by Kat Adams
“Stacey!” She dropped to her knees and pulled Stace into her arms. “What happened?”
“She went catatonic.”
Renee held her closer. “I’ll stay with her. You go, save the school. Save Cressida. I know a few spells I can try.”
I gave one last look at Stace motionless in Renee’s arms before waving for everyone to follow me. I double-checked the hall to confirm it was empty. We hurried silently to the door leading to the outside. I opened it slowly and peeked out. I was about to step out when a hand on my shoulder stopped me.
Bryan pointed at the crystal in my hand and then my neck. “Put it on,” he whispered.
Rob joined Bryan in lecturing me. “You don’t take it off, Reed.”
Leo and Clay both nodded as Clay said, “As much as you love to fight us on, well, everything, please don’t fight us on this. Please, Montana.”
I hated going invisible when it was me Alec wanted, but I slipped it over my head anyway. I assumed I disappeared considering how they all seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief. I opened the door and walked out into the gray, drizzly day. The cold immediately hit me, causing me to shiver. Why did I never remember to bring a coat?
I moved ahead to make sure the coast was clear before texting the guys from my burner to get to the different corners of the academy grounds, one for each of the elements. The legends were waiting for them there. The campus was empty, which I didn’t know was a good thing or not. The place had been crawling with Council patrol the last time I’d been here. Then again, they did just burn down their headquarters, so maybe they were out searching for another HQ.
Which made no sense and had me even more on edge. They’d burned down the school to draw me out, not to run and hide. That meant they had to still be here. But where?
I stopped in front of what was left of Clearwater Academy, my stomach twisting at the sight. The main hall had been gutted by the fire, the skeletal remains charred and smoldering. So many memories. So many stories. I closed my eyes and felt for Cressida, not surprised when she didn’t come to me.
I walked down the cement path that bisected the main lawn and led to the grassy round where Cressida’s statue stood proudly in the center. At least they hadn’t destroyed it. Placing my hand on the bronze robes, I waited for her warmth to envelope me, her presence to calm me. The surface remained cold, and my heart pinched as I slumped against the statue. My hand slowly slid from the robes as reality sank in.
Cressida Clearwater, the founder of the academy and original prophecy, was gone.
I swallowed over and over as my breathing grew shallow. That’s it. It’s over. I can’t do this without her.
No, dammit. I refused to go down that path, give in to my fear and sorrow. I’d come too far to give up. I needed to let that shit go. I didn’t have time to mourn my friend, mentor, and surrogate mother, but I would once this all ended. I couldn’t let my despair over losing her distract me from what I needed to do. I needed to channel my anger, transform my grief into fury. My focus shifted to finding Alec von Leer and making him regret ever crossing me.
And he would.
I continued to search the grounds for any sign of life. The four dorms remained standing. For now. Ventus, the large air elemental house with a yellow stripe like a ribbon. Ignis, the fire elemental castle with a red stripe resembling a ring of fire blown by a dragon around the structure. Aquae’s blue stripe still looked like it held the water elemental house together, as if without it, the building would somehow melt away and escape to the nearest body of water.
And just as I’d felt the first time seeing them, none of them held a candle to Terrae.
It still looked like an old inn that time had forgotten. The vines crawling up the outside were constantly shifting, every so often sprouting a new leaf to cover a part of the earth elemental house not already choked out by the foliage.
As I passed by Aquae, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. A very distinctive head of luscious brunette locks swayed back and forth as the owner quickly ushered a large group of magically enhanced elementals into the house through the back. Vanessa’s involuntary entourage had grown. Unbelievable. She had enough of what Alec called elemental sidekicks now to start her own uprising. Selfish bitch.
I stormed over and snuck in behind them, following them through Aquae’s common room. I never thought I’d step foot back inside this house and hated everything about it, from the boring common room to the dorm room that’d been my first home here at the academy. I was just about to remove my crystal to make sure she saw me before I beat the snot out of her for thinking she had the right to treat MEs like they were second-class citizens when she said something that froze me in my tracks.
