungs. Technically, that was a curse. And if I hadn’t banished it, he would have died. ”

“We know Gayl isn’t going to banish it,” Leo said. “Either because he can’t or doesn’t want to.”

“No, but there are other ways to stop a curse.”

“Are you suggesting we kill him?”

The thought had crossed my mind, but I remembered what Rissa had said when I brought it up in their cottage. That was no way to start a new dynasty focused on peace. It was an option, though.

Then, Leo said something that made the wheels in my head start to turn faster.

“What if it’s not the caster who has to die, but the magic?”

My eyes snapped to his. “The magic?”

He nodded. “That’s what’s holding the curse in place, not his physical body. If we can stop his magic, either pause it somehow or—or take it away, its hold would break, wouldn’t it?”

That was genius . I leaned forward over the Grimoire and grabbed the back of his neck, hauling his lips to mine. “You’re not just a handsome face, are you, Leo Aris?”

His hands gripped my waist and I toppled on top of him, his back hitting the bed. “Do you want to find out?” he murmured against me.

Fates, yes . I stifled a groan. “I’d love to, but you know what I’d rather do more?” I kissed him again. “Figure out how to keep you alive and break this curse.”

He sighed, his breath sending heat to my core. “And here I thought I was the responsible one.”

I dragged myself off of him, trying and failing to ignore the way his shirt had ridden up, exposing tan, toned skin pulled tight across his lower abdomen. I exhaled slowly and forced myself to focus, even as he smirked up at me with those sparkling onyx eyes.

“I’m about to make you leave,” I said.

Sitting up straight, he held his hands out in feigned innocence. I cleared my throat and asked, “Alright, so how do we get rid of someone’s magic? ”

“I’ve never heard of a person having their magic taken away, short of them leaving the borders of the empire.”

I chewed on my thumbnail. The magic of the Veridian Empire only extended to our coasts. Once you left, magic didn’t exist in other areas of the world—that we knew of—and therefore, our magic couldn’t exist. It was why not many people ever left. There were a few accounts I’d read about some explorers who traveled too far out to sea and temporarily lost their ability to perform magic until they crossed back into the boundary of the empire.

“I wonder if there’s a way to get Gayl across the borders,” I said, then an idea hit me. “Can Striders carry other people?”

“I don’t think so. Chaz never mentioned anything about it. You can’t transfer powers over to others like that.”

“But what if you could ? That’s the whole point of this—to think about things in a new way.” I hastily pulled my father’s book into my lap and flipped through the pages. There were a few spells that came to mind. It was a stretch, but it was something . “What if there was a spell or combination of spells that let you transfer magic into something else? Even if only temporarily?”

His eyes lit with intrigue and he moved to sit next to me, peering over my shoulder. His chin grazed my neck as he used my waist to balance himself. His fingers pressed into me, the rough pad of his thumb slipping beneath my shirt. When he caught me pausing, he chuckled low in my ear. “I’ll be good, I promise.”

Wetting my lips, I turned back to the Grimoire. There was a powerful replenishing enchantment I’d found in here days ago. It was for refilling herbs or other physical objects, but who was to say we couldn’t strengthen it and use it on more intangible things? Not exactly what I needed, but maybe combined with something, we could reverse the effects and make it a depletion spell, instead.

“What about this?” Leo asked, pointing at a page as I was about to pass it. “A siphoning spell. Used for siphoning water and other materials away, or”—he leaned closer to read my father’s faded scribbles—“he says he tried it for healing purposes. Siphoning away fluid from the lungs and infections from the body.”

He looked at me as he finished speaking, and I could tell we were both thinking the same thing. “What if we could siphon magic ?” I asked breathlessly.

Grinning at me, he said, “There’s only one way to find out.”