by D. N. Hoxa
“I know what you’re trying to do, Raven. Everybody does,” Kai said, and it was almost a warning.
“Good, because I’m not trying to hide anything.”
“There are supernaturals, on and off the potion, hundreds of thousands of them. Your army is nothing compared to that.”
“Trust me, I know. But like you said before—that doesn’t mean we’re not going to try,” I said even though the spicy scent of fear filled my nostrils and made me want to throw up all I had eaten.
“He’s strong. Very strong,” Kai whispered reluctantly.
“I’m strong, too,” I said with only half a heart. Samayan was not only stronger than anyone I knew—he was extremely smart, too.
But he’d never been confronted with an Elemental before, or that’s what I told myself. Funny, since even I didn’t know what the hell an Elemental was. I had no idea about the limitations of my powers, and as much as I hated it, the time had come for me to find out exactly what the power of the sky meant. The time had come to open Illyon again.
“I need to come with you.” Kai’s voice brought me back to the present.
“When the time comes, we will all be there. You are welcome to join us, fight with us—” Before I could finish, Kai cut me off.
“No. I don’t work for anyone. I have been alone all my life, and that’s how I will remain. I’ll fulfill my purpose, and then I’ll be on my way.”
“But, Kai, you’re going to have to fight, too,” I said, a dumbfounded smile on my face. We all were going to have to fight if we wanted to make it out alive.
“I will fight. I’ll fight Samayan. I have no problem with the rest of the Council or the Red Rebels.” Her stubbornness was another surprise feature I’d never noticed on her before. And I thought she was my friend…
“Kai, you won’t even make it to the front door.” Assuming he had one.
“I’ve been preparing for this my whole life. Not you, not anyone will take away from me the chance to try.” A tear escaped her eye and reached her lips before she could wipe it.
I had never imagined Kai to be this person. So much hate. So much resentment. So much anger was buried deep within her, and only now could I see it in her eyes, a reflection of the worst virtues of the world around us. She was a different person to me now, one I’d never known before.
“So are you going to keep me here or what?” Kai asked, only half joking. I had completely forgotten that she was behind bars.
“No, of course not. Aaron, please open the door.”
You might argue that it wasn’t smart to let her go, but how I could I stop her now? She was right—nobody could deny her the right to try. And the information she had given me was priceless. Knowing that there was a portal, right in the middle of Lyndor was priceless, a new window, opening just for us.
Aaron stood beside me as we watched Kai walk slowly out of the cell. She stopped and stared at me for a long while, telling me with her eyes what she could never say in words. Telling me that she was counting on me, depending on me, expecting from me. I recognized it with a nod.
And then she grinned.
“I always knew you were going to end up with a shifter.”
She did! She used to tell me that I was going to fall head over heals for a shifter, just because shifters were the coolest supernaturals in the world. She was right, apparently.
“I’ll need a way to contact you.” I offered her my encrypted phone, so she could give me her contact number.
When she returned it to me, she said: “I’ll show myself out.” Kai walked out the door without another look back.
“Are you sure it’s safe to let her go just like that?” Aaron asked.
I smiled. “No. It’s everything but safe. I was right about one thing while I was in bitch-mode. Nobody does anything without personal gain, and Kai? She needs me more than I need her.”
Not something I was happy about, but it was just how the world operated.
“I think it’s safe to call it a day after the Elders.” Aaron shook his head with a reluctant smile.
It felt like something heavy dropped in the pit of my stomach. I had to get that over with sooner or later. Better sooner.
Aaron took out his coin and closed the door to the cell room. We were apparently going to do it right there. Good.
“Ready?”
I offered a sad smile as an answer, then closed my eyes.
A draw of breath is all it took for the scenery in front of me to change completely. When I looked around, the Elders’ cold faces greeted me, without a smile. I took a seat on the brown soft right away, and Aaron followed. This was going to be a long talk.
“Star.” Grandmother’s voice pierced my ears. I was forced to look at the cold, dark green eyes of a former Fairy Queen. I nodded my hello.
“You found the time to meet with us.” Arlo’s deep, completely unhappy voice made me shiver.
“I’ve been busy,” I mumbled reluctantly.
“So we hear. Do you mind going through all the things that kept you too busy for us, Star?” Grandmother said.
At that point there wasn’t much I could do. I took a deep breath and told them everything from the second I woke up from the explosions caused by Seriel’s soldiers in Kentucky. They listened patiently as I hid details, such as the real reason why I made the members of the SKO give me command over their armies. They didn’t need to look at me with more hatred than they had in their eyes already. Not because I cared but because they were just as bad as I was. Just as guilty. They didn’t have the right to judge me.
Once the story was finished, Azazel spoke in his smoke-like voice.
“Seems interesting that Samayan would give you his enhancing potion willingly.”
I hadn’t told them about the theory I’d come up with, but I didn’t want to, either. I hadn’t even told Aaron yet.
“I don’t deny that he might have had a hidden agenda. This is Samayan we’re talking about, after all.”
“This Royal Guard you let go without even consulting us. Do you mind telling us why?” Eleanor’s brow was a thin arch on her forehead.
