Chapter Text
“Aaaaaand that should do it!” Luz declared as she shoved the Boiling Isles equivalent of a granola bar into her backpack, thoroughly testing the limits of its seams.
King poked at it with one claw, clearly expecting it to explode, and pouted when it didn’t. “Aren’t you going a little overboard? It’s just a trip to my castle and the horrifying monstrosities won’t even attack us this time.”
“We’re going to be there for a whole day!” Luz defended. “We need snacks and hydration if we want to keep our brains sharp for research! Besides, it’s not like I’m the only one. Do you know how much I saw Eda putting in her hair this morning? Like half a first aid kit!”
“Is it me,” King wondered, “or is she a lot more…prepared these days?”
“I’ve noticed that, too.” Luz fiddled with the zipper on her backpack as she cast her memory backwards. The stash of band-aids was fuller and funkier than ever, she always had snacks somewhere on her person, and she asked them if they needed their cloaks whenever there was the slightest gust of wind. “Now that I think about it,” Luz said, “I think it started when you changed your name.” Oh! Of course! Her eyes went shiny with realization. “Aw! She’s acting more like a mom!”
King spluttered. “But…she’s Eda.”
“I guess it is kinda weird,” Luz laughed. “She’s changed a lot since I first met her. Remember when she wanted Hexside to burn to the ground? And now she’s chaperoned Grom and organized palisman adoption day.”
Luz must have said something wrong because King started sulking, all hunched shoulders and half-hearted jabs at her backpack. “I don’t want her to change too much.”
“Aw, King.” Luz gave him a reassuring pat on the back. “She’s not going to stop being Eda just because she packs a few extra band-aids. I mean, can you imagine her ever not pick-pocketing jerks for fun?”
“No.”
“There you have it!”
That didn’t completely fix King’s mood, but at least he stopped sullenly poking at her backpack. Those little claws were sharp and it couldn’t take much more strain.
A shrill voice cut into their moment. “Lulu!” Hooty shrieked from outside. Tears made the greeting warble. “I’ve missed you so much!”
“Looks like Lilith’s here,” Luz said, shrugging her backpack on. She ducked down to give King a solid hug. For good measure. “Let the research trip commence!”
“I think you mean the nerd adventure,” Eda corrected as she strode over from the kitchen. Probably stocking up on her own collection of emergency snacks. “Do you need your cloaks? It might get cold later.”
Luz tried to stifle a laugh as grabbed hers off of the couch and King groaned, “Eda, for the last time, I have fur.”
Since their previous trip to the ruins of King’s birthplace had been cut short, Lilith had been eager to return to study more of the foreign carvings on the walls. Eda finally relented. She begrudgingly swung open the door to go greet their guest.
Or…guests?
Eda balked. “Mom? What are you doing here?”
Indeed, Gwendolyn Clawthorne stood behind her eldest daughter, chipper as anything. “Witchlet!” She rushed forward to crush Eda in a hug. “Well, Lilith here was telling me all about your research trip and it sounded so exciting. I thought since I’ve seen a lot of things in my time in the Beast Keeper’s Coven and searching for a cure to your curse, I might be able to help. It’ll be like a family bonding trip! Especially now that King is officially a Clawthorne!”
With that declaration, Gwendolyn moved from squeezing the life out of Eda to squeezing the life out of King. Wide yellow and pink eyes sought out Luz for rescue. Luz did not rise to that occasion, preferring to grin in smug silence.
“You know,” King gasped from inside the embrace, “I think Luz is jealous and could use a hug, too.”
Rather than releasing King, Gwen simply shifted King to one arm so that she could squeeze Luz with her other. Dang, her bicep game really was no joke. “Oh, I’m sorry, dear,” Gwen said. “I didn’t mean to exclude you! I consider you both my grandchildren regardless of what names you choose.”
Luz spluttered at that and hoped she could pass it off as being from the pressure Gwendolyn was exerting on her ribcage. Over Gwen’s shoulder, she could see that Eda, too, had developed a sudden coughing fit. Lilith patted her hard on the back without looking sympathetic in the slightest.
“O-oh, uh, thanks,” Luz said awkwardly.
