by Sadie Moss
My jaw tightened, remembering the ugly look on Jonas’s face when he saw me at his house. “Not by everyone.”
Beatrice sighed, her expression sobering. “No. Not by everyone. I will do what I can to change that though. You’ve made me question many of my assumptions, and I sincerely hope there are others here who will do the same. Reforms must be made.”
I sat up straighter. “Do you really think there are any other Representatives who might be willing to hear what I have to say? Most of the ones I’ve met so far seem to hate the Blighted.”
She waved her hand. “A few, perhaps. It won’t be easy to sway them, but I can help you determine who is worth working on.” She’d relaxed as we spoke, but now her face grew tight again. “But, sweet girl, there’s another reason I wanted to talk to you. I hesitate to even mention this, because I’m not completely certain of it. It’s just a series of strange feelings and doubts, and questions with no satisfactory answers. I have a… a suspicion about someone in the palace. I’ve buried my unease for so long because I had no one to talk to, no one who would possibly believe me. I didn’t want to risk my entire career over a hunch. And if I’m wrong… I cannot fathom accusing an innocent person of a crime this heinous.”
She was babbling now, talking to herself almost as much as me while her fingers tapped out a restless drumbeat on her desk.
I rested my forearms on my knees, leaning toward her as if pulled by a magnet. “What are you talking about, Beatrice? What are you saying?”
My grandmother laced her hands together and raised them to her chin, seeming to gather herself.
“If I tell you my suspicions, promise me you won’t do anything rash. It’s possible this is all just the imaginings of an old, tired woman.”
I clenched my hands into fists, trying to tamp down my impatience. If she’d truly been keeping this worry—whatever it was—secret for years, then she deserved a minute or two to work up the courage to speak it aloud. The fact that she was telling me at all was incredible.
Finally, she took a deep breath and rested her palms calmly on the desk. Her gray eyes were clear when they met mine.
“Sweet girl, I’m afraid that—”
BOOM!
The wall behind her disintegrated, the force of the blast throwing her forward. Everything in the room moved as if in slow motion—the huge desk, the chairs, drawers full of papers.
Me.
I flew backward across the room, slamming into something hard.
A piercing pain cut through my body.
Smoke and dust filled my vision.
Chapter 15
For a moment, the world went black.
The pain faded, and nothingness took its place.
Then a harsh cry filled my ears, and my eyes flew open again.
Beatrice!
I must’ve lost consciousness for only a few seconds, because the choking dust and debris from the explosion still filled the space. Little beams of sunlight pierced the thick haze as if trying to heal the damage with their bright warmth.
My head throbbed, and something wet trickled down the side of my face. My whole body ached, and when I tried to scramble to my feet, my right leg gave out with a sharp twinge of pain. Collapsing back to the floor, I crawled forward on three limbs, trying not to move my injured leg any more than I had to.
“Beatrice! Grandma!” My voice seemed too weak to penetrate the smoke, even as the thick haze cleared slowly. I heard shouts and screams from a distance but barely registered them. “Grandma!”
A low, breathy moan rose up from somewhere ahead of me, and I followed the sound, shuffling my way through fragments of wood and shattered glass.
Finally, I saw her.
The large desk she’d been sitting at had careened across the room and now lay on its side, cracked and broken. Beatrice was pinned under it.
Her entire body was covered in gray-white dust, except for where a dark red color seeped from her wounds. She looked like a marble statue that could somehow, horribly, bleed.
“Beatrice!” I crawled toward her faster, already reaching for the flickering glow of magic inside me and commanding it to raise the desk. The heavy piece of furniture lifted off her, and she took in a gasping breath. It moved several feet away before thudding back down.
She was still gasping for air when I reached her, her inhales sharp and fast. Ignoring the pain burning up my leg, I held my hands over Beatrice’s small form, reaching out with my magic as Jae had taught me. I’d only performed healing spells twice before, and never on injuries anywhere near as grave as these. But I forced down my self-doubt, searching for her life force, then for the interruptions in that pattern.
