Twisted Soul (Cursed Legacies #3)

18. Maven

18

MAVEN

Though my quintet isn’t happy about this situation, twenty minutes later, Ross opens the door to an expansive study room within one of the many other buildings in the Sanctuary.

It’s something between a library, alchemist lab, and indoor garden, with books lining every wall and a small sitting area beside thriving plants. Ross again dips his head and continues acting far too fucking formal with me before closing the door, leaving me alone with the Garnet Wizard.

Who has aged considerably within the last hour and a half.

When we first met him, I would have guessed he was in his late forties. Now he's definitely in his fifties, and his hair has grayed into his eyebrows. He’s sitting in one of the cushioned settees sipping tea and smiles when he sees me analyzing him.

“Silas did not warn you of my curse beforehand because he has been sworn to the utmost secrecy, as is everyone who enters my Sanctuary.”

He nods at the teapot and cup waiting for me on the small coffee table beside a small stack of ancient-looking books. I briefly skim the titles on their old, cracked spines.

A Complete History of Paradise

Divine Compendium: All We Know of Gods and the Saints Who Walk Among Us

Sancti, Semidei et Prophetae

I'm still translating the last title in my head when he motions again at the teapot.

“Tea?”

I don’t trust eating or drinking anything offered freely, but I take the opposite seat and study him, putting the pieces together.

“It’s your curse. You age quickly.”

“Four years per hour, to be precise. My life cycle resets each midnight—or rather, it used to. For centuries, ever since I lost my keeper and quintet, it has always been the same, but recently, the aging cycle has become quite unstable. I might wake old in the morning and age backward, for example. Extremely tedious and something I have taken as a sign of my probably-impending death.”

I see now how Silas matched this curse with The Scarab nickname. This is one of the most severe curses I’ve heard of, so it’s also no surprise that Silas wants Baelfire’s scales to try to treat his mentor’s condition.

Still. It’s fucking weird that he’s openly telling me about such a taboo subject.

The wizard sees my expectant look and shrugs, setting down his teacup. “That was my way of offering you transparency, for I am not one to beat ineffectively around the bush.”

“Me neither.”

“Excellent. Then, let us be frank with one another. I have long stopped caring about keeping the Nether out of this world. Indeed, my untraceable Sanctuary is my own world. It is safeguarded from any monster, human, or shadow fiend that I do not wish to admit. Only my deeply loyal acolytes and I know how to leave and enter through two rare spells, which I can change anytime. If the prophecies are true and you are to bring about the end of balance between the five planes and wreak havoc on this world, I and my collection of knowledge shall be quite safe here.”

I absorb that. At least now I know Gideon can’t get into the Sanctuary, even if he does track us here. It also means Douglas and any others after us won’t reach us for now.

“All this to say, we are not enemies,” the wizard clarifies.

“We’re not allies, either.”

“Agreed. We simply both exist and can benefit from one another if the option arises. If you need etherium or my assistance, I only require one thing in return.”

I glance down at my hands, which feel odd without gloves. “Knowledge. Silas says it’s what drives you.”

He smiles. “How very true. He’s always been quite bright—my only official apprentice for the last two hundred years, and I daresay someone I could almost consider a friend. And to think, I nearly refused to take him in. Those damned immortals would have raised him if that elemental of yours hadn’t stepped in.”

I blink. “What?”

The Garnet Wizard peruses the little teacakes on the table.

“Indeed. I charge a rather exorbitant fee for tutelage, let alone raising and apprenticing someone for many years. The Crane estate and fortune ought to have passed to that young prodigy when his parents killed one another—but their will was suspiciously altered, and his distant Crane relatives descended like wolves. He would never have survived on what little they left him with, and he knew it. He sent an application to me, but I overlooked the boy because of his severe lack of funding.”

He huffs with disdain. “Not to mention, I knew how much the Immortal Quintet wanted to make a Crane into one of their obedient, brainwashed pets. You see, I like to avoid them entirely, so I was resolved to ignore the so-called prodigy and continue as I have.”

“But…Everett stepped in?” I press, still stuck on that. “How?”

“He had contacted me and paid quite handsomely a few years prior for a very special trinket—intended for an empath, I believe. He contacted me again after the death of the Cranes, but instead of money, he offered nevermelt. At the time, it was worth far more than a fortune would have meant to me. After quite a lot of haggling, wherein I realized he seems to have inherited his annoyingly keen business sense from that prat father of his, I agreed to take in Silas as my apprentice.” He laughs. “Looking back, it is one of the finer decisions I’ve made in my very long life. Quite a lad, your blood fae.”