Somehow, in all of Luz’s fawning over King’s formalized adoption, she hadn’t realized that Eda was…technically…kind of…fostering her. She lived in Eda’s house. Eda was her registered guardian for Hexside. As far as the Boiling Isles was concerned, Eda was Luz’s only guardian. It made her stomach do weird, flippy things. Happy, and yet…her mother’s wounded voice roared to life, You chose to stay there?...Did you hate living with me that much?
No, no, no. Luz couldn’t think like that. She wasn’t choosing Eda over Camila to be her mother. One didn’t replace the other. They filled separate spaces in her life. She couldn’t picture any happy future where she couldn’t see them both. If she could somehow convince her Mamá of that…
“Hey, kid,” Eda said, appearing behind her after Gwen released her and King from her iron grip. A gentle hand settled on her shoulder. “I can tell Mom to back off. It’s okay if you’re not comfortable with the whole…grandkid thing.”
Luz shook her head vigorously. Maybe if she shook it hard enough, all of these bad thoughts would fly off, like a loose bracelet on a carnival ride. “No, I’m okay. That is…if you’re okay with it. I mean, King’s a Clawthorne now, and you raised him, but…”
Eda’s smile couldn’t be described as anything but soft. “Hey. You’re my kid, too. Okay? As long as you want to be.”
A wobble settled into Luz’s lower lip. Oh no, was she tearing up? She wiped at her eyes. “Thanks, Eda.”
It was a nice moment. The problem with nice moments, however, was that they were like glass—fragile and capable of being shattered by the notes Hooty could hit when distressed. He cried, “No fair! I want to come on the family bonding trip! Am I not family?”
“Sorry, Hooty,” Eda said, “but you know tearing yourself out of the wall too often hurts your stomach, and you’ve done it twice in the last month.”
“Pain is but a small price to pay for love!”
“It’s not going to be anything exciting—just all these nerds trying to figure out some old pictures. We could really use you keeping the house safe, too, in case the Emperor’s Coven comes sniffing around.”
“Fiiiiiine.” Hooty slithered dejectedly away until he nestled fully in the door.
Lilith, taking pity on him, stroked his beak. “I’ll bring back any weird bugs I find, Hootsifer.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” She placed a peck on his forehead, then lowered her voice to whisper conspiratorially. “It’s not like you’re the only member of the family left out. Dad wanted to come, too, but Edalyn still isn’t ready to see him.”
That, at least, seemed to settle Hooty somewhat. With all of the drama settled, they mounted their respective staffs. King settled behind Eda while Luz used this opportunity to saddle up with Gwen and prod her for stories from Eda and Lilith’s younger years. Mixed though her feelings were about the situation, being considered Gwen’s granddaughter had some advantages, and Eda was just so secretive.
Plus, she had a very pressing question that could directly impact her near future.
“So…do all of the Clawthornes have bird palismen?”
It turned out that although the Clawthornes didn’t exclusively have bird palismen, it happened more often than not. No, Luz would not be frowned upon for carving a non-bird. She then regaled Luz with the story of Lilith carving her own palisman—it used to nest in her wild red hair until Lilith began straightening and dyeing it. Gwen had a picture as evidence of said hair.
“Wow,” Luz marveled. “She must have been able to fit so much in there.”
Overall, it was a good trip that felt like it passed much faster than their first venture to the castle ruins. In between stories, various combinations of Clawthornes swooped and swerved to carry on conversations with each other. Luz could tell that Lilith actually missed Hooty on the flight over. She was the only one without a companion on her staff. However, any dourness lifted when they touched down on the island and she started rattling off all of the research she’d been doing.
“You sure have been hitting the books hard,” Eda drawled.
Lilith tilted her chin proudly. “Well, my new job at the museum certainly helps.”
“You got a job?”
Gwen chimed in, “And we’re so very proud of her! I’m sure she’s one of the best assistants that place has ever seen!”
It seemed Gwen was making up for years of inattentiveness. Lilith practically glowed. “I was the Emperor’s Coven’s top historian for a reason. It’s a good job. Stable. They don’t mind that I don’t have traditional magic. And I have access to the back rooms, which has been great for creating new glyphs. I’ve figured out how to make the invisibility glyph last for five minutes instead of for however long you can hold your breath.”
Luz zipped up to Lilith, demanding, “That’s so cool! Show me!”
Lilith eagerly flipped through her notebook before handing it over. The page showed a diagram of the base glyph, its components, and what changing it in certain ways would accomplish. It was a tribute to Lilith’s perfectionist tendencies. “This is amazing! Can I copy this when we get back to the Owl House?”
