The Last Spell 41.2

Mireya was learning a new type of grief in the moment.

It wasn’t like the kind she’d felt for her father, for Cyrin, or even for Dante back then. It wasn’t the aching shock of losing someone without the time for a proper goodbye. She’d lost something else entirely; time. If she’d just known Dante was out there, she wouldn’t have withdrawn for hundreds of years to live in numbing isolation. There would have been nothing stopping her from finding him again. Time was the only thing she had an eternity of, and yet she’d found a way to waste it.

A tear rolled down her cheek.

“Where were you?” she whispered.

“Space, for the most part,” Dante said simply.

She stared at him for several moments, dumbfounded. Eventually, a dry humorless laugh bubbled past her lips. “Very funny.”

Dante sighed. “I’m not lying. Lower Aphiran orbit, onboard the Sentinel 1 mission. I was the only crew member.”

Mireya shook her head disbelievingly. “No. You? An astronaut? You’re terrified of heights. You get vertigo standing at the top of a flight of stairs!”

But as she said it, she was struck by a recent memory— the astronaut in the Arcade shying away from the edge of the roof he’d cornered himself onto when she’d chased him there. She knew she’d seen Dante react that way before.

“How I wish that precluded me from such work,” Dante muttered.

“This isn’t just some… costume?” Dawn asked slowly.

Mireya had that wonder too, but she was stuck in the creeping horror of the realization that if this was true, this meant Dante had been living in his personal hell for… she didn’t know how long, aside from how Dante had described it. For the most part. A chill went down her spine, and she wiped fiercely at her eyes.

“It’s a real spacesuit, and it’s mine,” Dante said. “Not the same kind of spacesuit used for spacewalks— it’s an escape suit for launches and landings. Just a shell, really.”

“Hold on,” Clarity cut in. “You said you were on Sentinel 1, but that would’ve been an early-stage unmanned satellite. The same one that crashed and became a spacewreck five years ago.”

Dante smiled, but there was no joy or amusement in it. Mireya… didn’t like the sight of it. “That’s what we’ve been telling you, yes. Believe it or not, that ‘spacewreck’ is actually our very first space station.”

“Who is we?” Mireya demanded. “The same people who found you?”

“Yes,” Dante said. “But you won’t have heard of us.”

“Try me.”

Dante’s eyes darted around the courtyard. “I’m in enough trouble anyway,” he finally muttered, before he cleared his throat. “We’re called the Dynastics.”

Mireya exchanged a look with Dawn and Clarity. The lack of recognition told her that they didn’t recognize it any more than she did.

“I expect our existence is knowledge a bit above your paygrade, Fairburn,” Dante said. “But we work for you.”

Dawn frowned. “Me? You mean… the Houses? What are you, some kind of covert operations force?”

“You could say that,” Dante said. “Our mission is rather broad.”

“And it somehow includes crashing a government event and attacking Clarity?” Mireya said flatly.

Dante’s gaze flicked to Clarity. “You need stopping, Sable, as I’m sure you know,” he said. “Given the part you’re about to play.”

Mireya slowly turned to look at her. Clarity seemed to be frowning to cover up a guilty expression.

“What does he mean?” she demanded.

“I’m here to unlock a door,” Clarity said stubbornly.

“Not just any door,” Dante said. “That door. The one Summer sealed himself.”

Clarity’s shoulders sank. Dawn’s eyes grew wide as Mireya felt her jaw drop.

“You seriously figured that out?” she whispered.

“I’m nearly positive. I—” Clarity sighed, closing her eyes with a pained expression before spitting out, “Sparrow thinks there’s something behind it that Summer took from the House of Courage all the way back then. A scroll from ancient Renvara, written by the same mage who created the First Spell. It’s supposed to hold the instructions on how to use it.”

Dante pointed at Clarity.

“It’s a crucial piece of the puzzle,” he said. “The First Spell is useless if you don’t know how it works.”

“And you don’t want Sparrow using it,” Mireya reasoned. “Neither do we.”

“Which is the only reason I’m sharing any of this.” Dante pressed his lips together. “We’ve determined you and your team are… not our greatest threat.”

Mireya scoffed. “Because you’ve been spying and following us all around, huh?”

“That was somewhat of an accident,” Dante said. “I didn’t… expect to see you in the Arcade. I thought you were dead.”

Mireya let out a laugh. “Me? Dead? Did you learn nothing from our time together?”

“It’s not funny, Mireya.” Dante’s voice was suddenly frigid ice. “You disappeared from the world in 1607, same as I did. The historical consensus was that the Fading got you. The first sign I got otherwise was when I saw you in that Arcade shop.”

The sardonic amusement lifted in a heartbeat, replaced by her heart clenching as Mireya realized two things at the same time.

One, she couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to hear and believe that, isolated from the rest of the world, caged in a machine for centuries. Two, Dante had thought he’d killed her.

