Lead Heart

by Jane Washington

  “I’m going to give you a choice, Seraph.” Weston straightened out the lapels of his jacket and brought his head up, though his face was still tinged red with rage. “You can consider it your second test—and keep in mind how miserably you failed the first one. I couldn’t have handed you a simpler hostage situation to solve if I had tried, short of sending in actual children to threaten the college. You had a very manageable task… but perhaps my mistake was in not providing you direction. I would have, of course, if I hadn’t been trapped inside of a glass box.”

  He straightened out his jacket again, dusting off imaginary speckles of dirt, and I took a brief moment to properly inspect him. If he had been trapped inside of the glass box this whole time, then he had taken a moment to change his clothes. That was odd.

  “I’ll do anything you want,” I lied quickly.

  “Oh no…” He laughed deeply, his shark’s grin flashing over his angry face, making me stumble back a step. “You won’t give me pretty statements. You’ll give me a promise. And I’ll be able to tell whether you’re lying.”

  He sprang forwards in a blur of sudden movement, capturing my hand and ripping me away from Silas, who was already beginning to react, his hand inches from the front of my shirt as Weston spun me around. The sudden press of steel against my collarbone had me calling out to ward him off.

  “Stay back!”

  His eyes flashed to my neck immediately, and I flinched, because we had been in this situation before and it hadn’t ended well the first time. Behind me, Weston was rumbling out another laugh.

  “Good girl… now stay still, and nobody has to die. I’m just going to take a little trip inside your head. And you’re going to let me this time, or I might just decide that you aren’t worth all the effort and slit your throat right now.”

  Without warning, he dove into my thoughts, his presence heavy and painful, clawing along the walls of my brain and shattering my meagre barriers. It seemed that I couldn’t have stopped him even if I had tried, and I wondered if Silas had felt this amount of pain on all of the previous occasions that Weston had tried diving into my head. I had thought it was a shield of my own making, but Silas had claimed that it was him.

  Would I ever stop causing him pain?

  “I’m going to give you a choice, little creation,” Weston rumbled from behind me, his voice echoing inside my head. I cried out from the pain of it, but his presence only swelled, pressing against the constraints of my mind as though he could devour everything inside my head without the slightest bit of effort and move casually onto the next person. “You can choose to do exactly as I want, exactly as I say… to be my little puppet. You can choose to be the champion of my people, as I always intended you to be. You can choose to never see my sons again, to allow Miro his birthright as Voda and to never again pursue a relationship that might upset his position. You can choose to keep your remaining, fake brother from the fate of your real brother. You can choose to keep your little list of friends safe, and for much longer than eight months. You can choose all of these things, or you can choose to die.”

  It wasn’t implied that I had to choose my fate in that very moment, but the bite of a knife at my neck and then despair in Silas’s fiery eyes as he watched on helplessly was enough to hint at it. Silas couldn’t interfere in this. He couldn’t risk it, because Weston was more likely to kill him than he was to kill me, it seemed… and both deaths would lead to the same thing. By that logic, the safest place for me was at the tip of Weston’s knife, because at least it kept his attention away from Silas.

  “A-all of them?” I rasped.

  Weston grunted, annoyed at my request. “Is that all? Again? Disappointing… but yes. All of them.”

  “E-even… Silas?”

  The knife pressed closer and I bit my lip to keep from whimpering in pain.

  “No,” Weston growled. “Not him.”

  “I need him. I’m bonded to him. I c-can’t do anything for you if I’m dead.”

  The knife dug into me with a renewed purpose. The sudden flash of pain was enough to convince me that Weston had done it. He had slit my throat… but he was still waiting, breathing heavily against the back of my head and trembling with a rage so great that it shook right through to me, sending my body into intermittent hot and cold spasms.

  “I’ll consider it. Choose, Seraph, before I change my mind.”

  It should have been simple. The way Weston put it, it almost was simple.

  I could save myself and my friends. I could save Silas from any more pain. I could save the people that I cared about.

