"You're willing to risk your life," he said, "but what of your soul? What if the master ring falls to someone else? What then? It's only the slave ring that can't be removed by its wearer."
My eyes fell to Al's hands, just visible among the folds of the blanket. He wasn't wearing gloves, and they looked hard and worn. But I had no choice. Miserable and unsure I looked up. "I have to do this."
I couldn't tell what he was thinking. His eyes catching the red glow of the low flames seemed almost normal. "Then why have you failed?"
Oh God. I knew why I'd failed, and I dropped my gaze. "I'm afraid," I whispered, and he smiled. "Damn it, it's not funny!" I shouted. "I'm afraid!"
Still smiling, Al looked at my fingers knotted around one another, but he didn't reach out to touch me. "Do you trust Quen?"
Miserable, I thought of Quen, his morals, his loyalty, his strength of character. Ceri had loved him, and Ray was his entire world. I knew exactly what I would get with Quen, and I nodded. I trusted him.
"Do you trust . . . Trent?" Al said. My head snapped up, and Al bobbed his head at my deer-in-the-headlights expression. "Ahh, there it is," Al said, infuriatingly smug.
"Trent won't ever have access to it," I said quickly.
"Chances are he will. If you trusted him, you could invoke them. Show me what you do to invoke elven . . . silver."
Flustered, I dug the rings out. "I trust him. I do," I asserted, but my stomach clenched, telling me I was lying.
Al shrugged his shoulders, and his blanket fell away. "Then show me."
Fine. Mood sour, I carefully snuggled the smaller ring into the cradle of the larger. Shifting on the hard flagstones, I perched the rings on the tips of the fingers of my left hand, holding it right at eye level between us. One last look at Al, who had fumblingly put on a pair of glasses I could only assume would let him see my aura easier, and I closed my eyes.
God, please help me do this, I thought. I need to do this.
Exhaling, I pushed the aura off my hand, feeling it hang about my bent elbow like a shirtsleeve, warm and soft. Al grunted in surprise when I made an odd twist in my head, and my entire aura flashed red. "You layer your aura?" he breathed. "One vibration at a time?"
Nervous, I wondered if showing Al this was such a good idea. The demon was a packrat. No telling what defunct charms he had lying around. But I nodded, not opening my eyes as I sent a tendril of red aura to snake up my arm. I shivered as it skated over my pulse points and crawled up my fingers, twining over the joined rings and thickening. My pulse hammered. This was where it usually all fell apart, and I carefully, slowly, shifted my aura twining about me and the rings to the slightest shade of orange.
"Careful . . ." Al breathed, and my head started to hurt as tiny cracks in the rings showed.
"I can do this," I said through my clenched teeth. I had to do this. I had no choice.
But it was Trent, and I felt tears of frustration prick my eyes and my hand start to shake. He had caged me, hunted me, and made my life hell, even as I had fought to shove down his throat that he was immoral and deserved punishment.
But my breath came out in a sob as I realized I didn't believe that anymore.
I remembered his agonized expression in the ever-after basilica when he begged me to see his people to health, his anger when he pulled Nick off me, his willing sacrifice to endure death and the end of everything he had worked his entire life for-to save one child.
"Rachel," Al whispered, but the tinkle of wild magic plinked through my soul as one whirling eye of a thousand turned and focused on me. Others were drawn, and my courage faltered as they laughed at me for thinking I had any power but the power of choice.
And at that, my conviction grew. Choice. Damn it, I trusted Trent. Damn it all to hell, I trusted him down to my soul-not because I had to, but because I chose to.
Tears rolled down my face, and I shook at the realization. I trusted him, even with my soul. And he isn't meant for me.
The wild magic laughed, and it was as if the eyes marked me with the blackness of the night, making me theirs. I am yours, I agreed miserably, but it was true, and more important, it was my choice. It always had been.
I shook as the entire rainbow skated over my skin, flashing to a blinding white that sank inside itself to an impenetrable blackness. With an echoing ping, the rings reinvoked.
