I’m lifted up and tossed over a guard’s shoulder, and the last I see of Perry is him fighting off another guard before diving across the floor to retrieve the bottle. Which tells me that wherever Gemma is, she’s still alive. I almost laugh I’m so relieved.
Instead, I grunt as the guard carrying me starts running up the stairs, his shoulder digging repeatedly and painfully into my abdomen. The other guards remain around him, making sure to keep their weapons trained on me. Anyone would think I was the biggest threat this Guild had ever seen. I suppose from their point of view, I very well might be.
I’m gasping for air by the time the guard sets me down in front of a door. I don’t know which level we’re on, but it felt like it took forever to get here. The guard knocks on the door, opens it, then pushes me into the room. I stumble inside and all the guards follow me, their weapons still pointed at me in case I’m a threat to the people inside this room. The people who turn out to be seven members of the Council plus Olive. She’s the only one standing. The others are seated around a long rectangular table with at least one empty chair between each of them—probably to remind them not to touch each other. In the center of the table is a replay device similar to the one Olive keeps in her office to watch our assignments.
A guard edges forward and lowers the pouch onto the floor beside me, then steps hastily backward as though the pouch might explode. Councilor Merrydale stands and nods to the guards. “Thank you. You may leave now.”
“Are you sure?” one of the guards asks. “She could be dangerous.”
Dangerous? I want to ask the guard what he thinks I might do, but I manage to keep my mouth shut and my eyes pointed forward instead of rolling toward the ceiling.
Councilor Merrydale seems to agree with me because, after looking around the table, he says, “With eight fully trained guardians in the room, I think we can handle her.”
“We’ll be just outside then,” the guard says. As they leave the room, Councilor Merrydale points toward the empty chair at the far end of the table. “Please have a seat, Calla. You have excellent timing. We’ve been discussing your case.”
“And your law-breaking,” Olive adds. “I see you have as much regard for house arrest as you have for all the other rules of the Guild.”
I meet Olive’s gaze for a moment before taking a seat at the table. It’s the first time I’ve seen her since before the ball. Is she disappointed in me? No. Disappointment would imply that she cared in some way, and I know that isn’t true. She seems almost smug. As if she always knew we’d wind up in this position. As if she’s finally been proved right.
I’ll try not to enjoy it too much when I instead prove her wrong.
I pull my chair in, then start speaking quickly. “Before you ask me anything, can you please send this pouch of bottles to the healing wing. It’s the cure for the dragon disease. I know you probably don’t believe me, and you can fetch a compulsion potion right now to see if I’m telling the truth, but in the meantime, please get this to the healers.” When the only responses I receive are expressions of concern and doubt, I lean forward and add, “Please, I’m begging you. People are dying. This can save them.”
A round-faced woman stands. “I’ll take it. Kassia, you can get the compulsion potion.” Another woman stands, and the two of them leave together.
After the door closes, Olive points to the replay device and asks, “Shall I proceed?”
“No, let’s wait for the others to return,” Councilor Merrydale says. “In the meantime, it seems only fair to let Calla know where she stands at this point.”
“All right,” Olive says with a nod. She doesn’t appear to be bothered that I’ve interrupted whatever she was planning to show the Councilors before I walked in. She settles into her chair as though getting ready to watch a show.
Councilor Merrydale examines the papers in front of him. “There’s quite a list of evidence against you, Calla. Each item on its own is circumstantial, but together, these pieces of evidence paint a rather damning picture. So, let’s see.” He frowns at his notes. “You were found at the scene with no other witnesses. There was powder on your hand, suggesting you touched the victim. The disease seems to be spread by direct contact, yet you’re still healthy while everyone else is getting sick. A ring exactly like the one the victim was wearing—and from which the sickness spell allegedly originated—was found in your locker. And …” He shuffles through his papers.
“And the handwriting,” the man on his left says.
“Ah, yes. The anonymous letter the victim received was compared to a sample of your handwriting and found to be almost an exact match.”
“But that’s impossible,” I interrupt before I can stop myself.
The man who mentioned the handwriting frowns at me. “It certainly isn’t. I checked the comparison myself.”
“But—”
The door swings open and the woman who took the pouch of cures rushes in. “It worked,” she says breathlessly. “It worked. I took the cure straight to Marina at the end of the corridor. She’s healed already.”
“Yes!” I want to jump out of my chair I’m so happy, but when the Councilor looks at me, it isn’t with gratitude or joy or relief, but with something like fear.
“I still have to get to the healing wing,” she says to the others. “I’m going now.” And with that she takes off, the door banging shut behind her.
In the ensuing silence, the remaining people in the room look at me with expressions of mistrust and uncertainty. What’s wrong? I want to say to them. Isn’t this a good thing?
They start whispering to one another. “Remember all those stories?” the man who mentioned the handwriting murmurs to the woman beside him. “The stories we heard about when she first applied here? I wrote them off as ridiculous rumors, but now I wonder …”
“I know,” the woman whispers with a quick glance in my direction. “All this talk of witches. Perhaps she is one.”
Unable to stand an accusation like that, I smack my hand down on the table. “I am not a witch.”
