Diana had told Will that this would be easy. It was the same as always, find the Guardian and Chosen, convince them, and get out. The difference this time was that they knew that they would be here, but not what they looked like. Her plan was to tap into the security, see who moved to complete the mission, and catch them before they left. But, of course, things were rarely that simple.
Particularly when someone he swore he had never met before called out his name in the middle of the ballroom.
Will approached the red-head cautiously, stopped in front of her and looked down.
“Do I know you?”
“No, but I know your sister. I’m Kiara, Hallie’s girlfriend.”
Hallie? She knew Hallie?
For her to be able to pick him out of a crowd, she had to have seen pictures of him, and only three people in his life had those; his parents and his sister. It could be a trap, but… One look at her hazel eyes and he could see that she was sincere.
“Come with me,” he said, placing a hand on the small of her back so that he could guide her into one of the small function rooms. They needed privacy.
“Is Hallie here?” he asked, once they had closed the doors.
“No, she’s back at her apartment, probably wondering how I’m doing. She would freak out if she knew that you were here too,” she said, sounding excited.
“Is she okay? How’s everything been for her?”
“Yeah, she’s great. There’s a lot of stuff that’s been going on recently, but she’s been studying here at King’s College, which is how I met her. She misses you so much, so, so much, I can’t even begin to…”
Kiara stopped when she realised she was babbling and looked up at him again, tilting her head when she saw the expression on his face.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you,” he said.
“Why not? What have you been doing all this time that’s been more important than your family?”
His guilt flared up again hearing someone who cared a lot about his sister angry that he hadn’t even called Hallie to check she was okay.
“You couldn’t even begin to understand.”
“Try me.”
Will couldn’t do it, not this close to him and Diana achieving everything she had ever wanted. Not this close to--
“Caleb?” Kiara said suddenly, pressing her fingers to her ear like she had some sort of earpiece in.
Wait, was she the one here for the mission?
“I’m coming,” she told him, suddenly looking panicked.
“My friend’s in trouble, I’m sorry, I--”
“No, let’s go,” he said, ushering her towards the door.
Will knew this wasn’t exactly what he was here for, but if she ended up being the Guardian or the Chosen, then helping her was bound to win him points when he tried to convince her to join him and Diana. Her already having a strong connection to his sister would too.
Both of the lifts were being used, so they took the stairs instead. Kiara had to ditch her heels at the bottom, but once she did, they sprinted up them, Will following behind to make sure that she didn’t trip on her dress and fall.
They were racing so fast that he hadn’t even realised where they were going until they reached the door to the server room and Kiara threw herself against it to send it crashing open.
Oh no.
Diana and a man, presumably Caleb, were both standing in the middle of the room, looking overcome with emotion. Kiara darted to Caleb’s side, grabbing his arm and looking up at him.
“What’s happening? What’s wrong?” she asked.
Will moved to stand beside Diana instead, his confusion clear.
“This is him, this is my son,” Diana told him, looking back at Caleb.
“I thought you said your Mum was dead?” Kiara said.
“It turns out that a lot of people lied to me about my family too,” he said.
Will couldn’t believe this was happening. Obviously, it was great that Diana’s son wasn’t dead. But the fact that he was the Guardian that they were trying to recruit, and his sister’s girlfriend was the Chosen… It was exactly the sort of drama that they didn’t need right now.
“Why are you both here?” Kiara asked Diana and Will, fuming over the fact that Caleb was so upset.
“We can’t do this here,” Will said before Diana could start speaking. “Someone will have seen us both running up to the room, we have to go before security comes.”
Diana knew he was right. She looked directly at her son.
“I need you to come with me, so I can explain everything.”
Caleb shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“And I’m not leaving without you.”
Will lunged forward to try and seize Caleb, but Kiara blocked him and drove her fist into his face in retaliation.
“Don’t you dare lay a hand on him!”
Will shook off the surprise and grabbed her by both shoulders, so that he could lift her off the ground.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he threw her onto the floor, where Diana pinned her.
Will made another move towards Caleb, but he had pissed off the Guardian as well by hurting his Chosen. It seemed that hadn’t been a wise idea, because even with his heightened senses and his training, he could barely block the flurry of attacks that came his way. Fist and foot, and knee and fist… It seemed like it would never end. That was until Will finally saw an opening and was able to catch one of Caleb’s wrists, twisting it hard enough to make a cracking sound before flipping him over onto his back.
“Stay down,” Will told him, but was distracted by Diana crying out.
He thought that she would have been able to cover a fledgling Chosen, but Kiara had somehow got the upper hand and was laying into her with enough fury to cover both her and Caleb combined.
Will tried to stop Kiara, but she saw him coming. A swift knee to the balls was all it took to make him slump to the floor in blinding pain.
“Get after them!” he heard Diana shout, but he was paralysed.