My throat tightened.
There were so many. The glow of her life force wavered, interrupted in so many places it was nearly broken.
I couldn’t even tell where to start. There were injuries all over her body. I picked what seemed like the worst one and began filling the break in the pattern of her life with my magic. It took everything I had, and I sucked in air as if I was sprinting up a mountain.
But before I could even finish healing that injury, others became worse, bleeding out her life energy like holes in a sponge.
“Beatrice, no. Hold on!” I pressed my hands to her stomach, as if physical contact would force the magic into her, make it work faster.
Her eyes flickered open, the gray of her irises dull and cloudy. She reached a trembling hand up to my face, cool fingers brushing me cheek.
“Lana. Sweet girl… I’m so glad I found you.”
Tears blurred my vision as I grabbed her hand, pressing it to my face. “I’m healing you, Grandma. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t.
As fast as I poured my magic into her, the injuries all over her body worked faster, pulling her away from me, dragging her under.
The hand against my cheek went limp, but I kept filling the gaps in her life force with my magic until suddenly, there was no more life inside her.
My body jerked, the sensation like slamming into a wall. I tried to keep feeding healing magic into her, but there was nothing there to heal. I stared down at her, my whole body going numb with shock and grief.
A moment—or maybe an hour—later, the sound of shouting outside grew louder, and several people ran into the room.
Guards in palace uniforms darted around the space, talking in urgent voices to each other as they scanned for lingering threats. Jonas stood over me, Rain hovering behind him. A woman I didn’t recognize knelt down beside my grandmother, moving me out of the way. I fell backward into another set of hands, and a man with bushy eyebrows and a gray beard wiped at my face with a cloth.
“I’m going to heal you. You’ve had a bad cut to your leg.”
He spoke slowly, as if speaking to a child, but I still couldn’t process his words. He held his hands over my leg, and a bright glow emanated from his palms. Warmth crept up my leg, dampening the throbbing pain that pulsed in time with my heartbeat.
Other hushed voices talked near my grandmother’s body, the words “dead” and “bomb” and “nonmagical” floating into my hazy brain, trying to find purchase somewhere. But there was nowhere for them to land. My mind went blank as I lay back, staring up at the puffy white clouds in the sky.
That’s not right.
I shouldn’t be able to see the sky.
As soon as I was healed, two guards hustled me out of my grandmother’s office. The palace healer was good, and my leg was able to bear my weight after several minutes of his ministrations, but that hardly made it easier to place one foot in front of the other. My brain seemed to be processing everything at half-speed, and I couldn’t do more than nod or shake my head as unfamiliar faces floated in front of mine, peppering me with questions.
The area outside Beatrice’s office was damaged too, and another healer was helping the pink-haired fairy girl sit up as I shuffled by.
I was taken to a large, lavish room where I sat listlessly in a chair
until Jonas arrived. He grilled me with the same questions the floating heads had, and my dislike of him roused me from my stupor enough to answer him in clipped, one-word answers.
Once I told him everything I remembered about the moments before the blast—except seeing Gerald on the palace steps and my grandmother’s suspicion of someone in the government—he released me. Several of the Representatives were gathered outside the door, and they watched me with narrowed eyes when I passed them. Rain was there as well, hovering on the periphery of the group.
He had a shell-shocked look on his face, and he put a hand on my shoulder as I walked by, muttering in his raspy voice, “I’m sorry.”
I nodded dumbly, too exhausted to wonder if he really meant it.
Tarik was waiting for me outside the palace, his usually mood-boosting fairy magic dampened as he helped me into the car.
As he pulled away from the palace, I reached through the tangle of my hair and pressed the middle stone on my earring.
“Guys?”
“We’re here. What’s going on? Did you learn what your grandmother wanted to tell you?” Jae responded immediately.
