Ensnared (Sorcery and Science Book 5) (10 page)

“We need to talk,” she began.

At least on that they were of one mind. He said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

“Cameron shouldn’t join us when we set out after lunch. He should remain in Eclipse, where he’ll be safe.”

Not the topic Jason had had in mind, but he wouldn’t allow that to show on his face.

“As we discussed in the library, Eclipse may not be as inaccessible as we’d previously thought,” he said.

“Are you bringing the Books of Memory and Vision along?” she asked, looking at the books stacked beside his pack.

“Yes, once we’ve gathered together all the pieces of the Recovery Scrolls, I want to set off to save Terra without delay.”

“You are worried about her.”

“Yes.” He’d waited too long already to search for her, and now the whole world was after her. Time was pouring out all around him, slipping through his fingers. “Cameron is worried too.”

She sighed.

“Why don’t you want Cameron to come?” Jason asked her.

“It’s not safe. We’re up against elite assassins, and he’s untrained.”

“The assassins of the Crescent Order are good,” he admitted. “But I am better.”

She dipped the toe of her boot in the puddle behind her. “The Avans are on the trail too. Nemesis could be there.”

“We’ll deal with that problem when it comes.”

“That problem comes in the form of a fire-eyed insane Triad with enough power to take you on and every reason to hate all of us. We did thwart her nefarious scheme just a week ago.” She shivered. “And I’m pretty sure she’s one to hold a grudge.”

Jason pulled the jacket off her and threw it onto the coat stand. He pointed at the sofa.

“Sit.”

She didn’t even argue. Once she’d settled into the cushions, Jason tugged off her boots and wrapped a thick blanket around her.

“Thanks,” she said as he sat down beside her. “But I must tell you that this blanket is really scratchy. Don’t you have something soft and fluffy?”

“I am not a soft and fluffy sort of guy.”

“Of course not,” Isis said, biting back a smile.

She looked entirely too cute. Jason wasn’t sure how to act around her.

“Cameron,” she reminded him.

Jason really didn’t want to talk about that right now. He watched her release my hair from her ponytail. Pink-blonde locks cascaded over her shoulders, wet and glossy.

“What are you staring at?” she asked.

“I’m not staring at all. I am glaring with sinister purpose, as is appropriate for an assassin of my reputation.”

She snorted. “No doubt. And also keeping to your stealthy reputation, you are dodging the question.”

Because he’d not asked her here to chitchat about Cameron.

“I share your concerns. It’s a dangerous path, and Cameron has a knack for impulsively throwing himself in harm’s way,” he replied. “But if we don’t let him come with us to find his sister, he will never forgive us. Worse yet, he’ll run off after us anyway, get himself captured, and then we’ll have two people to save.” He met her eyes. “You know I’m right.”

She held his gaze for only a second, then looked away, her eyes nervous. It wasn’t an uncommon reaction to him, so Jason was used to it. Just not from her. She’d never shied away from him before. Just how deeply had the Selpes scarred her?

He reached forward, hoping to comfort her, but as their skins made contact, a spark shot from her to him, passing along a memory. She withdrew but not quickly enough. The picture was clear
—
that
of Isis as she thrashed and banged herself against the walls of her prison cell, her eyes an enraged red. The Selpes had given her the drugs, so many that she went mad, but they’d not inflicted the wounds. That they’d let her do all by herself.

“Isis—”

“Please, don’t,” she whispered, retreating from his extended hand.

Jason bottled a growl. This was definitely not going as he’d planned. “I can help you.” Maybe.

She shook her head, and tiny droplets flew off her hair, sprinkling his shirt. “No, you can’t.”

“What happened to my presence being soothing?” he asked.

“It is.” She extended her hand toward him, then withdrew it twice as quickly. “Jason, you can’t imagine…” She shook herself. “No, we need to stay on track. There’s no time for distractions.”

Jason stretched forward, his hands reaching toward her. Isis matched his movements, sliding backward until her back hit the armrest, ending her retreat. Jason leaned over her until their noses brushed.

Her lips trembled, and she breathed out, “Stop.”

But her hand gripped his back, pulling him toward her. When Jason kissed her jaw, she gasped. He saw her nostrils flare, inhaling his scent. She looked dizzy, as though she liked what she’d smelled.

