by Ellie Margot
I wrote this tome for you, and only you, because you are the only one who has the ears and the heart to hear it.
You may be wondering why I hid its words. The world is a dangerous place. People that have always been trusted are the ones who hold a knife at your back.
This is not a world for calm. This is a world for burning.
And burning, it is.
I love you, my dear girl, and I wish that I was able to just give this to you right now. You’re a tree away, but I see the end coming like a bird on the horizon, and my time is short.
Your mother cannot hear me. Physically, she has the ability, but mentally, she is hardened, and I cannot reach her.
She loves you in her own way, but she will keep you here forever, and if you found this book, you ventured into a world she’s turned her back on, and I have never been more proud of you.
Flowers are meant to bloom, my child, not to be cut and kept on display.
I made your mother, and I love her, but everyone makes mistakes.
I hope this book will guide you when I cannot. I know you will be the light of Vitan even in this moment of much darkness.
You are my light, my hope, my everything, dear Riette, and I am with you always, even when you feel like you are walking alone.
Riette turned the page. She knew full well that the words ended before this, but she couldn’t shake the idea that if she just looked, she could hear her again.
A tear fell from her cheek. She touched her face and found the wetness there. She didn’t know how long she had been crying. But she couldn’t deny that she was.
She read the words again. It was like her grandmother was, indeed, right beside her, but that fact that she actually wasn’t gutted Riette like a physical blade threatening to tear her in two.
Riette touched the page she would cherish for all of her days to come. She had to find more. There was a way to get the other pages.
She just needed someone stronger than herself to help her do it.
Chapter 32
The number of times Riette read those words by nightfall was in the hundreds. What danger was her grandmother in? Did it still exist? Why was her mother a mistake?
There had been food left for her, but most of it went uneaten. Barry had helped himself to part of it and had forced her to do the same, but beyond that, she didn’t have the stomach for it.
She needed out. Out of that cage. Out of Vitan. If her grandmother said she could save them, she would. She just needed the tools to do it.
She was still looking at the book when she heard someone coming. Riette got up quickly and tucked the book back into her bag, turning just in time to see two people getting closer to the bars with every second.
She stepped closer and saw it was Cassian and Mekhi. Riette touched her chest and ran to the bars. “I need out of here.”
“That’s why we’ve come,” said Cassian.
“Is she planning on releasing me?”
Cassian looked down, and Mekhi bit his lip. “She’s gone crazy, Ri. It’s not the same here.”
“What do you mean?”
Cassian shook his head. “The people. Everyone. They’re nervous. Your mother has been making weird decisions. People think she’s tampering with their powers. There’s talk of the burning trees, but no one is allowed to speak of it.”
Riette turned and went back to her bag to get out the book.
“What are you doing?” asked Mekhi.
“The book was empty,” said Riette.
“Excuse me?” asked Mekhi. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, right?”
Riette turned back around with it.
Cassian looked a similar shade of green as the trees that surrounded them.
“No, it’s okay. Part of it is readable.” She pointed to the necklace on her neck. “See this? Some of the words showed up when I ran the necklace across the pages.”
“Okay, so it’s charmed,” said Cassian. He nodded.
“Yes, we just need someone powerful enough to help me read the rest of it.”
“Riette—”
“Read it. My grandmother is warning me, warning us. She said my mother will never let me leave here. She predicted all of this. Something happened to her, and my mother is at the center of it.”
“Riette, it’s Alluette. She’s your mother.”
Riette swallowed. “Yes, and that’s why the betrayal of it all is more than I can fucking take, just about.”
Cassian shook his head. “Maybe—”
“Don’t say it,” warned Riette.
Cassian looked toward Mekhi. They both had the same expression when they turned toward her.
“I’m not crazy. I’m not making this up.” She took a breath. “You all think I’m losing my mind, but read it.”
She held up the book and watched them look it over. Mekhi nodded when he finished, and Cassian bit his lip.
“Riette, we need to think about this. We have to make an informed decision. We can’t just trust—”
“We have to. My grandmother’s words are the only chance we have to save this place. To save everything.”
“It’s your mother,” said Cassian.
“My mother is the reason I’m in here,” said Riette. She looked to Mekhi. “You believe me?”
Mekhi looked back at Cassian, at the book, and then at Riette again. “I believe you. But that doesn’t mean we jump without looking. Cassian has a point.”
“All I’m looking at is a cell and a life sentence,” said Riette. “She will never let me not be a prisoner here. She all but told me that.”
“So she did come?” asked Cassian.
Riette bit the inside of her cheek. “Yeah, she came. We fought. It didn’t end well.”
“Riette.”
“What? Shit came up. Pent-up stuff.”
“You can’t fight with her if you want to get out of here,” said Cassian.
“He’s got a point,” said Mekhi.
“So what was I going to do?” asked Riette. “Lie to her?”
