Behind me, I heard a rustling sound and spun around as Silvestra appeared from the shadows. My mouth grew dry. She’d expected this. She’d been waiting for me.
“I thought you would come for him despite my warnings,” she said. “It looks like I was right.”
I balled my fists, no longer caring what she did to me for using my magic against her. Swirls of amber and blue surrounded my clenched fists until power exploded from my hands, tugging at my chest as it ripped from my body. All the fear I’d felt for Kull went into the magic. I couldn’t hold the pain inside any longer. It was time for Silvestra to feel my wrath, so I used a binding spell that would burn like fire as the magic coiled around her. My hope was that the spell could hold her long enough for Kull and me to escape. Killing her was out of the question. No matter how much anger I harbored, I wasn’t a murderer.
I wasn’t Theht.
The magic hit the witch, but instead of binding her as I’d intended, it faded and pooled in her outstretched hand, absorbed by a black mist.
Stumbling, my energy faded and my back hit the wall. I glanced at Kull, feeling as if I’d failed him.
The witch’s cold, aquamarine eyes held me in her gaze as she kept her hand outstretched. The magic mist formed a cohesive shape until it became a black box—the same object she’d shown me earlier—the lotus cube.
She stepped toward me, keeping the box between us. Its magic was so strong it made my knees weak. With my energy absorbed into the box’s spell, it took everything I had just to remain standing.
“Tell me,” she said. “How do you open the box?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you will learn.”
She walked to Kull and touched the collar around his neck. Dark power pulsed from her finger into the stone band, making it glow. When she turned around, she showed me an ornate key sitting in her palm.
“The magic in this key will release the collar around his neck.”
She whispered a word of magic, and green energy surrounded the box until it opened. Then, she placed the key inside. With another whispered word, the box sealed shut.
The magic in her eyes shimmered when she looked at me. “If you want to set this man free and leave my castle with him, you have but to remove the key from this box and unlock the collar around his neck.”
I studied the box. It had to be a trick. “I don’t know how.”
“Then you must learn.”
I exhaled. “Fine. But if I do this, you must promise not to hurt him any longer.”
She studied my face. “Very well,” she said finally. “He will not be harmed as long as you are obedient to me. You only have until the sun sets tomorrow evening to open the box. Should you fail, he becomes mine. And you will belong to me as well.”
She placed the box on the table beside Kull and left the room, her footsteps echoing through the cavernous hallways until the sound disappeared.
I went to Kull and found him motionless and unresponsive. My hands shook as I took his fingers in mine. Seeing him like this frightened me more than I cared to admit.
“Kull,” I said, brushing the hair from his forehead. “Can you hear me?”
He gave no reply. Only the sound of his breathing assured me he was alive.
I squeezed his fingers, wishing I could do something for him, but my magic was gone. I’d used it all up when I’d fought the witch—and what a disaster that had been. My magic hadn’t fazed her. She was the only being I’d ever confronted with the ability to withstand my magic the way she’d done.
I rested my head on his chest, listening to the sound of his breathing. As long as he was alive, I still had hope.
Running my fingers over the collar, I felt the smooth ridges of the stone scales. Magic burned my fingers slowly, an intense heat filled with a power beyond my comprehension—the same power I’d felt in the box.
I turned away from Kull to inspect the box sitting beside him, then I picked it up. The stone felt cold in my hands, a seamless block with no discernible lid of any kind. Only magic would open it. But as I’d noticed earlier, only colorless swirls of energy surrounded the box, as if all the magic had been sucked away.
Or as if it had been combined.
Studying the box more closely, I found patterns of light glowing faintly from each of the six facets. I tried to make sense of the patterns. One was round with several half circles inside, but the pattern moved and faded in and out, making it hard to see clearly. Inspecting the other facets, I found different shapes—a triangle, a line that branched at the top to form a Y—but what did they mean?
Accessing the magic was impossible. I didn’t even understand what sort of magic it was, much less how to manipulate it. I got the feeling the witch knew perfectly well I’d never be able to beat the spell, and that Kull and I would both belong to her soon.
But magic was what I understood, so deciphering the box’s powers should have been within my abilities. Studying it again, watching the colors swirl to form patterns, I was reminded of the witch’s garden. It was a stretch, but could these patterns and the paths in the garden be connected?
There was only one way to find out. I placed the box in my pocket, then gave Kull a kiss on his brow, feeling my heart thudding with worry as I pulled away from him.
“I’ll solve this,” I told him. “I promise.”
More than anything, I wanted him to answer me, to give me some cocky remark and make me smile, to tell me to quit worrying so much, but he didn’t move or make a sound.