  It was the alternative that had me pausing. The reality of my other choice.

  I could save the Zevghéri people from what Weston was determined to put them through, just to prove that we were stronger than the humans.

  I could save the humans from whatever show of strength Weston decided to use against them.

  “I… choose…”

  The knife fell away from me. I watched it bounce around on the stones as though it moved in slow motion; I watched Weston’s arms slackening and falling away from my body. I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t understand until I turned and Weston was being pulled back to the stone parapet by a very alive Danny. Danny, with blood still trickling over his face. I watched, stupidly, as Weston’s eyes turned blind and sightless, as his shouts were cut off into a gurgle, as he was pushed atop the railing and then further… over…

  I watched as Danny pushed him clean over.

  I raced over to the parapet, but there wasn’t any point. The drop was too far. I caught a brief glimpse of a bloodied body on the cobblestones of one of the winding roads below, and quickly turned away, my stomach churning with acid. Danny stepped back from the stones and dusted his hands together, casting his eyes over me and Silas.

  “What did I miss?” he asked, raising an arm to wipe the blood from his face.

  “You died,” Silas informed him. His voice was natural. He was still staring at the spot where Weston had disappeared over the railing.

  Yvonne and Tabby…

  I could see the realisation swimming behind the darkness of his eyes. I could feel it cracking through his chest.

  I wasn’t the only person that he had endured pain for. He could have ended Weston long ago, he could have ended the torture, but not without hurting Tabby and Yvonne.

  “I did? Hate when that happens.” Danny rolled his eyes and walked up to me, his head tilted to the side.

  I backed away. “Silas…” I whispered the word, but Danny frowned anyway, obviously having heard me. “You need to stay away from his hands.”

  “I’m right here.” Danny flashed a smile that managed to convey his annoyance. “You don’t have to talk around me. And what about you, Lela? You going to stay away from my hands too?”

  “If you try to hurt me, my power will kill you,” I told him, though it began to occur to me that the same should have occurred with Weston. My power should have flipped out well before now.

  Danny arched both of his brows. “You know Jayden didn’t give you the right pill. C’mon, Lela, tell me you’re not that stupid. I have something set up for all possible contingencies, and Jayden knows that better than anyone. If he aided you in any way against me, I would hit him where he’s most vulnerable. You aren’t his vulnerable spot, Lela. You can’t be everyone’s vulnerable spot.”

  “Okay.” Silas snapped, pulling me back against his chest. “To hell with that plan, then. Time for plan B.”

  “There’s a plan B?” I asked, as Danny’s annoyed smile melted into a deep frown.

  “There is,” Silas announced, a second before he dove toward the knife on the ground.

  Danny might have had a deadly power, but Silas was fast, and he had the knife up between them before Danny could reach him. They circled each other for a few minutes, but Danny couldn’t get close enough and Silas couldn’t strike out without making contact, so it seemed inevitable that they would give up. S
ilas seemed to realise that as well, because he broke the circle, backing towards me. Shielding me so that Danny couldn’t use me the way Weston had.

  “I’m going to throw this knife,” Silas warned him. “And your power won’t be able to make it go to sleep. It’s going to sink into you whether you want it to or not.”

  “That’s a nice threat.” Danny was watching the knife as he spoke, his eyes narrowed.

  “How many times can you declare dominion over death?” Silas wondered out loud. “Every ability has its limits. Your ability has taken over, so when will it decide that it’s your time to die, Danny?”

  “Stop talking and—” Danny looked down, at the hilt of the knife now sticking out of his chest. Silas had thrown it so suddenly that neither of us had even seen him preparing the toss— “throw… it…” Danny finished, a maniacal laugh bubbling from his lips as he stumbled forwards.

  He pulled at the hilt, his face creased in pain, but the knife was lodged too deeply. He stumbled further forwards and just when I thought that he was about to faint, he lurched the rest of the distance and tossed out an arm. Silas twisted me away from the reaching fingers, but they brushed against him, and he dropped me, stumbling backwards himself.

