“Not for you Owen,” she answered as her eyes trailed me up and down. “We both know you’re too integral to ever be fully let go of. I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting otherwise. The freedom I speak of is for your mother.’
The sand heated just a little.
“What?” I asked, my brows shooting upward.
“Your mother faces several counts of insubordination. She defied fate and her own sense of loyalty and duty to save her sons. And while that fact might make her actions forgivable, it does not make them excusable.” Now it was her brows (red as flame) that were arching. “But you could.”
I stared at her for a long moment. “I’m listening,” I answered in a low, reluctant voice. She had me over a barrel and she knew it. With so much going on, the investigation into my parents had sort of taken a back seat. But it was still there, an ever present axe ready to fall.
“Listen to what will be said. Right here and now, hear it all with open ears and an open mind, and I assure you that no harm will come to your mother by hands of the Council. In fact, in the quest for friendship between us, I’ll go so far as to ensure that your parents are never tried or held accountable for the actions in which they have been investigated. The slate will be clean, Owen. No more wondering.” She placed her hand on my shoulder. “And all you have to do is listen.”
“I-I don’t believe you,” I said. “How do I know you won’t break your word?”
“Aside from the fact that a Council member’s word is the same as a law or decree?”
She asked. “It is a promise,” she relented. “A Breaker’s promise. And it will be kept.”
Even if she had been wrong about the first part, the second would have been all the convincing I needed. A Breaker’s promise could not be broken. To do so would be inconceivable. It would be to spit in the face of our people, of our history, of our home, and of our lives. And if proof surfaced that a Breaker had indeed broken that sacred vow-well, it would be the last thing he or she ever did.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Is this some sort of mind game? You’re going to play ‘good cop’ to Chant’s son of a bitch? It won’t work, and not only because I don’t want it to. She’s gone.” I splayed my hands out in front of me. “I don’t know where she is, and I couldn’t get her back if I wanted to. I might be the Dragon, but for all intents and purposes, my wings have been clipped.”
Her mouth straightened into a line. She wasn’t angry, at least not in the way Chant would have been. Ilsa was deeper, and she was playing the game from a different angle.
“The last time you were in our care-”
“You mean when you were holding me prisoner?” I snapped.
A patent and calculated smile draped her face. “It should come as no surprise to know that you were monitored for the entirety of your stay. You spoke in your sleep, Owen.” Her fingers made soothing circles in the fabric against her thigh as she continued. “You spoke of your desires. You spoke of saving her.”
“And I did save her,” I said instinctively. “It might have cost me all I had, but I saved her.”
“Escape is not the same as salvation, Owen. It never has been. And what you did only served to prolong what would already be an intense and horrible process.” She shook her head. “There are ways to save her, to truly save her. But none of you are interested in that. You see things as children do, in black and white, in right and wrong. You have no regard for the truth that lay in between.”
“Right and wrong-”
“Is a lie,” she interrupted me. “Built on the perceptions and egos of lesser men. We as Breakers are called to see past that. And you, as the Dragon, are called for even more.”
“You would have her dead if you could,” I answered. It wasn’t a question. It didn’t need to be. Both of us knew the answer.
“I would do what Fate and the greater good require. But do not resume to put words into the mouths of the Council.” The sands underfoot moved now, shifting as she spoke. “A fixed point is not something we come to lightly, and taking a life is a sacrifice that is made only after all other avenues have been exhausted. But you would label us murderers before the fact. You would presume to know all of our ways.”
“You tried to kill her before. In the woods and after, when the moon went red.”
“We tried to subdue her,” Ilsa answered, cutting me off. “And yes, when she brought about the bloodmoon, there was panic. I cannot say with certainty that we wouldn’t have ended her if we thought it might put an end to it. But you lack perspective in regards to that which is unfolding around you. Love has blinded you, Owen Lightfoot. It has stolen from you that which your heritage gave, and left you an unsure mess of a thing. You wish to save her, but only in the most straightforward of ways. You act as a boy would, all whimpering and self-sacrifice. You would give of yourself to save her, thinking nothing of your own duty, of those whose lives might be saved or enriched by your presence.”
