“You’ve never been kissed?” Teaser had asked.
Caitlin shook her head.
Glancing around, he nudged her into the alley next to Philo’s place.
“It’s just a bit of fun, you know that?” he asked. “I don’t want to get into trouble for a little kiss.”
“In trouble with my brother?”
“No, with Sebastian’s auntie.”
The fact that Nadia could worry him tickled something inside her—and also made her feel safe. “Just a bit of fun,” she agreed.
Oh, it was more than a bit of fun, that first kiss. It started out sweet and gentle—and ended as hot and edgy as the music. Might not have ended at all if Michael hadn’t walked into that alley with Glorianna in tow.
Probably just as well that they had all spent the rest of the visit within sight of Sebastian’s auntie.
Caitlin stood at the end of Nadia’s personal gardens and breathed in the crisp morning air. Across a little stone bridge—which Lee had assured her was nothing more than an ordinary bridge—was the walled garden that protected Nadia’s landscapes.
Landscapes! According to Nadia, the world was made up of lots of broken pieces fitted together but not necessarily in a tidy way of one village fitting with the next if you kept following a road. Oh, no. Nothing as simple as that. And them—Nadia and Glorianna—sitting at a table with her last night and asking, as calmly as you please, what landscapes, what parts of her country, were held in her garden. How was she to know? And why was Glorianna so sure they would be able to reach the White Isle? How was she planning to reach it? Was she figuring to have Lee cart them around on his little bit of an island?
“Like a magic carpet with trees,” she muttered.
“Talking to yourself, Caitlin Marie?” Michael asked as he came up the garden path to stand beside her.
She stiffened. She’d missed him so much, had wanted to see him so much—and now he seemed like just another bully, the way he had yelled at her yesterday and acted like a surly dog when they all went to the Den last evening.
Thinking about the Den made her think about Teaser and that made her think about…
“You’re blushing,” Michael said.
“You had no right to be so mean to Teaser,” she replied, giving him her coolest tone. Not cold, because he was her brother and she wouldn’t be cold to him, but chilly enough to warn him off. “We weren’t doing anything wrong.” At least, not by the Den’s standards. Even Nadia had said as much, hadn’t she?
“Can we not talk about Teaser? I don’t need a sour belly so early in the morning. Here. I brought a peace offering. Will you accept?” He held out a mug of rapidly cooling koffee.
She took the mug of koffee but wasn’t sure if she was ready to warm to him. “Teaser was nice to me. The boys in the village were never nice to me.”
“He’s an incubus. There were things he was wanting from you that you wouldn’t be knowing anything about.”
“I’m not a child, Michael,” Caitlin snapped. “What he wanted was no different from what the boys back home wanted, but at least Teaser was showing me a good time, and he didn’t expect me to go down on my back!”
She saw pain slash across Michael’s face before he looked away, focusing on that walled garden that led to other parts of the world.
“The world has disappeared right out from under me, Caitie, and I’ve lost my balance,” he said quietly.
He hadn’t called her “Caitie” since she was a little girl. She hadn’t allowed him to call her “Caitie,” not since he’d taken up the wandering life. That had been his punishment for leaving her. But she didn’t have the heart to slap at him for it. Not when she was feeling lost too.
“I thought I knew my life,” he continued. “I thought I was resigned to the bitterness of it and the hardship of it and the fear that I’d enter a village just as I’d done for years but this would be the time the people would turn against me because I was a Magician, and all their troubles would be laid on my shoulders. I thought I was resigned to the things I couldn’t have because of what I was, and I had found a kind of contentment, even joy, when my being in a place made a difference to someone. But the world is so much more than I thought it was—and I’m not sure of who or what I am anymore. I’m scared for myself, and I’m scared for you. I’ve seen the monster, Caitlin Marie. I’ve seen the thing that wants to chew up the Light and leave us all in the Dark. And may the Lady of Light have mercy on us, because I don’t know how we’re going to stop that thing.”
Caitlin looked back toward the house and saw Glorianna and Lee heading toward her and Michael. There was still enough distance between them not to be overheard, but she lowered her voice just the same. “Do you think they know how to fight the monster?”
“I’m thinking if they knew, they would already be standing on the battleground. It’s clear from the things that were said—and not said—last night that they all think Glorianna is the key to fighting this battle.”
Caitlin’s breath rushed out of her, leaving her light-headed for a moment. As clearly as if she’d done it yesterday, she could feel herself as a girl sitting near the attic window, looking at an old storybook she’d found in a finely made wooden box, puzzling out the words with her newly acquired reading skills.
“The Warrior of Light,” she whispered, staring at Glorianna.
No.
Michael denied the words with all his will, but the truth of it clanged through him like alarm bells shattering a peaceful morning.
No, he thought, struggling to breathe. Glorianna is the key to finding the Warrior of Light, but she isn’t the Warrior.
“I remember now,” Caitlin said loudly. “The Warrior of Light must drink from the Dark Cup.”
Michael flinched, remembering the day he’d gone searching for Caitlin and found her sitting in the attic with the book open in her lap, crying for the woman in the story. Had she been old enough to understand the full tragedy of the tale?
My heart’s hope lies with Belladonna. She can’t be the Warrior of Light. Can’t be. Lady of Light, please let it be someone else.
“What did you say?” Glorianna asked sharply, hurrying those last steps to reach them. She stared at Caitlin. “The Warrior of Light must drink from the Dark Cup. Isn’t that what you said?”
Michael felt a wind blow through him. Felt Caitlin shudder in response to the force of it. Saw Lee tense and lean as if to bend with it. And saw Glorianna Belladonna standing before him—face cold, green eyes wild, a flame in the Dark.
A flame that would destroy everything in its path.
Then the moment passed, and he wondered if he’d just imagined that wind blowing through him—until he looked at Caitlin and saw the same conflict in her face.
He had imagined nothing. Something had happened. The world had changed, and nothing would be the same for any of them because he was standing in a garden in a part of the world he hadn’t known existed, looking at a woman who was the living version of an ancient tale that was part of his family’s legacy.
On his ninth birthday, his father, Devyn, had taken him up to the attic and showed him the box of books that held the old stories.
“I’ve little enough to give you, Michael,” Devyn said, resting a hand on the box he’d taken out of a specially made cupboard. “There’s this cottage, but it’s usually passed on through the female side of our family line. Since it came to me, I guess there are no others anymore who can lay claim to it. But this is just a place, boy. Just wood and stone. And if you have to leave it, let it go without regrets. But this…” He stroked the wood. “What’s in here is your real heritage.”