Abandon: Book Three of the Forgotten Affinities Series

by Analeigh Ford

  Somehow, waiting outside of Bram’s office is even more nerve-wracking than breaking into the old academy.

  Now, back in The Underground complex, Edgar and I stand impatiently waiting for Bram to open up the gateway into his office.

  Edgar must catch me glancing over at him from the corner of my eye for the millionth time, because he finally huffs and throws up his arms. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you want to know,” he snaps.

  I keep my eyes carefully trained on the still solid wall in front of me. I’d wanted to ask what happened to the man that fell through the tear, but hadn’t dared. I’ll admit—I feared the worst. But Edgar’s confession does little to reassure me. He might not have killed him, but there are things far worse than death.

  I scratch at the burning sensation on the insides of my wrists. It’s been getting steadily stronger ever since we left the academy. I’m not sure I can perform any more magic right now, even if I try. This protection spell has worn away at my magical resistance, drawing from my magic for so long there isn’t much left.

  I’ve gotten so anxious I almost resort to making small talk with Edgar when, at last, the wall before us ripples into something slightly transparent and Edgar’s hand at my back forces me through.

  Bram waits expectantly at his desk, another mage over his shoulder. I recognize him as the second one who got into the altercation with Kendall.

  Edgar gives me another shove forward, and I stumble the rest of the way to his desk with the leather bag still in hand. Flynn does not follow. Bram has made it painfully clear that he has nothing to say to the rest of them. I just hope he’s already found the others and had the chance to reassure them I’m okay.

  My hands shake annoyingly as I undo the top drawstring of the bag. I don’t want to touch the artifacts again for fear of increasing their effects on my body even more, so I just pull it back enough for Bram to see.

  “Brendan,” Bram says, leaning back so the other mage can step up.

  Brendan pulls back the edges of the bag and carefully examines the objects within. After a couple seconds, he nods.

  “The spell is broken.”

  He steps back and Bram waves for him to leave, his usefulness at an end. He stops and whispers something to Edgar as he goes. I think I hear my name, but I don’t catch what it is that he says.

  Bram reaches inside and pulls out the lightest of the objects, the Psychic Orb, with two hands. He hoists it up a bit to catch the light. His face is reflected back to me, upside down, and pensive.

  He shows no sign of numbness or pain. Whatever spell alighted on me and Flynn when we touched it has well and truly faded.

  For the first time since we’ve met, Bram actually looks pleased. He motions for Edgar to take the bag from me, and he disappears into another tear in the wall—presumably to some vault or secure facility where Bram keeps all the things he has other mages steal for him.

  “Is that all, sir?” I ask. I have to force my hand to still in his presence. I’m anxious to get back to the others.

  He just leans back a bit in his chair and observes me.

  “I think not,” he says. “You’ve done something for me, so I will give you something in exchange.”

  “Exchange?”

  Bram settles back to rest his elbows on his desk. “First, knowledge.”

  He sorts through the papers on his desk until he finds the one he intended. He slides this across the desk to me. “I’m sure you’ve been wondering what exactly it is that I do. What my special affinity is, I mean.”

  I peg the paper down with one finger and twirl it around to read.

  It’s nothing more than a few hastily written notes, and some sketches that look roughly like the cane the Bram carries with him at all times.

  “I am not bound to multiple affinities, as you are, Octavia,” he says. His eyes follow me as I look at the paper again, trying to make out his scrawling handwriting. “Though I did too, absorb a twin.”

  That stops me. I look up at him again, and he is nodding. “I was not lucky enough to be scouted out by a local mage family and introduced to the magical world. Instead, I happened upon it later on in life.”

  I stop reading entirely and lean in as far as possible across the table, as if somehow getting closer to him will get me closer to his secrets as well.

  This must be why Bram recruits mages from the street. He was once one of them himself.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I ask, suddenly aware that the more Bram tells me, the more he has to lose if I were to try and escape The Underground. He isn’t a fool, so he must know that I don’t plan to stay here forever.

  I’d like to find a way to go back to the real world one day, as unlikely as that seems right now.

  He might have sent me to steal the ritual artifacts as a test of loyalty, but even he must know that my loyalty to him will shift the moment I think we have a chance of returning to the real world without consequences.

  “For the exchange,” he says, simply. “You don’t think I got to this position through ruthless neglect, do you?”

  I glance over at Edgar as he reappears in the study.

  “I’m not about to tell you how I work my powers, but I do think it is time you learned how to control yours.”

  The last place I expected to find someone who could teach me how to control my Time Magic was here, in The Underground. But the confidence with which Bram says the words makes a tingle race up my spine.

  I’ve almost resigned myself at this point to never being able to use it, much less control it.

  Bram beckons Edgar over and though he moves reluctantly, he does produce something from inside one of the many pockets of his coat.

  It isn’t until Bram holds it out in his outstretched palm that I am able to see what it is.

  It is a pocket watch, but it is anything but ordinary. It is beautiful—encrusted with diamonds, inlaid with gold—and broken.

  The watch is clearly more than just beautiful. The carefully carved edges are marked by dozens of tiny buttons and dials. Inside the crystal face there is not one set of hands, but three.

