Golden Stair (17 page)

Isai didn’t.

The wizard waved an arm in the air, sending another wave of power and incense washing over Adonis. “And you looked into the matter because you actually believed you could steal a witch’s familiar?” he asked incredulously.

“I am trying to unseat a vampire king,” Kirill said stiffly. “You will find there is very little I have not tried.” He cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, I was never able to locate the witch or her familiar.”

“Wait a minute,” Irina said. “Are you telling me, that this witch stole a child—a descendant of Apollo—and somehow turned her into a familiar?”

“It is possible to make a human your familiar,” Isai said reluctantly. “But it would be challenging. Familiars are not usually chosen, they choose their witches. For a familiar to be effective, its goals must be aligned with the witch. To force a powerful creature to align its goals with you would be an almost impossible task. It would have to be completely brainwashed.”

“Ivy is not an ‘it,’” Adonis growled. His temper spiked and he focused on the wizard’s shining aura. If only he had the strength to give the magic user the thrashing his arrogance deserved.

“Oh, how horrible.” Irina’s lilting tones reflected her sadness. “That’s why the witch wanted the baby. It would be nothing to get a helpless child to bond with you.”

Adonis’ heart clenched. “And if you kept her trapped in a tower for her entire life—completely devoid of any other company—and filled her head with enough fear to assure she never left…”

“Indeed,” Isai agreed. “There would be other things too, of course. Spells would have to be done to allow the human to act as a familiar. Part of that role is being able to absorb natural energy, to be a sort of bottomless well of power. That could be why she chose a descendent of Apollo, Ivy would have been born with at least some ability to draw power from the sun. There are spells that would magnify that, and if performed over and over, throughout Ivy’s life…she could be a powerful familiar.”

“A bottomless well of power?” Irina echoed. “Adonis—”

“Don’t say it,” Adonis said sharply. His thoughts raged through his head like a swarm of angry bats. It took a great deal of effort to shove them away, to avoid giving in to the urge to think about the situation in a completely selfish way. Now was not the time to think about his needs, not when Ivy could be hurt.

Aphrodite, I misjudged you.
He let the single thought escape, wanting to express a bit of gratitude for the way fate had intervened in his life.

“Is that a will o’ wisp?” Irina said suddenly.

Hope flared in Adonis’ chest and he almost fell off the bed when he lunged toward Irina.
The will o’ wisp.

“Did you say will o’ wisp?” he demanded, feeling around to make his way off the bed.

“How the blazes did that thing get in here?” Kirill muttered. “Isai, when was the last time you checked the wards?”

“I checked them this morning, as I always do,” Isai answered testily. “The little pest must have come in with one of you. Don’t look directly at it, Your Majesty, it will lead you astray,” Isai added begrudgingly. His tone suggested he didn’t find the idea of Kirill being led off by a glamour-wielding fey to be a great loss.

“No! It’s here for me, let it be.” Adonis ignored the pinch of his newly healed skin as he reached out a hand, holding his breath as he waited for the telltale tingle of energy that would mean the blinking fey was near him. When he finally felt it, he had to try twice to speak.

“You’re the one who made me fall into Ivy’s tower, aren’t you?”

A feeling of satisfaction flowed over him from the fey.

“I was meant to find Ivy, wasn’t I?” he asked softly.

More satisfaction.

“Can you help me find her?”

Suddenly the tingling fled from his hand and exploded in his head. Lights danced where his vision should have been and Adonis gritted his teeth against the sudden swell of sensation, but he didn’t fight it. The will o’ wisp settled over his mind, filling it with a desert landscape.

“She’s in a desert,” he said, concentrating on the land, searching for some feature that would help him identify where it was. The fey pulsed and suddenly he was looking at Ivy kneeling on the floor, her hands covered in yellow and orange paint.
Not a real desert. A painting.

“Kirill, can you bring me some paints and a canvas?”

Someone, he assumed Kirill, snapped his fingers and a growl from Isai let Adonis know who’d been chosen for the errand. He ignored the irate wizard and focused on the landscape in his mind. Finally Isai arrived with his supplies. Irina helped Adonis to the floor and they spread out the paints. Adonis held out his hand. “Blue, please, something light.”

