The Keeper's Flame (A Pandoran Novel, #2) (18 page)

It was Thad, and he sounded a little scared. Slowly, I creaked the door open. Thad stood on the other side, wide-eyed.

“You know, you’re not supposed to knock from the inside,” he said, stepping into my room, keeping a safe distance.

I walked back to Stefan, who was drawing invisible pictures in the air with his finger, smiling to himself.

“Did you find something that’ll fix him?” I asked.

“Rook.”

I turned around. Thad’s arms were folded and he looked very much like a scolding parent.

“What?” I said.

“Would you like to explain why Del Can’t looked like he was about to burn down the castle?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He arched a brow and waited.

I glanced away and took the rag from Stefan’s hands. “Pretty!” Stefan giggled.

“Can you fix him?” I asked Thad.

“I’m not telling until you tell me what happened.”

I glared at him over my shoulder, but he just grinned with his arms folded. With a grumble, I told him what had happened, well, with a few minor edits. All the while, his eyes turned wider and his amusement became overpowering. “Wow,” he said at last.

“Well? Stefan?”

Thad leaned forward with that annoying smirk.

“Don’t,” I threatened.

He shook his head and pulled a small vial from his cloak. It looked like a glass teardrop, filled with a glowing pale blue liquid. “I can’t believe you did that,” Thad continued, gazing at the little vial.

“His foot?” I pointed to Stefan impatiently.

Thad studied me a moment and then looked at Stefan. “Well, I didn’t find
exactly
what Del Can’t wanted, but I did find something that would help.” He held the vial in the air before me, and I took it.

The liquid swirled and bubbled inside.

“What is it?” I asked.

“A kind of mending serum. I found it in the healing ward.”

I eyed him suspiciously.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he defended. “It’s perfectly safe. If there’s one thing I know, it’s poisons. Besides…have I ever led you astray?”

“You really want me to answer that?”

He snorted while I hurried to Stefan’s side. He was sleeping. “Stefan,” I said, “Thad got something to help your foot.”

Stefan snored, loudly.

“Stefan, wake up,” I said, a little louder this time.

Stefan started choking on another snore when Thad walked over and smacked Stefan across the face.

“O—ow!” Stefan gasped, opening his eyes. I frowned at Thad but unstoppered the vial and poured the glowing liquid down Stefan’s throat, plugging Stefan’s nose to make sure he drank all of it.

At first Stefan choked, but then he started gulping it down and finished off the bottle. He beamed so big his dimples showed. “Is there more?” he asked, and then his eyes rolled back in his head, his mouth went slack, and he would’ve rolled right off the couch if I hadn’t caught him.

My mouth hung open. “What just happened?”

“Huh.” Thad stood with his hands on his hips, looking perplexed.

“Thaddeus!”

“I mean, that stuff was supposed to knock Goldilocks out, but it wasn’t supposed to happen so fast…” His voice trailed, his eyes widened, and he let out an ominous “Ooooh.”

“What!”

“Uh—” Thad scratched the back of his neck “—I sorta forgot he’d had faerie wine.”

“And?”

Thad looked at Stefan as though he were a museum artifact. “The faerie wine acts as an agonist to the efficacy of analgesics.”

“English?”

A spark lit his eyes. “Sleeping Beauty isn’t going to be awake for the ceremony tomorrow night.”

His words lingered in the air like a bad perfume. If Stefan was stuck in my room, on my couch, my surveillance was going to increase ten-fold. My time was exponentially decreasing. “I’m going to kill you,” I said.

“Whoa, now, Rook, no need to get—”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” I was standing and shaking, fists clenched at my sides.

“Well, yeah, I’m trying to help…”

“They’re going to kill Fleck!”

Thad was taken aback. “What?”

I explained to him what I’d seen, what I’d heard, and once I was done, Thad plopped in a chair, folded his arms behind his head, and said, “Hellfire.”

After a few seconds, he turned to me. “You weren’t really sick, were you?”

I shook my head.

“So,” Thad looked curious, “just what
were
you doing before we showed up?”

I reached in the folds of my dress and pulled out the kerchief Tran had given me. Inside was an amulet just like the one the Del Contes had used to transport themselves to my house on Earth, and the one I’d used that had delivered me into Tiernan’s evil hands.

