by Chloe Cullen
Cori shrugged, mostly because she didn’t know what else to say. It had been a long time since she had spoken so candidly, especially about her family. Speaking of her mother was a sad thing, but Cori could barely even remember her, having passed away while giving birth not long after the magic had disappeared.
Adeline cleared her throat and was quick to change the subject. “And so, what happened today?”
Cori got up from her seat and poured herself a fresh drink. “I met with the new President.”
“You met with Swarbrik? Oh, he is so good-looking! You know for an older guy… what?”
Cori cringed at Adeline. “That is so…. wrong. Maveron was like my second father growing up. And that Legionnaire looking for me yesterday? That’s his son, and… he was sort of like my best friend before I left.”
Adeline’s mouth fell open comically. “I feel like I don’t even know you! You were surrounded by all that hotness, and you left that behind… The horror!” Adeline put a hand to her chest and threw her head back theatrically like Cori had personally wronged her.
Cori couldn’t help but laugh a little at her ridiculous friend. “Well, today Maveron told me I should return, and that if I didn’t.” She paused, taking in a deep breath before she could say the next words. “Well he implied that I would be de-branded.”
Adeline had her glass halfway to her mouth, as though she had forgotten she was about to take a sip. Her blue eyes were wide. “What did you say to him?”
“I told him that I couldn’t come back,” Cori said.
Adeline’s eyes widened further. “What? But didn’t you just say you weren’t sure?”
Cori groaned. “I know. I feel like I barely know myself anymore. Like my head is saying one thing, and my heart is saying another, and I don’t know which I should listen to. I feel so lost. I wish I could talk to my dad… he would know what I should do.”
But her father, always a solid source for advice and comfort, would never be there for her again.
6
7 HOURS BEFORE THE MASSACRE
Cori helped herself to a fresh piece of fruit she found on a dish in her father’s room and threw herself down on to a plush sofa in his personal living area. Having this private area was one of her favourite things about her father being the President of the Legion - otherwise she would have to be in the communal areas they had for the other Legionnaires. Here, Cori was able to find some peace and quiet.
Sometimes.
“Cori?”
She looked up and saw her father enter the room. His grey tunic was trimmed in a bright white, which spoke of his standing among the Legion as the President. Cori swallowed her bite of apple and wiped some juice from her chin. “Yeah, Dad?”
He paused by the couch, looking harried. That was when she noticed his tunic wasn’t as crisp and clean as it usually was. There were patches of dirt across his front and staining the white lines down the centre of his chest.
Cori pushed herself up from her reclined position, and from that vantage point she could also see his shoes were muddy. “Dad… Is everything okay?”
“Huh?” He glanced down at himself, and then absently brushed at a dirty spot on his chest, which made no difference to the mud that was caked there. “Oh yes – just fine. Been out in the gardens. Have you seen Thoren?”
Cori felt her brow lower at the state of him, and her lip quirked up. “Were you rolling around in the gardens or something?”
He scoffed and sat himself on the edge of the sofa. “No missy, I was not rolling around in the gardens.”
Cori laughed quietly. “Okay then, but you should change… cause you’re kind of getting dirt everywhere.”
Her father nodded. “I will – but do you know where Thoren is? He should be in the training hall, but he isn’t.”
Cori stood, taking a few final bites around the core of the apple as she walked towards the tables in the corner of the room. “He was there a little earlier, don’t know where he is now.” She tossed the core into a bin and turned back to face her father. “But he did ask me to tell you he had four pieces of bacon and two eggs on brown bread for breakfast.”
Her father grinned, shaking his head. The two of them, much to Cori’s frustration – with only a little amusement – had been telling each other every single thing they ate each day for almost two months. It was some stupid game of stubbornness between them that started when her father tried to give Thoren a lecture on eating more foods with carbohydrates to keep up with his intense training schedule. Thoren’s rebuttal was to good-naturedly proceed to let his President know exactly what he was eating each day. Mostly, Cori found it annoying, but it was also sweet how close their families were.
“I don’t suppose you’d mind telling him I had boring old oatmeal for breakfast?”
Cori rolled her eyes. “Tell him yourself, since you clearly need to see him for something.” Cori watched as his face dropped the easy-natured grin that frequented his face. She didn’t know what she had said wrong. “Are you sure everything is okay?”
“Oh, yes. Nothing for you to be worried about.” He walked past her and tried to reach out to ruffle at her hair, but she ducked, laughing. “Though, I will need to travel again shortly which has me feeling a little glum. I think I’ll prepare to leave for the day after tomorrow.”
Cori made a face at him. “Why so soon? You only just got back from your last trip.”
Brennan sighed. “I know, darling. But there’s something I need to do in Mossley. I’ll only be gone a few days.”
“What’s going on in Mossley?” Cori asked, curious.
Brennan winked at her before he turned and started to walk away as he spoke. “Nothing that concerns you. Perhaps one day you will be the President and can know all the secrets.” He chuckled as he opened a door and stepped through it.
