Game of Lies

by Sadie Moss

  “What about all the people at the Resistance headquarters? The ones you told me about, who came seeking asylum? How could you give all of them up like that?”

  The older woman shook her head, her eyes clearing. “I never told him where the Resistance is located, and I never will. They’ll be safe. All he wanted was you.”

  My stomach dropped. He who? Wanted me for what?

  “So you’ve been a double agent this whole time. You betrayed your own cause.”

  Her lips pressed into a line, and she stalked closer to my cage—though she was careful to keep out of arm’s reach, I noticed. “Not this whole time. I have given everything I have to this cause, Ms. Crow. I’ve given my life to it. I believe in the rights of the Blighted, and I will never stop fighting for them.”

  “Really? So why have you been trading all the hard-won information I gathered to one of the Gifted?”

  Her expression cracked, the hard lines of her face shattering like glass until there was nothing left but a tired, very sad looking middle-aged woman. She opened her mouth but didn’t speak, her eyes growing glassy. When she finally found words, her voice was softer than I’d ever heard it.

  “Because… he found her. She’s alive. And I need her back.”

  My heart twisted with fear and pity. “Who? Need who back? And who do you work for?”

  She shook her head, lost in her own mind again. This Christine was so different from the one I’d first met, the one who led an entire resistance movement with the strength of her will.

  “She works for me, Miss Lockwood.”

  A raspy voice struck my ears, and I froze.

  I looked up, truly taking in the rest of my surroundings for the first time. The room Christine had led me into was large and cavernous, with dark stone walls and a soaring ceiling. Sconces lit with magic cast a dim light over the space, and on one side, a staircase led up to a door high in the wall.

  Rain walked slowly down the stairs, the bags under his eyes crinkling as he smiled at me. “I must admit, I didn’t know if I would see shock on your face or angry acceptance. I really wasn’t sure how close you were to uncovering the truth of all this. But it seems perhaps my worry was for nothing.”

  “Rain?” My voice was too loud and too thin, but I hardly noticed. “What are you…?” I turned to Christine. “You’ve been working for him?”

  She ignored me, her face hard again, though her eyes still held a haunted look. When Rain reached the bottom step, she turned to him, pulling a potion out of her pocket and holding it out like a grenade. “It’s done. I did what you asked. Now give me what you promised.”

  The brown-haired mage waved a hand at her. “Of course. Of course.”

  I couldn’t stop staring at him, trying to reconcile what I thought I knew of the man with this strange new development. He was the one Christine had been working for? Did that mean he was the one who’d taken Gerald’s magic? Who’d orchestrated the bombing at the palace? He had told me he cared for my grandmother and looked out for the Lockwood family because of an old connection to my father.

  But that could’ve all been a lie.

  My hands curled into fists, rage burning through my veins—both at myself and at him. I’d been so out of my element, so desperate for an ally in the palace after Beatrice’s death, that I’d accepted his story much too easily. I’d tried to be cautious, letting him help me without giving him any of the information I’d learned—except I had been, unwittingly, through Christine.

  “I said now!”

  Christine’s harsh voice yanked my thoughts back to the room. She squared off with Rain, and it occurred to me that she really didn’t like or trust him at all. So why had she agreed to work for him? Why betray the organization she’d helped build?

  “Patience, Ms. O’Connell. Here she is.”

  As he spoke, the door at the top of the stairs opened. A young woman of about fifteen wearing a loose-fitting gray dress walked through, her gaze darting around the room. Christine’s breath hitched, and she stopped breathing entirely as the girl walked timidly down the stairs. Their eyes were locked on each other, and tears streamed down Christine’s face.

  When the girl’s foot left the last step, Christine slipped the potion back into her pocket. She sucked in a shuddering breath, sobbing and laughing as she walked quickly toward the child. “Mira. Oh, my baby!”