“No.” I swallowed. “Beatrice is dead. A bomb.”
There was a brief silence, and I closed my eyes, blocking out the world for a few seconds.
“I’m so sorry, Lana.” Jae’s voice was a soft whisper. “Are you safe? Where are you?”
“I’m coming home. Have you talked to Christine?”
“Yes. We had a debriefing with her about an hour ago. But we’ll call her again and update her.”
A shard of glass that had lodged in my dress glinted in the sunlight, and I picked at it, hissing when it cut my finger. I pressed my thumb to the wound, watching a drop of bright red blood well.
“Keep her on the line. I want to talk to her.”
I cut off the communication spell without another word, my body starting to shake with latent adrenaline. The neighborhood we drove through was too peaceful, too calm-looking for the events of the day.
My mind was racing by the time Tarik pulled up to Beatrice’s house.
Everything that happened at the palace after the bomb went off was a hazy memory, but one thing stuck in my head like a burr—the bomb was nonmagical. This had been a Blighted attack. Anger flooded my body, and I encouraged it, letting it force out other emotions I didn’t want to feel. I threw open the front door and marched toward the kitchen, following the sound of voices.
Corin stood by the island in the middle of the room, the burner phone pressed to his ear.
“No other casualties that we know of, but we haven’t gotten the full details yet. Lana’s grandmother—”
He cut off, horror and anguish flashing across his face at the sight of me. The healer had cleaned me up a bit, and I hadn’t been as covered in marble dust as Beatrice, but I probably looked like a wreck anyway.
I strode toward Corin and plucked the phone from his unresisting hand. “Christine? Was this the Resistance? Did you do this?”
The words were thick with emotion, and I gripped the phone tight as I waited for her response.
“No, Ms. Crow.” The Resistance leader’s even voice came through the speaker. “It wasn’t the Resistance. Of course it wasn’t. It was probably a single operator with a vendetta and access to the palace.”
“It wasn’t a magical bomb. It was the old-fashioned kind.”
“That doesn’t mean it was ours.”
“Then who did this?” I yelled, my voice bouncing off the walls of the kitchen.
“I don’t know,” she said coldly. She’d never particularly liked me, and she clearly didn’t like the accusation I was leveling at her. “I’m sorry you lost your grandmother, and I understand you’re upset, but I should remind you that she was a Representative. A member of the government we are fighting against, and someone who was complicit in the oppression of hundreds of thousands of people.”
Anger choked me, and it took several seconds for me to force out a reply. “You didn’t know her. She was… she was changing. She wanted to make up for what she’d done. She was going to help me.”
“If that’s the case, we are truly sorry to have lost her help.” Christine’s voice was cool, businesslike. “We’ll do more digging on our end and see if we can gather any more information about who was behind this. I’ll keep you updated. In the meantime, stay in the Capital and try to keep gathering intel.” She hesitated, then added, “I am sorry, Lana.”
The line went dead.
“Fuck you!” I screamed at the hunk of metal and plastic in my hand.
Whirling, I bashed the beat-up old phone against the dark marble countertop, my anger nearly blinding me. I raised my hand to slam it down again, but strong fingers pried the phone from my grip. So I hit the counter with my fist instead, bringing it down so hard pain shot up my arm.
“Fuck you! Fuck you, fuck you!”
I would’ve kept beating uselessly at the smooth, unforgiving surface until my skin bled and my bones broke, but another large hand grabbed mine, pulling me into a crushing hug.
Fenris wrapped his arms tight around me, and Corin hugged me from behind, his front pressed to my back. Jae and Akio stepped up on either side, hands resting on the other men’s shoulders, heads bowed toward me.
My legs gave out as wracking, painful sobs shook me, but I didn’t fall, supported on all sides by warm, strong bodies.
They held me like that until I couldn’t cry anymore.
Chapter 16
Gray eyes.
An ache gripped my heart. They were my grandmother’s eyes.
