Secrets of the Starcrossed

by Clara O'Connor

  “I’m fine, really,” I reassured him. I sincerely hoped I was. The last thing I needed was to add visions to my recent strange episodes.

  I smiled tightly at Marcus and took the metal horseshoe from him, throwing it back on the ground. The sound echoed, and in it I heard horses screaming.

  But there it was again, a cascade of rocks in the corner, pulling me back. I peered into the lengthening shadows, the sky still flame-orange above and the slight tang of burning in the air.

  Nothing.

  I couldn’t dismiss the feeling of unease as we made our way out and home.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next morning, I woke relieved in the knowledge that I wouldn’t have to face Marcus watching me with concern – he had to get back to work. After the incident at the ruins, he had treated me like the fragile rose I knew I sometimes appeared to people. Petite but curvy, long silky hair, delicate fair skin, a cupid’s-bow mouth, I was a veritable romantic dream, much to my own secret disgust. I didn’t feel like the girl who looked back at me from the mirror very often these days. Vivacious and bubbly went with the old me, not this tired wraith who stared back at me. I dragged myself about the house until I noticed my father starting to give me the same watchful look Marcus had worn when he dropped me home at the villa the night before.

  I felt drained; this last episode had left me on the floor. If it was just my imagination, I shouldn’t feel like a stampede of horses had just mowed me down, surely? Could it have been real? Could what I saw actually be what had happened hundreds of years ago on that spot? For the thousandth time, I stood chewing my lip and contemplated calling Devyn. Would it really be so odd if I were to hail an old classmate? Why on earth would the authorities flag such an innocuous event? My fingers reached for the pendant I still wore around my neck, worrying it to and fro along the chain.

  I had taken it off after I argued with Devyn but the distinctly Celtic pattern engraved on the back of the plain disk had left me nervous about leaving it lying around where someone might see it. Despite the permanent reminder of Devyn, I felt safer hiding the pattern by placing it against my skin.

  Devyn would know what was happening to me. He had contacts among the Britons, like the people who had helped Oban and Marina. Maybe they would know what was wrong with me. It seemed to prove Devyn’s theory that I wasn’t city born – that, as a Shadower, there was Briton blood in my veins. Were these visions proof that there was even magic in my mixed blood? Or was it just the first symptoms of some strange new plague that we couldn’t hide from, even out here in the luxurious country retreat of Richmond? But the episodes, the visions, didn’t feel like an illness. Over the summer, as they had become more frequent and lasted longer, they had increasingly started to make me feel like I was more fully completely myself than I had ever been in my life. The sheer bliss of the moments spent chasing a light across the water or rustling in a bough left me nothing short of ecstatic in the moment. Afterwards, I reeled under the exhaustion with which even a few seconds of dancing in the air left me.

  I just needed to curl up in the quiet somewhere while the fatigue passed.

  More than anything, I felt drawn to the seclusion of the red and black brick walled garden at the top of Richmond Hill. The trudge up there almost finished me off but walking across the open heath I smiled into the sunshine in anticipation.

  The air was warm velvet, the deer barely stirring to lift their heads as I drifted by. My feet tripped lightly across the bracken as I wove my way through the winding paths the deer had made in the tall ferns.

  Finally there, I lifted the latch of the ornate gate and wandered through the cultivated paths of the garden inside. A haven of exotic plants and myriad flowers gathered from across the world was tended here in a protected enclave of the great park and it was my ultimate refuge.

  As a child, I had begged my parents to bring me here to play among the fine-leafed, fiery coloured Japanese acer trees, whose names I had whispered to myself as I danced around them: crimson queen, garnet, red dragon. Now in full bloom, the rambunctious pink and white rhododendrons had hidden my secret den. I made my way past such children now, pleading with their parents to stay just a little longer as the sun started its mellow descent and picnics were packed away.

  Deeper and deeper I went until I found the corner that was mine, past the exotic plants at the core of the garden, to a spot at the base of an ancient oak tree that overlooked the still pond.

  Deep and darkly green, the pond was the epitome of reflective quiet and, after spending the summer running from my own thoughts, when I was too tired to run anymore this was where I curled up.

  All the noise – my parents, my friends, my plans, Marcus, Devyn, the strange episodes I could no longer explain away, who I really was – all faded into the quiet of the pond. I felt as grounded as the oak, tethered to the earth, safe, when for so many weeks I had thought I might flutter straight out of my cage into a world that would batter me down.

  It all faded away.

  There was nothing but the still pond and the reflected sky, the trees, and the lengthening shadows. The silver moon brightened into gold as the sky darkened.

  Finally, I slept.

  And dreamed.

  * * *

  I dreamed of dancing, music swirling me down into the still pond where I lay stretched out, scarlet acer leaves reflecting, flower petals floating out of the sky, the twinkling laughter of a stream pulling me down its length and out of the walled garden, down the hill and up along the curve of the great river. The Tamesis was a comforting path that drew me along its curves and bends. Upstream. Through hills. By meadows. Further, away, further, along. Home.

  I stopped. Not home. Not home.

  A warning, a shout. Two travellers making their way along the river at night.

