“Faye,” Jaxen calls from the banister of the stairs.
I pull my eyes away and head after Jaxen up the open staircase. To the right and down the hall, we stop in front of Maddock’s door. Small black letters are etched across the glass, marking the room as Head Elder Room 205. My stomach rolls, leaving a sour taste in my mouth. What fate rests for me behind this door? What kind of trouble am I in? Everything happened so fast that I’ve barely had time to digest it, to let it sink in.
I don’t think I’ve wanted it to sink in, not just yet.
Jaxen opens the door and walks through. I follow behind, forcing one foot in front of the other, forcing a brave face. The room is large and keeps the same deep, reddish-brown colored wood along the ceiling, framing the room. Situated at the end of the room is a mahogany table meant to be stood in front of for judgment. Six wingback chairs rest behind it, awaiting their jury.
Residual panic drags lingering fingers down the back of my mind. Will I be made to stand there? To face judgment…possible banishment? I run my thumbs over the tips of my fingers as they hang by my sides, again and again and again. I turn and turn inside the large room, feeling like I’m living on a merry-go-round. For a room so large, it shouldn’t feel so small. I shouldn’t feel so choked, so lost, so scared.
“You okay?” Jaxen asks quietly from a few steps away. I turn around and face him. His lips are pressed into a slight grimace, but his eyes are deep and understanding. He’s a perfect stance of fearlessness, a statue of strength, a backbone I wish I possessed.
The room stops spinning but the fear still lingers. I straighten my shoulders and nod because it’s easier to lie that way. I don’t dare speak. I don’t want to admit it. I don’t want to be a coward. I want to be like him; strong. I thought the worst would be over after touching the Culling quartz. I thought I’d either be blessed or cursed, but, either way, I’d know the truth and it would be over. I never thought, not for a second, I’d be rushed out of the ceremony without an ounce of insight as to who I am. I never thought I’d be standing in an office with a Watchman, a very…handsome…Watchman who I barely know, waiting for the Head Elder to deliver the fate of mine and my parents’ future.
His feet move and he steps closer to me. He’s right in front of me. He smells of electrical wires and musk. The scent is soothing, like ginger to my stomach. His eyes follow after my gaze, and then fall back on me. “You know you’re safe here, right?” he says, his voice closer, deeper, filling the hollow parts of my soul. I want to believe him. It would be so easy to, but I know better.
“Am I?” I dare to look up at him. The screams of panic and the voice of my Elder, shouting for me to make it stop, pulse in my brain.
His forehead creases a little. “Why wouldn’t you be?”
I shrug. I don’t have an answer for that, not yet, at least.
I stare past him through the frosted glass which only shows silhouettes of bodies moving down the hallway. A form stops right in front of the door, and ice spreads through my chest, freezing my heart in place. The doorknob turns, twisting my insides along with it. This is it. This is it for me.
Maddock bursts through the door, his blue eyes wild with excitement and intrigue. He’s already shucking off his red robe and tossing it onto a chair. “That was indeed a show, Miss. Middleton. A show I never thought I’d witness,” he says with enough electricity in his words to light an entire stadium. The air buzzes around him. I’m light years away from relating. “Care to explain how you did that?”
My thoughts trip over my words, which jumble into an unredeemable knot. I stammer to say the right thing as he stares at me with intense curiosity, like I’m a rare breed caught and sedated to compliance, like he has just struck the lottery. The furnace inside me flips on, raising my temperature past any bearable level. I have no answer for him, nothing that’ll explain such a strange occurrence.
All I have is the truth.
“My mother had a vision when I was little that I would be a Defect.” I pause and drop my eyes to my fingers. I twist them uncomfortably at my waist, searching for more words, the right words. My eyes meet his. I skirt around, thinking about the secret grin he wears, like he knows something I don’t. He more than likely does.
“And that’s all?” he asks, taking small steps toward me. Slowly, carefully, like he’s trying not to spook me.
