“The older me doesn’t remember. She doesn’t have my memories. Ultimately… that’s why I’m here.”
Madeline took in child Neptune’s words, staring at the young girl.
“You… only exist because she lost her memories?” she asked.
Neptune shook her head. “Not ‘lost.’ Her memories were going to be stolen. Instead of allowing that to happen, I escaped.”
Madeline paused, looking back the way she’d come. There was an unsettling chill running down her spine, and she worried about prying eyes and ears.
“No spying here,” the masked boy said. “That is why I brought you.”
“Okay,” Madeline said, though she still couldn’t shake this strange feeling. “So… ‘stolen.’ Your memories were going to be stolen… by who?”
“What you sensed,” the boy said.
“There is a darkness here,” Madeline said softly, earning a nod from the boy and Neptune.
“Mercury and Jupiter had their memories taken,” Neptune said. “I was able to escape. But…” She paused, worry slightly creasing her brow. “They should not have come back. I don’t understand. Why did they return here?”
“This is what they’ve been searching for,” Madeline said. “They’ve been trying to get here for a very long time. They remember small fragments and echoes, and those called them to the Silver Star Sanctuary.”
“I see,” Neptune said. “So they retained just the right fragments to bring them back. So he could finish what he started.”
“ ‘He’?” Madeline asked. “The… darkness?”
“Darkness,” the boy said, nodding. “But not like other darkness.”
“You have seen the living darkness?” Neptune asked, earning a nod from Madeline. “The presence you sensed… he is not that. But… he was aided by it. Similar. And… similar to myself.”
“How?”
“Separated,” the boy said. “There is another.”
“He has another form somewhere else,” Madeline said. Neptune and the boy nodded. Madeline looked at the boy. “Are you… the same, too? There’s another of you who’s missing the memories you have?”
The boy hesitated, then bowed his head, not saying anything. Neptune frowned. “He is… different,” she said. “We are not sure if his other self still exists. He’s been here since long before my sisters and I were. You may have noticed that his memories are more fragmented than mine.” She reached out and took the boy’s hand in hers. “I’m glad you understand him. Others… they’ve struggled. He tried to speak to Fae and the two who look like Fae.”
“Feel like Fae, too,” the boy said. Neptune nodded.
“They didn’t listen to you?” Madeline asked. “So then… is Fae in danger?”
The boy looked up at Madeline. “All in danger,” he said. “Everyone here.”
“From the darkness,” Madeline said. The boy nodded. “But what about the Matron? Does she know? Has she warned them?”
Neptune looked aside. “The Matron… knows everything,” she said softly. There was sadness in her voice, but also bitterness. “But she will not say. Not until it is too late.”
“Then how do we warn the others?” Madeline asked. “How long do we have?”
“You had another question,” Neptune said, gazing up at Madeline. “Your mother. She was here before you, a long time ago. She… tried to help us. But then she left, and… it is very difficult for those who leave to find their way back.”
“But now you’ve come,” the boy said.
Neptune nodded. “Perhaps her mission was passed on to you,” she said. “Without you realizing it, you were brought to my sisters, to Fae, followed them on their journey, to arrive here. To… complete what your mother began.”
Madeline’s head was spinning. My mother knew about the Enchanted Dominion? She’d even been this far, to a place so far away, so difficult to reach? But then…
She remembered when she left Grimoire. How she’d told her father that Fae was in the Enchanted Dominion, and he hadn’t batted an eye, or asked a single question about it.
He knew. He knew the Enchanted Dominion existed all along.
But they both hid it from me? Why?
She stared at Neptune and the boy.
Mother…
You tried to save them. You had the same power, what you passed down to me. You could feel that dark presence. You tried to rescue these two from it.
She had so many questions. But she had one clear resolve. “I will help you,” she said. “Tell me everything you know, and let’s find a way to rescue both of you, and everyone else in danger here.”
——
“That, truly, is one thing I did not ever expect to happen.”
Fae blinked at the Matron’s statement. She hadn’t expected the Star sisters to lose their memories? But then…
“Well then how did it happen?” Mercury asked. “I mean… you must have been there, right? Why did we leave in the first place?”
The Matron bowed her head. “Your parents… they talked very little about the life they left behind to come here,” she said. “They kept journals, the both of them. I never read them, they wouldn’t let anyone. Until they died… and then, anticipating the end, they hid their journals. I did not know where they were. All I ever knew about your parents was who they were, not who they’d been. They were marvelous, beautiful people. So full of love, so full of… courage. The only details I knew of their lives before arriving at my door were that they hadn’t come to the Sanctuary by choice — they’d arrived by happy accident, not knowing it existed — and that both they, and their pursuers — their killers — came from Grimoire.”
