“They are here, Master Python.”
“Thank you, Kirk,” Python said. Kirk vanished.
Magda started forward again, but halted once more when an all-too familiar figure stepped into the breezeway from outside.
The young woman was a stunning beauty with cascades of black hair bound back from her high forehead, secured under a woven-branch silver diadem. Her eyes flashed, aquamarine. Her curling lip, ruby red. Her statuesque body was clad in tight trousers and a cut-away, forest-green gown of silken cloth.
The lathed walls and gleaming beams of Python’s mansion seemed to collapse upon Magda. The whole world closed in, darkening, disappearing, until it was only her and Lavana.
Lavana threw her hands open up by her shoulders, so her silver-hued finger-knives framed the long, sweeping lines of her face. All ten curving blades were drawn—the most straightforward method for one Rae to make her intentions known to another. One of them would die today.
“Hello, cousin.” Her sweet lilting voice echoed through the cavernous space of the kitchen. “Look at us. All grown up now, aren’t we?”
Magda edged back a step. “I don’t want to fight you. I don’t want the Enneahedron.”
“Oh, good,” Lavana said, drawing back all but one of her blades, the forefinger of her right hand—the dragon. The sheaths that covered her fingers were wrought like the worst of the beasts—a kraken, a were-tiger, a manticore. “Then I will not have to force it from you and worry about ruining my gown.”
“Or my house,” Python commented casually from where he had retreated, back by the sink.
Footsteps sounded from the hall. Two of Lavana’s warriors appeared. Riker gazed at them as if impressed. Damion stuffed the Enneahedron into his waistband and faced the approaching warriors, blocking the doorway.
“You should be more concerned that I will report your whereabouts to the Elf King,” Lavana snarled to Python. “How frustrating it must be for you not to be able to see your own future.”
Python gazed at her coolly.
“You are working for the Elf King,” Damion spat at her over his shoulder.
“Working for?” Lavana sneered. “Not at all. But we have come to an agreement.”
“What will the Crown say when she learns that you have treated with her worst enemy?” Damion asked.
“You are the only ones who know and soon you will be dead, as will the Crown, and then I will be the Crown.”
“A pawn to the Elf King,” Damion retorted.
“Damion,” Magda said, “give me the Enneahedron.”
Damion glanced back at her, then removed the bundle and held it to Riker, who bridged the space between Magda and Damion. Riker took it uncertainly and brought it to Magda.
“What a pretty Prince you have, cousin,” Lavana said, taking a sashaying step closer, almost at the edge of the kitchen now. The distance between her and Magda was more than ten feet, but it felt like ten inches. “Perhaps I’ll claim him instead of the one I already have.”
“You have no Prince,” Damion growled, still swelling up to fill the opposite doorway.
No escape. Either they’d have to go through Lavana or her warriors. Magda’s pulse revved. She knew what she had to do, but it had been so many years...
“You have been on the run too long, Damion,” Lavana said. “I have a Prince now. Quite a spectacular one, but I like the look of yours, Magdalena. There’s something rather sweet in his face, isn’t there?” She winked at Riker, who gazed at her dumbly.
Magda unwrapped the Enneahedron. When she laid her hand on the stone, a jolt of energy pushed through her, igniting her veins, rekindling the cinders of magic buried within her. Though she’d had no intention of fighting Lavana, though she still didn’t wish to be Radiant or even to return to the Lands, the thought of handing over the Enneahedron suddenly became... impossible.
“Very good,” Lavana said, eyeing the Enneahedron and stepping closer again, just beyond the threshold now.
Magda had another means of escape, but it would only carry one, and that would mean leaving Damion and Riker behind. She didn’t know if the two warriors squared off with Damion were the only ones or if there were more outside. And how had they arrived so quickly, still dressed in the garb of the Lands? Either they had a portal or there was one nearby. She guessed it was the latter. Moveable portals were much harder to come by than fixed ones.
Having the Enneahedron in her hand may have been giving her more physical strength, but it was also drawing her former self out—that reckless, bigheaded, insatiable self.
“Since you have no desire for the Enneahedron,” Lavana said, “you may hand it over to me now.”
“And then what?” Magda said.
