The Protection of Ren Crown (48 page)

“You can't lose control like that again,” he said as we walked through the first arch. He unwrapped some strange, perfectly white food from a square package and put it into my hand.

“I know,” I said weakly, then took a bite. The white square tasted like...nothing. Rice cakes had more flavor.

“
Ever
. Especially near the Troop.”

“What would they do?”

He looked at me without responding.

“Okay,” I said, just as feebly.

“We'll do some resurrections after the competition. Get you used to death.”

I shuddered. “I don't want to get used to death.”

“Too bad. Death and resurrection are part of this world. People die all the time. Most of the time they only miss twenty breaths.”

“Lucky,” I said with no small amount of bitterness.

“Yes,” he said in a voice that was suddenly almost soothing. “But death is real. The mage who relaxes is the mage who stays dead.”

“The papers... They knocked out one of your shields.” The magic had passed through my hand to him, but it was no less true.

“Hard to defend against Origin Magic,” he said casually.

My heart stopped beating.

He didn't look down at me as he continued striding forward, propelling me along with his hand at the small of my back. “But not impossible. I've got the feel for how the energy starts to activate and will be able to compensate for it next time. Completely worth the shit I'm going to get for dying during a training session.”

My legs felt like short, wooden stilts. I swallowed. “Origin Magic?”

“Sergei Kinsky made those papers. Didn't I say?” He didn't look at me, and his voice was far too casual. “Cost a small fortune and they are illegal to own. Hope you have a good place to hide them.” He nudged my suddenly unmoving form toward my dorm. “See you at Pisces Rising, Crown. Make sure you eat.”

Chapter Twenty-six: Revelatory Decisions

At lunch, I ate more than I had ever eaten in one sitting.

Still shaking uncontrollably from the whole death and resurrection and Origin Magic revelation thing, I ate and drank and ate some more, and everyone carefully let me do so without interruption.

Finally, I could eat no more. At the feeling of fullness, a white square burst into my mind's eye then exploded, rushing through me and converting all the food I had just consumed into magical energy. Everywhere the white energy streamed, my magic was replenished, and I bodily shook like a dog that had been dunked into a bath.

I stared at my hands, which were now shaking with a different force altogether. It was like a concentrated, alternate form of the energy renewal magic Dare sometimes used on me. He seriously had the best stuff.

“You okay, Crown?” Mike was looking at me dubiously. So were a number of people near us. I hid my shaking hands under the table and tried to stop the rest of me from vibrating.

“Way better.” Dare wouldn't have given this renewal to me if he was planning to turn me in, right?

I took a single, eased breath, and that's when the world slowed around me.

No
.

The world sped back up almost immediately, and I put my hand to my chest. Raphael had just done something. But it hadn't totally
worked
.

“The terrorists just partially destroyed a second installation!” I could hear the whispers traveling the cafeteria. “But with far less magic. Are they running out?”

Outrage and fear clogged the large, airy hall, but was threaded with the slightest bit of hope. It echoed my own feelings—though normal, crippling guilt rolled through me as well. Partial destruction still likely meant a loss of life.

But, the small cord of hope remained—what had just happened was a far less incapacitating response than I had experienced in the past. We had begun piecing together the leech in the last twenty-four hours and I had been touching materials left and right. If putting leech materials together was enough to limit some of Raphael's power, it gave me hope that we were on the right track.

I looked through the enormous floor-to-ceiling window that comprised one entire wall of the cafeteria—looking out over the mountain. Lightning storms broke in the distance.

Mike inhaled sharply and suddenly, then looked at Olivia. Everyone else at our table looked her way a moment later, and I could feel gazes around us similarly pinning Olivia like a stuck fly.

I grabbed my reader. Raphael had done something and everyone was staring at Olivia.

The newest
Information For The People
flyer and the
Threats to Public Health and Welfare
bulletin had hit the metaphorical stands. They were updated with horrible information concerning Helen Price and her failings as a politician on the world stage—and her inability to keep the Department installations secret or secure. Chatter broke throughout the cafeteria, mages eager to pin the blame for the latest security breach.