Cori followed him through the door that led into his office and watched as he plucked something out of his tunic pocket and placed it into his draw. It looked like a vial full of a dark liquid.
“What’s that?” Cori asked.
Her father reached into his other pocket and pulled out a small container, which clinked and rattled as he placed it down onto his desk. Cori knew that container well and knew that it housed a certain kind of tool – a series of metal needles and a small hammer.
“Just been collecting the things I need to have the new Legionnaires tattooed. We have five this month.”
Cori smirked, and placed her hands on her hips. “I know that. I trained them.”
Her father shot her an exasperated look. “You’re not a trainer, missy.”
“The trainers aren’t even trainers.”
“Come now, they are perfectly good trainers - your expectations are just too high.”
Cori scoffed, and went to stand by the large windows, looking down into the front courtyard. The statues of the Gods and Goddesses stood almost as tall as the room she stood in. “There’s nothing wrong with my expectations if they make excellent Legionnaires.”
Her father just chuckled and began shuffling through some papers on his desk.
“Well, I have to patrol soon, so I’ll see you after dinner.” Cori started to leave when her father spoke again.
“Could you go and see Nes before you go? She’s a little blue this morning. I don’t think her training went very well. Will you speak with her, maybe boost her confidence a little?”
Cori frowned, but nodded. “Of course, and if I see Thoren, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him… and that you ate oatmeal for breakfast.”
Her father grinned, which she returned because his smile was infectious. “That’s my girl, such a grown up and always looking after her family.”
Cori poked her tongue out at him, decidedly not very grown up of her.
Her father laughed again. “And why do we look after our family?”
Cori sighed, but smiled as she walked towards the door that led back into the main corridor. “Because family is our safe place.�
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When Cori turned back for one last look, he winked at her, and she exited with a smile on her face.
Family is our safe place.
This was a saying he had told to Cori and Nessida for their whole lives. When she was younger, she struggled to understand it, but she understood it now.
Cori strode the corridor until she came to the door to her rooms, which she shared with Nessida. When her younger sister wasn’t found in the small living area, Cori cracked the door open to Nessida’s own room, across from Cori’s, and was amused to find all the curtains drawn and a small figure sprawled in the bed and lying in complete darkness.
“Hey, kid,” Cori said from the doorway.
“Cori?” Came a muffled voice.
“Yes, of course it’s Cori, who else would it be?”
A small head poked out from under the covers to look miserably over at her. “I don’t know, it could’ve been anyone from this morning coming up here to taunt me, tell me how horrible I was and that I’ll never get the tattoo.” She buried her face back under her covers and said something else that was too quiet to make out.
“Nes,” Cori said, walking over to sit on the edge of her bed, “it couldn’t have been that bad.”
The cover flew off her head again, and Nessida sat up with a disgruntled look on her face. Cori could guess she had been lying there for a while, given the tangled mess of her blonde hair. “It was! I don’t know how I missed out on all the genes. I can’t fight, move quickly or use a sword to save my life! You should have seen the way I got barrelled today. It was so embarrassing.”
Cori hid her smile at the dramatic outburst, and instead looked at Nessida thoughtfully. She wasn’t going to bother lying to the other girl. Cori had tried training Nessida herself with basic defensive techniques, steering clear of offensive altogether, and she certainly hadn’t been the quickest to pick up on it. It wasn’t something that came naturally to her. “What if you made yourself skilled in something more suited to you? You might not have picked up on hand-to-hand combat or bladed weapons just yet but-”
“Like a bow?” Nessida blurted, as though this wasn’t the first time she had thought about this.
Cori laughed quietly at the excitement shining in her eyes. “Exactly – I reckon you’d be great at that. We don’t have enough Legionnaires who use ranged weapons.”
“I’ve always wanted to try, but we haven’t come to that in our lessons yet.”
Cori thought back to when they started offering lessons with the bow, then grinned at Nessida. “Regardless – we can get you a head start. I’m a little busy today, but what if I take you out tomorrow, we can get some practice in with shooting together?”
Nessida practically leapt out from under the covers to throw her arms around Cori. “Oh, yes please! That would be so great!”
Cori laughed, before she pulled back from Nessida to give her a more serious look. “But that doesn’t mean you get to give up on the rest of your training, you know that right? Maybe you just need to believe in yourself a little more, and practice as much as you can.”
Nessida nodded, some of the excitement behind her eyes dimming. “I won’t give up, I promise.”
Cori smiled at the younger girl, affection coursing through her, and knew she would do anything to help Nessida in any way she could.
Because family was her safe place.
7
Cori woke in a sweaty tangle of sheets, her breathing shallow, tears in her eyes. It had been months since she had dreamed of her father or… Nessida. Thinking of her, dreaming of her and seeing her little face with wide brown eyes full of passion, struck a sad chord inside of her.
Her little sister, only two years her junior, had been a force of nature. Not in the way you would expect for someone who had been born into the Legion like Cori was. No, Nes had not been a natural at all things that required physical prowess, but she’d been passionate about her friends, her family, and all of the hobbies she had that were outside the realm of the Legion. Her favourite thing was to read, and she had loved to care for and ride her horse, Molly.
