“Your imagination wouldn’t get you anywhere close.”
Turner grinned. “She’s pretty hot.”
Eli stared at him, expressionless.
Turner’s grin widened. “Uh huh.”
Eli grimaced. “Fuck off.”
They’d been friends too long. Turner didn’t need any confirmation that something went down between Eli and Dajia. But the banter helped Eli forget his father and the cage.
“Now, don’t forget, Your Grace.” Turner turned his nose up and adopted a pinched, nasally voice. “When impersonating the regent, you must screw your face up like there’s a dick in your ass the whole time.”
Eli suppressed a smile and straightened the robe on his shoulders. “You shouldn’t speak ill of the near-dead.”
“No love lost, and you know it.” Turner sat up and deposited his mug on the table. His grin fell away. “What’s going to happen?”
“I’m going to sit in a carriage and look like an ass in front of all of Sector 14.”
“After that.”
Eli shrugged. “I’m assuming today’s festivities are a celebration of the end of days. One last hoorah before the ravagers take over.”
“Fuck.” Turner ran both hands back through his hair and slouched again in his chair. “That’s it, huh? The walls fall, and we die.”
Eli turned his back on a reflection that looked too eerily like a younger version of his father. He didn’t like the comparison; it was too harsh a reminder how the man existed in him in ways he couldn’t control. He knew he shared traits with the regent, but now, he worried even more that the power-hungry demon who had sat in a wheelchair surrounded by death existed inside Eli, too.
He sat in the chair across from Turner. The silver vest tugged tight across his abdomen, restrictive, confining—like his legacy and future. “I can’t do what my father does. I don’t have even half his power.”
“And he’s killed everyone who could have possibly helped you.”
“Like Justin and Vanele Bray.”
Turner glanced up from his hands, an eyebrow quirking. “Yeah. I remember them.”
“She’s their daughter.”
The fact that Turner didn’t say “Who?” was a testament to their long-standing friendship. Instead, he asked, “How?”
Eli held out his hands, palms up. “You got me. She said the regent’s curse didn’t work.”
Turner’s face darkened. “It worked on my cousin.”
Eli rested against the back of the chair, attempting to find comfort in a vest a size too small for his muscular chest. “It did, didn’t it? How old was she?”
“Thirteen.” Turner huffed out a breath and slapped his knees. “Younger than me. I still ask myself why them and not us?”
“Because your aunt was incredibly powerful.”
“That doesn’t mean Claudia was powerful. Look at you.”
Eli’s jaw tightened.
Turner looked immediately peevish. “Dude, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yeah, you did. And you’re right, so don’t apologize.” He stared out the window. The sky had begun to clear, and pale blue showed between the clouds. The sun beamed down onto the packed Palace Green, not hot enough to melt the snow the landkeepers hadn’t been able to clear, but bright enough to make the mounds shine like diamonds.
He had hoped no one would come, that no one would care about a stupid parade when blood still stained the asphalt in Beat 3. But gazing out over the rolling mass of people waiting to see the start of the parade, Eli had to concede that his mother had a point. The people needed their rituals. They found comfort when things stayed the same, even if the world was falling around them.
“Your talents as a witch are wasted here,” Eli finally spoke without looking at his friend.
“I’m muscle, not magick.”
“Because it aided the regent’s purposes.” Eli considered the regulators he knew. He’d grown up with many of them; he’d grown up tutored by the older men and women. General Coyle… Commander Ryan… Every regulator he could conjure in his mind was extremely powerful in the magickal arts.
Was that on purpose? Had his father spent the last twenty years building a powerful army of witches loyal to him?
His father had hand-chosen his warriors, turning the best witches into muscle. Then he’d thrown his son into the mix. Eli had befriended them, learned from them, become family.
It was genius. Terrifying that the regent could be so calculating, but genius, nonetheless. The regent had created an incredibly powerful army loyal to his powerless son.
“Thirteen,” Eli said.
Turner’s brown crinkled. “Yeah. She was thirteen.”