Oh, my gods.

Knowing Silas’s life could have been so drastically different at the hands of the Immortal Quintet and that Everett stepped in like that…

“Silas doesn’t know about this,” I realize.

“No, to be sure. Secrecy was part of the arrangement. I assumed the elemental would tell him eventually.”

I try to tame my smile, but it’s surprisingly tricky.

Those fucking legacies. They’re all secretly a bunch of softies, aren’t they? They can gripe about each other and fight all they want, but the sense of brotherhood they deny having any trace of has clearly played a part in all their lives.

You’re getting a blowjob tonight, I send just to Everett.

There’s a shocked silence, followed by a very flustered, I…you…um, what?

Just say yes and thank you .

Yes. Thank you. But only if I get to return the favor. Also, please tell me you’re safe.

I reassure him that I’m good as I finally pour myself tea. If the Garnet Wizard was going to try hurting me, he would have done it by now.

Thank the gods. But keep talking. We’re kind of dying over here without updates, Snowdrop , Everett’s soft voice says in my head.

Whoa. Hang on. Snowdrop?

Not you, too. You cannot nickname me, I protest telepathically. Just call me Maven or Oakley like usual.

As we discussed, your last name isn’t Oakley.

For the last time, I will not be named after a motherfucking flower.

But it’s symbolic. I put a lot of thought into it, unlike Baelfire with his ridiculous string of nicknames. If he gets to call you everything under the sun, at least let me call you ‘Snowdrop’ and ‘mine.’

Gods. What the hell am I supposed to do with all these fucking nicknames? It’s ridiculous.

“Back to the subject at hand,” I mutter, realizing I’ve zoned out while the Garnet Wizard sips his tea. “What knowledge do you want in exchange for etherium? And more importantly, what will you do with anything you learn from me? ”

The Garnet Wizard smiles. “I see you’ve learned to ask the right questions, Maven. You are from the Nether, are you not?”

“I am.”

“Do you have any idea of the confusing theories permeating the secular world about the Nether? It has long tormented me with its mystique. I want to know the truth about it.”

“Meaning, you want to know about the Entity.”

He snorts. “Not unless you deem it interesting information. No, no, I’d much rather know about you , actually, and what you think you are. You strike me as one having a plan of her own, not to mention quite the story to share. Tell me everything simply to satisfy my curiosity, and I promise you may have all the etherium you like.”

It seems too easy and too good to be true. What if he wants all this information to turn around and tell the Immortal Quintet and Legacy Council? Not that he seems fond of those groups, but still.

My suspicion must be evident because the wizard nods and stands, gripping his walking cane and gesturing that I should follow.

“Not one to be taken in easily, I see. I applaud your reluctance to trust, for it is the best mode of survival. Come, then. Let me show you something as a show of good faith.”

We leave the study through a set of double doors, and the Garnet Wizard chatters casually as we walk down a long cobblestone path toward a colossal wall of hedges with a gate in the center.

Blood blossom , Silas reaches out telepathically, just to me so Everett won’t hear. Tell me you’re still breathing. Now, please.

So bossy. I thought your paranoia was gone , I tease.

I will never feel sane in your absence, not to mention your very existence drives me mad with need. Where are you now?

We pause in front of the gate, and the Garnet Wizard mutters about his lousy back before giving me a look.

“You seem the action type. I warn you not to react rashly.”

“Noted.”

We’re just walking into a garden. No big deal, I report to Silas.

When the gate to the garden opens, I stare at the couple sitting together on a bench in front of an enchanted koi pond.

One of them is a vampire, judging by the trickle of blood dried on his chin as he rests his head against the woman’s shoulder. He’s handsome, with a shock of red hair and an abundance of freckles. He brings the woman’s hand to his lips to kiss the back of it.

When he looks over and makes eye contact with me, I don’t look away despite the disconcerting chill that washes over me. It reminds me of the feeling I get when I sense death nearby—or when I’m tapping into Amadeus’s abilities to see the future.

But my interest in the vampire and that feeling shifts quickly.

Because the woman is Engela Zuma.

She’s dressed in an old-fashioned-looking dress. When she sees me, she remains still, as if she doesn’t know who I am and what I’m meant to do to her.

What the fuck?

What is it? What’s wrong? Silas asks immediately.

Are you hurt? Everett demands.

Oops. I didn’t mean to send that through the bond.

I’m fine, I say quickly before blocking them out because all this telepathic communication gets distracting.

