Mac shook his head grimly. “No. I apologize. All I ask is that you hear me out.”
Bryony stared at him, considering, for a long moment.
“Sister,” Floryn piped up. “We’ve already decided that this was—”
“The Finnegans are long-standing, honorable members of this order and young Cormac the Gilded will be heard,” Bryony said, a note of finality ringing in her voice.
The Gilded. My feeble brain tried to make sense of that, but Mac’s voice derailed my thoughts.
Marigold frowned and looked like she wanted to speak but thought better of it.
“I’ve spent the past three months observing her at school and the past two weeks with Maggie almost daily. I can tell you this much: she’s a good person.” His tone was respectful but firm. “She’s been doing that all on her own, with no one to guide her. The boy was injured while attacking her. She responded in self-defense.”
“If you believe that, then you’re even stupider than you look,” Rafe growled, still frozen in place.
It was then that a strange sensation snaked up my left arm. Life. Energy. Power. Mac was opening himself to me, giving me his strength in a slow, steady stream. I fought to keep my eyes open through the rush and tried to focus on the words that were being said, but along with the power came memories.
Dogs barking, crippling fear. “Get under the boards, now. Go, child!” Papa shouts.
“No. Come with me!”
Thrust under the shiny floorboards. A woman’s scream…Mama’s? And then she’s shoved below with me into the darkness.
A voice snapped me back to the present.
“Do you have proof of this accusation, Maggie Raynard?” Bryony demanded, but even if I could have answered her, I wouldn’t have. She was nothing but a distraction from the trauma that played out in front of me. Mac as a child. Terrified and hiding. From whom?
Mac squeezed my hand tighter. “Answer them, Maggie. Tell them your story.” As he spoke, he sent more energy pouring into me, the stream becoming a river. His hand shook with the effort, and I knew it came at a price. Along with it, the memories flowed, stronger and faster.
Shouts above, doors slamming, the meaty thud of fists on flesh. Over and over. I cover my ears and rock, biting my lip as hard as I can because Mama says I must be brave.
We huddle together until the noise stops. It feels like hours until Mama pushes the door open with a creak. Even the dim light of the lamp hurts my eyes. We climb out and Mama’s cheeks are wet with tears. Papa is…gone.
Mac’s grief was so sharp, it sliced my heart like it was my own, and I slumped back against him with a sob.
“Nothing else to say?” Floryn demanded. “You realize making a statement like that and refusing to corroborate is both a waste of our time and foolhardy?”
“Be done with it and let him take her back to her cell.” Marigold waved her hand and the invisible chain that had seemed to connect me to the ground released. Her face was like stone and whatever had convinced me that she was pretty at first glance was gone.
“You need to focus, Maggie. Please,” Mac muttered low enough for my ears only. “Stop peeping at my memories and focus on drawing the power.”
Easy for him to say. All I wanted to do was turn and throw my arms around his neck and bawl. Out of sadness for the boy he’d been; out of admiration for the man he was becoming.
Rafe chose then to throw his two cents in with Marigold. “They’re obviously stalling to give them a chance to figure how to save her neck. Please, let me take her back to her cell now so you can get on with more imp—”
“I can’t prove that Eric attacked me. But I can prove that Rafe killed him. I saw it myself.” Buoyed by Mac’s energy and every ounce of determination in my body, I forced myself onto one knee. Marigold lifted a warning finger my way again, but Bryony intervened with a swift talk-to-the-hand in her direction.
“Allowing the girl to speak causes us no harm. Considering the severity of the crime and her punishment, I wish to hear her out.” She faced me, her ancient blue eyes still sharp even though the skin surrounding them looked like parchment paper. “Speak, child.”
“They won’t give you another chance,” Mac whispered. “Spit it out.” He pressed the pedal to the floor and the ensuing dump of adrenaline sent my head spinning.
A dark night. The great room lit by a crackling fire. Mama’s cry as the door swings open and Papa stumbles through, clothes plastered to his body, crusted with blood. Wide gashes, still weeping, crisscross his thick arms, intersecting with ropey scars. They send me upstairs, but I listen from above to the hushed whispers and stories of torture as Mama tries to heal his broken body. They are the Gray Wolves. We are the hunted.