She had only ever told Cori this, but she had also been a writer. Nessida, at the age of nine had admitted to Cori that she only kept up with her training because she wanted the tattoo like all our family before her. She had no other aspiration within the Legion beyond familial obligation. Nes had once told Cori that if she could choose her own pathway, she would be a writer, and would spend her days in the barn with Molly as she put pen to paper and imagined extravagant stories. Cori would have helped her to do exactly that if she’d asked her to.
Cori had loved her fiercely.
She disentangled herself from the sheets and perched on the side of her bed for a moment, letting the tears fall. Every day she missed her family, and every day that she had been forced to spend without them had been a miserable one.
Pushing to her feet, Cori walked through her darkened apartment to the small kitchen. She stood in the moonlit room, her nightgown riding up to brush her thighs as she reached for a small glass, her throat dry and aching for water.
Cori sensed him only a moment before he spoke.
“You really have let your training go, for me to be able to sneak up on you.”
Cori inhaled sharply at the sound of his voice and turned toward him. She hadn’t had anyone except Adeline in her apartment before, and to hear a male voice in the middle of the night was extremely out of the ordinary. With eyes that were not quite adjusted to the darkness of the kitchen, Cori could see his silhouette as he crouched on the windows ledge above her small dining table, a spot that only moments ago had been empty.
“Thoren,” she breathed, noting that the pace of her heart had quickened, and feeling more than a little disarmed at being dressed in her flimsy nightgown. She resisted the urge to fold her arms across her chest. “What are you doing here?”
The dark shape of his lithe body didn’t move, but the shadow of his head moved slightly. “I spoke with my father today after you met with him.”
Cori placed her hands on her hips.
“Let me guess… he asked you to come back here and convince me that I’m making a mistake and wasting my talents here in the markets,” she said with a hint of derision.
“Actually, no. He didn’t ask me to come here… I came because I wanted to talk to you.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How did you know where I live?”
“My father has known where you’ve been for months.”
Cori turned away from him, plucked up her water glass and began to slowly fill it at the basin. She couldn’t help the thread of curiosity as to what Thoren might have come here to say.
“And what is it that you want to talk to me about?” she asked, taking a small sip of her water before glancing back towards the shadow in the window.
“My father was quite… troubled after you met with him. You know that he’s always seen you as part of our family.”
Cori shifted her weight uncomfortably but started closer towards the table underneath Thoren’s silhouette. The light of the moon behind him still made his features impossible to make out, and his shadow was cast across the table between them. Cori couldn’t help but tug on the curiosity thread, and so she took another step into the shadows on the wooden slats under her feet, trying to speak through her movements that she didn’t know what to say, but wanted him to keep speaking.
Thoren was silent for another heartbeat. “He struggles with you not being there at the Compound.”
Cori sighed through her nose and cast her eyes downward. “Because that’s where I belong, right?”
“Well, yes – we both think that. But that’s not why. It’s because it’s your home, and we’re your family,” Thoren said. His deep voice, though quiet, was still a rumble through her small, empty apartment.
Cori had reached the table beneath the window. Thoren was close enough that she could stretch out her arm and touch his leg. Instead, she sat the glass she was
holding down gently on the table. Cori knew she wouldn’t be able to find the right words, so she decided to just speak the truth as much as she was able, like she had with Adeline earlier in the day. “I can’t… just return like nothing ever happened. I don’t know how…”
His hand, swathed in darkness moved from gripping the window frame to drape across his knee, and the shadow of his body shifted slightly. “No one is asking you to pretend nothing happened,” Thoren replied gently, “I’m asking you to come back despite what happened, and work with us to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.”
Cori swallowed, working at a knot that was forming in her throat. She wished she were able to make out his expression, but his face was all shadows. She considered for a moment asking him to actually come inside, instead of crouching in her windowsill like a bird perched looking for food to steal. Cori could picture him standing in her little living room, and if she lit a lamp, she would be able to see his features, and perhaps understand what feeling might be behind his words.
“Cori?” he asked quietly.
She looked to where she thought his eyes must be and could easily conjure up the image of his furrowed brow over silver eyes.
She sighed, and with a thumping heart, she answered him. “I suppose I can’t deny any more that a part of my heart feels like I want to go back. Like maybe I do… belong there,” Cori admitted in a low voice. Her avoidance of the Legion had been a preservation tactic, and one she had needed. But now she was questioning whether those needs had changed. She had convinced herself she could be happy as a bar maid for the rest of her life, but now knew that she was being naïve. That had been a foolish lie she had been telling herself.
“It’s because you do,” Thoren said, fierce but still quiet, “and not because of your father, or your grandparents, or anybody else. You were born into it, yes. But you belong because you chose it, with your whole heart.”
Cori took a deep breath, his words sinking in. But she had a question she couldn’t help but ask before making her decision. “How do I know that the Legion isn’t still compromised?”