Secrets of the Starcrossed

by Clara O'Connor

  “He told me that I was being manipulated,” I informed Matthias earnestly. “That the city wanted Marcus and me to marry and have children with magic in order to strengthen the council. But it doesn’t make any sense. Why would the council want magic in the city?”

  “What an outlandish tale.” Matthias smiled at everyone in the room. I could see Marcus watching him closely.

  “He really believes it to be true,” I assured him. “He even told me that I’m a Briton. But that can’t be true because Britons aren’t allowed in the city.”

  I looked to my parents for reassurance and caught a flash of disgust on my mother’s face. Even though I had long since been convinced of the truth of this, it hurt to see the proof that I had never been more than a cuckoo in this particular nest. I allowed the tears that came at her visible rejection to well in my eyes.

  “You will catch him?” I asked the praetorian. “He’s crazy. I thought he was a friend, a citizen. I don’t know who I thought he was but he’s obviously not entirely sane.”

  I watched to see if they’d bought my story.

  “Of course. We’re doing everything in our power to detain him,” Alvar assured me.

  “He didn’t say anything else?” Matthias checked.

  I shook my head. “No. Miri came and saved me and I went with her back to Marcus.”

  I threaded my fingers through Marcus’s resisting ones. One person here wasn’t entirely convinced.

  “But you didn’t alert her to the fact that a wanted man was in the room you had just left,” Matthias observed.

  “I felt really disoriented, foggy, and light-headed. I’m not sure what I said. Perhaps it was the after-effects of whatever spell he cast on me?” I offered.

  “Indeed.”

  Matthias seemed satisfied enough with my answer – at least, he chose to let it go.

  The praetorian left when we sat down to dinner. Matthias stayed and made it clear that he felt it would be better if I remained in the apartment until the wedding. Marcus concurred, which pretty much sealed my fate. There was no way I was going anywhere, at least not without permission. I felt even less confident when I was assured that I would be guarded around the clock, which meant the sentinels were staying.

  The days passed slowly in the apartment. I was going stir crazy, the only relief coming from Marcus’s daily visits. I tried to speak to him about what had happened at the hospital but he was firmly under the influence of the handfast. He would talk about his patients and my day and any topic under the sun but when I tried to broach anything to do with Devyn or magic or the fact that we were being manipulated he shut it down. The easy physicality we had fallen into since our handfast had also disappeared. Before Devyn’s visit we had become more comfortable with each other, lots of hand holding, hugging, occasional doting kisses, but any time Marcus attempted to touch me now I pulled away. The only thing from that day that appeared to affect him at all was what he had felt when I was with Devyn.

  I had asked some questions about what had tipped him off that I might be in trouble. He’d been suspicious at first, or rather he believed my questions were innocent enough until he started to recall the feelings he’d received second-hand. Then he was less sure that my interest was purely about my own security and my hope that he would always come to my rescue. As he attempted to recollect what he’d felt, I saw a flash of something, perhaps jealousy or hurt; he knew the desire I’d felt while kissing Devyn and that it was something we’d never experienced together.

  He baulked at describing it to me but I was fairly confident that desire was the only emotion transferred by the handfast. I had also been paying more attention to my moods, trying to assess exactly what influence the handfast had. I was beginning to suspect that there was something to do with absence because I missed Marcus dreadfully during the day and my anxiety levels skyrocketed by the time he called to see me in the evening. I was fairly certain he felt the same because his relief as he walked into my room was palpable.

  I changed tactic and started to raise certain topics with Marcus under the guise of working through the outrageous things that boy had suggested. Marcus, despite himself, was intrigued by the claims Devyn had made. He also asked me more about the time I had spent with Devyn before we were caught.

  He had no one else he could ask about the magic that he now knew he was using to help victims of the illness. I couldn’t tell him much more than he already knew from Fidelma – I knew no more than he did as my magic had manifested too late to allow me any time to grill Devyn about it. It was quite a dance we led each other during the conversations in my room. I was unwilling to reveal more than Marcus already knew while trying to convince him I was still under the influence of the handfast, while Marcus was trying not to show his increasing suspicion that I was hiding something even as I was sowing the seeds of doubt in his mind that there was something more behind our match. Despite the handfast and its coding making him want to comply, I could see the clever scientific mind sucking in the pieces of information and chewing them over night after night.

  I whiled away my days scouring the newsfeeds for any mention of Devyn, my interest in my alleged psychotic attacker being apprehended only natural, surely. The gossips had noticed that I no longer went to the hospital each day and there was speculation in some areas that Marcus and I were on the rocks. Most defended me though – Marcus and I were a romance for the ages and it would take more than one crazy man to take us down. If only they knew. I was locked in my room, contemplating cutting off my own arm in order to get to that crazy man. Not seriously of course, but it had crossed my mind. My biggest hurdle was getting out of this room; the handfast armband was a concern but not a major one. I had already reasoned that they couldn’t track me with it or they would have found me sooner that day in the hospital.

  But I was starting to panic. My ivory tower had become a prison and I had no way out and no allies.

