Dominion 4 - Ascendance

by Lissa Kasey

  The gasp from the group was audible. Was it not something they talked about in the council meetings? Did they not understand how bad it was to have power that was hard to control? None of them seemed ready to make a statement on the phone that they supported the murder of other witches to inflate their own power.

  “Anyone found practicing these evils will be released from the group, reported to the authorities, and likely punished publicly for their crimes. Let it be known here and now, I will not tolerate murder.”

  “How can you say that when you have committed murder yourself?” someone demanded. “I killed Brock Southerton in self-defense. He was trying to kill me to increase his own power. I did not take his power in return. I sent all that stolen power back to the earth. Had there been another way, I would not have killed him.” How long had I beat myself up over that very bit of truth? After the fact, I thought of a million ways to protect myself, to stop the rape, to stop Brock from hurting me. Sometimes in the heat of the moment, common sense gave way to fear and adrenaline. I would likely regret that night for the rest of my life, but survival had been more important. Which of us deserved more to live? That was not my decision, but I certainly wasn’t going to let myself be killed for someone else’s selfish goals.

  “The Dominion would have anyway,” one of the council members said. “Because he had killed others and murder is against the law, human and magic. Why is this even a debate?” I demanded. “The ends do notjustify the means.”

  “Brock’s death is what made you Pillar, and becoming Pillar is what sparked the change within the Dominion.” Jamie spoke up this time. “That is only partially true. The changes were happening. Seiran was already in the magic studies program. He was already considered for several positions in the Dominion, and it was his persistence that got the university to begin accepting more male students. That was all before he became Pillar.”

  “Again, this is not up for debate,” I told them. Just how far would they let me push them? “Murder is unacceptable.” “This statement will be written into the Ascendance Code,” Luca stated. I figured I’d probably stirred up a hornet’s nest and should give them all some time to digest it. “Any more statements before we adjourn this meeting? I have no further changes at this time.”

  No one said anything. “All statements have been documented and will be used as record for changes applied immediately. We will schedule the next meeting in a few weeks.” Luca took control of shutting down the meeting. “Any complaints or questions can be filed through the proper channels for review.” He closed out the call and let everyone go. I took the phone out of my ear, feeling a little dizzy and nauseous all at once. Timothy had stopped working on the curtains and just stared at me like he’d never seen me before.

  “You totally just ripped apart the Ascendance.” “I tried to do the right thing.”

  “Not all of them will see it that way. They will probably come after you.”

  So be it. Having people trying to hurt me wasn’t new. Bring it on.

  Chapter 18

  I FELT Gabe’s gentle questions and told him most of the house should be safe for him to travel through as long as he took the back stairs down. He appeared in the kitchen a few minutes later. He smiled at Timothy but crossed the room to kiss me like he meant it. I wallowed in his lips, loving the taste of him and his wonderful kissing skills. No one locked lips like Gabe could.

  Timothy’s eyes were wide. Did he not know I was gay? He cleared his throat and got up from the counter. “I should go finish those windows.” Then he was gone before I could protest.

  Gabe chuckled, but hugged me. “You are amazing.” I let him go and went back to making dinner. “What are you talking about?”

  “Taking over the world, one crazy at a time.” “Whatever.” I rolled my eyes at him. “Do you have your lawyer on speed dial?” Whomever Gabe used was good, and I needed to make some changes fast.

  “Yes. Why?” “I should probably make sure if something does happen to me, the Ascendance gets nothing.”

  Gabe’s expression was unreadable, but I could feel his stillness and the pain the idea brought.

  A tapping at the window interrupted us. We both turned, but the new curtains covered the glass. Again with the tapping. Gabe moved to the other side of the room, and I carefully peeled the edge of the fabric back. The little fairy tapped at the window, expression fierce. Was he going to dive-bomb me again if I let him in? Couldn’t he just go through the window like he had my bedroom door? I pushed the window open a crack and he flew inside, then I shut the drapes, locking them down with the magnets.