“Of course.”
Luz caught Eda peeking over subtly to see the glyph without appearing overly curious. Couldn’t call them nerds if they caught her being one herself. As much as Luz wished she could keep pouring through the notes, they had walking to do, and walking and reading weren’t a good mix. Luz had a scar on her knee to prove it. The notes would be there later.
They trudged along through the forest with Lilith occasionally stopping to stick a bug in a glass jar for Hooty. Gwen pointed out a few that she knew any fun facts about. She did stop Lilith from plucking up one because it was near-extinct on the main Isles due to over-hunting.
“I underestimated how nerdy this trip would be,” Eda complained to herself.
“We’re almost there,” King consoled. “Then at least they can nerd out about something interesting: Me!”
Even Luz had to admit that she was getting tired of hearing about bugs by the time they reached the keyhole-shaped entrance of the castle, and was happy to see Lilith and Gwen changing topics to the inscriptions on the stone.
They spent well over an hour progressing an inch at a time through the space. King, Luz, and Eda had a tendency to run ahead, though, and search for interesting pictures while Lilith recorded the writings. Gwen alternated between the two groups.
“Oh, my,” she said at one point, pointing to a carving of something that reminded Luz of the silhouette of a stegosaurus and a goat smashed together. “That looks like it might be a depiction of a stonesleeper. No one has seen one in ages. They were said to be able to animate inanimate objects, much like a moonlight conjuring. I wonder when this was made…or if perhaps some could still be alive somewhere on the island…”
As they went, King slammed his paw against random walls, hoping that they would open up and reveal hidden rooms similar to the observatory. Finally, he struck luck near the Horrifying Monstrosity Room.
“Secret door! Secret door!” he and Luz cheered, rushing in. It looked like…a lab. Tables and tools and mysterious jars with mysterious contents everywhere! And there were shelves full of books.
Eda whistled. “I’m gonna get Lilly. She’ll faint.”
“I think I’m going to faint,” Luz commented, fanning her face. “Look at all this! I wonder if any of it is in English.” Gently, she started pulling books off of the shelves and rifling through them. Between volumes, she caught Gwen and King gazing at various things in jars. Aw! They were bonding!
“Oh, Titan,” Lilith breathed when she stepped into the room. “It’s beautiful.”
After about half an hour of combing, Luz finally discovered a half-translated book and held it aloft in victory. “Found one! Look at this! Apparently, the horrifying monstrosities are called sentinels.”
King bolted over to climb onto her shoulder for a better look. “This says how to make them! Looks kinda gross, though.”
Luz couldn’t argue with him there. She placed the book on the table in the center of the room so that they could all see it as she flipped through. “It says here that they’re powered by the breath of a stonesleeper. That’s why they were in that carving Gwen saw.”
“It’s still weird,” King replied. Nonetheless, he stayed perched on Luz’s shoulder until they’d finished with the section on the sentinels and moved on to other creations, most of which they’d never heard of. Then, he yawned directly in Luz’s ear and said, “I’m going to see if I can find more secret doors!”
“I’ll go with him,” Eda said. “I need to stretch my legs after all this reading.”
And keep King from getting caved-in or lost anywhere, Luz was sure. “Bye, Eda. Have fun!”
Luz certainly would. She surrendered the book to Lilith and Gwen while she scoured for more translated pieces. As invigorating as she found the book, she wasn’t well-versed enough in old magic to understand even a quarter of the ingredients or processes. They would let her know if they found anything particularly interesting.
She didn’t have to wait long.
Gwen gasped so loudly that it belonged on a theater stage, then breathed out, “Grimwalkers?!”
Lilith expressed equal befuddlement over the new entry. “I thought those were made up to scare children. Is this book claiming to actually know how to make one?”
“It would seem so.”
“Uh…” Luz piped up. “I’m out of the loop here. What’s a Grimwalker?”
“A dead witch brought back to life,” Lilith said. “Necromancy. There are stories about them stretching back hundreds of years, but even the best scholars believe them impossible to make. And perhaps this is why. They require stonesleeper lungs.”
“Which, as far as we know,” Gwen added, “don’t exist except for whatever magic remains in those sentinels.”
