by Sadie Moss
“Are you all right, Miss Lockwood?”
The question from the palace guard was so incongruous that I didn’t answer. He reached us and grabbed Gerald roughly, hauling his hands behind his back. Gerald didn’t resist, stumbling slightly as the man bound his wrists.
“Filthy Blighted. Don’t know how he got in the palace. Probably homeless.”
I blinked. Blighted? Homeless?
Now that I took in the rest of him, I realized Gerald was wearing a torn and stained tuxedo. Maybe the same tuxedo he’d been wearing the night I chased him out of the opera house.
“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?” I asked the guard, a thin man with white-blond hair.
“Caught him wandering the halls. Must’ve slipped inside earlier. Not sure how.” He rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “You don’t—you don’t have to tell your grandmother about this. I’ve got him now. I’ll take care of him.”
“Blighted man? No, he’s….”
I trailed off, a chill creeping through me as though someone had dumped a bucket of ice water in my stomach. Reaching out slowly with my senses, I searched for the power Gerald had exuded when I’d encountered him before.
Nothing.
No great waves of magic rolling off him. Not even a little trickle.
There was nothing.
My gaze flicked up to his, and he peered back at me. His pupils were huge, his eyes unfocused.
“Promised me…” he mumbled. “Promised me my magic back.”
“Shut up, you!” The wiry guard kicked him in the back of the knee. It reminded me uncannily of the way I’d taken him down as I chased him by the river all those weeks ago, and I winced when the big man’s leg buckled. He would’ve gone to his knees if the guard hadn’t been holding him upright.
“No! Wait!” I held up a hand as the blond man raised his foot again. I turned to Gerald, who was muttering under his breath. “Who promised? What are you talking about?”
He looked up, his expression clearing for a moment, but then his face went blank again. “You’ll help me, won’t you, pretty lady? He promised… said I could have it back. I need it. I’m… I’m so… empty.”
Pity and revulsion filled me as I watched the man blubber incoherent pleas to the air.
I looked up at the guard. “Take him somewhere safe.”
“But, Miss Lockwood—”
“Do you have somewhere you can put him?” My voice was sharp and commanding, and the guard dipped his head.
“Yes, Miss Lockwood. There are holding cells in the basement. But—”
“Take him there. And don’t hurt him.” I didn’t even want to imagine what the man’s plans for him would have been if I hadn’t intervened. I shot a sharp look at the guard. “If you do as I say, I won’t tell the Representatives you neglected your duties and allowed a Blighted man to wander the halls of the palace.”
His spine stiffened, and he nodded sharply. He started to haul Gerald up the stairs, but an idea occurred to me, and I held out my hand again. “Hang on!”
The guard hesitated, and I walked quickly up the steps to meet him. I rested my hand on his shoulder, pressing my lips close to the side of his head and pouring charm into his ear. His body stiffened then relaxed, and he let out an entirely indecent moan of pleasure.
I grimaced, but kept whispering in his ear. The guard nodded like he had a spring for a neck as I instructed him to put Gerald in a holding cell, record his crime as something minor, and then forget all about this encounter.
When I finally released the blond man, he roused himself slowly, then renewed his grip on Gerald and forced him back toward the palace. The large man’s head lolled as he stumbled up the steps, his gaze landing on me once again. “Help me… pretty lady….”
Then they both disappeared through the huge entrance doors.
I stood staring after them, my heart thudding like a drumbeat against my ribs.
What the fuck was going on?
I still didn’t know who had hired me to collect Gerald. I’d assumed at the time my client was just another Gifted socialite jockeying for power in the Capital—someone who had needed Gerald out of the way.
But this?
Was this what happened to the other Gifted who disappeared as well? Were they wandering the streets of the Capital, emptied of magic and out of their minds?
I should’ve taken vindictive pleasure in seeing the once powerful Gifted man brought low, forced to become the very thing his kind despised.
But I couldn’t. Instead, guilt and unease twisted in my gut.
Slowly, my feet resumed their forward motion. When I entered the palace, the two Touched men stationed at the door looked at me sharply before nodding with respect and allowing me to continue. I wondered how Gerald had managed to slip into the heavily guarded palace unnoticed; he didn’t seem to have the mental capacity in his present state to be sneaky or subtle.
One of the guards pointed me in the direction of Beatrice’s office, and I walked quickly down the long hallways, more anxious than ever to speak with her. Her office was on the fourth floor in the north wing. A petite fairy with bubble-gum pink hair and a sharp chin greeted me sweetly when I arrived, and ushered me in to see Beatrice immediately.
My grandmother sat behind a large desk that almost seemed to swallow up her small frame. She looked up when I entered, gray eyes tired.
“Oh, Lana! Thank you, Zooey. That will be all.”
The fairy bobbed a quick bow and left, closing the door behind her.
Beatrice gestured me closer, and I took a seat in one of the chairs across from her desk.
“I came as soon as Retta told me you wanted to speak with me. I was training with Jae.”
She nodded as she shuffled through some papers on her desk, seeming flustered and distracted. “Good. That’s very good. You’ll need to keep working to master your powers.”
“Yeah. I will. So… what did you want to see me about?”