“Kind of?” asked Mekhi. “Listen to me. You play nice with the warden and get out of here, or you stick to your morals and rot in the corner.”
Riette looked at Cassian. He didn’t look at her.
“Where’s Trinity?” she asked.
Still nothing.
“Cassian, where is she?” Cassian and Mekhi shared another look. “No, use your words. Where is Trinity? Is she still with Corin?”
“Yes,” said Cassian.
“Well?” asked Riette. “She was let in, so what’s wrong? What’s the problem?”
“She barely got in,” said Mekhi.
Cassian cut him a look. “What? She asked.”
“You didn’t tell me they gave her trouble about coming in,” Riette said to Cassian.
He looked at her then. “I didn’t want you to worry.”
“She’s with Corin because the only reason they let her in was Cassian taking her on as his charge,” said Mekhi.
Cassian glared at him again.
“What’s the big deal? She’s your responsibility. If that’s how she gets in—”
“No, it’s about how fucking pissed Alluette was,” said Mekhi.
“I don’t understand,” said Riette. She turned toward Cassian. “What’s going on?”
Cassian gritted his jaw. “Nothing. It’s nothing. The important thing is that we need to figure out the best way to get you out of here without getting killed in the process.”
“Get me out of here or Vitan?” asked Riette.
Cassian looked at her. “One thing at a time. Let me work on something. We’ll be back to check on you.”
“Only when the lady guards are working,” added Mekhi.
“I resent you calling them lady guards,” said Riette.
“You’re right. That was fucked. What I meant was, when Zia is working. She’s the only one bad enough at her job to think Cassian is worth the trouble of getting fired and jail time.”
/> “And on that note, let’s go,” said Cassian. He turned toward Riette. “Stay out of trouble okay?”
“I’m in a cage. What can I do?” Riette still held the book in her hands, but it was closed.
“Don’t think too long on that. I don’t want the question to inspire you.” Cassian nodded toward the door, and Mekhi and he started to walk out.
Mekhi turned back right before they disappeared again through the opening. “Don’t worry, okay, Sparky?”
“Don’t call me Sparky,” Riette said, but they both didn’t laugh.
They knew there was more than enough to worry about.
Chapter 33
Several hours passed, and Riette barely got the book in the bag before her next visitor came to light.
When Alluette entered a room, she brought the light with her. The room would go quiet in her presence. The earth, for that moment, would be still. And Riette wished the awe would go away now that she knew there was more to her mother than she ever wished there was.
But the awe was still there. Taunting her. She still felt like a child in her presence, and she wondered if that would ever go away.
Riette looked again to make sure the book was fully hidden before walking toward the bars to meet the woman who’d raised her. The woman she would have trusted with her life. The woman who may not have liked her choices but who she always knew loved her.
“Have you come to your senses?” asked Alluette.
She didn’t lead with small talk, but at the same time, she never had. There was already so much noise in the world, Riette remembered her mother saying, why add more to it with words that didn’t need to be said?
“I feel that I have,” said Riette. Her voice was quiet.
Alluette looked at her. All of her. She stared at her eye again. A moment passed and then another with it.
“Can you fix it?” Riette asked. “Cassian seemed to think—”
“What Cassian thinks no longer concerns me.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think I can,” said Alluette, ignoring her last question in favor of her first. “If I knew it’s origin.”
Riette thought about Trinity. She didn’t want Trinity to be on her mother’s radar any more than she already was.
“A Siren—”
“Sirens? Have you gone mad?” Alluette stepped closer.
“I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“No one does. Riette, I raised you better than that.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You don’t have to with Sirens. They do the damage themselves. What irresponsibility—”
“Mother—”
“The idea you would be silly enough to make eye contact—”
“I didn’t—”
“It’s the sickness then.”
“What?” asked Riette.
“All of your rash, brazen behavior. You’re sick with it. The Siren song. The sea. I wish I could say I was relieved, but even still—”
“There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Riette look at yourself. You left my beautiful little girl—”
“I’m not a little girl.”
“Only a little girl finds offense in the title,” said Alluette. Then she paused. “You left my beautiful daughter and came back—”
“A monster?” offered Riette.
Alluette went quiet again. “That has yet to be determined.”
“You think out of the two of us that I would be the monster?”
“What are you implying?” asked Alluette. Riette recognized her tone. She had heard it before but not directed at her.
The few times she had seen her mother’s full powers directed at another person, that tone had been used. The few times her mother had been consumed with such hatred that she ceased to be her mother and became something else, that tone was present.
“Nothing,” said Riette, her voice every bit the one she had had as a child.
“No, you were bold enough to start to say it. Be adult enough to finish.”
Cassian’s warnings rang in her ears. She stilled her tongue before speaking. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“And that’s the problem.”
“Excuse me?”
“I keep waiting for you to be a leader, and you keep bringing me a child who—”
“I am not a child, mother.”