  Or so I believed.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Anna helped me with my dress after my final fitting. I was running out of time – the wedding was just days away. My chest tightened and my heart pounded like it was going to burst every time I allowed myself to think on it. The feeling of being trapped was insidious, ever present, and I felt like an animal in a snare trying to remain compliant lest the trap tighten, but the need to thrash against my bonds was overwhelming as I almost tore the dress off, clawing at the pressure in my chest.

  Anna’s cool hands calmed mine and she helped me take it off, wrapping my robe around me before sitting me down.

  “Donna Cassandra, would you like me to fetch your mother?” Her concerned voice came to me as if from a great distance

  I shook my head frantically as I struggled to draw breath.

  I was going to have to marry Marcus. There was no way out.

  I whimpered.

  I would never see Devyn again. Never know what he meant when he said he would take me home. It was one of the many things I had spent my days fretting about. Home, he had told me. I had a home with him, out there in the wilds.

  I looked into Anna’s eyes, my own filled with the despair I could no longer hide. Anna’s hand came up to hold my trembling one as I tied the clasp on my robe.

  “I’ll help you,” she whispered.

  “What?” I asked, certain I must have misheard my carefully proper servant.

  “I’ve watched you since you was a little girl,” Anna told me. “It ain’t right. My dad, he was a Shadower, you know. My mum loved him despite his blood. If you want to be with this boy… I’ll help you.”

  “You will?”

  “Yes, donna. I watched you in that dress. I see your heart’s breaking. If I can help you, I will.”

  I beamed at her.

  “Thank you, thank you,” I gabbled. Anna would be risking a lot to help me. But beggars can’t be choosers and this was it, my one slim chance at escape. I was going to take it.

  “If we’re going to do it, now’s our chan
ce. I can get you out. Do you know where to find him?”

  I hesitated. Was this the same trap Devyn had fallen into after the sentinels let him go? He’d thought he was in the clear but they’d followed him and he’d led them to me. I gripped Anna’s hand in the Briton manner, pulse to pulse.

  “Can I trust you?” I asked.

  Anna looked back at me, this woman who had always lived in the shadows of my life. I remembered her picking me up and dusting me off as a toddler, or sitting on my bed stroking my hair as I cried. I had wanted so badly to be loved and I had missed it where it had been freely given, all this time.

  “Yes,” I said, “I’ll be able to find him.”

  “All right then. If you need anything, best you be gathering it now,” she directed me.

  I looked around the room that had been the centre of my universe. It held all my treasures, luxuries, fancies, and mementoes. The pictures on the wall documented the things I had cared for as a girl. I was that girl no longer and none of it meant anything to me.

  I’d thought about what I needed to do if I got my chance – after all, I’d had little else to do. I accessed my online account and selected the image I had identified a couple of days earlier. It was a picture of a red dragon acer, the scarlet leaves reflected in a lake – not the one that grew on Richmond Hill but close enough. I indicated I was a fan of the pic and shut down my comms. If Devyn was watching, I hoped it was enough of a flag to tell him I was on my way. I ran to my wardrobe and changed into some of my more practical clothing, which wasn’t saying much. My outfit was still more aesthetically pleasing than sturdy and who knew how long it would have to suffice.

  I shrugged on a jacket and squared my shoulders. “Ready.”

  Anna took a quick look into the hall before beckoning me to follow her. We quickly took the corridor to the door at the end and down the backstairs to the kitchen.

  “I can get you as far as the lower level exit,” she told me, wrapping a long servant’s cloak about my shoulders. “The cleaners will all be leaving in about twenty minutes. Go out with them; nobody will take any notice of one more. I’ve been watching and them sentinels don’t take no notice of the servants, leastways not on the way out. As long as nobody comes looking for you in your room, you should have time to get away.”

  “They’ll know you helped me,” I said, gesturing to the cloak.

  “I’ll cry and say you nicked it, donna.” She smiled at me, a genuine smile that I hadn’t been on the receiving end of since I was a child. Was it my fault Anna had grown distant or had I been the one to put the distance between us as I got older?

  “I… thank you, Anna,” I said, hoping the older woman understood the depth of my gratitude.

  We made our way down the stairs with Anna in front in case anyone met us on the stairs. When we reached the lower level, she opened a storeroom door and gestured for me to go inside.

  “Wait till the others are passing, then you join them,” she instructed me softly. “Good luck, my girl.”

  I slipped out into the night with the servants and, as predicted, nobody so much as looked my way. I walked a little behind the main group headed south when they splintered between those headed east and south, the two areas where the cheaper housing in the city existed. When we got to the river, I peeled off and headed west into the lowering sun.

  I needed to be out of the western gate before the sun set and traffic was halted for the day. My plan was to simply walk out. Devyn had mentioned that the charm would conceal the wearer from the cameras when active – maybe not conceal so much as cause a person to be overlooked. I was wearing two now; hopefully that meant double the strength. All that remained was to keep my hood up and my head down and hope the guard didn’t look too closely.