No… my father’s.
His large hands held mine once again, and once again he pressed the tungsten and copper ring into my palm. But I was older this time—not the child version of myself, but the “me” of today. I was covered in white marble dust, and bright red scratches marred my unnaturally pallid skin.
“This will keep you safe,” my father promised, closing my fingers around the ring. The metal was cool in my palm.
“No!” I shook my head, trying to force the piece of jewelry back into his hand. “No, it won’t.”
He hesitated, seeming to truly see me for the first time. A look of pain crossed his face.
“I know it won’t. But I have to try.”
A woman watched us from over his shoulder. She had long red hair like mine, and she smiled at me as if she had no idea of the danger approaching. A second woman stood off to the side. She was petite, with short gray hair and kind eyes. My grandmother. But younger than I’d ever known her.
Farther behind them, another man stood. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He was tall and lanky, with brown hair and dark circles under his eyes. Rain? He was smiling at us too.
Didn’t any of them realize the danger that was coming? The death?
The Great Death.
It was coming.
And there was nothing my father could do to change that.
“You can’t stop it,” I whispered, meeting his fearful, sad gaze.
My father nodded, pressing the ring back into my palm. “I know. But I have to try.”
White light burst from my hand like a bomb, engulfing us all.
Something tickled my cheek, and I blinked my eyes open. A tear had slipped out of my eye in my sleep, tracking down my face to wet my pillow.
The room was dark.
Low voices drifted in from down the hall, but I was alone on the bed.
My body felt like it had been picked up and shaken like a rag doll, my joints and muscles stiff and sore. A throbbing pain pounded in my head, increasing in intensity as more tears threatened to fall. I pushed them back, letting the numbness take over my mind again as I swung my legs to the floor and stood slowly then headed for the bathroom.
I flicked on the light and looked at myself in the mirror. My four had put me to bed after I cried myself out in the kitchen; I vaguely remembered being carried up the stairs and laid gently on the soft blankets
. I hadn’t let them change my clothes, so I still had on the dress I’d worn to the palace, ripped and dirty and stained with blood—mine and Beatrice’s.
My face looked both puffy and gaunt, my eyes hollow. Streaks of pink covered my skin where the healer had wiped away blood.
A sudden revulsion filled me, and I clawed at the zipper of my dress, ripping it off and hurling it into the corner. I turned the water on as hot as I could stand it and stepped into the large stone shower, closing the glass door behind me.
The water pelted my skin, and for several moments it flowed down the drain in streaks of pink and gray. I stared straight ahead, letting the spray pour over my hair and down my body. Large drops caught in my eyelashes, and I blinked.
You didn’t even know her that well. Maybe Christine was right.
I pressed a hand to my stomach, clenching my jaw against the wave of pain that accompanied that thought. No. Christine was wrong. My grandmother had been a good person. Or at least she had wanted to be, which was more than I could say for a lot of people—Gifted, Blighted, or Touched.
Tears ran down my face, mixing with the water that ran clear now.
The bathroom door opened, and I looked up, peering through the foggy shower wall.
Fenris.
He closed the door softly behind him.
“I can feel your pain, killer. I feel it like it’s my own, and it’s wrecking me.” His voice was low, more subdued than I’d ever heard it. “I’ll go if you want. But please… let me help you.”
I hesitated for a moment, breathing shallowly as I stared through the glass at his blurry form.
Then I reached out and pushed the shower door open.
His warm brown eyes softened with relief, and he walked toward me quickly, pulling his shirt over his head with one hand as he approached. He slipped off the rest of his clothes before stepping into the shower with me.
My grief and emotional exhaustion broke down any shyness I might’ve felt, and I stared unabashedly at his body. I’d seen him nearly naked once before, in the mountains. But the difference between “nearly naked” and “naked” was a big one, and as I took in the sight of him, a spark of desire lit low in my belly, burning through the pain and anger and confusion.