The Gilded.
The pressure of Mac’s hand on my wrist jerked me back to the present as the cuffs seemed to get looser. I opened my eyes, the images that young Mac had seen burned into my brain. Is that what had eventually killed his dad? Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Focus on the power.
“I saw it when I touched him.” My voice was stronger now, and it echoed in the wide field.
The trio exchanged unreadable glances and Marigold took point, stepping closer and eyeing me hard. “Saw it how?”
New, sharper memories lapped at my brain, and I tried to push them out. To focus on Marigold and the life-or-death task at hand, but they were strong. So strong…
A kiss that rocks my socks off with a girl who does the same. A slash to the belly. Sharp, brutal pain but worth it. So worth it. I glance in the mirror, and I’m Mac. But not Mac. A moving, fluid, silver statue with a chisel in one hand and a piece of myself in the other. Mac, standing in front of a pit of fire, forging a band…no, a braid of silver.
The very same braid of silver that dug into my palm at the moment.
The sob that had been building in my throat since he’d touched me couldn’t be contained and broke raggedly from my lips. Mac was one of the Gilded. I’d read about them in one of Gram’s books but hadn’t made the connection until that second. Since the dawn of alchemy, humans had hunted his kind for their transformative powers as much as for the precious metals their bodies could produce. They would trap them like animals, but they wouldn’t kill them. Once dead, Gilded turned to regular flesh and bone. So instead, they terrified and mentally tortured them until, on the brink of death, they changed to a metal form. Then the hunters hacked away, taking pieces of them while trying to find the root of the change so they could replicate it.
It went on and on, and they would be kept this way for hours…sometimes days, until they were either used up to the point there was nothing left to take, or they were dead.
It means a lot to me.
That’s what he’d said when he’d given me the ring. Not a gift from Mac. A gift of him.
For me. Hunted and mutilated for their bodies for centuries, and Mac had willingly given me a piece of himself.
“Mac—” Tears scalded my cheeks as I searched his gray eyes.
He held my gaze unwaveringly, his face tight with pain, and then shook his head with a muttered, “Don’t.”
“Jesus Christ, now cue the waterworks. That’s enough of this,” Rafe snarled. Suddenly, inexplicably, he was free. When he came at me, I didn’t think. I blocked everything out but my rage and hurt and mentally painted a target on his head. I shot to my feet and sent the chains that Mac had softened exploding from my wrists with one blast. Mac.
Marigold leveled a finger at me, but Mac dove in front of me as I headed straight for Rafe, who was charging me like a bull.
I was on him in a heartbeat, Mac’s strength combined with my fury coursing through my veins. I used his body to block mine as I closed my hand over his forearm, drawing at his energy with all my might. He was strong when he wasn’t half asleep, but I was stronger.
“Tell them the truth or I will suck every ounce of love from your entire body and you will be nothing but a mewling, shitting little bag of flesh in three
seconds flat,” I hissed.
A blast of energy whizzed past my head and a female voice screeched, “Release him at once!”
I ignored both and pressed harder, my power looking for a foothold to cling to. Just one tendril of love to latch onto and I’d be—
Something hit me hard in the shoulder and sent me flying backward, ears crackling like old-fashioned radio static. I went total pit bull and dragged Rafe with me, but Mac’s ring flew out of my hand.
“Let me the fuck go!” Rafe’s growl rumbled from deep in his chest and when he swung at me, it was for real. He was about to hit me like a straight-up man. Instinct made me release him and cover my face as his sledgehammer of a fist came at me but it glanced past me, like a stiff breeze.
I uncovered my eyes to see Mac standing in front of me, his skin transforming to rippling, fluid silver. Rafe stood a few feet away, blood streaming from his nose. “You lay another finger on her, and I’ll beat you to death.”
Rafe grinned, and the blood dripped into his mouth, making him look like a ghoulish jack o’ lantern. “Let’s see about that, shiny boy.” He sank lower into his stance, thick thighs grounding him, and came barreling in like a raging bull. One second he was skin and bone, the next he was a moving slab of granite.