I looked down to find the sands underfoot swirling clockwise. It was like I was staring into the funnel of a tornado from above. And I was sure it was about to swallow me up.
“You are the Dragon, Owen Lightfoot. And that means more than destruction. It means more than consummation. You are a symbol of hope. You are a beacon of victory. You are the light at the end of our darkest tunnel. But you must warrant it. You must deserve it.”
The sand began to lift off the ground, circling me in a whirling dervish that quickly shortened my line of sight.
“What’s happening?” I asked over the sounds of sand and wind.
“You will be told what you must be told. You will be shown what you must be shown.” Ilsa was just a voice now.
“Then just say it!” I yelled. “Skip the theatrics and just tell me what you brought me here to say.”
“It isn’t I whom you must converse with.” Ilsa’s voice was fainter now, as though we were moving away from each other somehow. “Remember, open ears and open mind. Hear what he has to say.”
“He?” I asked. The wind whipped through my hair now. I shut my eyes tight so that sand couldn’t fly into them. It was all shade. I knew that. But my perception was real, and it would really hurt if it did me any damage. “Who the hell is he?”
“Our newest acquisition,” he answered, almost a whisper now. “The wildcard.”
The sand jerked wildly around me before I could ask any more questions. It lifted off the ground, taking me with it. My body flew around, tossed like an anchorless ship. My eyes remained closed tight and I wondered what all of this might have been about.
Ilsa hadn’t seemed angry. Even when we disagreed, she always kept her composure. She was the slow knife, the smile that crept up behind you when you weren’t looking. Why would she lash out like this?
Suddenly, the sand and wind halted. I came crashing down to the floor, landing face first on what felt like hard marble. The tastes of blood and metal flooded my mouth, but I swallowed them down. I was here for Sevie. I was here for Mother. I needed to get it together.
“Fate’s a funny thing,” a voice, familiar and chilling said from over me. My face was still planted on the floor, my eyes still shut. “A few weeks ago, I was an also ran. And now look at me. I’m the most important person in the world. More important than you. More important than your girlfriend.”
The familiar voice tickled at my ears, poking into my memory. Who was it? It was on the tip of my tongue.
“I saw your girlfriend, did anyone tell you that? The night of the bloodmoon, she had almost convinced some pathetic little youngling to let her go. She’s good like that, it seems. I caught her. She put him down though; almost did me in too. I felt so bad about myself after that, like I was the biggest failure in the world.”
The voice drilled into my head and, as I was turning over, a face joined it in my mind’s eyes.
Oh-oh no!
“But it turns out I was wrong. The energy she threw at me. It changed me somehow, made me different, a
nd made me special.”
I turned to see him there. Luca James stood over me, a disgusting grin on his face. His hair was the same close cropped nightmare. His arms were corded in the same tormenting muscles. But his eye-his eyes were blank, pupil-less, and white. They were-Fate help me- they were seer’s eyes.
Luca James, the boy who had tortured me every day since I was a youngling, who came to embody everything I hated about the world-Luca James was a seer.
“But like I said, Dead Boy. Fate’s a funny thing.”
Chapter 5
Flying Off
“No, no…” I murmured as my body sprang into action. The last time I was in this situation- lying on my back with Luca James looking down on me- I was rewarded with several swift kicks to my gut. That wouldn’t happen again. If he wanted to fight me again, it would be on equal grounds.
Of course, given this newest revelation, I wondered how equal our grounds could actually be.
“Don’t be like that Dead Boy. I’m not going to hurt you,” Luca grinned, staring at me with those open and vast eyes. He was a seer. Somehow Cresta had turned the person I hated most in the world into one of the most powerful beings in history.
