by A. J. Rosen
“Geez. I didn’t know you were like that.” I shook my head in disbelief. Vladimir, the dedicated law intern, involved in a bar brawl.
“They only locked him up for one night, but he got his own VIP cell since there was no sign of him calming down. The Court Guards felt it was best to put him in solitary where he couldn’t beat anyone else up,” Adrian continued. “He was a beast.”
Unbelievable. I could barely picture Vlad in a bar, let alone in a fight. He struck me as the type of guy who spent most of his time studying in the corner of a library somewhere.
“Adrian, enough.”
Commander Pete Hudson came back, along with two men in suits, all three wearing the same deadpan expression.
We stood up and I met Hudson’s gaze. “Look, I know what I did was wrong. I’m sorry. I’ll pay the fine. Though I’ll need to ask my parents if it’s more than two hundred bucks.”
“It’s not that simple, Ms. Montgomery.”
“You want me to do community service too? That’s all right; I love the elderly.” The last comment earned a choking noise from Adrian, who tried hard not to laugh.
Vlad cut off my childish behavior and politely asked, “What was suggested for the penalties, sir?”
“There are stricter laws during the Gathering, as I’m sure you well know, Lord Ambrosia. There is no room for negotiation. We simply cannot tolerate anyone ruining the sacred month of December with any kind of violence. Therefore, by royal decree, we have no choice but to place Ms. Avery Zosime Montgomery under arrest and in a holding cell.”
Surely my ears caught it wrong.
“Wait, for how long?” Adrian stood and fished out his cell phone, seemingly ready to send for more help.
Vlad looked very calm as he asked, “When is the trial, sir?”
“I’m afraid there won’t be one, Lord Ambrosia.” Commander Pete Hudson shook his head and continued, “It is a minor offense.” When he saw me about to protest, he quickly added, “But an offense nonetheless. Minor offenses do not go to trial.” To Adrian, he answered, “She’ll be here for the week.”
Two Court Guards went to my sides and I barely had time to say good-bye before they took me to my temporary home.
When the door closed behind me, the sound of the automatic lock turning reminded me there was no escape. These four concrete walls would be my residence for the next seven days. The cell itself was nothing like I had been expecting from all the crime dramas I’d watched. My imagination conjured creaking metal bunks, dark and dirty floors, one tiny barred window, a surly cellmate, and rats lurking in the corners. This was nothing of the sort. The cell was clean and bright to the point of blinding—making me want to file a complaint about their energy overuse. On my right, a metal bed was attached to the wall: no mattress, no pillow, just one thin blanket to keep me warm. There was a sink in one corner with something that looked like a chamber pot placed below. I was extra grateful that I didn’t have a cellmate. No way could I use that thing with someone else in the room.
I wrapped my arms around myself and sat on the stone-hard bed, plonking down too hard and bumping my tailbone on the metal. I had given over my personal items—my phone! I hadn’t even read Kris’s texts yet—and changed into an all-black prison uniform, the color that represented the Underworld. The color of mourning, sadness, darkness.
Each new minute felt like an hour. After two hours—or twenty minutes, who really knew—of nothingness, I was bored of staring at the walls. Just as I was about to bang on the door, screaming came from another cell. The noise paralyzed me. I backed away from the door and knocked my right hand against the bed. Ouch. My palm was already red and swollen from giving Carlo a good head smack. But that hurt was nothing compared to the ache in my heart. All I wanted now was to talk to Kris and let her know why I had hit “Domenico.” I had to tell her that he was Carlo and he had tricked us both.
I should have known better than to allow myself to be vulnerable and give someone the chance to break me. It was like giving a murderer a gun and expecting not to be killed. Love was a myth. In the end, all that was left was agony, misery, and emptiness. I only had myself. And that thought was the loneliest one I’d ever had.