Olive, the only person who seems bored by all of this, says, “Witches have black eyes and pointed teeth. Of all the things Calla may be, a witch is not one of them.”
I look at her, surprised to find her agreeing with me for once. She stares back with the smallest of smiles. A knowing smile. A smile that scares me. For the first time, something occurs to me: could she have done this? Could she have bartered with a witch for a dangerous ring that would kill a trainee she dislikes while framing a trainee she hates? But what about everyone else who’s dying? She wouldn’t want to wipe out the entire Guild, would she? Perhaps she didn’t know it would spread. Perhaps that was a side effect the witches conveniently forgot to mention.
I’m trying to decide whether it’s worth accusing her out loud, just to see her reaction, when the other Councilor, Kassia, returns. In her hand is a small vial; a compulsion potion, I presume. “The cure is genuine, Kassia,” Councilor Merrydale tells her as she sits. “Pepper ran back to tell us Marina was healed before taking the cure to the healing wing.”
“Oh. She didn’t wait for confirmation?” Kassia gestures to the tiny vial. “That seems irresponsible. What if it wasn’t a cure but a poison instead?”
Councilor Merrydale’s voice is quiet as he says, “Marina was close to death. I suppose Pepper thought it was worth the risk.”
“Well, that’s wonderful news,” Kassia says, “although I’m not sure what it says for Miss Larkenwood’s case that she knows exactly how to make the cure for a disease she supposedly knows nothing about.”
I rein in my frustration and manage to keep from slapping the table again. “Please, Councilor …” I don’t know her last name, and I suspect it may be rude to call her Kassia. “Please, Councilors,” I say, addressing them all instead of just her. “Give me the potion and question me. Then you’ll know it wasn’t me who made the cure or the sickness spell.”
Councilor Merrydale nods an
d reaches for the vial of compulsion potion.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Olive says, standing and speaking loudly. “We all know that anyone intelligent enough can twist their answers to disguise the real truth. Nothing Miss Larkenwood says now, whether under the influence of compulsion potion or not, can convince me of her innocence. Once you’ve seen what I’m about to show you, I think you’ll agree with me.”
Oh shoot. What has she found? Is this why she’s been looking so pleased with herself? Councilor Merrydale considers Olive’s request with a frown. He looks around at his fellow Councilors, and, after several nods and shrugs, he says, “All right. Proceed.”
With a barely concealed smile, Olive reaches across the table with her stylus and turns the replay device on with a quick spell. There’s already a marble sitting in the top, so an image lights up in the air above the device. The scene is of the Guild stairway. It moves by quickly, and I imagine the little surveillance insect zooming through the air above it.
“This replay was skipped over at first,” Olive says, “because nothing about it is immediately suspicious. But after the audio spells were installed yesterday, the surveillance team went back through some older replays, just to check that everything was working properly. That’s when they found this.” The surveillance bug reaches the bottom of the stairway and flies across the foyer, stopping above two people standing close together. My heart drops like a leaden weight.
The two people are Zed and me.
My hands are clasped in his, and I realize the surveillance bug caught the end of our interaction. “Go,” I hear myself say to him. “Just go before someone figures out that you’re the guy who escaped.” Then Zed turns and heads for the entrance room, and I walk in the opposite direction, making no attempt to alert anyone to the fact that a criminal is escaping the Guild.
Olive waves her hand, and the replay freezes.
Holy. Freaking. Screw-up.
She was right. No clever twisting of the truth can get me out of this one.
“That’s not all,” Olive announces. She removes the first marble from the replay device and drops a second marble into the hollow at the top. “After the audio spells were added to my replay device yesterday, I watched a few older assignments to check that everything was in order. I also happened to put in a marble from one of Miss Larkenwood’s extra training sessions last week. I hadn’t checked it at the time. I trusted she’d done the training she was told to do. But since she’s shown herself to be … less than trustworthy over the past few days, I decided to take a look at this one.”
I twist my hands together in my lap, trying to figure out what I’ve done wrong. I’ve never missed an extra training session, and I destroyed the tracker band that showed Chase at my assignment last week. So what did Olive see that’s supposedly so incriminating?
“I assumed Miss Larkenwood had returned directly to my office after her additional training at the ruins,” Olive says as she writes the activation spell onto the replay device. “She did not. She took a detour and had a private conversation with someone. A conversation that will shock you.”
My hands freeze in my lap.
No. Nonononono.
The scene is close up this time because it came from a tracker band, not a surveillance bug flying overhead. Zed and I are standing close together, separated only by the cell bars between us. We’re speaking quietly, but the new audio spells on the replay device pick up every word. “You know what else, Cal?” Zed says as he places his hands around mine. “They’re going to find out about you too. You know that. You won’t be able to hide what you can do forever.”
After a moment of hesitation, the tiny little me floating above the replay device says, “They’re not going to find out.”
“They will,” Zed repeats.
Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it.
“Eventually you’ll slip up, and then everyone in the Guild will know you have a Griffin Ability.”
The replay stops.
Seven pairs of eyes focus on me.
And with a shuddering breath, the world drops out from beneath my feet.
