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“Nope.” She popped her lips over the word, making me realize she’d said it in English. So much of me had leaked into her. “I’ll wait while you use it and then put it away again.”
I itched enough to get my hands on the thing again that I respected Athena’s caution. The scepter definitely possessed some sort of addictive quality. My recent discovery of the dome’s properties might mean I could use that as a tool instead, but for now I intended to fulfill my promise to Starling. That she’d left without arguing further, her glance flicking to the scepter and away, indicated she hadn’t forgotten, but had simply been good about not nagging me.
Gravely, Athena handed me the scepter, standing by like a weight-lifting spotter while I settled cross-legged into my chair, laying the awkward object across my lap. A heavy crystal sphere on one end of a fairly long staff, the scepter didn’t balance well. It looked great for brandishing, however, as Walter had done frequently before I took the damn thing away from him.
Darling leaped onto the other arm of the chair, my flanking sentry.
“I’m not going to go psycho with one peek,” I said, trying not to be irritable. The scepter sang softly in my hands, the staff smooth, solid, fitting my hands perfectly. The crystal globe swirled with light, beckoning me to touch.
“Then it will be no trouble for you to hand it over again.” Now that Athena had given me the scepter, she’d pulled out her dagger, spinning it artfully. The slightly menacing aspect, complemented by her spiked hair and that sharp, restless mind, got my attention. Not that Athena wasn’t always serious—sometimes dismayingly so, despite her flower of a face and lavender eyes—but she clearly meant business.
“I won’t use it if you think it’s that bad.” I definitely wouldn’t mention the dome’s properties. Rogue wouldn’t have built it for me if he thought it could be damaging. Right?
“It’s a good experiment,” came her nonanswer. “Let’s see how you do, since you’re…better.”
Better than what?But I knew exactly what, even before Darling Hercules gave me an image of my haggard self, riding through the Glass Mountains, a starving husk with despair written all over her. Surely I hadn’t looked that awful. Athena and the cat simply gazed back at me, lavender and green eyes sharing common sympathy—and determination. I’d never mentioned the dreams to them, of Rogue in Titania’s bed, of them laughing at my efforts to find him. It hadn’t been all about using the wizard’s staff.
“Fine. Poke me if I get weird. But don’t get blood on the carpet.”
Even Athena didn’t laugh at that one. Some humor was simply lost on the fae.
I put my hands on the crystal globe. And, oh yes, it satisfied some deep craving, like a shot of whiskey after a four-hour department meeting. As if I’d strapped on a mental jetpack, my thoughts took off with fabulous speed and power. Belatedly it occurred to me that the scepter and the dome would amplify each other.
It felt so amazing that I couldn’t find it in me to care. Better than riding on the Liralen.
Barely did I think of Walter than I was there, hovering somewhere right behind his forehead. Wrenching and sordidly disorienting. I should have braced myself for the return to the scene of my horrific sorcery training. One day it wouldn’t bother me so much. I hoped. For the time being, however, the scene I happened into made me reel. I’d left Walter with my erstwhile trainers, Marquise and Scourge, knowing full well their predilection for sadistic kink as a tool for teaching self-discipline.
I’d tried my best to warn Walter and, sure enough, they were working him over. Being in his head while they did it sent a flood of revulsion through me.
Marquise’s eerily beautiful face gazed up, contorted with pleasure, words of endearment falling from her lips, her Christmas-ornament eyes glittering. The erotic joy of fucking her filled Walt’s mind with delirium, urged higher by the agonizing pain from Scourge’s whip falling on him from behind.
I nearly vomited. Would have, had I not been out of my own body.
I yanked myself away, the point-of-view refocusing like a camera panning back to a wider angle. The scene still played out—still deeply disturbing to my scarred self—but blessedly less immediate. Walt was determinedly working to please Marquise as Scourge whipped him—and as he magically altered a nearby cube from white to black, to a sphere, to a pyramid, instantly and perfectly at each of Scourge’s shouted commands.
Lessons in exacting magic under the most distracting conditions. Well did I remember those trials.
And how grateful was I that Rogue had taken the steps he did to spare me actual rape by those two. Steps that had ultimately placed him in Titania’s grip, and in her bed.
Marquise smiled, a delighted expression that had nothing to do with Walt’s steady efforts.Hello, precious pet,she mentally crooned at me.Felicitations on your nuptials. We all three shall attend.She blew me a kiss, her tinkling laugh following when I zoomed myself back, their castle spinning into a dot below me.
Okay, I panicked a little. Arguably, I had what I came for. Though I obviously wouldn’t tell Starling all of it. Interesting that they intended to bring Walter.
The rushing power of the scepter cushioned the rawness of exposing myself to that past trauma, so I rode it longer. Why not visit all of my old friends? I thought of Blackbird and, indeed, found her already back on land, riding behind Fergus on his battle stallion, racing dramatically across the countryside. Her black hair streamed behind her like a pennant of silk and she looked dreamily happy, leaning her cheek against her husband’s back. Fergus must have been still in princess-rescuing mode because he looked like a handsome avenging prince.
I checked in on Falcon’s army. No longer encamped by the sea engaging in entertaining but pointless naval battles, the entire force was marching instead, traveling at magically amplified speeds. As the general, Falcon rode at the forefront, stern in mirror-bright armor.
I pulled back my view again, trying to get a feel for the landscape. Apparently it didn’t work that way, however. I might be able to “see” physical people and places, but only with a specific focus. I couldn’t seem to just soar about and take things in. I needed people and I’d pretty much used up everyone I knew, except Mistress Nancy who might be already here and, well, Titania.
She might be tucked away in my secured mental file folder, but she still blazed on the edge of my consciousness. It was tempting to drift closer, to sniff around a bit. Getting better at my control, I coasted closer, careful to stay back far enough that she couldn’t detect my presence as Marquise had. Her palace seemed very quiet, with none of the activity I’d seen in other vision visits. She had to be there, however, if my mind’s eye drew me to that place.
I tried seeing on the mass-mind level, instead. As if I’d flipped the lens on a microscope from bright field to phase-contrast, a new level of detail jumped out. The black, oily rope strands she used to connect to the people she manipulated radiated out from her palace in a complex, horrifying web.
She was in there, all right, spinning her nasty plans.
Worse, amid the many cords that connected me to Rogue, which seemed iridescent with golden light in my mental metaphor, fine black threads snaked through, seeking me. Reaching from her to Rogue to me.
Worming their way to our unborn child.