Through his blurred vision, he watched as Kiara hoisted Caleb up off the floor. The pair of them bolted for the door and didn’t look back.
Chapter Twenty-One
Caleb had said he needed some time alone, but he didn’t know why. The last thing he needed to be was alone after what he had just discovered. Kiara had fussed over him all the way back to Hallie’s apartment, where she and Lily were waiting to find out how it had gone. They were worried too, but he hadn’t been able to handle all of them trying to tell him that it was going to be okay. Now that he was standing outside in the cold night air, he realised how ungrateful he had been up there.
Loosening another button on his shirt, he took a deep breath to prepare himself to go back inside, but a voice stopped him.
“Caleb.”
Caleb shook his head and looked round at his Mom, standing there in the shadow of the building.
“Did you follow me?”
“I put a phone in the pocket of your jacket when I stopped you from leaving.”
A quick check of his tux proved that she wasn’t lying.
“I just want to talk,” she said.
“I thought I made myself very clear back at the hotel.”
“You didn’t give me a chance to explain,” she told him.
“It’s hard to keep listening to you when you’re the reason that I grew up with no parents,” he shot back.
“You have no idea how much it hurt me to not have you in my life,” she said, only increasing the tension between them.
“No idea?! I was four years old! I’ve had to live the last three decades with no idea about my heritage, no real parental guidance, can you imagine how hard that must have been? Do you think maybe I understand how much it hurts to be separated from my family?”
Diana shook her head. “It’s not the same as a mother losing her child.”
“No, you do not get to pla
y that card. You do not get to play any cards with me. If you had been a good mother to me, then you wouldn’t have let me go along with you in the first place. None of this would have happened. All of that pain would be erased.”
“You weren’t there, you don’t know what it was like,” his Mom said, frustrated.
“I don’t care. I don’t want to hear it. I want you to leave me the fuck alone.”
This time Caleb strode away, but she still chased him. She darted in front of him, barring his access to the door.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” he warned.
He was prepared to do it if it meant getting away from her.
“No,” she said, holding firm. “You have to hear me out.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“I want to tell you how I’m going to change everything for the better.”
“You can’t,” he said.
“I want to try. The way things are now at the Citadel, the strict regime that the Elders have for the way this world works, it’s not fair. If they had given me a second chance, then we never would have been in this situation in the first place. Now all they do is keep secrets and put their people down.”
“You’re exaggerating,” he said.
Caleb knew that they were stern, that things had to be just so, but they had their reasons. If the whole word knew about what Chosen, Oracles and healers could do then everything would change, not for the better.
“Oh really? You think they haven’t told you lies?” she said. “Do you know Ezra Mahmid?”
Caleb frowned. “He’s my mentor, what’s he got to do with this?”
His Mom laughed bitterly.
“Ezra was there in the hospital with me the day you were born.”
“No,” Caleb said, unable to take another earth shattering revelation.
“Yes,” she continued. “He was my sparring partner, my confidant, my best friend. We gave you a Hebrew name so that you would always have a connection to him. Yet he’s been lying to your face this whole time.”
“No,” Caleb murmured.
“Listen to me,” she said as she seized his head in her hands, forcing him to look at her. “Things have to change. I have an army of people at my back and I’m going to tear the old regime asunder to make sure that nothing like what happened to us ever happens to anyone again. It would mean everything to me if you were by my side.”
Caleb looked into her eyes, which were his eyes. The fire she held inside her was burning so brightly that it was blinding. Many would have crumbled in that moment, but he had been taught better.
“I’m part of that old regime,” he said. “I can’t let you hurt the people I care about just to prove to the Elders that they’re wrong.”
“Caleb, please…”
He secured her wrists, pulling her arms down so that he was in control.
“You’re coming with me.”
For the briefest of moments, Caleb could see the devastation in her eyes before it turned into determination.
“No, I’m not.”
If what happened next was any indication, she had been taking it easy on them earlier. Despite the warning, his Mom was able to twist out of his grasp, elbow him hard in the stomach and throw him back against the door. His eyes watered as he struggled for breath, slumping over onto the cold concrete.
“Don’t get in my way,” was her final warning as she disappeared into the night.
~
“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” Lily asked, pacing back and forth across the living room.
Poor Caleb hadn’t been able to get out of the apartment fast enough once he had made sure that Kiara was safely home. They all knew he hadn’t gone far but were worried about him all the same. Kiara most of all. She had been there moments after his world had got turned upside down. The pain that he was feeling had to be overwhelming.
She had only managed to get bits and pieces out of him on the long walk to Hallie’s apartment, all of which she told Lily and Hallie as soon as he went outside. Hallie had grabbed a bowl of warm water and a towel and was busying herself tending to Kiara’s busted lip, making sure it was clean before she healed it.