  “Silas!” I caught his arm, pulling him out of the way of Danny, who was now on the ground, attempting to pull out the knife even as his arms started to slump.

  Silas turned to me, his eyes blank. White. He was clutching at me.

  “Can’t—”

  “I know,” I interrupted, reaching for the sides of his face. “I know. I-I’ll fix it.”

  I closed my eyes, calling on the valcrick. It rose to the surface normally, which made me momentarily wonder which pill Jayden had given me, but I couldn’t allow my attention to wander further. I concentrated on a neutral feeling—since I wasn’t able to pinpoint anything positive in that moment—and pushed it quickly through my fingers, feeling the warmth spark between my touch and his skin.

  “Limits,” he whispered, a hint of dread in his voice. “You should have them too.”

  I ignored the statement, intent on my task until Silas caught my hands and pulled them away from his face. His eyes were back to normal and fixed somewhere over my shoulder. I turned around, expecting Danny to still be dead—even if only for a few more minutes—but there was only a pool of blood where his body had been.

  “He’s gone?” I pulled away, running from one side of the rooftop to the other. There was no sign of him. “He’s seriously just… gone?” I couldn’t seem to come to terms with the fact. I returned to the puddle of blood, and then caught Silas staring at the spot where Weston had been pushed off the roof again.

  “He’s gone…” Silas seemed to lose all of the fight in his body. He dropped to his knees, his eyes never moving from the spot.

  He wasn’t talking about Danny. He didn’t even care about Danny.

  And why would he?

  Nothing puts a life-threat into perspective like a life lost.

  Nothing could make a death more real than the moment the casket is lowered into the ground. The same way we organise our lives, we organise our deceased: we pack them into fancy boxes and tip them into an allocated lot in the ground, where they will stay until we have forgotten about them. That person has reached an expiration date, just like so many more of our things that we part with—and their moment of expiration says little about their death. It says everything about their life. I had a red scarf once; something of my mother’s. When I was finally forced to give it up, it was unravelling and faded: expiring with the dignity of something used and loved to death. Weston had looked perfect before the lid of his coffin was sealed. There hadn’t been a single unravelling thread in his suit, or wrinkle on his face. His funeral only served to prove that he inspired even less love than he offered. It reminded me so much of Gerald’s funeral that I became cold inside—hardened to the reality of it all.

  It was just another broken man.

  Another broken man sent into the ground.

  There was another priest, droning on in the same way as Gerald’s priest had droned, promising eternal life and forgiveness. There was another woman crying, too.

  Yas.

  She sobbed at one end of the grave, away from the rest of us. Jayden stood at the other end, his hands folded behind his back, his face stoic. I still hadn’t confronted him. I would, eventually, but he wasn’t an immediate danger. He hadn’t heightened my abilities, but he hadn’t taken them away either—and that was a big statement. His motive was nothing more than what I had always assumed it to be: he was on his own side; he would do what was best for himself. I was okay with that, for now.

  None of the Klovoda were present, they were too busy trying to hunt down Danny. The only remaining mourners were Quillan, Silas, Noah and Cabe… and in another parallel to my own father’s funeral, they seemed to be confused about what exactly they were mourning. Certainly, their own mothers… but Weston? The idea of a father, as Tariq had put it? Or the circumstance? Weston’s undignified fall from the top of his own secluded mansion, where the remnants of the great leaders that came before him still stood? I was sure that Silas wouldn’t have attended at all, but he wasn’t allowed to split up from us. Quillan had been so furious at the both of us that the only way to calm him down was to promise that we would all stick together until Danny was found. Silas wouldn’t go rogue anymore, and I wouldn’t run away from the others anymore, no matter how good of an excuse I had.

  The priest indicated the end of his soliloquy by looking up at the rest of us and tucking his closed Bible beneath his arm. He was staring at Quillan, who was staring with a blank expression at the rectangular hole in the ground before us. The priest cleared his throat and Quillan blinked out of his stupor.

