"Hence the mug." My father said, giving me another intense stare. As if his glare alone could scare me away.
"I need someone to tell me what's going on. Because I’m about to lose it," I snapped, wishing there was a way to dig my heels in, or whatever the mortals would do against their parents.
"Ever since the Gauntlet there have been outbreaks in some of the tunnels--" Wyn began, turning to face me, although my father’s stern face still towered from behind her, glaring into both of us.
"Not yet," Ilyan said, snapping his fingers toward Wyn who instantly closed her mouth. The glare made it clear it was not an action of choice. "He's not ready."
"Ready for what, Dad? I don't know if I can be ready if I don't know what's going on!"
"Not yet." My father's blue eyes shimmered with damp emotion before he returned to the table, furiously stacking and moving the clutter off the desk. It was only then that I realized his hands were shaking. "You're not ready for this, Rowan. I'm sorry. I need you to go back to your rooms. I will find you later."
"Ilyan, none of us were ready when the world came knocking. None of us." Ryland said, peeling himself away from Mira "You think Jos was ready for my damn house to implode around her, or Cail to throw her out of a window?"
I looked at my cousin Cail in confusion, but he waved me off, like he hadn't thrown my mom out of a window.
"Or me to be used as a bomb and kill my own brother," Mira piped up, striding past me to stand next to Ryland, both of them facing the king like some kind of wall. The bravest and dumbest wall I had ever seen.
"He's not ready!" Ilyan yelled, his voice cracking as his hands shook, at the bookcase behind him cracked in two. Books and papers poured over the floor in a literary waterfall. It was as I had done with the tree, the family temper peaked through. "I will protect my children, Wynifred. No matter what. You understand that better than anyone. Now, get him out of here."
"But Ilyan--" Wyn started, any counter cut off by yet another pop, the room erupted with smoke and a single scream as my mother burst into being, Dramin draped over her shoulder. Blood was pouring from a large gash in his chest. He wasn't moving.
"Take him!" my mother yelled, Ryland and Mira grabbed Dramin right before he hit the ground. So much for clearing the table, my father pushed all the papers to the floor, only the mug surviving the onslaught.
Not that it mattered, I couldn't look away from my brother. I couldn't hear anything past the thump that was rattling my bones as my heart tried to remember how to beat. Blood dripped from him like rain, it covered my mother. It covered the floor.
I tasted it in my mouth, I was sure I could feel it against my skin, like every dream. Every night. Every sight.
The attacks. They slammed into my side, taking the last of my breath as the world spun away and pulled me into it. I didn't want to know what had caused this. But I already knew.
Dramin grunted as they laid him on the table, the blood free-flowing over his chest and dripping to the floor.
The whole world was dyed red.
"Rowan," mom whispered, pulling my focus as she grabbed my hands. The blood that covered her streaked against my skin as she held my hands against her chest. "I need to pull my magic to save your brother. I know you don't want this..."
"It’s not that… It’s…" I couldn’t find the words, and seeing all that blood. I had seen that blood other places. I couldn’t do this.
Everything locked up as I stepped away, even as I needed to move forward.
I needed to help him.
"I know. Which is why you need to leave," she said as my father handed her the mug. She placed her hand over the rim, filling it right to the top as I had seen her do a million times before. This time, instead of drinking the black water, she handed it right back to dad who took it over to where Dramin was laid over Cail's desk, blood pooling over the sides of the wood.
"We will come see you later, I promise." I didn't miss my notice that she hadn't said anything about telling me what was going on.
"Don't bother," I hissed, pulling my hands away from hers. "I'm not ready. Go heal Dramin."
I was pissed, I had meant to snap, to shame, to do anything to vent my frustration. But saying his name, seeing him laid on the table, I couldn't. My voice caught in my throat and it wasn't until Cail was pulling the door open behind us that I even realized he was dragging me away.
