Warrior of the Moon

17

There were a lot of things Tarin should have asked, should have done, should have said.

He should have fought her. He knew deep in his bones that she was behind all of it. Iliss was a figurehead. Eris had probably been a figurehead, too. His mother had always been clever and cruel, and though he knew very little about her past, he had always suspected she had done bad things. He had known she was a witch; a magician like the rest of the Fae, but one that corrupted her magical gift into working solely toward gaining more and more of it.

When one took more magic than the heavens had gifted them in the first place, they were also taking magic away from the heavens and the uses they would have put the magic toward. It was why Fae who grew so corrupted began to rot inside; denying their heavenly purpose would kill them in the end, or else change them irrevocably. Tarin did not know what terrible things his mother had done to stay alive and coherent thus far.

He had tried to deny it for as long as he could. It was easy to tell himself, as his mother had tried to convince him, that Iliss had been making up stories in her desperation to survive. But seeing his mother, the way she looked unchanged, the way she looked at him as if she could care less that they shared the same blood, reminded him of everything she had put him through. He did not trust her, not for a second; even less so than he trusted Iliss. Besides, Iliss' story - as much of it as he knew, anyway - made some sense. She could have poofed away from him during the fight; it was not like she had really been losing thanks to that power of hers.

He cursed himself for going to Iefyr's feast rather than interrogating Iliss. He had known how important it was that he get the information she had to offer, but he had convinced himself that building rapport with Iefyr, not insulting him, was just as important. Yet if he had spoken to Iliss instead, he might have avoided this imprisonment.

Because that was what it was. As far as he could tell, the only two people who would ever be able to get in and out of this underground cavern were Iliss and Celestine. Perhaps it had once been a part of the tunnel system Iliss had mentioned the Infernals used to get to the castle, and the collapse of the royal home caused cave-ins under the ground as well. He knew that was a stretch. These walls looked smooth and untouched. He had no idea how Celestine had managed to find such an underground tomb, but it did not bode well for him that she had.

He had his magic, but not much he could do with it. He had never attempted teleportation before, but no matter how hard he willed his magic to take him somewhere, nothing happened. He had a feeling Celestine knew he did not have that ability, anyway, seeing as she still did not care if he had hold of his magic.

He had considered blasting out the walls, the ceiling, but there were a few hitches in that plan. For one, he had no idea how far down he was, or where he was. If he had to blast through a mile of rock, his magic might run dry before he could make it to the surface. For another, he was just as likely to get himself crushed underneath that mile of rock as he was to escape the cave.

Eventually he stopped trying to find ways out and started focusing instead on contacting somebody else for help. He hated asking for help, and it was very rarely that he had to do so. But this situation was bigger than his pride.

Tarin closed his eyes, sitting cross-legged on the ground amongst the Moonspun Crystals, not that they would do him any good. As they were still growing, he knew they had not been plucked yet to be used as magical storage. If they had, he would have taken advantage of that extra power to figure out a way back to Reave.

He did his best to silence his mind and worked on directing his magic into a projection, reaching out for Vice. The twins were the most adept of his Wolves with magic, and so they would be the easiest ones to reach through it.