Voices surround me, hollow and distant. “It was never witchcraft or Unseelie magic. It was a Griffin Ability.”
“Why didn’t we figure this out sooner?”
“Her parents have obviously hidden it well.”
“And she hid it too, making this number one on her list of crimes against the Guild.”
“Miss Larkenwood.” Councilor Merrydale’s booming voice stands out amongst the rest. He rises to his feet, quickly hiding his confusion and disappointment beneath a hard exterior. “You’ve left us with no choice.” He meets the gazes of his fellow Councilors, who nod to him in confirmation. He looks at me once more, and where there was once warmth in his eyes, I see only a cold detachment. “You are expelled from the Guild of Guardians. And for the suspected murder of Saskia Starkweather, for aiding in the escape of a criminal, and for knowingly deceiving the Guild with regard to your Gifted status and Griffin Ability, you are placed under arrest.”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Before my brain has had time to properly comprehend Councilor Merrydale’s words, the guards are back in the room tugging me to my feet. They drag me out to the corridor because apparently my slow, stumbling footsteps aren’t fast enough for them. Or perhaps my feet aren’t moving at all. It’s hard to tell when my brain seems stuck in that room listening to Councilor Merrydale’s words on repeat.
There’s shouting all around me as people emerge from offices and lesson rooms and wherever else they’ve been hiding. Some of the shouting is about the cure and some of it’s about me, and I hear the words ‘Griffin Ability’ thrown around several times. I’m starting to regain my senses by the time we reach the bottom of the stairs and the foyer. The guards, with their arms hooked tightly and painfully beneath my arms, lead me across the foyer toward the corridor that will take us to the detainment area. That’s when I start struggling. I have no hope of fighting off all these guards—or every guardian inside this Guild—but I know I can’t go down there. I’ll be locked inside another cage, and this time my brother won’t be able to save me. Not without breaking the laws he works every day to uphold.
I wriggle and kick and even try biting, but every time I break one guard’s hold on me, someone else is there to take his or her place. I scream out in frustration and continue fighting back. I end up tossed over someone’s shoulder again, tasting blood on the inside of my lip. Amongst the people streaming into the foyer, I see Perry and Ned. I go limp for a moment, wondering why Gemma isn’t with them. Was I too late? Did I take too long getting the cure to Perry?
The world spins around and, with a painful thud and an “Oof,” I find myself on the floor. Arms pin me down. Enchanted guardian ropes wrap around my arms and legs. I look up at the domed ceiling with the swirling enchantments I may never see again after today and realize there’s only one way out of this. And since most people know my secret already …
My mental walls are down in an instant as my imagination sets to work doing what it does best—creating a scene that doesn’t actually exist. High above me, the domed glass appears to shatter as a dragon dives through it, plunging down toward the crowd on the foyer floor. The shrieks and screams around me become deafening. The dragon pulls out of its dive seconds before hitting the ground, and I add in the rush of wind from its wings as it swoops by. The guards jump up, already shooting arrows into the air. Mentors and other guardians add their weapons to the mix, and the great foyer becomes a melee of sparkling weapons, shouting guardians, running trainees, and scorching dragon breath.
I struggle against my bonds as part of my mind remains focused on the dragon illusion. Unfortunately, these are the kind of ropes that aren’t broken by simple magic. A guardian blade would do the job, though. I squirm out of the way before I’m trampled by a guard, then twist my hands as far apart as they’ll go while still being bound at the wri
st. Then I think of one of my knives and pull it from the air—just as someone else’s glittering knife sweeps toward me. I jerk away, but not before the knife swipes at the rope around my ankles, cutting it loose. The person moves around me and slices cleanly through the rope binding my wrists before pressing something small into my hand. In the tangle of people above me, I can’t see who my liberator is. The rope falls away. I roll over and push myself up in time to see Perry running off with a knife in his hand.
I close my palm around the tiny key he gave me, then turn and push through the crowd toward the entrance room. Maybe I’ll get the chance to thank Perry one day, but now isn’t the time. Or maybe he’ll never want to speak to me again once he discovers I’m Gifted and have essentially been lying to him, Gemma and Ned all along. I make sure to keep the illusion going as I head in the opposite direction. In my mind, I see the dragon letting loose a stream of fire. I add some smoke into the mix to decrease visibility and help me get away without being stopped. When I finally reach the entrance room, I find there’s only one guard left there. I imagine the dragon reaching around the doorway with a clawed foot. The guard rushes at it with a glowing sword.
I turn to the wall and open a doorway there with a shaking hand and stylus. Then I freeze as I try to figure out where to go. I can’t go home. I can’t go to Ryn’s. I can’t go to Raven’s or the old Guild ruins or anywhere else I might normally hang out. A sob rises in my throat as I wonder if I’ll ever be able to safely visit these places again. Everything has changed. Everything is ruined. I’m a criminal on the loose and the Guild will never let me—
“Hey! Stop her!”
I whip my head around and look beyond the imaginary dragon claw. A small group of guards has abandoned the assault on the dragon and is coming for me instead. The guard fighting the dragon claw swings around and lunges at me. I twist out of the way, picture a place no one in the Guild knows about, and dive into the darkness.
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