“Summon the Guards,” Bryony shouted.
But wherever the guards were, it wasn’t close enough. Rafe’s stone fist hit Mac square in the jaw. My heart beat out of my chest, and I screamed as his head snapped back. Surely that had killed him.
But Mac was still on his feet, a lethal smile of his own curling his lips, teeth white against his metallic skin. “That’s all you got?”
Jesus Christ, I hoped so.
Mac’s open hand flew out so fast I almost didn’t see it connect with Rafe’s throat. Rafe stumbled back and scrabbled at his neck, eyes bulging. Mac followed him, moving with the purpose and grace of a trained assassin. His foot flicked out, sweeping Rafe’s knees from under him.
To my surprise, Rafe didn’t fall. He stumbled again and then righted himself before launching an attack of his own, serving up a glancing blow to Mac’s temple. Mac grunted then feinted right and came behind the slower boy, a shimmering arm wrapping around his neck like an anaconda.
A shout sounded from the other side of the room and another blast arced our way. I tried to get there to take the force of it, but I wasn’t fast enough. I shouldn’t have worried. Mac was in the zone now and blocked it neatly with his other forearm. Rafe bucked and shook like a spooked bronco, but Mac held tight, his face a mask of ruthless fury.
He wasn’t going to let go until Rafe was dead. I lunged for his arm.
“You can’t kill him.” I jerked back, stunned by the smooth, metallic texture of his wrist and the energy that poured off him. “Mac, stop!” He was deaf to me, lost to anger, muscles corded tightly as he focused on finishing the job. If he did, he wouldn’t leave this chamber alive. That much I knew for sure.
I lowered my voice and pleaded in hopes of cutting through the rage. Of making him hear me. “We need him to confess, Mac. Or they will hang me.”
It took a second, but my words hit their mark and his thunderous eyes locked with mine. Finally, he nodded, the feral rage on his face fading, along with the silvery color of his flesh. “Okay. Yeah, okay.” He used the leverage he had and sent Rafe to the ground on his back.
While Mac held him pinned to the floor, I grabbed Rafe’s shoulder and unloaded into him. No point in trying to suck the love from him. Even if there was any to be found, he’d managed to block me in the car.
Instead, I tried pushing again this time, but not in search of memories. This time, I pulled out a newer trick, frying his brain cells one by one, like the alarm in the school window. I didn’t get far when an invisible fist seemed to reach in and close around my heart.
There were a thousand times that I’d been afraid since the day I’d found out what I was becoming. Hell, fear was such a part of me now, I almost didn’t remember what it was like to not feel it. But never like this. The blackness that pulled at me, drawing me closer to something sticky and black, a gaping maw of horror that I’d felt a hint of when I’d touched Rafe the night before but a thousand-fold. But it wasn’t coming from Rafe. So where then?
“Maggie? Are you okay?” Mac’s voice seemed like it was coming from very far away. I tried my best to answer. To tell him I was okay, but I couldn’t.
I was too busy dying.
Chapter Twenty-One
I don’t know what I’d imagined dying would feel like, but it definitely wasn’t this. No life flashing before my eyes. No sweet, fond memories of my childhood. Not even regrets. Just…nothing. And the knowledge that whatever was happening to me was worse than death because there was only the promise of even more nothing to come.
My heartbeat slowed as the fist closed tighter.
I could count each final pump of my heart in my head. One. Then far too long before two. Then longer until three. Then none. I fell backward and stared up at the sky. It was so blue. So beautiful. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? I held onto the sight for as long as I could, until the blackness that had a hold of me crept into my vision like the dimmer on a light switch.
Blackness.
Until a trickle of light broke the darkness. So slight. Like a single birthday candle in a gaping black hole. I reached for it with my mind as it flickered for a second but then got a little stronger. The icy feeling in my chest got worse before it got better but then it was weakening, lifting, and the heartbeat I’d been waiting for came. Four. Then five. Six seven eight…
My eyes blasted open, and I tried to sit up, but a weight pressed on my chest like a sack of stones. Brown hair tickled my nose, and I realized what was pinning me down.
Mac. He was lying on top of me, his body pale and white, covering mine. And he wasn’t moving.