  Gabe returned to the counter, watching the fairy fly around the room like a bee on steroids. “This your new friend?”

  “Heh,” I said. Friend. Sure. “Lyden, right?” I asked the bug.

  He landed on the counter. How do you know my name, child of Dorien? “’Cause I watched you attack my dad in the tree in the foyer. What’s with that, anyway? Didn’t I free you? Why are you back?”

  You planted things for us. I glanced at Gabe, who shrugged. “Yeah, I thought you’d like that and maybe leave the rest of the yard alone. I’d really like to not have to mow it every day just to walk to the gate.”

  He flew up and landed on my shoulder, big eyes blinking at me in confusion. You want us to stay? But you released me.

  “Just because you don’t have to serve me doesn’t mean you can’t stay. The yard is plenty big for a couple of fairies.” Now if they could only tell me how to get rid of that damn cursed fairy ring, things would be even better.

  How many? “How many what? How many of you can stay? As many as you want. How many are there? Do I need to expand the gardens? Because I can. I just don’t want to cut down any trees.”

  He flew up again, rushing around, darting across the room and back. I feared several times that he’d run into the wall and hurt himself. This time he couldn’t seem to leave unless I opened a door or window for him.

  Let me out, child of Dorien. “You got out just fine last time.” I sighed and went to the window. Gabe shrugged. The sun was setting. As long as it didn’t hit him full on, he’d be fine.

  “Maybe if you invite him in, he can come and go as he was,” Gabe suggested. “He is a thing of magic and the new wards are pretty strong.”

  “Fine. Lyden, I welcome you and all your kind to come and go in peace within these walls and my home.” Lyden suddenly vanished. I blinked a few times and wondered if I’d just missed seeing him move, but no, he was really gone, no open window or anything. I went back to my work, finished stuffing the chicken with cheese and peppers, and popped it in the oven. “This has been a really odd trip.”

  Gabe pulled out his phone and dialed his lawyer. “Let’s get this legal thing done while dinner is cooking. Sam will be down soon.” Gabe’s lawyer would draft up the paperwork and send it to my e-mail.

  Timothy came back into the kitchen after finishing all the windows. I invited him to dinner. He said he’d go clean up and come back. No reason for me to eat alone. Gabe and Sam couldn’t touch the stuff. Gabe was at the counter on his computer, reading through some sort of history on fairies. I suspected Timothy wanted to check on Lily too.

  “I’m going to take a peek at the new garden,” I told him. Gabe just nodded. He could join me outside if he needed to. The side yard bloomed with ivy and flowers. I didn’t remember all those things showing up that morning. Caleb must have been working fast to get it all planted. A red blur buzzed around me several times on my way toward the back to where I heard digging and movement. A fairy, probably, but he didn’t seem all that interested in talking to me. Or maybe it was a she. Hadn’t Gabe said females were more common?

  Caleb’s blond hair was darkened with sweat, tank top stained with dirt and perspiration rings, but he dug and planted like a machine. He paused and glanced up at me.

  “Your garden is growing like a possessed thing.” He gestured to the blooming flowers he’d planted earlier in the day. “Th
e second I put them in the ground they take, grow, and blossom. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  I wondered if he saw the whirring dashes of color flying around and thought they were bugs. “The earth magic here is pretty strong,” I told him. He’d carved out ground all the way to the fence, on both sides of the path and around the yard, like edging. “You work fast.”

  “Planting is easy. Churning up the ground was pretty easy too, since I have a machine that does it, and I’m not going that deep. I’ll come back tomorrow with mulch to keep the weeds out.” He shrugged at the yard. “You’ll probably want to hire someone to maintain all of this.”

  I smiled to myself. Wasn’t that what the fairies were for? “Thanks, Caleb. Let me know if you need anything.” He tipped his missing hat to me and went back to work. I headed back inside through the kitchen door. The smell of the spicy chicken made my mouth water. Sam sat beside Gabe at the counter now. The timer went off on the oven. I checked the temperature of the chicken and pulled it out, since it was exactly 160 degrees.