  “Yes?” He sounded as vacant as he looked.

  “The rose.” The priest motioned the single, long-stemmed rose dangling from Quillan’s fingers.

  I had no idea who had given it to him. He certainly hadn’t picked it up himself. He seemed shocked, as though he hadn’t even realised that he had been holding it, and then his eyes settled on the grave again, the blankness falling back over his features. He didn’t seem to be willing to move. The priest had apparently reached the same conclusion, as he shifted his arms behind his back, casting a nervous glance toward Yas, silently begging for assistance. Yas was still openly crying, all of her attention reserved for the grave that seemed to be holding everyone else transfixed. I moved from between Noah and Cabe and stopped before Quillan, my fingers wrapping around the stem of the rose, just beneath his. He focussed on me, his attention wavering briefly before sharpening. He drew in a quick breath and nodded, releasing the rose. I tried to smile at him—to reassure him in some way before I turned and tossed the rose into the ground, watching as it landed on top of the coffin. It seemed a callous thing to do: to toss something at a coffin, even if it was a rose. I shook off the feeling and turned away from the others, walking towards the car.

  They followed, as I knew they would. Their relief sparked through our bond as the car doors slammed, shutting us off from the image of Weston’s grave site, and it grew stronger the further we pulled away from the cemetery.

  “Who is Yas to Weston?” I eventually asked.

  “The mother of his child,” Cabe replied solemnly.

  I turned toward him, but he was looking out of the backseat window, his arms folded across his chest. Noah glanced at him from my other side while the two in the front seemed to be locked into an eternal silence.

  “He even has a bastard with Yas?” I could feel my brows arching in surprise, though it would have made sense, considering the way Yas appeared to care for Weston. I just hadn’t expected it from Yas. Weston had said that she was one of the Klovoda’s most powerful Atmás… which meant that she was supposed to have a pair. She was also trying to lead the Klovoda. It didn’t show much common sense, if she had been seduced by Weston along with so many other women. It didn’t fit with the image I had
of her.

  “Not a bastard.” Cabe finally faced away from the window, his eyes downturned.

  Unease stirred within me—barely enough to give me pause, but enough to dredge up another question about Yas that had been tugging at the back of my mind ever since Cabe’s almost-death.

  What is Cabe to her?

  “Holy crap,” I moaned, dropping my head into my hands. “I think my brain is going to explode. Yas is your real mother?”

  Cabe chuckled, the sound completely devoid of humour. “Yas is my birth mother. Tabby is my real—” He cut himself off abruptly, and the silence inside the car grew heavy and solemn.

  “Tabby was his real mother,” Noah finished for him.

  Was.

  The grief was hitting me from all sides—from four different bodies, plus my own—and it was almost too much to handle. I couldn’t think about Tabby yet. Her funeral would be in a week’s time, giving people enough notice to travel. Nobody had wanted to travel for Weston. I wouldn’t last another day if I had to face the death of a such a complicated person; I would have to face my own shallow grief over a person who I was equally fond and frightened of; I would have to face a far more complex grief over the mother of two people I considered a part of me; and I would have to face the loss of another woman, who I hadn’t even had the chance to meet. Yvonne’s death was even more surreal than Tabby’s or Weston’s. I remembered Silas telling me that he and Quillan visited Yvonne every thanksgiving, but that wouldn’t be happening now.

  Their next trip to the Ukraine would be for her funeral.

  It hurt… it hurt so much.

  “Where are we going?” Cabe murmured, bringing my head out of my hands so that I could see the road through a haze of quiet tears.

  “Home,” Quillan answered, proving that he hadn’t lost the ability to speak.

  “Which home?” Cabe winced as he spoke the words, and I flinched right alongside him.

  I was sure that none of them wanted to be at the mountain house in the wake of Tabby’s death, but I also assumed that they didn’t want to be anywhere near Le Château—the site of Weston’s death.