by Anna Hill
Rebecca spun around, her eyes misting over as she rushed toward the door. As distraught and angry as she felt, a large part of her was hoping Liam would stop her. She almost expected him to come after her, to pull her into a warm embrace and comfort her the way he used to. But his touch never came.
As she ripped open the door and sped out into the dark hallway, Rebecca felt a heavy weight come down over her, crushing whatever strength she had left. Liam had abandoned her. Her last vestige of hope had been ripped away.
Chapter Nineteen
“You should be more aware of your surroundings.”
Startled by the voice, Rebecca swiveled her head and spotted Faolan approaching the large boulder she was perched on. “And you shouldn’t sneak up on people.”
Faolan gave her a wry smile then climbed up onto the boulder and took a seat near Rebecca, dangling her legs over the edge.
Rebecca leaned back, resting on her hands, as she gazed up at the green, leafy treetops above. As she’d done every day for the past week, Rebecca had awoken early, before anyone else in the house was stirring. She’d grabbed enough food to make it through the day and then headed out into the woods to wander amongst the trees until darkness enveloped the forest. Out here, lost within nature, was the only place where she could find peace of mind or, more accurately, try to ignore her unstable psyche.
Since her fight with Liam, Rebecca had found it impossible to be around anyone. She no longer had the strength or will to feign happiness, to pretend as though she was still a part of the crew. Until that night, she hadn’t realized just how much she was still clinging to the hope that she would regain her friendship with Liam, and possibly even more. But that window had clearly closed. Liam had moved on and no longer wanted anything to do with her. This realization had obliterated any remaining trace of her courage and hope. As her nightmare had foretold, it was only a matter of time before her Feiceann side would win, before the Rebecca that everyone knew would be gone and only darkness would endure. She needed to leave soon, before it was too late.
Rebecca checked her train of thought, realizing that Faolan had been silently staring at her for quite some time. She lowered her gaze and attempted to convey a relaxed demeanor as she addressed her friend, “How did you find me out here? I must be miles from the house.”
“Close to seven miles.”
“Really? Didn’t realize I’d wandered that far.”
“Wandering is an appropriate word for it. With the amount of zigzags and detours you took, you probably walked over ten miles.”
“You tracked me?” Rebecca giggled, picturing Faolan retracing her long, random meanderings through the woods.
“Well, there’s not much else to do out here, besides, you shouldn’t be alone all day anyway. It isn’t safe.” From the look Faolan gave Rebecca, it was clear that she wasn’t only referring to the Aillil soldiers.
Rebecca’s smile faded and her stomach churned with guilt. She didn’t like lying to Faolan, or to any of the crew. They’d done so much for her, risked so much--but that was exactly why she had to go. She couldn’t face any more of them getting hurt, or worse.
“When are you planning to leave?”
Faolan’s bluntness stunned Rebecca so much that she found herself unable to respond.
“I thought we’d cleared this up in Portland when you promised me you weren’t going to leave; but apparently not.”
“I said that before,” Rebecca finally answered, trying to defend herself.
“Before what?” Faolan retorted.
“Before I started to lose control of myself.” Rebecca responded earnestly, expecting sympathy, leniency, maybe even understanding from her friend.
Instead, Faolan snorted with annoyance. “There’s nothing you can say that’ll get me onboard with this. In fact, I think you’re being incredibly selfish.” A glint of resentment flashed across her eyes. “But I’ve been watching you, and I can tell that you’ve already made up your mind.”
“Selfish?” Rebecca sputtered. “How can you call me selfish? I’m leaving for you, for everyone!” Shaken by Faolan’s brusqueness, Rebecca felt her defenses going up and her anger mounting.
“You’re leaving for yourself,” Faolan countered, her voice remaining aggravatingly even and her face, as always, stern. “You’re leaving because you’re afraid and unwilling to face your fears. We’ve all tried to help you, to show you that we’re here for you, but you refuse to listen. You’ll leave because it’s the easy way out. You’ll leave because you’re not willing to fix yourself.”
