“You don’t have to,” the old Reaper said. “Point Eirexis to your right. What do you see?”
Taeral exhaled sharply but did as he was told. Aiming Eirexis to his right, he stilled for a moment, then shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Okay. Now, do a slow 360-degree turn with Eirexis up.”
Taeral moved, his gaze fixed on Eirexis. As expected during the turn, the symbols on Eirexis took on a slightly more contoured sheen, as if reacting to the direction of Zetos. I smiled, my arms crossed as I watched the Widow Maker. I didn’t need to see his face to know that he was grinning beneath his mask.
“Whoa…” Taeral mumbled. He turned farther to the left, noticing the glow’s intensity increase before it went away completely, leaving him with only the faint glimmer of the black stone dragon bone—which signaled that they were simply on the right planet. He moved back to where Eirexis’s symbols had lit up the brightest. “Oh… I see…”
“It’s a divining rod, basically,” Amelia said.
“What’s that?” Raphael asked.
“The humans used it a long time ago. It was basically a stick they used to find water below the earth. It was more or less fiction, if you ask me, but for some it worked. The stick would vibrate if it was near a water source,” Amelia explained.
The Widow Maker walked over to me, leaving the crew to wonder over Eirexis, as they tested different directions and eventually agreed that they would need to go west if they wanted to find Zetos. Thieron’s blade clearly had a pull on Eirexis.
“You need to explain to me why Death insisted on this Taeral boy,” he whispered, making sure no one heard him. He could’ve just disappeared from their sight to talk to me in our Reaper plane of existence, but he probably didn’t want to give them any cause for concern. No one likes a frequently disappearing ally. “What makes him so special, huh?”
“He’s important to the ritual’s end, I told you,” I said bluntly.
“How, though? Is it about his heritage? Am I missing something? Come on, Seeley. I don’t know you, and I can’t speak to Death directly. Help me out here. I need to know what I’m getting myself into,” he replied.
“You chose to stick around and help them,” I chuckled.
“So I wouldn’t have to cross over, you noob!” the Widow Maker hissed. “I’m not ready to move on, and my options were clear the moment I was released from Eirexis. I’m a free Reaper now, yeah. But I still deserve some information here!”
I shook my head slowly, regretting that I couldn’t tell him everything I’d learned from Death. “He’s the only one who can make a real change in this wretched cycle that the Hermessi have established. He can shift things, after millions of years.”
“Better than Death?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“Yes.”
“We’re ready to go,” Taeral said after a while, looking at the Widow Maker. He couldn’t see me unless I allowed it, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was watching me, somehow. This fae-jinni hybrid prince was certainly special, and he had zero clue as to his own potential. It was fascinating to observe like this.
The Widow Maker walked back to the crew, hands behind his back. “You’ve figured out your direction?”
“We’ll keep going west,” Taeral replied.
“We’ll teleport across patches of ten to fifty miles at once and see how close we can get before Brendel and the others come for us,” Riza added.
Nuriya put a hand on Taeral’s shoulder. “I believe the Widow Maker severed your Telluris connection to Viola,” she said. “Make one with me, instead. I need to be able to reach you, no matter what.”
“Good idea,” Eva replied and prepared the ingredients required to establish a soul link between their group and Nuriya.
I was a little worried about them. The Widow Maker was no longer fused to Eirexis, and his powers could no longer be amplified. He could still do most of his Reaper spells, but at a reduced level. But even that was better than what I was able to do. The guy had tens of millions of years on me, if not more. Granted, he’d spent a lot of those eons trapped inside Thieron’s handle, but still, I felt like the noob he’d referred to me as in comparison. He was a good ally for them, and so was Kabbah. But it wasn’t enough.
Brendel played dirty. She was ruthless and had no moral compass. Most of her associates were the same. Heartless entities that were desperate to see the ritual completed, no matter what it cost. While I applauded those who stood against their brethren, I knew that Taeral and his crew would need more than a few allies to push through and complete this mission for Death. Unfortunately, Reapers couldn’t undertake the challenge of retrieving Thieron.
At the same time, I couldn’t stop thinking about Vesta and the other fae. They were in so much trouble in those sanctuaries. They didn’t deserve any of this—particularly poor Crane, who’d died because of the Hermessi’s influence. His life was over. It had been snuffed out by Brendel and her allies. The thought alone was enough to make my blood pressure spike. If only I could just turn them all off like one did with a glitching appliance…
Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible. I could, however, focus on Taeral and his team. The hope of every single world out there rested in their hands and in their ability to outsmart Brendel and get Thieron back. I dared not fantasize about what that moment would look like, but I was certainly willing to give it my all in order to make sure I’d get to witness it.
Amelia
Once our Telluris link to Nuriya was established, we were ready to leave the palace. There wasn’t anything else we could do here, and we were needed for Thieron’s retrieval. I knew Taeral would’ve given anything to be able to go out there and look for his father, but I also understood that Brendel wouldn’t have made it easy for anyone to find Sherus.
The fae king was her leverage against Taeral, but she’d underestimated our reasoning capabilities when the fate of the entire world hung in the balance. She could’ve taken everybody in Taeral’s family; he still wouldn’t have surrendered. This was one of those awful situations where our personal interests didn’t matter. The good of the many outweighed the good of the few. It hurt to even think this, but it was the truth.
“Be careful out there,” Nuriya said to us, tearing up. “I’ll keep you updated on the decoy movements, in the meantime. They’re south of here, for now.”
Taeral nodded and hugged his mother. It seemed different from where I stood. As if this really was the last time they’d see each other. Maybe it was just my paranoia at work here… Raphael took my hand in his, squeezing gently. We’d slept in each other’s arms last night, unable to shut our eyes separately. I’d tossed and turned for a couple of hours before working up the courage to knock on his door and ask him to just hold me. But he did, without needing any further explanation.
The taste of his lips lingered on mine, late into the morning, as we left the palace behind, cloaked in our invisibility spells. With my red lens on, I could see everyone in my crew—maybe better than ever. Something had shifted between us. Maybe it was all the trauma we’d experienced, or the love that had found a way to blossom in our midst, despite the harsh conditions. Or maybe both. Either way, we carried the faint shadows of experience under our eyes, while our lips arched in faint and hopeful smiles.
We’d been bashed repeatedly by the Hermessi, yet here we were, still standing.
“This is amazing,” Varga exclaimed, as Eirexis’s symbols glowed slightly brighter than before. We’d advanced about a hundred miles across the land, already, and Thieron’s handle was reacting more. We were closer to Zetos.
“Don’t hold your breath,” the Widow Maker replied dryly.
“Why not? It’s pointing in the right direction,” Varga shot back.
The Widow Maker’s shoulders dropped. It was so difficult to gauge his reactions without seeing his face, and Varga had no way of reading a Reaper’s emotions—not for lack of trying, though. He’d already told us that the Widow Maker lacked an emotional aura. I figured being dead came with some perks, including the absence from a sentry’s feelings radar.
“Check your compass. I suppose you have one?” the Widow Maker asked.
Taeral pursed his lips. “Of course we have a compass,” he said, taking his out. He flicked the semi-transparent lid open and looked at it. I leaned in to see and found myself befuddled. The needle pointing north was fine, but Eirexis’s strongest glow was no longer to the west. It had shifted to the north, as well.