This wizard knows I’m the telum , and therefore that I’m supposed to kill this immortal…yet he’s introducing us?

“A moment of your time, Engela?” he calls.

The earth elemental monster leaves the garden, stopping in front of me. Her neck has noticeable recent puncture marks. Whenever I ran into her at Everbound University, she gave off an odd, unsettling feeling—but it’s gone now. She seems more present somehow, more focused as she looks me over without hostility.

“Who is this?”

I frown at her. “We’ve met.”

Her gaze turns distant as if she’s trying to remember. “We have, haven’t we? I believe…you may be the one they are hiding from. Natalya and Iker, I mean.”

“And you’re not hiding with them?”

Engela shakes her head, her expression sad and wise at once. “No. I only escaped once I saw my chance. If I return to them, Natalya will only meddle with my mind until I feel and think nothing, just as I have for the last few centuries. I would much rather spend my last days with the one I truly care for before I finally am taken to the Beyond. If you are who I believe…I accept my fate. I only ask a few more days with my Bertram before you do what you must.”

Well, then.

This is really fucking unexpected.

I glance at the vampire who waits on the bench patiently. If he knows I’m supposed to kill his girlfriend, he doesn’t react. He just watches, giving off that same off-kilter energy that I can’t figure out.

“So, you’re fine with dying?” I reiterate, looking back at Engela. “You expect me to believe you were being mind-controlled by your keeper when you stabbed my dragon shifter with a fucking mountain?”

She studies the twilight sky, which is streaked with even more hints of the aurora borealis. “I apologize if I did injure him, though I do not recall it. But whether you believe it or not, truth is truth. I have not been within my own untarnished mind in so long that I can barely remember when the tarnishing began. I know it was after I met Bertram, at least,” she adds, looking over her shoulder with a small smile. “I thank Arati that he returned to me after losing him for so long.”

She looks back at me. There is still a slight inhuman stilt to the way she speaks, evidence that she is no standard elemental but one from the Nether.

“I have lived hundreds of mortal lifetimes with monsters who made me feel nothing. I have seen atrocities that they made me forget and been forced to do things that I wish they would make me forget. In all the nothingness of my existence, finally experiencing mortal love is the only thing that has brought me…this. Serenity. I don’t need lifetimes of it, telum . Mere days would be enough, for it is more than I have hoped for in far too long. And when you deem it time, I shall gladly depart this life.”

I examine her at length. She doesn’t seem to be lying, but just to be safe…

“Prove it. You know what I’ll need.”

Engela’s smile is soft before she pulls something out of one of her dress pockets.

At first glance, it looks like an expensive diamond-encrusted bracelet. But then I sense that one of the decorative beads is made of the glass-like substance I’m looking for.

I was right, then. They all have an etherium anchor.

For a long moment, I stare at the bracelet as I consider everything. Finally, I hand it back to Engela, meeting her dark gaze.

“Tell me where the other two are, and I won’t need this.”

She's surprised, as is the Garnet Wizard. But when I don’t take it back, Engela pockets the etherium bracelet and thinks.

“As I said, my mind has been meddled with for quite a long time. My quintet has many safehouses and may have found new hiding places. I will make you a list of their likeliest whereabouts, as well as their etherium life links, but I warn you that they will be trying to have you killed long before you can find them.”

More fun for me. Let them try.

Engela turns to return to her lover but pauses, looking over her shoulder at me with an almost sad expression. “Your incubus. Somnus’s son.”

“His name is Crypt ,” I say pointedly, guarded.

My Nightmare Prince says little about his past, but I’ve deduced that the Immortal Quintet was brutal to him growing up. Still, Engela did deliver those messages from him to us. Maybe that counts for something.

“I ask that you offer Crypt my apologies for any part I may have played in his past,” she says quietly. “I gave up fighting them long before he came to be, or else he would have had someone watching over him. Instead, I’m afraid he abandoned all feeling and became quite twisted just to survive.”

She returns to her lover in the garden, and for a moment, I stare at the koi in the pond.

I became twisted to survive, too. So did the others.

Now, I just need to make sure they keep surviving once this is all over.

I turn back to the Garnet Wizard. “Etherium for knowledge. I accept your deal with one other condition.”

“Which is?”

“Engela Zuma must be safe here. She needs to remain this well-protected until I can re-stabilize the Divide.”

His brows go up. “Re-stabilizing the Divide is a part of your plan?”

“Agree to the condition and find out.”

The Garnet Wizard smiles. “It’s a deal, telum.”