“Grimoire?” Mercury asked, staring in shock. “Wait, but then…” She narrowed her eyes, staring at the smooth, silver surface of the table, deep in thought.
“The journals,” Neptune said slowly, looking up.
The Matron nodded. “You girls found them. I still do not know what was written in them, but… after you read them, you were determined to leave. All three of you insisted. ‘We must go back to Grimoire.’ But you never said why, or what you’d read.”
“Not even a hint of a reason?” Mercury asked, raking a hand through her hair, a pained look on her face.
“The only other thing you said was…” The Matron paused. “You said, ‘We have to set things right.’ But you never explained what that meant.”
“Set things right, huh?” Jupiter asked. She folded her arms, sitting back. “Where are the journals now?”
“You took them with you,” the Matron said.
“We took —” Jupiter started, then slumped in her seat, a hand to her forehead. “So then they’re totally lost! We didn’t have them when we woke up in Grimoire, right?”
“We didn’t have anything from the past,” Mercury said. “Except… but… that’s really weird.”
“What’s weird?” Jupiter asked.
“We were wearing ordinary clothes,” Mercury said. “Like the kinds you’d wear in Grimoire. We fit right in.” She looked up at the Matron. “But you don’t have clothes like that here, right? What were we wearing when we left?”
“You were dressed in the Sanctuary’s garb, albeit slightly redesigned for long travel,” the Matron said. “All three of you were clad in silver.”
“And we definitely weren’t when we woke up in Grimoire,” Neptune said. She sat back, so Fae could finally see her eyes. They were narrowed in deep thought. “We didn’t just lose our memories of this place, or of our journey back to Grimoire. There are memories… how old were we when we left?”
“Time is strange here in comparison to the rest of the Dominion, and especially Earth,” the Matron said. “So I cannot say how long you’ve been gone —”
“That’s not important,” Neptune said. “How old were we?”
“A year younger than you are now, by Human reckoning.”
Jupiter sat up straight. “No, wait, hold up,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s no way. We’ve been in Grimoire for nearly four years already. We woke up on the first day of our first year at Grimoire U, in our dorm room.”
“And everything was paid for,” Neptune said slowly. “Our tuition, room and board, textbooks… and we all had a lot of money.”
“A lot of money,” Jupiter said with a low whistle.
“We never could trace our benefactor,” Mercury said. “So… we were in Grimoire for… well, we don’t know how long before we woke up with our memories gone. We didn’t have any friends or family with us, so it felt like starting from zero.”
“Okay, wait, backtrack a sec,” Jupiter said, waving her hands. “The timeline still doesn’t work. We were only a year younger, but it’s been four years, at least in Grimoire, right? There’s no way that works.”
“I said your ages by Human reckoning,” the Matron said. “But look at yourselves. At each other. How much have you aged in four years?”
A taut silence filled the room, stretching on for several long moments. The Star sisters looked at each other.
“What…” Jupiter finally started in a low voice.
“What the heck is this?” Mercury asked.
“Time here is different than the rest of the Dominion,” the Matron said. “And you were born in the Silver Star Sanctuary. Not to mention… you were carried in your mother’s womb through much of the Enchanted Dominion. Your most formative years were spent not in the Human realm, but in that of the Enchanted — surrounded by, immersed in, the magic that fills the entire Dominion, the magic that gives the Enchanted such long lives and the ability to control magic without a Talisman.”
“So, wait, we’re like… older than we should be?” Jupiter asked.
“But you can’t say for certain,” Neptune said, studying the Matron’s masked face. “Can you?”
“It is difficult to measure time, but age I can decipher readily,” the Matron said. “By Human reckoning, in however long you spent outside of the Sanctuary — both through the Dominion and back in Grimoire, and we can’t be certain how long that was — the three of you only aged one year, near exactly. Your bodies are eighteen years old — again, by Human reckoning.”
“We… should be twenty-two,” Jupiter said, shaking her head. “We’re about to graduate college!”
“We age slower than we should,” Neptune said. The Matron nodded.
“This is too messed up,” Jupiter said, resting her head in her hands. Mercury stroked her back gently.
“But you can’t say for sure how slowly we age, can you?” Mercury asked. The Matron shook her head. “Mom… and Dad… how, um… how were they dressed when they arrived? What kinds of clothes, accessories, stuff like that? What kind of… stuff did they have? Did they just have their journals? Did they have cell phones, extra clothes, watches, car keys, anything else on them?”
