“Bri, c’mon.” Kean steered her away. She shook her head, fighting the urge to look back.
They climbed slick granite steps glittering with flecks of gold and silver. At the top was a set of ancient-looking wooden doors set into a carved recess of stone. They swung open without a single creak, an eerie welcome.
They stepped into a dark, bare hallway of the same granite, sparkling like the night sky. It was hard to tell where the floor stopped and the walls began, giving an odd sense of vertigo. From the main hall, they followed their hosts down the passage to the right, where the granite became marble, and into a hall of rougher-cut stone, lit with evenly spaced flame sconces. Every hundred feet or so, another hallway would intersect with theirs. The deeper they tunneled, the colder it got, and Bri had a feeling of being in an underground cave. How deep into the mountain were they going? It hadn’t seemed so large from the outside.
She and Astrid were able to remain side by side, while Kean and their Armani-clad entourage walked single file in front and behind. They stopped at the eighth or ninth set of polished mahogany doors. She’d lost count after the third or fourth right turn. Or maybe it had been a left?
One of the guards pushed the doors open and they shuffled in. The room was surprisingly large, with plush furnishings that dampened some of the hollow creepiness of the place. An antique sideboard filled one corner. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases stretched along the back wall. Plush rugs and a gathering of leather armchairs sat in front of a glowing orange fire. Glowing, but not warm. It gave no heat when Bri stepped in front of it, as if the surrounding stone absorbed it all. The doors shut, leaving the three of them alone, but Bri’s skin continued to prickle.
Kean looked warily at the closed door. “I hate this place.” He took up a pacing track at the front of the room, hands jammed in his pockets.
“Just relax.” Astrid helped herself to the sideboard. She poured two glasses of amber liquid from a crystal carafe and thrust one at Bri. “It’ll help, trust me.”
Bri gave Astrid a doubtful look, but took the offered glass and sniffed. Scotch. The first tentative sip seared her tongue and burned down her throat, but she drank the rest in a single gulp. The fire it started in her stomach helped to chase away the chill. But under that, she was buzzing. Vibrating with energy. She felt like a live wire. It was unfamiliar…but not actually unpleasant. She handed her glass to Astrid for a second pour.
“You mean help numb her senses,” Kean said, whirling on his heel again.
Bri frowned and sat down in one of the cushy armchairs. He was the one making her dizzy.
“You’re edgy enough for all of us,” Astrid snapped. “Bri’s father is a Council member. I hardly think they’re going to bust in here and rack us.”
Kean issued a derisive snort over his shoulder. “You have no idea what they’re capable of.”
Astrid refilled their glasses with a look that said never mind him. “Typical pomp and posturing. Just let me handle this.”
Bri cleared her dry throat. “I think I can handle Aldric on my own.”
Kean veered from his course and took post by her. “You don’t have to see him at all if you don’t want to.”
She appreciated his loyalty. Kean had always made her scars his own, and it was comforting to know someone else had not forgiven Aldric. She angled her chin up. “I don’t have a choice. He’s the only blood I have left.”
She’d coped with everything else so far — she could handle this.
It was easy enough to school her face and demeanor to appear calm and collected. She’d had lots of practice in Sydney. From the outside, she’d always looked put-together, even if the inside was a huge mess. The players had changed, the stakes were higher, but this was just another performance.
The doors swung open again, and two guards from the hall barred either side like giant mafia-inspired gargoyles in their black-on-black suits and Ray-Bans.
Bri’s father swept into the room as if he’d been marching down the endless halls for a mile. Long, loose-fitting black robes billowed behind him. Another ghost from her past made flesh.
She could pretend to have no reaction to seeing him again, but a tingle slithered up her spine. The hair on her neck stood on end as he crossed through the tense silence filling the room and stopped in front of her.
He’d aged, though not ungracefully. Fine lines marred his once smooth brow and bracketed his mouth. His eyes were slightly more drawn and tired, his black hair silvering at the temples. He still carried himself with light-footed calculation. He was still handsome, but she studied his face and saw nothing familiar or comforting, felt no twinge of connection. A frost crept over her, shriveling her insides.
She couldn’t read his expression, but his gaze flared with something as he brushed her cheek. His hand was warmer than she expected. Alive. More real than she’d been prepared for. “By the Stars, Briana Celene…you look so like your mother.”
A hot flash of anger filled Bri. Of all the people to say that to her, she hated it the most coming from him. She flinched away from his touch.
Kean eased forward, shielding her with half his body.
The guards by the door tensed as a single unit.
“Forgive me, my dear. I haven’t seen you for so long. I was simply shocked by the likeness. It’s not what I intended to say.” The earlier emotion had leaked from Aldric’s voice, leaving only cool command.
Bri stood up straighter and edged Kean aside. “What did you intend to say?”
“That I am surprised, but very glad to see you.”
“I’m only here because I have to be.” She bit her lip. So much for being civil.
“I know.” He swallowed. “I’m very sorry for what happened to your sister and Cecelia.”
“Don’t you mean to your daughter and mother-in-law?”