The lights in the corridor dimmed one by one, the only indication that it was nighttime. I lay down on the bed carefully, the cold metal pressing against my back, and covered myself with the blanket. It was a mistake to come to Court in the first place. Yes, I had wanted to satisfy my curiosity—but at what cost? I closed my eyes briefly, feeling overwhelmed by everything. I had let myself develop feelings for Carlo. I had believed his empty words and I had decided to come here. Now I had to face the consequences.
I tried to gather my thoughts, figure out my next move. But soon, I drifted to sleep.
Chapter Nine
I could only tell that it was daylight by the slim shaft of light penetrating the air vent. My whole body ached after sleeping on the metal bed, but I forced myself to sit up, ignoring my muscles as they throbbed in protest. For a brief moment, confusion spread through me as I processed my surroundings, until the realization hit me hard. Cheesy macaroni, I really was in jail. A feeling of hopelessness sank in, and I tried to shake it off as I stretched my arms above my head and then reluctantly got up.
The drowsiness still had not left me, so I stumbled my way to the sink. As I was splashing my face with water, I heard the door open followed by an upbeat voice.
“Are you enjoying your new digs?” It was the young Court Guard who had been with Hudson when they’d arrested me. “Remember me? I’m Officer Brad Warwick.” He winked as one corner of his mouth stretched up into an asymmetrical smile that showed off his flawless white teeth.
Even though I remembered him, his cocky behavior made me refuse to admit it. “No.”
“That’s too bad. Because I certainly can’t forget a pretty redhead like you.”
“Is this what they pay you to do—harass prisoners?”
“Feisty.” Raising one hand, he tapped on the panel and pressed several buttons all at once, so I had no chance of catching the passcode. One side of the door opened, and he leaned against it. “You have visitors.”
Kris?
After the loneliness I suffered last night, I walked toward the door with newfound excitement. The feeling quickly plummeted back down when Officer Warwick added, “It’s your parents.”
I had to face them sooner or later. It was best to rip the bandage off and get it over with. And at least I would be out of my cell for the next little while. Officer Warwick brought me into a room with one metal chair facing a partition of glass that separated an inmate from their visitors. My parents waited on the other side of the glass. They looked as pissed off as I expected. I sat opposite them.
Dad was the first to make any movement, his eyes narrowing as he leaned forward. Without a hello or how are you, he said in a cold, detached voice, “I am glad they put you in a cell. I hope that will teach you something.”
Dad sat back in the chair and Mom took over.
“Avery Zosime Montgomery,” she said. “What. Were. You. Thinking?!” She balled her fist and slammed it on the metal surface a few inches from the glass partition. “Why on earth did you assault him? You know it is an offense to use violence of any kind on Court Grounds. So why the hell did you hit Lord Ferraro? He is of royal blood, the descendant of Hephaestus, god of blacksmiths, metalworking, metallurgy, fire, forges, the art of sculpture, and stonemasonry!”
“Geez, Zeus. Did you memorize all that before you came in here?”
She was in such a boiling fury that if someone were to draw an animation of her right now, fumes would be coming out of her ears. If I had been five, seeing my mom this angry would’ve made me want to hide. But I was used to this by now.
“Tell me,” she finally said after one minute of silence and murderous stares, “why did you do it?”
“He lied. He deceived me.”
“How?” My dad laughed.
“He told me that—” I swallowed my embarrassment before continuing. “He liked me, but then I saw him with Kris and—”
“Can you blame him?” Mom said. “It’s a choice between a pebble and a diamond.”
I ignored her snide comment. “Maybe I shouldn’t have used violence—that was wrong of me, but Carlo lied. He used a fake name and said he didn’t know me even though he’s been texting and calling me for the last year. I had to stand up for myself. He got what he deserved. Really, it’s his fault.”
“No,” my dad insisted. “This is your fault.”
“Of course you would say that.” Typical. He’d choose any Royal snob over his own flesh and blood. Why did I expect anything different?
