“She tried to kill me,” he said to her, rubbing at his neck like I’d pierced it. If I had, no amount of rubbing would save him.
“You probably did something to deserve it,” Aaryn said, approaching.
“You can’t talk to me like that! I’m—”
“—a prospect, which means I can and will talk to you however I want. Now, I’m going to tell you to be quiet, and the next words out of your mouth better be yes and ma’am.”
Ferrum grumbled something that sounded like yes and ma’am, but was probably a little more colorful than that.
Aaryn ignored it. “Seline, when you’re done terrorizing the other prospects, I need you to come with me.”
“Come with you?” I asked, “It’s not even eight in the morning.”
“Duty doesn’t wait for anyone…”
I could hear the question bubbling on Ferrum’s lips. Duty, what duty? But he didn’t speak. He was afraid of Aaryn, and that was good. If I had to listen to him talk again, I would’ve probably ended up hitting him.
I nodded at the girls as I went past them. Felice nodded back and took up the role of instructor, telling Fate and Ness to go and arm themselves. They’d be practicing their swordsmanship today. That was something I’d have wanted to see, but Aaryn was already on her way out of the gym, and I had to follow her. I found her waiting for me in the hallway, that was only just starting to stir with the morning hustle and bustle.
“This way,” she said, and l followed.
“Is everything okay?” I asked as I shadowed her steps.
“The fortress is in no immediate danger, either from inside or outside, so I’d say that counts as okay.”
“Good… why did you need me?”
Aaryn moved into the courtyard, where the air was crisp and cool, and there wasn’t another soul around. A fine mist had descended on the fortress, turning the sky grey and making even the Aevian statue in the center of the courtyard difficult to see.
“I’d like to talk to you about Six.”
“Six?” I asked, “What about her?”
“She tried to escape last night.”
“Oh… I guess she failed?”
“We had her under surveillance, there was no way she’d get very far. I was simply wondering if you had any thoughts as to why she may have wanted to escape her comfortable room?”
I scratched the back of my head. “I don’t… I mean, I guess I can understand why though… this place is strange to her. Alien. It doesn’t feel like home.”
“As I understand it, she was in chains when you found her… why would she want to go back to that?”
I remembered the way I was when Draven found me. When we first came to the fortress, it was probably one of the most impressive things I’d ever seen. Sure, I’d just come face to face with some nightmare beast, but after that, going inside the castle, seeing Fate sitting at that huge dining table, stuffing her face with delicious food. Considering the two of us had come from… not poverty exactly, but something close to it, the fortress was a palace.
Still, though, I didn’t want to stay there. I wanted to go back home, back to my life, my shitty apartment, my reality TV, my lotto tickets. I didn’t realize I’d actually won the lotto by being brought to the fortress where not only could I do a bit of good in the world, but I could also hone my skills and become… someone powerful, someone who could really thrive on her own, and not just survive like I was doing.
I sighed. “She may not know anything else,” I said, “Chains probably feel comfortable. And that’s assuming she’d have gone back there. Maybe she was going to escape and make a new life for herself?”
“You could be right. Still, she strikes me as someone who has been through a great deal of trauma in her life. I would therefore like for you to take a more hands-on approach with her.”
“Hands-on? I don’t understand.”
“I want you to train her.”
I frowned. “You mean you want her to become a prospect?”
“That’s not what I said, though I wouldn’t say it’s off the table. She may be a fiend, but she’s also under our protection and that means she’s welcome to join the order if she so wishes.”
“You think she’s under our protection. But trust me, she thinks she’s our prisoner right now. I know I did at first, and I’m sure a whole bunch of other people thought the same thing at the start too.”
Aaryn looked to the side. “Yes, Draven and Crag have never been subtle about the way they brought new recruits into the Order.”
“Yeah, whoever let them in charge of recruitment really screwed the pooch.” Crag. Sunglasses. Douche Squad. A smile swept across my face. “I hated him so much, and then I kind of got used to him.”
Aaryn smiled, too. “Yes, he had that kind of effect on people… anyway, Draven brought me up to speed on what you discovered last night. While that situation marinades, I would like you to go and see Six, talk to her, see if you can get her to open up a little more. And if you feel like she’d respond well to it, train her.”
“I’m not an instructor, Aaryn…”
“I beg to differ. Ever since I took you on, I’ve watched you become something of a leader. Those prospects you were with look up to you, they listen to you. You have a natural charisma, and a knack with people.”
“Go figure.”
“Right, so go and use that skill. I don’t want to have to stop her from escaping again. That kind of oppression is only going to push her further away from us.”
I nodded. “Alright, I’ll go and talk to her.”
“Thank you. If you need anything, you know where to find me.”
Aaryn walked off, disappearing into the mist like a ghost. I looked around at the wispy white mantle surrounding me. “Me, an instructor,” I said to myself, shaking my head. “That woman is insane.”
