Trial of Shadows (Order of the Elements Book 3) Read online

  “Damn.” She whistled. “He’s confident they won’t come back?”

  “I think he’s hoping I’ll fend them off, despite the fact that I had no idea they even existed until one of them attacked me.” I picked up the controller, fury seeping through me. “He’s reached a new low. But if I don’t see this one through, Brant’s dead.”

  There was no other option. The Death King had me trapped and he knew it.

  Devon shook her head. “So you aren’t going to want to hear the news I got from the Order’s direction?”

  “What, they located your ‘missing’ package?” I asked. “They’re asking me to bring in a rogue again? Or some other mission?”

  “Nah, it’s more directed at both of us,” she said.

  “They aren’t threatening our business again, are they?” I watched the loading screen. “Come on, just tell me.”

  “They’re hosting a school reunion.” She pulled a face. “For those of us who graduated ten years ago. It’s a snazzy event at a hotel in town.”

  “Devon, that is not good news.”

  “I never said it was good news, did I?” she said. “Nobody likes school reunions except for the people who actually enjoyed school.”

  “So, Judith French,” I said, with a theatrical shudder. “They don’t seriously expect me to show up, do they? I haven’t done anything to make the academy proud.”

  “Maybe I can tell the future graduates how I created my business making cantrips instead of studying,” she said.

  “At least it’s more honest than the drivel they told us,” I said. “I can tell them what it’s like playing security duty for the Death King and finding all the creative places people hide cantrips in their laundry. That is, if His Deathly Highness would take a school reunion as an excuse to let me out of his sight.”

  She snickered. “Don’t worry, I know you’re busy this week. The reunion is this Friday night, though.”

  “Great.” A school reunion. Just what my week needed. “I think I’ll pass. I’d almost rather take on a rogue spirit mage than face the people who fucked me over after the memory-loss crap.”

  The academy hadn’t directly been involved with my punishment after Dirk Alban’s death, but they’d punished me in their own way when they’d failed me on every exam I’d taken, despite my malfunctioning memory erasing years of study. Not to mention they were the ones who’d invited Dirk Alban to speak to my class to begin with. I didn’t entirely blame them—I was the one who’d taken the bait, after all—but that didn’t mean I had any intention of revisiting bad memories any more than I had to.

  “Are you going back to the Court of the Dead tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Every day this week, yeah,” I said. “The liches take over as security at night. Generous of them.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “So… what’s the plan?”

  “Whoever said there was a plan?”

  Devon tilted her head. “You aren’t going to do everything the Death King says, are you?”

  “If I want Brant to live, I can’t go chasing down rogue spirit mages,” I said. “Not while I’m on the clock, anyway.”

  “But outside of it?”

  I picked up the Xbox controller. “What can I do? The spirit mage is probably long gone by now, and besides, the Death King is looking for any excuse to let Brant be sentenced to death. He doesn’t care about him, and he only made this bargain with me so that I’d take him up on his job offer.”

  “Then turn it around on him.” Devon grabbed the controller and hit the pause button. “Seriously. You’re acting like he holds all the cards, but he doesn’t. You’re a living spirit mage—one of the handful of people who might give him a run for his money. You removed his soul once, in case he’s forgotten.”

  “Devon, I think he’d have words to say if I held his soul hostage as a bargaining chip.” And as he’d proven already, there was no other way I could best him.

  “You don’t have to.” She gave me a serious look. “That other spirit mage could have done the same. You’re the one thing standing between him and them.”

  “He didn’t need me, though,” I said. “He took out the spirit mage himself. I didn’t do anything except get taken by surprise.”

  “You’ll be prepared next time,” she said. “Besides, with the number of attacks there’s already been, I can guarantee you’ll end up saving his arse again sooner or later.”

  “That’s just it,” I said. “The only way I can make sense of him being so blasé about the attacks is to assume he deliberately stuck a neon target on his head so that they’d all come to the castle at the same time. Just like he did with the soul amulet when we faced the Crow.”