“Fix myself?” Rebecca’s rage erupted, as if it had been lying in wait, hoping to be unleashed. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about! You have no idea what I’ve been going through!” As fury flooded through her, so too did the frightening desire it had ignited. The Feiceann strength coursed under her skin, enveloping her mind with the power she so desperately craved. “All of you want me to be this hero that I’m not! That I can’t ever be!”
Faolan’s eyes suddenly went wide, her face rapidly draining of all color. Against her own volition, her body went rigid and her mind paralyzed. No matter how hard she frantically fought against the invading force, she couldn’t regain control over herself, not even enough to tell her lungs to breathe.
Meanwhile, Rebecca was overcome with sheer panic. She was inside Faolan’s mind, controlling her friend without having meant to, without even having tried. She had complete domination over Faolan’s brain, over her every instinct, thought, and desire. Rebecca wanted out, she wanted to free herself and sever their connection, but the dark urges within her resisted. They flooded her conscious, invading her psyche, becoming her.
“STOP!” Rebecca shrieked in terror. Abruptly, their connection shattered, and a searing pain split through her brain as she crumpled forward onto the rock. Clenching her eyes shut, she threw her hands to her temples and pushed hard against her throbbing skull, the intense power still surging dangerously within her mind.
Foalan slumped over and cradled her head in her trembling hands. She sucked in ragged breaths, her spasming lungs burning with a dire need for air. After a few minutes of panic, her heart rate began to slow and her breathing returned to normal. She took a second longer to center her thoughts and test out her brain until she was sure she had recovered full control. She’d meant to bait Rebecca into showing how strong her Feiceann instincts had grown, to prove to Rebecca that she couldn’t leave the crew. She’d known her taunting would set Rebecca off, but she hadn’t expected this. And yet, as terrified as Faolan was by what had just happened, she was even more frightened of what it meant for her friend.
Faolan turned to find Rebecca curled up on the rock, her arms wrapped around her head and her knees tucked tightly into her chest. Rebecca’s entire body was quivering and her breathing was short and panicked. “Breathe, Rebecca,” Faolan shifted closer to her friend, gently placing a reassuring hand on Rebecca’s back. “It’s OK, Rebecca. Nothing--”
“Get away,” Rebecca whispered harshly from behind her arms. “Now you know how dangerous I am. Now you understand why I have to leave.” Her voice was shaking as she struggled to keep her emotions in check. She was so afraid--of herself, of what she’d done, of what she could do.
“No,” Faolan answered defiantly, pressing her hand more firmly against her friend’s back. “In fact, I’m now even more convinced that you have to stay. If you leave, you don’t stand chance against your Feiceann side. You can’t do this alone, don’t you see that? You have to stop shutting us out, Rebecca. You have to let us help you.”
Rebecca squeezed her eyes shut, pulling her arms in more tightly around her face. Her body was still trembling, horror and panic swirling within her chest. Faolan didn’t understand. She’d been inside Faolan’s mind, just as she’d been inside the General’s before… Rebecca instantly pushed the terrifying thought away.
Taking a deep, measured breath, Rebecca slowly unfurled herself and sat up on the rock. “I
don’t want to be like this.” She raised her eyes to meet Faoan’s as she spoke, “Trust me, I want to fix it. But I can’t do it, and we’ve already proven that the crew can’t--”
“But, if you’d only--”
Rebecca shook her head. “No, Faolan. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
“Leaving isn’t going to help you, though, Rebecca. If you go out there alone, the Aillil will find you and kill you.”
Rebecca gave a cynical smirk, “Maybe that’s not such--”
“Don’t even say that!” Faolan cut her off, her brow furrowing in anger.
“Alright.” Rebecca’s smile fell and she dropped her gaze back down to the stone surface beneath them. “I know I can’t be alone out there, but I wasn’t going to be alone.”
