Chapter Nineteen

"There it is!" Evyne pressed her face up against the window and gave a short victory laugh.

"It's so... big." Lefeli had managed to calm herself some over the three days of traveling, but she was still so much fidgetier than she normally was and she always wanted to be on the opposite bench as Miss Mylda, claiming once when the woman had fallen asleep that she was afraid of her, though she hadn't mentioned why.

The city seemed to triple in size as we grew nearer to it and before I knew what to think, we had come to a stop in front of an immaculate gate flourished with vibrant decorations and two large gargoyle statues that inspired the unsettling thought of not being quite all stone.

A short but impossibly intimidating guard scowled up at the carriage as he conversed with Jaren. Both of them motioned to us in the compartment—the guard as an accusation, Jaren as a calm but spirited explanation—then Jaren stepped up to the carriage respectfully and opened the door for the guard to inspect us. His short stature did nothing to inhibit his ability to peer into the compartment where the four of us sat.

His beady eyes first latched to Miss Mylda, who was trying halfheartedly to keep herself awake, then to Evyne, who met his gaze with a sort of challenge in her eyes, then to Lefeli, who shrunk back with a delirious whimper. He paused for a moment. When he looked over to me, I felt as if my body had been stripped bare, open for him to see and to judge. His little black eyes narrowed at me, his gaze lingering, and I felt as if he could see everything—my parents' lifeless bodies, my tearstained cheeks as I sat alone in the orphanage, the fire that enveloped the walls around me as I escaped the same burning hallways years later. My deepest, darkest memories I had tucked away now resurfaced with a simple flick of his gaze and I felt paralyzed under his scrutiny.

Then he turned and tromped over to Atlas and Birdy and the heat of his black eyes retreated. I sighed shakily and watched as he harrumphed at the horse and nodded once to Jaren, returning to his post, then we were moving through the gate with another jerk of the carriage.

As we passed through the inside of the gate, intricate paintings and ancient runes jumped out in colors and patterns that glowed even in broad daylight. The inscriptions appeared to float off the wall as they passed overhead, but when I blinked they returned to their place as if they had never left. I felt a shiver run through me and an odd unsettling pushed at the base of my spine, then we entered the city in all its vastness and the muffled noise of people erupted into a cacophonous chatter and the roar of crowds.

Through the closed walls of the carriage, I couldn't understand individual voices, but the people themselves told enough of a story that I found myself entranced by the foreign acts of magic all around us. Bright shots of blue and silver fired into the sky from a magician we were passing, his clothes matching the brilliant colors he shot from his hands, one to the other, then up into the air. The crowd oohed and aahed at his display, then another more discreet magician caught my eye—a short, stout woman who sat in front of a glass ball on a green pillow. A tent adorned with golden stars surrounded her and a coy smile played across her glossy lips as she conversed with the small crowd of people collected around her.

"Don't be fooled," Miss Mylda's crackly voice caught me off guard as she peered solemnly out the window for the first time in the whole trip. "These are merely the showy magicians. They perform set acts to intimidate the masses, but their magic is mostly tricks and skims. Once we get farther into Azareba, these sideshows will cease in lieu of the actual artists in the city. And once we're there—" her eyes caught mine and I stiffened at her prideful smirk—"I will finally be able to show you my life's work."

"That's right," Evyne rubbed her chin nonchalantly. "You did say you had a house here—"

"The Meeker House, yes."

"—but you never did tell us what exactly you do for a living." Evyne finished with a curious look at Miss Mylda, who, with smugness playing across her wrinkled features, seemed all too happy to tell her story.

"Well, I myself am a magician of great standing here in the City of Magic, and the Meekers have long been a bloodline very talented in the art of potion brewing. Sadly, I am the last one living of my six siblings, but all of us have many promising grandchildren who I'm sure will carry on the Meeker name with great upstanding. The Meeker House that we're headed to is actually the estate where my great-great-great-grandmother first started her life in brewing nearly two hundred years ago in this very city, though it was much smaller back then..."

Miss Mylda continued on like this, but my eyes soon drifted back to the window, where light, cotton-like clouds drifted through the peaceful afternoon sky. Looking out at the streets, I realized Miss Mylda was right—the theatrical feats of magic had come to a stop, replaced by a shockingly normal-looking shopping district. There were storefronts filled with clothes, townspeople milling about with errand boys or servants to help with the groceries, men and women working their shops with aprons and outfits dirtied with the work of the day. It didn't seem like the dark allies filled with poisons and curses that I'd seen in the many restless dreams I'd had while traveling to get here.

In the life I'd led up until now, I had always been told that magic was taboo. Magic was supposed to be the spawn of evil and the abuse of nature and an abomination to the church. Witchcraft and spellcasting was only to be mentioned in the whispered conversations between my parents late at night after I was presumed to be asleep, but the normalcy of this city seemed only to remind me of my home of Esterwilde. The peaceful, everyday life of a town couldn't be disturbed by the presence of magic, could it? Or was magic not the circles drawn in blood and the midnight incantations that I thought it was?

"Aha!" Miss Mylda jumped up in her seat and jarred the carriage. "There it is! My beautiful Meeker House of Potionry and Elixirs!"

I strained to see past Evyne's lust of the window space and caught sight of a large, mismatched house with lopsided decorations and added rooms in brighter, newer colors trying and failing to distract from the older, more ancient parts of the house. It looked as if they had changed the location of the front door multiple times throughout the ages, and in turn, I counted eight entrances all facing the front of the house from different points in the structure. Did that mean it also had eight separate foyers and eight separate welcome mats? What about the hallways? Were they interconnected? I scrunched my eyebrows.

The carriage kept going past the large house, however, and all the way to the end of the street where the buildings ended, where it made a sharp right turn and began barreling through the grass. Everyone let out a yelp except Miss Mylda, who sat with her hands folded over her lap, humming pleasantly.

The carriage pushed through the yard for a ways, then turned again until we were looking at the backs of the buildings we had just passed on the street. Just when the rough, bumpy riding was about to turn my stomach, we came to a stop directly behind the same misshapen house as before, where a small dirt path led up to a single back door. I let out a queasy sigh as Jaren opened the door for us, an amused smile playing across his face. Slightly behind the carriage, Atlas struggled across the terrain one-handed on Birdy. His sling had been tightened to accommodate for his trip on horseback, but even with it, he cringed at the movement. They came up to the carriage as well and he dismounted, heaving a sigh much like my own.

"Welcome, welcome," a deep voice crept out from seemingly nowhere and a tall, slinky man materialized in front of us, his hair so black it appeared blue in the sun, his eyes even darker than that. His long robes brushed on the ground as if his feet weren't quite touching the grass and he extended a hand to Lefeli, the last person who hadn't exited the carriage. Her eyes were as wide as saucers and her face twisted in sheer terror.

He helped her down, though she was frozen solid, and turned to Miss Mylda with a smile. "Hello, Mother. I'm glad your travels went smoothly."

Miss Mylda chuckled jovially and glanced at us, then she motioned to the pale man in front of her. "Allow me to introduce my son, Maestus Meeker. If you will," she turned to the man pleasantly, "please show our guests around the House, would you? And get that boy some medical attention, for curses’ sake.” She motioned to Atlas dismissively.

"Of course," Maestus smiled again, and with a swish of his death black cape, he started toward the Meeker House, opened the door, and motioned for us to follow him into the darkness that lay beyond.