Guardians of the Boundary (The Conjurors Series Book 3) (12 page)

But Valerie was too blinded by
tears to stop, and too torn apart by her guilt to care.

A flash of blonde hair caught
Valerie’s eye when she walked beneath the arches of the Guild of the Knights of
Light. Oleander was walking the perimeter of the courtyard with Kellen, deep in
conversation.

The sight made Valerie’s stomach
clench. The injustice of Midnight’s killers walking around unpunished made her
sick. But picking a fight with the new Grand Master of the Guardians of the
Boundary would only cement her in everyone’s mind as the unstable little girl
that Kellen was painting her to be. The news that her power had led to Azra’s
pregnancy had made the Conjurors in her guild stare at her more than ever, and
she never had a moment where she wasn’t conscious that her every move was being
scrutinized.

“She’s been here all morning,”
Juniper said, joining Valerie in their usual corner.

“I wish we could hear what
they’re saying,” Valerie said.

“You’re about the last people
they’d tell anything important to,” Claremont said, nosing into their
conversation with a smug grin on her face. “I know what’s going on, but all I’m
authorized to say is that the future of our Guild is in good hands.”

“Right, I’m sure you’re in the
inner circle,” Juniper said, his voice laced with derision.

“Closer than you are,” Claremont
bit back.

“Let the big kids finish
talking,” Juniper taunted.

Claremont turned red, and
Valerie was sure she was about to attack again, when Kellen’s voice resounded
around the courtyard.

“I’m pleased to let everyone
know that the Knights and Guardians are declaring a formal alliance,” Kellen
said.

“Alliance? Against who?” Juniper
whispered to Valerie.

“Maybe it’s not who it’s
against, but who it’s in support of,” she whispered back.

“The old ideas about how guilds
are run has become outdated,” Oleander said to the group, her voice musical. It
didn’t hurt that she was beautiful, too, and the Knights all listened. “It
doesn’t make sense for guilds to be like islands, each with its own rules and
secrets. It’s time to band together for a brighter future with the Fractus.”

“We must help in the mission to
return to Earth and save the humans from themselves. And for Conjurors to
return home after centuries away,” Kellen said, and Valerie saw Oleander shoot
him an annoyed glance that she quickly hid. She didn’t like having her little
speech interrupted.

“Starting today, each of the
members of our guilds will be interviewed to determine the best role for you in
this new vision of the future. There is real work to be done, and there is a
place for everyone with a willing heart,” Oleander said.

“And for those of us who
refuse?” Mira spoke up, his voice loud in the courtyard. Valerie was surprised
that he would question Kellen’s decision.

“Like you, I used to think of
the Fractus as the enemy. But my eyes have been opened. The Fractus are going
to be the winning team this time, and anyone who doesn’t want to be a part of
that should leave,” Kellen said, his words clipped. “But what do you think those
who oppose the Fractus are going to wind up with? Nothing!”

“The Knights have always decided
the direction of the Guild by vote,” Gideon spoke up, his usually quiet voice
carrying over the crowd. Valerie wondered how he had snuck in past Kellen’s
thugs, but she was relieved he was there. “Are you our leader, or our
dictator?”

A murmur of agreement followed
Gideon’s words, and Kellen began turning red, a telltale sign that he was
angry.

“He’s right,” Mira said. “We
vote on the new direction, or else we vote on a new leader.”

“Now listen here,” Kellen began,
but Oleander interrupted him.

“Of course,” she said smoothly.
“That is your way, and we certainly don’t want to force anyone’s hand. Let’s
take some time to discuss and debate, and we’ll vote in the next few weeks.”

“I don’t see why we should wait
so long,” Claremont grumbled. “I’m ready now.”

As the crowd began to disperse,
Valerie’s mind was hit with the force of a battering ram. She recognized the
touch of Kellen’s magic as she fell to her knees.

Valerie struggled to her feet,
only to have Kellen bring her to her knees again. He flew over to her, his eyes
blazing with rage.

“I don’t know how you did it,
but somehow you’re undermining me,” he said. “If you value the lives of those
you love, you’ll leave this Guild.”

Mira stepped in front of her
then, and the magical assault on Valerie’s mind receded, allowing her to stand.

“Valerie has been no more than a
faithful student,” he said. “You have my word that no treason has occurred
during her training over the past few weeks.”

“And can I trust your word? You
spoke against me,” Kellen said, his wings trembling with rage.

“I spoke for the ideals of the Guild.
Not against you,” Mira said, but Valerie saw the tension in his stance. He was
ready to fight if he had to.

Oleander approached, and she
eyed the little group around Valerie. Olwain, Alex, and six other Knights were
watching the showdown.

“Don’t be paranoid,” Oleander
hissed to Kellen. “This girl is easily disarmed. Let her be, or think of how
this will look to everyone. We need their support.”