“Yes. Of course.” He frowned, as if already finding conversing with her taxing.
Kean’s shields soothed across her shoulders, a silent presence to draw strength from.
Aldric coughed softly. “Perhaps we could start over? Alone?”
She almost blurted out the no she screamed in her head, but refusing would only show weakness. She’d said she could handle this. Now was the time to prove it. Nodding slowly, she met Kean’s eyes for a charged moment. His were saying more than words could that he was ready to tear a hole through the mountain and drag her out of there. “Yes. Fine.”
Kean dropped his defensive stance and crossed the room, draping his arm over Astrid’s shoulders as they walked past the guards. He glared a warning at Aldric as he left. Bri knew she was asking a lot of him. He’d sworn he would never let her father hurt her again, and Kean took his oaths seriously. But some battles he couldn’t fight for her. Some ghosts she had to exorcise herself.
Chapter Fourteen
So, this is what you’ve been doing all this time.” Bri glanced around the room she now realized was her father’s private office. “It’s not what I imagined.”
His somber mask slid back into place, and his hands disappeared into his sleeves. “I was surprised to learn you had come back.”
“Ce-Ce called me here.”
He quirked one brow as he settled in the chair opposite her. “That’s most disheartening. I thought your grandmother and I had agreed on one thing.”
“And what was that?”
“That you were better off in Sydney, without any part in our world.”
“Why?” Bri chewed her lip. Why, when she’d wanted to run away from home, had they practically packed her bags for her? Perhaps Ce-Ce had wanted to protect her, but what did Aldric care?
“You are…fragile. Like your mother. You would never maximize your potential under the strain of magic. Your success speaks for itself. Look what you’ve accomplished. You have a life most people only dream of. Money, fame, the world, quite literally, at your fingertips.” His lips quirked in a hint of a proud smile, but it looked wrong on him, as if he’d forgotten how to do it. Or knew h
e hadn’t earned the right. “You have everything you deserve.”
There was no way he could understand why those words tore through her. She had everything she deserved, but she didn’t have love. True love. She had a glass mansion, where she was admired from afar, but never let anyone in.
“It doesn’t matter. That path is behind me now. I want you to release my binding.” Aldric hissed in a breath. Bri met his eyes, watched as he closed his gaze off from her, like steel doors slamming down. She straightened her shoulders. “My power is already flaring. I’ve had visions, regressions, even glimpses of the future.”
“The Oracle.” He closed his eyes and steepled his fingers against his chin. When he opened them again, something had changed. There was nothing of the man she’d once known left in the room. He’d flitted away like one of her wispy memories. “Then it is worse than what I have heard. We must strengthen the binding, not release it.”
“I want it released.”
He made an impatient noise. “You have not been properly prepared. Obviously, the stress of your situation has brought this on. I don’t know what those hooligan friends of yours have been telling you, but this idea should not even be discussed. There are severe risks with such a late initiation. Your mind could break under the pressure.”
Hooligans? The only two people who’d ever really been there for her. And all of the sudden her well-being mattered to him? “I’m willing to take those risks.”
“I am not.”
She shook her head. “As I understand things, it’s not your decision.”
He dropped his hands and straightened in his seat. “I am your father.”
“But you have nothing to do with my life.”
His eyes narrowed to midnight blue slits, but he was not deterred. “I am a member of the Synod Council.”
“And I have a right to choose for myself, the same as any Zyne.”
“You are here because the Sigma of the North Wake coven called to report your suspected involvement in another accident. You are lucky I am the one who received his message and have shielded you from a full Council inquiry. What makes you think, under the circumstances, that I would even consider it?”
Though she should be relieved she was off the hook from being interrogated about the fire, she resented that he was still trying to shield her from the Zyne world. She pressed on. “If you won’t agree, then I will petition the Council to have my binding removed.”
His nostrils flared. “You already made your choice.”
She laughed, which seemed to startle him. Good. She liked him disarmed. “Yes. I chose to turn my back on everyone. I chose to run from my past, from who I was. I chose to be like you. There’s nothing I’ve ever regretted more.”
She hadn’t realized it until that moment, but it was true.
The tiredness soaked back into his face like a hovering shadow. “I didn’t want this life for you, my sweet child. I wanted to keep you protected from it. You see now what it costs us. Look at what happened to your grandmother, your sister.” He met her eyes. “Your mother—”
“No.” Bri’s vision of him wavered, but she managed to keep the tears from spilling over by sheer force of will. The two of them would never speak of her mother again. “Don’t.”
Aldric’s face contorted with effort not to finish his thought.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I see what it costs. The guilt I carry is immense. Not to mention the Karma, right? Because if I had made the right choice, I might have saved Ce-Ce and Tara. You say my success speaks for itself? Well, so does my failure. I failed the people I love the most. All of them. But unlike you, I won’t do it anymore.”
Aldric winced as if she’d struck him. A long silence passed where they just stared at each other, strangers on opposite shores of an impassable river. The bridge between them had not burned, but buckled under their combined pain and crumbled long ago.
