“Yes, but you’re still talking to me. How often do you get to talk to someone who understands the Order, Aaron? Tell me, what finally did it?”
“I turned thirty. The night before we’d gone into a sewage treatment plant. There was a small hydra in it, and it threw us around like we were fucking toys. I woke up that morning. My legs hurt. My whole body was black and blue. It hurt to sit up. It hurt to piss. I’d soaked in a tub for an hour the night before, and I could still smell rotting human shit on me. It was in my hair. On my skin. I reeked of it. I looked at myself in the mirror and I decided I was fucking done surviving. It was time to thrive.”
“This doesn’t look like thriving to me.” I indicated the room.
“This came later,” he said.
“Ah. Let me guess. You started to moonlight. The Order doesn’t like that.”
“I was done caring what the Order likes.”
“But still, they really don’t like to kick knight-enchanters out. You guys are a significant investment for them. They would’ve ignored your little side jobs.”
He snorted. “Little?”
“You must’ve really fucked up. You warded someone you shouldn’t have warded. The Order came across your ward while pursuing a petition and it must’ve blown up in their faces. What happened? Did someone die?”
His eyes turned dark. Magic tore out of Aaron and splayed around behind him, like a wave ready to crash down and drown. If it could’ve made a sound, it would’ve roared at me like a hurricane.
Wow. Not good. Not good at all.
“Someone did die,” I said. “Wow. Sucks to be you.”
We stared at each other. The real Aaron was awake now and fully focused on me. Whatever bargain he had made, he’d ended up with a shit-ton of power. He was the magical equivalent of a small nuke.
“Impressive,” I said. “But not something you were born with.”
He stared at me, his expression harsh.
“Pagan gods come in different flavors,” I said. “Some are interested in humans, some are amused by them. And then there is the Tuatha Dé Danann. Everyone knows that of all the gods available, they’re the absolute last resort, because they fought us and lost. They didn’t assume godhood because of their deeds, they had to assume it to survive. They hate us and everything we stand for.”
“Personal experience talking?” Aaron asked. His voice sounded unnaturally deep.
“I’ve met Morrigan, and I was there when her Hound died, and a new Hound was chosen.”
“Mhm. That happened two flares ago. How old were you then? Ten?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “Let’s talk about that feather over there.”
I pointed to the feather above his head.
“That is a swan feather. You’ve got cold water sponges in your little lab, monsters in your ship, and all sorts of bizarre marine critters having a rave outside. Those cliffs over there, that’s probably the coast of Ireland. And then there is the hole itself. There is a nexus of power just through that hole, about twenty or so yards from the ship. That’s what’s generating all of the magic currents and keeping this gap open. I bet it doesn’t close even during tech.”
The magic behind Aaron crested.
“Humor me,” I said. “I came all this way. Here is what I think happened. You got yourself kicked out of the Order and they blacklisted you by letting everyone know that they would consider anyone who hired you their enemy. Standard procedure. The Knights are not forgiving. So here you were, adrift and abandoned”—thanks, Rimush—“and the Night of the Shining Seas happened. Was it pretty?”
“It was beautiful,” he said in his deep, power-saturated voice. “The ocean lit up with blue. The magic was so thick, it made you drunk.”
“And in that beautiful moment a deity manifested as a giant swan. You’ve had a whole semester of Comparative Mythology at the Academy. You know Wilmington’s demographics and you knew exactly who that swan was.”
“There were four of them,” he said. “They were majestic. Breathtaking and glowing with white.”
“Four? Well, that’s a dead giveaway, isn’t it? They must’ve been unforgettable, the Children of Lyr.”
“They were,” he said quietly.
“And you trapped one of them in your ward. It must’ve been a once-in-a-lifetime ward, to catch a god who could both fly and swim. The culmination of all of your training and practice.”
Aaron smiled.
“The god couldn’t escape and when the eclipse ended and tech came, that majestic swan would die. So you bargained with the father of that god for the life of his child.”
“It was Fiachra,” he said. “The swan I trapped.”
“And his father is Manannán, Lord of the Sea, Guardian of the Otherworld, and Over-King of Tuatha Dé, for whom the Isle of Man is named. That Manannán. That’s who you haggled with.”
Aaron smiled wider. “Yes.”
“What did you ask for?”
“Powers and riches.”
“Ah. And here you are, three years later, sitting in this ruin, stealing children and chaining them up. You probably still think you came out on top. You haven’t been blessed. You’ve been cursed, Aaron.” I pointed to the kids. “Was it worth it?”
“Yes.” His deep voice boomed. “I will get what I am owed.”
“On that we agree.”
I sprinted toward him, Sarrat in hand.
Aaron clawed the air. The magic wave above him plunged down and turned into real seawater, speeding toward me in a foamy current. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Darin grab Antonio and hold him up above his head.
The wave smashed into me. Like being hit by a charging bull made of concrete. The current jerked me off my feet. I gulped some air, and then the sea swallowed me. The raging water pushed to the back of the room in less than a second. I tried to curl into a ball, but the current was too strong and ice-cold, as if it had come from a melted glacier.
I hit the wall with my left side. Pain shot through my left shoulder all the way down to my fingertips. The impact reverberated through me, and for a second the world dissolved into soft, fuzzy darkness made of agony. The sea gripped me in a watery fist laced with Aaron’s magic, squeezing, hurting, threatening to cave my chest in. My bones groaned.
I clawed at the glimmer of the light, holding on to it through the agony, through the pressure, fighting through it, pushing past the threshold of pain. The darkness melted a little. I strained, trying to move my arms. Like trying to lift a car. The water pinned me to the wall, trying to crush me. I couldn’t raise my sword. I couldn’t even open my eyes. All I managed was a weak twitch.
Aaron’s magic burned me through the water. I felt it, a net woven from power borrowed from a god saturating the sea.
My body screamed for air. The memory of Darin lifting the smaller boy up flashed before me. He’d known what was about to happen. This is what Aaron did to them. This is how he punished them.
Not today. Not anymore.
I bit the inside of my mouth. The salty taste of my blood coated my tongue, the magic in it nipping at me with electric sparks.