Eyes. There are four of them and they are trained on me. I don’t like it. I push my shoulders back and take in a deep breath. “I…I have believed my whole life that I was a Defect, sir. I came here today fearing banishment, but hoping for a miracle. But this morning, as you know, my parents went missing.” He halts mid-step. The topic’s changed, shifting the mood in the air. A ripple of disquiet spreads over his features.
I shut my eyes. I want to ask where they are. I want to drop to my knees and beg for him to tell me, but that’s not our way. A novice doesn’t question an Elder, and an Elder doesn’t just offer up information.
Maddock stands there, studying me. I can see my words being tossed around his mind. His mouth opens a little and then pinches at the side as he chews on his decision. I’m a bag of nerves waiting for Maddock’s words to lift and carry me. His eyes graze over me and, surprisingly, there’s no judgment, no subtle hints of my life being cut short, just a man who’s been given a perplex and very dangerous riddle. I think the seasons have changed by the time he speaks again.
“First off, please, call me Mack. Everyone does. Secondly, please, sit.” He gestures to the two couches facing the unlit fireplace. “Before we discuss your parents, we need to talk about the Culling incident, about the impossibility of what we all just witnessed. Never before has the Culling quartz shown both sides of the affinity bond for one person, not until you.” He’s still on a high from it. It’s clear by the way his brows are drawn up with inquisition. It’s not at all what I expected.
Excited and not mad.
Curious and not appalled.
The three of us sit, no one saying anything. It’s so much to absorb. He wants to talk about the Culling and not my parents? Why avoid it? The room begins to spin a little, so I grip the edge of the couch, trying to sort through my tumbling thoughts. I was both Hunter and Witch, but how? Why? Is that a Defect thing? Am I nothing? I know the thought is ridiculous. No Defect could do that…could clear an auditorium of light.
“Well?” Jaxen asks, staring at Mack like he has better things to do, better places to be. I don’t know why the tone offends me.
“Have you ever heard of the Everlasting gene?” Mack asks quietly, thoughtfully. He looks between Jaxen and me like he’s on the precipice of something groundbreaking, something earth shattering, something I think I don’t want to be a part of.
Confusion grows thick between us on the couch.
“No,” Jaxen says flatly, answering for us both.
Mack tilts his brow up at me. I’m still stuck on the word everlasting. He leans forward with a hint of a smile on his lips. “I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. It’s a myth amongst our people. Kind of like Bigfoot, only this myth is kept a tightly guarded secret.”
“Bigfoot,” Jaxen drags out. He leans forward too, meeting Mack’s intent gaze. “Are you messing with me right now? Is this some sort of field test I didn’t know about?”
Mack chuckles once, the sound carrying a slight bitter note. “I wish I was messing with you.” He exhales loudly and leans back again. “The truth is, the myth is not really a myth. The Everlasting will, at some point, exist. Just as our Coven’s genes have warped to produce Defects, at some point, they will warp to produce an Everlasting, one who possess the power of both. It has been foreseen by the Divine Cecilia.”
I know I should have questions. Maybe I should even be bursting at the seams with what he’s possibly implying, but not a single part of me moves. I don’t even blink or breathe. It’s like every word pouring past his lips is spoken in a language I can’t comprehend. Words like ‘everlasting’ and ‘foreseen’ and ‘my
th’…none of these words apply to me. None of them can be about me.
“Okay, not to offend you, Mack, but you’ve lost me. You lost me at Bigfoot,” Jaxen says. He stops, looks over at me, and turns back to Mack. “And it seems you’ve lost her too.”
“Roll up your sleeve,” Mack says. I look up from my lap. He’s looking at me. He wants me to do it. I start to roll one up when he adds, “The arm that burned during the Culling. Roll that one up.”
I switch arms and roll the sleeve up. A small pinkish birthmark in the shape of an awkward heart sits just below the crook of my elbow. Jaxen tenses beside me. I gasp the moment I realize what it is. An affinity mark. I look up at Mack. “Does this mean…”
“That you have a partner? I don’t know. The quartz didn’t work properly after you cracked it.” He smoothes a hand through his hair, trying to form it into some kind of cohesion. “But if what I suspect is true, that you do carry the Everlasting gene, then that mark has nothing to do with a partner.”
