Guardian: Darkness Rising by Melanie Houtman Page A

Not this.”
    Luke didn’t blink; his eyes and voice seemed
to freeze over as he said, “Mari. We know why you’re here. I’m not
going to let the Master use you like this.”
    Mari’s eyes widened; the party went on
normally around them, but to her, it was as if time had stopped.
Did they know? How? Had the Spirits told them?
    ...Who was really the villain here?
    The Master had lied to her – there
was no other option. Luke didn’t seem as if he was under some kind
of spell – this was Luke, and he was offering her help. It wasn’t
that Mari hadn’t already discovered that the Master was bad news –
she just didn’t really believe he was. She’d just rather stayed out of his
business – until he’d told her about the Spirits keeping her family
captive.
    Mari peeked inside the purse she was carrying
to have a look at the glowing red stone, and sighed. “I need to
talk to my dad.”
    Luke placed a hand on Mari’s
shoulder. “Of course you do,” he said. “Don’t worry. Together with
you, it’ll be sixteen against one; this ‘Master’ fellow won’t stand
a chance.”
    Mari smiled as she and Luke
entered the Ritual Chamber; people were coming after them, as the
dance was probably about to start. If Luke had confidence that they
could win it from the Master, then why would she worry?
    The Master was powerful. That’s why she was
worried. Well... at least he couldn’t enter the Land of Light,
right? As long as they were here, they’d be safe, and that was more
or less a reassuring thing to know.
    When Luke and Mari entered the Ritual Chamber,
James and his friends were already attending the altars they’d once
used twenty-five-years ago. Apparently, that’s from where James was
going to hold his speech – would his friends be speaking,
too?
    Luke told Mari that he and his friends would
be joining their parents as soon as they were told to – which left
Mari amazed; of course she’d still been wondering about the
identity of the remaining four Guardians. Luke told her that she
had to join them, so her father wouldn’t look so lonely up there
(despite the fact that Daisy would be joining him), and it’d add a
nice element of surprise to the evening.
    And Luke was convinced that if every last of
the Lunariae knew Mari, everyone would support her in her fight
against the Master, leaving him practically powerless.
    ...Or at least he’d be pretty weakened – for
as long as his wretched soul remained separated from his
body.
    The Guardians began their speech; everyone
attending the dance fell silent as they watched the five adults
climbing the stairs to the altars.
    “ Welcome, everyone, to his special
evening,” James spoke; his voice was magically amplified. Akilah or
one of the other Spirits had probably helped with that.
    “ It is with great honour that we
stand before you all here tonight. And, to be honest, before we
arrived here, we didn’t even know that the Spirits had organised
this masquerade ball for us, so we were actually quite overwhelmed
by tonight’s turnout.” James let out a nervous chuckle as he
scratched his neck, and the audience laughed along with him to
reassure him a bit.
    They were all old friends in some sort of way;
there was no reason for him to feel nervous or uncertain here
tonight.
    “ Anyway,” James continued, “we’re
here for a reason, as you might already know. And we’re here
tonight to tell you that we’re going to do everything within our
might to keep Lunaria safe from harm.”
    The audience applauded
encouragingly; of course they had full faith in these five humans
after all they’d done to save Lunaria twenty-five years ago. They’d
managed to defeat the Master once before; there was absolutely no
reason they wouldn’t be able to do it again this time.
    “ Thank you,” James said, making a
small bow toward the audience, and noticed his friends did the
same. “But this time, it won’t be just us. We’ll be helped by five
very special