“Stop,” she said again.

Jason couldn’t. He wanted to kiss her, to taste her lips. He could think of nothing else.

“Terra,” Isis said.

“What about her?”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes, of course.” Oh.
That
. “As a friend, a sister.” He stroked his hand down her shoulder. “Not like this.”

“Cameron said you were engaged.”

And Cameron needed to keep his big mouth shut.

“Our fathers’ doing. A silly idea they had about uniting our families. That was a long time ago. It died with my parents.”

A wrinkle formed between Isis’s eyes. “So you don’t see yourself marrying her? Being with her?”

Jason couldn’t hold back the snort. “Marry Terra? No, of course not. It would be like marrying my sister. I love Terra, but I could never see her as anything but my best friend. I could never have romantic feelings for her.”

“Why are you looking for her?
Why after so many years?
” asked Isis.

“The Selpes and Avans are after the Recovery Scrolls.”

“No, that’s not it. You were already looking for her before, back when I was traveling with you.
Cameron said you two haven’t seen each other in ten years, and you choose now of all times to go after her? Why?”

Jason wasn’t sure how to answer.
Lana had wondered the same thing, and he’d evaded responding. In order to do so, he would have had to admit to keeping secrets from her for the past decade.
But Isis was not Lana.
 

“Before Terra and I were separated, we exchanged sand slates,” he told her.

A portable version of the Elition temple sand pits, sand slates were linked in pairs. You could only communicate with the person holding the matching slate and in text only, but it worked over vast distances.

“They allowed us to write to each other over the years,” he continued. “But a
year ago was the last time I heard from her.”

Understanding dawned on her face. “That’s why you’re after her now. You think something has happened.”

“Yes. We used to talk several times a week. Then, all of a sudden, she was gone. No warning. No hints. Something must be wrong. And now that the Selpes and Avans are both after the Recovery Scrolls, things can only get worse for her. Unless we find her first and bring her here.”

Isis tucked up her knees, putting a barrier between their bodies. She looked about two seconds away from bolting out of the door.

“I saw Ariella at Precipice,” he mentioned, hoping to hold her interest long enough to make her forget about running.

Her face lit up. “Did you? How is she? I’ve missed her.”

“She looked well. She was running around with that Phantom Wrest again, off on some perilous quest to a Hellean floating city.”

Isis chuckled. “She hates planes, and she’s going to step foot on a floating city? Silas is getting her into all kinds of trouble. He’s a bad influence.” Her eyes twinkled at him. “Sort of like you.”

Jason didn’t know how to respond to that, so he spoke his mind, “Ariella said you went to school with Terra.”

“Yes,” she replied cautiously.

“So you know her well?”

“Somewhat.”

“What is she like?”

“Jason, I fear you don’t want to know.”

“Tell me.”

Isis hugged the blanket to herself.
“You wouldn’t know her. Her mind was lost long ago. She’s caught in a waking dream, all sense of reality lost. The problem hasn’t gotten better; it’s only getting worse. When I knew her… well, she would say and do things she didn’t remember later, or recall them only as dreams. There was a time she spent most of her days aware and alert, and fell only into short episodes of delirium. But those bursts grew longer, and the periods of sanity shorter.”

“Why hasn’t anyone done anything to help her?” Jason demanded.

“They’ve tried,” she replied. “Her power is simply too much for her to handle. I fear she’s lost to this world.”

“No. We wrote to each other over all those years. She’s fine.”

“Have you never considered that she only wrote during her good times? That she hid her turmoil from you so that you wouldn’t worry?”

“I would have known. I know her.”

“You’ve not seen her in ten years, not since you were children. Even when I was at Precipice with her five years ago, she was barely holding her mind together. You wouldn’t recognize her anymore. And
she wouldn’t know you. Not in that state.
”

“I would. And she would,” he insisted.

Isis sighed and lifted up the bottom of her shirt, exposing her abdomen. Just above her hipbone was a very long and thin scar. It glowed eerily in the dim light of the room. Jason traced it, feeling its unnatural smoothness. It was the scar Ariella had mentioned, the one he’d only caught a quick glimpse of until now.

“Your body was unable to heal this?” he asked her.