  I picked up my pace as I made my way along the embankment. Even if it wasn’t double the strength, the western gate tended to be on the lax side as there was another level of security on the other side of Richmond. My plan wasn’t an elaborate one but I was hoping that therein lay its strength.

  I took a deep breath as I approached the gate. Ducking my head into the recesses of the hooded cloak, I queued up with the last few stragglers hurrying through the gate before it closed. The guards informed us that only those already in the line would make it through. We inched forward. Was the queue slower than usual? Were they being more conscientious or was I imagining it? I didn’t usually queue in the foot-traffic line on my way to Richmond; we normally took a boat and the guards would check our passes on the river.

  A moment later, an argument broke out at the back of the queue as a man protested why he had been denied entry. Or rather, exit. His loud excuses for his lateness received short shrift from the guards but as I approached the front of the line his protestations started to sound increasingly aggressive and the guard checking the passes barely glanced at me as he waved me through.

  On the other side, I breathed deeply and headed into the red sunset. I had decided to stay off the main roads, instead using the river path as it wound its way from the city to Richmond. It would take me longer, but with night falling there would be fewer people on the path and if I was pursued it would surely be the last route they checked.

  I passed joggers and strollers taking in the last rays of the day, the oranges and golds of the trees along the bank mirroring the reds and pinks of the sky in the water. I rarely came out to Richmond once the summer was over, which was a shame really as it was truly spectacular at this time of year.

  I was passing through the gardens of Kew by the time darkness fell and what would have been beautiful and rustic became sinister and gloomy as the shadows took over. I walked as fast as I could without calling attention to myself. I was starting to feel even more tired than usual and the cuff on my upper arm felt uncomfortable. It was an odd sensation – I almost forgot it was there most of the time but this evening it felt noticeable. I rubbed my arm as I walked on.

  Finally reaching Richmond, I started to fret about where in particular I should go to meet Devyn. If I continued on the path I would pass by the old ruins – my parents’ villa was only a little further on from there – but if I took a small detour and then came back onto the path and headed west until I got to Petersham Meadows, I could then hike up the hill to the walled garden. He would be in one of those places. He would.

  The ruins felt even lonelier than usual as I picked my way through them. No Devyn. It had been a long shot but I felt it had been worth checking. He knew I had witnessed the start of one escape from the site. I padded quietly up the familiar road to our summer villa. Strange to think I would never walk this path again. Once I left the city I could never come back. My old life would be gone forever. I would never run along here on my way back from tennis, planning my outfit for that night’s party.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin when a figure emerged from the trees.

  “Cass.”

  I sagged in relief, tears springing to my eyes. He was here. I turned back and practically fell into his arms.

  “You’re here.” We stood in the dark, careful not to embrace and attract attention but just the sight of him was enough to ease me.

  “Of course. Didn’t we have a date?” he teased. He took my hand and we headed back the way I had just come, towards the river. “How did you get away?”

  I told him as we walked, increasingly conscious of the cuff which was starting to feel warm in the cool autumn air. I rubbed at it; it felt prickly, like I’d developed an allergy.

  “The guards at the gate didn’t challenge you, the lovely Cassandra Shelton in servant’s garb?” he asked, indicating my plain cloak.

  “No, not everyone reads the gossips, you know,” I retorted, “though to be fair there was a bit of a commotion so they were a little distracted.

  “Ah, good. You came through the western gate then?”

  “What… how did you know? That man was a friend of yours?” I guessed and received a cocky look in confirmation.

  “You think of
everything,” I cooed, only half mockingly. Even after the fact, it made me feel better to know that he had been there helping me.

  “Ow,” It felt like the cuff had stung me. And it was growing still warmer. I rubbed at it again.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing.” He stopped walking and pulled my sleeve up so he could examine the armband.

  “What the—” he exclaimed, finding the skin red and inflamed around the band. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. Just now it felt like it emitted some kind of sting or something.” A prickle of unease ran down my spine. “You think it got triggered when I left the city?”

  Devyn shook his head. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so. You’ve seen handfasted couples out here in the summer,” he reminded me. “It doesn’t seem to harm them.”

  “Let’s just go. The sooner we get out of here the sooner we can find someone who can get this off me.” I tugged on his arm and he joined me in heading purposefully up river.

  We hurried along the path which was almost completely deserted now. After Petersham, we ducked into the woods where Devyn had two of the most beautiful horses tethered to a tree.

  “The boundary on the other side of the park is patrolled but if we’re moving fast enough we should be able to get through,” he explained as I admired our new equine friends.

  “Uh… I’ve never…” I started, eyeing the tall beasts.

  “Just sit in the saddle and hold on.”

  Right. This was it. He cupped his hands for me to step into and I swung myself up. He untied the horses and climbed onto his chestnut, then we swung their heads back towards the river. It was the best path west – at least until dawn when we would be able to head cross country in the light.

  “Is your arm feeling better?” Devyn checked.

  “Yes, it stopped hurting a few minutes ago.” Devyn frowned at my admission that it had actually been causing me pain.