Gasping, I opened my eyes wide to see the rings glowing like glory itself. With a sudden implosion of thought, the making of the rings imprinted on my mind. The degradation that the rings in my shaking hand had once caused echoed through me, the cruelty of the master, the anguish of the slave, the petty bitterness and the savage backlash that ended both lives and broke the rings. It was all there, in the tinkling laughter of wild magic, savagely honest in its cruelty. Lives had been ruined beyond belief with the power contained here, and now it was mine in two tiny bands of hard metal.
"Rachel."
I couldn't look away from the rings. I could feel tears on my cheeks and sense Al-a dark bear of a shadow-hovering before me, his hands outstretched, afraid to touch me.
"Rachel?" It was questioning this time, and I blinked, curving my fingers around the warm metal. They were alive. All I wanted to do was destroy them.
"These are evil," I said, choking back a sob as my aura thickened, pinpricks of energy welling up through me in protection-protection against stuff such as what I had made. And I would trust Trent with this? "These are evil!" I said louder, seeing them through my tears.
My arms hurt, and I jumped as a blanket smelling of Al and burnt amber landed around my shoulders. "You did it," Al said in wonder, and I looked up, shaking. "You trust him?"
"I wish I hadn't." Sniffing, I wiped a hand under my nose. "No wonder you hate elves."
I went to hide them, and Al caught my wrist. Slowly my fingers opened, and he took them, his expression solemn as he held the rings up to the firelight. His glasses were gone, and he held them close, squinting. "How sure are you of his commitment?" he asked, his tone guarded and soft.
I wiped my eyes and held my shaking hand out. The memories of the rings still echoed in me, still coloring my thoughts as I tried to readjust my world. I'd known elves were savage, fighting for their existence under the boot of the demons. I had guessed that the demons were seeking revenge for the elves cursing them into a slow spiral of extinction. But I hadn't realized how deep it went, how convoluted it was, how old.
Shaking the feeling off, I took the rings from him and jammed them away in a pocket, hiding them. I'd use them, and then when done, I'd destroy them. They were tools, and I wouldn't let fear rule me. "It doesn't matter," I said, answering him. "It's the choice I make."
Al sighed and looked into the flames, through them, maybe, at nothing and everything. "Perhaps you should concentrate on saving yourself," he whispered. "Let us all die. We're broken beyond repair."
I thought of Al in his dream, looking nothing like this, more like an elegant bat. Broken? Perhaps, but I had put his butterfly back together with my blood. "I never liked the movie Titanic," I said, and he grunted, his gaze sharpening on me. "They both could have gotten on that damn door."
Al smiled, and a weird, kindred sensation filled me. Standing, I took his wedding rings from the mantel and handed them to him. "Don't try to forget her," I said, and his hands closed on them, wonder in his eyes as he looked up at me.
"You don't know what you're asking."
"Yes, I do." I had to leave. The rings were awake, and the sooner I used them, the sooner I could destroy them. "Could you . . . send me home?"
He blinked, then got to his feet with a huge sigh. "My student just reinvoked wild magic, and she can't get herself home?" He laughed, but it fell flat, and I jumped, startled when his thick finger touched my jaw, turning me to make me look at him. "If he betrays you, I will finish what I started with his fingers," he said, and I shivered. "Tell him that."
"I will."
The smooth finish of my scrying mirror slid into my arms, and he backed up, eyes running over me as if it might be the last time he'd ever see me. "We are such cowards," he said softly, and then my breath sucked in as the line took me, my head exploding in pain. I think I passed out, because I didn't remember hitting the hard red cement slab that covered Pierce's grave in my backyard, but that's where Al dropped me.
Sitting up, I rubbed my bruised hip, looking past the silent gargoyles perched around me as I pulled my scrying mirror to me. "Ah, hi," I said as I got up, nervous and stinking of burnt amber. Leathery wings rustled, and red and gold eyes blinked. "I hope I didn't disturb you," I said as I edged onto holy ground, my hands touching the outside of my pockets to be sure I still had everything. I had reinvoked wild magic. Somehow I had done it. I had everything in place.
Tomorrow was going to be a long day.