It was like I was watching a horror movie, my mom’s hair moving in slow motion as she raced to Dramin.
Mira, Wyn and Ryland held him down as my father moved mother’s hair back from her neck, revealing the dragon shape brand behind her ear, the mark of a chosen glistening as she drank from the water, as she poured it over Dramin's wounds, as my father pressed his finger to her mark, as they all began to scream.
I had no idea what I had just seen. But it didn't matter. I couldn't even turn to Cail to ask before my magic surged, everything spinning as I was sent to my knees, my own scream ripping through the air.
I didn't even have time to push the sight away.
The Drak magic had connected me right to her.
22
Gemma
"It's five fucking o'clock. In the morning. I am going to murder whoever is knocking on my door!" I stomped across the floor of my dorm, making as much noise as I could without my boots, simply not caring who I disturbed, or how much beauty sleep of Sia's I was disrupting.
You know what, screw it. I stomped around more, flinging the door open and half expecting her ugly scowl to be laughing at me. It wasn't her.
"Who the hell are you?" I asked the smiling woman on the other side of the door. I suddenly felt out of my place in the underwear I had fallen asleep in, seeing as she was dressed in some kind of candy-striped business suit and bright red heels. No one looked this nice at five in the morning. Well, except her. Whoever she was.
"My name is Patrice." Her wide smile and perky nature made me even more sure she was a figment of my imagination. Happy business women should not exist at this god damned hour of the day. Ain’t no one got time for a smile that big and painted on.
"I'm sorry?" I was being kind of snappy, because five in the morning, but her smile didn't falter.
"May I come in Gemma?" Still didn’t know who ‘Patrice’ was, but I doubted someone would send a smiling assassin my way, and even if they did, I could use the workout.
"Sure, come in," I held the door open wide as she shuffled by me, her heels not so much as making a noise on either the stone floor or the heavy carpet in my room.
Shit. Maybe she was an assassin, or a hallucination, or a ghost. Either way, I could take her. My magic was still all alive and supercharged from having been woken up so abruptly. In fact, it felt completely normal. Like I could do anything, almost like when we held our midnight meetings. Maybe the Štít was sleeping.
I lifted my hand to check, but caught her staring at me and dropped the hand behind my back.
"So, who exactly are you?" I asked, leaving her in my living room to grab my robe. Not that I needed to cover up, but she was looking at my tattoos funny and it was weirding me out.
I had inked a whole ocean scene over about forty percent of my body when I was fourteen. It covered much of my back, my stomach, my left arm, and leg. It was full of bubbles and seaweed and fish that we had copied from a book I had found. In the center of my back, a mermaid, dreaming of a world she could never have. Maybe only two people had seen the whole thing, make that three with this lady and her slack-jawed stare.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded, very aware that all of Ed's leftover coffee cups on the little table were starting to rattle. It had been so long since I had felt more than a trickle of my magic. It was very quickly getting out of control. Weirdly, she didn't look scared.
"I was sent by the royal family to help you," she began, stepping around the chairs and looking around as though she had never seen a dorm before.
"Help me? I'm really going to need more context than that."
/>
She smiled again, pulling a folded paper out of a hidden pocket in her suit thing and handed it to me. I didn't need to open it to know what it was, I had seen that curly writing before. Our letter had worked. Thank God Cail wasn't as big of a douche as his sister and had delivered the thing.
"We have all of the vans pulling in now," Patrice said, stepping around my dorm like I had invited her in for an inspection and not a casual chat. "We will have time to load the food and send anyone you choose to their respective communities with as much as they can load. I will escort you to your community, if you agree of course."
She paused, turning to face me from where she stood by the bathroom, eyes narrowing into me. She clearly wanted an answer, all I could do was nod. I was still too shocked to really compute that this was real and not some twisted hallucination. Just to be sure, I walked over to the little kitchen thing and slammed a drawer on my hand.
