Silence. Or as much silence as there could be with my blood roaring in my ears.
She blew everything for that lying piece-of-shit that had my sister murdered.
I couldn’t even respond because the only possible thing I could come up with either involved throwing her out the window or telling her how much of an idiot she was—when neither action would help us now.
For better or for worse, I just had to deal.
“So, basically what I’m hearing is that the Born took Anastasia, but no one bothered with Lucas.” I figured repeating the facts to make sure I had this right was the safest thing to do at the moment, for both me and her. Tori nodded, sharing a broken look with my sister that I was positive I wasn’t meant to see. If I was being frank, her being Alexandra’s rock was one of the only reasons I wasn’t tearing into her right then.
“Speaking of, what are we going to do with him?” Amber interrupted. She sat on the other end of the couch with Ash’s feet strewn across her lap. Dried blood saturated most of her shirt and stained her entire right arm and half her face. She was tougher than I gave her credit for.
“Question him,” I answered like it was obvious. Amber pursed her lips.
“If you do the questioning, he might ‘accidentally’ end up dead. You sure you want that on your conscience?” Amber asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“She won’t be doing the questioning,” Johanna answered. “I will.”
Under normal circumstances, I might have chaffed at her assumption, but in this case, we did have a better person for the job. As Amber said, me doing it could be…problematic. Tori or Alec wouldn’t be well-suited either. We needed a neutral party. Or at least as neutral as a party could reasonably be.
“I think that would be best,” Blair said. She shifted side to side uneasily, looking out into the night.
“I agree,” I said, shifting to stand up. I lifted Ash’s head and stuffed a pillow under it, moving to stand beside Blair. “I don’t think I can be in the same room as him right now. After he and Anastasia tried to kill Ash…” I didn’t let myself finish that sentence. I’d already lost too much. Tonight had been a massive failure, and that was a bit of an understatement.
People hadn’t just almost died. People did die. And for what?
For my crazy, insane plan that no one thought would work, but almost did.
I had failed because I’d underestimated Tori’s love for her brother, the same love that drove me to these lengths. And now here we were, stuck between a rock and a hard place with fewer options and a climbing body count.
When was it going to stop? When were we going to say enough is enough?
I didn’t have an answer for that. To kill Anastasia was to overthrow the Supernatural government. It would plunge the paranormal world into a dark time if there was not someone ready and waiting to step up.
But for that to even come to pass, we had to get close to her and settle this business with the Vampires.
I ran a hand down my face and pinched the bridge of my nose, inhaling slowly.
“So where do we go from here?” I asked them. It was the next obvious question. Accept our losses. Acknowledge why we failed and what we were going to do next.
Except that was the one question no one, not even Johanna or Oliver, seemed to have an answer for.
“Selena, I don’t think we can—”
“Don’t,” I snapped, whirling on Alexandra. “Don’t for one second tell me there’s nothing we can do. There is always something that can be done. We hit a nerve with her and she responded. We were on the right path. There has to be something we can do.”
She knocked her head back against the marble siding and closed her eyes. Her chest rose and fell, but she didn’t respond.
“Under different circumstances, all the families of the Council have the right to call an accord,” Alec said. He stood at the back of the common room slumped against the wall. I couldn’t blame him for being exhausted. We all were, but some things couldn’t wait for sleep. “But without someone to enforce it—whether it be a group or a single person—there’s no one to force Anastasia to abide by it.”
“We also have no idea what kind of deal she’s made with the Born,” Johanna added. She reclined back into Oliver’s shoulder, her injured foot propped up on the edge of the black leather couch. “If the Vampires are helping her, it’s going to take a miracle to fix this because she is the law.”
Sitting on the floor in front of them, Scarlett sat stiff as a rod with Liam sprawled out in her lap, unconscious. He suffered a blow to the head by one of Anastasia’s goons and sported a nice goose egg but was otherwise fine.
“I just wish we knew why all of this was happening. It doesn’t make any fucking sense why she’s going after Selena like this. Why she had Lily turned. Why anything,” Amber grumbled.
“Anastasia only cares about her power…” I started.
“Exactly. So why does she bother with you? It’s not like you’re a threat,” Amber griped and waved a hand in my direction. “I mean, you are, but you know what I mean.”
It’s not like you’re a threat…
My hand twitched towards the zipper of my jacket.
Where Elizabeth’s envelope sat snug against my chest.
What’s inside that folder changes everything.
Isn’t that what she said?
Jo said we were going to need a miracle. Maybe this was it.
Maybe all hope wasn’t lost.
I tugged my zipper down, pulling out the envelope.
There was no writing on the outside. No indication of what I would find. Only a few crinkles and a dark red stain near the bottom edge. It was as untouched as I could possibly hope for.
Elizabeth had told me to open it alone and I hesitated, looking to the people around me.
Their faces were just as grim as mine. Blood coated their hands. Mud splattered their clothes. They didn’t have to stand by me through all of this, and I certainly didn’t deserve it, but they did. They chose to.