“You guys stay quiet. If any Council members hear you, you’ll be back in Carcerem with the rest of the MEs, and I’ll be right there with you.”
“Why are you doing this?” Anna, one of the elementals I’d followed the last time I was here, spoke up.
“Yeah,” Jacob, her buddy, added. “You’ve never been nice to us.”
“Because you shouldn’t be forced to wait on pures, and you don’t deserve to be locked away for standing up for yourselves, to want to live free.”
“You made me do your homework,” Jacob pointed out.
Vanessa fluffed her hair as she regarded him. “I made you do a paper on the history of the school. Did you know anything about Cressida Clearwater before that?”
He closed his mouth and shook his head.
“What about me?” Anna spoke up. “You made me do your laundry.”
To this, Vanessa simply shrugged and said nothing. So the ice queen hadn’t gone completely Mother Teresa. She still had a streak of selfishness in her.
“Which of you are air elementals?” Several hands went up. “Can you teleport? Good. Those who can’t, partner up with someone who can. We have to find another way out now that they have the tunnels blocked.”
Tunnels? What tunnels? Clearwater had tunnels? How did I not know this?
“Once we get away from the academy, I’ll take you to Katy Reed.”
The crowd gasped. A tall skinny girl with square glasses thrust out her chin. “It’s illegal to say her name.”
Vanessa regarded her with, dare I say, kindness in her eyes. I barely recognized the gesture coming from someone known as the ice queen. “It’s also illegal to take a stand against the Council. You want to know why? Because they’re scared. Katy doesn’t deserve to be an elemental enemy just because she won’t back down. She’s done nothing but protect this world, and what has the Council done to thank her? They tried to lock her up, to silence her so everyone will fall back in line. I, for one, won’t allow their fear to rule me, not anymore. Katy wouldn’t let their fear rule her from the first day she arrived in our world.”
Holy fartnarker. Did Vanessa Graves just defend me? Will wonders never cease?
“Is it true the Council found Sentry?” a fire elemental asked. I remembered him from his first tribunal, the one where Stace had incorrectly declared his primary.
“I heard they not only found them, but they killed everyone, including her.”
“If they killed her and destroyed her army, where will we go?”
“Without Sentry, we’re doomed.”
The rest of them began spouting panic-induced paranoia. Vanessa brought up her hands to silence them. “Stop. Let’s just get away from the academy and go from there. Okay? I told you I’d get you to safety. That’s what I’m going to do. If Sentry really is gone, we’ll figure out something else.”
That wasn’t what they wanted to hear. The group’s protests grew louder. If they didn’t quiet down, one of the Council’s patrols would be drawn by the noise.
I glanced around, made sure we didn’t have any unwanted visitors, and removed the necklace. Glasses gasped and pointed at me. Vanessa turned and gasped, her blue eyes wide. I fully expected her to jut out a hip and curl her lip at the sight of me. I expected her
to make some sort of snide comment about me trying too hard or that she hated my outfit. I even expected her to call me new girl.
What I didn’t expect, what I didn’t think she was even capable of, was a flood of emotions suddenly shining in her eyes. “Katy,” she whispered and ran toward me, pulling me into a tight embrace. “Thank God you’re okay.”
Whoa. What the…what? I stiffened, not hugging her back. Vanessa and I weren’t exactly friends. “Uh, hi?”
“It’s her,” one of the MEs whispered. “That’s Katy Reed.”
Several more repeated my name as if saying it banded them together like a gang of badasses.
Vanessa suddenly pushed me away and jutted out a hip as she crossed her arms. That was more like it. Now I didn’t feel like I’d landed in bizarro world. “Why the hell are you here?”
“Sentry is here. If your plan was to send them to the grove, it’s too late. The Council found us and destroyed the protective veil keeping us hidden. We’ve surrounded the school. If you want to get out, now’s your chance. Shit is about to go down.” Once we found the dark elementals, that was.