“You can see for yourself their clothing when Toryu returns with photos,” the Matron said. “As for belongings, they only had the clothes on their backs, their Talismans, and their journals. They did say they’d had more — they were always so apologetic for being granted free clothing and other things they needed — but in their flight they lost a great deal.”
“We still might be able to guess something,” Mercury said. Her eyes were narrowed, her gaze intense. “We have to know. We have to know… who we are.”
Fae was silent in all this. She had so much to think about, her mind swirling with more and more questions and ideas, but this was the Star sisters’ story, and things they needed to know and work through.
But…
If you need me, I won’t shy away.
After all this time, you’re finally getting answers. And yet…
What words were there for all of this? Fae couldn’t wrap her mind around it.
The truth…
Can change your entire world. That’s…
…terrifying.
“I’m sorry,” Sonya suddenly said in a small, shy voice. She even raised her hand. “I just… I have some questions. We… can’t learn much more before Toryu returns with photographs, can we? And… well, I just…” She shook her head, looking down at the notebook she had out. As always, she’d been writing notes throughout the entire conversation. “You said there…” She shook her head. “Sorry, not that one. I, ah…” She looked over at the Star sisters. “Is it… okay if I —?”
“Go for it,” Mercury said, somehow managing to flash her signature perfect smile.
“Thank you,” Sonya said with a nod. She turned her attention to the Matron. “Excuse me, Matron, but I was wondering why you’ve told us so little about yourself. Do you have a name we can call you, for instance?”
“I am the Matron of the Silver Star Sanctuary,” the Matron said. “What need have I of a name?”
An expression flickered across Sonya’s face, gone before Fae could read it. “What of your mask?” she asked. “Why do you hide your eyes? It’s very difficult to read your expressions, and that makes it difficult to trust you.”
The Matron cocked her head to the side, smiling slightly. “The eyes are the windows to the soul,” she said in a simple, matter-of-fact tone. “To gaze into them is to see the truth of a person. Would you bare your entire soul for all the world to see?”
Sonya flinched slightly at that. “But you’re among old family. Will you not bare your soul to even them? Or offer them masks to protect them, as you protect yourself? You’ve set yourself in a very different position from the rest of us.”
“The truth is a precious thing,” the Matron said. “The truth…” She sighed, nodding slowly. “Yes. That is the most important part of this mask. I am a bearer of truth. And truth, in the wrong hands, can be horrifically misused. Or, as we see here… learning a lost truth can be painful. The truth must be protected and carefully handled. This mask is a reflection of that — an intentional obfuscation of the truth.”
Just before the Matron spoke her final word, Sonya slammed her hands on the table and stood so quickly it knocked her chair over. All eyes were on her, while hers were locked on the Matron in a vicious glare.
“An intentional obfuscation of the truth…?” she asked in a taut, quiet voice.
A moment later she snatched up her notebook and pen and strode swiftly from the room, shoving open the door they’d entered from so hard it slammed into the walls outside.
“Sonya!” Fae called, recovering from her shock just enough to rise. What was going on? “Sonya, wait!” She ran after her, and Olivia followed.
“Fae!” Mercury called, and Fae looked back for a moment. But Mercury shook her head. “Sorry. Go get her. Make sure she’s okay.” Fae nodded, not sparing a glance for the Matron as she left with Olivia.
——
“So that’s what happened,” Madeline said in a soft voice. She realized her hands were shaking, and she clasped them together.
Fae… you’ve walked right into the worst possible trap. All of you have.
What little Neptune had told her, with some input from the masked boy, was…
“How could this happen?” she asked, shaking her head. “How does the Matron allow this to happen?”
“The Matron is… a complicated woman,” Neptune said. “Please, you… you must try not to blame her.”
Madeline looked past Neptune. “I’m not sure about that,” she said. “But… I’ll try.” She sighed, looking back out of the gazebo. “Where do we go? How do we stop this from continuing?”
“We must go,” the boy said. “To the core.”
“The center of the Sanctuary?” Madeline asked. The boy and Neptune nodded. “How do we get there?”
“It will be dangerous,” Neptune said. “I… we could not go there. Perhaps with your help we can, but… it would be best if we could find your friends. If they could see us, or hear us, or… at least believe we’re here.”
Madeline smiled. “Fae will believe me. Don’t you worry. We just have to find her. After all she’s escaped… we can’t let him win. Not now. And yet you’ve made it sound impossible to stop him.”