Feeling sick, she dropped her gaze to her lap and hung her head.

“Were you in the Permafrost’s Fall?” Dawn asked quietly. “There was a battery there, similar to what you were in the Arcade for.”

“I was.” Dante took a deep breath. “That and our run-in in Storm City weren’t because of any order or mission. I did my research and figured out where you were going. I don’t know what I was thinking when I went there just to leave that behind. I must’ve thought… I hoped Mireya would start to make connections and realize I was still here.” He paused. “I wanted her to find me. I just didn’t want it to be when I was on the job.”

Mireya bit her lip. She couldn’t wrap her head around any of this. She didn’t know if she was talking to an ally, an enemy, a friend or a stranger. All she knew was Dante had changed and nothing could be counted on as familiar anymore.

“Dante,” she whispered, slowly looking back up. “What do these… Dynastics want? How do they do it?”

Dante hesitated. It was the first time he seemed like he didn’t want to answer something.

“We keep the Houses in power,” he said. “We take care of threats. And we do it by employing the best mages in Aphirah.”

A beat of silence passed. Then Mireya shrank back as revulsion coiled in her stomach like a snake.

“You’re a battlemage.” She could taste the disgust in her words. “You’re still doing the Houses’ dirty work.”

"I’m a soldier,” Dante said firmly, but despite the strength of his tone, she saw a stung look flicker across his face. “I follow orders, including the ones I don’t like. That’s it.”

"Was Renvara a threat to take care of, too?” An angry laugh tore itself from her throat as she rose to her feet, backing away. “Did two rogue Houses really come up with that plan, or was it just a secret order ready to send millions to the grave if it meant upholding their precious government? Did you learn this and stick with them anyway?”

“You don’t know what they can do, Mireya,” Dante retorted. “When they want you, you don’t understand the lengths they’ll go to make you theirs.”

“I know the Dante I knew would never have let himself be controlled like that,” Mireya snapped.

"If you think that, Mireya, then you don’t know a damn thing!” Dante leapt to his feet, fire in his eyes. “You think I rolled over and showed them my belly when they took me? I said no to everything. Even when they figured out they could hurt me as much as they liked because I’d simply heal, I refused to help. You know where that got me? They shipped me off to the prison of space so I’d stop causing them trouble.” Each word was spat like a curse. “In orbit, the way you experience gravity makes it feel as though you’re constantly free-falling. Imagine that for five hundred and twenty-six years of your life. Imagine being told it’d be hundreds more if you didn’t cooperate. So I’m sorry I let myself get controlled. I’m sorry that the ways they methodically broke me down during your absence aren’t clear to you. I’m sorry all you can see now is the Houses’ loyal guard dog. Trust me, there was a lot in between.”

Mireya opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her lungs were too tight to summon the air to form words.

Dante shook his head, letting out a rueful laugh.

“I thought you’d get it,” he murmured. “I guess I was wrong. We’ve gone too far on our separate ways for that.”

Mireya’s eyes burned once more as she dropped her gaze to the ground, unable to meet his eyes as guilt drilled a hole in her heart.

She hardly recognized him. Perhaps he didn’t recognize her anymore either.

Dawn slowly stood up beside her. From the shuddering of her breath, Mireya knew she was feeling emotional too.

“This isn’t fair to you,” she whispered. “Does my House leader know?”

“All of them do,” Dante said bitterly. “The current ones don’t care, but Gwen Hawking was the one to get me back on the surface. It took her years.”

“What in the name of the Saints were you doing on a secret space station that they think warranted being subjected to that?” Dawn’s voice was appalled. “Does this new battery have anything to do with that?”

Silence fell over them for several seconds.

“I can’t answer that,” Dante said at last. “I’m sorry.”

Mireya’s heart sank. Whatever it was, she knew it wasn’t worth it.

“You should be warned, though.” Dante paused. “Mireya, if the Dynastics knew of you, they’d stop at nothing to recruit you as well. They don’t, and I will do what I can to keep that information from reaching them. But they already have their eye on your friend.”

Blinking away the tears from her eyes, Mireya managed to look up again out of confusion.

“Cyrin?” Faint panic pitched the sound of Clarity’s voice. “What do they want with him?”

“What does it sound like?” Dante asked.

Mireya and Clarity exchanged a stricken look. This was no time to get into the information that their friend was dying, or quite possibly already dead.

“You said you’re made up of the best mages in Aphirah,” Mireya said slowly. “Why would you want Cyrin?”

Dante’s brow furrowed. “Why would we not?”

“Cyrin’s good with magic,” Clarity said quietly. “Uniquely so, in some ways. But they’d be the first to admit they’re not among the best.”

The scowl on Dante’s face made it seem as though he was just as confused as them now.

“They… don’t know?” Dante asked with surprise.

“Know what?” Mireya pressed.