Since both publications were owned by the Baileys, and Bellacia had used some specific language with Olivia at the party, then taunted me about Olivia this morning, the source of the articles wasn't a surprise. The articles had likely been sitting on the edge of someone's magic fingers, awaiting the right time to hit “send.”

I really wanted to push the clicker thing Constantine had given me, just to make Bellacia forget her own name for a little while. Maybe it would cure her of her vindictive streak.

Helen's embarrassment and public ridicule meant little to me—I actually was pretty pleased by that aspect—but Olivia was going to be punished for it, and Olivia knew it, judging by her lack of conversation, clenched body language, and quick excuse to leave the cafeteria.

I hurried after her, but waited until we were back in our room before speaking.

“Olivia—”

“It's fine, Ren. I knew what would happen eventually when—”

Olivia tensed momentarily. I didn't have to ask why. The backlash from the vengeance magic whipped through me in the next moment.

I grimaced and my stomach clenched. But, on the satisfying side, Helen Price had just gotten her backside paddled, pretty literally.

Olivia was staring down at her intact cocoon, bewildered.

I shifted on my feet, pretty certain that I'd be unable to sit in a chair for a good while. I wasn't in nearly the pain that putting the magic into place had caused, but even with the abundance of energy now running through me, the backlash still stung. Magic, like nature, required balance, and it was basically giving me its version of a disappointed parental head shake for misusing it. Vengeance spells, like the one I had put on Helen, weren't full of sunshine and rainbows.

Though, hey... Maybe that would be
worse
to someone like Olivia's mom. My excess energy and the backlash pain were probably making my brain think thoughts that I should immediately
disregard
, but the absurdity of Helen Price being repeatedly forced to look at fuzzy rabbits made me smile stupidly. I'd have to consider sending her an overload of cute images in response to whatever she tried next. See if I couldn't do some psychological damage instead.

I bet I could skirt the “vengeance” side of things entirely if I made my brain think of it as “joyful rehabilitation” instead. Food for thought.

My grin widened and I shifted position to lessen the heat on one side of my lower body. That's when I realized that Olivia was staring at me, her eyes narrowed.

“Er, yes?” I wiped my grin.

“Why are you standing there, smiling strangely and shuffling back and forth from foot to foot?”

“Uh, just trying to stretch my legs. Too much sitting lately.” I scrambled for a proper excuse. “And I'm trying to recreate some of Neph's moves. Awkwardly.”

I tried a little hop, then stumbled into a small, shambling circle to get rid of the blazing pain and cramp.

Olivia watched me through narrowed eyes. “My mother easily connected the Baileys' scathing articles to me. And her response to it should have resulted in far more than the light tickle I just felt.”

Filtered through the previous magic in the cocoon, Helen's vindictive attack would have caused the cocoon to burst into a butterfly—absorbing the more anguishing aspects—but Olivia would have still felt remnants of pain.

I pointed at Olivia and couldn't keep the hostility toward her mother out of the movement. “Her response should have contained no violence at all.”

Olivia watched me for a long moment, then turned the cocoon over in her hands, examining it. She hadn't examined it since I had given it to her. I had done a pretty good job embedding the second spell, way better than a cursory examination would show, but Olivia was very detail oriented. I knew as soon as she found it. She went rigid.

Her neck bent and her head dropped forward to shield her expression.

Crap.
“Er, Liv?”

A shudder ran through her and her hand twitched toward her eyes. “When?”

“A month ago?”

“I'd wondered,” she whispered.

That just made me angry again—that she'd wondered why she'd gone so long without punishment. “I'm not taking it off,” I said mulishly, crossing my arms.

She pulled the cocoon to her chest, fingers wrapped around it. “Ren—”

“No, you'll let me do this,” I hissed. I wasn't angry at her, not in the least, but I was
so
angry
at the situation. I took a deep breath and walked over, kneeling painfully in front of her chair. “Please. At least until it's a butterfly.”