“I’m not going anywhere,” the fire elemental announced. “I’m with Sentry.”
“I’m with Sentry,” another stated.
“Me too.”
Each ME declared their loyalty to Sentry, and my chest swelled with pride. They hadn’t been trained and didn’t know the strategy of our attack, but they were willing to stand for what they believed in, and that was Sentry.
“Go stand watch at the doors and windows,” I told them. “Alert us if you see any Council patrols.”
The group scattered and took up their appropriate posts. Vanessa waited until the last of the MEs were in place before regarding me. “What the hell are you doing here?” she whispered fiercely, then looked around before dragging me to the opposite side of the common room away from the MEs watching the doors and windows. “Do you have any idea how many people are looking for you? There’s a price on your head.”
“Wow. Really?” I’d only been kidding when I made that wisecrack. I’d never had a real price on my head. Then again, most hadn’t. It wasn’t a good thing, yet that didn’t stop me from asking, “How much?”
She looked at me.
Okay, I deserved that look.
“I did not risk everything to rescue the MEs all for you to fuck this up by getting killed when the Council finds you here.”
“Gee, sorry my death will be such an inconvenience for you.” God, how I hated this woman. Of course, she’d turn this into something about her, including how me dying would screw up her life. “Tell me about these tunnels.”
“It’s how I’ve been getting everyone out. There are tunnels all over the island leading to the academy. Some are collapsed now but most are still intact. There are a couple different ones that lead out to the woods. That’s how I’ve been delivering those who want to enlist with Sentry to the grove. We need as many recruits as we can get.”
“We? You’re the custodian?” Holy shit shocker. My mean girl nemesis…was my biggest supporter? Never in a million years would I have ever thought Vanessa Graves was capable of such selfless acts. “It was you behind the graffiti, you recruiting the alchemists and blacksmiths. That’s why you had your dad declare alchemy illegal, so they’d join Sentry.”
“They needed a little push.”
Shock didn’t even begin to describe the wave of disbelief washing over me. “You’ve been leading the uprising from the inside all this time.”
“Surprise!”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me it was really you? Why hide behind the name custodian?”
“If you knew it was me, would you have believed it?”
I smiled and shook my head. “Not even a little.” I still needed more convincing before I fully trusted her. “But I saw you inside Alec’s office. I was there when you told him you were having MEs crack the code in my webcomic.”
“I’ve been feeding him misinformation and staying close to pick up any intel to give to an ME to deliver to you. He thought you were hiding somewhere in Oregon. It wasn’t until Margo Carson convinced her son to decipher your latest webisode and give up the coordinates to your real location that Alec knew where you really were. He still has no idea I’ve been the one running the underground network to send recruits your way.”
“How are you not in an elemutus and in Carcerem?” I still didn’t trust her. She could be playing an angle. What angle, I had no idea, only that whatever it was would have her coming out smelling like roses. “He had to have figured out you lied when Margo posted the real location.”
“I convinced him my sources just got it wrong.”
Of course she did. “How’d you originally discover our real location?”
“Bryan.”
“Bryan?” My Bryan? As in her ex-boyfriend? Jealously bit into me and hit the back of my throat. “What the hell kind of game are you playing?”
“Calm down.”
“You do realize telling someone to calm down has the opposite effect?” My core heated as fire built inside me. If I didn’t find a way to pull it in, I’d wind up setting something on fire—like Vanessa. “How did you convince Bryan to give up our location?”
“He didn’t give it up. I followed him.”
“And he just agreed to partner with you on this? Just like that?”
“Bryan knows me very well.” She smirked, and jealousy once again twisted inside me. I hated that she’d dated my boyfriend before I had. Her expression wilted when I hardened my glare. “Okay, fine. He didn’t know I was there. He trusts me about as much as you do.”
“Then how did you get MEs inside the veil?”
“Professor Layden.”
