Ever After (Rachel Morgan)

rings in my front pocket. Feeling his eyes on me, I crossed the room, counting my steps. It was smaller by about a foot. My hands were steady as I stood on tiptoe, one hand on the shelf for balance as I moved three books out of the way, my hand searching blindly in the small space behind them. A jolt went through me as I found the cool, smooth shape of a ring.
    “Don’t put it on,” Al cautioned as my heels came down and I turned with a ring in my hand. It was tiny, almost a pinkie ring. I wondered whose it was, since it wouldn’t fit on Al’s hand. Unless . . . he was in the shape of that gaunt black bat.
    “What is it?” I asked, cold but too wary to come back to the fire.
    “Half of a set,” he grudgingly said, his eyes down as he snatched it from me, cradling the ring to him as if it were alive. My eyes widened as I realized it was his shackle, his tie to a miserable past. “I want you to see this,” he said. “To know what you risk.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said softly as I came forward to sit cross-legged before him again. He was flushed, embarrassed and ashamed to be clearly still tied to it. “Where’s the other half?”
    Al smiled a savage, ugly smile. “Gone, along with its owner.”
    My eyes fell. I couldn’t look at him. Al had been a slave? “Al—”
    “I trusted once.”
    I couldn’t say anything, huddled cold before his fire in his shrinking room, failing world.
    “You’re willing to risk your life,” he said, “but what of your soul? What if the master ring falls to someone else? What then? It’s only the slave ring that can’t be removed by its wearer.”
    My eyes fell to Al’s hands, just visible among the folds of the blanket. He wasn’t wearing gloves, and they looked hard and worn. But I had no choice. Miserable and unsure I looked up. “I have to do this.”
    I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His eyes catching the red glow of the low flames seemed almost normal. “Then why have you failed?”
    Oh God. I knew why I’d failed, and I dropped my gaze. “I’m afraid,” I whispered, and he smiled. “Damn it, it’s not funny!” I shouted. “I’m afraid!”
    Still smiling, Al looked at my fingers knotted around one another, but he didn’t reach out to touch me. “Do you trust Quen?”
    Miserable, I thought of Quen, his morals, his loyalty, his strength of character. Ceri had loved him, and Ray was his entire world. I knew exactly what I would get with Quen, and I nodded. I trusted him.
    “Do you trust . . . Trent?” Al said. My head snapped up, and Al bobbed his head at my deer-in-the-headlights expression. “Ahh, there it is,” Al said, infuriatingly smug.
    “Trent won’t ever have access to it,” I said quickly.
    “Chances are he will. If you trusted him, you could invoke them. Show me what you do to invoke elven . . . silver.”
    Flustered, I dug the rings out. “I trust him. I do,” I asserted, but my stomach clenched, telling me I was lying.
    Al shrugged his shoulders, and his blanket fell away. “Then show me.”
    Fine. Mood sour, I carefully snuggled the smaller ring into the cradle of the larger. Shifting on the hard flagstones, I perched the rings on the tips of the fingers of my left hand, holding it right at eye level between us. One last look at Al, who had fumblingly put on a pair of glasses I could only assume would let him see my aura easier, and I closed my eyes.
    God, please help me do this, I thought. I need to do this.
    Exhaling, I pushed the aura off my hand, feeling it hang about my bent elbow like a shirtsleeve, warm and soft. Al grunted in surprise when I made an odd twist in my head, and my entire aura flashed red. “You layer your aura?” he breathed. “One vibration at a time?”
    Nervous, I wondered if showing Al this was such a good idea. The demon was a packrat. No telling what defunct charms he had lying around. But I nodded, not opening my eyes as I sent a tendril of red aura to snake up my arm. I shivered as it skated over my pulse points and crawled up my fingers, twining over the joined rings and thickening. My pulse hammered. This was where it usually all fell apart, and I carefully, slowly, shifted my aura twining about me and the rings to the slightest shade of orange.
    “Careful . . .” Al breathed, and my head started to hurt as tiny cracks in the rings showed.
    “I can do this,” I said through my clenched teeth. I had to do this. I had no choice.
    But it was Trent, and I felt tears of