Chapter 5 A PROBLEM NAMED LILA ALVAREZ

KIERAN

The fear in Alvarez’s eyes sharpens. She takes another step back until she is pinned against the wall. "What... what does that mean?"

"It means exactly what it sounds like." I take a step closer and raise one hand. “As I said before, don’t try to run. You won’t succeed and I assure you, this is much better and safer for you.”

Memory erasure is a simple enough piece of fae magic, clean and precise. It would only take a moment and she’ll be on her merry way home and I’ll pretend like this error never happened.

I chant the spell and the magic leaps from my skin to hers.

Crack.

I feel the magic rebound before I fully understand what is happening. It ricochets back through the connection with a force that sends a sharp, unexpected shock up my arm, and from her skin, where the magic had made contact, a bloom of gold light radiates outward.

"What in the realms..."

I snarl and try again, sure that I must have made some sort of mistake. I reconstruct the magic more carefully this time, reinforce its edges, send it toward her with greater precision.

The same thing happens. Gold light. Rebound. The magic dissolving against her skin like water meeting heat. At this point, she simply stares at me, looking utmostly confused and flabbergasted.

What in the world is happening?

“Is... is something supposed to happen to me?” she asks, and I cannot quite decipher the tone of her voice.

My jaw tightens. I try a third time, differently, approaching from a different angle, using the version of the spell I had once used on a human who had been trapped for three days by a high-court fae and who had built up 3 days worth of memories that I had to alter. It’s extreme, but it’s guaranteed to work. That spell can cut through almost anything.

The light this time is brighter and I notice her eyes widen in terror and her hands extend to cover her face as it reaches towards her.

It fails. And when it ricochets back, it nearly knocks me off the ground.

I withdraw in horror.

What the hell is going on? What the hell is she?

I find, to my irritation, my fingers slightly quivering as I reach out for the fourth time, this time not reaching for magic, but for answers. I grab her jaw.

“What are you? Answer me?”

The display has obviously shocked her, because she just stares at me, her body cooped in a defensive manner, as though she expects me to strike her.

I hiss and tilt her head roughly to the side. She tenses when I step behind her, her whole body going rigid. She whimpers, her hands catching my wrists, as I reach up to brush aside the hair at the back of her neck, but I ignore her.

And then I see it.

Tucked behind her right ear, glowing faintly in the aftermath of her flare, is a small, crescent-shaped birthmark.

I reach out and touch it.

The reaction is immediate. A faint pulse of warmth beneath my fingertips, one that hums at exactly the same frequency as the Conduit's foundational structure, and the gold light flickers briefly at the edges of her skin.

Great heavens. An anchor.

I take my hand away and step back.

And then, before I have fully processed what I am about to do, my hand has gone to the hilt of my sword, my mind screaming two words.

Vaelor. Trap. Human slave.

Panic, real and unbridled, takes hold. She has a bloodline connected to the Conduit at a time when the Conduit is under active attack. She cannot be made to forget. She is standing in front of me.

She probably has a hand in the increasingly devastating wreckage to the Conduit. Why else would she be here at this moment, at the exact point of the tear in the Conduit? Why else would an anchor come to work in my firm?

A spy perhaps?

I draw my sword and lift it. In a second, she immediately recognises what is about to take place.

"No! Please!" she screams, her voice breaking. She sinks to her knees, her hands up in a futile shield. "Please, I won't tell anyone, I promise. Please don't kill me!"

I level the tip of the blade at her throat and she gasps.

One thrust. One clean movement and the threat to the veil is gone.

"Please,” she’s crying this time. “I don't... I won't tell anyone. I don't even know what I'd tell them. Please, I have done nothing to you, I'm just a person who was walking home and I... please."

I look at her. My hand trembles. The sword does not move further.

My mind is still all in support of ending her life. Her memory cannot be wiped. She has seen too much. Most importantly, she carries a bloodline that makes her a potential asset to whoever is attacking the Conduit, and he probably has already got her and is working through her.

I should finish it.

But if she were to be used by Vaelor, she should be well equipped to fight for her life. Even if she were in pretence, with the sword poised on her throat, she should have let go of her mask and fought for her life.

Unless she has predicted that she is less detectable this way.

Good gracious heavens. My mind is a blur.

I look at her hands, still raised, covering her face, still shaking slightly at the wrists.

I have killed many things in the two hundred plus years that I have lived on earth. Hollow Walkers and redcaps and court traitors and creatures that had once been something else before they became monsters. I have never once hesitated over any of them.

I have always followed my instincts, and they have never led me astray.

But...

I slide the sword back into the sheath.

"Get up," I snap, my voice like falling ice.

She looks up, tears streaking her cheeks. "Are... are you going to...?"

"If I wanted you dead, you wouldn't have had time to beg."

She sniffs and gets up, trying to straighten herself up. I look at her for a long moment.

"What is your name."

She blinks. "What?"

"Your name. Your full name."

"Lila," she says, after a moment. "Lila Alvarez."

Lila.

"Listen to me carefully, Lila Alvarez, because I am going to say this once. You are not going to speak of what you have seen tonight. Not to anyone. Not to your friends, not to your colleagues, not to a journal, not to a therapist. You are not going to research what you saw or attempt to document it or discuss it in any format. Do you understand me?"

She stares at me. I can see her weighing the question. Weighing me.

"And if I do?" she asks. Her voice is shaking, but there’s some steadiness in her tone.

The fact that she asks instead of simply agreeing tells a lot about her. "Then you die."

A beat. "I... I understand," she says, very quietly.

"Good." I take a step back, giving her room to breathe, which she does, visibly. "Your life as you knew it ended the moment you saw me tonight. I will decide what is to be done with your... unique situation. Until then, you are under my shadow. If you breathe a word of this, there isn't a corner of this earth I won't find you in."

“I... I just want to go home, please.”

I nod. "Go home, Lila. Lock your door. Sleep, if you're capable of it. And remember what I said."