by Kat Adams
I would stop this before the war destroyed our world.
“I really am the prophecy.” I pushed away from the table as I let that sink in. Sure, I’d said it a million and one times. I even believed it most of those times. But something deep within me had plagued me with doubt, a fear that the Council had made a mistake, that the real prophecy had always been my mom and I’d been the consolation prize.
“The Council came to my mom when I was almost sixteen and told her what you just told me, didn’t they?”
“They came to her a lot earlier than that. I believe when you were eight or nine.”
Right around the time she’d declared I had some rare disease and put me on meds that kept my powers muted for over a decade. Had my mother, the woman who’d gone dark and terrorized me until the day she died, done that to actually protect me? “Why’d they come then? My mom said they came a week before I turned sixteen to take me away, and that she volunteered in my place so I wouldn’t have a target painted on my back.”
“They didn’t come to take you away, either when you were nine or when you were sixteen.” Stace stood and poured us mugs of freshly perked coffee before pausing at the wood counter, her back to me. I was in such a state of shock over all the bombs she’d dropped, I waited in numb silence for her to continue. “Katy, what I’m about to tell you is…very unsettling.”
Well, crap. As if my anxiety wasn’t already high enough. She returned to the table and set the coffee in front of me. The draw of the mug of nirvana was too strong to deny, so I slid the chair closer and wrapped my fingers around the mug, lifting it under my nose to pull in the delicious scent. I took a quick sip, burned the ever-loving crap out of my mouth, and set the mug back on the table. Maybe I’d just let that cool down before I lost the ability to taste anything ever again.
“It’s something I’ve known about for some time and haven’t found the right moment to tell you.”
“Now you’re scaring me.” We’d had lots of talks, heart-to-hearts, and the like. Hell, we spent the entire summer together. She’d had plenty of opportunity to tell me whatever news had her staring into her coffee to avoid looking at me. “Stace? What is it?”
“There’s a reason your mother and I never saw eye to eye.”
How did I know this would come back to that woman? “You mean more than her teaching you astral projection? Because that’s a pretty major thing you never mentioned.” And I never brought it up until now, having actually forgotten how Stacey Layden had create three other Staces that night at the party where my mom showed her true colors.
“She was a member of the Council. Did she ever tell you that?”
I gulped. How many more truth bombs did she plan to drop? “Nope. Must have slipped her mind.”
“We were both recruited into the Council around the same time, young, eager to make names for ourselves. The competitions started innocently enough. She’d finish her report before anyone else. I’d be the first to unravel whatever mystery the Council had the group working on. Soon, it was just her and me competing.”
“Sounds like you two were BFFs.”
Stace laughed and shook her head. “No, not even close. We ran in different circles and barely spoke to each other. When the competitions heated up, it forged an even greater wedge between us. So, no, we were never friends.”
Her smile wilted as she stared into her coffee mug. “Katy, your mother, she wasn’t well. No one knows this outside a small group inside the Council. Now that we’re both labeled dark and elemental enemies of the Council, I no longer need to follow my sworn vow to keep it a secret.” She drew in a deep breath and released it, as if freeing the air from her lungs somehow brought her strength. After a long pause, she lifted her attention to me.
What I saw sent my heart into palpitations. It wasn’t just worry. She always had that swirling in her dark gaze when she looked at me. It was fear, plain and simple. Not fear I’d lose my shit and set her on fire. It was fear she’d lose my trust.
“What vow?” I whispered, unable to do anything more.
“The real reason she left this world wasn’t that she’d fallen in love with a Nelem and wanted to start a family. It wasn’t to have a normal life. She’d been caught using her powers for personal gain. Several times. The Council gave her an ultimatum. Leave this world and start over in the Nelem world without her powers, or go to Carcerem. She made the wise choice and left.”
“How’d they mute her powers? I don’t remember her wearing an elemutus.”
“She did for quite a few years, but then out of the blue, she contacted the Council and said she needed her powers back to care for her elemental daughter. She claimed your powers were far beyond anything she’d ever seen and was certain you were the prophecy. They didn’t even know about you until then.”
“What?” I shot forward. “Why would she tell them that? She took my place as the prophecy so they wouldn’t put it on me. Why would she purposely draw attention to me like that?”
“It wasn’t to draw attention to you. It was to draw attention to herself. Your mother was a narcissist, willing to do anything for attention.” Stace dropped her gaze back down. “Even have a daughter and claim she’s the prophecy as a way to get back into our world.”
I pressed a shaky palm over my mouth before letting it fall away. What did you say to something like that? I just found out my mom had me as a way to get attention, a ploy to allow her back into a world that didn’t want her. A sudden coldness expanded from my midsection. I swallowed over and over to keep the emotions tightening my throat from breaking free.
“The Council tested you and proved you had powers. But you weren’t ready for the academy, so they released your mother from the elemutus to care for you, certain she’d changed. Not all of us agreed with their decision, including Mindy Wilkerson, who signed on as your watcher. She didn’t trust your mother and thought it might be a trick. So, year after year, she watched over you and reported back to the Council on your progress as a budding elemental.”
