Ethereal Entanglements (3 page)

Justin swore. Once again, the news came as no shock, but it still surprised him. Soft thumps on the damp earth made him turn to see Tariel stepping into view. Her white coat and mane seemed dingy and gray today, and her silvery hooves had lost their sheen.

“I never would have done that in my right mind,” she mumbled, her head hanging low.

Justin rubbed his face. If Tariel died, so did he, though he could sever their bond to avoid that fate. For six years, she’d been his friend, confidant, and partner. Between her and Marie, they kept him sane and grounded. Of course, the methods they used to put animals down wouldn’t work on a sprite, so he had no idea how this would actually play out. The uncertainty bothered him almost as much as the problem.

He looked up at Avery, hoping the detective had a brilliant plan. “There has to be something we can do.”

“If I had ideas, I’d tell you.” Avery picked up another rock and hurled it. “There’s no apology or probation options with a horse. Animals that attack people almost always get put down. Since you rode away on her, they won’t buy anything about a different mount.”

Justin sighed and nodded. “I need to sleep on this.”

Avery raised an eyebrow. “No, you need to come down to the station with me. If we go now, you can play up the drunk thing. Say you slept it off and realized you’d done something horrible, so you turned yourself in. Leave your sword behind. The longer you wait, the more guilty you look.”

“It’s Thanksgiving. I can’t just leave now.”

“The holiday makes it easier to get away with this. Go tell your wife you’re sorry and get in the car. We’ll figure out what to do about Tariel on the way.”

For this, Justin suspected he’d have to spend the next year apologizing to Marie. She deserved more from him than this fiasco. So did Claire. “Isn’t my residence outside their jurisdiction?”

“Yes. But the next time you need to ride into Portland, it’ll be on a horse Portland would like to have destroyed.” Avery laid a hand on Justin’s shoulder and squeezed it.

Justin frowned and grasped for some way to avoid this. Luck, swordsmanship, and play-acting had always gotten him out of tight situations before. This one seemed like it would stubbornly refuse to be sidestepped.

“Sever our bond,” Tariel said. She stayed too far away for him to touch and refused to look at him. “That will fix this.”

“No. There’s a better option. I know there is.” A bad idea popped into Justin’s head and he blurted it out to Avery. “We could just never go to Portland again. I mean, between you and Claire, you can handle whatever comes up on that side of the river. There aren’t any other Knights for at least fifty miles to the north. Maybe Tariel and I should spend more time worrying about that.”

“Are you kidding?” Avery huffed an empty, mirthless laugh. “Running away isn’t how Knights normally solve problems.”

Justin crossed his arms. “This isn’t running away, it’s…handling a delicate issue without directly addressing it.”

“Coward.”

“Look who’s talking,” Justin snapped. “I killed your Phasm weeks ago and you haven’t been back to the Palace yet. That’s worse than me shifting the region I take responsibility for. I don’t live in or work for Portland, unlike some people.” He gave Avery a pointed glare. “There’s nothing tying me there but duty and ancestry. I live in Vancouver. Across the river. In another state. Where the fire department thinks I’m great because I volunteer at their fundraisers. Portland wants to murder my sprite. Fine. I don’t need Portland. The Palace, on the other hand…” He raised his brow, daring Avery to deny anything he’d said.

Avery scowled and nudged a rock with his shoe. “You haven’t been back yet either,” he muttered.

“It’s been less than twenty-four hours for me. And it’s Thanksgiving.”

“But you’re worried about the same thing I am. That there’s a mark everyone will see.”

For several long beats, Justin tried to deny that to himself. He was tired. Yesterday nearly killed both him and Claire. He’d betrayed Drew, Claire, and Enion. Worse, he’d failed everyone. Knights remained stalwart defenders no matter what. And he hadn’t. None of that excused the fact he feared being ostracized at the Palace for it.

Justin sighed. “I am, yes. We’re both cowards.”

“I hesitate to point out the obvious solution.”

Glancing at Tariel, Justin nodded. Maybe if he visited the Palace, some other solution to his Portland problem would present itself. Offering his hand, Justin tried and failed to muster a smile. “Rip off the band-aid with me?”

After staring grimly at Justin’s hand for several beats, Avery gripped it. “Deal.”

