“Hey.”
She stepped inside, stopping at the foot of the bed. Her posture was rigid and her fists clenched at her hips. “Why?” she growled.
“Nothing I say will take away what happened, but know that it was not my intention to hurt you. I would never want to do that. I’m sorry that I did this to you.”
“What exactly were you doing, then?”
“While you and Eric were fighting, I noticed something weird about your energy. Before I knew it, instinct took over and I couldn’t control it. Believe me, I tried to stop it.”
“Oh, I believe you. When you changed my freaking DNA, it hurt like hell. I felt when you paused whatever was happening. It felt like my cells exploded all at once, like you ripped away everything that was me.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as tears fell down my cheeks. “I was so scared to hurt you that I didn’t think about my actions. It all happened so fast.”
Lacy sighed as her shoulders began to lower and her muscles loosened. “Look. I know you didn’t do this on purpose. I really get that, but I still want to be mad about it.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? Really?”
“Intimately.”
She narrowed her eyes for a moment before shaking her head. “Well, I guess you would since you had a part of me inside you.” Madison guffawed as Kian snickered. It took a moment but Lacy and I understood their reaction to the unintended innuendo.
“You guys need to grow up.” I laughed.
“I get why Kian should grow up, but what did Madison do?” Luca asked as he and Rebecca barged into the room. Everyone else jumped at their unannounced appearance.
“Give us a heads up next time,” Madison demanded as she tapped my forehead.
“I think it’s funny,” I chuckled.
“Of course you do,” Kian added.
“How are you feeling?” Rebecca gathered my hands in hers. “Did you and Lacy make up yet?”
“I’m in pain, but better.” I looked to Lacy and back. “I think we’re okay.”
Lacy nodded.
“At least you put a Talent in her that accents her already available skills,” Madison stated.
Everyone nodded, even Lacy.
We fell into an easy conversation. It was almost as if I hadn’t almost died and completely re-written the DNA of two people. For a blissful moment, I forgot the world’s troubles and enjoyed the company of the people I loved.
“Did you tell her yet?” Luca asked Kian.
I looked between the two of them. Luca’s gaze was challenging while Kian’s was murderous. “Look at me like you want to kill me all you want Kian, but it will not change the fact that she needs to know. You will not be keeping any more secrets in this group.”
Madison whistled as she smirked at the exchange. Lacy and Rebecca both looked a little uneasy with tension.
“What’s going on?”
Kian turned to look at me. “I wanted to wait until you recovered a little more. There was no intention of keeping this from you. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.” Kian shot a quick glare to Luca. “While you were recovering, some new, but inaccurate information about your Talent leaked to the press. It was damning to your new reputation.”
“Okay?” I was confused as to why Kian deemed the issue worthy of keeping me in the dark.
“That’s not the bad part,” Rebecca whispered.
“Oh?” That gut-dropping feeling that happens before you know you’re about to hear something terrible filled me with nausea.
“Yes, the president has issued a public statement asking for the Moreau family to give you up. McCredie flew up to D.C. to meet with him and a few other key players to try and convince him otherwise.” Kian grabbed my hand as I covered my mouth with the other one.
“There has been an official call for you to be either subdued or destroyed.”
Chapter 35
“Destroyed? That seems extreme for some misguided rumors,” I screeched.
“Tensions are escalated now that the Koenig serum has been released daily, killing hundreds of norms at a time. The only thing that kept you in the norms’ good graces was that your Talent only affected Caelians. Now, the rumors say you can drain norms too.” Luca sighed as he wrapped his arm around Rebecca, who had begun to nibble on her bottom lip, a sure sign that she was scared.
“But I don’t drain norms.”
“In a way you do,” Madison offered. “You have to drain in order to exchange Talent energy.”
“When you had Lacy and Eric in your grasp, quite a few people grew hysterical and fled before they saw that both Eric and Lacy were fine—even if they are different.” Rebecca rested her hand on my leg and gave it a little squeeze. “Marianne is planning on hosting a mandatory family meeting once you’re well enough to stand next to her. Until then, no one except the few people present know what truly happened.”
“Oh…” My eyes drooped from fatigue as the stress of my new situation began to coalesce in a heavy mass, pressing down on my chest.
“We’ll leave you to recover,” Lacy stated with authority as her shrewd eyes took in my ever more exhausted state.
“There’s one more thing,” Luca added, his eyes focused on Lacy as she shot him a glare. Luca returned her look with raised eyebrows.
“What is it?” My voice slurring on the s.
“McCredie heard back from his agent inside GenCorp and everyone except Lacy has been recalled to the underground,” Luca answered.
“You’re all leaving!” I sat forward with renewed energy. “Why?”
Kian tightened his arm around my shoulder and pulled me back onto his chest. The reassuring steady pace of his heartbeat slowed my own racing pulse. His finger lifted my chin before cupping my cheek in his warm palm, urging me to look at him, but I didn’t want to meet his eyes.
“Look at me, Sadie.”