  “So, that gives you a way in,” she said. “Get creative. I believe in you.”

  “Glad one of us does.” My anger had begun to melt away, though, to be replaced with a steely resolve.

  Screw the Death King. I’d make him thankful for having me around to fend off those who wanted him dead—spirit mages or otherwise.

  6

  My plan would be a lot easier if I got Ryan and the other Elemental Soldiers on my side, which meant getting up at the crack of dawn to head into the Parallel before the contest started for the day.

  I arrived at the castle and found Felicity guarding the doors, clad in armour with her blue-lined coat swirling behind her. I wondered how hard I’d have to plead for the Death King to let me keep the uniform after the contest finished. I had to admit it was nice to have decently durable clothing for once. And boots which didn’t leak.

  “Hey, Liv,” she said. “The boss isn’t around, but the others are in the break room.”

  “That figures.” It’d been too much to hope for that His Deathly Highness would show up to assuage my concerns about his attitude to potential attacks from rogue spirit mages. Maybe Ryan had had better luck when they’d addressed their concerns to their master yesterday, but I didn’t hold out much hope.

  I entered the castle via the back door and joined the other Elemental Soldiers in the break room, which lay down the corridor from their living quarters. Half the space contained a large sofa big enough to seat at least four people, along with a TV mounted to the wall, while the kitchen at the back was stocked with snacks brought in from the other side—Ryan had explained yesterday that they had a rota on who did the week’s shopping, since the liches didn’t need to eat or drink. Ryan and Cal occupied the sofa, while Dex and Aria flew around the ceiling in a game of chase.

  “Nice place, this, isn’t it?” said the fire sprite, spotting me. “I always assumed His Deathly Highness made his people sleep in the dungeons.”

  “The dungeons are involved in today’s tasks,” said Ryan. “Or so Felicity says, anyway. She won’t tell me why.”

  “Perhaps the Death King is planning on locking the contenders in there all night as an endurance test.” For all I knew, the whole contest was entirely for his own amusement. It wouldn’t surprise me at this point.

  “You should speak of him with more respect,” Cal said. “The next Fire Element needs to be ready for anything. And we need to weed out any scumbags who are plotting against our leader.”

  “There shouldn’t be any left, surely.” Felicity entered the room. “The non-fire mages are all out.”

  “And did he tell you about the spirit mage?” I asked the others. “Because as far as I’m concerned, that shows a glaring lack of any respect for his employees.”

  “I told the others,” Ryan added. “I also spoke to my master. He claims that scaring off the intruder ought to have deterred any other spirit mages from trying the same thing.”

  I’d believe that if I hadn’t found another intruder hiding in a bush five minutes later.

  “Did the spirit mage really attack you during the trials?” asked Felicity. “I didn’t see.”

  “The Death King scared them off,” I said, addressing Cal as well. “He also claimed he was likely the target and used that as his reasoning for not warni
ng us first. But if he knows who the spirit mage was and whether they might come back, he wouldn’t say. Did he tell any of you?”

  “No,” said Ryan. “Honestly, he just doesn’t want us distracted from our jobs. Our goal is to keep all enemies out of the castle and from interfering in the trials, and we aren’t trained to deal with spirit mages.”

  Except for me. If you counted half a lesson as proper training anyway. “I understand that, but it doesn’t exactly set a good precedent for the new Fire Element. I mean, I’d be concerned if my employer wasn’t telling me the potential risks before I took the job.”

  “Protecting him is our job, though.” Cal rose languidly to his feet and walked out of the room. “I’m going to check the arena. Felicity, are you done?”

  “Sure.” She turned on her heel. “Ryan, don’t fall too far behind. The boss wants us outside in ten minutes.”

