Archer had lied.
The Cataclysm was not an accident.
Dad was not her dad.
“I need to go,” she said faintly. “I just … need to go.”
“Wait, Ridley, please don’t leave.”
She shook her head, stepping backward, repeating simply, “I need to go.”
11
The pain inside Ridley was too big, too blinding. She fragmented, every particle of her elemental being becoming every particle of the violent tempest that now raged across the wastelands. Her tears were the monsoon rains that gushed from above. Her breaking heart was the crack of lightning as it split the sky. She raged and sobbed and groaned, and the storm poured everything out over the broken landscape.
If Archer hadn’t broken her heart, she would have run to him now. She would have told him that Dad wasn’t her dad and Mom wasn’t her mom and her real parents were people she would never remember. She had no family left and no idea who she really was. She would have cried until she was empty, and he would have held her the entire time.
But there was no one to go to. No one who—
Meera, she thought suddenly. I still have Meera. My best friend.
Ridley sensed a change in the storm’s direction. Or at least, a direction where previously there had been none. The storm had spread out further and further, and Ridley had been everywhere at once, but now she felt almost … pulled together and hurled toward something. Toward Lumina City, hopefully, if the magic around her was correctly reading her intent. She was vaguely aware of the speed at which the landscape raced by beneath her, and it seemed the landforms and ruined towns slid by faster than before. Though perhaps it was only her imagination now that she knew she was supposed to be some kind of super-powered elemental.
Just like her parents.
People she would never know.
Thunder echoed across the wastelands as pain spread through every particle of her being. It was so huge, this hurt. How had it not broken her completely?
She sensed Lumina City on the horizon. Wrapped in a storm, she hurtled toward it. Details she hadn’t bothered to think of before rose to mind. What time of day was it? What day of the week? Would Meera be at school?
The city wall slid by beneath her, and soon she was traveling above her old district and toward Meera’s building. She entered Meera’s bedroom via the narrow gap where the upper edge of the window didn’t properly meet the window frame. The gap Meera complained about whenever it was windy. Ridley’s feet touched the worn pink rug as her human form materialized. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself. The room was so familiar it hurt. The wrinkle-free bedspread, the neatly organized desk, Meera’s precious print books stacked neatly on a small bookshelf. Ridley had spent countless hours in here with Meera, studying, talking, laughing. Would there one day be a world in which that could happen again? Not that she could imagine herself laughing. Everything hurt too much for that.
“Yeah, okay, just give me a minute and I’ll help you with that.”
Ridley looked up, her breath catching at the sound of Meera’s voice. And then, without another moment’s warning, Meera was there, in the open doorway, her eyes growing almost as large as her enormous glasses. “Ridley!” she gasped.
“Um, hi,” Ridley answered uncertainly. Now that she was here, she didn’t know where to start. She was saved from having to come up with something immediately when Meera launched across the room and enveloped Ridley in a hug.
“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh,” she said into Ridley’s hair. “You’re okay. You’re not dead. Oh thank goodness. What a relief.”
Ridley brought her arms up around Meera’s back and squeezed tight. Tighter and longer than she’d ever clung to her friend before. “I missed you,” she whispered, mainly because her voice couldn’t go any louder without breaking.
“I missed you too.” Then Meera pulled back and slapped Ridley’s arm. “Where have you been? Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? You and your dad both just vanished. What happened?”
Ridley stepped past her and quietly shut the door. It was probably a weekend, given that Meera wasn’t in her school uniform, and Ridley wasn’t sure how many of her family members might also be home. She didn’t need them all running in here while she struggled to get through the secrets she needed to share. “I … there’s …” She inhaled a shuddering breath, her fingers absently playing with the zip of her jacket. The jacket that Dad—not my dad—had conjured for her. “There’s a lot I need to tell you, Meera. I’m … my dad …” Emotion stuck in her throat, making it hard to speak.
“Oh no, what happened?” Meera raised both hands to her mouth. “Is he okay?”