A part of me wanted to keep acting like a cantankerous child. A massive revelation had not only changed my own life, but downright rearranged the lives of two others. I deserved to throw a little tantrum, right? As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I knew I had to get over myself. There was so much suffering in the world, not limited to my own struggles or those close to me. Jedidiah had indicated that my role would be to facilitate lawfulness in a world where equality and integrity were nothing but revolutionary ideas.
Me. Not Kian or any of the others. Although I depended on their collective strength and love to make it through each and every day, it would be me alone who had the ability to truly set things right. I only had to figure out what I needed to do to accomplish that.
With a renewed resolve, I met his mauve gaze. “It’s okay.” I turned to look at everyone. “Everything will be okay.”
“We know that,” Rebecca replied with a smile. “You discovered your Talent’s purpose. We’re going back to the HCA to help McCredie subdue the spy. Plus, McCredie has received all the information he needs to attack GenCorp.”
“Who’s the spy?” I asked as my muscles began to feel heavy, the earlier shock fading and taking all my energy with it.
“Do you think McCredie would tell us through the network?” Luca’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
“Whoever it is, was tipped off and has escaped,” Kian offered.
“So, since you’re the big, bad bounty detective, they’re sending you after him … her?” Kian nodded in reply. “When do you all leave?”
Luca looked at his communicator. “In a few hours.”
“Lucky I woke up when I did.” Everyone nodded in agreement except Lacy, who shifted back and forth on her feet while looking everywhere that wasn’t me. I scanned the rest of the group, but they were going over plans for their trip. Everyone except Madison, who stared at Lacy. Her forehead wrinkled and she pursed her lips.
“Lacy?” Madison whispered though clenched teeth.
“Yeah?” Lacy returned with equal hardness. The two girls stared at each other, mirrors in both posture and atti
tude.
“What did you do?” Madison demanded.
“Nothing,” Lacy answered with less acid. “Nothing that any of the other healers didn’t do, anyway.”
It was then I noticed that Lacy had her hand wrapped around my ankle and the smallest trickle of healing energy flowed into me. How did I not notice this before?
“You’ve been using your untrained Talent on Sadie?” Rebecca gasped as she noticed what I was looking at. The others followed and all expressed their shock.
“How long?” Kian’s jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth.
Lacy’s ministrations picked up as she poured even more healing energy into me, and I warmed from the inside out. A heavy blanket of somnolent energy wrapped around my mind like a thick quilt, comforting and laden with peace.
“Since I first visited,” Lacy answered as she wavered, obviously not used to using more than a trickle of her Talent at a time. Madison reached out to remove Lacy’s hand from my ankle, but she waved her away. “I don’t know how it is for you guys when you come into your Talent, but when I woke up, I knew what to do. Healing is as natural to me as breathing.”
Lacy’s knees buckled and Luca caught her. “It sometimes takes a while for a Caelian to know how to properly use their Talent,” his eyes cut to mine for a moment. I wanted to nod, but I felt heavy all over. “But most have a kinship with their Talent; it’s a natural extension of who they are.”
Rebecca joined Luca as he helped her sit down in an oversized chair just on the other side of Kian. “We train our Talents, not because we don’t know what to do. We train to push our limits so we can use our Talents without killing ourselves.”
“Take her to the head healer,” I mumbled, as I resisted the urge to melt into darkness. “I think she has forced my body into a healing sleep. Whatever McCredie has y’all doing, be careful and come back to me. No one else needs to die.”
Madison and Rebecca both looked like they were holding back tears, while Luca nodded with a grim smile.
Kian kissed my forehead before trailing kisses down my cheek, stopping to place a light peck on my ear lobe. “Sleep well, my love,” he whispered and stepped away from the bed, leaving an empty coldness where his body had lain.
A chorus of “I love yous” and “goodbyes” echoed through the group as I fell deeper into oblivion.
Chapter 36
I found myself standing on a small mountain overlooking a sea of people. One side shimmered with every color under the sun, while the other was a wave of muted colors. Divided as they were, both sides were angry. Their screams reached my ears, wanting, demanding something from me, but I didn’t know what. I was torn. I looked out and felt the tears streaming down my face.
“Choose,” a voice behind me demanded.
My heart shattered as I looked back at the crowd.
“I choose them all,” I answered the voice.
“Then you choose death,” the voice deepened, taking on a crisp accent. I turned to my left just as my grandfather shimmered into view.
“If that’s what it takes to stop all of this,” I swept my arms out toward the crowd as fresh tears fell. “It will be worth it.”
“Your death will never stop the coming storm,” another voice materialized from my right before his body. Dean Kerrington sneered at me, and the part of me that was the girl he had captured and subsequently tortured shriveled under his glare.
“Death is not my endgame,” I replied with surety. “But I will stop this.”
Both men laughed as I looked out over the crowd to the horizon, their shaking bodies pillars in my peripheral vision. The sky brightened as the sun began its ascent. The midnight blue of the fading evening bled into the mauve, pink, and orange of dawn. As the golden sun rose and the beginnings of the clear blue sky melted with the mélange of color, I knew this was more than a mere sunrise—it was the start of a new era.
