Cold Front

by Nikolai Joslin

  “Can we please take a break right now?” Cam said suddenly, causing everyone to stop and look at her. “Please. Everyone stop touching the tree and inspecting it and just stop what you’re all doing right now. Leave, go away, just give me a few minutes.”

  I could tell she was trembling, and I nodded. “Go make sure no one else is coming this way. We have to make sure the area is secure; there are probably some more lurking around to keep an eye out for people like us.”

  Everyone slowly drifted away, leaving Cam and me alone.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked after a while.

  “This is where you buried me,” she whispered. “I was dead. Gone from this world. I watched the funeral. I watched you cry over me and I watched Ston and Liam carry me and I heard everything Regan said and I watched her cry over me. I remember every second of it. And I’m finally standing in front of my grave and all you want to talk about is what an amazing find this is for us.”

  I nodded and looked up at the tree. “You’re right. I should have moved slower instead of jumping into using this. I mean, it saved my life. And the people here really honored it. Remember that kid whose mom had cancer? You helped that right here. These people never forgot you. They built this park around you. And I left. I couldn’t be here, so close to you even though you were gone. So I ran. And I’m finally back and you’re here with me and I’m just dropping the ball right now.” I was looking up through the branches. Despite the uncharacteristic freezing cold for the summer months, the tree still had bright green leaves and seemed as full as it would in the middle of a normal summer. It must have had something to do with its Life Force. “Let’s take a break, like you wanted. Come on.”

  “What?” she asked, but I couldn’t see her face because I was already starting to climb up. “Where are you going?” she asked, scrambling up behind me.

  “They’re making sure this place is safe, and in a few minutes, we can call Alex and have him focus his troops here, but for now I want to give you a break and let you take this in. You haven’t had a chance to breathe since you came back, and we haven’t really had a chance to catch up, so let me give that to you.”

  I climbed until I reached what resembled a basket made of branches. I pulled myself over the side and dropped into it, landing on the soft moss and flowers that had cushioned our landing last year. It was just as soft now as it had been then.

  Cam dropped into the spot beside me shortly after. We both lay there, looking up through the breaks in the leaves and breathing it in.

  “What was it like?” I asked. “And I’m not asking as the researcher Casey, just as Casey.”

  Cam was quiet for a while, long enough that I wondered if I had overstepped my bounds. And then she started talking. “It was boring,” she said hesitantly, probably unsure how to describe it. “It was very large, but also empty. I mean, there were plants and animals and things, like here, and we usually had enough to eat unlike the demons’ plane, but it was still empty. We didn’t need the food, but we got hungry. And though they all deny it, I noticed that people who were hungry for long times disappeared. They left the Veil and became nothing again. There weren’t houses or cities or chairs or anything. And it felt… gray. I’m sure there was color. I’m sure people wore clothes with colors and the plants were green. But I just remember it being pastel and gray, like it was a thick fog. We never slept or grew tired, though I used to try to sleep just for some sort of resemblance to my life here. It was quiet. People didn’t usually talk after being there for a few months. The heavy gray and emptiness gets to people. They lose themselves in it. There wasn’t day or night, and I don’t remember food having flavor to it. Most of all it was lonely.”

  “You spent a year like that?” How could anyone handle that? It sounded unbearable.

  “I didn’t even know it was a year. It could have been hours or years. My only way of keeping time was watching this world.”

  “Watching me?” I asked hesitantly, remembering what she had said about being her reason for practicing magic.

  She shrugged. “Not just you. I watched my friends from the city. It was hard seeing them, though. I couldn’t watch them much. It’s hard living on the streets like that. Some of them didn’t make it over the winter. I watched you guys, of course. I saw what was happening with Ston and Liam. It broke my heart. I kept hoping Liam would break it off, but it seems he hasn’t. And I saw the unrest in the underground. I just didn’t realize it would become like this. And I kept an eye on you and Regan. On some of the kids here. I watched a lot. And for a while, before I came back, I was getting stronger. I started seeing snippets of the future. Short ones. Usually they were harmless, the kid going to college or one of my old friends getting a job. And then I saw you. The night I came back, I saw you. And you were in a dark room. You were unconscious, and you couldn’t use magic. And Ston walked in. He threatened you. He was a traitor. He wanted to hurt you, Casey. It cut out, but I knew what came next,” Cam whispered. “That’s why I tried to see you. I had to warn you. You can’t trust him, Casey.”

  Cam never did like dark elves. She got better after knowing Ston, but she never was fully on board. “Ston would never do that.”

  “He will.” Cam sat up and grabbed my shoulder. “He will, Casey.”

  I sat up too and put a hand on her knee. “The future can change, Cam. We’ve seen it plenty of times. The future can change. Ston is one of my best friends; he would never do something like that.” She didn’t look like she believed me. “Do you trust me?” She nodded. “Well, I trust him. So if you can trust me, you can trust him.”

  She sighed and agreed quietly, but I knew it wouldn’t change much.

  “Let’s call Alex. We should get back. I want to talk to Twitch about this tree.”

  “All right.” She didn’t seem to be in the talking mood anymore.