“Like I said, we need her and she needs us. If we’re going to find out where Samayan is, our safest bet is to go through Lyndor. That is where she’ll be. Exactly where we need her.”
“It could backfire,” Azazel said.
“It could, but it won’t. Even if we did decide to keep her, what good would that have been for us? We’d just get her more angry and more eager to rat at the first chance she got. Trust me, this was the right thing to do.”
“And what do you think, Aaron?” Arlo asked.
“She’s to be trusted,” Aaron simply said, putting an end to the issue, just like that.
“How will you proceed?” Grandmother continued her interrogation.
“I don’t know exactly. I will wait for Arsenal to give me a place to start, if he can find it. And I will try to pinpoint the exact date of the launching of the potion on humans. I’ll be working in the meantime with the heads of the other Bases and put in place the armies of the SKO members. Hopefully, we can attack before the potion hits the fan.”
It all sounded so very easy. Extremely easy. And I had an uncomfortable feeling in my gut because doing all of the above required time. Time that I wasn’t sure we had, especially since Kyahen told us that the date of the launch had changed.
“And when you find Samayan?” Eleanor asked.
“I will fight him.” I shrugged because I already knew where this was going.
“With what? You said yourself that he has grown stronger. He even has the Oracle now. She can now warn him of whatever is coming.”
“With my powers. With my weapons. With everything I have.”
“It will not be enough,” Grandmother said.
“It will have to do.” There was nothing worse than hearing that I couldn’t do it. Were they trying to get me to fail?
“And what will happen if he kills you?” Eleanor said.
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I almost rolled my eyes at her.
“Then it will be up to all of you to stop him.” I looked straight at Grandmother. For a second only, I wondered if she was maybe going to come to her senses and stop lying. Come clean. It would be a hell of a motivator for me to do the same.
Unsurprisingly, that ship sailed with the next words she said.
“If you succeed, Star, I want you to make Illyon your priority,” she said. “Even if you manage to kill Samayan, we need to have it.”
“Why?”
She didn’t expect Aaron asking her that any less than I did. All our eyes turned to him.
“What do you mean?” Arlo said, narrowing his brows.
“I mean, if Samayan is gone, the best thing that can happen is if he takes the book with him. We don’t need it. No one does,” said Aaron.
“Don’t be a fool,” Grandmother hissed, and my hands pulled up in fists. “We’ll always need the book. It is ours. It always has been. Ours.”
The fire in her eyes burned brightly. That’s when I knew for certain that Illyon had the power to release her from whatever jail of powers Samayan had put her in. She wasn’t going to give in.
“I’ll keep my eyes open.” I wrapped my fingers around Aaron’s wrist to tell him to stop arguing with them. It was all going to be okay.
Chapter
Stuck between Edison, the head-shifter, and Kyahen, the royal assness, was no fun, especially since my mind was elsewhere. Everywhere, in fact. The potion. Samayan. The power of the sky. Illyon. Even Karly…
“You make it sound easy,” Edison finally said, one eye on me and another on the fairy, if that was even possible. Somehow, he made it look like it was.
“It’s everything but,” I said with a long sigh.
He expected me to know exactly how the whole thing was going to play out to the very last detail. All of them did. Perhaps it was my fault. I’d been the one who insisted we go after Samayan, the one who said I could take him. But had I ever had any other choice?
“Well, without a location, there really isn’t much we can do,” the head-shifter said. His thick brows were raised as if he were trying hard to mock me, but it just wasn’t coming off right. We were too close to the war now. The time for games had long passed.
“Yes, there is,” I said reluctantly.
Edison was right—without knowing where Samayan was, we couldn’t attack. Yes, we had an army, a much bigger one than I’d ever hoped we would have, thanks to the evil side of me that Samayan’s red potion had brought out. Never thought I’d say it, but now as I looked at the shifter and the fairy—my first allies—I was glad I’d been kidnapped. Glad I was fed that potion without my consent. If I hadn’t been the way I was while high on it, I wouldn’t have had commanding rights to a whole lot of supernaturals trained by the Council themselves. But Samayan’s location, or even his training grounds, was our starting point. Without it, we were both blind and deaf. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to admit it. I was the one these people looked up to. They truly did expect me to just know. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“As hard as it is for me to admit it, Raven, your furry friend here is right,” Kyahen said.
Edison’s hands pulled up in fists, and I could see the thick, blue vein in his forehead pulsating as he clenched his teeth. But he didn’t say anything to the fairy. I had no idea if they knew each other from before or why they seemed to hate each other so much, but as long as they played nice, it didn’t really matter.
“We might be blind, for now, but I’m working on finding the location. That’s why I have friends like you guys. To help me.” It was the reason I’d called for the meeting in the first place because I definitely hadn’t missed any of their faces.
“There’s panic among the people. That’s never good news. I’m not sure what you want from me, but what I am sure of is that you promised me that you were going to take care of Samayan.” Edison pointed his thick, short index finger right at me.
“And I am. When we find him. Until then, I’m doing my best, and I expect the same from you.”