I decided to wait to tell her about my encounter with Gerald until after I’d heard what she had to say. Although I truly wanted to believe she could be an ally, I knew better than to trust my instincts without question—too many emotions colored my judgment when it came to Beatrice.
She finally stopped fiddling with the documents on her desk and met my gaze. She took a deep breath, and her shoulders slumped as she released it.
“Sweet girl. You look so much like your parents it both breaks my heart and repairs it every time I look at you. Having you back has opened my life up in ways I never expected. You’ve challenged everything I thought I knew, and your presence lights up my lonely old house. And your men’s presence too. I often walk by the kitchen just to hear the sound of you all talking and laughing. Although”—she tilted her head, cocking one eyebrow—“there are other rooms in that big old house, if you’d ever care to spend time in any of them.”
I couldn’t help smiling at that. In my tiny apartment, we’d had little choice but to gather in the kitchen. Apparently, even when we had dozens of other options, that was still where we all gravitated.
“If we did, would you come sit down with us instead of just walking by?” I asked.
She chuckled softly. “Perhaps. I’m an old woman, set in my ways. Changing my habits doesn’t come easily to me. But I want you to know how welcome you and your friends are.”
My jaw tightened, remembering the ugly look on Jonas’s face when he saw me at his house. “Not by everyone.”
Beatrice sighed, her expression sobering. “No. Not by everyone. I will do what I can to change that though. You’ve made me question many of my assumptions, and I sincerely hope there are others here who will do the same. Reforms must be made.”
I sat up straighter. “Do you really think there are any other Representatives who might be willing to hear what I have to say? Most of the ones I’ve met so far seem to hate the Blighted.”
She waved her hand. “A few, perhaps. It won’t be easy to sway them, b
ut I can help you determine who is worth working on.” She’d relaxed as we spoke, but now her face grew tight again. “But, sweet girl, there’s another reason I wanted to talk to you. I hesitate to even mention this, because I’m not completely certain of it. It’s just a series of strange feelings and doubts, and questions with no satisfactory answers. I have a… a suspicion about someone in the palace. I’ve buried my unease for so long because I had no one to talk to, no one who would possibly believe me. I didn’t want to risk my entire career over a hunch. And if I’m wrong… I cannot fathom accusing an innocent person of a crime this heinous.”
She was babbling now, talking to herself almost as much as me while her fingers tapped out a restless drumbeat on her desk.
I rested my forearms on my knees, leaning toward her as if pulled by a magnet. “What are you talking about, Beatrice? What are you saying?”
My grandmother laced her hands together and raised them to her chin, seeming to gather herself.
“If I tell you my suspicions, promise me you won’t do anything rash. It’s possible this is all just the imaginings of an old, tired woman.”
I clenched my hands into fists, trying to tamp down my impatience. If she’d truly been keeping this worry—whatever it was—secret for years, then she deserved a minute or two to work up the courage to speak it aloud. The fact that she was telling me at all was incredible.
Finally, she took a deep breath and rested her palms calmly on the desk. Her gray eyes were clear when they met mine.
“Sweet girl, I’m afraid that—”
BOOM!
The wall behind her disintegrated, the force of the blast throwing her forward. Everything in the room moved as if in slow motion—the huge desk, the chairs, drawers full of papers.
Me.
I flew backward across the room, slamming into something hard.
A piercing pain cut through my body.
Smoke and dust filled my vision.
Chapter 15
For a moment, the world went black.
The pain faded, and nothingness took its place.
Then a harsh cry filled my ears, and my eyes flew open again.
Beatrice!
I must’ve lost consciousness for only a few seconds, because the choking dust and debris from the explosion still filled the space. Little beams of sunlight pierced the thick haze as if trying to heal the damage with their bright warmth.
My head throbbed, and something wet trickled down the side of my face. My whole body ached, and when I tried to scramble to my feet, my right leg gave out with a sharp twinge of pain. Collapsing back to the floor, I crawled forward on three limbs, trying not to move my injured leg any more than I had to.
“Beatrice! Grandma!” My voice seemed too weak to penetrate the smoke, even as the thick haze cleared slowly. I heard shouts and screams from a distance but barely registered them. “Grandma!”
A low, breathy moan rose up from somewhere ahead of me, and I followed the sound, shuffling my way through fragments of wood and shattered glass.
Finally, I saw her.
The large desk she’d been sitting at had careened across the room and now lay on its side, cracked and broken. Beatrice was pinned under it.
Her entire body was covered in gray-white dust, except for where a dark red color seeped from her wounds. She looked like a marble statue that could somehow, horribly, bleed.
“Beatrice!” I crawled toward her faster, already reaching for the flickering glow of magic inside me and commanding it to raise the desk. The heavy piece of furniture lifted off her, and she took in a gasping breath. It moved several feet away before thudding back down.
She was still gasping for air when I reached her, her inhales sharp and fast. Ignoring the pain burning up my leg, I held my hands over Beatrice’s small form, reaching out with my magic as Jae had taught me. I’d only performed healing spells twice before, and never on injuries anywhere near as grave as these. But I forced down my self-doubt, searching for her life force, then for the interruptions in that pattern.