“She was Recorded. She went through her Wanding.”
Turner nodded.
“Dajia Bray had neither of those things.”
“You think the curse was tied to the Recording?”
Eli turned away from the colorful mass upon the Palace Green. He reached into his robe and extracted his wand: Dark amber base and an emerald tip, woven together with pure 14k gold. He sat it on the table between them.
“There’s a piece of me in that,” Eli mused out loud.
Turner pulled his own wand from the waistband of his jeans. His was wooden, carved with sigils for protection, and set with miniscule rubies. He sat it beside Eli’s. “A piece of your soul.”
Eli met his eye. “What if that’s what the curse searched for?”
“The missing piece?”
“Yeah. So if they didn’t go through the Wanding…”
“The curse didn’t recognize them.” Turner shook his head. “A stupid mistake to make. The regent is smarter than that.”
“Don’t give him too much credit,” Eli warned. “He’s power-hungry. Being power-hungry means making stupid mistakes. I think there are a lot of ‘stupid mistakes’ still alive that he doesn’t know about.”
“Kids died, though. Do you remember that female regulator who committed suicide because she had to murder an infant?”
Eli shivered. In the wake of mass-murder, her suicide had shocked the sector into near-revolution. “The baby, if I remember correctly, was home with her parents. Just the three of them. They wouldn’t have bothered with the curse. Obviously that was their kid, and as such, had to be eliminated.” He felt callous even saying the words. “What about the kids who weren’t home? Witch kids in human houses where they were just another human child.”
Turner nodded slowly. “We weren’t so segregated then. I lived in Beat 2—it was like fifty percent human, fifty percent witch.”
“I need to talk to Dajia again. Find out exactly what went down the day of the purge.”
Turner smirked. “Talk?”
“Fuck you.” Eli threw a decorative pillow—one of his mother’s little touches to his room—at Turner’s head. For a moment, he forgot that the fate of the sector rested on his shoulders.
14
Dajia
It was a miracle he hadn’t changed his mind and decided to arrest her after she’d blackened his gorgeous ice-blue eye.
Dajia was certain assaulting the heir regent of Sector 14 would be considered a crime. She was even more certain said crime would probably carry a death sentence under the current high regent.
But damn him, Eli had just seemed amused. He’d grinned, touching his right eye. “You got quite a punch there.”
Dajia had stumbled to her bare feet. At that point, she hadn’t felt the cold at all. Her whole body had been hot enough to melt snow after rolling around with the heir regent between her legs. “You should see my roundhouse kick.”
He laughed. The sound slid over her, caressing her arms as if he had touched her. The motion lit up his face, highlighting his high, arched brows, his strong, square jaw, and his thick lips, reddened from her kisses.
She had hoped he’d kiss her once more before they parted. She had hoped he would ask to see her again.
Instead, he asked, “Do you
think there are more of you? Powerful witches who survived the purge?”
Dajia thought of the families who had lived through the breach. They’d been on her mind all day, especially after talking with Liam and learning he was the wallkeeper’s son. She nodded. “I do, Your Grace.”
“Call me Eli. I owe you,” he had said on his way down the front steps. “Anything you want.”
She hadn’t had the guts to tell him that thing she wanted had suddenly become him.
DAJIA AWOKE LONG AFTER HER normal time. She had spent half the night remembering every moment of her encounter with Eli and the other half dreaming of her parents’ bleeding bodies. The juxtaposition of one experience against the other had left her feeling like a rag wrung out to dry.
In the kitchen, the coffee pot sat cold, and the remains of her mother’s scrambled eggs rested on a plate in the sink beside her used coffee mug. Her mother worked on Saturday mornings at the clothing co-op, and was usually gone by the time Dajia got up. She’d never minded the alone time; being a schoolteacher gave her plenty to do in her idle moments.
Today felt different, however. The quiet of the house seemed tomb-like, which made her think of death. Even conjuring an image of Eli’s face couldn’t chase away the demons.