My fingers shook as I bent the aluminum clasp and slipped the seal off of it. The paper made a crackling sound as I parted the opening and reached inside.
“What’s that?” Blair said, scooting closer beside me. I pulled out the pieces of paper. There were images printed on them and black Sharpie writing. The words were written in a sloppy scrawl, like someone was in a hurry.
I knew instantly who these pictures belonged to.
“That’s my mom’s handwriting,” Blair breathed. “Where did you get these?” She reached for one of the pictures in my hand, stepping away so she could trail her fingertips over them lightly. Her muscles tensed, but her face remained blank.
“Elizabeth came to me in the market before Lucas and Anastasia showed up. She gave me this folder and told me that it was evidence…” I swallowed hard against the crippling disappointment. “But these are just pictures.”
Pictures with paranoid writing. A bedtime lullaby I’d heard a hundred times. A message that I had already received. Answers that I already had, not that they knew that, and I couldn’t tell them.
Why was it that every time I thought I found something, a new piece of the puzzle, all I found was another dead-end with a body count?
I schooled my face handing off the rest of the photos to Alexandra. I didn’t want to look at them. They were reminders from another time. Where I’d been weak and lost everything.
They took me to a place of memories that weren’t real and dreams that couldn’t have been planted, and a place inside myself where I didn’t know what was right or wrong.
I got down on my knees and brushed the hair out of Ash’s face. His eyelids twitched, slowly opening. “Hi there,” he breathed. It was more of a rasp, but given that he was alive and talking at all, I’d take it.
“Hi,” I said, smiling sadly.
“Did I miss anything good?”
I know he meant it jokingly to try and break the tension. All I could do was press my lips toget
her in an awkward kind of answer.
“Nothing you don’t already know,” I replied. He looked at me without pity, reaching out to squeeze my hand.
“We’ll get her back.”
But would it be too late?
I could see that question in his eyes too, although neither of us said it.
“Selena,” Johanna asked. There was a curious tone to her voice. An implied frown. I glanced over my shoulder to see her holding one of the pictures. “Who are these pictures of?”
My shoulders tensed but I answered her anyway. “My parents, why?”
She stared at it another minute before she answered.
“I thought you looked familiar.”
Huh?
“What are you talking about, Jo?” I pulled away from Ash, moving to stand beside her. She held the one picture that had all of us together. My parents. My sisters. Alive and whole. We couldn’t have been older than three or four. Our poofy dresses and bright smiles, so young and innocent.
Johanna stared at the picture, still as statue, before turning to look at me.
She knew something.
“Because,” she paused to flip the picture around and point at my father. He looked so different here than any of the memories I held. “This man is Erik Fortescue.”
I blinked. My lips parted, and I blinked again.
Was she implying—no, not implying—she was saying—
“Your father was Anastasia’s uncle, which makes you…” She let her voice trail off, cocking an eyebrow, waiting for me to say it.
Waiting for me to declare myself a Fortescue, the name that I hated most on this earth. Oh, how the world was cruel, but even so, if it were true…
“That’s why Anastasia wants me dead,” I mused as those pieces slid together in my mind. “If I’m a Fortescue—and to her knowledge, the only one alive that could challenge her place as Head of the Supernatural Council—then she wants me eliminated before that becomes an option.”
My heart kicked into overdrive attempting to keep up with how fast my mind was going. Blair swore softly under her breath.
Elizabeth was right. This changed everything.
If I was a Fortescue, I had a leg to stand on with the Council. I could challenge her for the right to rule—I could do what the current heirs could not.
“But wait,” Alexandra said, “if our father was Erik Fortescue—a man I have never heard of—then wouldn’t I have at least heard his name when we were in a Supernatural school?”
Oliver shook his head.
“He died over a decade ago, and when a member of the ruling family dies, there’s a power shift,” he explained. “Anastasia was declared heir. Shortly after, she banished anyone from ever talking about it. This is standard for the Fortescues.”
Scarlett and the others nodded, but they weren’t completely correct.
“He didn’t die over a decade ago,” I said. “It’ll be seven years this coming February.”
Alexandra didn’t comment one way or the other. She was too absorbed in laying out the photos. Arranging and rearranging them on the floor in front of her, like she could draw a picture that would tell us what we weren’t seeing.
“If he didn’t die, then someone faked his death,” Ash said, getting to his feet. He swayed as he did and I was there to catch him.
“Anastasia?” Amber asked, like it was obvious.
“No,” I disagreed. “It’s not her style. If she was going to fake it, she would have killed us all, but it wasn’t until Daizlei that things started happening…” My voice trailed off, not wanting to say where this plausible train of thought went.
Things had gotten strange ever since that dinner, where she commented on how much we looked alike. A trick, she had called it. More like blood—but a Fortescue? Did I really believe that? It seemed as outlandish as the idea that I was part demon, and that was true, so how crazy could it really be?