Isis recoiled. “Poison blade,” she told him. “Terra did this.”

He looked up from the scar to her trembling eyes. “Why?”

“During a fit of paranoia.” She covered the scar again, then set her hands onto his cheeks. Looking solemnly into his eyes, she said, “Her mind is gone.”

Then Isis stood up to gather her things and left. And Jason couldn’t even bring himself to so much as say goodbye, let alone get up to stop her.

CHAPTER TEN

~
Fallen Artifact ~

526AX August 20, Pegasus

LIGHTNING CRACKED, SPLITTING a tree nearly in half. Its splintered remnants plunged down and landed two meters from Cameron’s foot. He stepped back, mud oozing up as his boot sank into the soft ground. Covered in mulch and mud
—
and now a fallen tree
—
the trail was blocked.

“I think we should call it a day!” Everett bellowed over the storm.

Cameron nodded. By the time they’d left Eclipse, the rain had stopped there, but it was still drizzling in Pegasus. The drizzle had intensified to a hard rain. As the hours passed, the chilling winds had picked up. Cameron had shivered against the wind and suffered beneath the piercing rain, but he had no intention of being crushed by falling trees.

Oblivious to all, Isis was staring at the felled tree as though she wanted to scale it. She was insane. The satin-smooth trunk loomed over five meters high. She didn’t seem to realize that Jason was the only one there with even the slightest hope of getting over it. All day, she’d set a death-march pace, as though her life depended on making it to the next portal before nightfall.

“Isis,” Jason said, setting a hand on her shoulder

She jumped in surprise. “Yes, I know. It’s too high.”

Since her back was turned to him, Cameron wasn’t sure whether she was talking to herself or to them. But when she panned her head, searching for an alternate path, he caught the sparkling glisten of a tear upon her cheek. She wiped it hastily away, but it left Cameron wondering what she had to cry about. A pit formed in his stomach as the realization hit him. The Selpes had left her a broken person. After what they’d done to her, it was a wonder she was still acting even close to normal.

“It will soon be sundown. We need to find shelter for the night,” Jason told her.

“Dry shelter,” Everett added quickly.

Thunder roared overhead, and that seemed to finally snap Isis out of her trance. She looked at them, her wide eyes sparkling like sapphires. She gasped as she took in the sight of them, rain gushing down over their heads.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” she stuttered. “Of course we can’t continue on like this. I know of a place nearby. We should be there in a quarter of an hour if we can just get past this tree.”

She opted to go around the tree, then cut through the thick underbrush until they returned to the trail. Inside his boots, Cameron’s socks slushed. He really hoped they’d be there soon—and that Everett’s sandwiches were still dry.

The wind howled and pounded their bodies, making them fight for every step they took. All around, trees swayed and bent forward, their trunks threatening to snap at any moment. Cameron was soaked through to his underwear, which would make drying off beside the fire that night a fun experience.

“Here,” Isis’s voice broke through the cacophony of storm sounds.

They’d left the trail. Before them, a hill sloped downward. The drop was nearly vertical, but at the bottom was a large grey cave.

No, not a cave. It was too symmetrical to be a natural formation. Lightning flashed, and Cameron got a better look. It was a massive airplane. Its metal exterior discolored and coated with layers of green sludge, the plane must have been sitting there for centuries.

Everett’s mouth gaped. “What is that monster?”

“A crashed Xenen ship,” she told him.

“Xenen? You want us to go inside a crashed Xenen ship?”

“I don’t think they’ll be coming back for it,” she said. “This plane crashed centuries ago. It was flying overhead the day the Wilderness was born.”

“Sure, but still.” Everett chewed on his lip. “It’s kind of creepy. Like sleeping amongst the dead.”

“It’s that or sleeping out in the rain.”

Cameron decided to make the decision for him. He began to jog down the hill. He had no intention of spending the night in that weather. Very few remnants remained of the Xenens’ time in the world
—
here and there an odd bit of technology, but hardly anything big. They’d taken most of their planes with them, but the nature of the Elition Wilderness must have made the extraction of this one impossible. It’s hard to move something that big in an area where none of their machines even function. Some people said Xenen artifacts were cursed, but those were the very same people who also thought the Elition Wilderness was haunted.