I dug my heels into the ground and rolled to the side, using my momentum to take him with me. I spared a quick glance to Rafe who lay a few feet away from us gasping for air, muttering incoherently. Whatever he’d hit us with had obviously taken its toll.
My blood went cold when I remembered that feeling…that awful feeling, and I wondered why he hadn’t busted out that little gem earlier. Then my focus was solely on Mac. He was still…so fucking still, and his skin flickered from gold to flesh and back again.
I grabbed his arm, a scream building in my throat. “What did you do? Jesus, Mac, what did you do?” I was frantic, shaking him, tears streaming down my face. I wasn’t dead, and I knew the reason. Mac had covered me, shielding me with his body and absorbing the fingers of death that had been aimed my way. He’d already used up so much of his strength on me, he didn’t have enough left to maintain his metal form and protect himself from something of that magnitude. He’d given me his all… So much more than he had to give and now he was going to pay for it with his life.
“Please,” I begged. “Take your strength back.” I pushed out, trying to return the gift he’d given me, but it was no use. I was too weak Nothing I was sending was getting through. “No!”
His eyes fluttered open, and he tried to smile.
“Shh, Magpie, it’s all right. I’m your Protector, remember?” he whispered, reaching a shaking hand out to stroke my hair. “This is the only shot you’ve got at it or a killer goes free. Finish it.” His eyes fluttered closed and the ever-present energy arcing between us fizzled away to nothing.
Gone. My friend, my savior, my Protector was gone.
The sound that came from my lips was unholy and the hatred that burned in me was worse. I leapt to my feet and fell onto Rafe, squeezing his neck with my hands, sending my power pouring into him with a silent prayer than I had enough left to do the job.
“Step away from him, child,” Bryony screeched.
As if.
It only made me squeeze tighter, press harder, because I knew I didn’t have a lot of time before—
The blast of energy hit me square in the back, and I
fell forward, but held on, using the energy Mac had given me to finishing frying Rafe.
Footsteps on stairs sounded, and I gave it one last burst. Time was up. He tapped out, smacking at my hand as his face went gray and his eyes bulged. “Stop. Please, stop.” I loosened my grip and he continued, his voice shrill now as he shoved himself to his knees. “I killed him.”
The Amaranthus rushed us as a group, hands raised, only a few feet away now, and Rafe blanched. “But seriously, he was practically dead anyway.”
For the first time, Rafe sounded afraid. Terrified, in fact. I searched for some pity but came up empty.
“Is this the truth?” Bryony’s eyes went cold and flat. “We sent you to solve a problem and you committed cold-blooded murder and risked our people?”
Rafe’s temper got the better of him then, and his pleading turned to fury. “That’s bullshit. He was in such a deep coma, I doubt he was ever coming out anyway.” He shook me off and tried to stand, hand outstretched. “Plus, I was just do—”
The rest of his sentence was cut off as Marigold hit him in the chest with a blast of power that sent him to the floor like a stone with his eyes rolling back in his head.
“Enough!” she shouted.
“I say the same to you, Marigold of Thebes.” Bryony’s face was a mask of fury that would have been scary as shit if it was aimed at me. Three guards charged through the trees, way too little, way too late, and made a circle around Rafe. Bryony held up a hand to them to stand where they were before continuing to her co-council.
“We are the judge and jury, but we are not the executioners. Stand down.” She held Marigold’s gaze and the other woman stiffened. I wondered if another, even more volatile fight was brewing. Then Marigold stepped back, head bowed.
“Yes, Bryony. I apologize. He was approaching us aggressively, and I hoped to regain some order.”
Bryony nodded stiffly but didn’t respond. Rafe still wasn’t moving, and I wondered dispassionately if he was dead. Then I dropped to the ground next to Mac. His eyes were closed, his lashes dark smudges against his skin that no longer flickered, but was a washed out shade of gold that grew less brilliant with every passing second. I laid my head on his chest, listening, but there was nothing to hear. I wanted to flail. To howl and curse the heavens and the bitches that stood there staring down at us and that motherfucker Rafe.
Chaos (Kardia Chronicles) (Entangled Teen) Page 28