“What are you talking about?” Jaxen asks, this time sounding interested.
“Before the proclamation, marks were given during Samhain as a means of branding them to the Coven, as a symbol of power and faith. That all changed after the dark days, when the Darkyn Coven rose up against us and so many of our Witches abandoned our Coven in the fight against Hunters. Those Witches cut their marks off. They disowned us…disgraced our kind.
“So when Mourdyn was brought down, the Divine decided to use that very mark as the link that would bind the Hunter to his Witch, ensuring they had to remain close and intact in order to use their magic. They used it as a reminder that we must stick together in order to be strong. As a reminder of what nearly destroyed us.”
I think I know where he’s going with this, but I’m not sure it’s a road I want to follow.
“If she is who I think she is, based off of what I saw in that quartz, then that mark reverts back to the way things were before the affinity bond, when marks were symbols of power and not chains linking us to another. She,” he says, looking over at me with eyes filled with pride and wonder, “she harnesses what no other has yet to harness before, not even the Divine. She harnesses the power of a Witch and a Hunter.”
“This is insane,” Jaxen says, pushing his hand through his hair and blowing out through his mouth. He leans back into the couch, staring absently at the floor.
“How can we know for sure?” I ask, ready to squash this logic. Me? A prodigal Defect harnessing both sides of the affinity bond? Impossible.
“It’s simple. I’ll ask you to do two things. If you can do both of them, then it’s true. If you can only do one, then we’ll know which power you harness,” Mack says easily.
I fall right in step with what he says, though I’m not sure if it’s so I can prove him wrong or so I can prove to myself that I am what he says I am. “Let’s do it then.”
The sun beams from his smile. “I want you to pull the energy from the light above us, since you seem so well conversed in the Hunter’s way.”
I clam up. “But I don’t know how to do that,” I say. “I haven’t been through training.”
“You didn’t need training when you bled the auditorium lights dry of electricity,” Mack points out. He looks at me with such surety, such confidence, it’s almost overwhelming. It’s unsettling. “Close your eyes. Open your senses to the energy around you, and then pull. It’s that easy. You will know it when you feel it.”
I inhale deeply, wishing the air offered confidence along with oxygen, and then shut my eyes. There are too many thoughts in my head, too much to sort through. It’s noisy.
“Clear your mind, Miss. Middleton,” Mack says evenly, encouragingly.
I sigh and try to visualize pushing my thoughts away. When I think I’ve succeeded, I notice a small humming in the back of my mind. It’s like an electric gate waiting for me to touch, waiting to zap my fingers. So I do, and the moment I do, the power is so exhilarating, so intoxicating, I tug hard. When I open my eyes, the only light in the room slants in from the curtained windows.
Mack’s small, knowing smile is the first thing I see. The second is the lack of electricity in the room. It’s all swarming and buzzing inside my veins. I can feel Jaxen staring at me, but I don’t acknowledge it…even when my cheeks do.
“See. You definitely have the Hunter in you, but let’s try the Witch.” He leans forward and pushes a small white candle on the table toward me. “Light it.”
I quirk up one eyebrow at him.
“Same rules apply. Shut everything out and focus on the wick of the candle. For a Witch, it’s your intent that holds the magic. Will it and it will be.”
I close my eyes again and think about the heat and shape and burn of fire, and will it to appear on the wick. I crack one eye open, small enough to peer out, and see that nothing has happened. The candle remains unlit. Mack’s face leans into my line of vision and tells me to try again. I shut my eye and think deeper; the way fire sways, its smell, the way my finger feels when brushing dangerously back and forth through it. I want the candle to burn. I need the candle to burn. I will the candle to burn.
The candle will burn.
When I open my eyes, the candle is lit, but that’s not where Mack and Jaxen are looking. The fireplace now has a roaring fire. Every candle on the mantle burns. Mack looks back at me, and I can tell that, even though he considered it to be true, he didn’t quite fully believe it, not until now.
“We have to hide her,” he says at once, any sign of excitement burnt away in the millions of flames surrounding him.