  Bram sees my eyes linger on the unmoving hands.

  “Not to worry,” he says, passing the watch my way. It is surprisingly heavy and cold in my hand.

  “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “I told you,” Bram says, “It’s an exchange. You don’t really think you are the first mage ever to have the ability to control time?”

  My eyes bug out. “So you can—”

  He hastily shakes his head. “No. But the mage who once possessed that watch, she could.”

  My hands turn the watch over again, a new meaning given to the many dials and the carefully carved symbols along the outside.

  His eyes fall back down to the papers on his desk and I know, somehow, that he is already finished with me.

  But before I can turn to go, it is Edgar’s turn to clear his throat. I glance over at him. He stands stiff beside Bram, his eyes facing straight forward at the wall opposite. As soon as I see how he refuses to look at me, a pit forms in my stomach and I know, even before he tells Bram what he is about to, that I am in trouble.

  When Bram does finally look up, it is with annoyance. “What is it, Edgar?” he asks, his voice short and sharp.

  “Octavia and the boy…”

  “Flynn,” I remind him.

  “Octavia and the boy, Flynn let a stranger into the in-between.”

  Of course he would word it like that.

  Bram’s head snaps in my direction, any almost fatherly-like look he had before completely replaced with cold fury. “Is that true?”

  “It wasn’t like that!” I blurt. “It was an accident. We were found out…and we had to sneak off to the divination room.”

  Bram’s fingers twitch to the edge of his cane. They drum a senseless pattern there.

  His eyes flicker back to Edgar. “And?”

  “I took care of him.”

 
Bram makes a rumbling sound in the back of his throat. “This is highly inconvenient. Octavia, this sort of thing cannot happen. I’ll have to sort out some sort of punishment.” He glances up at Edgar. “What is the boy’s name again, Flynn?”

  Crap. I shouldn’t have volunteered that so readily.

  “Wait!” It isn’t even his fault we got caught. It’s mine. I think back to what Bram said earlier. “What about an exchange instead?”

  Bram cocks an eyebrow, and that is enough of an invitation for me to continue.

  “When we were heading to the second rendezvous point, we ran into a student. We learned some…information…that may be helpful to you.”

  I wrack my brain for exactly what it was that Whitney said. To be honest, I don’t know if it will be at all useful, but it’s all I have to offer. “She said that the tribunal will be meeting soon. All of them, together.”

  Bram’s attention is fully on me now. He leans back slightly, weaving his hands together in his lap. “Now that is interesting. Did you get a specific date?”

  I squeeze up my eyes and try to remember.

  But I don’t have to.

  Edgar pipes up before I do, his voice low and gruff and, I think, a little reluctant. “December twenty-sixth. The day after Christmas.”

  My eyes briefly dart over to him. I’d forgotten that he likely followed us the entire time, listening in and watching, just from the other side. The realization of it makes me shiver a little.

  Bram’s eyes stay on mine. “Well then,” he says, slowly—this time rising to his feet. “I guess we know how long you have to get that watch working, don’t we?”

  “Not really,” I say, and flinch at my own words. “I mean,” I glance down at my feet nervously, and then back up. “I know the time works differently.”

  Bram nods. “That’s why I need you to be able to stop it.”

  “Stop…time?”

  “For the tribunal. I’d like to have a word with them, face-to-face. I have some demands I’d like to be met,” he says. “But I need some time to set up the necessary precautions first. There are some rituals that will keep me safe, even from the likes of them, but I’ll need a hell of a lot more time to set them up than I’d ever get otherwise.”

  Again, the information he gives me makes me shift uncomfortably.

  Edgar escorts me out, always standing just a little too close for comfort. Though Bram never speaks the words, I know I am forgiven for my earlier mistake—because I, and all my paired mages, are still alive.

  15

  Kendall

  It’s been hours since I ran into Octavia, or at least I think it has been. There’s no real way of telling time here in this godforsaken place. Truth be told, my mind has been turning my last interaction with her over and over in my mind until I feel like if I don’t do something, I am going to explode.

  This morning, or was it yesterday, I don’t really know…I almost lost control of myself with her. I shake my head and press it to the cool cement of the wall. I am unable to sit still.

  I tried to head back to the sleeping quarters at first, but I was afraid I might run into her there. I know she needs space from me…but after the fear I saw in her, how she drew back from my touch, the words that she accused me with…all I want is an opportunity to apologize.

  That wasn’t like me. This isn’t like me.

  This place, The Underground, it is spoiling us. It is changing us. We’ve only been here for a short time—I don’t want to see what it will do to us if we remain.

  And just as quickly as I have that thought, I crush it.

  I glance up and down the long, empty hallway. Even after I learned she’s already left, dragged off on some quest for Bram, I haven’t been able to bring myself to go anywhere I might run into the others. Draven knows what happened this morning for sure, and I’m not sure he’ll be able to keep it to himself if he gets the chance to corner me. Then again, maybe he shouldn’t.

  Because it isn’t The Underground who should take the blame, it’s me.

  I am responsible for my actions. I am responsible for fixing this.

  But how?