“Very well,” he said at last. “I will assemble a majority and you can plead your case. I will act on their decision, but know that I cannot protect you from their ruling, whatever it is.”
“Fine. Good. I don’t need your protection.”
“Before this is over, you will.”
Bri left her father’s office and barged down the hall in search of her hooligan friends. One of the muscle-bound guards followed, more of a tail than an escort. He gave her a good ten-foot lead. She had no idea where she was going, but marched onward, tennis shoes squeaking on the polished floors with every step. Her argument with Aldric was still fueling her, and that charge of magic she felt humming under the surface of her skin hadn’t dissipated. Now it was radiating in waves, washing her insides with warm fizzy energy.
She veered down a corridor to her right and came to another “T” that looked exactly like all the others. She huffed and glared at the guard over her shoulder. “Are you going to help me out, or just follow me around like a stray dog?”
Only after she’d said it did she realize he was the same one who had caught her earlier. He crossed his arms over his beefy chest and leaned against the nearest pillar. “Do you always get away with talking to people like that?”
“I beg your pardon?”
He flashed her a startlingly white smile and straightened. “Then you’re forgiven. Your friends are this way.”
She caught up with him and cocked her head to study his aquiline profile and strong jaw. He looked in his mid-thirties. His hair was buzzed short but it sparked with gold and copper as they passed the hall sconces. She imagined it would have a fine, silky texture grown out. He was quite handsome, despite his eyes being shielded by the shades. She realized she was staring and glanced ahead, evening her steps to his. “I suppose I do. Get away with it.”
His lips curled on one side. “I figured as much. Being a Councilor’s daughter.”
Bri scowled to herself as they rounded a corner into a broader passage. Though there was room for both of them to pull away, they stayed close. He moved with quiet purpose, swift, but unhurried. Predatory. Heat came off of him in waves, along with a not-so unpleasant spiciness that was utterly masculine and oddly…intoxicating. Must be some trendy cologne, to match the suit.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” he offered after a long silence.
She shook herself back into the conversation. “It’s fine. I understand how you might have gotten that impression.”
Come to think of it, she probably really fit the part of the pampered princess from the outside. Maybe she had become too used to looking down her nose at people. But she did it to keep distance, not because she thought she was better. She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to explain herself, but she did. “I am not used to being a Councilor’s daughter. I’m new to all of this. But he and I are not on good terms. Seeing him upsets me. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
The guard stopped, and she did too, as if it were important they remain engaged in that fleeting moment. Her breathing slowed. The air between them pressed against her cheeks in a hot blast. The energy under her skin buzzed so hard she could almost hear it. She was suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to tell him everything, even though she didn’t know his name. She felt like she could confide her darkest secrets in this hallway to this total stranger, and trust they would never leave his lips.
Those wide, curvy lips pulled down into a frown. “It’s none of my business, and you can tell me to keep my nose out of it, but in this case, I would take your father’s advice. I doubt you know what you’re getting yourself into. You don’t want the Council’s attention. The Synod does not deal in fairness, they deal in power. Only the strong survive.”
She could feel his gaze boring into her from behind the wall of reflective black glass. It was fierce, intense — meant to intimidate, to make her back down. It stopped her breath for a moment, like a sudden shock of cold water, but she was getting really sick of everyone else deciding what was best for her.
You are not weak.
Al
dric was wrong. She was not fragile, and neither was her mother. Her mother had been strong, and beautiful, and full of laughter and light. So had Ce-Ce and Tara. Now she was the only one left, and she owed it to them to be strong too. She didn’t need anyone to protect her from what she was anymore. “You’re right. It’s none of your business.”
He smiled, making her heart skip a beat, then turned down a hall to their right and kept walking. This time she followed behind, holding her hand to her fluttering stomach. Was that because he was right? She was afraid…every instinct in her body was screaming for her to run from this place and never look back. But that was exactly why she had to stay and face the music.
Seven Council members were in attendance to rule on her petition. They sat three per side of the long wooden table in the center of the chamber. Aldric sat at the far end, closest to the door, opposite Bri and her friends. Another cold-burning fire burned in the hearth cut into the stone behind them, and large torches set in the walls cast the room in half-shadows. A scribe robed in a dull grey sat in the corner, silently recording everything they said.
Unfortunately, her plan to let Astrid do the talking fell through. Though they had allowed Kean and Astrid to come with her, they were not allowed to speak unless asked a direct question. In fact, the Council members had barely even looked her way while her father explained the purpose of the meeting, Bri’s wishes, and laid out his own argument for why unbinding her powers was too risky, both to her welfare and setting an unfair precedent. His speech rattled on about tradition and why rules are rules, and seemed well-received by most of the other members.
“An Oracle is not a thing to waste. We are in great need of them,” Councilor Bellini argued. He was the most senior Councilor there, and the most animated of the bunch — a round man with round cheeks, and a curly black moustache perched atop a mischievous mouth that always seemed to be smiling.
Rain of Ash: Skydancer Book 1 (The Zyne Legacy) Page 11