Luz crept closer to examine the list. Unlike many of the others, this page had been painstakingly translated onto a separate sheaf of paper. Also unlike the others, she recognized these ingredients. The Galderstones that Gus had found. The palistrom wood that the emperor had over-harvested. Selkidomus scales—the Emperor’s Coven had also been pursuing one of those. It was the first time she’d met Hunter, back when he was still just the Golden Guard to her. (Now that she thought about it, hadn’t Gus said that there were Coven scouts looking for the Galderstones, too?) And now stonesleeper lungs. The only ingredient she didn’t recognize was bone of ortet.
She pointed to it. “What’s that?”
“It’s the original version of something you’re copying,” Gwen filled in. “The Beast Keeper’s Coven tried using an ortet to bring back the stonesleepers some years ago. It was very hush-hush. Top brass only. The experiment failed, of course.”
Luz shivered. Creepy. But also kind of cool.
They were interrupted by the sound of rushing wind as Eda and King flew into the room on Owlbert. Neither of them looked pleased.
“We have a visitor,” Eda said. “Your bad but sad boy is here, Luz.”
Bad but sad…? “Hunter?!” she exclaimed. “What’s he doing here?”
“Probably looking for something for Emperor Bonehead,” Eda grumbled. “Not sure what, exactly. Luckily, he didn’t see us—too busy chatting with his bird and freaking out over the wall carvings like Lily was. Must be an Emperor’s Coven thing.”
“Sorry, what?” Lilith said. “Someone from the Emperor’s Coven is here? I don’t remember anyone named Hunter.”
Eda raised her eyebrows at Luz as if to say, “You have the floor.” Luz laughed nervously. “Well, you’d…know him better as the Golden Guard. We’ve run into him a few times.”
Lilith’s expression went from confused to sour in a snap. “Oh. The brat.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Eda said. “Any idea what he’s here for?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say Belos sent him after what remains of the stonesleepers. They seem to have the highest magic value of anything here. Just to be sure, though, this sounds like a good use for my new invisibility glyph. I’ll follow him to get a better idea.”
“Whatever it is,” King said, “we can’t let him get it.”
Great. On opposite sides again. Why couldn’t they ever run into Hunter at the library? Mildly disheartened yet determined nonetheless, Luz insisted, “I want to come, too.”
Lilith firmly denied her. “If we’re both invisible, we might run into each other and tip him off.”
Luz had to admit that this was a good point. “Okay, but once we figure out what he’s here for, I want to talk to him.”
“You want to talk to him?” Lilith scoffed. “I’d be happy if I never had to speak to him again.”
“Funny. He actually reminds me of you,” Luz replied, then watched as Lilith’s face twisted in disgust. She was 90% sure Hunter would make the same expression at that insinuation. “I think I can get through to him. Eventually. After what Amity told me about when she saw him at Eclipse Lake, I feel like something’s really, really wrong.”
“You’re too nice for your own good, kid,” Eda sighed. “Alright, we’ll find out what Blondie’s up to, then corner him for a little heart-to-heart. While Lily trails him, we should close up this room so he can’t find it.”
Locating the Golden Guard was not a difficult task, Lilith found. As Edalyn said, she could soon enough hear him chattering to a little red cardinal perched on his shoulder. Odd. He didn’t have a palisman before, instead favoring the same artificial staff that the Emperor used—part of that special treatment Lilith found so infuriating.
And the oddities continued.
Honestly, she might not have recognized him if Edalyn hadn’t already identified him—no staff and no uniform. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen his face. Was it her imagination or did he look rougher than her last glimpse? Those dark circles were positively ghoulish. A vindictive part of her rejoiced at seeing her replacement struggle with the weight of her former position. A smaller, newer part got stuck on how reverently he ran a gloved hand over the wall inscriptions, much like she had.
“I wish we had more time here,” he lamented to the little bird. “I’ve never seen magic like this. For all we know, there could be a cure for Belos’ curse here.”
The cardinal tweeted back at him.
“I wish,” the Golden Guard said in response to whatever the bird had said, “but Belos wouldn’t be happy if he found out I’ve been studying wild magic. Again. We’re in enough trouble as it is. So. We get in, grab one those stone monster things Belos showed us, and get out. Then we’ll be in the clear!”
Cheep, cheep.
“It’s a good deal. Belos finding out about you could have gone a lot worse. It’s only fair that I prove we can work well together.”
The next little cheep sounded wholly unimpressed, even to Lilith’s ears.
