Wrapping my fingers around Marcel’s charm hanging from my neck, I willed it to give me strength. I was out of options. I had only one way to defend myself. I had to absorb the power from the Brotherhood’s shield. The thought made me want to curl up and die on the spot. Absorbing their tainted magic was going to hurt. I pushed my entire backside against the shield and opened myself to the power that fueled it. Blackness flowed through me, but I took it all and let it overpower me.
Lefty leapt.
The last of the shield’s power wavered a split second before it shivered and collapsed. I crashed to the ground with it. Pain and nausea coursed through my body, and I convulsed with the tide of dark magic.
A wave of golden energy flared through the sky above me, and like a giant blade, it crashed into Lefty, slicing clean through the beast. His front half fell at my feet, claws still reaching.
Magic twisted the beast back to man. Two charred halves of mangled, naked flesh lay at my feet, causing my stomach to rise up into my throat.
My vision blurred as more flashes of magic surrounded me.
Howls pierced my ears.
Hazy figures raced toward me. I clutched my head. I was drowning in the tainted power—thick black magic. It was a million times worse than the spell I’d absorbed from Atticus. My lungs filled with ink, and it clawed up my throat, choking me. I fought it but wasn’t strong enough to resist. The dark energy pulled me into unconsciousness.
Chapter Twenty-One
Someone was strangling me.
I gasped and pushed my long, tangled hair off my face. My racing heart calmed as I sat up in a soft, warm bed, covered by a thick blanket. I was in a room I had never seen before.
Bright sunlight shone through a window, reflecting off the dark-red walls and creating a warm, cocooned space.
Outside, tall buildings blocked the view, giving me no clue where I was. On the wall opposite the bed, a small shelf held a collection of toys. I stared at a short wooden sword, blinking while my mind caught up. This was a child’s room in someone’s home.
The elegant gold dress I’d worn to the Exposition hung off my shoulders, shredded and covered in dried blood and dirt. I twisted to look at my shoulder and felt no pain. I must have been healed after I passed out. But Marcel’s charm still hung around my neck. I rubbed my thumb across its raised surface as I tried to reconstruct exactly what had happened.
A single chime sounded on the other side of the wall.
“May I enter?” a muffled male voice asked.
“Atticus?” What the hell is going on?
The door disappeared, and Atticus entered the room with a slight bow. He was wearing a plain brown shirt and loose pants—which could have fit two of me inside—wrapped around his tree-trunk legs. “Are you well?”
I was fine. Great, actually. I’d begun to recognize the post-healing buzz of energy. “What happened?”
“After you were attacked, you required a Healer.” He nodded at my torn dress. “When you didn’t regain consciousness after the wounds were healed, the Lord Commander realized you’d absorbed the tainted magic of the shield and that you needed clean energy.”
I nodded. Where is Silas?
“He made quite the scene transferring power to you. Unfortunately, the Council had not evacuated with the rest of the citizens. Lord Magister Alaric was... upset.”
I bit my lip. Silas was incapable of keeping a low profile. He just had to flaunt the fact that we had a bond by sharing power with me in front of all of Aeterna, all while refusing to give Alaric’s daughter the same benefits. Bad idea if he wanted to keep Alaric on his good side. Now Alaric would hate me even more.
My fuzzy memories were starting to return. “I saw you rush on the field during the attack. What if someone saw you and realized the compulsion was lifted?”
“I owe you my life, Maeve. I’d take the risk a thousand times over.” At my frustrated sigh, he added, “If anyone bothered to pay attention to the actions of a Traiten, they’d simply assume I’d been ordered to assist. I assure you, my actions held little risk.”
I sighed. I wouldn’t call fending off Rakken low-risk, but it wasn’t worth arguing about. “Where am I?”
“You’re in my familial home in Lower Aeterna, my lady,” he replied softly. “You slept through the night and most of this day.” Atticus sat on the edge of my bed. “The Lord Commander wishes that you remain hidden here until he can figure out who is helping the Brotherhood. He believes there may be a traitor within the Council.”
“A traitor? Why does he think that?”
“He’s long suspected it. We believe the Brotherhood is recruiting citizens from Lower Aeterna with someone on the Council helping to transport them to Earth.”
I remembered something I’d seen just before the attack. “Alaric used his magic to make the shield! I saw his flare right when it happened.”
Atticus quirked his head to the side. “He couldn’t have made that shield without being noticed.”
The shield had been made from the tainted energy of the Brotherhood’s spell. Alaric’s flare had been pure golden—no dark edges from stolen life magic. “Damn it. You’re right. Could Alaric have been doing something else to help the Brotherhood?”
“It’s possible, but it would be hard to prove. We don’t know who the traitor is, and while Lord Silas works on that, you’re best off hiding here.”
“No one knows where I am?”
“No one except my family and the Lord Commander,” he replied. “No one will think to search for you in Lower Aeterna.”
I would have to miss my date with Elias. Equal parts relief and frustration hit me. It would have been good to find out more about him and maybe remove him from the suspected list of traitors. But that was ludicrous because Elias wanted to get me in his bed, not tell me his deepest secrets. And I was not going down that path. Staying out of sight would probably be good for a few days.