Dajia put on an old CD of Myra’s to dispel the gloom. She washed the dishes and put them away, then brewed a pot of her own to drink while she graded quizzes. She sang along to the music as Ghost snoozed in her lap, and managed to stay focused long enough to finish.
As she tucked the last quiz into her messenger bag—98%, one of her best students—the lights flickered. Dajia glanced up at the simple chandelier over the dining room table. The bulbs flickered again, and the house powered down.
Ghost lifted her pointed nose to the ceiling and flicked her tail with an uncanny sense of understanding.
Dajia stared at the dark chandelier, too numb to be stunned. She realized then what she hadn’t said to Elliott Pierce last night—what’s wrong with your father?
The furnace and lights came back to life in less than half a minute, but the meaning was very, very clear to Dajia.
All was not well in Sector 14.
AFTER A SHOWER AND CHANGE of clothes, Dajia stepped into her snow boots by the front door and left to meet Clark and Charlie for brunch. They had plans to eat and then join the Founding Day festivities down by the palace. Dajia felt it morbid to go on as if things hadn’t changed, but the routine would help, she reasoned. She went to the Founding Day parade with Charlie and Clark every year. Maybe the bright colors and bustle of humanity would erase some of the shadows she still felt from the breach. And help her forget—for a moment—the impending doom at her fingertips.
The sun had broken through the cloud cover. Even though winter still held Sector 14 firmly in its grasp, it was the kind of bright Saturday in Beat 3 that would have once bustled with play and laughter. Now, only one lone figure moved on the street.
Dajia passed the empty houses beside her own—broken windows shuttered against the elements for the time being—and sent up a small prayer for the innocents lost. Senseless loss, like her parents’ deaths, making her quiet home seem fatal.
Near the intersection of M and 10th, the lone figure came into view: a child bundled in a dark coat and furry hat as she constructed a snowman from the fresh snow. As Dajia drew near, the child glanced up and Dajia recognized Hanna Parker.
Dajia waved. “Hey, Hanna!”
The girl gave her a half-hearted wave in return but said nothing.
Dajia crunched across the snow, her bare hands shoved deep into her jacket pockets. She made a show of humming as she appraised the lumpy snowman. “Exquisite sculpture. Excellent workmanship. Blue ribbon quality!”
Hanna finally giggled, packing another handful of wet snow against the lopsided head. “Don’t be silly, Dajia.”
“Why not? Life without silliness is no life at all.” Dajia pinched the girl’s rosy cheek. She searched for any hint of Erin Parker’s face in her daughter but found none. “You must look like your dad, huh?”
Hanna spared her a shrug. “I never met him.”
“Oh.” While she had visited with the Parker family after the breach, Erin had specifically mentioned losing her husband to pneumonia the year before. Hanna was nine; she couldn’t have forgotten her father that fast. And she was born long after the purge, so she couldn’t have been a forgotten witch child…
But Erin could have been.
“Is your mom home?” Dajia asked.
Hanna nodded. “She’s in the kitchen.”
“Can I go in?”
Hanna nodded again, humming as she slathered a new layer of snow on the snowman’s face.
DAJIA STAMPED SNOW FROM HER boots before she entered the Parker house, warmth replacing the frigid northern air. She stopped on a colorful woven rug just inside as packed-in snow began to melt from her soles.
“Hello? Erin?” Dajia called, peeling off her gloves.
The pretty red-head appeared at the end of the hall, a glass in one hand and a dish towel in the other. Water dripped from the glass to the tile floor. “Dajia. What are you doing here?”
“I saw Hanna outside and thought I would check in. How’s your eye?”
“It feels okay, thank you.” She offered a grateful smile and resumed drying the glass. Did you need something?”
Better to just spit it out, Dajia thought. She plowed on. “Are you a witch?”
Erin gasped. The glass slipped from her fingers and crashed to the floor, shattering. Several pieces slid down the hall and stopped against Dajia’s melting boots.