Light hands curled around my neck, and for long moments I had an armful of Olivia Price.

When she pulled back her chin was steady and gaze level. “I have a few letters to the editor to write. What say you?”

I grinned.

~*~

Once Olivia had started furiously writing and focusing her sight forward, I headed to the Midlands and Okai to work off the overabundance of excess energy Dare had “squared” me with.

Olivia was taken care of for the moment, and I had a longer term plan chugging away for her. But Dare...Dare had
died
this morning
.
And no matter what he might know or not, he was firmly in my circle of protection. He had started in it as the stranger who'd saved my life and given me one last moment with my twin, and his importance had increased exponentially since we'd begun working together.

I stroked one of Kinsky's sheets, and set to work.

Two hours later, I walked out of Okai buzzing with spent energy. Locking the door behind me, I stopped cold to see Dare leaning against Okai's wall, casually waiting. It was both a comforting notion and a threat. As suspected, he could find me at any time. I wondered how long it had taken him to get onto Okai's tile. It was one of the trickiest to access—it had taken me a week, a lot of magic, and a drop of paint to do so.

“You were going to be late,” he said, a half-smile on his face as he answered one unasked question and left a million others unanswered.

“I would have totally made it with a minute to spare,” I said, walking down the front steps while trying to still my racing heart. “I'm awesome at being just on time.”

He pushed away from the wall and looked me over. “You ate. I had wondered if I'd find you half-dead here.”

“I think I actively offended the table next to ours in the cafeteria with the amount of food I consumed. And thank you for that kick in the jugular experienced soon afterward that made them think that not only was I gluttonous, but demented as well.”

I still had a little extra energy running through me and it was doing funny things to my stomach. Had he tracked me down to make sure I was okay?

That made me think preposterous thoughts.

I shoved the little papered creation toward him, transferring ownership as I did. “Here. I made the magic in this one safe for you.”

I could feel Guard Rock and Guard Friend watching through the little floor-level window the building had created for them—assessing whether Dare was a threat. How had Dare concealed himself from the three of us before I'd exited? Guard Rock would have seen Dare if he'd truly just been standing out in the open.

Dare examined the small phoenix resting in his hand. He stroked a tail feather and touched the crest feathers and beak. Unlike its slightly crinkly counterparts, the phoenix's parchment had smoothed into a nearly seamless design.

It was one of my best creations. Kinsky's paper was exceptional. I wondered how old he had been—and how long he'd been a mage—when he'd created it. Should I be working harder?

Dare continued to examine it and said nothing. It was excruciating.

“You, uh, you shouldn't use him outside of the Midlands,” I said, then chewed on an already chewed fingernail. “You said to keep the paper hidden, and well, ta-da! One piece hidden.”

Dare's wasp and dragon swooped down to see their new sibling. My God, I was making him a menagerie. It was beyond mortifying, if I let myself think about it.

“I assigned each a task during their creation,” I said, trying to outrun the thought that I was giving him pets in some weird courting ritual. “Sort of like embedding instincts. They can do other things, but their primary instinct will be to complete their task. And I made sure none of them will leave the Midlands without your express permission.”

The wasp and dragon were chaotic little beings—and occasionally they absorbed and overdosed on the Chaos Magic around them. I had seen them being mischievous and spiteful to other people traversing the levels, but they always listened to Dare when he spoke, and they followed their embedded directives to a T.

“And the phoenix? What is his task?”

I felt my cheeks heat. Seriously, what had I been thinking? “He, uh, he will follow you.” I busied myself with my bag so that I didn't have to look at him. “If you die here, he will immediately alert me.”

It
should
also pull Okai's tile toward him, attaching to whatever tile he was on for a short period of time, making it possible for me to find him if I dropped everything and sprinted to the Midlands. Perhaps the effort of imbuing
that
magic had made it possible for him to be here right now—that it had somehow tugged him the way that I had accidentally tugged Raphael twice now. I'd have to think about that.