“It very nearly is,” Neptune said. “But there is a system. Sort of like… a puzzle to solve. If we can get to the core, we should be able to do so safely. We’ll be in his blind spot.”
“So it’s getting there that’s the hardest part,” Madeline said. She sighed. “And I’m not a fighter, not really. None of us are. Wait, no.” She nodded. “Olivia is. She might be able to handle it.”
“The greatest trouble is once we leave this place,” Neptune said. “There are no other safe areas in the Sanctuary between here and the core. We must be very careful about what we say and how we act.”
“He sees and hears all,” the boy said.
“This whole place was all a…” Madeline sighed, shaking her head. “Won’t he notice that we were out of his sight and hearing?”
“It… appears to be a loophole,” Neptune said. “At least, judging from how he’s behaved. Hopefully I’m right.”
“Hopefully,” Madeline said. She took a deep breath, then let it out. “Okay. Nothing to it but to head out and see how things go, right?”
“Thank you,” Neptune said. “However things go… the fact that you are so willing to help us despite the danger is worth everything.”
Madeline stared at the girl, lost for a words. Finally, she just smiled and turned towards the stairs. “Thank me when we succeed,” she said, steeling herself.
Knowing what lay ahead now, Madeline was terrified. But she also knew what was at stake here. She was more terrified of the consequences of either inaction or failure.
Success is too precious here to fear the risk, no matter how great.
Fae…
I won’t let him take you. I promise.
Together they left the gazebo. They left the only safety they had.
From here until the very distant core of the Silver Star Sanctuary, they would have to be very, very careful.
——
“Sonya!” Fae said, finding Sonya out in the atrium, next to the giant silver tree. “Sonya, what’s going on?”
Sonya stood facing the tree, but she wasn’t looking at it. She was looking at her hand. Flickers of magical light, like magenta flames, played at the tips of her fingers, combining and spreading, then separating and sinking back into her skin, before rising again and repeating the action.
“The truth is precious,” Sonya said softly. “But not like how she said. Hiding the truth… no matter how painful it is… it only brings harm. If I’d known the truth about my power sooner, if I’d brought my fear of it up sooner… I’d still be afraid of it, I know, because I still am. But I wouldn’t be as frightened. Olivia, you would have realized what it was and told me sooner. The path to recovering from that fear would be clearer and easier. If I hadn’t kept the truth from you… you could have saved me sooner. I thought I was protecting all of you by hiding this power I so fear, and look where it got me. Nowhere worth going.” She shook her head. “Wearing that mask, saying those things… the Matron is hiding far more than she lets on. And hiding so much truth is only going to cause people pain. For her to cause the Star sisters pain, after all they’ve gone through to return to her, that’s —”
But she cut off, shaking her head, gritting her teeth, glaring at the glimmering magenta glow around her fingers. “She said it’s just her and Toryu here,” she continued. “But we saw the boy. All of us did, and more than once. Things aren’t adding up. ‘Intentional obfuscation of the truth’.” She scoffed. “We need to see through these lies, and soon. Or… we’re in danger. And I think the Star sisters are in the worst danger of all.”
Fae nodded, looking around at the vast, empty atrium. She’d wondered the same thing when the Matron had said it was just her and Toryu in this place. If so, who was the boy? And why had the Matron tried to hide his existence?
“So the question is, what do we do about this?” Fae asked. “Splitting up…” She looked around, hoping to see Madeline suddenly come running, returning from whatever solo exploring she was doing. “Splitting up is probably the worst thing we can do right now. If we’re in danger, we have no idea what that danger is.”
“We’re better off together,” Olivia said.
“It’s fascinating that you think you have any hope at all.”
Fae’s eyes went wide at the voice that had spoken. An airy, mellifluous tone, carrying with it the air of a bored aristocrat, but also that of someone with absolute confidence in their complete control of all things.
She looked up and laid eyes on the man, the man who controlled darkness itself, the man who’d gone to such lengths to reveal just his name to so many.
Alexander Salazar Greyson.
The man stood high up in the branches of the silver tree, hands tucked in his pockets, a complex smile on his face. His left eye, the blue one with the silver spiral pattern within it, the one that marked him as a Halfchant, gleamed.
“What do you want?” Fae asked, her stylus pen Talisman in hand, taking a step back. “Why are you here?”