“Yes. Yes, he’s okay. But …” Ridley couldn’t bring herself to say it. The words wouldn’t leave her lips. “Um, I have to tell you something about me,” she said instead.
“O-okay.”
“I … uh … I’m not like you.”
A frown line formed above the bridge of Meera’s glasses. “Okaaaaay.”
Ridley let out a rush of breath and said, “There’s magic inside me. Like, inside my body. I was born that way. I don’t have amulets beneath my skin—neither an AI1 nor AI2—and I don’t have to pull magic from the environment the way other people do. Or used to do, before it was banned. I can just use the magic from inside me to do conjurations.”
Unmoving, Meera stared at Ridley. Then she grabbed her commscreen from the desk and shoved it beneath her pillow. “Ridley, you can’t say things like that! You don’t know who might be listening.”
Ridley sighed, wondering if the meaning of her words had actually reached Meera’s brain, or if she’d got stuck on the fact that Ridley was talking about something illegal. “Don’t worry. I’m the one saying these things, not you, and I’m already a wanted criminal.”
“You—you are?”
“Yes. Because of this.” A demonstration was probably simpler than trying to explain things to Meera. Ridley pushed her sleeves up and extended her arms as glowing threads of blue pulsed beneath her skin. Wisps of magic drifted into the air. Ridley did a quick one-handed conjuration and flicked the magic toward her own head. Her hair swiftly pulled itself into a ponytail. It was a conjuration her mom—not my mom—had done often for her when she was little.
Meera blinked. Blinked again. Then she shook her head as if waking from a daze. “Ridley!” she hissed, her eyes darting furtively around as if she might find some member of law enforcement lurking in the shadows of her own home. “What the—are you crazy? You can’t do that here!”
“I’m sorry, but you didn’t seem to be getting what I was telling you. This isn’t a law I chose to break. This is the way I am. And I managed to keep this a secret—even from you—until the night I went to that party with Archer. Something went wrong there, and I had to use magic to get away quickly, but there were cops there and they saw me, and then Dad and I had to run.”
“You …” Meera was still staring at Ridley’s hands. “You just used magic,” she whispered. “In my house.”
Again, it seemed like Meera might be missing the point. “Meera, I’m trying to tell you all the things I’ve always had to keep from you. All the secrets. The reason that man was killed outside my home, and me being able to sneak around the city to steal things so I can help the people who really need it, and Lawrence Madson and his father trying to kill me, and Shen leaving without saying goodbye, and … it all comes down to this. There are people in the world called elementals, and I’m one of them.”
Meera was gaping at her, which was probably to be expected after the number of secrets that had tumbled from Ridley’s mouth in a single breath. “There are people who want to kill me because of what I can do, Meera. Because of the magic inside me. Because I can do things like this.” She became water in an instant, splashing to the floor and then leaping into the air as a sparking rush of flames before whooshing up to the ceiling as air, causing the curtains to billow. It all took place within a matte
r of seconds before she returned to her human form.
Her feet had barely touched the floor when Meera stumbled backward and smacked into the wardrobe. Her palms flattened against its doors. “Stop,” she whispered. Then louder: “Stop. Stop, stop, stop.” She covered her ears with her hands and squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t want to know any more. Please don’t tell me anything else, don’t show me anything else.”
“What? But …” Ridley’s heart floundered painfully. “I thought you’d want to know the truth.”
“Nope. No. Not this truth.” Meera lowered her hands and shook her head repeatedly. Her eyes were open again, pointed at the floor somewhere near Ridley’s feet. “There were times when it seemed like you were keeping things from me, and I always hoped you’d eventually be honest, but I didn’t realize you were keeping these kinds of secrets. Illegal secrets. Like, death sentence-worthy secrets.”
