His hair was red and scraggly, and moist, as if the fire had gotten it wet. He was skinny; Emma wondered if he was sick. He walked with a limp. His hair fell across his forehead in shreds.
He tipped back his head and peered down the length of his nose at her, and Emma knew at once that the man wanted to kill her. He started to laugh—but it was deep down inside in his chest, the body-shaking sort of laughter that makes your face swell and deepen in color.
He stepped toward her, angular limbs moving out of sync, teeth visible between his crooked lips. He reached up and wiped his cheek, leaving a dark smudge. His eyes widened with hunger.
“Emma Banks,” he said, lips flirting upward into a disgusting smile. “I’ve been looking for you, and now here you are. Would you like some Ranch dressing?”
Then he burst into laughter. Behind him, an explosion rocked the world. Fire boiled up into the sky and black smoke was everywhere. It crept into Emma’s nose and throat and filled her lungs, and she was screaming and shaking her head, no no no, but she couldn’t look away, couldn’t even blink.
“Get it?” He screamed at her, clutching his gut. “Ranch dressing!”
When Emma awoke there was imaginary smoke still in her lungs. Sweat covered every inch of her body, and her sheets were a twisted mess by her feet. Lily was snoring beneath her quilt in the other bed.
It was just a dream, Emma kept telling herself. My sight is totally different. It sees things that are happening, but this was just a dream—a stupid, scary nightmare.
Convinced, Emma fell back asleep and forgot all about it when she woke up in time for breakfast.
PART IV
WINTER OF GOODBYES
CHAPTER 45
T he warm summer in which Milo and Emma first made their appearance in Astros eventually turned into a cold, snowy winter that left the countryside a pure, unbroken white.
Six months had passed since Maximus’ death, and those were long months for Alexandra. She spent half of her time remembering the little things about her husband that she had always taken for granted—how he would sometimes break toilet handles and doorknobs by accident, and how he could lift her over his shoulder with one arm and lay her down on the bed like a bundle of silk, and how at times, with his body resting over hers, she could allow herself to feel as helpless as a child.
She stayed up most nights and cried. She told herself a warrior would never cry, but then she would remind herself that she was an Acolyte, and a woman—that she had been strong all these years and was therefore allowed a few sobs into her pillow.
The bedroom was decent. Kovax had upgraded her surroundings to keep her happy and healthy for Iolus when he got back. It had been magically sealed, however, and there were glowing, magical eyes in every corner of the room. They made a low humming sound that never let her forget they were watching. Whenever she needed to use the bathroom, two of the glowing eyes would detach themselves from the corners and float alongside her, aware of her every movement.
Those were long, boring, and painful months in which the absence of her family was a gaping hole in her chest. She ate and slept and kept healthy for one reason alone—because at some point, the opportunity to escape would come.
THE MONTHS FLEW by for Milo and Emma, if only because they were unaware of the hundreds of soldiers combing the villages and cities of the Taradyn coast. Word had gotten back to the twins that Alexandra was safe and was being kept in comfortable quarters. It was enough to ease their minds for the time being, though they spent a lot of time worrying about her.
They were fortunate enough to be ignorant of the progress their enemies were making, for in the past six months, a name had been uncovered, one that would lead Iolus to his prize.
That name was “Asceranon.”
AT THE RANCH, the previous six months had been full of nothing but homework, chores, and exams. Ascher informed the twins that they would have to work extra hard in order to catch up. It was hard, but the twins welcomed the challenge, especially now that it was winter and they could no longer play outside.
Milo finally found the close friends he’d yearned for in Owen, Gunner, Barrel, and Oscar. Most nights, he’d spend an hour or two in their bedrooms, or in the attic, talking about Elki hunting and gossiping about the lives of the Champions. Owen and Gunner treated Milo with a detached sort of respect, since he was the son of two Champions himself. One of their favorite subjects was Milo’s parents, and that was just fine with him. They asked all sorts of questions.
“What was it like living with Maximus and Zandra?”
“What did they like to eat?”
“When did you find out your father had superhuman strength?”
“Did they go out with other parents or keep to themselves?”
Milo would sit back and answer their questions one by one, never growing bored or tired, even after answering the same question a dozen times.
He became friendly with Oscar, though he and the Colombian boy didn’t have as much in common as he had hoped. Oscar spent little time with the other orphans, as his father did not allow him to attend classes. Not only were the classes in English, which would have intimidated him, but none of the teachers were Ferals and therefore couldn’t do much to speed along Oscar’s maturation. He had a tail, yes, but his eyes hadn’t changed color yet, and he still found it impossible to phase into even the simplest animals, regardless of the blood he drank from certain birds and critters.
That was one unsettling thing Milo learned during his time at the ranch: A Feral could only phase into an animal form—called a “shell”—after drinking that animal’s blood while it was still alive. And even then, it took hundreds of hours of practice to master a new form.
Oscar’s father, Andres, had decided to earn his keep at the ranch by tending to a spread of beautiful gardens he’d planted over the summer. When the snows came, he switched over to wood gathering and levathon maintenance.