Kellen huffed, but he fluttered
away without another word. Oleander glided after him, smiling sweetly at
everyone who stared at her.

“Let’s get out of here,” Juniper
said. “Everyone’s too distracted for training today.”

Mira hesitated and then nodded.
Valerie and Juniper left the Guild and found Gideon and Chrome waiting for them
beyond the arches.

“The Knights are on the brink of
becoming Reaper’s army,” Gideon said gravely.

“But thanks to your words today,
we have a chance to change people’s minds,” Valerie said.

A barrage of images from Chrome flooded
Valerie’s mind—dozens of attacks by the Fractus against the Knights that had
resulted in injuries and death. Valerie wished she could shut her eyes and make
Chrome’s memories stop. She saw from Juniper’s and Gideon’s faces that Chrome
was sharing his thoughts with them as well.

“It is true, the Fractus and
Knights have a long history of violence. There was a time I would have thought
it impossible that they could ever be allies,” Gideon said.

“This is insane. How could the
Knights ever forgive all this?” Juniper asked.

“The older Knights will resist
supporting Reaper,” Gideon said. “But Kellen has recruited heavily over the
past five years, and there are many apprentices and journeymen who haven’t had
to battle the Fractus. They will be easier for him to convince.”

Another image flashed from
Chrome’s mind, this one of a Knight kneeling before Reaper. As they watched,
Chrome tore out the Knight’s throat. Valerie understood that this was a vision
not of something that had already happened, but what Chrome was willing to do
to anyone who supported Reaper and the Fractus.

Valerie sucked in her breath,
disturbed by Chrome’s threat. She knew he was grieving for Jet, but to
slaughter everyone who made the mistake of following Reaper was unthinkable.

“I’m not naïve,” Valerie said.
“I know that a battle is coming, and people will die. But there are many who
are supporting the Fractus because they don’t understand what they’re planning.
We can’t slaughter everyone who agrees with them.”

“I couldn’t be a part of that,
either,” Juniper said, rubbing goose bumps on his arms.

Gideon glanced sharply at
Chrome. “Your desire for vengeance cannot override the oath we have all taken
as Knights.”

“To use our Power to protect,
Courage in the face of danger, and Mercy to your greatest enemies,” Juniper
said solemnly.

Hearing the values of her Guild
triggered something in Valerie. She was reminded of the stories of King Arthur
and his knights that her mother had left for her to read. All of this time,
she’d been struggling to keep her head above water that was constantly rising,
frantically paddling against a current that wanted to tug her down. But that
force wasn’t Reaper or the Fractus. It was her own uncertainty. She was afraid
to take a step, fearing it was the wrong one. She needed to find the courage
she knew she possessed and move forward.

It was time to stop paddling and
swim.

Valerie knew what her next step
should be, and she was glad that Henry was distracted by his activities at the
Empathy Collective. He was talking to the Grand Master of his Guild, Dasan,
about psychic tactics that could be used to locate his dad.

Kanti and Cyrus were in their
dorm cafeteria, poring over maps of Arden’s woods, when Valerie found them.

“We’ve been over this ground a
dozen times. Babylon isn’t there,” Kanti said, flashing a brief but dazzling
smile when Valerie approached.

“It’s time to talk to someone
who can break whatever spell must be cast over Babylon to hide it,” Cyrus said.
“I have some contacts in the Charm Guild I’ll talk to next.”

Cyrus pulled Valerie close to
his side and buried his face in her neck, breathing deeply. He still had an
extra glow about him, as if being touched by a vivicus had increased how much
light he attracted.

“Missed you,” he said. “Please
tell me you came here for a break and we’re all going to the beach. Messina has
some great ones.”

“Better. I’m here because I need
to do some breaking and entering, and I don’t want to do it alone,” Valerie
said, grinning as Cyrus’s face lit up.

“Anything that gets us away from
these maps,” Kanti agreed. “Whose privacy are we violating?”

“Oleander’s,” Valerie said.
“Well, the Guardians of the Boundary, really.”

“I like this plan already,”
Kanti said.

“Azra said that Oleander can’t
get into Midnight’s office to learn the location of the Byways due to magic
that only allows those with unselfish motives to enter,” Valerie explained.

“It’s more complicated than
that,” Cyrus interrupted. “Midnight told me once that the person also has to
have the potential to be a true Guardian Grand Master. We’re as locked out as
Oleander.”

“We have to try,” Valerie said.
“Even if we can’t get into Midnight’s office, maybe we’ll learn more of
Oleander’s plan to get the guilds to support the Fractus.”

“Less talking, more walking,”
Kanti said, rolling up the maps and heading out the door.