As the tears dried on my cheeks, I smiled. For some reason this sky brought to mind all of those I loved.
The crowd grew restless and their urgent voices rose louder than before as they chanted a single word, “Justice.”
An etherealness descended upon me and lightened my heart and I knew what I needed to do.
When I awoke, the tranquility I had felt in the final moments of the dream bled over into reality. For the first time since the moment my Talent had activated, I knew what to do.
Carefully, I eased my body to the edge of the bed. Nothing ached like the last time I had awakened, but tubes and wires pulled uncomfortably and I returned to my previous position.
Restlessness churned in my spirit as I searched for the call button. Sitting in a bed was the opposite of what I needed to do. As I pressed the call button to an impatient beat, a crude plan began to form. All I needed was to contact McCredie and tell him I was ready to be his bait after he contacted Mae for one last covert operation.
Eric burst through the door, followed by two other healers. I sat on the bed with a smile as they crossed into the room, checking my vitals.
“Are you okay?” One of the healers asked.
“Yes. I am ready to be released.”
Eric snickered as he recorded information into my chart. “Just like that? You’re in a coma for weeks, wake up for a few hours, then sleep for another three days and think you’re going to get up and walk out.”
“I see your manners haven’t changed,” I deadpanned before giving Eric my best smile. “But yes, that’s the plan.”
“I have been told my bedside manner is rather pleasant, now that you’ve turned me into a norm.” Eric replied with zero malice, but his words still made me flinch.
I placed a hand on his arm. Eric stared at my hand before inching his gaze up to meet mine. “Sorry about that,” I whispered. The other two healers shot each other uncomfortable looks before handing over their charts to Eric and leaving.
“No worries.” He shrugged. “I always struggled with being Caelian, and even though I found acceptance in the Moreau family, I couldn’t let the bitterness go. You did me a favor when you stripped me of my Talent.”
“You didn’t want to be Caelian?”
Eric’s cheeks bubbled as he pushed out a breath between pursed lips, “It’s not that I didn’t want to be Caelian, it’s just that my experience before the Moreau family left me an angry man. That anger was infecting the family. Your actions not only brought harmony back to the family, but giving my Talent to someone who was worthy of it felt like reparation for all the discord I have sown.”
“Oh.” My cheeks heated as Eric smiled, changing his usually hard features into an airy brightness.
“Why the sudden need to get out of here?”
“I know how to bring this all to an end without any more loss of life.”
Eric studied me for a moment before pulling out his communicator and sending a message. “I just let the attending know you’re awake and requesting discharge.”
“Thank you,” I breathed in relief. “For believing me and not hating my guts.”
“No worries, just do what needs to be done before the world goes any deeper into hell. I hear the president has agreed to sign the Talent Registration Act live on national television.”
“When?” My mind swirled with worry. Everything I had planned needed to happen before that Act became law. My plan hinged on it.
“No one knows. They’re not announcing the date or location in fear that the Caelian families will retaliate.”
My gaze flicked to the door just before the doctor walked in.
“I heard about your secondary. That’s just freaky,” Eric murmured.
“It comes in handy.”
“I bet.”
“What’s this I hear that you’re ready to be discharged?” The surprisingly young doctor asked as he reached out to take the charts from Eric. With a quick wave behind the doctor and a mouthed “be careful,” Eric excited the room without a sound.
“Yes. What I need to do cannot be done from this bed.”
“Are you sure?” Marianne’s voice bled with worry.
“More than anything in this world,” I replied as I stuffed another pair of jeans into my carry-on bag.
“I never liked the idea of you being used as bait, but I came around eventually. Now you’re going to put yourself in even more danger. I don’t know if I can’t handle this.” Marianne fanned herself with a folded piece of paper.
“You’ll be fine. Just focus on how the Koenigs are getting their serum out to the public. There has to be a way to figure it out. A pattern or mistake they made.”
“We are handling that.”
“I know, but my plan won’t succeed if you don’t discover how they’re getting the serum out.” Two more wadded pair of jeans shoved into the bag later, I slung the pack over my shoulder and turned to my aunt.
“Francis would have a heart attack if she saw how you packed that bag,” Marianne smiled.
“Where is Francis? I haven’t seen her around much.”
“I decided you no longer needed her services. She’s back to running the household.”
“Good.” We stood there staring at each other. There was so much I wanted to say, and with the tortured way she looked at me, I assumed the same was true for her. With a sob deprived of all gentility and grace, she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into a strangling hold.
“How come I feel like I will never see you again?” she cried.
“Because the future is unknown, but I will promise to do everything I can to come home.”
Marianne pulled away, her steely gaze trapping me. “You better.”
“Yes ma’am,” I answered with a smile as I stepped out of her embrace. My communicator dinged, letting me know my ride waited out front to take me back to the underground.
“Walk me to the car?” I asked my aunt. She nodded as she adjusted the sleeves of her silk blouse. As we walked down the hallway in silence, I watched as my aunt transformed from a woman overcome with emotion into a proud, fierce leader, and I vowed to be more like her.
The Caelian Cycle Boxed Set Page 55