Oscar was always by his father’s side, often playing with a soccer ball Coral had sewn for him. Sometimes Sevarin joined in. He and Oscar got along well due to a mutual love of sports.
At exactly six o’clock in the morning, Coral rang the iron bell that hung behind the ranch’s main building. At least once a week, the bell’s booming DEN! DEN! DEN! caused Milo to jerk awake so violently that he would end up rolling right off his bed and slamming against the floorboards, still wrapped in one or more of his blankets.
But not today. On this particular morning, Milo was sitting cross-legged on his bed, already awake at the sounding of the bell. He was staring out his window at the spread of snow stretching all the way to the mountains. It was the six-month anniversary of his father’s death. He wondered if he should say something. Would the other orphans care?
He knew the beacon crystal would keep him and Emma safe—at least for now—but he couldn’t stop thinking about his mother. Even if Kovax and his cousin Corgos were keeping her in a comfortable place, she must be going crazy without her family. And surely Kovax and his men were doing more than just sitting around waiting for the twins to come to them. He often tried not to think about it.
Fortunately, Milo had found one very good way to occupy his mind over the past few months. He’d been spending more and more time in Barrel’s room, learning the secrets of levitation. And why not? He had decided enough was enough—he was ready to start learning magic, and if Ascher couldn’t teach him, he’d just have to find another way.
He had approached Barrel a few weeks earlier.
“Can you teach me a spell?” he had asked upon entering the boy’s room. Barrel had been in his pajamas and looked frailer than ever.
“It’s rather late, isn’t it, Milo?”
“Can I come in, just for a second?”
Barrel waved. “I suppose.”
“I know you know more about magic than you let on. Like that levitation spell you cast in the attic. And I’m sure you’ve read hundreds of books about it. You’ve got to know something about th
e application of all that knowledge, even if you can’t do much spellcasting yourself.”
Barrel frowned. “Who says I can’t do it myself? I just haven’t spent the necessary amount of time practicing it. I chose chemistry instead—it’s easier on my body, which, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, cannot withstand large amounts of physical exertion. It’s this luminether poisoning, a rare genetic condition.”
“I know,” Milo said. “I’ve heard about it.”
“Of course. The gossip at this ranch…”
Milo looked down at the floor. “I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
“I know, Milo. I rather like you, you know. You remind me of myself back when I first began to study magic. There were so many possibilities. I felt like a child in a candy store.”
Milo sighed. “I feel like a kid in a candy store with his mouth taped shut.”
“That makes sense,” Barrel said, nodding. “It’s not that you can’t do it—you simply haven’t practiced channeling luminether. I could show you a thing or two, but you’re a sorcerer, not a magician. Your power must be harnessed using your faculty of intuition, before you can channel it into the world in any sort of meaningful form. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Milo nodded, but said, “Well, sort of.”
“Come,” Barrel said, waving him further into the darkened room. “Sit.”
Barrel spent the next two hours explaining the basic principles of luminether channeling to Milo in a way he could understand. Milo found himself grasping the subject more easily than either he or Barrel had expected. By the end of the lesson, both boys were leaning forward in their seats and whispering like two thieves planning a bank robbery.
“That’s it,” Barrel said. “You can use an image, a sound, or a memory—whatever you want, as long as it’s complex enough to engage your faculty of intuition and simple enough to recall instantly. You could think of grass, as long as you can convincingly imagine what it feels like, looks like, and smells like. Pair that with a spell using conditioning drills and voila—instantaneous spellcasting.”
“And the grass—that’s called a trigger,” Milo said. There was a light sheen of sweat on his forehead. His imagination had never been so stirred. It felt great.
“Exactly. You pair the spell, which is by nature highly abstract, with something concrete that you can remember in the heat of battle. It’s sort of like a mental shortcut. But the hard part is channeling the spell out of your body and into the space around you. If you’re not careful, you could really get hurt.”
“Gotcha,” Milo said, his eyes going blank as he worked his mind around the information. “I would have to not only bring up the spell using the right trigger, but also find a way to eject it into the world. It’s kind of like speaking, in a way. My brain converts my ideas into language, which then comes out of my mouth in the form of sounds.” He looked at Barrel. “Right?”
Barrel leaned back, eyes narrowed, lips gathered into a pout.
“You’re right,” he said. “It is like speaking a language. That fireball you cast shows you’re already fluent—now you just have to take the tape off your mouth.”
“Can I levitate anything I want?” Milo asked, wonderstruck. “Like a car, or—or a building?”
Barrel shook his head. “That would take a very complicated spell only a magician could cast. And even then, she would require a charged luminether crystal to pull it off. But you’re a Sorcerer, which means you can levitate certain metals—Tiberian, according to the legends. It takes years of practice, and Tiberian is rare.” He shrugged. “But you’ll get there eventually, with the right teachers.”
The next morning, with Barrel’s words playing over and over in his head, Milo got off his bed and made his way to the bathroom to wash up. In that immense, misty room, he swam with the other boys in water that immediately purified his skin. The water was a light, glassy blue and sloshed up onto the tiles as the orphans splashed each other.
“Hey, watch this!” Gunner said, and ran at top speed toward the pool. Milo watched, and for the hundredth time, he noticed the pink round scars all over Gunner’s chest.