"Holy mother!" I screeched, jumping back and waving my hand through the air, shaking off both the pain and my momentary lapse in judgment.
"Good lord, are you alright?"
"Yeah," I grumbled, still shaking, still jumping around, still clenching my jaw so as to keep the scream in. "Just making sure I'm not dreaming."
"I can assure you that you are not." Strangely, that time she didn't smile. "Now, another condition for this arrangement is your help. The Queen and King would like you to investigate the recent attacks that have been waged against the Undermortal communities. Who led them? What the goal was? Find out if any counter-attack against us or the Chosen is being planned. Can you do that while we are there?”
I swallowed, I knew that royal bastards were going to put me to work sooner or later, it was part of her deal for letting me keep my magic. I hadn’t expected it to be quite so full of espionage. I was suddenly faced with the reality of being their spy. I had no other option but to grit my teeth and give her a solitary nod. Which I did.
“Wonderful,” Patrice said, clapping her hands together. “If we want to deliver the food to as many of the Undermortal communities as possible we need to hurry. I believe it would be best if we get on the road before the other students begin to wake up?"
I gave her a nod. Yeah, very good. I hadn't been the only Undermortal that had been attacked by the golden spawn in this place. The less of a reason we gave them to target us the better.
"Perfect." she clapped her hands together, bouncing the toes of her shoes, her heels clacking against the floor that time. At least I knew she wasn't a ghost. "Now, go rouse your friends and have them meet in the cafeteria. My husband will be arriving to help us next week, but this week--"
"Next week?" Interrupted her, my heart pounding excitedly against my rib cage while her smile returned. “We are going to do this more than once?”
"Yes. Every week. We are excited to help. Unfortunately, my husband Dramin is preoccupied this week. Under the weather, we shall say. He should be tip-top in no time.”
“Dramin?” I asked, searching the worry the was burrowing in her eyes. Something about her husband was worrying her. The name clicking into a place a second later. “The prince. Meaning you are…”
“Able to kick your ass if you get out of line.” I stepped back. I hadn’t expected those words to come out of her mouth. She gave me a sweet smile that didn’t quite match her appearance, no wonder she was worried about her husband. She probably expected to have to kick my ass then and there.
“Yes. Now go."
She scooted me out of the room, closing and locking the door behind us with a snap of her magic. I didn't even have time to argue over the fact that I was still in a robe, I took off down the hall racing toward Eddy's room and hoping to every Eternal in existence that he knew where to find everyone else.
---
"I can't believe they let you out," Ed said, bouncing excitedly on the plush bench seat in the middle of the van before he popped another of the fried carrot straws in his mouth. I would be worried that he would eat them all before we got to Last Pyre, but we had bins and bins of them at our feet.
More than enough for Aria, the kids, and even Ed. He could eat all he wants; we were almost there and I was about to see how everyone had been faring since I left them.
That was the part that had me fidgeting in my chair.
"I'm sure the queen is just having a momentary lapse in judgment," I said, stealing a carrot fry of my own.
A scoff echoed from the empty backseat where Patrice sat, legs crossed, staring out the window as if she was caught in a daydream. The sound was the first sign she had given that she was still there, still shadowing my every move. She hadn’t said much since we left, which was probably for the better.
I would rather Ed or anyone else that was currently streaming to their communities not know the darker side of what had gotten us this privilege. I had warned them I was a double agent; I don’t think any of them knew exactly what that meant.
I cringed and sat back against my seat, watching the city I had never actually seen stream by the window. My entire life had been underground, watching the sun and the clouds dance over the blue sky from behind the bars of a grate. A prison. When I finally did emerge, it was under the guise of night, just like the creatures we shared the tunnels with.
But this sprawling city of iron and glass was impossible in the kaleidoscope colors of the sun. Massive buildings stretched to the sky, their reflective glass side making them look like crystal tears from the sun. They exploded from a ground of square brick buildings and rows and rows of houses that gleamed of white stone. Some of the houses that we streamed by were as big as the school. As big as that massive room in Last Pyre where we all slept.