“We have to, or…I don’t want him to do to you what he does to other palismen. If we can’t find one of these things, you can’t come back with me. I’m not even sure I could go back.”
More tweeting.
“Yes, of course I want to go back. He’s my uncle and I owe him. Without him, I have nothing. He’s also the Emperor. There’s nowhere I could go that he wouldn’t be able to find me. I don’t even want to imagine what would happen then.”
Those last words resonated with a forlorn flavor of dread. The bird stood down from its criticizing to nuzzle his cheek affectionately. Perhaps it tickled, because it earned a startled laugh. Anyone other than Lilith might have called it cute.
Lilith’s observation left a lot to unpack. First, the Golden Guard was related to Emperor Belos, which explained a lot. Second, the Golden Boy had finally gotten himself in trouble, by hiding a palisman from the sound of it. Lilith could only assume he was supposed to hand it over to Belos and instead chose to adopt it. Third, he was definitely after the sentinels, which would absolve him of the crime of hiding a palisman. Lilith was uncomfortable with the idea of what would happen if he returned empty-handed. She had a feeling it wouldn’t end well for that cardinal.
The Golden Guard began to move on before something on the wall caught his eye. Lilith herself hadn’t been able to examine this section in depth before being pulled into the library, so she flew in a little closer to see what it was. From far away, it resembled any of the other depictions of warriors and opponents and battles, but up close, the stylized lines mimicked a more familiar pattern.
“Huh,” her replacement muttered to his little bird. “Is it me or does this symbol look like one of the human’s glyphs?”
A lot of the shapes were certainly the same. She could identify similar configurations to the plant and ice glyphs. Most importantly, it was markedly different from the foreign language earlier in the tunnel. Interesting that the Golden Guard had seen enough of the glyphs to spot the similarities.
He and the cardinal tilted their heads in unison. Again, not cute to Lilith, but perhaps to other people.
“Yeah,” the Golden Guard said, running a finger across it tentatively. “All it’s missing is the…”
As he spoke, he traced a circle around the symbol in demonstration.
His finger reaching the zenith was the last thing Lilith saw before a platform of earth slammed into her, stealing the breath from her lungs.
Hunter hadn’t expected the symbol on the wall to actually do anything, and now his fingertips hummed with warm currents of wild magic similar to when he used Flapjack. (The bird's former witch really couldn’t have picked a less nonsensical name?) That could wait, though. When the pillar had shot up, he’d heard a distinct oof. He was not alone.
Battle-reflex quick, he transformed Flapjack into a staff and wielded him threateningly. “Who’s there?”
When no answer came, he shot out a wave of energy. It deflected in one spot. An invisible opponent, then. He charged forward, sending out wave after wave of energy as a form of sonar until he was able to start landing stronger, more direct hits. Although he’d gotten better at fighting with Flapjack, his new opponent clearly had a lot of experience. He waited for the glint of a spell circle. Unless this wasn’t a witch? Belos hadn’t told him about any invisible monsters in these ruins, but anything was possible.
A powerful blast knocked him to the other side of the room when his opponent flickered into view. Was that…?
“Lilith?” he exclaimed. His predecessor was certainly not high on the list of people he expected to see here.
She regarded him with thinly veiled contempt as she brushed off her dress. “Hello, Golden Guard. Looking a little rough around the edges there. Life as Coven Head treating you well?”
“You’re one to talk, traitor,” Hunter spat back. She’d lost her commanding presence in her fall from grace. He’d heard she was powerless now, which didn’t explain how she’d turned invisible. One of the human’s glyphs? Either way, this was the closest to a fair fight he would ever get with Lilith. “Were you following me? Trying to sabotage my mission?”
She huffed as if he was being ridiculous and as paranoid as Kikimora. “I’ll let you know I was here first. I didn’t think the Coven even knew about this place.”
“Upset Belos didn’t trust you with that knowledge?”
“Don’t you mean Uncle Belos?”
Crud. She’d been eavesdropping on him long enough to connect the dots. Stupid, stupid. What else did she hear? She probably knows about the stone monsters!
Lilith beamed cruelly, twirling her staff. “And from the sound of it, his special little prodigy nephew broke the rules and got himself in trouble. Not so golden now, are you?”