As soon as his hands were covered in paint, he began. Swirl after swirl followed his hands, the scent of the paint filling his senses. He let the scent take him back in time, let it remind him of how he’d felt painting with Ivy, creating art while she hummed excitedly over his masterpiece. Every now and then he’d call for another color. He’d never painted blind before, but he trusted his body to do it. The will o’ wisp still hovered in his mind, using the same magic that it so often used to lead unsuspecting travelers astray to project the image Adonis needed. When he heard Irina gasp, he knew he was done.

“Adonis, it’s amazing,” she breathed.

“Isai, I’m afraid I have very little energy left. If you would be so kind?” Adonis asked, gesturing to the painting. A swell of magic wafted over him. “This is it. I have to go to her.”

“Adonis, I wish I could help you, but I’m afraid a desert is not a locale conducive to undead assistance,” Kirill said ruefully.

Adonis groped around himself until he could stand. Without him having to say a word, Kirill reached out and took his paint-slicked hand.

“Kirill, I will never be able to thank you enough for all you’ve done for me already,” he said quietly. He swallowed hard, his throat constricting with emotion as he tried to find the words to express his gratitude.

“I know,” Kirill said softly. “I have been where you are. Don’t waste time here with me. Go. Find Ivy.”

Soft, thick material was pressed into his hand. “Take this cloak. There’s no sense in startling the young lady.”

Adonis laughed, half-tempted to tell Kirill how he and Ivy had met. He doubted Ivy would flinch if he showed up naked. But that was a story for another time.

“Adonis, I will go with you if you need me,” Irina spoke up.

“You most certainly will not,” Kirill snarled. “Isai can go if Adonis needs help.”

“Excuse me, Your Majesty?” Isai spluttered. “With all due respect to His Majesty of Nysa, leaping into a painting is hardly a reliable manner of travel. We have no way of knowing if he’ll even get to Ivy, or if he’ll be able to—”

“Kirill, what have I told you about asking of your people what you’re not willing to do yourself?” Irina chastised her husband, overriding Isai’s increasingly disparaging rant.

“It’s all right, everyone,” Adonis called out, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “The will o’ wisp will guide me. I’ll be fine. Isai should stay here. If anything were to happen, he would have the best chance of finding us. And Irina, you must stay with Kirill. I don’t like to think of what would happen to the world if anything happened to you.”

Before anyone could argue, Adonis knelt down and groped for the painting. As he’d expected, his hand passed through. He offered a grin to the room. “Wish me luck.”

Ivy stared at the cup of tea. The delicate china with the green spirals curling around its edges sat on the table in front of her, soft billows of steam rising from its dark depths. It was such an ordinary sight—nothing there that should have surprised her at all. Except she was out of tea.

“I’m losing my mind,” she whispered. She raised a hand to cover her eyes, counting to ten before peeking through her fingers at the table. The tea was still there.

Ivy sank into the sturdy wooden chair beside the table, the same chair she’d sat in so many times while her mother had fixed them dinner. She dragged her gaze from the cup of tea and hesitantly eyed her surroundings.

Everything looked as it should, as it always had. The tower that she’d lived in her entire life was still standing, her books still lined the shelves near to bursting, the smell of paint still drifted off of the canvases tilted against the wall to dry. All was as it should be.

Only…this wasn’t how it should be.

Pain throbbed in Ivy’s temples and she lifted her hands to apply pressure. A memory was trying to make itself known, but every fiber of her being warned her to ignore it, to push it away. Whatever the memory was, it would only bring misery. She knew it.

Nervous energy seized her body and she shot up from her chair to pace tight circles around the room. Suddenly she strode to the window and looked out at the land. The lake beside the tower glistened like melted sapphires in the sunlight. The fresh scent of leaves tickled her nose as the trees swayed in the gentle summer breeze. The wind slid warm fingers of air through her golden tresses and she raised her face to bask in the warmth of the sun.

Heat sizzled along her nerves, sparking painfully. Ivy winced and rubbed her arms, trying to rid herself of the prickly sensation. The buzzing became a burn, biting at her skin like acid. Ivy shrieked, staring down at her flesh.

“What’s happening?” she whispered, her eyes so wide the breeze made them water. A tear slid down her cheek and Ivy moaned. “Mother, help me.”

“Ivy, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Ivy whirled around, her lips parting in shock as her mother rushed to her side. Dame Gothel took Ivy’s hand in hers, staring into her daughter’s eyes with concern shining from her face.

“Mother?” This wasn’t right. Was it? Why did it seem so strange that her mother was here?