But this was an amulet to Tran.

When Thad saw it, he gasped. “Okay, Rook, now you know I’m not one to avoid danger, but that’s just crazy,” Thad said. “The Black Bard can’t possibly be Tran Chiton. Tran Chiton hasn’t been seen in decades!”

“Shh!” I said as we ran down the hall. “Not so loud.”

“This is mental!”

“And you’d know all about mental, wouldn’t you?” I spat.

Thad made a face.

Where did she go…?

“Princess?” Rhea emerged from one of the doors and I stopped.

“Are you busy?” I asked.

She wiped her hands on her dress. “Not at all, what do you need?”

“I need you to keep an eye on Stefan.”

She studied my face. “Of course.”

Rhea followed us back to my room, where Stefan had fallen facedown on the floor, smiling and drooling all over himself.

“Whoops,” Thad said, “that’s gonna hurt.”

“No one is allowed in,” I said to her, and she nodded with understanding.

I tugged the amulet’s chain over my head and looked at Thad. “Are you coming or not?”

“Wait, now,” Thad said, “let’s think about this.”

I clasped the amulet in my hands. “I don’t have time to think about it.
You
”—I jabbed my finger at him—“just made sure of it.”

Thad rolled his eyes and bolted to my side. “I don’t know which I can’t believe more. What you’re telling me, or that I’m reluctant to believe it.”

I wrapped the chain around Thad’s neck, too—the two of us standing close.

“Or maybe this is just an excuse for you to get close to me.” He winked with a stupid smirk on his face.

I rolled my eyes before closing them tight.

Please take us to Tran.

The air thickened, pressing all around me until I couldn’t breathe, and vomit rose in my throat. Then it was gone.

Chapter 12

Swapping Serum

T
he air had changed. It felt warmer and the scent of wood smoke and freshly baked bread permeated the air.

I opened my eyes.

We were standing in what looked like a large closet. There were brooms and a mop standing in a half-filled bucket, with boxes stacked from floor to ceiling in towers that looked like they’d fall if I so much as breathed on them.

“What the…?” Thad said as the door to the closet creaked open.

A short figure dressed in a potato sack appeared on the other side.

“Grool!” I said.

Grool scowled, grumbled, and then he slammed the door shut.

Thad looked at me in disbelief, pointing a thumb at the door. “How do you know Ugly?”

I lifted the chain from our necks and stumbled to the door, but before I could try to open it, it opened again—this time, with Tran on the other side. And I was happy to see that he was dressed as himself, wizardly white beard and all.

Thad’s astonishment crashed into me.

“Now, Grool,” Tran said over his shoulder, “is that any way to treat our guests?”

Grool mumbled from somewhere, I heard something shatter, and then heavy footsteps pounded off in the distance. Tran shook his head and looked back at us with a grin. “Good evening! You’re a bit earlier than I’d expected…”

Thad gasped. “It can’t be.”

Tran regarded him blankly and I felt something cold before he looked back at me. “I see you brought someone with you.”

I glanced back at Thad, who was very, very quiet.

“I’m sorry,” I said, turning back to Tran, “but it’s urgent. Fleck’s in danger.”

“But of course he is!” Tran exclaimed. “Everyone’s in danger, but please, come out of the closet, would you?” He stepped aside. “Lingering there has never done anyone any good.” He shook his head.

Thad’s lips parted a little, and the piece of grass he’d just shoved in his mouth promptly fell to the floor. “I can’t believe…you’re alive?”

“I might say the same,” Tran replied in a low, scratchy voice. Tran didn’t smile. His eyes tightened a bit as though Thad were an object of scientific study, and then he scratched his beard.

So maybe I shouldn’t have brought Thad, but I didn’t have time to take him back. I needed Tran’s help sneaking Fleck out of here. Now.

I walked past Tran, right into his house with a quiet Thad behind me. It was the same house I’d been in before, when I had been with the Del Contes. Everything was just as tidy, including Grool’s bookshelf of spirit-filled vases and his torture wall.

But that had been in the middle of the Arborenne, which was very, very far from my room at the castle. I looked at Tran, who was fixing a kettle over a blazing fire. “How’d we get here?” I asked.

“The amulet in your hands, child, don’t you remember? You used it only a moment ago.”