It wasn’t a surprise Six hadn’t managed to get far. There were two guards posted at her room, and these guys weren’t prospects, either; they were members of the douche squad. Maybe they were new, I’d never seen them before, but they were armed, and wearing shades. Indoors.
I walked up to them. “Gentlemen,” I said, nodding.
One of them raised his eyebrow over his shades. “Who are you?” he asked.
Rude. “I’m here to talk to Six. Didn’t Aaryn tell you?”
They looked at each other. “We answer to Draven, not Aaryn. We’ve been asked not to let anyone in or out of that room.”
I cocked an eyebrow now, and folded my arms across my chest. “Well, then. How about we get Draven down here and you can tell him how you’re blocking me from doing what I’ve been asked to do.”
“Like he’s gonna give a shit about what we say to a fucking prospect. Get lost.”
I tapped my collar. “Gold prospect, or can’t you see the stripe?”
“I could give a shit about your stripe,” one of them said, and he lunged as if to shove me away. I grabbed his arm, spun around him, and pulled it up against his back. He groaned loudly as his elbow started to strain. The other went to grab me, but I round-house kicked him against the chest and sent him staggering back into a wall.
“My name is Seline,” I growled into the ear of the guy I had in my grip. “You’re probably too stupid or too new to know who I am, but you’re going to have to get used to my name because I’m not someone you want to fuck with.”
The guy I’d kicked recovered and came to grab me again, this time with a sword drawn. Using my other hand, I drew my own dagger and effortlessly parried his strike, sending his sword flying out of his hand in the process. I aimed the tip of the weapon at the disarmed douchebag. “I’m willing to call this a misunderstanding if you two idiots don’t try and attack me again.”
The guard put his hands up. The other cried mercy. I let him go. He turned around, cradling his arm. “Alright, fine,” he said, “Go inside. But you’ve got five minutes.”
“I’ll have however long I want, and you’ll make sure no one el
se gets into that room. Got it?”
The guards grumbled at each other. I took that grumbling as consent and allowed myself into Six’s room. She must have heard the commotion because she was already sitting on her bed, pushed right up against the corner wall.
Her bangs almost covered her sharp eyes, brown and flecked with burning amber. Her black hair wasn’t matted and dirty anymore, but it hadn’t dried right so it was all over the place. On her back she had a brand-new set of clothes; a black t-shirt, ripped up black skinny jeans, and boots.
She looked ready to strike, like a coiled snake.
I stretched one hand toward her. “It’s alright,” I said, letting the door shut behind me. “Those guys are assholes, I had to make sure to teach them a thing or two about getting in my way.”
Six’s breathing was heavy, her attention focused entirely on me. She was feral, almost. I’d need to be careful. Deciding it was a good idea to keep my distance, I stayed by the bedroom door. That probably put a couple of feet between us. Enough for her to be comfortable, I hoped.
“I heard you tried to get out last night,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Where were you going to go?”
Six continued to stare at me, her lips so tightly pressed together they were going white.
“Were you going to go back to New York? I can tell you, we’re a long way from the city out here… you’d still be walking.”
“Flying,” she said.
“Flying… sure, but you’d still be doing that right now. And it would be cold, and dark, and probably wet too. Last night was cold as hell. Did you want to go back to the place where we found you?”
“No.”
“I get it… I was like you once.”
“You were never like me.”
“No, it’s true. When I first came here, I hated it here. I wanted my own bed, my own house, my own life. I felt like a prisoner here.”
“I am a prisoner.”
I shook my head. “No, you’re not. You’re a guest.”
“Then why can’t I leave?”
“Because it’s not safe out there, Six… it just isn’t. Not for you, or for me.”
“I don’t need your protection.”
“I’m sure you don’t. You look like a tough girl, someone who’s probably been in more scraps than I’ve been in, but you have to see that we’re only trying to do what’s best for you.”
She narrowed her eyes, and the spots of amber in them began to glow. “How can you know what’s best for me? You don’t know me. You don’t know where I’ve come from.”
I walked a little closer to her, reaching the edge of her bed but not moving any further. “I don’t,” I said, “I know you’ve lived in New York for a while. I know I found you chained up. I know you’re a… fiend.”
“I hate that word.”
I angled my head to the side. “Hate it?”
“I’m Aevian, like you.”
I nodded. “Yeah, you are… I have to tell you, I’m real sketchy on everything that happened before I fell through the rifts. I forgot everything that happened to me. Everything. I literally had no idea I was even an Aevian until I got here a few months ago. But now I do, and I feel like I’m a better person for it.”
Six’s stare softened a little. Her lips unclenched, they were chapped and cracked, like she hadn’t been drinking. It was now that I noticed the tray of food she’d been given. She’d knocked it over and spilled all the food and her water onto the floor.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, but her eyes had quickly flitted to the mess she’d made on the floor.
I decided not to wait for a reply that probably wasn’t going to come. “Siren,” I said aloud, and a moment later, a green cloud of mist pushed into the room and began to take shape. Six panicked and scrambled further against the wall, like she thought she could maybe become water and seep through it if she only pressed herself hard enough against it.