Faolan stared incredulously at Rebecca for a moment before responding. “You’re leaving with one of the crew?”
“No.” Rebecca looked up, determined. “I want to find my father.”
Faolan sighed, dejectedly shaking her head, “You know you can’t do that. If the Aillil see you with him, or know you’ve gone to him, they’ll kill him. Could you live with yourself if that happened?”
“But what if they don’t find out? What if we can stay hidden?” Rebecca pleaded, refusing to accept the truth. “What if he’s the only one who can help me control my Feiceann side?”
“How could a man who doesn’t even know you exist, who knows nothing about the Aillil or Truaillithe, and certainly nothing about the Feiceann, be able to help you?”
“Because he loves me!” Rebecca snapped angrily and then quickly recoiled, surprised by her revelation. She felt her chest sink as sadness ate at her heart. “He has to love me,” she whispered as she hung her head.
For a long while, neither of them spoke nor dared to meet the other’s eyes. The soft rustling of branches above mixed with distant calls from birds returning for spring floated down to their ears, filling the heavy silence that hung between them.
Finally, Faolan turned, shifting her body to face Rebecca. “Not even Maverick knows where I came from.”
Rebecca looked up to see her friend staring at her, deep pain lacing her typically austere eyes. “Where did he find you?”
“He didn’t. I found him.”
If anyone but Faolan had said this, Rebecca would have been shocked.
“I--” Faolan abruptly stopped and inhaled deeply, closing her eyes for a moment as she worked to collect herself.
It was clear that Faolan was struggling immensely to maintain her composure. This was more emotion than Rebecca had ever seen from her customarily regulated friend and it unsettled her. “Listen, you don’t have--”
“No,” Faolan opened her eyes, her intense gaze unwavering, “It’s time I told someone.”
Rebecca nodded slowly, leaning back uncomfortably on the rock. She didn’t know what to expect from Faolan, but what she heard next left her utterly speechless.
“Before I joined the crew, I had a twin sister.” Though Faolan’s face was steady, her voice shook as she labored to rein in her emotions. “Her name was Eavan, and I loved her more than anything.”
Faolan took another deep breath, lowering her eyes to the rock as she continued. “We grew up together in foster care, bouncing from one house to the next. It was a horrible way to live, but having each other made it bearable.
“Eavan discovered her gift first. Wherever we lived, she would sit in the garden and make plants grow. Even in sand, she could coax the most beautiful flower into bloom. When I started to recognize my own abilities, I realized we were different from the other children, that we would never truly fit in. We spoke often about running away and using our gifts to make it on our own. It was a daydream more than anything else, but then they came--and Eavan was adopted.”
Faolan looked back up, anger in her eyes. “They were going to separate us! They didn’t even care that we were family, that we needed each other; so we decided to leave before they could take her.
“I’d remembered hearing, a few months back, another foster kid talking about a boy who had shown up at her last house. She said he could do weird things with plants and that all the other children avoided him. Then, one day, an older boy showed up at the house, took the strange boy aside, and spoke to him. The next morning, they were both gone and she never saw either of them again. We decided to look for the older boy who had come to the house. The story didn’t give us much to go on, but if there really were others out there like us, we had to try to find them.”
“The older boy, he was Maverick?” Rebecca interrupted.
Faolan nodded affirmatively. “But I didn’t know that at the time. For months, we secretly visited foster homes and orphanages, searching for any information or stories about other kids who might be like us. At the time, we were living on the streets, barely surviving, but we always had each other.
“Eventually, a tip led us to a man who’d grown up in foster care. He was much older now, but after one look at his incredible garden, we knew he had to be like us. He told us that Maverick had approached him a few years earlier, and how they still kept in contact. He said Maverick was trying to locate anyone that was like us and bring us all together.”
“Why would Maverick bother to find an older Truaillithe?” Rebecca asked, confused.