  “Got it.” Ryan climbed off the sofa. “The Death King has too many enemies to count, and not all of them are worthy of the same level of attention. Right now, his focus is on keeping potential intruders out of the position as Fire Element. The rest, he can deal with later.”

  “I know.” Frustration burned beneath the surface. “But I can’t do my job if I’m walking around blindfolded. I’m not supposed to be the one on trial here.”

  Or maybe I was, and this was a test to see if I was worthy of taking on the position of the Death King’s Spirit Element. A position I wanted less and less with each passing day. I wouldn’t back out now, though. For Brant’s sake, if nothing else.

  “If you’ve already told him that, there’s nothing more I can do,” Ryan said. “Sorry, Liv. If it’s any consolation, things will go back to normal around here after this week is up.”

  “I’ll try to hold off on punching him in the nose before then.” I gave a grim smile. “You’d think my ex-boyfriend’s life hanging on the line would be enough of an incentive, but he’s seriously testing my patience.”

  The Death King might not like me, but he wouldn’t reprimand the other three Elemental Soldiers for asking questions. If they started pressuring him over the issue of the spirit mage, too, then he’d have to cave eventually and tell them the truth. Right?

  The two of us left the break room at the same time as a contender walked past, from the direction of the main part of the castle. I recognised her as the young woman from yesterday… the one I’d found spying on the contest after the spirit mage’s attack.

  “He actually let you stay?” I said to her.

  “Oh, it’s you.” She turned to me. “Turns out I performed well enough in the rest of the tasks yesterday to be worthy of a place in the trials.”

  What the hell was the Death King playing at this time? I looked at Ryan, who glanced over their shoulder at both of us. “I’ll go and catch up to the others. Don’t forget you have to be outside in ten minutes… that includes you, Bria.”

  Evidently, they didn’t want to discuss their private meeting with the Death King in front of any of the contenders, but they’d given me an opening.

  “That’s your name?” I asked the woman. “Bria?”

  “Yeah, why?” Her defensive tone wasn’t unexpected. I wasn’t normally this much of a grump, but several brushes with death coupled with the Death King’s attitude problem were starting to grate on me. That, and the fact that she’d sneaked into the trials under the liches’ noses and had still been allowed to stay.

  “Some mages use aliases.” I watched Ryan walk out of sight. Wait, had they left me with her on purpose? Maybe. There was no rule saying I wasn’t allowed to speak to the contestants—or ask them pointed questions. She had already seen me use spirit magic and hadn’t commented on it. Was it a usual sight to her, or had she been more concerned with not getting kicked out?

  “C’mon,” I said to her. “You have to join the others. What’re you doing alone in here, anyway?”

  She’d been coming from the direction of the main part of the castle… which was supposed to be out of bounds to the contenders, as far as I was aware. Hmm.

  “Forgot my coat.” She indicated the plain dark uniform which all the contestants had been given at the end of the previous day. “Then I got lost. This place should come with a map.”

  “The Death King doesn’t normally have visitors,” I said. “As you may have gathered.”

  “What’s it like?” she asked. “Working for him?”

  “A trial.” I opted for an honest approach in the hope that it might make her open up a little about how she’d sneaked in without being noticed. “Don’t tell him I said that.”

  She grinned. “I can see why it would be. I haven’t seen the man himself yet. What’s he like?”

  My mouth parted. She might be innocently curious, but her questions were those a spy might ask, and I still didn’t trust her motives in being here. On the other hand, she’d given me an opening.

  “Dangerous,” I said carefully. “I mean, he’s an immortal lich lord who’s been in power longer than I’ve been alive, and then some.”

  “Huh.” She frowned. “Not what I heard. I thought he only got the job a decade or so back.”

  “Really?” I tried to hide my genuine surprise. “How’d you know?”

  “I thought everyone did.” She shrugged. “I guess if you don’t live here in the Parallel, you might have missed it.”

  Or rather, my missing memories had evidently eaten that particular piece of information, too. “Yeah. I don’t live in the Parallel. This is a temporary job.”