She furrowed her brow and pursed her lips, slowly shaking her head. “Only, you didn’t bud. You seemed to regress to the point your powers no longer manifested. Every once in a while, you’d show signs of an element heeding your call, but not often enough to warrant extracting you and bringing you to Clearwater. Until right before your sixteenth birthday. That’s when everything changed. Your watcher came to the Council and said she believed you really were the prophecy and should be extracted to be trained to fulfill your destiny.”
Betrayal hit me so hard, it bruised my soul and broke every ounce of trust I’d ever had in the woman I’d considered a surrogate mom after mine had disappeared. The shock knocked me out of my speechless state. It took me several tries to get the words dislodged from behind the lump in my throat. “Ms. Wilkerson believed I was destined to be the prophecy?”
“She did. When the Council came to extract you, your mom begged them not to take you, to take her instead, insisting you weren’t ready. I believe she volunteered to take your place as the prophecy, not to protect you, but because this was her plan all along. She used you to not only return to this world, but to return a hero, the center of attention.”
That much I’d put together on my own. I crossed my arms over my chest and turned to look the opposite direction from the woman dropping so many bombs on me, it felt like I should dive for cover. Stace’s betrayal hit me hardest of all. She’d known about this, carried these secrets all this time instead of telling me the truth. “How could you keep this from me?”
“I never found the right time to tell you.”
Slowly, I turned my head until I nailed her with a heated glare that burned me from the inside out. “And you thought now was the right time to drop all this on me? I’m trying to build an army to go up against the Council, and you tell me this to…what? To shake my confidence?”
“On the contrary. I’m telling you this to prove to you that despite what your mother did to keep you from your
true destiny, you still found a way. You, Katy Reed, are the true prophecy.” She reached for my hand and then pulled back, hesitant.
I grasped it, drawing her wide gaze. I wanted to be mad at her—in fact, I was furious with her—but I also knew now was not the time to hold a grudge. I’d unpack everything she told me later. Right now, I needed her by my side more than I needed to stay angry.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now,” she finally admitted and hung her head.
I squeezed her hand before releasing it. “You can make it up to me when this is all over. For now, how about we concentrate on the present.” I tried the coffee again. Ouch. Dammit. Still too hot.
Stace ran her hand over the coffee. The steam followed her command and lifted from the cup. She picked up her mug and brought it to her lips, eyeing me over the brim.
Well, duh. Why didn’t I think to use my powers to cool the liquid? It would have saved me the brutal wait time and burning pain. I followed suit and took another sip, sighing with contentment as the gloriousness traveled down my throat.
“When Cressida came to the coven that night,” Stace went on, “I believed most everything she said, but there is one point she made that I don’t agree with. Well, the interpretation of her message, anyway.”
“That is?”
“You are not the one standing in the way, as in singular. You are the one leading those of us willing to stand in the way of the Council destroying this world. You, and now the quad squad bound to you, will lead us to victory.”
“Thanks.” No pressure.
“If we’re going to make it happen, you’ll need this.”
I whipped around. Bryan stood at the entrance to the treehouse, a set of colored pencils in one hand, a sketch pad in the other. Relief washed over me. “You came back.”
“Of course I came back.” He pushed off the doorframe and stepped into the room. “I said I needed to think, not run away. Did you know Tabitha in the next treehouse over is an artist? She was out drawing in the field, so I told her about the plan, and she offered up her supplies for the cause.”
“Thank you!” I accepted the magnificent sketch pad and brushed my fingers over the surface. It was larger than my old one, which made it even more awesome. All that blank space for my drawing pleasure. The pencils were worn, just the way I liked them. I set everything onto the table. “This is amazing. Tell her thank you.”
“How about you tell her yourself?” He waved off to the side. A girl, no more than ten, maybe eleven, stepped into the opening, her green eyes wide with wonder and admiration taking up half her elfish little face. She had long blonde hair, board straight and hanging well past her narrow shoulders. “Katy Reed, this is Tabitha.”
I didn’t know what to say. I never expected to see someone so young here at the grove and didn’t know how I felt about that. She should be out riding bikes with her friends or playing with dolls or something equally as carefree. She shouldn’t be here, forced from her home and into hiding from a governing body that wanted to throw her into Carcerem for being who she was.
Seeing her hurt my heart and made this all that much more real. I swallowed back any emotions clogging my throat and knelt in front of our young guest to be at eye level. “Hi, Tabitha. I’m Katy. Thank you for the sketch pad and pencils.”
“Bryan said they’d be helping the cause.”
“They definitely will.” I moved to the table and opened the sketch pad, turning page after page, impressed at her skill at such an early age. Flowers. Grassy fields. Trees. I turned another page and stopped, blinking at the image and running my fingers over her sketch of a woman standing on a stage, her ginger locks flowing off to the side, her fist in the air as she addressed a crowd of women. It was me, and it was a damn good job. The wave of my red hair. The hint of gold in my hazel eyes. She’d even captured the determination in my expression.