“I’m surprised Silas sent me here. He thinks we’re sleeping together.”
The blood drained from his face. “I need you to correct that impression with the Lord Commander.”
I glared at him. “He doesn’t have any say in who I have sex with.”
“Don’t take offense,” he pleaded with his palms up in a placating gesture. “I simply mean that Lord Alaric is using me to sow the seeds of discord, and it would not help the situation if Lord Silas believes we are having sexual relations.”
Confusion made my brow furrow. “What do you mean? How is Alaric using you?”
“Silas and I advanced through all five levels of training together and had our first assignments together as greenies. Lord Alaric assigned me as your Traiten as an intentional thorn in his side, likely in response to him bonding with another whilst denying Lady Aria the Valeron sigil.”
Atticus was amazingly perceptive, and I was stupid for not realizing it on my own. The way Silas had reacted when he’d seen Atticus in my quarters was exactly what Alaric wanted. The political tension between the other Councilors and Silas was more complicated than I could hope to understand on my own. With Atticus’s insights into the situation and his willingness to help me without an agenda, I felt as though I could trust his assessment of the situation. I was grateful to have him on my side.
So I was in hiding while Silas found the traitor on the Council. I could’ve done worse. A guest in Atticus’s house was a solid upgrade from prisoner of the Council. “Got any edible food around here? I’m starving.”
As if I had summoned her with magic, a woman appeared in the doorway with an armful of clothes and food. Her long dark hair was swept back into a simple ponytail, and she wore a brown tunic and leggings. As with all the magic users I’d seen in Aeterna, it was impossible to tell her age.
“Lady Maeve, this is my mother, Junia,” Atticus said.
The woman set the clothes and a tray of food down on the bed next to me and pulled me into a hug. “Thank you for returning my son to me.”
After a mom
ent of surprised hesitation, I hugged her back. When she pulled back, tears shimmered on her cheeks. Real suffering pulled at the corners of her eyes.
I didn’t know what to say. “It’s nice to meet you, Lady Junia.”
“Just Junia,” she said softly. “We’re not an Upper House.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“You are welcome here, Lady Maeve. We are honored to offer our hospitality to you, meager as it may be.”
“No, this is great.” I picked up the stack of clothes she had given me. The wardrobe I’d been given by the Council was entirely made of soft, flowing fabric. The basic tunic and leggings Junia offered were plain brown cotton. Stiff and thick, the clothing had a utilitarian feel that spoke of hard work, reminding me of jeans. I missed my jeans.
“Thank you,” I said. “Please call me Maeve. I’m not really a lady; I’m just a girl from Earth with no family.” I said it to lighten the mood, but Atticus and his mother gaped at me as if I’d just told them I kidnapped puppies for a living. I cleared my throat awkwardly.
Junia offered me food, and I gratefully picked up one of the baked, stuffed buns she’d brought. It was an immense relief to find something edible in this realm. Before she left, Junia pulled me into another hug and kissed my cheek.
“I think we should talk to the families of the missing citizens,” I told Atticus when we were alone. We had to find a connection between them if we were going to figure out what the Brotherhood was up to. My gut told me the missing people were the key.
Atticus paused with a piece of bread halfway to his mouth. “I’m not sure going into public is a good idea. After what happened at the Exposition, you could be recognized. Your white flare is notable.”
“I promise not to access my magic. No one will even look twice at me. I swear.” In his mother’s clothing, I was already dressed for the part. “I can’t just sit here.”
“The Lord Commander ordered it.”
I gave him my hard stare. “The Lord Commander needs to realize I’m not one of his minions. He doesn’t get to make choices for me. I’ll go by myself if you’re scared of him.” Channeling one of Silas’s most irritating expressions, I raised a single eyebrow in challenge.
A wry grin lit Atticus’s face. “I suspect you’re very likely to get yourself in trouble. It appears I have no choice but to go along and protect you.”
I grinned back. “How can we get the names of the families?”
“It shouldn’t be hard to cross-reference who lives in each House with their current resource allotment.” At my confused expression, he explained that each month, Lower Houses were given an allotment of resources, such as food, based on the number of daily assignments they completed. “If the allotment has decreased recently without a corresponding decrease in their House headcount, we just might have our missing people.”
“How do you know all that?” I asked, sincerely impressed.
He shrugged. “I’ve learned to stay two steps ahead to make even.”
He didn’t sound bitter, just resigned to the facts of life. I wondered if I would have the same outlook if I had gone through everything he had. He’d had to fight to become a Guardian, then they’d made him a slave for something he didn’t do. If I were him, I would’ve been angry as hell. I couldn’t help but wonder how different his life would have been if he were from Upper Aeterna.
“But those records are kept by the Council,” he said. “We’ll need Lord Silas to get them.”
I frowned. “That’s going to take a while. Isn’t there anything we can do today?” Hiding in the Lower City was a great opportunity to find out more about the Brotherhood, and I didn’t want to waste it. Plus, a trip through Lower Aeterna could help me plan an escape route when the time came.