And here I thought things had gotten just about as bad as they could.
My hands clenched into fists. The fire, the one I still didn’t quite have a handle on, started to bubble up inside of me. I could feel my inner match as it lit, threatening to burst up out of me and send this entire place up in flames.
“Don’t call me that ever again,” I commanded, my entire body tense. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I didn’t die.”
“Not yet,” he shook his head. “But you all do. Everyone has an expiration, and I can see them all. You’re all dead boys to me now.”
“How did this happen?” I asked, circling him like a prizefighter waiting for his opponent to strike first.
“Fate’s a fu-“
“Don’t say that again,” I cut him off.
“Don’t be such a downer,” Luca smiled. “I learned that, all the verbage.” His brows shot up. “I learned everything. The whole world is open to me now. And it’s not at all what I thought it was. We treat the world like it’s some intricate system of checks and balances. We try to keep the weight from piling up on one side and tipping the whole damn thing over. But do you want to know a secret, Dead Boy? It’s not like that at all. It’s nothing like that. This whole place is just a giant spinning pinwheel. No stopping, no slowing down. And you’re lucky if you don’t go flying off.”
He waved his hand and I was afraid that I actually might go flying. Seers had that power, the power to manipulate the perceptions of even the strongest Breakers. And now, as sickening as the thought was, Luca now had that power as well.
But I didn’t move. There were gusts of wind like before, no transporting twisters of shade meant to throw me off my game. No. As disturbing as it was, Luca’s efforts were much smoother than that.
The world shimmered around me and, with a soft shift of light, Luca and I were somewhere else.
The room was nearly empty. Its white walls sat in chipped, worn and unadorned blocks. A single light, long and florescent, buzzed overhead and a television sat atop a desk in the corner, surrounded by folded lawn furniture.
“I’ve seen all the places in the world. Every one of them,” he started. Moving toward the wall, he rubbed a finger across one of the creases, s though he was looking for something that sat just under the surface. “And out of all of them, this is by far my favorite.”
“Whatever,” I murmured.
“You’re not going to ask me?” Luca turned to me. Though his eyes were empty and unreadable, they narrowed at me. “It’s just a room, Dead Boy. Aren’t you going to ask me what’s so special about it?”
“You’re the seer,” I growled. “I figured you’d know what I was or wasn’t going to do.”
“What can I say,” he shrugged. “Still getting the kinks out, I guess.”
This was strange, and not just because it was Luca talking to me. Seers never spoke this way, so loosely, so intimately. Traditionally, seers were discovered at birth. Their powers were evident the instant they passed into this world. And, in order to keep those powers potent, they were kept away from anyone and anything that might be able to pull their focus away from cultivating their gifts. It gave them perspective, but it didn’t do much to help their social skills.
Luca was a seer of a different sort, a late bloomer- if such a thing even existed- and that might have made him dangerous. Of course, the fact that he was son of a bitch sociopath who had spent the formative years of our lives kicking the snot out of me didn’t help anything either.
“I’ll give you a hint,” he nodded. “It’s not what the room is, or even what it was. It’s what it will be, everything that these walls are going to house. And you’ll be there Dead Boy. You’ll have a front row seat for every gut punching minute of it.”
“I don’t care Luca,” I huffed. “Whatever you’ve got to tell me, just say it so I can get my brother back.”
Luca tilted his head and a long white gown- the same gown seers traditionally wear at their presentation ceremonies- appeared on his body. He was really milking this.
“That’s not my name anymore, Dead Boy. I don’t have a name anymore. I’m better than that. I’m more than that now. More than you.”
I moved toward him, fists at my sides and rage trickling its way into my mind. “Is that what this is about? You want to tell me your better than me? You just hate the fact that I’m not some useless afterthought, don’t you?” I raised my hands as if to surrender. “Fine. You’re better than me. You’re better than anybody who’s ever lived. You’re a no named Ghandi. Whatever you want. Just cut the bull and tell me how to wake Sevie up.”