  She pulled Mira toward her, enveloping her in a hug that almost drowned the girl. Mira’s body stiffened at first, but as Christine swayed gently back and forth, still sobbing, she relaxed slightly, one arm coming up to rest low on the older woman’s back.

  Against my will, tears stung my eyes as I watched them.

  So this was why Christine had turned her back on the Resistance, why she’d sold me and my men out to Rain. For her daughter. A riot of emotions whirled through me as I watched their reunion.

  Pity. Anger. Jealousy.

  I’d never forgive Christine for what she did, but I hated that she’d been given such an impossible choice. Rain had used her daughter to manipulate her. What would I do to protect any of my four? I liked to think I had some morals, but if it came down to saving their lives, I wasn’t sure there was much I wouldn’t do.

  Christine ran a shaking hand over her daughter’s hair. Still clutched tight in her embrace, Mira raised her other hand. Light sparked between her fingertips.

  What the fuck?

  The light grew, electricity flowing from her fingers and gathering above her palm like caged lightning. She brought her hand down toward the older woman’s back, and my stomach dropped.

  “Christine—!”

  A bolt of electricity shot from the girl’s fingertips, striking Christine’s body with a loud popping sound. The Resistance leader jerked back, all her muscles going rigid as her ragged cry pierced the air before cutting off suddenly.

  She crumpled to the floor, sparks still dancing over her skin.

  Sightless hazel eyes stared up at the ceiling, and the face that had been so hard and full of strength in life looked wan and pale in the dim light.

  Mira stepped back, and as she did, her features transformed. The woman who stood before Christine’s body now looked older, with gleaming black hair and olive skin. Her face was expressionless as she looked down at the corpse in front of her.

  “Well done, Kate.” Rain’s voice made me jump. In my horror, I’d almost forgotten he was here. “Clean that up, please, and leave us.”

  The woman nodded and flicked a hand. Christine’s body rose into the air, floating ahead of Mira—Kate—as she walked back up the stairs and left.

  “What. The. Fuck?”

  My words were barely a whisper, but Rain heard them anyway, and seemed to take them as an invitation to start a conversation. He brushed an invisible speck off his suit jacket, turning away from the stairs.

  “I hated to do that. Christine has only been working for me for a very short while, but she proved an invaluable asset. Once I found the right leverage over her, she gave me a great deal of useful information, including the fact that you were the one who destroyed all my tracking spells. However, I don’t think she would have taken it too well when she learned the long-lost daughter I located was not, in fact, her daughter. It would’ve gotten ugly; better to just avoid the whole mess, I say.”

  “What did you…? How did you get her to believe that? She was too smart to trust one of the Gifted. She hated you.”

  He cocked his head, the gap in his front teeth showing as he smiled slightly. “People become surprisingly stupid when it comes to the ones they love. As to how I convinced her I had truly found her daughter, well, I used Marielle’s excellent services. I was able to track down someone who knew Christine in her younger years and extract enough memories from them to give Christine details only her ‘daughter’ should know. And she wanted to believe. It’s truly a pity she had to go. She worked very hard for me with the right motivation.”

  My stomach turned. I’d known the Gifted politicians
all wore masks and had lamented how hard it was to get a real read on any of them. But this was beyond anything I’d imagined. Nicholas and Victor were sick fucks, but Rain had them beat, hands down.

  He was just better at hiding it.

  It had always been Rain. He was the man behind the attempted hit on Akio, the one running all those tracking spells I’d destroyed. The man responsible for Gerald’s death, and Rat’s… and Beatrice’s. Working within the government to go after the Resistance, and working outside it to conspire against his own kind.

  Turning his deep-set brown eyes on me, Rain walked slowly toward the cage I was trapped in.

  Unconsciously, I took a few steps back, a shiver rippling over my skin.

  He stopped a few feet away from me and rapped gently on the bars of my prison.

  “But enough about what Christine did for me. Let’s talk about what you can do for me, Miss Lockwood.”

  Chapter 28

  “I’m not doing anything for you, you crazy fucking asshole!”