Hunter refused to put up with anymore of this. He struck. Lilith was swift in her parry. There went any hope at this being a clean, easy mission. He hoped she maintained enough of her solitary, egotistic nature that she hadn’t brought any reinforcements on this trip. He’d have to keep an eye out nonetheless.
Hunter teleported around the room rapid-fire until he snuck behind her. A good blow to the head should knock her out. But as he swung down, his staff connected with a barrage of familiar ice.
So Lilith was using the human’s glyphs—proof that Lilith and the Owl Lady had impossibly made up after the revelation that Lilith had cursed her sister. How did a person forgive someone for something so atrocious? Hunter had faced punishment for far less. Belos had never threatened to break her palisman. It wasn’t fair!
Despite the sweat on his brow and the ache in his arms, Hunter’s anger renewed the ferocity of his attacks. A solid blast of magic knocked Lilith to the ground. He huffed out a breath of air. He loved Flapjack, but there were certainly limitations to using him instead of his regular staff. Less variety in spellcasting, for one.
He moved to double-down on that strike when plants sprung up from the ground and seized him. More glyph magic? No, Lilith had nothing in her hands and the plants were binding her, too. Before he could teleport himself out, his staff was ripped from his grip. He discovered Lilith to be in much the same state.
“Why am I not surprised?” resounded a voice Hunter had learned all too well in Latissa. The human stood at the other end, glyphs at the ready. She must have summoned this thorny prison. Behind her filtered in an assortment of others: the Owl Lady, her bird-dog-rat, and an older witch. Lilith had brought reinforcements after all.
Hunter, assuming that the human had been not surprised to see him in particular, stuck up his chin. “I shouldn’t be surprised either. You and your friends always seem to be in my way these days.”
“I meant that you two would get in a fight,” the human corrected.
“He started it!” Lilith insisted.
And people called Hunter a brat. “I wasn’t the one invisibly stalking people!”
Lilith ignored his very valid point. “He’s looking for the sentinels on behalf of Belos, as I suspected. Who, for the record, is his uncle. This mission seems to be some sort of test to prove he’s capable of wielding a palisman. He also accidentally uncovered that some of the symbols on the walls are glyphs. They can be activated by drawing a circle around them. It appears to be some sort of defense system.”
Hunter didn’t have the patience to explain that they weren’t biological family as far as he knew—that Uncle was what Belos had said Hunter could call him after taking him in. It didn’t change anything—Belos was his family, by blood or not. Hunter would be dead by now if not for him.
The human’s eyes caught on Flapjack tangled up in the vines and softened. “What happened to palismen being made of wild magic and dangerous?”
Furious heat bloomed its way from the tips of Hunter’s ears down to his chest. “I can’t get him to leave me alone, so I might as well make use of him.”
“Uh-huh.” The human clearly didn’t believe him. She dug around in her overstuffed backpack until she pulled out a knife. If this were anyone else, the sight of Hunter’s captor with a knife would have made him sweat. The human was too nice to fear much. She held it out to the Owl Lady. “Can you cut Lilith loose?”
“Do we have to?” the Owl Lady asked, clearly teasing. She grinned at Hunter as she accepted the knife. “How many times have we tied you up now? Twice? Not so formidable without that fancy staff, huh?”
Do not rise to the bait. Do not rise to the bait. You are mature. You are the Head of the Emperor’s Coven. “Make it a fair fight and we’ll see who’s more formidable.”
“Stop,” the human instructed. The Owl Lady shrugged and left to free her sister. The human sighed as if she was the only real adult in this situation at the ripe age of…whatever she was. Younger than Hunter, definitely. She put her hands on her hips. “I just want to talk, Hunter.” Despite being the one to tell her his name, hearing her use it made his gut twist. “It’s about what happened at Eclipse Lake.”
Right, when he’d threatened her and her loved ones, then stole her last connection to the human realm. He refused to feel guilty about that. Once the Day of Unity happened, the realms would be united, and she’d be happy. If only he could tell her that—she might stay out of the way. However, since that was all top secret, he settled on “I’m not talking to you while tied up.”
“Fine,” she groused. “Give me the knife I know you have somewhere on you so I can get you out.”
“What makes you think I have a knife?”
“Because I’ve met you.” She looked him up and down once before coming to the correct conclusion that it was tucked inside his boot. One weapon gone. Regardless, having his hands free would improve his situation significantly. Sure, he was still outnumbered, but he could get Flapjack, and—
“You sure that’s a good idea, Luz?” the Owl Lady asked as the human started cutting. “At least get the staff away from him.”