  The teenage boy and the red-haired child from the Richmond palace ruins? I wondered. Another glimpse of the distant past? I wanted to know what had happened to her, that angry face looking back at me across time with fierce green eyes.

  Somehow it didn’t feel so thin or so far away. As the sentinels came into view, my guess was confirmed. What I was seeing was not now, not today, but days long past. This time, the uniforms were much more instantly identifiable, almost precisely the same black ones with their red insignia, led by praetorian guards, their collars glinting silver in the evening light.

  The travellers had started to flee, their horses urged to make their way along the path, faster and faster. One of the horses stumbled and took its rider to the ground with it. The other paused and turned to go back. The rider on the ground stood and, reaching down, she grabbed a bundle from the fallen saddle bag, before continuing to run. She ran to the still mounted rider who paused on the path, caught indecisively between returning for his companion and fleeing the sentinels who were fast approaching.

  My stomach swooped in terror for the woman who clearly knew she could not outrun her pursuers. She stopped and looked down at the bundle in her arms, then back to the rider. A small boy sat in front of the man, his arms reaching back to the runner on the ground, his expression one of horror and disbelief as he was held fast. Finally, the man averted his face before turning his horse and continuing to ride away.

  The boy shouted but the woman was already whirling to face the sentinels, who were almost upon her.

  She raised her hand, and the wind swirled.

  * * *

  “Cass.”

  My name.

  “Cass.”

  No. I resisted. I wanted to know what happened, I wanted to see.

  “Cassandra.”

  I looked back but the wind was up, mists starting to swirl over the river and across the still pond.

  “Cassandra.”

  The voice was more urgent, insistent now. I couldn’t see.

  “Wake up.”

  It was an order, from a voice I knew.

  I blinked and in the dark struggled to identify the shadow looming over me.

  �
�Cass.” A gentle hand trailed down the side of my face.

  Devyn.

  What was he doing here? When had it grown so dark? A moment ago it had been… somewhere far to the north of here. I tried to hold on to the last vestiges of the dream.

  I whimpered. I wanted to know what had happened. Needed to know in a deep, soul-wrenching way. It was like something crawling on my skin, trapping me inside. Only finding out what happened would set me free. I needed to be free.

  I pushed at Devyn. I needed to get him off because he had interrupted me. I had to get back there.

  “Shhh, Cass, it’s me.” He caught my flailing arms and spun me around till he held me safe in his arms and my breathing slowed.

  “Devyn.” My voice sounded like I was about to burst into tears.

  In fact, I could taste the salt of them with my tongue.

  We lay there in the moonlight underneath my oak tree as I slowly came back to myself, Devyn holding me in his arms, occasionally lifting a hand to brush my hair.

  I felt hollowed out, the only thing preventing me from splintering into a million pieces the strong arms wrapped around me.

  My voice was smaller than I would have liked when I finally found the power of speech.

  “What just happened?”

  Even as I asked I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “I’m not sure.” So much for the great all-knowing Devyn.

  My eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Happened to be passing.”

  I didn’t need to turn around to see his face to know it bore a smirk. I sighed.

  Coincidences, I conceded, did happen. But Devyn, in the middle of Richmond Park, in what appeared to be the middle of the night as I came out of the worst episode to date, was not one.

  I didn’t have the energy, didn’t want to disturb the sense of safety I felt, the calm that had spread through my limbs in the comfort of his arms. I let myself relax into the lean length of him. For once I wasn’t on my guard, I wasn’t trying to be someone else – the good daughter, the dutiful debutante, the glittering girlfriend on the arm of the boy every girl wished she had. Just myself.

  “Cass.” His chest vibrated as he said my name. It was deep and rumbling in the dark.

  “Mmm,” I responded, too enervated to speak.

  “What just happened?”

  I huffed mutinously. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I wasn’t entirely ready to admit out loud to the episodes I had been experiencing, much less give him the satisfaction that all signs suggested my veins definitely ran with Briton blood and without the pills suppressing it danced with magic.

  I half turned towards him, snuggling into his shoulder, wrapping myself around his warmth. The summer evening had become chilly and I wasn’t averse to taking advantage of that fact to get closer to him.

  He wrapped his arm around me, tucking me closer, before bending his head to mine.

  “Cass, please,” he begged softly. “I need to know if I’m to help you.”

  “Help me with what?” I scowled into his chest. I really did not want to have this conversation.

  “Really?” His sigh was exasperated in the extreme. “You’ve freaked out over handling a bit of tech and introducing chaos to the Code, fretted about the prison sentence involved in helping a sick girl escape the city, but discovering you have magic in your blood you feel you can just ignore? The moments you’ve been experiencing are only going to get worse.”

  I sat up.

  “What? How do you know that?”

  “How do I know you have magic in your blood?” He shrugged. “There was always a chance. That’s why they’re marrying you to Marcus, after all.”

  I frowned. “No. How do you know I’ve been having moments?”

  “I just saw one.”

  “Right, one. You said ‘moments’, plural.” I felt outraged and suddenly very sure. “You’ve been spying on me.”

  I could just about make out that eyebrow going up in the moonlight.

  “I haven’t been spying on you, Cass.”