  My voice was gaining some of its usual strength back, although my declaration still sounded pitifully weak to my ears. I searched inside myself, willing the spark of magic to appear again.

  Rain adjusted his tie. “I’m sorry to say you won’t have much choice in the matter. The bars surrounding you are enchanted with a powerful magic suppressing spell, so you won’t be able to use your magic to stop me. And the help I want from you isn’t the kind you need to give willingly.”

  He smiled at those last words, and my blood ran cold. I screamed for Fenris in my mind again, knowing it was hopeless. We didn’t have the same kind of mind-link when we weren’t both in wolf form, and I wasn’t sure the link worked over great distances anyway. I didn’t even know where I was.

  My fingertips itched to summon a fireball and throw it at Rain’s head, to watch his smug expression morph into pain and terror. But the itch was an empty promise; no magic rose at my command.

  I hadn’t realized how much my newly discovered powers had become a part of me until now. I felt naked without the comforting glow of magic burning inside me—vulnerable and exposed. Jae had told me it would take time for me to adjust to having magic at my disposal. Well, I finally had, just in time for it to be taken away from me.

  No. Not taken.

  Rain had said “suppressed.” That meant my power was still inside me; I just couldn’t access it right now.

  The thought unclenched the vice around my heart a little bit, and I was able to breathe and think more rationally. Being without magic didn’t make me powerless. It hadn’t for the first twenty-four years of my life, and it wouldn’t now.

  Rain cocked his head at me, watching my reaction to his statement with a pleased expression. His eyes flickered down my body, and I resisted the urge to cover myself. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing his gaze felt like spiders crawling over my bare skin. Instead, I locked my arms, keeping my hands at my side. My fingertips brushed the hilts of my twin daggers and—

  Oh, fucking gods. Lana, you idiot.

  In my panic over losing my magic, I’d forgotten I did have another weapon with me. Two, in fact.

  “So, what do you want with me then?” I asked, edging closer to the bars of my cage.

  It was a question I wanted an answer to, but I asked it more to distract Rain than to glean information. There’d be plenty of time for that later, once I got out of this fucking cage and had him tied up someplace where I could interrogate him properly.

  “Not one to beat around the bush, are you? You’re very like your father in that way.”

  Rain took one more step forward as he spoke, and I moved. Darting forward, I drew one of my daggers, reaching through the bars to grab a fistful of Rain’s shirt. I hauled him toward me, aiming the dagger at his heart.

  As soon as my body touched the bars of my cage, pain blazed through me. I gritted my teeth against it, forcing my muscles to work through the agony, but my mark went wide, the dagger lodging in his shoulder.

  With a grunt, he yanked himself from my grip, hurling a blast of wind at me. It threw me back, slamming me into the bars on the other side of the cage. Pain sang through my body again, but I leapt forward, drawing my other dagger and throwing it at the mage. He dodged, stumbling to the side, and the blade missed his eye by an inch, leaving a long cut across the side of his face.

  Rain leaned against the stone steps several yards from me, his hand outstretched as weak gusts of wind burst from his fingertips. I could tell he was holding himself back from killing me, and it seemed to be taking a supreme effort.

  But whatever he wanted me for, he must need me alive, because he pulled the magic back into himself when he saw I was out of weapons. He used his good hand to pull the dagger from his shoulder, letting the blade clatter to the floor. Reaching into his pocket, he drew out a small vial and pulled out the stopper, and then poured the contents into this mouth.

  We stood in silence for a few moments, watching each other warily as we both caught our breath. The cut on Rain’s face began to heal, the flesh knitting together slowly. The same thing must be happening to the wound on his shoulder, although his shirt and face were still wet with blood. It made him look even more deranged than he had before.

  The daggers had been a gift from Jae and were enchanted to return to their sheaths so I wouldn’t lose them. But would the magic work while I was in this cage? I glanced down at my sheaths. Both were still empty. Maybe it took a while for the recall spell to kick in.