“Maverick has tracked down every possible lead he’s found, no matter their age. He believes, and I agree, that we all deserve to know the truth about where we come from.”
Rebecca bit her lip, as a small surge of anger rippled through her. Or was Maverick just recruiting Truaillithe to join his secret army?
“The man told us that he didn’t know how to reach Maverick--that Maverick had always been the one to contact him,” Faolan continued, and Rebecca set her suspicions aside. “But he showed us the location of his most recent safe house. It wasn’t much to go on, we didn’t even know if Maverick would still be there, but it was the best lead we’d found yet.
“We left straight away, pushing ourselves day and night to make it to the house as soon as possible. We were completely exhausted when we finally reached the outskirts of the town nearest the house, but we refused to stop. We were so close to answers, to a new life, to never again worrying about being separated. But, just as we were about to get everything we’d ever hoped for, we were ambushed by the Aillil.”
Rebecca’s skin prickled and she almost asked her friend to stop. But it was clear Faolan needed to tell her story, for both herself and for her sister.
“Two of them attacked us in the woods, about a mile outside of town. To this day, I’m not sure if they’d been tracking us all along or if they’d only found us by accident.
“We fought them as best we could, but we weren’t trained to fight and we were so weak already from the long journey. It all happened so fast. We had absolutely no idea who we were up against, or even why we were being attacked. One second, I was fighting one of them. Then, a moment later, I was lifted into the air by a vine that wrapped forcefully around my neck. I could feel it tightening, crushing my throat and suffocating me. Suddenly, the vine losened and I dropped to the ground. Eavan had bent a tree and crushed the Aillil who’d been controlling the vine. I leapt up and tried to locate her and the other Aillil soldier but, by the time I found her, it was too late. She was lying on the ground, motionless, with the horrible soldier standing over her.
“Something inside of me snapped. A rage I’d never felt before took over and I lunged at the soldier, attacking him more viciously than I knew I could. I wanted him to pay for what he’d done, for all the pain he’d caused. I wanted him to feel that pain too. I didn’t just kill him, I obliterated him.”
Rebecca shivered, breaking away from Faolan’s intense gaze. Her words were all too reminiscent of Rebecca’s wrath and frightening desires.
“When the soldier fell, I rushed to my sister. She was barely breathing. He’d shot a vine straight through her chest, puncturing her heart and lung.” Tears began streaming from
Faolan’s eyes and yet she remained steady, her face stern and strong. “I lay down next to her and held her until the end. I promised her I would find Maverick, that I would avenge her. I decided then and there that I would find a way to put an end to the Aillil army and all the hurt and sorrow they caused.”
“Stop!” Rebecca demanded. “I already know what you’re going to say, and I don’t want to hear it.”
“Becs, I joined Maverick and your mother of my own volition. I believe in what they’re trying to do and I want to be a part of it.” Faolan pushed on, her teary eyes swiftly filling with determination, “I miss my sister every second of every day. If I can stop even one other Truaillithe from going through what I have, then I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“You sound just like the rest of them.” Rebecca hands began shaking in her lap and she quickly clenched them into fists, working to restrain both them and her emotions. “I’m extremely sorry for what you’ve been through, but I can’t help you--I can’t help any of you. Especially not after what I did to you today. You have to understand that I have absolutely no control over myself. How can I fight with you if there’s as good a chance that I kill you, as there is that I kill the King?”
Faolan shook her head, waving away Rebecca’s concerns. “Forget all that for now. That isn’t why I told you my story. I told you because I wanted you to understand that my sister was my rock. Even now that she’s gone, she’s still my source of strength. Her memory is what keeps me going every day. You need someone like that to help you conquer your darkness. You need someone who knows you, who loves you unconditionally.”
“My fath--”
“No!” Faolan cut her off, sternly. “Get that idea out of your head, Rebecca. There has to be someone else, someone already in your life--before all of this mess began--who truly loved you. Someone you’d do anything for.”