Jebus rice crackers. Just when I’d started to trust that woman again. Now this? Why’d she feel the need to hide this from me? As soon as she broke free from her void coma—granted, if she broke free—I’d confront her. Until then, I had bigger issues to deal with.
Like the fact Vanessa Graves had a group of MEs with her that didn’t know how to use their inside voices. If the Council heard them, they’d all be sent to Carcerem.
“All of you, talk only if absolutely necessary. You don’t know where the Council’s patrols are hiding.” I glanced around, making sure they all paid attention, before returning to Vanessa. “You’re saying Stacey Layden knew you were the custodian all this time and never said anything? Why?”
“You’ll have to ask her. Trust me, I don’t have any hidden agenda. Katy, this world, it’s not the same now. You have to stop the Council. They burned down the school. My own father led the mob that set fire to the main hall last night. There’s nothing left.”
The sight of the charred remains made me sick to my stomach. “What about the ruins?”
She shook her head. “Gone. That was the first building he destroyed. He had an army of earth elementals not only level it, but also toss every stone that made up the tower off the cliff.”
My first thought was of Cressida. That had been her home. If the Council destroyed it, had that destroyed her? Was that why I no longer felt her presence? “Where’s your dad now? Alec? All the others? Why aren’t there any Council patrols? He used the fire to draw me out. I’m here. Where is he?”
“Underground, in the tunnels. That’s why I have this group here. The Council blocked all the entrances and exits. They know someone is sneaking them out. They just don’t know who.”
Shit. We never planned for the enemy to attack us from below. I needed to warn the others. “I have to go.” I moved to slip the crystal over my head.
“Katy?”
I paused. “Yeah?”
“I don’t expect us to ever be friends. You don’t like me, and I definitely don’t like you.” If this was her definition of a pep talk, she sucked at it. “But this is bigger than us. We have to stop the Council before they destroy our world.”
“The enemy of my enemy is a friend.” I couldn’t remember where
I got the quote, but it seemed appropriate. I texted the guys to let them know I had a group of Sentry recruits with me in Aquae and that the Council was hiding in the tunnels beneath the school to sneak up and attack us by surprise. We had to move—now—if we wanted to take them by surprise instead.
“Katy?” An ME spoke up. “There are, um, giant hairy trees heading this way. What are those?”
“Yetis.” I checked the window. Sure enough, Bryan and the yetis were on the move, closing in from the north. “Earth legends.”
“No way,” he breathed. “They’re real?”
Another ME pointed out the window. “I see a swarm of something with a weird-looking butterfly thing in front.”
I hurried to the window to confirm the sighting. “Pixies. Air legends. The one leading them is Xye, their leader.” And right up there with the head pixie, using his element to carry him, was my bearded air elemental, grinning from ear to ear as he held a Superman pose and closed in from the south.
“I think I see a snowstorm, maybe?”
I checked to be sure. “Snow ghosts. Water legends.” Leo marched with them, determination set in his expression, closing in from the east.
“I’m not really sure what I’m seeing. It looks like snakes. Glowing snakes.”
“Lava snakes,” I explained and spotted Rob right up front with them as they closed in from the west. “Fire legends.”
Oh, hell yeah. They’d never see us coming. We totally had this.
How wrong I was.
22
Sentry closed in, taking up the entire grassy round. I smiled and practically giggled at the sight. It was a beautiful thing, seeing so many coming together to fight for our world.
My smile wilted when I caught sight of the Council members, dark elementals, leechers, and sorcerers teleporting in onto the grounds and surrounding Sentry. By the time the troops spotted them, it was too late.
The Council all fired at once, the coordinated attack taking out an entire line of each group with the opposite element. Alec charged in with dark fire elementals and continued to attack the water elementals, focusing his assault on Leo. Only, he didn’t know Leo had the power to call fire now. Joke’s on you, asshole. Graves attacked Bryan and the yetis with air, but it was no match for the tree giants. They circled the earth elementals and others with the group, protecting them.