  “I think it’s best if this tree gets used to help us win the war. For so long it symbolized your absence, and now you’re back. This place has been a place of sadness for so long that I think the only way it can become good again is for us to do this.”

  She ran a hand along the pillowy moss and nodded. “You’re right. I don’t need a grave anymore. I need a home.”

  “You have one. With us.” I wasn’t sure if I meant literally or not. Perhaps we could live with Cam, as like a roommate situation, at least until she found her own place. It’d be nice to have her around without the fear of one of us dying.

  She smiled. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  I was too confused to keep making eye contact, so instead I found Alex’s number and called him.

  “Casey, what’s going on? What’s wrong?” His voice was loud and to the point, not even a hello.

  “We’re safe. Secure the location around the tree we talked about earlier. We found what they wanted.”

  “That explains why they’ve been retreating. We’ll get some troops down there. Are you on your way back?”

  “Leaving now. We can talk more at the Temple,” I answered, not trusting our phones enough to talk about it now.

  “All right, hurry back.”

  “Will do.” I hung up and turned to Cam. “Let’s get going, then, shall we?”

  “Yeah.” She brushed her hand along the bark one last time before hauling herself up and starting the climb down.

  Chapter 21

  WE WALKED through the double doors, Flick jabbering on about his favorite kill from the day, something gruesome and horrifying for sure, but I was too distracted to pay attention.

  The doors opened to show a hollow woman sitting on the marble stairs. She was sunken in, her skin unnaturally pale, dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, and looking like she was made only of skin and bone, but I would know those eyes anywhere.

  Green with an orangish brown ring around the pupil. Central heterochromia eyes.

  Regan’s eyes.

  She was barely recognizable.

  She stood up, her bony arms folded over her chest. “Go
ddammit, Casey, you didn’t even tell me you were leaving!”

  “Regan, let’s take this somewhere else,” I said quietly, walking over to her and trying to guide her away.

  She jerked away from me. “No! We’re going to talk now! How the hell did you forget to invite me to your big meeting about this? Or to stop by and say you were going to go out and get attacked and shot at and hurt? Case, how could you do that to me? Do you know how worried I was when I found out?” She touched my cheek, and it was my turn to jerk away from her.

  “And how did you find out? Did you leave your cave for the week? Were you looking for someone to shout at and blame? Did you want to throw some more things? Go on, tell me you didn’t find out because someone ran down to tell you where I went. You don’t notice when I’m here, so I doubt you noticed when I left.”

  I could see her working her jaw. “You were right. Let’s do this in private,” she said harshly.

  “No! Not anymore. You wanted this out in the open, let’s do it out in the open.” I could feel everyone’s eyes on me, but I knew that everyone would also be trying to pretend they weren’t so captured by this.

  “Case—”

  “Don’t you dare ‘Case’ me! Go back to yelling about how I’m in the wrong for leaving you to sulk in your room some more. I want to hear more about that.” I cocked my head to the side slightly as I waited for her to say something.

  “You left for a dangerous mission without telling me. You don’t think you’re in the wrong at all?” she snapped.

  “And what would you have said? Would you have wanted to hop in the car and go with us?”

  “Yes! It’s my job to protect you!”

  “Are you kidding me right now? You did not say that. I heard something else, right?” She refused to say anything. “Okay, so your silence is telling me that I am in fact hearing you right, so let’s talk about that for a minute, shall we?”

  Regan rolled her eyes. “Really, Casey? I swear, the Old Ones will die off before you’re done with this again.”

  “Yes, again, because I have to tell you a hundred times that you do not have to protect me. I can take care of myself! I pulled my weight today! I did everything everyone else did! I was in there, and I’m still alive! I don’t know why you think I’m some damsel in distress, but I’ll tell you right now, I am the dragon.”

  “In case you forgot, so am I!” Regan thrust her wrist out, showing me the thin dark lines on it. I hadn’t even meant that, but I suppose it made sense why she would jump to that conclusion.

  “And where have you been? Wasting away in the dark. I got shot today. Shot. A bullet ripped through me. Not because you weren’t there but because I was blocking another attack and couldn’t see the damn gun. I was able to block the first attack, however, because I wasn’t worried about my fiancée getting hurt in a battle she couldn’t keep up with! I came back with fewer injuries because I surrounded myself with people as competent as I am. People who don’t throw themselves in front of me to save me! Because every time we go into a fight, I think about that. I’m so worried about keeping you safe that half the time I forget that I am also supposed to be taking care of myself. Right now, I protect you. And that’s on a good day. Now, after you’ve withered away into some shell of who you were, neither of us would have made it back at all! You aren’t the same anymore and everyone knows it. I made a decision today, and yes it was hard for the both of us to deal with that decision, but I stand by it. I did the right thing. You are in no shape to go out there and stand in front of the enemy and hope to come home! You’re someone else, and I can’t have someone who throws silverware across the room because we don’t have strawberry in the field. I can’t have someone out there who I haven’t seen in weeks. I made the right decision, and I’m sorry you didn’t like being left out of the loop, but it was safer for everyone.”

  Regan’s fists were clenched so tightly that her knuckles were white, and I could practically hear her teeth grinding. “You don’t get to make that decision.”