  By now I was fully energised again, recovering quicker in his arms from my strongest episode to date than I had from the smallest of moments I had dealt with on my own.

  “Liar.” I straddled him as he continued to lie there leaning back against the tree but arguing with someone’s profile in the dark wasn’t very satisfactory. I stabbed my finger in his chest. “Li–ar.”

  Devyn sat forward until his face was mere inches from mine. Slowly, he reached up to take my accusing finger and wrapped his hand around it, lifting it away from his chest.

  “I’m not lying, Cass,” he said softly.

  “I know you’ve been there.” I recalled the sound in the ruins the night before. It was worth a shot. “In the old castle, you were there. Clumsy boy.”

  I tutted. His lips tugged upwards. It was him. I was right.

  “Why didn’t you say hello?”

  “Cass…” he started, reaching to tuck a stray lock of hair that had blown across my face behind my ear.

  “I missed you.” I couldn’t believe I’d put it out there but I couldn’t contain it anymore. I did miss him. So badly. He was my first thought every morning and my last every night. Conversations became less interesting when I remembered I wouldn’t be able to tell him about them. I suddenly realised I didn’t care if he was using me to access Marcus; I didn’t care what he wanted, as long as he was there. I know he didn’t feel it as I did, that as far as he was concerned I was nobody.

  He stood up and stepped back from me as he pulled in a long dragging breath.

  “I’m not following you,” he corrected. “I’m following Marcus, remember. Interestingly, his hospital is the only one to have had some success at curing the illness. I have my suspicions that he may be the reason they’re doing so well at Barts. I was hoping to see some sign that he has… uh, opened up to his birthright.”

  “Magic?” I prompted, scrambling to my feet. Did Marcus have what I had? I hadn’t seen any sign of him experiencing similar episodes.

  “Yes, Cass, magic. His line is old, his blood is strong even this many generations on. It’s not impossible,” he explained. “But if he has magic, I haven’t seen any sign of it. You on the other hand…”

  His hands cupped my face in his excitement.

  “You, Cass. You have magic in you, I’m sure of it,” he declared.

  This close, I could feel the beat of his heart, smell the warmth of his skin. I couldn’t keep this secret from him.

  “I think so.”

  His eyes were bright as he leaned in, as if he couldn’t help himself, and touched his lips gently to mine. It was a soft kiss of sweet joy. In a heartbeat, the kiss deepened, and we were pressed desperately against each other, our hands roaming free to express the need we’d kept battened down until the touch of his lips released it.

  I melted into him, breathing him in as the kiss deepened, dragging me down, down, deeper into the mindless haze. A haze where I saw the woman on the river cut down as she fled with the bundle still in her arms. There was blood everywhere and anguished blue eyes looking at me as the life in them dimmed and was gone. The horses’ hooves danced perilously close and I screamed.

  And screamed.

  “Cass.”

  For the second time that night I came back to my senses to find myself in Devyn’s arms as he struggled to secure me. Adrenaline raced through my veins. I felt terror and grief, a wild disbelieving sorrow.

  “She’s dead,” I whispered brokenly.

  “Dead?” Devyn repeated. “Who’s dead?”

  “The woman on the riverbank.” My eyes danced wildly while the scene replayed itself again. “They never gave her a chance. They just ran her down.”

  I looked up at him.

  “The sentinels ran her down. But the man, he just left her there,” I muttered darkly. “He just turned tail and saved himself.”

  Devyn was looking at me strangely.

  “Look,
I know I’m not making any sense”—I was that aware of that at least—“but I know what I saw.”

  Devyn put his hand on the oak.

  “Oaks are protective. They give strength and knowledge. It is a rare gift that comes to those in need of insight…” His face was pale in the half light. “…Or warning.”

  “Did you see anything else? Was anyone else there?” His voice was taut.

  “No.” I shook my head until I recalled the boy. “Oh wait, the man, he had a small boy on the horse with him.”

  The expressions that flitted across Devyn’s usually controlled face were almost impossible to catch, they changed so fast: shock, hope, confusion, despair, resolve.

  I looked at him, bewildered now. “What? Did I see something that really happened?”

  There it was, the expression I was most familiar with: nothing. A stone wall would have more story to tell. My expression, I expected, was murderous. No way was he doing this to me again.

  “Devyn, tell me what I just saw. I know you know something.”

  I was so tired of being locked out. Fury and frustration swirled inside me. I wanted to know. I had to know what he knew. I took one step and was back inside the circle of his arms. Reaching up, I put my hands to his face and forced him to look directly at me.

  “Tell me,” I demanded amidst the storm of emotions, my desperate need to know, and the echo of the woman’s eyes as she held out the baby girl in her arms.

  * * *

  A girl I adored, would give my life to keep safe from the first time she wrapped her tiny fingers around one of mine and her blue eyes twinkled up at me. She was the happiest baby, stubborn when she didn’t get her way and her mother laughed at me for being her pet griffin as we travelled across the wintry countryside.

  It was my duty to keep her warm.

  When I was big it would be my job to keep her safe, always. My father had told me so, but I knew this to be the single truth of my being without anyone having to tell me.

  I heard the hooves before my father or my lady.