The front door of the in-laws’ farmhouse creaked open and Drew stepped outside, his short red hair still damp from a shower. He pushed his black-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose then stopped three steps down the path to the cottage and stared at Justin. His gaze flicked from Justin to Avery to Tariel and back to Justin.

“Hi, Drew.” Wishing he could have escaped without seeing Drew today, Justin gestured at Avery to deflect the teen. “You probably don’t remember Detective Avery.”

Drew raised his eyebrows and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Sure I do. He beat the crap out of Claire. You beat him in a sword fight at the downtown Portland police station because he was trying to kidnap Claire again. He was tainted then, but not anymore. You saved the day and all that.” He scowled. “And now, everybody’s happy and best friends forever.”

Avery coughed. “I’m still amazed you beat me that day, Justin.”

“So am I,” Drew said.

Justin pursed his lips and tried not to get annoyed. The kid had every right to needle him, though he’d be happier if they could just have an ordinary fistfight to settle everything. “Claire isn’t back yet.”

“Good to know.” Drew’s head twitched. He curled his lip and pivoted on his heels. As he headed into the forest, the temperature plummeted and mist formed in his wake.

Avery waited until the boy disappeared into the trees. “He clearly hates me, but he’d like to murder you.”

“Thanks for pointing that out.” Justin stood and braced himself to go tell his wife he needed skip out on Thanksgiving. This could wait, but he knew if he waited one day, he’d wait another, then another, then a week, and it would keep waiting until something forced him. With luck, he’d only be gone half an hour.

Chapter 4

Claire

The fall stripped Iulia away with tinny shrieks as Claire plunged downward. Wind buoyed her arms and thundered against her ears. “I’m not going to panic,” she whispered, desperate for it to be true. After all, so long as she didn’t look down, she’d never see the ground. It might not even exist. If she hit, it probably wouldn’t hurt. Probably.

Above her, Enion leaped off the cliff and pumped his wings to reach her. Claire wanted him to get to her in time, so he would. Probably. This stupid place with it’s stupid rules and stupid test. The Palace wasn’t real and didn’t deserve the dignity of being mistaken for real. It wanted to play dirty. She clenched her fists and dared it to do its worst as she willed it to slow her fall. An Ordeal couldn’t beat her. The Knights couldn’t beat her. Caius couldn’t beat her.

Enion slipped under her and she threw her leg over his back. He pulled up and backwinged only a few feet from the ground to land heavily on the floor of a magnificent marble structure. Scalloped columns held up a grand, peaked roof with gold flourishes and painted bas-relief images of people and horses. For several seconds, Claire failed to notice anything else other than how close she’d come to hitting this expanse of white stone riddled with black veins. She had no idea if the fall would’ve killed her or not.

Angry growls drew her attention. Another silver dragon, glaring with an angry snarl and flared wings, faced them from the center of the huge open-air building. The display reminded Claire of a cat trying to ward off a rival.

“Aw, aren’t you cute,” Claire said, figuring she might as well try diplomacy. Every other Knight probably rushed to battle the evil dragon, but she knew better. Caius and his men had never once tried to befriend a dragon—they saw one and drew their swords. Had Enion been his current size when she first found him, Claire had no doubt Justin would have done the same.

“Enion, try to make nice with…him? Her? Whatever. Let’s see if we can make a friend first.”

“Her.” Enion folded his wings in and sat on his haunches. “Hi! I’m Enion. Do you have a name?”

The other dragon paused in its growling and cocked its head to one side. She made a half-cat, half-bird noise, a growling chirp in a deep voice.

“Leeloo! Leeloo is pretty. Leeloo and Enion friends?” His tail swished and he beckoned Leeloo closer.

She chirped again and slunk toward him, though with her head lifted in interest and no longer showing her fangs. Still several yards away, she paused and cocked her head to the other side, her chirping ending with a questioning lilt.

“My friend too! Claire. She’s nice.”

Judging it safe to do so, Claire slid off Enion’s back. She held her hands up and smiled. “Hi Leeloo.” She tilted her head toward Enion. “Can she understand me?”

“Kind of.” Enion lowered his voice so it wouldn’t carry. “Most dragons are less smart than me.”

