Page 2 of A Kiss of Flame
“Not exactly,” she retorted.
He chuckled. “No, not exactly. We’refarmore responsible now.”
Levian and Carvatticus had been friends since they were children. His father had been an advisor to one of the old High Daemon Lords and had hired her mother to consult with some matter of politics between the daemons and the fae. Levian and her mother had been invited to Obsidian, the capital city of daemons, as guests of Car’s family. They’d become fast friends. Levian was a halfbreed outcast with a notorious father, and Car was a daemon runt with a penchant for getting into brawls he couldn’t win. She and Carvatticus had been hellions. Levian’s mother, Trislana, was a beautiful, full-blooded dryad, but even she’d developed a few grey hairs on her head thanks to some of her daughter’s youthful antics.
To be fair to Car, being offered the appointment of the Wizen Council of Mages’s official Ambassador to the Zephyr High Court the winter before had shocked her as much as anyone. Even more shocking when she’dacceptedthe position.
The Wizen Council of Mages were the ruling body over all mages. There was no way to avoid them except never to use magick, which she had tried for a short while to catastrophic effects. They’d loathed Levian for what she was: a second-generation mage, a rare thing amongst their kind, and the daughter of one their most notorious fallen brothers, Merlin. She’d returned the sentiment.
Council had sent her to study at The Towers as a girl, where all young mages trained in magick. Levian had quickly determined that the Council had no genuine interest in her advancement but merely wanted to keep her in check and in line. When she’d left the Towers she’d vowed to give Council a reason to treat her with such disdain and had been a permanent thorn in their sides ever since. At least up until the day she’d decided to become an Ambassador.
Levian took a pull from the flask and immediately flew into a fit of coughs, the spirits burning her throat like she’d swalloweda mouthful of hot coals. “Hells, Car—cough—that could raise the dead.”
Car took a swig and responded to the potent drink with a sharp wince and a shudder. “It’s Vex’s own concoction,” he told her, his voice strained. “It’s disgusting but has a rather pleasant after-effect.”
The mage blinked. As soon as the fire in her throat subsided, it was followed by a soothing tingle that spread over her entire body, like laying in a warm bath full of her favorite things. And she suddenly smelled—apricots. “How strange,” she observed with intrigue. “Vex is still fiddling with potions?”
Her friend took another swig. “Amongst other things,” he replied, handing the flask back to her. “So what do your dragon and vampire think about your new position?” he posed, changing topic with familiar mischief.
She cut him a look and took another—albeit smaller— sip.
For most of her immortal adult life, she’d worked with a vampire, Sirus, and a sun dragon, Barith, taking all manner of odd contract work amongst the Folk that required their strange mixture of expertise. Rescues, spying, tracking, monster hunting, spell crafting, to name a few. It was often unsophisticated work Council loathed her for, which had made it a perfect arrangement for as long as it had lasted.
“Sirus is retired,” she told Car as she surveyed the damage around them. Birds had begun chirping again, and the dust had finally settled. “And Barith is off with his horde being mated,” she cleared her throat, playing it off as a bit of dust still caught in her lungs, and ignored the grip of emotions that filled her belly thinking about the sun dragon. “We all move on with our lives, as you said. We all grow up.”
Sirus was at Volkov, his ancestral castle tucked deep into a hidden forest, with his beloved Gwendolyn. Levian had helped him and Barith rescue Gwen from the clutches of a darkpriestess just the year before, and if she hadn’t witnessed it with her own eyes, Levian would have never thought her blood-drinking friend had a heart, let alone could fall deeply in love. Yet he had. She was happy for them both. She couldn’t say quite the same for Barith.
Dusk was settling rapidly and smeared the sky with uncharacteristically vibrant colors for early winter. The chill in the air grew crisper as the sun began to vanish. If they were going to find the orb, they were starting to run out of daylight, and she’d much prefer to be focused on the task before her and not Barith.
Car slid up next to her, surveying the fallen tower himself. “We do grow up,” he agreed with an uncharacteristic heaviness. “The most exciting thing to happen to me since I’ve ascended to be ruler of Obsidian is when you stole my horns from me a few summers ago and?—”
“Won,” Levian corrected with offense, spinning around to face him. “Iwonyour horns, fair and square, in that game of fae folly, and you know it.”
He rolled his eyes. “I was barely able to speak; I was so pissed,” he pointed out. “You carved them from my head after I’d passed out. Though I don’t know how. I could have sworn you were more drunk than I.”
Shehadbeen extremely drunk. Enough that Levian only foggily remembered using a rather clever bit of magick to carve his horns from his head before she’d shoved them in her enchanted bag, which hung at her side. They were still floating around inside somewhere.
“A bet is a bet,” she declared smugly. “And you know I always collect my winnings.”
He flashed a catlike grin. “Oh, that I know, ViVi.”
Levian sighed as she looked over the crumbled remains of the tower. “The orb has to be here,” she told him. “Somewhere.”
“You’re sure?” he asked skeptically. “I still don’t see why a pixie would leave a priceless treasure behind in a rotting old house.”
“Because he died before he could retrieve it,” she explained. Or so that’s what she’d been betting on.
Levian tapped a long, painted purple nail on her lip as she considered everything she knew. She’d traced her mysterious shadowy band of thieves to Paris, where she’d suspected them of attempting to steal from a half-fae who’d boisterously claimed to own a rare and forbidden artifact known as the Heart Orb. The half-fae’s loudly self-proclaimed ‘rare collection’ had turned out to be nothing but fantasy, but her slippery thieves had given her a lead and an opportunity.
The orb was said to contain the heart of an Abyssal beast from a dark plane of existence far beyond the mortal realm. A beast that allegedly devoured not only souls but light itself. Such an object would send most Folk quivering with fear, but Levian knew better. Stories around Dökk artifacts were often over-embellished.
The Dökk were an ancient race of Shadow Fae that had been mostly wiped out after opening a portal to the Abyss in an attempt to siphon power from the dark realm. Those that had survived only did so long enough to be annihilated by the other Fae to guarantee no portal could ever be opened again. Any magickal item of Dökk origin had been forbidden to possess since The Fall, which naturally meant the Folklovedto collect them.
“You know pixies,” Levian continued. “The estate was likely stripped bare after he died, but if he’d been as clever as they say, he would have hidden it well. That rune was a strange bit of magick, and I think the spell it set off could tell we were here to find the orb and wanted to be sure we didn’t. We’re unlikely the first to trigger it.”
Her friend grunted unpleasantly and turned over a bit of rubble with his booted foot. “Or perhaps the old pixie just wanted everyone to think that,” he suggested instead.
Levian cut him a look. While in Paris, she’d run into Carvatticus, who’d also been in town on Daemon Lord business. He’d offered some contacts to help in her search, which had led her to a rather old shop in Montmartre owned by a pixie, who’d then pointed her toward this old estate in the rural German countryside. The pixies ran the black market of rare and forbidden items of magick. The specific long-dead pixie in whose home they stood happened to be a rather infamous broker in all manner of dark and forbidden magickal items back in his time. He’d been dead for centuries, but according to the other pixie in Montmartre, he’d been the last known owner of the Heart Orb, and it hadn’t been traded on the black market since, meaning there was still a chance it was hidden in his old estate.