  I ball my hand into a fist and slam it against the cement wall. A girl who I hadn’t noticed passing behind me, jumps and skitters off in the direction of the main part of the complex. I watch her go with unseeing eyes.

  Well, this new temper may be a good place to start.

  This is unfamiliar territory for me. Wednesday was always the one with the temper. I’ve played the docile peacemaker my whole life—but I’ve never been on this side before. I close my eyes a second. Maybe that’s it. I’ve relied on Wednesday to balance me out my whole life, and now that she isn’t here, I am suddenly one half of a whole. I have to deal with this new side of myself that my twin sister has always kept in check.

  No wonder Octavia looked so afraid of me. If I can’t even recognize myself, then surely, she can’t either.

  My mind races again, searching for some kind of solution to my problem. I find no answers. However, I can’t be the first one of us to mess up badly enough to owe Octavia a major apology. It’s been a while since I hung out with Cedric or Draven or Flynn without Octavia there. It’d become something of a habit while she was in the infirmary, and as much as I didn’t want to at first—I’d come to like them.

  So it is their company that I seek.

  If anyone will know what I have to do next, it will be one of them. And if Draven wants to confront me, then well, I deserve whatever I have coming.

  Fortunately, unlike Octavia, I have a good mind for maps. I might have been wandering these halls for the better part of an afternoon, but I find my way back to the main part of the complex with no trouble at all. Just the little reminder of Octavia’s unique ability to get lost while walking a straight road makes me smile for a moment. It quickly fades. I miss the Octavia that wasn’t wrapped up in so many god-damned complications. The most glaring of which, is of course, entirely my fault.

  They are not in the training room, and for that I am somewhat grateful. I don’t think it’s a good idea to be standing around a bunch of weapons when I ask for their help—because it is going to mean admitting to what I almost did. No, not what I almost did…what I already did.

  Enough bodies are wrapped in blankets in the sleeping quarters that I know it must be getting late. The new recruits are still set to a traditional schedule—but most of the mages that have been here for some time are more active now than ever.

  I have to avoid their glances and whispered conversation as I pass. My little display with Edgar this morning has labeled me as a troublemaker. Just the idea of it makes me chuckle. That is more of Draven’s territory—but here, I guess he just fits right in.

  Speaking of—it is him who I spot first at the very far end of the dining hall. I’d rather it wasn’t in such a public place, but I guess it is best I don’t put this off any longer.

  Though he sits with Cedric, neither of them is speaking much. I can tell they are as on-edge as I am with Octavia gone. She might have been allowed to bring Flynn, but we all know how useless his powers are right now, especially if he is going back at the academy with his other paired, Jessica, screwing with him.

  Even so, Draven spots me almost right away. His expression immediately sours. Though I expected it, it doesn’t make approaching them any easier. I never thought this would be a conversation I’d be having, least of all, with these two.

  While Draven is in the midst of his element, Cedric couldn’t be more opposite. Though something has obviously changed since he found out about his mother, he still cannot hide the fact that this kind of communal living makes him uncomfortable. More than uncomfortable. He appears to be a man on the edge of something.

  I might be about to push him over, but I stop in front of them anyway and clear my throat.

  Draven just stares at me, his lips pressed into a thin line. When he doesn’t greet me, Cedric looks at Draven first then slowly turns back to me.
/>   “What’d I miss?”

  Draven bares his teeth. “Kendall has been misbehaving.”

  To put it lightly.

  Cedric has gone back to pretending to eat the stew set out in a bowl in front of him. The corner of his mouth turns down in disgust. I’ve only been to his house once, but he’s used to a very different palette than the rest of us. Normally, I’m sure Draven would be giving him a hard time over this, but the Ritual Mage’s eyes haven’t left me since he spotted me picking my way over.

  I’m tempted, for a moment, to just slip away. Then I remember a time when Cedric and Octavia weren’t getting along, and I can only hope he knows something of how to make things right.

  But when I go to sit down, Draven slaps his hand down on the empty space beside Cedric and glares at me. His teeth are bared like an animal marking his territory.

  “You should go,” he says.

  Now even Cedric cannot ignore the fact that there is definitely something going on. He takes the opportunity to push his bowl away from him, obviously glad for the distraction.

  “Alright, what happened?”

  I wait for Draven to answer, but he just snatches his hand back after a second and resorts to staring straight ahead. I don’t know why he doesn’t just say it. Instead, he leaves that part up to me.

  “I had…an incident with Octavia this morning,” I start, carefully.

  Cedric looks on but doesn’t say anything right away.

  “More than an incident,” Draven says, his voice coming out as a growl.

  I pick my next words carefully. I’m not trying to make myself out better than I am, but I also don’t want Cedric to try and murder me here on the spot. I might not be a Psychic Mage, but I can still feel that tension that is there, in him beneath the surface, growing more taut by the second.

  “I was angry. I let it get the better of me, and I…I crossed a line.”

  Cedric’s gaze continues to bore into mine, but his expression becomes unreadable. That line draws tighter, and my words sloppier. “We were alone. I thought she wanted it too…but she didn’t.”

  Draven can’t hold his tongue any longer. “You’re just lucky I showed up when I did.”