Claire bit back an unfriendly bark of laughter. Though she adored Enion even after only knowing him for a few days, her dragon wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box. Him claiming intellectual dominance over dragons smacked of hilarity. “Are you supposed to guard this place, Leeloo?” she asked.

While Leeloo chirped, Enion translated. “Yes. She fights Knights. Sometimes she wins. Usually they win. It hurts. Then she wakes up and it happens again. Long time since the last Knight here.”

“What a crappy job. Leeloo, is there a way to free you?”

Leeloo rushed the rest of the way, chirping up a storm until she stopped in front of Enion. Her body contorted in an odd sort of bow, leaving her with the back of her head on the ground, her front knees bent, and her wings splayed.

“If we free Leeloo, she will be mate.”

“I hope you mean your mate and not mine.”

Enion grinned. “Yes.”

“Good for you, Enion.” Claire patted his neck, then she crouched beside Leeloo’s head and rubbed her neck. “We’ll free you if we can, Leeloo, but I don’t want you getting your hopes up. I’m not sure how to do it.”

Leeloo lifted her head and maneuvered it so Claire’s hand rested behind her frill of horns. Happy to oblige, Claire scratched the soft silver skin and listened to Leeloo purr. Though she wouldn’t say so, Claire suspected Leeloo might be a ghost or some other kind of magical thing in a dragon shape, which made this kind of sad. Releasing her might do nothing more than force this stupid place to come up with something else. But at least it wouldn’t be Leeloo getting tortured over and over.

“Now we’re on a quest to free Leeloo. Let’s look around.” Claire patted Leeloo and walked to the side. The giant slab of marble ended with a squared corner and a five foot drop-off. Blank, dead earth surrounded it in a wide strip, then verdant, waist-high grass covered the land for miles in every direction.

Both dragons trailed her. When she reached the closest column, she ran her hand over the scallops and gave it a solid kick. As in the corridor earlier, the marble seemed solid. She drew her dagger and pressed the tip to the stone, then walked in a circle, scoring a line around the column.

“I’m still not completely clear on how the Palace works.” Thinking out loud made her feel stupid, but she had no reason to keep it to herself and the dragons might be able to help. “Everything in the Palace is the product of someone’s will. The Thoroughfare is used to get from place to place and isn’t a destination in its own right. Because of that, it’s so boring to look at that you can’t look at it without really trying. Knights have been using it that way for a really long time. That’s a lot of Knights adding to its purpose over time.

“But this place doesn’t get used much. Leeloo just said it’s been a while since the last Knight was here. In fact, this Ordeal place wouldn’t have existed until some Knight did something so monumentally stupid or evil that the rest of the Knights decided they needed a way to test him to see if he was just an ordinary jerk or actually incompetent or tainted. The Knights probably don’t think about it much the rest of the time. It’s just sort of here because no one willed it not be, probably.”

Claire flicked her fingers over the scaring she’d done. The divot felt smooth even though it should have been rough. This told her…she needed to think more. She noticed the two dragons sat before her, tracking her every move. Enion gave her rapt attention. Leeloo’s eyes seemed more glazed over.

“Right now, there’s a bunch of Knights thinking about how I belong down here, and probably how I should fail down here. They’re not here, though, so they don’t get to fight me or fundamentally change how the Ordeal works. Their wills…only insure there continues to be an Ordeal, I guess. Because something is running it. There has to be something actually in charge of running it or it wouldn’t have been able to use Justin and my dad against me.”

Talking all that through didn’t help. She still had no idea how to free Leeloo. If this was a challenge from the Heart, she’d have to prove herself worthy to Caius. As she’d discovered, that came more from attitude than fighting prowess.

“Maybe we need to see something we can’t?” Enion touched the column with the pads under his claws.

“Like…?”

He crunched his claws into the column and hopped up. Mimicking a cat on a tree, he surged up the column to the roof. Claire had no idea why he didn’t just fly up there, but she did notice his claw marks filled as if the marble were water.

Leeloo chirped a question. Claire shrugged. They watched him stop at the ceiling, circle the column, then jump down and open his wings. He flapped to the floor again and shook his head.

“Let’s take a spin around the outside. Maybe we’ll see something from above.” Claire climbed onto Enion’s back. He bounded across the floor and leaped into the air.