“Hello, Seline,” Siren’s ghostly form smiled at me. “What can I do for you today?”
“I need to have water and a fresh plate of food brought up to Six’s room right away.”
Siren nodded. “Certainly, Seline.”
The magical construct burst into that same misty green cloud she’d been birthed from and disappeared into nothingness, leaving glittering green sparkles floating in the air.
“What was that?” Six asked, breathing heavily again.
“Siren is a friend,” I said, “She helps us all around the castle with whatever we need. So, if you’re hungry, you only have to call her and ask, and she’ll send food to you.”
Six swallowed several times, her throat working inaudibly. I watched her relax again and take more of a seated position. “Books?” Six asked.
“Books too.”
She brushed her hair out of her face and tucked some of it behind her ear. It was good to see her face again. She’d showered since she’d been here, allowing her true, pretty self to shine through. Still, she looked terrified. Something had really spooked her, and I was starting to wonder if what had happened last night was an action or a reaction.
“I…” she trailed off, then she shook her head.
“What is it?”
“I don’t belong here.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because I’m not like any of the other people here.”
“Really? You’re not lost and alone? You didn’t fall through the rifts, lose all your memory, and wind up living on the streets like a rat?”
“I am Aevian, like you, but I’m also…” she shook her head.
“Is there another name for your people? If there is, I don’t know it.”
“No one does because no one cares to ask.”
“I’m asking…”
Six’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Serakon.”
“Serakon? That’s… a beautiful name.”
“I wish more people used it. We aren’t all fiends. I’m not, anyway.”
I shook my head. “People have a lot of notions about fie—the Serakon. They say, on the other side of the rifts, their kind are brutal overseers who want to dominate the world, or destroy it if they can’t have it. I don’t know if any of that is true, but what I know is that I’ve met a couple of them in my time and they haven’t been the nicest of people.”
“Prejudice is a dangerous thing. If I had judged you when I first saw you, we would not be talking right now.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why’s that?”
“All those things that are said about the Serakon are said about the Aevians. Bloodthirsty, power-hungry killers who will stop at nothing in their quest to dominate all they touch.”
“I guess we really are birds of a feather, then.”
“Yes… we are. The only difference is, you look like angels, while we look like demons.”
I turned my eyes to the floor, feeling the sting of Six’s words. She hadn’t meant any harm by what she’d said, I knew that, but… “I don’t look like an angel,” I said.
She cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”
I shook my head. “My wings don’t work. Others of my kind may look like angels, but I’m… missing something. Incomplete. All the time I’ve been here I’ve had to live with other Aevians, train with them, watch them spread their wings and fly… watch them do something I should be able to do, but can’t. I’ve never truly felt like I belong with them, but I try every day, I fight for my place, because no one’s going to fight for me. Looking at you, I can tell you’re a fighter too… we’re more alike than you think.”
A long pause hung in the air, the kind of pause that let you hold a full few thoughts before it was broken. I thought about Felice and her aerial acrobatics. I thought about Fate and her wings of mist, Draven and his wings of night. Mine were gold and sparkling, but they were wings of shadow; not real.
I would never let anyone see just how much that hurt.
“I’m sorry,” she sai
d. “About your wings…”
I shrugged. “You play the hand you’re dealt.”
“What?”
“Poker… you play poker?”
“What’s poker?”
“Yeah, fair enough.” I took a deep breath. “Listen, I know you’re probably going to go a bit stir crazy in here, so I had a proposition for you.”
“What kind of proposition?”
I held her eyes. “Let me train you.”
“Train me?”
I nodded. “Yeah, let me help you learn how to fight, how to use magic. We could even learn about our histories from the library. There’s tons of books about the old world in there.”
“Books written by people who hate my kind?”
“I don’t know… but you could probably learn a lot about our kind regardless. More than what you’d learn if you decided to go back to New York right now—which I’m willing to let you do.”
She frowned at me, cautious. “You’d… what?”
“I’m giving you a choice. Leave, flee the fortress and go… wherever you want. Do whatever you want. Live wherever you want. Or stay, but if you stay, we’re going to have to start trusting each other—and you’ve got to agree to let me train you.”
“And then I’ll be forced to join your Order?”
I shook my head. “I’ll make sure you don’t have to join if you don’t want to, but if you do, the option is open.”
She examined me from where she sat, her eyes glowing slightly. Strands of her hair fell in front of her face. She brushed them out of her eyes and tucked them behind her ear. “I won’t try to escape,” she said.
“Awesome. We’ll start today.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to train.”
“No, that’s the condition. You can leave right now, or you can stay and train with me.”
Another thoughtful pause. “Will I have to train with anyone else?”
“Look, I’m not an instructor, not really, but if you only want to train with me, I’ll talk to the big guys and make sure.”
Six frowned, her eyebrows meeting in the middle. “Fine,” she said, “I accept.”
The Obsidian Order Boxed Set Page 49