Triumph Reign (The Callistra Chronicles #3)

SEVEN

Chapter Seven

"Don't panic," Seth's voice said. "I'm okay."

Pasiphae stumbled into the wall of the tent. She felt its ice cold fabric sooth her skin, soothe the raw and throbbing wounds marred with her blood. Then she staggered forward to Seth's bedside, reaching out and grasping his face.

"I'm panicking, Seth," she said, her voice slowly rising. "I'm panicking—"

"It's reversible," his voice cut in quickly. "I'm sorry, there was no time in battle to tell you what I was doing. I can wake up any time I want."

Pasiphae blinked. She looked around, tried to find where exactly the voice was coming from if Seth was right in front of her. All she managed to pick up was Stavros' annoying shuffling as he batted the walls of the tent. Seth's voice, on the other hand, seemed to be coming from inside her head instead.

"What did you do?" she whispered lowly. "What is the barrier you put up?"

"It's pure magic," Seth replied, and though his voice was detached from his body, though Pasiphae was not entirely sure if she wasn't just making all this up, she thought she could hear a sigh in those words. "And pure magic needs a vessel, so I gave it a vessel."

"Your body?"

"Technically speaking, yes."

"And where are you? Where is Sesostris Basillerius?"

A sudden giggle came from the corner of the room. As soon as Pasiphae narrowed her eyes over to Stavros, he clamped his chubby hands over his mouth and ducked out.

"That was my fault," Seth said. "I'm kind of...hovering around you right now. I suspect it looks a little silly."

Pasiphae suddenly understood. "The sylph can see you, can't he?"

"We're made of the same thing right now, so yes."

This was too much. First she had learnt that immortality existed, that Morgana had put her life force into something that might be lurking in Medeis. Now there was such a concept as strong as pure magic, able to separate Seth from his body, to put him a strange in-between...

"Let me guess," Pasiphae said. She tried to inject snark into her voice, but it only came out weary, tired. "As soon as you wake yourself back up, the barrier goes down."

A beat of silence. Then, just as wearily as she: "Once I wake, I suspect a twenty-four hour grace period where I can hold the magic steady, keep the barrier up. But that is all. That is all I could manage without it passing through me as an empty channel. And as soon as it goes down, it's our final battle. War starts again, and this time, we've got to finish it."

Pasiphae dug her hands into her hair. She felt the sudden urge to scream, not from the pain wearing away at her—not from all the carvings and runes and the fae magic, magic that had once sent her diving to the floor in pain but was now nothing more than a little sharp pinching in her stomach. At this point, void of pain, beyond pain, all she was made of was pure frustration.

"This is a mess," she whispered. "This whole world is a mess."

She just wanted him back. She wanted this war to end. One needed to follow the other. One needed to be timed after the other in very careful succession, because they were not ordinary civilians who could chase after their wants at the lightest whim. They were the king and queen of Airesi, and they would be damned if the world fell at their hands.

A sudden rustling sounded outside, and then Circe ducked into the tent. Her sister's hair swung erratically, sharp and choppy, weightless in a way that Pasiphae's could never be at such a length.

"I have bad news and good news," Circe said, slightly breathless. There was a smear of dirt on her cheek. "Which do you want to hear first?"

Pasiphae reached out and took Seth's hand—his real one in front of her. In response, she could have sworn she felt the slightest touch at her neck.

"Give them to me both at once. Grow another mouth and speak it."

Circe rolled her eyes. With all the developments to Pasiphae's understanding of magic these past few hours, she would not be surprised if growing extra mouths was something truly possible with Callistra's magic.

"The coalition has broken," Circe said. "The Divines of each sector have reclaimed their right to act as sovereign entities."

Pasiphae clicked her tongue. Well. She supposed they had known that was coming.

"And the good?"

Circe blinked. "That...that was the good, Saf. The other sectors aren't our business anymore. The bad news is that Ruqyah has reported Unseelie fae on their shores."

Pasiphae bolted to her feet. "How many?"

"Only three. It's not an army."

"Then they're spies." She whirled around, expecting—for some reason—to spot the version of Seth that she knew was around and about, listening in on the conversation. But she couldn't see him, couldn't touch him, couldn't seek his comfort, so she could only hurry out of the tent, hurrying to find Meira.

"Saf!" Circe called after her. "It's the middle of the night!"

"We don't have time to waste," Pasiphae replied when her sister caught up to her. The two of them hurrying forward side by side like a pair of wraiths, backlit by the glow of the barrier dissecting Khotadi away from Eo. "If you're right about this—if Morgana has made herself immortal, then she attacks Medeis because she worries we have grown powerful enough to threaten her."

"And suddenly spies appear in Ruqyah," Circe mused, catching on.

"It could be because that's the only sector they can get people onto," Pasiphae warned.

"Fusun is unprotected too, if all they wanted was land," Circe shot back. "Why risk going all the way to Ruqyah? Why risk venturing so close to Airesi?"

Indeed. Why choose Ruqyah, the place of sea salt and steeps, where everything was made of pitch black rock surfaces, and fog constantly clung to the houses and ground? Why go where even the witches didn't trust each other, where an impenetrable prison was the beating heart of the sector—surely the Unseelie couldn't think that they wouldn't be spotted?

"It wasn't a choice then," Pasiphae finally said aloud. "They want something there. And if she can't send an army, she is frantic enough to send spies."

Pasiphae stopped outside Meira's tent. All the bases were nailed loosely into the soft ground, ready to move at a moment's notice. It was time to move. Time to regroup.

Find Morgana's life force. Take down the barrier. Win the war.

"Shall I put out the call?" Circe asked.

"Yes," Pasiphae breathed. "Gather the Seelies. We're going to find whatever it is in Ruqyah that Morgana is after. We're going to find it before she does." Pasiphae looked up at the skies, at the stars that had pulled and twisted so far from the shapes they had been thousands of years ago, before the world fell to pieces. "And we'll invade every sector in Medeis that stands in our way."

Author's Note: As promised, from all your lovely encouragement, we're back!!! And like I disclaimed, you might notice that chapters could be be slightly rough because I can't go into deep editing, but the gist is all here, and we're going to get to the finale (I hope... yell at me if I don't lol). This chapter is short because we reached a bit of a transition moment right before I left, but a lot of about to go down ;)