“Ivy, you look so pale. Come in, dear, lie down.”

Ivy stumbled as her mother led her back into the tower and up the winding staircase to her room. She blinked, confused for a reason she couldn’t name, as her mother guided her to lie in bed.

“Wait,” she said, her mind fighting to tell her something. “It’s the middle of the day.” She put a hand to her temple as if she could ease the pounding headache that was forming. “You’re never home during the day.” Her mind flashed to Adonis, and she saw an image of him climbing her hair to get to her window, the sunlight glinting off his sparkling hazel eyes as he smiled up at her.
Adonis.

“Ivy?”

Ivy jumped, her heart seizing in her chest as she raised her face to see Adonis standing next to her mother. Her jaw dropped and fear slithered down her spine as she waited for the inevitable moment when her mother would rage at finding an incubus in her daughter’s bedroom.

But Dame Gothel didn’t react. Instead, she just stood there, watching Ivy with motherly affection shining in her gaze.

“This isn’t right,” Ivy murmured, shaking her head. “No, this isn’t how it would go. Mother would be furious if she knew you were here. She’d…”

Pain lanced through her head and Ivy stumbled, clutching her skull. She looked to her mother, a new image superimposing itself over the woman standing beside her. She saw Dame Gothel’s face twisted in rage, her eyes nearly glowing as she raged that Ivy had betrayed her. Ivy’s golden braid that had been coiled in a pile beside her on the bed a moment ago, vanished. The frayed ends of her hair caught her peripheral vision and her lip trembled at the memory of her mother’s knife shearing through her tresses as she’d cried.

The image of Adonis wavered as well and Ivy sobbed.

“Adonis, don’t leave me,” she moaned.

The dam that had been holding back the memories burst. Ivy leapt off the bed as she was swarmed by images, sounds, and emotions. She fell against the doorframe as she remembered Adonis taking off into the sky, leaving her behind. She crashed into the table, sending the teacup to shatter against the floor as she remembered the way her mother had enchanted the painting and shoved her into it, abandoning her to an empty desert of her own creation.

Memories, colors, emotions, threw Ivy around like a grain of sand in a hurricane. She put a shaky hand to her forehead, her chest heaving with every breath. An eerie, semi-hysterical peace suddenly fell over her like a blanket, muffling the flames of her panic. She crouched on the floor, clutching the sides of her head as she gathered her wits. She was in her painting. In a desert. Or not a desert? It had been a desert when her mother dragged her painting before her, but her tower…?

The energy inside her throbbed and Ivy raised her gaze to her window and closed her eyes. Remembering what Adonis had taught her that day he’d helped her get to the astral plane, she tried to feel the energy around her. It was her painting, wasn’t it? Her creation. She’d made these dunes, this sun, that sky. If it had been infused with magic…

She imagined herself standing outside, looking at her tower from the ground. Memories of the scent of grass, the sound of lake water being churned by the wind…

When she opened her eyes, she stood in front of her tower.

“It’s not real,” she said numbly. She closed her eyes as she let the thought settle in her mind, felt the weight of its truth. Her mother had pushed her into her own painting, infused it with magic. No. Not infused it with magic. Awakened the magic. The magic in her painting. Ivy’s magic.

A sharp laugh escaped Ivy’s throat and she opened her eyes to see her tower had vanished. Gone was the stone structure that had been her home—no, her
prison
—for her entire life. Gone was the lake that she’d so often yearned to put her feet in, the grass that she’d wanted to run in. The trees, the clouds—everything was gone and she was alone in a silent wasteland.

“I’ve been living in a dream…for how long, I wonder?”

On some level, Ivy knew she should be feeling something. Pain, sadness, anger, fear…something. But for now, in this moment, she was absolutely calm. Eerily so.

Her mother had always told her that her magic could only be used for healing. She’d been adamant about that fact, had hammered that point into Ivy’s brain for as long as she could remember. But Adonis was right. It had been a lie. The energy inside her shifted again, a powerful swell like the undercurrent of one of the vast oceans she’d read so much about.

Her mother had lied.

“…you are not human… I know an elemental when I see one. You are too solid to be a pureblood elemental, but believe me when I say that someone in your family tree lives in a beam of sunlight.”

Adonis’ words floated back to her. At the time she hadn’t believed him. Her mother had told her they were human, and she’d had no reason to doubt her. Until now.