“I know that, but—”

“Wait a second,” Thad said. “You’ve been here before?”

I rolled my eyes and looked back at Tran. “So we’re in the Arborenne?”

“Oh, spirits, no.” Tran stood and dusted his hands. “I never keep my home there for long. Gaia knows the vegetation there drives me mad.”

Right, so that didn’t make any sense. “So, where are we, then?” I asked.

Tran glanced around, thoughtful. “I’m not really sure this time. Somewhere between here and there. We may not be anywhere.” His clear eyes flickered to Thad before settling back on me. “You wanted to discuss the Daloren child?”

“Ow!” shouted Thad from behind me.

He was standing next to Grool’s bookshelf of vases, shaking his hand while Grool stood near Thad’s feet, waving a very long bone.

“No touch!” growled Grool.

“I wasn’t!” Thad argued.

Grool reeled the bone back and Thad dodged just in time.

Thad looked at Tran. “What’s Ugly’s problem?”

“Egocentrism,” Tran sighed. “It’s genetic, I’m afraid.”

“Tran,” I said, “I need to get Fleck out of Gaia.” I explained to him what I’d explained to Thad, and Tran took a seat on the couch, folded his hands in his lap, and said, “I see.”

“Can you help us?”

He scrunched his nose and scratched his beard. “It is very possible that I
can
.”

I didn’t like how he’d said that. “So…will you?”

His intelligent blue eyes looked tired. “No.”

No? That was it, just…no? “But Tran…you have to help. Fleck’s life is in danger!”

He stared absently at the fire. “I know very well that Fleck’s life is, and has been, in grave danger.”

“Then why aren’t you doing anything to help?”

Tran sighed. “I am, child.” He stood, walked over to the fire, and poked it with an iron prod. “You see, I was concerned when you found him. The boy—I’d heard of his parents. Unique situation, it was. Both Daloren, and you may not know this, but Dalorens are never romantically involved with one another. The trait appears at random, but for two Dalorens to come together and have a child…” He set the prod on the floor beside him. “The boy was born dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” I said. “Tran, how can you say that? You were there…you know that’s not true. He’s just a boy…”

“He’s a Daloren born of Dalorens,” Tran said, voice firm. “Too powerful for his own good, and that kind of power, in the hands of another…”

“You knew that and you let me bring him to Valdon,” I said.

Tran scratched his beard. “I wasn’t certain at the time just who he was, and I saw how much you two had bonded. I wasn’t about to do that to either of you. But now, there is no doubt in my mind, and it seems like there isn’t a doubt in their minds, either.”

“But why do they want his power?” I asked.

Tran’s lips tightened. “You already know the significance of the games this year, yes?”

I nodded.

Tran sighed. “Once a winner is chosen, the shield and unity stone can reunite and power can be restored to all of the territories. However—” he paused, scratching his beard “—the secret to understanding the magic of the shield was lost with your mother.”

The box.

I swallowed. “I heard Lord Commodus ask the headmaster about it, and that’s what Lord Tiernan had wanted from me, but I didn’t know anything about it.”

Tran nodded very slowly. “Since that knowledge is believed to be lost, they intend to find shadows of it by taking Fleck’s power.”

“Why Fleck?” I asked. “Why not some other Daloren? They all have access to the same knowledge, right?”

“Because, child, Fleck’s background lends him to being the most powerful. In other words, his tie to the wisdom of this world would be greater than any of his predecessors’, making him their best possible option for uncovering knowledge.”

“Tran,” I said, “you have to help me get Fleck out of here.”

Tran stood, clasping his hands before him, looking sad. “It’s of no use,” he said. “You wouldn’t get far before they’d find you; they won’t stop until they do. And that kind of power can’t hide forever.”

“There has to be something.” I started pacing. “Thad?” I looked to him for a solution.

Thad shrugged and dangled his legs over the armrest. “’Fraid his wizardship is right. Even if you somehow snuck through a portal, you’d never get far. In fact, you’d probably be sacrificed right beside him.”

The fire crackled in its hearth; Grool busied himself with counting the weapons on the wall beside it.

“There was someone else,” I continued, “a name Lord Commodus mentioned that he is working with. Someone called Eris.”

Something cold settled in the room, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Thad go still.