Cyrus led them around the back
of the guild buildings that faced the forest of Arden, rather than straight
through The Horseshoe, so that they were less likely to be spotted.

From the back, the Guardians of
the Boundary Guild was even more gothic than it appeared from the front. An
enormous stained-glass window depicting Earth and the Globe connected by a
thread took up a huge portion of the back wall.

“That must be beautiful from the
inside when the sunlight pours in,” Kanti said. “But only Guardians are allowed
far enough into the building to see it.”

“Any thoughts on how to get in
undetected?” Valerie asked. “It’s not really breaking and entering if we walk
through the front door.”

Cyrus was examining the building
closely, his eyes flicking over the surface of the walls.

“Do you guys see how the light
refracts differently on the lowest pane of the stained glass?” he asked.

Valerie squinted, but nothing
looked out of place to her.

“There,” Cyrus pointed, and a
beam of light shot out of his finger to a spot on a large, red pane of glass.

Valerie’s eyes widened. She’d
seen Cyrus do amazing things with light, but it had never burst out of him
before.

Cyrus turned his hand over,
staring at it like he’d never seen it before. “I thought my powers had stopped
growing years ago.”

Kanti glanced at Valerie. “Maybe
this has to do with… recent events.”

Cyrus’s blue eyes were wide. “She’s
right. Val, maybe your magic changed me, like it changed Sanguina and Azra.”

Valerie was less certain. “It’s
a natural extension of what you can already do. Maybe it’s a belated growth
spurt. After all, wasn’t it only last year that Kanti accessed her powers?”

“Let’s dissect this later, and
get into Midnight’s office now before we’re caught,” Kanti interrupted.

Cyrus nodded and led them to the
stained glass. He gently pushed on a spot in the corner of the pane, and it
swung open noiselessly. Then he ducked inside, and Valerie and Kanti followed.

“I bet that’s the door that most
of the Guardians use to get in,” Cyrus mused. “I never see anyone other than
visitors go in through the front.”

“They do love to be mysterious,”
Kanti said, her voice sounding a little derisive.

“Can you find Midnight’s office
from here?” Valerie whispered. Even though her voice was low, it seemed to echo
off of the stone walls.

Cyrus put a finger to his lips
and gestured for them to follow him. Staying in the shadows, they hurried as
quietly as possible down a long, narrow corridor. They stopped at the stairwell
that led up to Midnight’s office.

Valerie bit the inside of her
cheek hard, willing herself not to play her last visit to the office through
her mind like a movie reel.

Cyrus slipped his hand in hers
when she squeezed her eyes shut.

“It’s okay if you want to leave,”
he said.

“But you’re strong enough to do
this,” Kanti added.

Valerie nodded and forced back
the tears that hovered behind her eyes. She led her friends up the stairs,
taking them two at a time. A Guardian could spot them at any moment.

She stopped in front of
Midnight’s office and froze. She reached out to touch the handle, and it
shocked her. She jerked her hand back in surprise, stung.

Symbols on the door illuminated
red. It reminded Valerie of her first trip to the Globe. The inside of the
Great Pyramid had stones that were etched with symbols like this, but they had
been blue.

“It’s magic, right? Maybe if we think
about our intentions, it will let us in,” Valerie said.

“I don’t know,” Cyrus said
doubtfully.

“What can it hurt?” Kanti asked.

Valerie shut her eyes and
thought of Midnight and everything she stood for. She thought of her own intentions:
to only use the Byways to protect humans and Conjurors from the Fractus’s abuse
of power. With her thoughts firmly in her mind, she tried the handle again.

This time, it shocked her so
hard that she was flung back and fell down three steps. Cyrus was at her side
in an instant, helping her to stand. She rubbed a spot on her back that ached
from the impact.

“I could try to kick it down,”
Valerie said doubtfully.

“You’d bring every Guardian in
the building here in a matter of seconds,” Cyrus said.

“If the office would consider
anyone a potential Grand Master to the Guardians, it would be Valerie,” Kanti
said. “I don’t think we’re getting in.”

As she spoke, Kanti reached out
to jiggle the door handle to prove her point. To their surprise, the symbols on
the door glowed blue and swung open.

Kanti, Cyrus, and Valerie stared
at each other, their mouths open.

“The office thinks Kanti’s a
potential Guardian Grand Master?” Cyrus asked. There was so much disbelief in
his voice that Kanti punched him in the shoulder.

“Shut up and let’s see what’s
here,” Kanti said, stepping inside first.

Valerie closed the door behind
them and examined the room, hoping that there wouldn’t be any traces of
Midnight’s death. To her relief, the room seemed undisturbed.

“What are we searching for,
exactly?” Kanti asked.

“I thought we should take her
globe, for one thing,” Valerie said. Midnight had a magical globe that allowed
her to zoom in on any part of Earth that she wanted to see. It was a powerful
scrying tool, and the Fractus could possibly use it to send more of their army
to Earth if they still had Darling’s fur stored away.