“I don’t know,” Kiara admitted, then winced when her wound stung.
“How hard did you bite his Mom?” Hallie asked.
“Hard enough to get her to let me go,” Kiara said quietly.
“She tried to take on the two of you by herself?”
Hallie was obviously trying to get everything straight in her head. Unfortunately, what Kiara had to tell her wasn’t going to make any of this any easier.
“No, she had someone with her.”
Hallie looked confused. “Who?”
“Will.”
“My Will?”
Kiara nodded.
There were plenty of different ways that Hallie could have reacted, but she wouldn’t have put her money on dead silence.
“How?”
“I can only assume that he’s been with Caleb’s Mom all this time.”
“But why?”
“His reflexes were fast. If I had to guess, I would say that he’s like me.”
“A Chosen?”
“Yeah.”
Hallie ran her fingers through her messy hair.
“Why would he be hanging out with her though?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t get a chance to ask.”
They might never get a chance to either if Will and Caleb’s Mom went back into hiding.
Hallie started to ask another question when the door banged open and Caleb stumbled through it, clutching his stomach and wheezing.
“Oh my God!” Lily exclaimed.
She and Kiara both bolted over to him, each taking an arm, so they could steer him to the sofa and place him where Kiara had just been sitting.
“What happened?” Hallie asked, forgetting all about their conversation for now.
Caleb gestured to his pocket instead of speaking. Lily pulled out a phone.
“She tracked us,” he coughed.
“Your Mum?”
He nodded at Kiara, then looked across at Lily who stroked his face gently with her hand. She was probably feeling everything that he was feeling, because of her abilities and their bond.
“What did she say?” Kiara looked to either of them for an answer.
“She’s planning an attack on the Citadel,” Lily said for him.
“An attack, why?”
“Diana blames the Elders for splitting up her family. She wants to take everything apart so that she can build something new in its place.”
So that was what she had wanted to talk about back at the gala.
“She can’t do that,” Kiara said. “What about the collateral damage?”
“She doesn’t seem to care so long as it gets her what she wants.”
Lily wiped away a tear from Caleb’s cheek, leaning in so that she could hold him in her arms. He had been through so much in such a short space of time. This had to have hit him like a ton of bricks.
“Screw that,” Hallie said, taking charge. “I don’t care if she’s your Mom, we can’t let her have her revenge, not at the expense of others. Get that Mahmid guy on the phone right now, I’ll tell him what’s up.”
“They need time to prepare,” Kiara agreed. “Your Mom showed her hand, if she doesn’t move fast then she loses her chance of striking altogether.”
“I’ll tell him,” Caleb managed, wrapping his arm around Lily. “Just give me a minute.”
Caleb and Lily had given Kiara all the time she needed to adjust after she found out the truth about her family, the least they could give him was a few minutes.
~
Will watched anxiously from the bathroom doorway as Diana proceeded to tear apart their hotel room. He had been able to tell that her talk with Caleb hadn't gone well by the thunderous look on her face when she came through the door, but he had retreated when she had begun throwing things in an effort to sate the emotions th
at had to be eating her from the inside out.
He had never seen her become this unhinged before. Will could count the number of times they'd had meaningful conversations about family on one hand. He had suspected, but never experienced, how badly what happened to her son had been affecting her. But this was different. Now she knew he was alive and he still didn't want her in his life.
After several minutes of chaos, Diana let out one final cry and collapsed to the floor, losing her face in her hands.
Will waited a moment before approaching her, kicking some of the debris away from her with his foot so he could sit down behind her and pull her against his chest. She resisted at first, but gave in when he wouldn't relent, crumpling into him.
"I couldn't make him see," she said, her voice hoarse from all the noise. "He doesn't want anything to do with me."
"I'm sorry," Will said quietly, holding her even tighter.
It must have felt like she was losing her son all over again.
They stayed there like that for a while, Will sitting quietly as Diana muddled through everything in her head and steadily calmed down. When she eventually pulled away, she looked a lot more like her composed self again.
"I'm sorry, you shouldn't have had to see me like that," she said.
"Don't worry about it," he smiled. "I think after four years by your side, I can survive one break down."
Diana snorted, although she didn't look to be in a laughing mood.
"What do you want to do now?" he asked her.
Surely finding out that Caleb was alive and that he was a Guardian would affect her plans. She wouldn't want to put him in harm's way. He was worried about Hallie and she wasn't actually involved in any of this, not directly.
"We make our way back to camp, get everyone ready to mobilise."
Will couldn't help but look surprised.
"Nothing's changed," she said. "Now there's even more reason to overthrow the Elders and their regime. Once they're out of the way, Caleb won't be under their influence anymore and he'll see how much better this life can be without them."
"Oh, okay."
"What's wrong?"
Will shook his head. "It's nothing. I assumed, but I should have known that you wouldn't give this up now."
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