“I do know two families with missing sons. I believe they haven’t reported it—they were too afraid of the consequences. The second shift just ended; we can probably find them at home.”
We set out on foot in search of the families Atticus had identified. As we walked, I noticed that the difference between Upper and Lower Aeterna was stark. The buildings were, for the most part, in need of repairs. Each red-stone structure rose ten or more levels, stacked with individual living quarters. It appeared that each generation had added additional units on top of the deteriorating bottom floors. Haphazard streets wound through an endless maze of neighborhoods, and tele-nets hung at intersections of major pathways, displaying reminders about energy rationing.
No one wore finely crafted, lightweight tunics, robes, or capes. The clothing of Lower Aeternals would best be described as utilitarian and serviceable. Self-consciously, I adjusted the decorative headscarf Atticus had suggested I wear to disguise my recognizable auburn hair. The elaborate wrapping had seemed ridiculous at first, but I was relieved to see several other people wearing something similar as we traveled through the streets of Lower Aeterna.
Atticus and I went to the first address together, a tall building squeezed between two others. An older woman answered the unit on the fourth floor, confirmed she was a relative of our first missing person, Maxim, and invited us in. It was impossible to tell her exact age, but the wariness in her movements made me suspect she’d lived a long time and seen too much hardship.
Armed with the information on where Maxim had been assigned, we told her we worked at the same farm and were concerned because we hadn’t seen him recently. As we sat inside her threadbare sitting room, she served us tea and told us everything she could think of that might help us find her grandson. The way she talked about him made it obvious how loved he was.
Pretty quickly, a story started to emerge of an angry young man who wanted more than his society would give him. I understood wanting more, especially when surrounded by so much wealth just out of reach. It reminded me of the people living on the streets of Boston—sleeping in the shadows of grand brownstone buildings on elegantly cobbled streets. So much opportunity was in front of them, but it was completely out of reach. Compared to the opulence of Upper Aeterna, this family had nothing.
Everything the woman told us made me think Maxim was a perfect candidate to join the Brotherhood. He didn’t want to be a farmer like his parents. He wanted to be a Harvester, but his family didn’t have the standing to qualify for the training. They couldn’t even get him an apprenticeship within the merchant’s guild. In the end, he didn’t have any good options. It was a classic radicalization story: unfulfilled life, no future, no options. Someone like him would have definitely found the Brotherhood appealing.
“He’s not the only one,” the grandmother whispered over her cup of tea.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“A handful of us have reported our missing family members, but the Council accused them of being traitors.” Her shoulders lifted in a defeated shrug. “Most of the missing are not reported. There are more every month. I’ve heard of at least a dozen in the past fortnight.”
“Can you tell us who they are?” I asked.
The woman’s face pinched, and she clammed up. She didn’t want to betray anyone else’s secrets. Eventually, we excused ourselves to visit the other House Atticus knew about. By the time we traveled across the city, it had gotten dark. A man answered the door of the seventh-floor unit, dressed in a brown servant’s uniform. I immediately noticed the public sigil visible to me on both sides of his neck. He was a Barren, born without magic.
“We’re looking for Cato,” Atticus said.
“I am Castor. Cato is my bond-brother.” His eyes went wide. “Are you Atticus?”
Atticus tensed. “Do I know you?”
“No, but you’re the one everyone’s talking about,” he said with a quick glance up and down the street behind us. “The Traiten the Council set up.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“How do you know about Atticus?” My voice had risen too high, and I tried to control my growing panic. If word was out about Atticus’s compulsion, then whoever had betrayed them at Krittesh had already
discovered that we’d removed their spell. They would’ve covered their tracks, and we would have no way to clear Atticus’s name.
We sat on a tatami-style mat in the front room of his house, and Castor’s voice took on a reverent tone, full of awe. “They didn’t want to let you train with the Guardians, but you fought for it and earned it. People are saying that after Krittesh, the Council punished you for crimes you didn’t commit. They’re using you as an example to keep us all in line.”
I was relieved that he didn’t know about the compulsion. According to this man, Atticus was some kind of local hero—a success story who had been punished for daring to fly too high. He gazed at Atticus with star-struck admiration. Suddenly, he jumped up and rushed out of the room. Atticus glanced at me with alarm, but Castor returned quickly and handed a small, portable console to him. “Here.”
Atticus’s eyes went wide before he swallowed and handed it to me. It was a picture of Atticus in a Guardian’s uniform. He had shorter hair, and his bright brown eyes were young and eager. Superimposed over the image was the symbol of the Traiten drawn in red, and it was dripping like blood. Underneath his picture were the words “Remember Atticus.”
Castor’s brow furrowed in anger, and his voice rose. “The Council needs to be held responsible for their actions against you, against all of us. We’re going to change things.”
This man was a perfect candidate for the Brotherhood, and he seemed to be in the loop with a group of like-minded people. We needed to get inside information about what they were doing because I would bet a lifetime supply of hamburgers that they were connected to the Brotherhood. We needed to be on the inside. “You’re right, but how? There’s nothing we can do.”
“We’re having a meeting in two days to talk about change,” Castor said. “Will you come?”
Fate Forged Page 22