“Meera, just—”
“I don’t want to know!” Meera repeated, her eyes wide and desperate. “Please leave me out of this. I don’t want to end up in prison. I don’t want to …” She shook her head again as she edged past Ridley, keeping as much distance between the two of them as possible in this tiny room. “Please, Ridley, I love you and I’m so happy you’re okay, but … you have to go. I can’t be involved in this. My family can’t be involved. Please don’t get us into trouble. Please just … go.” She pulled the door open and rushed into the hallway, then stopped and looked back. “I’m sorry.” Her eyes met Ridley’s, her gaze pleading with Ridley to understand. “I’m so sorry. You’re my best friend and I love you, but … I’m not brave like you. I can’t do this.” She hurried away, her shoes swiping swiftly down the hall.
Stunned, lost for words or thoughts or any feeling other than the ache radiating from the center of her being, Ridley stared at the empty doorway. “What’s going on?” Meera’s sister Anika asked from the living room. “I thought you were coming to help me with—”
“We’re going for a walk,” Meera interrupted.
“What, now? But—”
“Now. Grab your coat. We’ll finish lunch and your history homework when we get back.” There was the scuffle of shoes and the mumble of voices and then the front door banged shut.
Ridley was alone.
12
Ridley was folded into the corner of a couch, her arms wrapped around her legs, her body enveloped by familiar, frayed cushions. Dull orange light from a street lamp seeped through the gauzy curtains, and the only sound filling her ears was the tapping of raindrops against the window and the rustle of the flimsy plastic taped across the hole in the window’s center. She was in the tiny living room of the apartment above Kayne’s Antiques.
She was home.
She had imagined returning here many times over the past few weeks, but in her mind, it hadn’t been like this. It hadn’t been so dark, so cold, so drenched in pain. Part of her wondered if she was even here. She didn’t remember planning to come. She had let the wind take her, and perhaps it had sensed she needed somewhere to feel safe. To pause. To breathe. To process.
Archer.
The Cataclysm.
Dad.
And now Meera.
Ridley needed her best friend, but her best friend had quite literally run away from her. She supposed it was what she deserved, after keeping so many secrets from Meera. They were life-threatening secrets, as Meera had pointed out, and Ridley shouldn’t have put the Singhs in danger by trying to share those secrets. She should have kept her distance.
I am alone.
She stared across the room at a framed wedding photo of her parents on the wall. Golden and glowing and looking absolutely nothing like Ridley. Maverick and Claudia Kayne, she reminded herself. Not my parents. Sarah and Karl Ohlson were her parents. She was not Ridley Kayne, she was Ridley Ohlson. The name felt foreign in her thoughts. “Ridley Ohlson,” she whispered, then shivered. Saying it out loud was even worse.
She covered her face with her hands and released a long breath. Dad loved her—she knew that without a doubt—yet she felt betrayed in a way she couldn’t make sense of. Some logical corner of her mind knew that none of this should make a difference to who she truly was. Dad had raised her. He had been her father—was still her father—even though they shared no genetic material. But she was left with the horrible feeling of being … set loose. Of not belonging anywhere. Somehow she was both the same person and not the same person at all. The same person … reframed.
She lowered her hands and whispered, “I am alone.”
You are not alone.
It wasn’t a voice. It wasn’t words. It was a feeling, the distinct sense of being comforted. Magic, Ridley realized. This was the way it always communicated with her, though she was usually in elemental form when she ‘heard’ it. Although … was that true? She’d been human when she first sensed magic trying to warn her that the Shadow Society was coming to attack the reserve. First in the afternoon when she’d been with Archer, and then later that evening as she’d returned to her cabin, before she’d been distracted by Nathan and Saoirse’s conversation. And then magic had warned her in her dream. She hadn’t been in elemental form then.
You are not alone, came the feeling once again, accompanied by the sense of being held. Of course, technically, she was being held by the couch. Embraced by the cushions. But it was more than that.
Or perhaps I’m losing my mind, Ridley thought. She shifted sideways and lay down, burrowing into that quiet, unwavering promise that she was not alone. Her fingers searched near her feet until they found the edge of a blanket. She pulled it up over her head. She knew it wasn’t safe to stay here long. Somehow, the apartment hadn’t been broken into in the weeks it had stood empty—which Ridley had put down to the ever-present stigma of Dad being a former magicist—but that didn’t mean it would continue to be safe. A thief might decide to take a chance, hoping there were no illegal conjurations protecting the place. A drone might fly overhead and detect Ridley’s presence along with her lack of AI1 and AI2.