“That they’re a Major Mage.” Dante said it as though it were evident.

Mireya was stunned to silence for a moment before turning away with a laugh that she knew made her sound crazy. She hoped she was. She wanted these last twenty-four hours to all be some kind of elaborate hallucination.

“He is not,” Clarity protested. “He does what a regular Minor Mage can do.”

“And then some!” Dante threw up a hand. “Not to mention that Bridger is the only case we’ve seen of someone catching the Fading and surviving in all history.”

“He— he did what now? And did you say Bridger?” Dawn sputtered, but although Mireya felt bad, there was no time to address either of those truth bombs.

“Fine, humor me. What’s his magic of his own, since you think you know all about him?” Clarity demanded.

Dante pursed his lips. “That’s what we don’t know.”

“Wow,” Clarity said flatly. “Your intelligence unit is truly something.”

Dante sighed. “It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. The Dynastics think it’s true, which is all that matters.”

“The warning’s heeded,” Mireya said. She couldn’t bring herself to add that it would be completely irrelevant.

“Good.” Dante suddenly seemed very, very weary. “Then I’ve said my part.”

Taking a deep breath, Mireya looked between Dawn and Clarity. The shock was still very much on Dawn’s face, but aside from that, she knew they were all thinking the same thing: what now?

“If we don’t all want to go back to shooting each other…” Dawn started quietly. “Which I think we don’t. Is it possible we stay out of each other’s way for the rest of the event?”

Dante gave Clarity a hard look.

“I can’t let her get that scroll to Sparrow,” he said. “Orders are orders.”

“Then she won’t,” Dawn said. “She’ll give it to us. You said the Dynastics themselves considered us a lesser threat, didn’t you?”

Clarity’s eyes widened slightly. Dante stood in impassive silence for several unbearable moments.

“Sable,” Dante said finally. “Will you do this?”

Mireya found herself silently praying in a way only a Saint could understand the earnesty of. She didn’t even care if Clarity said yes and betrayed them again. All she could think right now was please, don’t make me fight Dante. Don’t do this to me.

She counted it among the greatest reliefs of her life when Clarity nodded, just barely. Dante seemed to relax the tiniest bit.

“I have a different mission here to carry out that I can finish instead,” Dante said. “It won’t interfere with your heist. But I will warn you— if I let you go tonight, we will hunt you down. It might even be me who comes after you. You will be running until the First Spell is sitting in the possession of the Houses.”

Mireya’s throat tightened. She wished they had the opportunity to talk this over with the entirety of the team. But there was no time.

“We’ll be ready,” she said firmly.

“I hope you are.”

Dante met her eyes steadily for a moment before he nodded sharply and turned away to pick up his flamethrower. That nod told her everything she already knew about him being a soldier. Another barb hooked through her heart.

“That’s a nice weapon,” Clarity said suddenly.

Dante looked down at it, before letting out a quiet huff.

“I’ll trade you,” he said.

Clarity didn’t seem to believe it, until Dante extended it to her. Surprised, she accepted it, lifting it into her arms before tossing him her handgun. He caught it smoothly.

“Mireya,” Dante said. He didn’t look up as he spoke, checking whether the gun’s magazine was loaded. “One last suggestion.”

Mireya stood attentively. He raised his head to look at her.

“Do it the old-fashioned way when you bring the power back,” Dante said.

Mireya could’ve smiled. Or maybe she could’ve cried. She didn’t know. She did neither, but she knew the reason for the feeling. It was an acknowledgement of what used to be.

“Safe wandering,” she whispered.

Without another look back, Dante turned and pulled himself up to the branches of a tree against the wall, leaving the same way he must’ve snuck in. Considering his vertigo, she had to admit he’d finally become a decent climber. The fire he’d started was nearly out, and although she watched him for as long as she could, the darkness swallowed him rapidly and he was gone.

“What did he mean, the old-fashioned way?” Dawn asked quietly.

Mireya tilted her head up to the night sky. The suspended glow of city light trapped in the air told her it was cloudy out. She closed her eyes to concentrate.

“Back in my day, we didn’t have any of that fancy alternating current stuff,” she said.

They wouldn’t hear the thunder for another second or two, but she felt it brewing in her bones. Even through her eyelids, she was blinded by the flash of the nearby lightning bolt striking the roof of the Summer Palace. She bent its energy to her willpower, commanding it to enter the now dead and silent power system of the building. Mireya felt it spark and resist— lightning was a stubborn force— but her control won over. As the thunder boomed, she heard the lamppost in the courtyard sputter back to light and life.

Dawn and Clarity’s faces were awed when she opened her eyes, and Mireya felt the faintest of smiles rise to her lips. Dante had looked that way when he’d seen it the first time, too. It was a show-stopping spectacle of the world’s two most powerful forces: magic and nature.

She just wished Cyrin was there to marvel with her as well.