Sal chuckled, spreading his hands. His form flickered, like a television screen glitching out for a second. “I’m not actually here, not bodily,” he said. “Oh, but don’t get excited. That doesn’t make you any safer. And as for your first question… I want you, Fae. And your entire retinue, save one. You picked up a straggler, but she’ll be dealt with easily. I must thank you, Fae. You brought everyone here. It’s always so exciting when I can get someone else to do my work for me.”
“What are you talking about?” Sonya asked.
“Don’t talk to him,” Fae said in a whisper. “We have to get out. Find the others and escape.”
“Ah, see, that won’t work,” Sal said. Fae’s blood froze, because Sal wasn’t in the trees anymore. In the span of a heartbeat, he’d vanished, appearing directly behind her, speaking in a soft, confident voice right over her shoulder. She leapt forward, spinning around, but Sal simply smiled, his form flickering again. “Surely you’ve picked up the clues by now, Fae? I thought you were a clever one.”
He doesn’t mean…
The way his body flickers like that… ‘not here bodily’…
“The entire Sanctuary?” Fae asked in a hushed voice.
Sal grinned. “Clever as always.” He flickered again, but this time because Olivia attacked him…
And yet her alabaster scythe went through him and out again with no effect. Like he was a ghost. Or like a…
“Hologram,” Fae said, narrowing her eyes.
“Indeed,” Sal said. He smirked at Olivia. “A commendable effort, though. And useful, too. Now you see the futility of fighting back.”
“Where are you, then?” Sonya asked, her hand bristling with a magenta aura.
“Attending to a great many things,” Sal said. “I’m a very busy man, nowadays. So much to do. It’s difficult to be in multiple places at once, but…” He chuckled. “What can I say? When I set my sights on a goal, I see it through.”
“Fae!” came the cry of Mercury. She, Jupiter, and Neptune came running into the atrium, but stopped as they saw Sal. “Is he…?”
“Yes,” Fae said. “And…”
Sal tsked, wagging a finger. “Don’t be hasty, Fae. You already figured it out, right? So you know there’s nowhere to run.”
“Nowhere to run?” Jupiter asked. “What’s this punk talking about? What’s going on here?”
“Please, don’t!” came a sudden, shrill cry from the Matron. She stepped ahead of the Star sisters, her posture and voice not at all composed, not anymore. “Sal. Please. I…”
“We have a deal, Matron,” Sal said. “And,” he shrugged, “the Sanctuary has already been converted. You can’t reverse it now. If you had an objection, you should have voiced it a long, long time ago. Ah —” he raised a finger, nodding, “but of course. If you had objected, you’d be a very different person, thanks to your favorite Dragon. Wouldn’t you?”
“What did you do?” Sonya asked, her voice a wrathful growl as she glared at the Matron.
“Don’t bother explaining,” Sal said with a grin. “Let the Sanctuary do it for both of us, eh?” He bowed to the girls. “Thank you, one and all, for everything. And don’t worry — you’ll see me again. At least one more time before you die.”
With that, Sal vanished. Immediately, a low rumbling sounded from all sides, growing louder and louder with every second. The entire Sanctuary shook, and it was all Fae could do just to stay on her feet. She ended up bracing herself against the silver tree’s trunk, but a moment later that failed her.
The tree was opening up, separating off into sections and panels as if it wasn’t a tree at all, but in fact…
Mechanical.
The trunk opened, revealing all sorts of sliding panels and rotating gears, wild puffs of hissing steam obscuring glowing machinery within. But when the steam cleared…
Fae stared in horror. Behind her, Sonya and Olivia cried out in terror.
The tree was filled with clear piping, pumping a viscous, glowing green solution through them. The exact same solution —emblazoned with the exact same emblem — that was found in Wasuryu’s laboratory.
“Dear Vessels,” came Sal’s voice over the rumbling. “Did you honestly think you’d escaped from Wasuryu’s scheme? And did you honestly think he was the greatest force at play in those experiments?”
Fae realized, then, that the low, heavy rumbling was only partially the noise of massive mechanics coming to life. It was also laughter.
The laughter of a Dragon.
Fae started to run, calling for everyone else to run with her. But the Matron stepped in front of them, tears rolling down from behind her mask.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Out of our way!” Sonya cried, rage mingled with panic.
But it was too late. The entire Sanctuary was transforming, not just the tree. And a moment later all six girls were grabbed and pulled away by mechanical arms, drawn down into dark, endless tunnels.
Fae swallowed a scream as the darkness closed in around her. A moment later, she blacked out.
The last thing she heard was the vicious, victorious laughter of Wasuryu.