“You are my child, and you are not what the people are asking for.” Riette reared back in her cell as if her mother had actually hit her. “Do you enjoy this? Watching me suffer? I wait and I wait for you step up, and you step back so far I can barely see you for looking.”
“Was my father enough?”
Alluette turned. “Oh, please.”
“No, answer me. Did you hate him like you hate me right now?”
“I don’t hate you. It’s a sign of immaturity to oscillate to such extremes.”
“Then don’t talk about me. Talk about him. I deserve to know what happened.”
“Deserve? You want to talk about what you deserve?” A bitter laughed left Alluette’s lips.
“He was my father.”
“And I am your mother.”
“Grandmother—”
“Are you parading around all of the bones?” asked Alluette.
Riette sucked in a breath. She knew she shouldn’t speak, but she couldn’t hold it in. “Grandmother was—”
“Your grandmother was two steps from senile.”
“Don’t you speak of her like that,” said Riette.
Alluette turned and closed the distance once more between her and the bars. “No, I’ve hid you from this long enough. Your grandmother, be her your hero or not, was two steps from out of her mind.”
“She knew I would—”
“She knew nothing.”
“She tried to warn us. The trees—”
“Your grandmother is the last person on Esper who could solve our problem.”
“At least she acknowledged there was a problem.”
Alluette laughed again.
It burned in Riette. The sound of it. “How could you? This is bigger than you, than us.”
“It’s always black and white with you, isn’t it?” asked Alluette. “I’m your hero, or I’m your enemy.”
“I never said—”
“You don’t have to, Riette. It’s written on your features. How you look at me. Was I so bad, so wrong? Did I do something to deserve this scorn?”
“Mother—”
“What, Riette? What?”
“You have to let me out of here.”
“Then you have to promise. Swear on your life. On everyone you hold dear.”
“Swear what?” asked Riette.
“To rule.”
Silence filled the space.
“Mother. We need to find a cure for this.”
“I’m asking you to take your spot at the table.”
“I’m not saying I won’t, but if we don’t fix things, there won’t be a table. There won’t be a place to rule.”
“When Sebastian—” Alluette started.
“Who’s Sebastian?”
“No one. I misspoke.” Alluette touched her hair.
Riette searched her memories, and she couldn’t find anything. Not once had her mother stumbled, looked nervous. Not once. “Mother—”
“Enough. I have heard all I can from your lips for one day.” At that, she turned to leave her again.
“Mother! Alluette!”
But she was gone.
Chapter 34
Cassian and Mekhi came again that night. She knew they would, and she was waiting. Her hands were on the bars, and she stared at the opening as if the act could make them appear.
For hours, it didn’t, but when they did show, Riette felt like she had something to do with it. It was a lie she told herself. It was a comfort she gave.
Her bag was packed. Barry and Bark were safe. She just needed Cassian. To talk. To make sense of the world. She would be
okay.
Cassian saw her and rushed forward. He touched her hands on the bars. “What’s wrong?”
“Get me Guy and get me out.”
“Riette—”
“We’re leaving, or we’ll perish trying.”
“What happened?”
“Something is wrong with Alluette.”
“Your mother—”
“No, Cassian. Something is wrong. The world is burning to ashes, and she’s breaking at the seams.”
“Then we need to stay to help her.”
“Look outside, Cassian,” she said, and then she walked to the window. “Tell me you don’t see it.”
“Of course, I see it.”
She walked back to the bars. “Get Guy now.” She swallowed. “I cannot stay here. Not while everything is burning.” She stopped. Mania was taking over her breathing. “It’s not even home anymore. Not until I make things right.”
Cassian grabbed the bars. “Take a breath.”
Riette turned away. Her shoulders were hunched, and she closed her eyes again.
The humming was back, the wind. Things felt so out of her control that her hands were shaking and sparks were flying with them.
“Riette,” Cassian started, but she didn’t turn.
She needed to be a leader. Leaders didn’t panic. They didn’t freak out in front of the people that needed her the most. They stood strong. They didn’t fold. They didn’t let the sea, or anything else, take them over and steal their soul.
She felt the wind blowing through her hair, stronger than it had. It was an unnatural amount, swirling in a cyclone fashion around the small cell. Riette turned and watched Cassian’s face pinched in concentration.
She came back into herself. He dropped his shoulders, and the wind stopped.
“Your powers work here?” she asked.
“I didn’t know if they would,” he said.
There was something in her throat. “Thank you,” she said.
“Well, it’s obvious you’re going bat shit in here,” Mekhi said. “We’ll get Guy and do this. I don’t want you eating your hair or some shit if left on your own for too much longer.”
Riette laughed, and her hands stopped shaking. “I’m okay. I’ll survive, but I wouldn’t bet on how long if we don’t work on getting me the fuck out of here. And pronto.”