“What was that?” I asked as he re-stoppered the decanter and handed me the bottle.
“Wine. Drink up.”
I accepted the bottle, but he didn’t wait around to see if I would drink it. He merely turned on his heel and disappeared, without a care. I grabbed another cork stopper and shoved it into the top of the bottle, twisting my ring and muttering Calder’s name. I landed in the same room we had been shown to earlier, though it was initially hard to tell that fact due to the number of next-to-naked women now lounging about. Calder was the only man in the room—currently seated at the small writing desk pushed up against the wall, staring at a map. A map held down on one side by a woman’s bare ass. She had luscious long hair, white-blonde, the colour bordering on a mutation, and was naked except for a scrap of silk that she had wound about herself in a careless way. There was another woman sitting on the shelf above the writing desk, almost as though Calder had put her there to get her out of the way. Her legs swung back and forth, tapping against the sides of the desk.
There were two more curled around his chair like pets—one of them seemed to have fallen asleep waiting for attention, while the other combed her hair out with her fingers, conversing quietly with another, seated on the floor by one of the couches. I counted twenty in total, with several of them milling about the bedroom, rolling on the bed and talking amongst themselves.
“What …” I managed to get out, words dying on my tongue.
Calder glanced up, startling the women all around him. He fixed me with a stare, his expression twisted in annoyance. “The King sent us company.”
“I see that.” I winced. “His entire harem?”
“He thought I might get bored waiting in this room while you attend the festival.”
“You’re not coming?” My brows lowered.
“Of course I am. He’s playing with us.”
I nodded, glancing around. “Ah … should we speak here?”
His lips twitched, as though he might smile. “No, Ven.” He snatched up the map, swatting the blonde woman’s ass so that she would move off the desk, and then he was walking for the door, motioning me to follow. I caught his hand as we cleared the doorway and quickly twisted my ring, whispering a location. We didn’t have time. If I was going to dampen my magic, I needed to do it sooner rather than later.
Calder’s arm shot out by instinct, drawing me into his chest as we tripped through darkness and dropped into my room at the Obelisk.
“This is where they were keeping you?” he asked, glancing at the rumpled silks and furs piled onto the bed.
I nodded, pulling the bottle from where I had secured it to my belt.
“And this is their solution.”
“Wine?” he asked dubiously.
“Mixed with lakris.”
“No.” His tone was final. He didn’t even pause to consider it.
“You haven’t even asked why.” Amusement rode my voice.
“And you’ve already decided to drink it.” Frustration rang in his.
“We have no choice,” I told him. “Did you find out anything that might help us? Do you have any better ideas?”
He set his teeth together, baring them at me, his fingers curling and uncurling at his sides. “How,” he finally ground out, “is that going to help?”
“It’s my power that makes me different. The power of the Fjorn. It’s how the Darkness will connect to me. The lakris will incapacitate me, blanket my power. With this, I can actually hide. As least until we have a better plan.”
“Incapacitate being the key word.” He strode across the rug, turned on his heel, and paced back to me, shaking his head. “I don’t like it, but I don’t have anything better. There are strange things happening around Edelsten—some of the Sentinels are talking about it—but I learned of nothing that can hide you from the Darkness.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, unstoppering the bottle. He had as good as agreed with me, and I didn’t plan on wasting any more time.
I sat back on the bed as he pulled out his map, sitting next to me and laying it across his thighs. “There are rumours about all these farms losing their livestock to a plague.”
“The Darkness?” I questioned as I tipped the bottle to my lips.
Calder watched me drink before turning back to the map. “Possibly, but look at the pattern.”
I leaned over him, bouncing the bottle on my knee. He had marked several settlements on the map. They spread out like a fan with Edelsten and the Sky Keep at their centre. A border.
“I overheard a conversation between the masters,” I muttered, tipping the bottle back to my lips, my eyes narrowed on the map. “They were saying that they could contain something by having enough food and wine here for the festival. That everyone would be travelling here for it.”
“If this plague infecting the food is really the Darkness, then Vidrol knows about it, and he’s using the festival as an excuse to herd the majority of the population to Edelsten.”
“To keep them safe?” I frowned, choking down the rest of the wine. My tongue felt thick, my head dizzy, but I persevered through my thought process. “I don’t think they care about saving the world. To them, the end of this world is just the beginning of another—where they’ll exist just as easily.” I blinked away a wave of dizziness. “They can’t die,” I murmured, centring my fuzzy focus onto Calder. “But I don’t think they care about preventing the end of the world either. They might help the Darkness along, or hinder it, at any moment. They haven’t decided where they stand.”
Calder’s hand slipped around the side of my face, helping me focus on him, his eyes flicking between mine.
“You discovered a lot today, Ven. What did you give them in return?”
A short, sharp laugh hiccupped out of me. “Time,” I decided, my frazzled brain deciding it was the perfect response. “Time with me. I’m the deciding factor in their game. There are too many strings dangling from me. Too many possibilities. I held up my arm, where the fishing lines still hung from my wrist. I plucked at them, unravelling them, discarding them to the ground.
“Will I win against the Darkness, marry one of them and give them the only power they don’t already possess—power over the afterworld?” I asked, staring at the picked-apart fibres. “And if I do—which one will it be? What will happen to the others?” I turned my eyes to Calder, seeing the echo of something horrible staring back at me. “Or will I die?” I asked. “And the world along with me, leaving them to rebuild a new world without us all?”
“I can’t let it happen.” Calder’s whisper was almost too soft for me to catch. “You’re just a girl—”
“I’m an adult now—” I began to protest, but he shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re …” He waved a hand at me. “Tiny.”
“Still an adult—”
“You’re mine, Ven.” His hand dropped from my face and he jumped up, folding the map away. He towered over me suddenly, widening the room to accommodate his presence. “You belong to me and I belong to you, until one of us dies. You will never be able to love anyone, not in that way. We’ve sacrificed that, don’t you see? This … connection between us is selfish. It won’t allow you to be stolen away or married off. I’ll be there on your wedding night, making sure he doesn’t hurt you. I’ll be there as you walk the aisle, shadowing your steps. I’ll be there for every touch, every kiss, every moment of vulnerability. Eventually, he’ll kill me or I’ll kill him. Is that really what you want?”