Bullet wounds.
Gunner and his family had gotten caught trying to escape from North Korea, ruled by a tyrannical dictator, to find a new life in democratic South Korea when Gunner was only five years old. The soldiers had killed Gunner’s mother, father, and older brother. One of his parents—he never found out which one—had Astrican ancestors, which was how Gunner had gotten his Humankin inheritance. He had been shot eight times by North Korean border guards, and made international news when he survived and was out of a South Korean hospital a month later and walking around. That was how Ascher found out about him, and it was Ascher’s job to save orphans who had the blood of the gods in them.
“I know how being a demigod must feel,” Gunner once told Milo. “In the human world, after I survived that escape, I felt like one.”
At the edge of the pool, Gunner jumped, folded himself into a ball, and landed in the water with a heroic smack. The other boys cheered.
They spent ten minutes frolicking and doing cannonball dives, as was their custom in the mornings. Then the second bell rang, which meant breakfast was in five minutes.
“It’s Sunday brunch,” Owen called out. “Let’s get it before the girls eat it all up!”
Gunner tipped his head back and made a loud honking gasp. It was how he laughed when a joke caught him off-guard. The others giggled at him.
“What?” he said. “I got water in my throat.”
MILO CAUGHT the delicious aroma before he saw the breakfast spread.
He and the other boys ran down the stairs, laughing and pushing each other out of the way, sandals pounding the carpeted wooden steps. He could already smell sausages and corned-beef hash and the sugary, buttery aroma of pancakes. It was American food, a favorite at the ranch. Emma had taught Coral how to make it.
The room was filled with sunlight and laughter and the sounds of trays and forks and footsteps. The boys ran to the long table at the other end of the room, eager to get their hands on plates so they could load up. There was no table schedule on Sundays, which always sent the orphans scrambling to be first, regardless of the surplus of food. The girls were already serving themselves, as this Sunday had been their turn for the early morning shower.
Lily Breezewater turned to Milo.
“Late again,” she said, picking up a cinnamon roll and twisting it around for inspection. “Boys and their pool parties.”
“It makes us hungrier. You should try it.”
“We have our own pool parties during girl hours.”
“Right.” Milo turned his attention to the food. “Decisions, decisions.”
“I shouldn’t eat this,” Lily said, eyeing the cinnamon roll on the corner of her tray. “I’ve been trying to go on a diet.”
“What?” Milo stared at her. “But you’re so—so…”
“I’m so what?” Her eyebrows descended in a look of suspicion.
“Uh—skinny?”
She squinted at him and took a humongous bite out of the roll. “I was only kidding,” she said around a mouthful of dough. “Sheesh!”
Milo watched her walk toward her table. No, he decided, she definitely did not need to go on a diet.
Emma was standing by the table a few feet ahead of him. She leaned over and plucked a red banana out of a basket. There were green ones, blue ones, and even pink ones that tasted faintly of strawberries. Milo’s favorites were the brown ones, because they were cinnamon-flavored. Emma gave him a warm smile.
“Hey, bro.”
“Hey, sis.” He slid his tray next to hers.
Sunday brunch was always extravagant, but this was something else. In addition to croissants and bread rolls, there were also donuts of every variety: chocolate-covered, stuffed with jelly, or white with powdered sugar; there were also weirdly shaped donuts that looked as though someone had twisted the dough before frying it,
and glazed donuts with colored sprinkles embedded into the sugar.
And if that wasn’t enough, at the opposite end of the table sat bowls loaded with fruit of every shape and color—mangoes, melons, grapes, apples, strawberries, blueberries, bananas—along with a variety of fruit unique to Astros, the names of which Milo still had trouble pronouncing. There were also jugs containing juice and cold milk of every thickness and grade.
Further down the table, one could find every other kind of breakfast food—all the warm ones Milo had smelled on his way down: scrambled eggs with mushrooms, peppers, and cheese; waffles, on top of which one could pour strawberry sauce and add whipped cream; breakfast meats in a wide metal tray, bacon on the left, sausage on the right; little round sandwiches made with meat, eggs, and cheese that reminded Milo of Egg McMuffins. He was so astonished by the variety of choices that he decided it would be easier to just take a little bit of everything.
“Gods, you eat a lot,” Emma said.
“Yup. Think it’ll make me taller?”
He concentrated on filling three cups with several different types of juice. There were certain kinds he liked to mix together whenever he could. Standing over his tray with a jug in each hand, he felt like a chemist mixing potions in a lab.
“I wish I could eat that much and not gain weight,” Emma said. “Boys are so lucky.”
“Hey,” Milo said, putting down the jugs, already eyeing the cheesy scrambled eggs. Steam rose off of them in the morning sunlight streaming in through the window. “Do you remember how Dad used to put salad dressing on his eggs? I wonder if they have any of that here.”
“Salad dressing,” Emma said, looking at the eggs and frowning.
“What is it?”
“Right after we got here, I had a dream about a man who walked through a wall of fire. He was walking toward me, and he had this ugly red hair and, like, a limp or something. He asked if I liked Ranch dressing. Isn’t that weird?”
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