“No. Whatever gave you that idea?” Erin stooped to gather the broken glass.
Dajia opened her mouth to speak, but her words stilled in her throat as the lights flickered. She and Erin both glanced at the lamp on the hallway table. It flickered twice more, and then the foyer plunged into darkness.
Erin’s voice cut through a sudden silence. “That’s the second time in less than an hour.”
Dajia could barely make out her kneeling form in the gray, ambient light coming from the living room windows. “I know. My house, too.”
“Something’s wrong.”
“I know.”
“The wall. The electricity. The heir regent standing in for PSAs…” Erin stared at the broken glass in her hand. The shadows deepened her ginger freckles. “I’m not a witch, but Hanna’s father was.”
“He survived the purge?”
Erin nodded, the movement nearly lost in the dim room. “He was twelve when it happened. Five months before his thirteenth birthday. They came while he was sleeping over at a friend’s house. A human friend.”
“His parents died?”
“Both of them.” Erin sighed and stood, leaving the glass where it lay. “We married when we were young, barely eighteen. I had Hanna less than a year later. My husband… he was a troubled man.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “He had a rare heart defect that left him dizzy and breathless. It made him feel weak. He never fully got over his parents’ deaths, I think. When Hanna was two, he committed suicide.”
“How?” Dajia asked, a sinking feeling in her stomach. Her fingertips tingled, though the stars were hidden by the light of day.
“He went over the wall.”
15
Dajia
Dajia said goodbye to Hanna as she passed her in the yard. The little girl waved merrily, still humming. She’d moved on to decorating the snowman’s finished body, which obviously required all of her attention.
Dajia couldn’t shake the horror of what Erin Parker had told her. The people of Sector 14 knew only horrible pain and certain death awaited outside the dome of the regent’s power. Cory Parker had taken his wand, cut a door in the dome, and turned himself over to the ravagers. In front of his wife.
The very idea of dying at the hands of the ravagers filled Dajia with dread. Eaten alive, like a gazelle caught by a lion pride from the biology teacher’s old National Geo
graphic tapes. What could cause a man to choose a death so horrific?
Foot traffic on the streets thickened as Dajia wound her way deeper into the city. The abnormally large number of pedestrians could have been explained by the anticipation of the parade—due to start in an hour—or it could have been the fact that nobody had electricity. She shuddered to think how cold her house would be after several hours without heat.
Dajia pushed open the door to her favorite diner, thankful to find it warm. They’d lit the stoves manually, and red-faced cooks worked over blazing fires that doubled as heating units for the small restaurant.
The place was packed full, but Charlie’s blonde head popped up over the crowd and she waved. Dajia cut through the mass, thankful to see Charlie stepping off her chair at a table, biscuits already steaming before her.
Clark tossed an arm around Dajia’s shoulders and kissed her temple. “How you holding up, soldier?”
She shrugged, taking the chair beside Charlie and snatching a biscuit from the basket. “Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve passed the shock stage.”
She’d already told them what she’d witnessed the night of the breach, so she caught Clark up on what had happened yesterday with Liam, and then told them both about her conversation with Erin Parker.
“Wow.” Clark sat back in his seat and let out an astonished huff. “I wonder how many there are. The purge was fucking brutal. I can’t believe anyone lived.”
Dajia pointed at herself.
“Well, yeah, I know you lived, but I dunno, you’re like superhuman or something.”
“First of all,” Charlie said, “she’s not human.”
Clark waved his hands irritably.
“Second of all, if Dajia lived, it makes sense that others did, too.”
Dajia nodded. “Right on both counts.”
“So what are you going to do?” Charlie asked.
“The little girl, Hanna Parker? She doesn’t have a wand. She has this little branch she uses, but it isn’t a proper wand. It’s a miracle she and her mother survived the breach.” Dajia shook her head. “I used to get so angry about not having my own wand. I’m lucky. I have my mom’s and my dad’s. So I think I might give her Mom’s.”
The Shadows and Sorcery Collection Page 47