The human looked at him, at Flapjack, back at him, and then winced. “Sorry, Hunter.”
Hunter forced himself to stay calm as she freed Flapjack first and placed him very gently against the opposite wall. He took a deep breath. This was still doable. If nothing else, biding his time with this merry band of misfits had worked for him in the past. They would slip up eventually. Because they were nice and he was the kind of mean born from desperation.
He could feel all eyes on him as she removed the last vine. “What now? Are you going to yell at me for taking the portal key?”
“Can’t say I’m happy about that,” Luz said, “or that you threatened my girlfriend.”
So the youngest Blight coming back empty-handed hadn’t been the end of their relationship. Hunter felt even less badly about it now. That didn’t stop him from crossing his arms defensively. “I did what I had to do.”
“Or what?”
The question caught him by surprise. “What do you mean?”
“You keep saying things like that!” the human exclaimed, hands exploding into the air. “I’m just following orders. I did what I had to do. I can’t go back empty-handed. What happens?”
“Some of us have to do our jobs, human. You can’t live life doing whatever you want whenever you want.”
She refused to relent. “You practically let me get away with the palismen in Latissa, but then at Eclipse Lake, Amity said you went off the deep-end. Something happened because you didn’t bring back the palismen, didn’t it?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“What happens if you don’t bring back a sentinel?”
Maybe if he told her, she might back off and let him finish his mission. “Then Belos will break Flapjack in half and lock me inside the castle for the foreseeable future. Happy?”
Her face twisted in horror, gaze glancing behind her to his palisman. “No, I’m not happy! Is Belos really worth all of this to you?!”
“It’s better than becoming a fugitive.”
“Are you so sure about that?”
In a demonstration of years of diplomatic training, he slammed his hands over his ears and turned away from her while shouting, “Oh, no no. I am not listening to any of your bad ideas. I was perfectly fine before I met you.”
“Hunter, I know you can hear me. I get that we don’t know each other very well, but you can’t be okay with Belos treating you this way.”
“Nope! Can’t hear any terrible, traitorous ideas.”
And then, to up the anti, he started whistling a tune at random. It might have even been three songs smashed together and completely off key. Didn’t matter. Whatever would convince her to stop.
“Hunter.” Nope. Not listening. “Hunter!”
Next thing he knew, small hands roughly grabbed onto his to try yanking them away. He fought with all of his might to keep them where they were. She fought harder in turn until they were one wrong step from knocking each other over.
“Let! Go! Of! Me!” he ordered. Wrong step: taken. They both tumbled to the floor. Their squabble evolved into a full-on wrestling match.
“Should we…stop them?” Eda asked. As much as she wanted Luz to be able to fight her own battles, she wasn’t sure this qualified. It was too…slappy.
Her mother broke into quiet laughter beside her. “No one’s pulling hair or knocking out teeth. Give them a minute. Let them get it out of their systems.”
“Fight, fight, fight!” King cheered from atop Eda’s shoulder.
“Mother has a point,” Lilith said. “They’re both clearly holding back. Luz isn’t using any glyphs and I’ve seen the Golden Guard take out men twice his size.”
Their mom added, “It reminds me of how you two used to fight.”
Wasn’t that a weird mental image? Eda could see it, though. If she squinted.
“I can’t believe that’s the Golden Guard,” her mother said very suddenly, very quietly, and without any of her earlier levity. “I remember how much the responsibility of being Coven Head crushed you, Sweet Flea. I can’t imagine that being on the shoulders of a teenager.”
“Don’t make the mistake of treating him like a child,” Lilith warned. “He can be ruthless and conniving.”
From the ground, Luz screeched, “Get your gross foot out of my face!”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have taken my shoe!”
“I took your shoe so that I could do this!”
“Do wha—hahahaha!”
“Aw, is the big bad Golden Guard ticklish? Surrender!”
“No!”
“Surrender!”
“You’ll regret that, human!”
Gwen turned to Lilith, deadpan. “Truly, a monster.”
“I said can be.”
With a shake of her head, their mother continued, “Would the emperor really destroy that palisman?”
“It’s entirely possible,” Lilith sighed. “He’s not a merciful man and…he needs them to keep his own curse at bay. I doubt he took it well when he found out his own nephew was hiding one from him.”