“My mother knew you were alive,” Blair murmured. “That all of you were, and she wouldn’t take you until you were older. We weren’t to speak of you. Do you think—”
“She was in on it.”
All eyes turned to Alexandra who sat staring at the pictures that told a story. She held her hand out and nodded to the picture in my hand. I passed it over, coming to stand behind her as she read the message that I hadn’t seen.
The message I had mistaken.
“Girl of fate. Daughter I made. He was here. We could not stay. Soul in pain. Come back one day. Mother of time. Don’t delay. You must take revenge this way.”
A cold chill entered my limbs. No, this wasn’t quite the same wording as my childhood lullaby. Not when you put the pieces together.
When read here and now, with what I knew…
It wasn’t just a warning of what was coming. It was a hint at what already happened. These photos started from the time we were young, well beyond the time when we all had supposedly died.
And the last one. The very last one…it wasn’t a picture of my mother or father at all.
But of the old lady in the market with eyes that changed color.
The Crone.
You must take revenge this way.
It was a command scrawled beneath her yellow smile.
“What does this even mean?” Blair swept her hand out towards the pile of photographs, her frown deepening the longer she stared.
“I think,” Alexandra said slowly, “it means our parents faked the death of our entire family and buried the evidence so that we would live long enough to stand a chance.”
She was close. So close, but not quite right. I opened my mouth and again, no sound would come out. Valda’s curse had become mine. Her burden and mine to bear.
This message had been worded so carefully. So close to that childhood rhyme and yet, inexplicably different. This wasn’t just a warning to go after Anastasia. This was a command to the Mother telling her what she must do.
Oh yes, my parents bought us time—but the real question here was for what?
My gut roiled again, nausea hitting me with a sudden onslaught at the horror of what I suspected. I choked it down and said nothing.
“Perhaps,” Johanna agreed. “But why would they feel they needed to hide you in the first place? What were you trying to stand a chance against?”
Ash came to stand beside me, placing his hand on my lower back, offering what little support he could. If only he knew…if only I could say…
“Twelve years ago, Selena manifested. Wouldn’t you hide your daughter if she was the first matter manipulator in a millennium?” Alexandra said, staring at Jo with one black eye and one brown. “Selena was powerful enough to throw me through a wall at five years old. How powerful was Anastasia? Because if she’s willing to sacrifice thousands of lives for power now, what would a single five-year-old have been?”
Oh, Alexandra. You’re not wrong. You just don’t have the full picture. I clenched my fist, letting my fingernails bite into the soft pad of my palm. We were all covered in so much guck that the tiny droplets of blood that formed went unnoticed.
“This is all bloody well, but why they didn’t isn’t as important as can we prove it? Can we prove that they are indeed Fortescues? And”—Scarlett paused to look at me head on—“will you do what you need to do to put an end to all of this? Will you take up your name and force that lying cow to either face you or die a coward’s death?”
Silence.
Would I do it?
Could I?
I turned to Violet, hoping for guidance, but she had no answer for me. It seemed that this decision I had to come to on my own.
I leaned back, pinching the bridge of my nose while I inhaled deeply.
Could I do it? Could I be who they needed me to be? Could I take up a mantle I wanted nothing to do with—a name I despised above all else—to be the rallying face for this war?
To win this war. To survive. To ensure Lily survives—I would do anything.
I had my answer.
“Scarlett, I’ll do whatever you need me to do. Wear whatever name you need to me wear. At the end of the day, we’re all fighting for the same thing. If that means my name is Selena Fortescue, then so be it.”
Scarlett’s anger was just and well-founded. I didn’t blame her for asking me the hard questions. I’d never wanted to rule anything. I still didn’t. Politics and government weren’t what I was cut out for, but the same could be said about the thousands of Supernaturals that had been turned into Made over the last six months.
People everywhere were suffering and dying in the Fortescue name.
Families ripped apart. Half breeds considered lesser.
The world was an ugly broken place.
But if two warring families that caused a thousand years of darkness could come together, if I could be born, if a matter manipulator could walk the earth again…
Well, anything was possible.
And just like that, I, Selena Fortescue, became the face of a rebellion that would not just overthrow centuries upon centuries of oppression, but would rattle the very stars our ancients looked down from.
And I could have sworn that in that moment I heard a laugh, dark and lovely.
As if the Goddess of darkness herself was waiting for her chosen heir to do just that.
Chapter 42
Vengeance is a virtue. At least to some.
I was not expecting the surprise that awaited me when Victor had me summoned to the very chamber his Council had tried to bar me from. This time there were no such attempts.
The Made did not dare even look at me as they opened the door, silently letting me pass. I obediently strode to Victor’s side, pleased by silence from the rest of the Council. It only took a single sweep of my eyes to see that Nikita was absent.
But my glee was short-lived as I saw the woman they had chained to the floor of the amphitheater.
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