“Never mind. Don’t even bother explaining. You’ve always been like this when it comes to Royals. If you had to save me or a Royal from drowning, you wouldn’t even blink before pulling them out of the water,” I said.
“That’s irrelevant, Avery. The mistake is yours,” he said simply, waiting several more heartbeats before dropping the hammer. “You didn’t punch Lord Carlo Obelius Ferraro. You punched his twin brother, Lord Domenico Aegeus Ferraro.”
Carlo had a twin? I was about to confirm this, when my mother piped in. “Clearly you didn’t know Carlo as well as you thought you did. His parents split up long ago—Domenico lived with his mother in Sybaris while Carlo moved to Seattle with his dad. The boys were estranged.” My mother looked over at my father. “Although in the wake of what’s happened to Carlo, I’m sure the whole family will come together.”
“What’s happened to Carlo? Has he arrived at Court yet?” My mind leapt to his voice-mail message, which I hadn’t had the chance to check.
Dad shook his head, his jaw clenched slightly, which made me feel anxious about what he was about to say. “He’s . . . gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?” I pulled my chair as close as I could get to the glass. “Did he take off?”
Was he angry with me for punching his brother? Had he already left because of me? My chest hurt knowing how much he had wanted to find his soul mate—how he had never skipped a Gathering since going to his first one.
Mom’s face was filled with sadness. Her eyes lost their fury as she cast her gaze to the floor. The lines between Dad’s eyebrows gave more years to his actual age. “He’s gone as in . . . we’ve just heard the news that he died en route to Court, Avery,” he finally said. “A car accident.”
My parents exchanged a look—a conversation passing between them. In a normal situation, I would’ve asked what it was, but my mind was blank. Carlo was gone. I had the same feeling I had the day Bryan told me he was on his way to tell me something. Carlo was gone now, too, and there was nothing I could do to bring him back.
I don’t know how I got back to the cell. Carlo was dead. Standing in the middle of the empty cell, I did nothing but exist. I was shutting down. How could he be dead? My mind couldn’t accept it. I kept replaying the conversation with my parents—they could be cruel, but they would never lie about something like this. I lay back down on the hard bed, numb to its discomfort. A tidal wave of grief washed over me and I let myself be taken away by it.
First Bryan. Now Carlo. I wished I could have a face-to-face conversation with the Fates because there was one question I was dying to ask: Was everyone I cared for doomed to die?
Chapter Ten
For the first time in my life I had trouble eating. Judging by the number of meals they’d brought me, I’d been here a full two days by now. The lights had abruptly gone out for the night a few hours after a dinner tray had been delivered to me, the food going cold and untouched—the sight of it alone made my stomach turn. My appetite had not returned this morning, and now a guard took away my breakfast tray and replaced it with a lunch tray. I greedily drank the water, but after trying one bite of the dry sandwich, I pushed it away and curled back up on the bed.
I blotted my eyes with the sleeves of the uniform they had given me. They felt bruised and sore.
If Carlo was my soul mate, then I would never have a click in this lifetime. But if he wasn’t, that meant they were still out there. I could have a click as soon as I turned eighteen. I was an Awakened—had drunk from the Golden Chalice. Even if I wanted to stay true to my original plan—which was to avoid next year’s Gathering, like Adrian had done—there was still a chance I’d be in the same place as my soul mate and make physical contact with them. Maybe we’d accidentally brush shoulders at the beach, or there would be an introductory handshake—any skin-to-skin touch and a click would be triggered.
There had to be a way to break it. Some kind of ancient way of undoing what had been done. What had we learned about our Awakening? My annoying selective memory came up with nothing. All I desperately wanted now was freedom. Freedom from this cell so I could find a way to free myself from the possibility of getting stuck with my soul mate for life.
There was no way my Hellenic textbooks had the answers I was looking for. I would have remembered something if it had come up in my lessons. Wait. Maybe the Court had stored information about this. Maybe this was the kind of information Royals were privy to. Kris hadn’t lived at Court since she was ten years old, so I’d have better luck asking either Vlad or Adrian. Both of them had grown up here and had gone to the Royal High Court Academy, and Adrian still lived here.