Cyrus went over to the table
with the globe and spun it. Then he lifted it and staggered a little under the
weight.

“What else might be here?” Kanti
asked.

“Somewhere, there must be clues
to the Byways on Earth and the Globe,” Valerie said, rifling through books on
Midnight’s shelves. They all had titles in languages that Valerie had never
seen before, like ancient hieroglyphics and complicated characters.

“It could be in any of these,”
Valerie said, overwhelmed as her eyes traveled over the floor-to-ceiling
shelves. “Azra can probably read most of them, but how will we sneak them all
out?”

“Maybe we don’t have to,” Cyrus
said.

Kanti and Valerie came over to
Midnight’s globe. Cyrus was staring at it strangely.

“There used to be a marking or
writing here,” he said, pointing to a spot in Japan.

“I don’t see anything,” Kanti
said, squinting.

“It’s been rubbed away, but the
way the light touches this globe tells me that something used to be here,”
Cyrus explained.

“Let’s take it and go for now,”
Valerie said. “We’ve got a clue, and if we get out of here before we’re caught,
we can always come back and search for more information.”

Cyrus hefted the globe off of
its stand, brushing aside Valerie’s help. She decided not to point out that it
would be effortless for her to carry it, given her fighter strength.

Instead, she opened the door as
quietly as she could and peered out. She didn’t see anyone in the shadows, and
she waved Cyrus and Kanti out the door. They were less than halfway down the
curving staircase when they almost smacked into Oleander, who smiled wolfishly.
A handful of Guardians stood behind her.

“Stealing from a guild is a
major offense,” Oleander said.

Valerie stepped in front of her
friends, holding out her arms to shield them.

“Let’s go, you and me, right
now,” Valerie said, her rage blazing hot. She burned to smack the grin off of
Oleander’s face. She didn’t even worry about the fact that she didn’t have
Pathos with her. It would be more satisfying to fight her with her bare hands.

“You poor, confused soul,”
Oleander said, managing to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. Valerie
understood that this performance must be for the benefit of the other Guardians
behind her. “We all want the same thing—to save lives. Now you can help us by
letting us in to Midnight’s office.”

Valerie barked out a laugh.
“We’d die first.”

“That’s an option,” Oleander
said, her beautiful face twisting. “So is jail for the three of you.”

“The boy is holding Midnight’s
globe,” said one of the Guardians, a tall man with dark hair.

“Hand it over,” Oleander
commanded.

Valerie saw Cyrus assess their
chances of taking on Oleander and the rest of the Guardians and winning. He
turned and threw the globe over the rail of the stairway, and it smashed onto the
floor into a thousand glittering pieces.

Oleander grabbed Cyrus by his
hair, but released him when Valerie kicked her in the chest, sending her
stumbling back into the men behind her. The Guardians advanced, and Valerie
could see that they were gearing up to fight.

“Attacking children?” Kanti
asked, adopting a hurt expression on her beautiful face. Valerie had to bite
back a smile to see Kanti trying to work her looks to their advantage. “Are you
all as morally bankrupt as Oleander?”

“She’s right. We should take
them to the Knights for questioning,” the man said, bowing his head
apologetically.

Valerie knew they didn’t have
the time to waste being questioned by the Knights. Kellen would make sure that
they were in a cell locked away from the world with the barest excuse.

She was evaluating how to cause
the least damage to the Guardians while still managing to escape when Kanti
held up her hands and a burst of red flower petals showered down on them. There
were hundreds, maybe thousands, of petals, and it was more disorienting than
being caught in a hurricane.

Kanti grabbed Valerie’s and
Cyrus’s hands and yanked them through the middle of the storm. When they
reached the bottom of the stairwell, they all ran out the front door as fast as
they could, racing across The Horseshoe and ignoring the astonished stares of
the other Conjurors, many of whom were eating lunch outside.

Kanti headed straight to the
Society of Imaginary Friends, and Valerie and Cyrus followed without
questioning. Once they were inside the front doors, they fell to the ground,
catching their breath.

“That was amazing,” Valerie.

Kanti was grinning a little.
“That’s the first time my power was ever really useful.”

“See? Being hot can come in
handy sometimes,” Cyrus teased. “We should tell Dulcea what happened in case
they come looking for us,” Cyrus said.

Valerie shrank away from the
idea of talking to Dulcea again so soon after their last encounter.

“What about Rastelli? He might
try to kill us all if he finds me here. We need a more secure place to hide
until this blows over,” Valerie said.

“Kanti took Rastelli to his
house, and he’s been told to remain there until further notice. Dulcea is
running the Guild in his place for now,” Cyrus explained.