My throat tightened.
There were so many. The glow of her life force wavered, interrupted in so many places it was nearly broken.
I couldn’t even tell where to start. There were injuries all over her body. I picked what seemed like the worst one and began filling the break in the pattern of her life with my magic. It took everything I had, and I sucked in air as if I was sprinting up a mountain.
But before I could even finish healing that injury, others became worse, bleeding out her life energy like holes in a sponge.
“Beatrice, no. Hold on!” I pressed my hands to her stomach, as if physical contact would force the magic into her, make it work faster.
Her eyes flickered open, the gray of her irises dull and cloudy. She reached a trembling hand up to my face, cool fingers brushing me cheek.
“Lana. Sweet girl… I’m so glad I found you.”
Tears blurred my vision as I grabbed her hand, pressing it to my face. “I’m healing you, Grandma. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t.
As fast as I poured my magic into her, the injuries all over her body worked faster, pulling her away from me, dragging her under.
The hand against my cheek went limp, but I kept filling the gaps in her life force with my magic until suddenly, there was no more life inside her.
My body jerked, the sensation like slamming into a wall. I tried to keep feeding healing magic into her, but there was nothing there to heal. I stared down at her, my whole body going numb with shock and grief.
A moment—or maybe an hour—later, the sound of shouting outside grew louder, and several people ran into the room.
Guards in palace uniforms darted around the space, talking in urgent voices to each other as they scanned for lingering threats. Jonas stood over me, Rain hovering behind him. A woman I didn’t recognize knelt down beside my grandmother, moving me out of the way. I fell backward into another set of hands, and a man with bushy eyebrows and a gray beard wiped at my face with a cloth.
“I’m going to heal you. You’ve had a bad cut to your leg.”
He spoke slowly, as if speaking to a child, but I still couldn’t process his words. He held his hands over my leg, and a bright glow emanated from his palms. Warmth crept up my leg, dampening the throbbing pain that pulsed in time with my heartbeat.
Other hushed voices talked near my grandmother’s body, the words “dead” and “bomb” and “nonmagical” floating into my hazy brain, trying to find purchase somewhere. But there was nowhere for them to land. My mind went blank as I lay back, staring up at the puffy white clouds in the sky.
That’s not right.
I shouldn’t be able to see the sky.
As soon as I was healed, two guards hustled me out of my grandmother’s office. The palace healer was good, and my leg was able to bear my weight after several minutes of his ministrations, but that hardly made it easier to place one foot in front of the other. My brain seemed to be processing everything at half-speed, and I couldn’t do more than nod or shake my head as unfamiliar faces floated in front of mine, peppering me with questions.
The area outside Beatrice’s office was damaged too, and another healer was helping the pink-haired fairy girl sit up as I shuffled by.
I was taken to a large, lavish room where I sat listlessly in a chair until Jonas arrived. He grilled me with the same questions the floating heads had, and my dislike of him roused me from my stupor enough to answer him in clipped, one-word answers.
Once I told him everything I remembered about the moments before the blast—except seeing Gerald on the palace steps and my grandmother’s suspicion of someone in the government—he released me. Several of the Representatives were gathered outside the door, and they watched me with narrowed eyes when I passed them. Rain was there as well, hovering on the periphery of the group.
He had a shell-shocked look on his face, and he put a hand on my shoulder as I walked by, muttering in hi
s raspy voice, “I’m sorry.”
I nodded dumbly, too exhausted to wonder if he really meant it.
Tarik was waiting for me outside the palace, his usually mood-boosting fairy magic dampened as he helped me into the car.
As he pulled away from the palace, I reached through the tangle of my hair and pressed the middle stone on my earring.
“Guys?”
“We’re here. What’s going on? Did you learn what your grandmother wanted to tell you?” Jae responded immediately.
“No.” I swallowed. “Beatrice is dead. A bomb.”
There was a brief silence, and I closed my eyes, blocking out the world for a few seconds.
“I’m so sorry, Lana.” Jae’s voice was a soft whisper. “Are you safe? Where are you?”
“I’m coming home. Have you talked to Christine?”
“Yes. We had a debriefing with her about an hour ago. But we’ll call her again and update her.”
A shard of glass that had lodged in my dress glinted in the sunlight, and I picked at it, hissing when it cut my finger. I pressed my thumb to the wound, watching a drop of bright red blood well.
“Keep her on the line. I want to talk to her.”
I cut off the communication spell without another word, my body starting to shake with latent adrenaline. The neighborhood we drove through was too peaceful, too calm-looking for the events of the day.
My mind was racing by the time Tarik pulled up to Beatrice’s house.
Everything that happened at the palace after the bomb went off was a hazy memory, but one thing stuck in my head like a burr—the bomb was nonmagical. This had been a Blighted attack. Anger flooded my body, and I encouraged it, letting it force out other emotions I didn’t want to feel. I threw open the front door and marched toward the kitchen, following the sound of voices.
Corin stood by the island in the middle of the room, the burner phone pressed to his ear.
“No other casualties that we know of, but we haven’t gotten the full details yet. Lana’s grandmother—”