  For her, though… it might explain her lack of reaction to my use of spirit magic. Rare or not, it wasn’t a crime on this side of the nodes.

  “Fair enough,” she said. “I imagine he pays well. That’s one of the reasons I want the position as Fire Element.”

  “Pay isn’t everything,” I said. “There are risks, too. But I guess you knew that.”

  “Meaning, the risk of getting killed by a phantom?” she said. “Oh, that’s old school. We get them everywhere back home.”

  “Do you get liches, too?” I said.

  “Nah, they’re all conscripted into the Death King’s army, aren’t they?” she said. “They can’t turn on us.”

  “Actually…” I doubted the wisdom of telling her the Death King’s secrets, but if she was working against us, she already knew, and if not, she’d need to know what she was up against if she wanted the job of the new Fire Element, once way or another. “Actually, there have been a few incidents recently. Thought you should know in case you end up getting the job without anyone telling you.”

  “Thanks for the reminder, then,” she said, turning to the door Ryan had gone through. “Is that the way out?”

  “Yeah, we should head outside before we’re late.”

  We walked out of the exit and towards the arena. While part of me doubted she’d sneaked in using legal means, her comment about the Death King had knocked me off-balance. How much more had the gaps in my memory swallowed up? Brant used to be my go-to person for reliable info on the power structures in the Parallel, but he’d left out some pretty major things. Like his own criminal enterprises. And now, it seemed, how long the Death King had been in charge.

  As I neared the arena, a shadow fell across my back as though conjured up by my thoughts. I slowed my pace, letting Bria walk ahead. Then I turned to the steps, and the masked figure looking down at me.

  “Decided to welcome your potential Fire Elements in person?” I queried.

  “You were talking to that contender,” he said. “Why?”

  So he had been paying attention, then. “She asked what I knew about you. Since you’re so elusive and mysterious.”

  “And what did you tell her?” he said.

  I tilted my head. “Why? Worried I’m bad-mouthing you behind your back?”

  “Simple curiosity,” he said. “Well?”

  “I said you were a deadly immortal lich lord who’s been in power forever,” I said. “She corrected me on my dates
a little. Seems I was misinformed on how long you’ve been in the position of Death King.”

  Which meant there were people in the Parallel right now who’d known him before he’d become Death King. No wonder the vampires had known his old nickname. They were ancient enough that it would have still made sense if he’d been a century old, admittedly, but perhaps I could make use of that information later down the line.

  “Your point?” he said.

  I shrugged. “Just found it interesting. I’d also like to know why you let her stay in the contest after she showed up late and tried to hide in the bushes. Not exactly soldier-worthy behaviour.”

  “I have a policy of giving everyone at least one extra chance,” he said. “Including yourself.”

  “If you ignore the time you locked me up for days before letting me explain myself.” Second chances? He’d locked me in a cell, the dickhead. “Why are you suddenly giving everyone the benefit of the doubt? Because if you’re intending to lure your enemies in so you can force them to expose their treachery, you might have held the contest somewhere which didn’t literally contain the lives of yourself and every single person in your Court.”

  “I didn’t know you were so concerned for my well-being.”

  My hands clenched. “I’m concerned that you’re making it bloody impossible for me to do my job, Death King. If you’re going to keep secrets from me, invite people with dubious motives onto your property and allow latecomers to sneak in, don’t blame me if I accidentally kill the wrong person.”

  “I’m honoured that you’re so dedicated to the cause,” he said, “but I doubt you have reason to worry. Anyone who’s foolish enough to get on your bad side deserves their fate.”

  “Do you include yourself in that number?” I said, before I could question if it was wise to anger him at a time like this. “Because you’ve spent longer on my bad side than otherwise.”

  “Really.” His tone dripped with scepticism. “If you’re reconsidering your offer to work for me, then I would remind you to think of the others who would be impacted by your decision.”