Seeing the wealth as we rushed through the streets to the poverty made some of that slowly building trust evaporate. How could any leader look at this for so long and let it happen?
It made my heart ache.
"Remember,” Patrice said as the van exited the long motorway, making a beeline for the darker, older buildings that were more familiar. “I will be with you the entire time. So please watch your behavior, I won’t make myself known unless something is needed from me. Or if you step out of line, Gemma.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” I ignored the look Ed was giving me and sat back in my chair. I folded my arms over my chest but not before I shamelessly lifted a few carrots from the bag. Popping one in my mouth, I threw the other at Patrice who promptly disappeared from sight, pulling that same shielding trick I had seen in Gregario’s class on the first day. I barely flinched, Eddy however shrieked and plastered himself against the tinted window of the van, the driver jerking at the noise and sending us veering to the other side of the road.
A car honked, the driver swore, and Eddy shrieked again as the same car sped within inches of the window. Even my heart was pounding in my chest, sure that I might have died or worse.
"What the hell?" he sputtered, still looking between me and the open-air that Patrice had both appeared and vanished in. "What. The. Hell."
That time I very clearly heard the Eternal laugh.
The rest of the trip was spent discussing how the more advanced shields work, Eddy begging the empty back seat to demonstrate again, which she obliged to a few times.
"Eternals suck. They can do all the cool things," he moaned as the van turned, the road growing uneven.
I gave him a look, I was sure he could do the same with his super cool ancient Vilỳ bite, but I would have to remind him of that later. Our grumpy looking Chosen driver grumbling as we drove into the old MidCity stop that led to Last Pyre.
The large lobby had been where the vans had picked us up to take us to the Gauntlet what felt like a lifetime ago. It had been where we had sorted the food and supplies from months of raids. It was where we slept when the summer flood got too high. It was where I had first dreamed of the world I could create with the magic that buzzed in my veins.
It was in ruin.
The tiles that had once been set into the floor
were pulled up in rows, as if a monster had dug its claws in. The mural of flowers that covered the left wall had a massive crater in the middle, colored tiles showered over the ruin in specks of haunting color. With all the lines of smoke and a still burning stack of wood near the entrance to our home, I was amazed the place was still standing at all.
"Oh my god," I gasped, gripping on of the front seats, needing to see better, but needed to see anywhere else. "What happened?"
"That’s what we need to know,” Patrice whispered from the empty air behind us. “There was a string of attacks two days ago, four communities fell. But not this one.”
"This is as far as I can get." The driver's voice cut in with a dead drawl, his fingers clicking nervously against the steering wheel as he peered at the doors at the end of the once grand entry. His magic was drifting from his skin, sitting heavy in the air as he fidgeted. He clearly didn't want to be there. I was suddenly worried that he was going to take off the second we unloaded the supplies.
Muscles coiled over my shoulders as I reached for the sliding handle of the door, my fingers weren't shaking, thank God, but they felt like they should be. The air felt heavy, like it was made of water, as I wrapped my hand around the handle.
"Wait." Patrice suddenly said, causing all three of us to turn, although she did not appear this time. "Do you two feel confident to attack should something go wrong?"
"Attack our people?" Eddy asked his voice cracking. I dropped the handle as though it was made of a hot iron.
"No, I doubt your people would attack you, especially with Gemma here." The disembodied voice was not aiding with my inability to swallow, or breath, that I was currently experiencing. "But I can sense quite a few bodies and their placements are worrisome. There's a large man, hovering over ten others, maybe more. I think they are sleeping."
I couldn't even register the fact that she was sensing and seeing people from the back of a van a half mile away. My fear had built up too far, the emotion quickly replaced by the anger that had fueled me for so long. The need to protect my people. To save them. I had been away for so long, and now they were right there. I could actually do something.
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