  “Regan, I am the only one who makes these decisions. That’s my job. Your job isn’t to protect me, it’s to listen to what I tell you to do.” Wrong thing to say. Very wrong. I shouldn’t have said that. I should have worded that differently.

  But I didn’t; it was already out there, hanging in the air between us.

  Finally Regan bowed deeply and said, “You’re so right, Your Majesty, I shouldn’t have doubted you. I’ll go back to the cave for a while.” She spun on her heel and stalked up the stairs.

  Everyone else scurried away now that the exchange was over. Even Cinder slunk off to go bother some kitchen worker for scraps.

  Cam walked up and stood beside me. Her hands were deep in her pockets, and she let out a low whistle. “I know you guys fight sometimes, but I’ve never seen it like that.”

  “It’s been getting worse. Every time I see her, it gets worse. I stopped checking up on her the last week or so because I just can’t handle the yelling at each other. I don’t know what’s wrong. I know that just leaving wasn’t the best fiancée move, and I could have handled it better, but she has to understand why I did it. I mean, I had to make a decision right then. There wasn’t a lot of time to waste. And she can tell how she’s been, right? Why her going out in the field could be a problem?” I sighed and shook my head. “I should go talk to her.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that right now, after all of that?” Cam asked.

  “I have to. I didn’t handle the argument well and I need to try and fix it. I’ll see you later,” I said as I followed Regan’s path up the stairs.

  I hesitated at the door, unsure if I should knock or just walk in, or maybe even just leave.

  “Well, you’re not winning girlfriend of the year,” Jaysun said.

  I turned around to see him trying to pick something from between his teeth. “Why are you still here?” I hissed.

  “Not done yet. Still have some plans to get ready, so really can’t have you die. Plus, I’m having fun. You know how badly I used to want to kill you? Well, this is a lot more fun. Watching you tear your relationships apart, fall in love with another woman while engaged, getting shot at, falling to pieces constantly. It’s so much more fun this way.” His twisted grin crossed his face.

  “Regan is the love of my life.” I tried to remain quiet to avoid being heard.

  He shrugged and faded away, leaving me in the hallway alone.

  I took a deep breath and opened the door.

  It was dark. The curtains were closed and only a dim light in the corner by a desk was lit. Books were everywhere. They littered the floor and were stacked on chairs. There were too many on the bed for me to believe Regan had slept there in a long time.

  “What do you want?” Regan’s voice was sharp enough to make me flinch.

  “I just want to talk. For once I don’t want to yell at each other. Tell me what’s going on, why you’re locked up in your room so often now and what all of this is.” I gestured around the room.

  “You want to know what’s wrong? I hate the fact that I’m the weakest one here. I hate that you’re always protecting me. I hate that I’m always in the way. I hate that everyone here is on a whole different level than I am. I hate that Cam, a girl who is so desperately in love with you, died so that I could spend the rest of my life with you. Do you realize how shitty that is? I’m supposed to hate her. I’m supposed to think of her as the obstacle in our romantic storyline, and instead she brought me back to life and I have to love her.”

  “What, do you think we’re in some kind of book? We may lead these really crazy lives that you would see in your fairy tales, but this isn’t some story. We don’t need to have some tragic love story with romantic hurdles. I have plenty of other hurdles to jump over right now with the rest of my life, so I’m sorry for not realizing how hard it must have been for you to get saved by your mortal enemy. I only had to watch you die and then lose one of my best friends.” I was handling another argument
quite badly. When was I going to learn how to do this better? We never used to fight like this, we used to be kinder to each other, but with all of the stress put on the both of us, we were beginning to spiral out of control.

  “Well, now she’s back! And you’re always spending time with her and sending me off or not even bothering to take me along in the first place. She’s back, the hero has returned, probably to save the day again. It’s what she does. Do you know how hard it is for me to see her back? To see the way she looks at you and still have to be happy because she gave her life for me? And to know that she’s out there, helping you. You got shot today, and where was Cam? Running to your side, as always. And I was here.”

  “That’s not my fault. If you were in my position you would have done the same thing. I probably saved your life today!”

  “I didn’t ask you to! I didn’t ask anyone to do that!” Regan slammed her fist against the wall.

  I took a step back in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  She didn’t move, not even to look at me. Instead she just stayed staring at the wall with her fist pressed against it. “I didn’t ask anyone to save my life, so stop trying to.”

  “Regan, you can’t say things like that. I love you. I need you here. I don’t know what I would have done the last year if you hadn’t been there.”

  “Shut up,” she whispered harshly. “You would have moved on. You would have found a new way to live your life. You didn’t need me.”

  “Regan—”

  “I said shut up!” Her eyes slid over to me, and I could see something dark in them, something that wasn’t Regan.

  “I—I need to go,” I whispered and almost ran out of the room.

  What did she mean? Was that her way of saying that she wanted to be included or was that her saying she wished we had never saved her in the first place?

  Cinder kept trying to talk to me, to try to help me think everything through, but I couldn’t handle it right now and instead I put up a wall to block him from my mind as I wandered the Temple mindlessly.