  Timothy came back in and paused, seeing the two vampires in the kitchen. Maybe he wasn’t used to being this close to them. Finally he moved and took the seat at the end of the counter, several feet away from the vampires.

  “Need any help with anything?” he asked me. I shook my head, mashed up the cauliflower and potatoes, and mixed the cheesy broccoli topping before dishing up a plate for each of us. The look on Timothy’s face when I set the dish in front of him said he didn’t get to eat well very often. I set my own dinner down and began cutting the chicken into small bites. The colors of the cheese and peppers made it bright, and when I tasted it the flavor came through rich and spicy.

  “Sorry,” I said when he didn’t touch his food. “I should have asked if there was something you didn’t like.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’ve just never had anyone cook for me like this. It looks great.” Timothy dug into the chicken, then covered a broccoli floret in potato before stuffing it into his mouth.

  Gabe threw me an amused smile. Sam seemed to be dozing in his chair. I glanced back to my plate and had to pause. Had I eaten all that already? Over half my chicken was gone. Maybe I was hungrier than I thought since I didn’t remember eating more than a piece of it, and I still felt far from satisfied.

  A red blur passed the edge of my sight again. I looked up, searching the room for more movement. If fairies were going to be hanging around, I’d have to get used to them. No one else seemed to notice anything, and after a few minutes I went back to my food, only to find the rest of the chicken gone. No way had I eaten that without knowing it.

  I pushed a cheese-covered broccoli floret to the chicken side of my plate and watched intently. Nothing. Dammit. At least I’d made more chicken. Dishing myself up another piece and cutting it in a hurry, I figured I’d keep an eye on it this time, no matter what kept flying around me.

  The blur landed when I pretended to be looking away. He snatched up a piece of chicken and swallowed it whole. “Holy crap!” I cried.

  Gabe, Sam, and Timothy all appeared startled. “What?” Gabe asked.

  “There’s a fairy eating my chicken!” Why had I figured they’d be vegetarians? Just because they looked bug-like from a distance didn’t mean they fed on plants. A lot of creatures were carnivorous.

  Gabe didn’t look surprised at all. A smile tugged the corners of his lips, but he went back to his research. Sam and Timothy still looked at me like I was crazy. I wondered why the creature wasn’t attacking Timothy’s food, but he was bent very protectively over his plate. Then I remembered the mint plant Gabe had given me. I had fresh mint in the fridge. Pulling out a sprig, I left it beside my plate and waited.

  Finally the rushing blur stopped. It landed in the mint, rolled around a bit, then lay there. The long cinnamoncolored hair and copper skin told me nothing about whether it was a boy or a girl, but it could be Red. I picked up a small piece of chicken and offered it to the creature, who eyed me warily with its overaccentuated expression.

  It took the piece carefully, then stuffed it in a mouth that became momentarily larger than its head. I blinked at it and brought my face closer to the fairy’s level, wondering if it would talk to me. Instead of speaking, I thought, Who are you? hoping it would hear me. Are you the red-haired man from my dreams?

  I held out another piece of meat for it. Again it vanished inside that impossibly small creature. Before I could move my hand, it bit me. I yelped in surprise. Sam’s eyes turned dark and hungry at the smell of blood. Gabe grabbed his arm to keep him from moving. Timothy sat frozen in his seat, eyes as wide as saucers, waiting for whatever disaster was to come.

  Sam’s struggle played on his face. I could almost see in his eyes that he wanted to leap across the counter and rip a hole in my throat. He shuddered, turned, and headed toward the front door. Gabe glanced at me but followed him slowly.

  “Be safe,” I told them. Once the door slammed shut in the distance, Timothy sucked in a deep breath. I patted his hand. “Sam’s working on it, but he’s only a few weeks old, vampire-wise.”

  “I get it. I’ve just never been that close.” The little red chicken thief had vanished again. I wondered vaguely if it was my red-haired friend. Did that mean he was safe? “I think I’m going to call him Bryar,” I told Timothy.