I turned to the next page and paused, just as impressed. It was Bryan on the stage next to me, his short brown hair perfectly groomed, his hazel gaze fixed on me. He had just a hint of a smile, but enough to tease the viewer with that cute dimple.
“Wow. Tabitha, these are amazing.” I turned to another page and stopped. It was my fist from the first image, but with an S drawn into the center, curving around the knuckles, across the heel of the hand, and sweeping along the wrist, and it was beautiful, utterly perfect. Simple, yet powerful. “What is this?”
Tabitha joined me at the table and tapped her finger on the drawing. “That’s Sentry.”
“Yes, it definitely is.”
And now Sentry had a logo.
13
“Today’s top stories: Weather anomalies continue. A tornado touched down in Western Washington earlier today, which in itself is not unheard of. However, the waterspout that was spotted less than two miles away, and in an inlet, is. Weather experts are baffled. There were no reports of injuries in either event. In other news, a wildfire broke out in the Hoh Rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula. Experts believe the fire is the result of lightning striking a tree, which exploded on impact, sending embers in every direction. It didn’t take long for authorities to have the blaze contained thanks in part to the wet weather and the cool, moist conditions of the terrain. A look at your weather is coming up after the break.”
Bryan turned down the radio and drew his eyebrows together, remaining silent for several seconds as he stared straight ahead. After standing and running his hands up and down the front of his pants a few times, he joined me at the table as I sketched out the next set of panels for the webcomic.
Our inaugural Sentry webisode introduced a new character, a blond runt with owlish glasses that took up half his face. Although I’d never had him on the page, I’d worked it out that he was a regular at the library, one who pestered Amethyst nonstop with questions. He even mentioned her being gone for so long. I hadn’t been able to upload a new webisode in weeks, not since being banned from my world and declared elemental enemy of the Council.
Trevor’s character—that I’d changed to Adam to protect the innocent and because I’d always liked that name—perpetually had his nose in a book, so it made it easy to hide the title in plain sight. No one knew how to find it unless they specifically looked for it. The cypher…was more of a challenge.
That was where Detective Nigel Brandt came in. He’d talk in cop code to Amethyst and promptly apologize before proceeding to repeat it in laymen’s terms. He’d been doing that since before this whole shit show started, so chances were, it wouldn’t lift an eyebrow.
I hoped.
Bryan watched in silence as I sketched out each panel, judiciously adding in the message. The title of the book in Adam’s hands that’d be the cypher. The carefully crafted code Amethyst called the detective on. It’d worked out last week, drawing in new members from the alchemist community. Not all of them, but a good majority. They’d joined us here in the grove, hiding from the Council, and immediately got to work creating potions, powders, lotions, and any other kind of medicine we’d need.
We’d also recruited a fair number of blacksmiths who worked with the alchemists to strengthen the weapons they created. I didn’t know if we’d need swords and shields, but I’d take anything we could get at this point. On top of the strength of the weapons, the witches charmed them to protect them from an attack. It wouldn’t stop the element, but it would slow it down.
But the kicker was the emergence of someone calling themselves the custodian graffitiing Sentry’s symbol of a fist with an S trailing down the wrist all over the island and sending more and more newcomers our way. I didn’t know who it was, only that the custodian was singlehandedly recruiting just as many members to Sentry as the webcomic. The graffiti was a nice touch and kept the Council adequately agitated.
“Done,” I declared and closed the sketch pad, smacking the pages together. “Now to find a computer and an internet connection.”
“We almost got caught last week using the library’s Wi-Fi. The Council has
patrols everywhere looking for us.”
I paused, blinking at him. It was a very Leo thing to say, pointing out the obvious like that, and made me miss my water elemental even more than usual. We couldn’t use the cabin’s Wi-Fi. The Council no doubt had it under surveillance.
From the outside.
I perked up. “What if we teleported into the cabin?”
Bryan dismissed the idea with a shake of his head. “Rob said the Council came up with some nifty new wards that blocked against popping in and out. Leo’s whining about having to go outside to teleport to work, says it messes with his hair.”
His comment made me smile sadly. I missed my guys so much, even smiling felt like a struggle. Bryan had used the crystal a few times to visit the guys while I stayed behind and worked on sketches, strategized with the coven leaders, and welcomed new residents to the grove. I wanted my guys here with me, needed them here to give me strength, but I needed them out there more.
Rob and Leo left books at random locations around the island for supporters of Sentry to use for the messages I sent in the webcomic. Clay kept watch over the school, recruiting members when he could and influencing Alec’s decisions as best he could. Without the guys on the outside, we’d never stand a chance at recruiting enough members to fight the Council, even with the mystery custodian helping by spreading graffiti and sending recruits our way.
So as much as I hated being apart from them, I had to embrace the suck.
“I’ll just use the crystal to take me to a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi.” I stood and stretched my aching muscles. I’d been sitting too long, focused on the sketches. I needed to move around.
“You still need a computer to upload the panels, don’t you? These burner phones suck for cameras.”
Minor detail. I’d figure out something. I was going stir-crazy inside the concealment veil. It was paradise, the weather perfect every day. I never thought I’d miss the rain.