Yes. I would start with them.
Noise came from the entrance of my tiny cell. The door slid open and a woman in a dress the color of pomegranates stood there. She was older than my mom, maybe around fifty years old. Her dark-blond hair was gathered into a simple ponytail at the nape of her neck, and she wore a brooch of a diadem with lilies on either side of it. It was so unique and beautiful. I was mesmerized, at least until her head tilted eerily as she regarded me with unrestrained curiosity.
I scrambled up off the bed and stood in the corner of the room, my eyes never leaving her.
She hit a button on the keypad outside the room and the door closed. The two of us were now alone in the claustrophobic cell. My anxiety grew as she paced around the secluded area, pausing every now and then to eye me warily. I asked bravely, “What do you want?”
“Not what I want. What the Faction wants,” she answered.
“What Faction?”
To my horror, she burst into hysterical laughter. I wasn’t sure this woman was in her right mind. I gazed wistfully at the door, wondering if the guards had heard her and would come to take her away. “Oh, you really are clueless, aren’t you, little Awakened one? Never safe, no chance to run.” She paused, her twisted smile fading. “I’ll die here.”
“We’re safe here,” I spat out, trying to reassure her and curb her insanity. “The Court Guards won’t let anything happen to you.”
“No place is safe.” The woman fiddled with her fingers anxiously, cold sweat dripping off her forehead. “Once those stupid Myrmidons learn that the inevitable cannot be avoided, that keeping the secret child alive and hidden all these years was for nothing, it will cause a distraction. Enough to grab the file from the archives and run.” She let out a lamenting sigh, “Oh! It was supposed to be easy. You weren’t supposed to be in here!” She raised her hand and I cowered, thinking she was going to hit me. Instead, she slapped her own face, hard.
She raised her hand to do it again, and I jumped in front of her, catching her wrist. “Stop! Hitting yourself won’t do anything.”
Terror overtook her eyes. “She will find me,” the woman croaked. “She will find me, for I have failed her. She will have me tortured.”
“Hey, hey.” I inched closer to her, maintaining a safe distance while calming her down by rubbing her shoulder. “Listen, I get that it sucks to be in jail, but they follow the law here. Torture is illegal. Not even the queen could hurt you.”
“Oh, poor child.” She barked, “I am not scared of the queen. She’s nothing compared to her. I can’t be like Lamia. I can’t let her touch Petros and Iosif. I can’t.” She backed away from me, crying into her hands as she crumpled to the floor. At least now she didn’t look like she was about to murder me.
I crouched down next to her. “Listen,” I said, knowing that my words were meaningless, “no one’s going to hurt you.”
The second I let my guard down she moved with lightning speed and lunged at me, her hands wrapping around my neck. I released an ear-splitting scream as I tried to escape her, hitting and kicking wildly, but she was determined to choke the life out of me.
I punched at her again, but my fist hit something else—a boot? Two guards came into the cell. They yanked her off me, restraining her violently and dragging her away. I scurried back into the far corner, curling my knees up into my chest, crying with relief.
“What the hell just happened?” Officer Warwick asked me.
“I should be the one asking that,” I choked out.
Officer Warwick barked orders to the three guards behind him to secure the perimeter. He then kneeled down and put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “You’re going to be okay.”
He picked me up like I weighed nothing and brought me to the medical room located at the back of the building. The nurse stood almost immediately when Officer Warwick slid the door open using only his elbow. The doctor, who was in the middle of reading something, set her papers down and adjusted her glasses, nestling them on the bridge of her nose. The doctor pointed to a bed attached to the wall and told me to make myself comfortable. Even in the best of conditions this would have been difficult because the blanket on top of the thin mattress was made out of a scratchy, puke-yellow fabric.