Luca’s blank but devilish eyes bore into me. If I wasn’t so disgusted, I might have wondered what secrets fate was laying out in front of him. But truth be told, I couldn’t have cared less. Fate, for all the times I had called to it, had stripped everything from me. It took away my freedom. It took away my love. And it took away my brother.
And worse than that, maybe worse than anything else, it took away my naivety. I was happy before this, just thankful to be alive when I should have been dead. But then fate, with its cruel hands and wicked ways, twisted everything around. It gave me importance that I never asked for. It gave me a mission with no way of succeeding in it. And it showed me what life really was just in time to snatch it all away from me forever.
So no, I didn’t give a damn what fate was showing him right now.
“You think she’s the only person in the world, don’t you?” He asked, moving around me in a half circle. “You think the sun rises and sets on her plain little head.”
“This isn’t about Cresta,” I started, my body tensing.
“Isn’t it? Isn’t it always about her?” His hands spread out at either side and he moved them through the air, as though there was a scent in the room that he was trying to gather for a particularly big whiff. “I’m here because of what she did to me. You’re here because she lives in the first place. And Sevie, he’s where he is because of her too.”
“The bloodmoon,” I murmured. Cresta had thrown it into the sky in an effort to try and escape. There was no way she could have known the effect it would have on Sevie. There was no way any of us could have known.
“No,” Luca grinned. “Not that. Something else.”
“What?” My brows rose. “What the hell are you talking about? Sevie has…issues. The bloodmoon had a strange-“
“Sevie has more than issues. He has epic truths, and they’ll come to light soon enough. But that doesn’t have anything to do with why he’s in that bed.” Luca nodded at me. “Yes, the bloodmoon would have killed him if it had stayed in the sky much longer. But it didn’t. Cresta saved him.” He glared at me again. “No thanks to your little pep talk, but I won’t tell the Council about that if you don’t.” It was sort of di
sorienting to see Luca wink at me, half because he had no pupils and half because I know knew that he knew I begged Cresta to leave, going against not only what the Council ordered me to do but also my brother’s best interests at the time.
“The reason he hasn’t yet woken up, is decidedly more human in nature.”
“Stop speaking in riddles,” I commanded as my heart sped up.
“Sorry Dead Boy,” Luca chuckled. “It comes with the territory now, I think.” He turned toward the television on the counter. “There’s a memory disc there. It was pulled from a guard whose mind had been wiped.” He folded his arms. “Luckily for you, my new powers not only showed me where to look, but how to get around those psionic barriers too.” He walked toward me as I neared the disc, which I now saw lay on top of the dusty television. “I want you to hold it. I want you to use your powers in whatever way you have to ensure yourself that what you’re about to see on that disc hasn’t been tampered with. You need to know that what you’re about to see is real.”
I was apprehensive. I hated talking to Luca. So the idea of trusting him was as far out as Jupiter. But he had piqued my interest, and truth be told I had no idea how to cure Sevie. This was my only shot.
I picked the dusty disc up and rolled it around in my hands. My powers activated. A surge of heat ran through me and then I saw the disc as it truly was, energy pulled from someone’s mind. It was bright and swirling, but there was no shade. Not an ounce. This, whatever it was, was the real deal.
“Satisfied?” Luca asked.
“What is it?” I asked in return.
“The truth you never considered. The snake that crept into your garden.” Luca raised his hands again. “You tried so hard and fought so long trying to keep Cresta safe. You cursed her enemies, and never considered that you might have some of your own.” He dipped his head. “The Bloodmoon has allies, allies who are both powerful and persistent. And they want nothing more than to see you weakened, to see you dead. They’ll come with pitchforks and tall tales. They’ll knock you back to the Stone Age if they can. And they’ll rip you apart using that which you love the most.”
The Breaker's Resolution: (YA Paranormal Romance) (Fixed Points Book 4) Page 4