She could feel it. She could feel her power building, fed by the sun as it heated her flesh. She closed her eyes, searching her mind and her soul. There was no one here to ask for help discovering what she was, and even if she knew what she was, she didn’t know what she would do or where she would go. Before she did anything else, before she took another step, she had to figure out what she wanted. Once she had a goal, a real goal—a goal that was hers and no one else’s—then she could start. Then her life would truly begin.

“Mommy? Are you okay?”

Startled, Ivy opened her eyes and whirled around. Two children stood a mere few feet behind her. The girl had long golden hair that fell to her waist and brown eyes so light they looked gold. The boy had a shock of wild brown hair in total disarray around his head, and hazel eyes that sparkled with mischief. Her eyes warmed with tears and she tilted her head. He looked so much like Adonis…

Ivy beamed at the children. Behind them, a small cabin stood surrounded by lush green trees, an oasis in the desert that had not been there moments ago.

“What a happy dream,” Ivy murmured. Her shoulders drooped. “But it’s just a dream.”

There was a crashing somewhere deep in the trees, leaves ripping and branches snapping like dry bones. Ivy tensed. For a moment she worried that the fear in her mind had somehow manifested itself without her intention, her power delving into her imagination for things to create much as it had with the children and the cabin, only this time malicious and dark. It would be the nightmare on the astral plane all over again.

Without thinking, Ivy put herself between her children and the threat, holding her hand up and preparing to wipe the entire scene away if necessary. She straightened her spine and faced the trees. This was her world. Hers, and no one else’s. She would not be made to cower here.

A figure stumbled free of the trees at last. At first, all Ivy could see was a pale grey cloak, wrapped around broad shoulders. The stranger’s legs and feet were bare and Ivy winced at the thought of how painful it had to be trudging through the forest without the protection of shoes. She jumped back as the figure plunged a few steps forward only to run into the side of the cabin she’d only recently created.

“Bloody hell, I thought this was a barren desert,” a man’s voice groused. Hands rose into the air and the sleeves of the cloak fell to reveal strong, muscled arms.

Ivy blinked, but kept her hand pointed toward the newcomer. “Are you all right?” she called out.

The figure twitched on the ground and shot into a sitting position. The hood of the cloak fell back and Ivy gasped.

“Adonis!”

His flesh was covered in healing cuts and his eyes were opaque milky orbs, but she would know him anywhere. As soon as she called out for him, his hand flailed in the air in front of him.

“Ivy?” he said hoarsely. “Ivy, is that you? I can feel your energy…”

It was strange that her mind had created another image of Adonis. Perhaps her brain was trying to tell her something?

Or maybe, I need to get over him and find someone who actually wants me,
she thought bitterly. She waved a hand at Adonis, waiting for him to vanish as the other images had. The image remained. Ivy closed her eyes and counted to ten. When she opened them, Adonis was still there. Her spine went ramrod straight and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Ivy, say something, please,” Adonis begged. “I can’t see you. You’re just a ball of golden energy now.”

Ivy put a hand over her mouth as she crept toward him. “Adonis? Is that really you?”

“Ivy!” He stood and leaned forward, taking a few careful steps. “Where are you?”

“What happened to you?” Ivy whispered.

She carefully reached out a hand to touch his shoulder, startled when he tensed and reached out to snatch her into his arms. He crushed her against him and for a moment she remained stiff, confused. Part of her wanted to throw her arms around him, to ask him how he’d found her and beg him to take her away. The other part of her remembered the sight of him flying away, leaving her behind with no more than a vague promise that he would return someday.

For a moment, he didn’t speak. They just stood there, his arms banded around her like iron clamps, the warmth from their bodies mingling together. Ivy couldn’t get the image of his unseeing eyes out of her head. A seed of unease burrowed deep inside her and began to grow.

“Adonis, how did you find me here?” A lump rose in her throat. “Did you go to the tower first?”

His body shuddered with a heavy breath. “Yes. Ivy, can you ever forgive me?”

“Forgive you for what?” Ivy pulled back to look him in the eyes, wincing when she was reminded he couldn’t see her. The white orbs in his eye sockets twitched as though he were trying to focus on her.

“For being so stupid as to let your mother catch me in your tower. For trying to wreck the life you had when I didn’t have anything better to offer you.” He slumped against her. “For not telling you the truth about why I couldn’t stay.”

Ivy’s heart pounded as she curled her fingers into his tunic and leaned back. “And what is that truth?”