  “Who?” “The fairy I keep seeing in my dreams. I searched all the briars in the yard because that’s where I last saw him. He said they took the names humans give them. Plus he keeps biting me, so it’s almost like he has thorns.”

  “What do they look like? Is there any in here now?” His eyes darted around the room, looking large enough to pop out of his head. I wondered if he’d take my suggestion and get some therapy for what the Ascendance had done to him.

  “Small, kind of bug-like at first. I think they can change how you perceive them.” I grabbed Gabe’s computer and turned it my way. He had a page open that talked about fairy glamour and illusions. He’d bookmarked a half-dozen pages for me to read, but I had a lot more than just fairies to learn about. “Do you have a copy of the Ascendance Code that Luca was talking about?”

  “Yeah. They will e-mail out a new one with the changes in it within twenty-four hours. Things happen fast in the Ascendance.”

  I nodded and took my plate to the sink to clean up. “Lily’s okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s hard seeing her so shook up. I remember when I was little and Dorien was killed. I think I was six at the time. Lily came home and found me alone; Dad left as always. But she wrapped her arms around me and just cried for hours. I didn’t know what to do. The idea that Dorien had been put to death really didn’t make sense to me, being that little and all.”

  A lump formed in my throat, and tears blurred my vision. Dammit. “Jamie won’t talk about it either. I think he watched.”

  Timothy shivered. “How awful. Dorien had been good to me. Whenever he got back from spending time with Jamie, he doted on me for days. Bought me gifts, took me places, read me bedtime stories. He was more my dad in those years than Charles ever was.”

  I ground my palms into my eyes, trying to will away the tears. My life would have been so much different if my father hadn’t died before I was born. My mother would have been kinder, more loving. I would have had someone who took me places and hugged me like I mattered. The years at military school probably wouldn’t have happened.

  Timothy touched my back lightly. I hadn’t even heard him move. “I’m sorry, Seiran. I didn’t mean to upset you.” “It’s okay,” I managed to say. “I just can’t control it sometimes, the emotions.” He laughed. “I think that’s normal. They call it being human.” He put his dishes in the washer and helped put away the rest of the leftovers. “I’m going to keep working on the curtains. You look tired. Get some sleep.”

  I sighed, but nodded and headed toward the stairs, feeling soul weary again. Who knew learning about the past could hurt so much?

  The bed was cold without Gabe in it, s
o I rolled myself up in all the blankets like a sausage, left the bathroom light on, and closed my eyes. Sometimes letting the real world go for a while could sort out the troubles in my head. I would talk to Lily tomorrow about doing my interview early. I missed Jamie, Kelly, Hanna, and even my mom. I longed to sleep in my own bed, cook in my kitchen, and run the indoor track when my head got too full of crap. It was time to go home. Sleep took me with that thought.

  Chapter 19

  BACK in the glowing garden, the peace had returned. Something lingered just on the edge of the giant flowers, darkness rolling in with the weight of a nasty storm. A hand clasped mine, bringing not only warmth but worry and my red-haired friend.

  “I’m so happy to see you, Bryar.” I yanked him into a tight hug. He hesitated for a second before finally returning my embrace.

  “Bryar?” he asked. “You’re kind of prickly sometimes.” I held up the thumb he’d bitten twice now. “And you bite.”

  His eyes met mine with an intensity that made me want to turn away. “You really give me a name?”

  “Don’t you want one?” I shuffled my feet and looked away from him, searching the clouds for answers I didn’t yet have. “I want you to have the freedom you long for. If you don’t like the name, you don’t have to take it.”

  “And if I accept it?” Was he asking for more? Somehow I felt like I was still disappointing him. “I don’t know what you want from me. I thought you wanted me to give you a name.”

  “Bryar is a good name.”

  “And we can call you Ry for short.” The silence between us stretched a few awkward minutes. “Or not, I guess.” He laughed. “Bryar it is, and Ry is fine. I accept with honor.” “Why do I feel like I just did more than give you a name?”

  Ry gave me one last quick hug. “Because you’re oddly smarter than you should be.”