It was tiresome to have to have these meetings and these conversations over and over again. It was clear from the beginning that I would be needing them to help. Otherwise I would’ve gone and done everything on my own. Why they insisted on making my life even more miserable was beyond me.
“We’ve come so far already. Further than any of us thought we would.”
“That is the truth, but I fear you’re not going to get much further than this,” Kyahen said.
“Don’t you mean we?”
The fairy had that nasty habit of speaking as if he were an outsider. Not part of the RR.
“No, I mean you. My resources are limited. I swore to help you in any way I can, but there just isn’t a lot more I can do.” His face never changed expression throughout his complaining, although his voice rose the slightest bit.
“Yes, there is. You can give me an exact date of release on the potion. One of you—if not both—has the resources to find that out, at least, right?” But both only pressed their lips together. “So that’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to give me a date, and you’re going to focus on finding where Samayan is keeping most of his army. We already have a clue.” Alcatraz, where Samayan had kept me. Maybe that wasn’t where he kept his minions, but at least we knew the kinds of places he went for.
“And if we come up empty-handed?” Edison asked. He didn’t like the sound of his own question any more than I did.
“We won’t. We won’t stop trying until we do.”
“The people you have now are more than what you had but still no match for his,” Kyahen said. I should’ve had him meet Kai. They both shared the same positive enthusiasm it seemed.
I rolled my eyes to hide my disappointment. “It is.”
“A lot of people are going to die if you don’t find Samayan. As long as he stands, nothing can really be done—not even through war.”
He was right about that. Samayan didn’t care about his soldiers—that much was obvious. But the truth was, even when I found exactly where he stayed, a lot of people were going to be there between us. Fighting was inevitable.
“But there will be a war. You already know there’s no escaping that. So instead of complaining here like a fucking pussy, why not just be on your way and get to work?” I hissed. I hadn’t meant to lose it, not in front of both of them, but that fairy just got to me. He pushed my buttons at exactly the right time.
Edison grinned. “You’re right. We’ve lost too much time as it is.” He stood up and his wide frame nearly took up all of Aaron’s office. “I’ll put all of my resources into finding a date and a location. In the meantime, I expect to be updated daily.”
Oh, thank God.
I raised a brow at Kyahen, who didn’t seemed to mind that I’d called him a pussy, or he didn’t want to show how he felt in front of Edison. “You’re already looking for Karly.” He only nodded. “Use those same resources to look for others who might have suffered the same fate, and we didn’t hear about it. That has got to be the fastest way to a location, don’t you think?”
“I shall do my best,” Kyahen said, and without even a look Edison’s way, he disappeared into thin air.
“Fucking fairy,” Edison muttered.
“He’s our ally, Edison.”
“He’s also an asshole,” he said as he made for the door, but then he turned to me again. “I heard about your friend Kai. That she was here.”
Here we go. “She’s gone, Edison.” I just wanted the meeting to be over so I could clear my head and put my next actions into order.
“Oh, I know, but I do have something to ask of you, too. When you see her again, make sure I do, too.”
I raised a brow in question. The head-shifter seemed actually really curious, and there was no hint of amusement in his voice.
“Why?” I asked when he failed to read my facial expressions.
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�Because I’d like to meet a leopard,” was all he said before he opened the door. Three of his guards stood waiting outside it.
What a load of crap. He couldn’t have cared less about just meeting a leopard. He wanted something else. Unfortunately, my curiosity about his real reason was one that needed to wait to be quenched. I had a shitload on my plate already.
***
The pillow on my bed called my name like never before. Politics had a way of getting to you. When I saw the door to my room at the end of the hallway, I almost ran the rest of the way to it. I needed to calm my head for a second, and since Aaron said he had stuff to do, now was the perfect time to get a few hours of sleep. All our troubles were still going to be there in the morning.
When I finally made it to my door and turned the knob, I sighed loudly, already angry. My room was no longer where it was supposed to be. In its place was glass, or mirror if you will, on all sides of me. It was the stuff dreams were made of, a concrete space that wasn’t really there. My reflection was but a silhouette when I realized the door I’d just opened was no longer there, neither. I was alone in an illusion, or delusion, and there was only one supernatural powerful enough to make it look so damn real. Couldn’t say I was glad to see him, so I didn’t. This was obviously going to be very tiring, but I didn’t want Samayan to see how he got to me. So instead of cursing out loud like I wanted to, I crossed my arms in front of me and pretended to be interested in the reflection in the mirrors that surrounded me.
Soon enough, his voice boomed out of the mirrors, or it could have been inside my head just the same.
“Do not tell me I bore you,” he said, the sneaky smile on his face obvious though I couldn’t see him.
“Give me some credit for trying to hide it, at least.” My words, even the roll of my eyes, weren’t going to fool the man, but a girl could try.
“I give you credit for a lot of things, Raven. More so than those you surround yourself with,” Samayan’s voice said.
“Dude, I’m literally talking to a wall. Is it so hard for you to show yourself to me? It would be easier to insult you if I could look into your eyes.”
It was my way of saying it made me uncomfortable to not even know where to look. His voice was everywhere. He was everywhere. No matter that I knew he couldn’t get to me there, it still made me feel more vulnerable than I cared to feel.