But she couldn’t bring herself to move right now. She wanted to ignore the rest of the world. Ignore Nathan’s plans for the future. Ignore the possibility that she might be as powerful as he suggested. Ignore the difficult conversation she would have to have with Dad when she saw him again. She wanted to simply … lie here and fall asleep and not feel.
Run.
Ridley’s eyes popped open, seeing nothing but darkness beneath the blanket. The quiet sense of comfort that had promised to lull her to sleep was gone in an instant. Panic took its place. Run! it told her. Go! Now! Hide!
She threw the blanket off and bolted upright—just as an odd tearing sound reached her ears and a shadow of movement behind the curtain caught her eye. She launched to her feet, her magic already swirling around her. Air, she thought, but in the blink between human form and invisibility, yellow light flickered behind her, and then everything—
13
Ridley woke slowly, becoming gradually aware of the tight discomfort at her wrists and ankles. She blinked. Blinked again. Her stomach turned, but a deep breath kept her from vomiting. She was lying on a bed, her head resting on dark gray sheets and her hands bound in front of her with a cable tie. She tried to pull one leg up, but pain bit into her ankles. Her legs were also bound together.
Stupid, she thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She should never have gone back home. Especially after revealing herself to Lilah at the Davenports’ apartment yesterday—or whenever it had been. Days and nights had begun to blend together ever since the attack on the reserve.
Ridley pushed herself up and swung her bound legs over the edge of the bed as she looked around. Of all the rooms she’d woken in after being unexpectedly knocked out, this was by far the nicest. A thick cream carpet concealed the floor, and the walls were covered in interlocking geometric panels of dark gray. In the far corner stood a modern bucket-style armchair beside a pair of small, round nesting tables with gleaming brass le
gs and marble tops. There were no windows. No other furnishings. There was, however, a door near the armchair.
Locked, Ridley thought. It must surely be locked. Still, she had to at least investigate. She stood. Her head spun lazily and the desire to throw up increased several notches. She took another few moments to breathe, managing to keep her body upright and the limited contents of her stomach where they belonged. When she was certain she wasn’t about to fall over, she began to hop.
She made it about halfway across the room before something shocked her cheek, her hand, her knee. She recoiled, stepping back instinctively. Which was impossible with two feet tied together, so instead she toppled over and landed hard on the carpeted floor. Her stomach heaved, and she was convinced she really would vomit this time, but after a moment of retching, she recovered.
With a shaky breath and a groan, she squinted up at the diamond-shaped mesh-like layer that had appeared, dividing the room in half. An orange glow rippled across it, originating from the spot she’d walked into. The glow faded. The silvery diamond shapes vanished. Ridley narrowed her eyes. Whatever it was, she had no doubt it was still there.
She scooted back to the bed, pushed herself up, and sat. Her pulse drummed a dull, throbbing ache across her head, and something a little like panic rose up to mingle with the nausea. Every crushing revelation from the past day or two—Archer, the Cataclysm, Dad, Meera—receded in her mind as the primal need to survive took precedence over everything else.
Don’t. Panic, she reminded herself. Breathe in. Breathe out. This is not the—
A beep sounded from the direction of the door. It swung open, and in strode Alastair Davenport. “Ridley,” he said, his tone businesslike. He glanced up from his commpad as the door swung shut behind him. “You’ll be moved soon, but since you’re awake, I thought we could have a brief chat.” He swiped at the screen of the commpad, then placed it on the larger of the two side tables as he sat in the armchair. He leaned back and crossed one leg over the other, comfortable and composed in his perfectly tailored suit. The man who orchestrated the end of the world. The man who would kill her.
Elemental Heir (Ridley Kayne Chronicles Book 3) Page 10