“Sending the kid after the sentinels with only a palisman and no natural magic, though?” Eda said. “That’s a pretty dangerous test. Sounds like he was setting the kid up to fail.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Belos doesn’t take conflicting loyalties lightly.” Lilith pursed her lips as she mulled something over. Across the room, the fight began to turn sluggish. Eda couldn’t help the instinctive thought, Hopefully they’ve tuckered themselves out enough to sleep well later. Ugh. Going soft could be so disorienting. Then Lilith asked, “What happened at Eclipse Lake? Luz keeps mentioning it.”
“Three-way race to a source of Titan Blood,” Eda explained briefly. “Us, Goldie, and Kikimora. Things got a little hairy.”
“She said he went off the deep end.”
While Eda tried to think of the best way to phrase it, King tactlessly jumped in, “Oh, yeah! When there wasn’t any blood at the lake, he started digging his own grave and ranting about how he couldn’t go back empty-handed again. It was suuuuper weird.”
“…Oh,” Lilith said. “That’s…um…”
When Lilith couldn’t find a way to continue that sentence, their mother concluded, “He sounds about as stable as two-legged chair.”
Eda couldn’t argue with that assessment. She turned back to the fight, which had devolved into some sort of weird flipping contest where each of them kept trying to pin the other to the ground, only succeeding in tumbling across the room.
Correction: across the room towards Goldie’s staff.
Oh, he was tricky.
She sent Owlbert out to move it. The Golden Guard threw Luz off of him and raced her palisman to the staff. Dang, that kid was quick on his feet. Owlbert got his little talons around it seconds before Goldie got there, and Eda instructed her palisman to hold it above his head.
She didn’t expect the kid to launch himself off of a piece of rubble and grab on, dangling mid-air and risking a drop that could very well break an ankle. The second he brushed the staff, he zapped across the room.
Eda would be impressed if she wasn’t so annoyed.
“Hunter!” Luz called out in reprimand as Lilith hopped onto her own staff to chase him down. Eda saw the exact moment that the Golden Guard spotted a glyph higher up on the wall and the exact moment he decided it was his ticket out. Lilith was fast, but not fast enough to stop him from activating it.
Sickly yellow light filled the grooves in the room like water, tracing out symbol after symbol, until the very air trembled. Earthen pillars shot up from the floor and down from the ceiling, blocking the only path to the entrance. “This…is not good,” Eda realized. Owl Beast, I could use some help.
Sensing the danger to both of their lives, the Owl Beast only put up a paltry argument for a good preen in return. Then wings sprang from her back. On pure instinct, she rushed forward to shield Luz and King from any falling debris, holding firm as small rocks bounced off of her feathers. Heavy enough to bruise, but not enough to break anything. She waited a long minute after the shaking had stopped before releasing her kids.
“Are you two alright?” she asked them.
They chorused out affirmatives, after which Luz said, “Thanks for protecting us, Eda. Did you get hurt?”
“I’m fine, kid. Might be a little stiff in the morning, though.” She stretched out her wings and turned toward where she’d last seen the source of the problem. Blondie must have been knocked off his staff in the commotion because he now laid flat on the ground with that cardinal hopping anxiously atop his chest. Eda loomed over him.
“And that,” she said, “is why we don’t activate random glyphs.”
She of all people would know.
Goldie blinked his eyes open slowly—did he hit his head?—and then yelped at the sight of her, scrambling backwards. Oh, right. Harpy form. The one he'd called her delusional over. She grinned sharply. “Told you I could turn into a harpy.”
The palisman squawked angrily at her for scaring its witch. Adorable.
Luz ran up to the scene and said something in that other language of hers that Eda chose to roughly translate to Hunter, you reckless idiot. “You could have gotten us all killed!”
“Instead,” Lilith said from the sealed exit, “it looks like you might have gotten us all trapped.” Every set of eyes in the room turned to her as she blasted at the blockage. The magic fizzled then ceased, like soda going flat. King attempted the same with his sonic attack. A handful of pebbles fell. Nothing else. “We’ll have to find a way to deactivate the spell.”
“Guess your little escape plan backfired,” Eda said to the Golden Dunce, and watched with no small amount of amusement while shame turned his pale skin as pink the girl’s toy aisle. No wonder he wore a mask all the time if he blushed that easily. “Looks like you’re stuck with us.”