Jaxen stiffens. “Whoa, wait a minute before you make any rash decisions. I’m still trying to let this sink in,” Jaxen says, holding a hand out.
I’m a tumble weed lifted by a sudden breeze. I can’t catch my footing. I can’t stop where I’m heading. I just used both powers. I really just used both powers. No one has done that. Ever. “I…what…” I stop, try to formulate the storm of thoughts in my mind into one understandable sentence, and say, “I don’t understand. How? Why? What does this mean?”
“I don’t know,” Mack replies with three words that weigh heavily on my soul. “But I do know that we need to keep this hidden for now. The kinds of people that will be attracted to what you’re capable of are not the kinds of people you want after you. There are layers I need to go through, people I trust that I need to speak with first.”
“Hidden how?” I don’t like the sound of it. I picture four small walls closing me in, swallowing me…just as if I was a Defect. My pulse triples in pace at the thought, and I suddenly wish I had worn something a little cooler. I suddenly wish for a tall glass of water.
“Maybe at my place. I don’t know. Somewhere where you won’t be found.” His eyes are everywhere, all over the floor, searching for reason, searching for answers.
Jaxen scrapes a hand through his hair. “Don’t you think it’d be best to hide her in plain sight? She was seen. Everyone in that auditorium saw what happened. They’re going to question it, and if they find out she was removed or hidden, word will spread. It will draw more attention to her.”
I can almost see the wheels in Mack’s head spin as he rubs his brow. “Your logic does have a point. Maybe…” he stops, touches his chin, looks around the room, “maybe we can place her in the dormant program.”
“The program for affinity partners who have the age gap? You still use that?” Jaxen asks, thrown off.
“We haven’t in a very long while, but yes, it’s still open. You never know when a novice will miss the birthday cut-off.” His tone lightens, lifts, changes into something that resembles hope. His eyes find Jaxen’s and a small smile begins to form. “This year’s Culling was an odd number. I can pass it off as that. It’s a perfect idea.” I think my insides have turned to stone. Mack nods a little, like the idea is sinking in, finding a home in his mind. “Yeah. That’s what she’ll do. For now.”
“Sweep floors and tend to the kitchens?” I wa
nt to grab the words as they come out of my mouth and put them back. I want to wipe the disbelief and slight disgust clean from my tone, but the slight quiver in Mack’s brow tells me it’s too late. He’s heard it, swallowed it, understood it.
“Do you have any better ideas, Miss. Middleton? I’m trying to keep you safe.”
Jaxen shifts, straightening the leg of his jeans, and then clears his throat. “Putting a loaded gun in the middle of an angry mob isn’t what I’d call safe.”
He’s taken the spotlight burning my cheeks and moved it onto him. I feel my mouth part in shock.
Mack’s eyes flash over to Jaxen’s. His lips are drawn tight. The air around him thickens with anger, flickers with electricity. He lifts his finger and drops his voice to a dangerously low level. “Do not forget just who you are speaking with, Jaxen Reade Gramm. I’m your Elder first and foremost, and you are not Gavin.”
It’s as if Jaxen is struck with a whip. His body tenses all over. His hands form into fists near the many handles of his daggers. His tone drops too, matching Mack’s. “My brother has nothing to do with this. You know what I say is true. You can’t keep her on campus grounds without some form of training, some way of keeping her magic in check. You’re asking for neon signs to flash around her.”
I hold my breath.
Mack glares for a second more, and then relents. A flicker of amusement passes through his eyes, a moment of revenge. “You’re absolutely right,” he says.
I let a small sigh of relief escape past my lips.
“That’s why I’m going to assign my best men to her side. They’re going to train her to become a Night Watchman.” He looks at me. “You will train separate from the other novices. They will think you’re in the dormant program until I figure out what we should do with you. I don’t want to have to make you choose a side of your magic to use as a cover. You need to learn both, to be good at both.” He leans a little closer, his face going serious. “And no matter what, no one outside of your trainers can know of your abilities. Not until I say otherwise.”
Everlasting Page 6