  “If you’re hoping your blades will come back to you, I’ve got bad news, Miss Lockwood.” Rain straightened, regaining some of his smug demeanor, although his raspy voice was strained with anger. “Whatever spell you have on them won’t work. The magic repressing spell cuts off all charms and enchantments.”

  I shrugged, affecting nonchalance even as my heart raced. “Well, can’t blame me for trying.”

  He stalked toward me again, although his pace was slower this time, his eyes more wary.

  “Oh, I most certainly can. Still, I respect your efforts. It takes persistence to get what you want, and I can see you’re a woman who doesn’t give up easily. Your father would be proud.”

  My chest squeezed, anger overriding my fear. “Don’t talk about my father! Did you even really know him? Was anything you told me fucking true?”

  Rain stopped, his eyebrows rising slightly as if in surprise. He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and used it to mop up some of the blood on his face. “Of course it was. The most effective deceptions always have a kernel of truth. And the truth is, I did know your father. We weren’t the best of friends, but we were friendly. Until he tried to get in the way of my life’s work.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Rain’s dark eyes gleamed. “Do you know why precious metals and gemstones are considered so valuable, Miss Lockwood? Because they’re rare. The same could be said of magic. The more rare it is, the more valuable it is. And thus, the more power those who have it wield. Did you know that before the Great Death, interspecies breeding was becoming so common that more magic users were born every year than non-magic users?”

  I swallowed as disgust and a creeping, dread-filled anticipation soured my stomach, forcing bile up my throat. “So?” I whispered. “Why is that a bad thing?”

  Rain frowned. “I just told you. More people with magic means magic itself loses value. I looked around the country, and I saw the end of pure magic. People who were ‘part this’ and ‘half that’ being treated as if they were of the same status as someone whose entire family line was magical, stretching back for generations. It seems to me that magic shouldn’t be a right, but a privilege that must be earned. Not everyone is worthy of this power.” He dropped the blood-soaked handkerchief at his feet. “It wasn’t right. So I decided to fix it. Your father tried to stop me, which was disappointing. I never should have shared my vision with him.”

  “You…?” I forced the words out through dry l
ips, shock numbing my limbs. “You caused the Great Death?”

  For a moment, something like guilt flashed across his face, but his features smoothed over quickly. “I didn’t mean for people to die. I do truly regret that. It was an unfortunate side effect of the magic pull. I only meant to take their powers, but despite extensive testing, there were negative effects when I performed the spell on a large scale.”

  “Negative effects?” My voice rang out in the large space, almost a scream. “Thousands of Gifted people died! And then thousands of the Blighted after them! How could you do that? How could you let everyone think we had done it?”

  In my distress, I grouped myself back in with the Blighted, but it only seemed appropriate right now. At the moment, I had no magic at my disposal. And I’d spent almost my entire life living on the edge of poverty, pushed aside by the Gifted and the Touched, forced to do their dirty work at the expense of my own well-being—all because of this man.

  The enormity of his what he’d done staggered me, so overwhelming my mind couldn’t comprehend it.

  All that loss.

  All that suffering.

  On all sides.

  Because of one single person.

  It shouldn’t be possible for one man to have so much blood on his hands and still look human. There should be some outward marker to signify the utter blackness of his soul.

  But there wasn’t. He was just a middle-aged man with a thin face, gray streaks in his hair, and wrinkles around his mouth.

  Those wrinkles deepened as his lips turned down. “Why would I want to step forward and claim responsibility? I saw what the surviving Gifted did to the Blighted. And besides, the deaths were an accident. I lost people I cared about as well.”

  “Breaking a vase is an ‘accident.’ Killing thousands upon thousands of innocent people is genocide, you fucking Gifted psychopath!” I lunged forward, body straining less than an inch away from the bars of my cage, my teeth bared like I wanted to tear him to pieces. I did. Hell, I’d even do it in my human form.