Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,118
tell him anything. And yet, if he could hear monsters talking now, maybe he had intel that he’d be willing to cough up, now that he knew I’d gotten here without him.
He laughed. “Have you developed a means of conversing with the pixies? Has such a power come to you already?”
“We have an… understanding of sorts.” I refused to let him be smug over the fact that we were mostly talking in charades and mime performances. But I should have known better than to try and pull the wool over his eyes.
“They will not listen, will they?”
“They listen,” I shot back stubbornly.
He nodded in thought. “Yet they do not understand you fully. Is that right?”
“They get mixed up sometimes, that’s all.” I thought of the children’s book and grimaced, though I tried to cover the expression as quickly as possible. “But they’re doing their best, and they’re helping me, which is more than I can say about you and your vague comments.” I also felt an urge to defend them. They weren’t stupid, by any means. There was just a bit of an issue with their love of destruction.
Leviathan smiled. “You continue to impress me.”
“I’m not doing anything to impress you. I’m doing this to save my friend,” I retorted. I didn’t plan on ever becoming his evil queen, so he could stuff that.
“Nevertheless, I am pleasantly surprised by the warmth you are showing toward these creatures. And your ability to reach the crossroads you are at, without my assistance. In return, I will grant you a valuable piece of information.” He lunged nearer, coming disgustingly close to my ear. There, he whispered a single word: “Inwalla.”
My brow furrowed. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
“It will mean everything to you.” He pulled back, all smugness and arrogance. “It is how you will get the pixies to obey. They will understand every detail of your instruction. No more mishaps. No more accidents. It is an ancient word of the Primus Anglicus; the only word they will listen to.”
“Inwalla? That’s all I need to get them to understand?” It seemed too easy, and with Leviathan, that was never a good thing.
“Yes,” he said simply. “However, I would urge you to be careful. You are entering a perilous unknown. Even I know very little about the Door to Nowhere and the land beyond it. It is hallowed ground, and the spirits are uneasy.”
I saw an opportunity to give him a few home-truths. “But not because of me, like you implied. You said I was the one who caused all of this by opening the gateway, but that’s not true, is it? It opened because they built the foundations of the new wing too deep and stirred the gateway back into life.”
He pressed a palm to his chest. “More and more remarkable with every encounter. What a wonder you are.” His eyes twinkled, his angler-fish bulb flashing a sultry pink. I realized he might’ve made his earlier digs about my apparent uselessness to manipulate me. Bastard. “I know you have been worried. I have heard your fears. I wanted to see if you could bear the weight of such responsibility, and you did. You did not crumble. You feared you would, yes, but you did not.”
How does he know that? Dread bubbled in my stomach. I hadn’t told him it concerned me, though I supposed you wouldn’t have to be a genius to figure that out. And yet, his certainty made me nauseous. Could he… read my thoughts when we were linked like this? I suddenly felt very exposed and vulnerable, my mind open for him to scoop out the highlights. It set a dangerous precedent. If he’d listened to my fears without me knowing, then what else could he hear?
“I do not delve too deep,” he said, as though he had heard everything I’d just thought. He laughed, without so much as a hint of malevolence. “I skim the surface so I can sense how you are feeling. I would not intrude where I am not welcome. A person’s mind is a locked box that should never be opened, unless the key is given. I reach only for your emotions. I do so because I wish to know your state. I do not like when you suffer.”
“Then why play games, why manipulate me into feeling guilty?” I felt breathless again, panicky. He’d allowed me to believe that I’d been the catalyst to these kidnappings. If that wasn’t suffering, I didn’t know what was.