by Jade Alters
“Might be a little weird,” I chuckle. “Maybe…in time. Mom.”
“Weird!” Stephanie barks, and we laugh together. As the shock just barely starts to recede, I realize this proves part of Dorian’s tale. As for the rest… Now I can check with a second source.
“So…what came back to you? Everything?” I ask. Stephanie loosens her hold on me, but doesn’t dare let go.
“Still bits and pieces… Just more of them. I remember that I was pregnant, and that my husband was with me when the car hit…and a name. I know we picked a name for our daughter.” Stephanie arches her head back to smile at me. God…that can’t be what I look like, when I smile. Her charm is palpable, almost overwhelming. “How lucky am I. Not just to have met you…but to live with you?”
“You?” I laugh. Stephanie’s ability to find light in the situation at all strikes me. Mother and daughter, separated by death, yet all she sees is their reunion in what came after. I’m the lucky one.
I let go only when a piercing cry shoots through my forehead. I stumble back with a hand on my forehead to chase out the pain. I know from Stephanie’s lack of reaction and Lee’s almost identical one, that it’s a message through the Soul of Fire, an emergency one. It drills its way through our skulls, whether or not we want to hear it.
“Cece. Lee. Report to my office at once,” Dragonlord Thise commands.
Cece,
The Broken Academy, The Dragonlord’s Office
We’ve never started a meeting so abruptly, or informally. I’m stricken with Thise’s voice, in my ears as well as my mind, the second Lee and I shut the door behind us.
“Share with me what you’ve learned,” she says as I cross halfway to her stony desk. It’s never seemed so much like a judge’s pulpit before. There’s a certain sharpness to her voice I don’t recognize. She doesn’t sound like she’s about to vault the desk and incinerate me, but this isn’t the same loving force of guidance I’ve spent the last two years getting to know.
“Forgive me, Dragonlord,” I use her formal title for the first time in almost that long, “But it seems to me that you already know.” The sound of it, and the words that follow, seem to snap her from a sort of trance. Her eyes open wide with surprise. The lines around them round out and soften.
“I’m sorry, Cece… It may seem redundant, but…I need you to take the lead on this one. If your story and the one I thought ended twenty-three years ago are one and the same…the more you know, the more danger you’re in. It may be hard for you to believe, but this is in your best interest,” Thise says. The look on my face reminds her just how many times I’ve lost because of what other people thought was in my best interest. “I promise,” she adds with a painful sincerity. “Tell me what you think you know, and I will tell you honestly if it’s true.” Thise looks about half her age with those big, begging eyes. I sigh, a hand over my forehead. Lee’s hand on my back is all that gives me the strength to start.
“My parents are Dorian and…” then I realize –- the Academy would never have roomed me with Stephanie if they knew who we were to one another. They don’t know. “An Astral,” I keep it vague. “She was killed in a car accident…which was actually an assassination attempt from the Council.”
“It’s true,” Thise admits, eyes floating down to her desk. In the time she struggles to look up at me, Lee grabs my shoulder, just as shocked as I am to actually hear it.
“What?” Lee sputters. Thise looks at him as she says it, but she’s explaining it to me.
“I was a member of the last Council as well. Following the Runic Gate incidents that introduced Demons, Astrals and Fey to our Realm, there was much fear and prejudice… It was a much less tolerant time, and people were already on the brink… When we received the news of an offspring with traits of both her Astral mother and Dragon father…we voted for the safety of all the Academy’s communities. The idea was proposed by the old Magister, before Horace. If you think he’s traditional... “
“So…you voted. For my mother’s fate and mine?” I growl.
“It hardly matters now. I voted to spare you both, but I should have… Damn the votes and the Council, no life should be considered evil in the womb and snuffed. No matter how powerful. Cece, I’m so sorry,” Thise tells me. Agonizing as the words are for her to pass, they echo hollow through me. I can hardly afford to think of the past, before I was even born, when the future hangs so delicately in the balance right before me.
“What will happen now?” I ask, “Will…will you tell the rest of the current Council?” Thise folds her hands over her lap and slouches in her seat. To see her so deflated, so human, shakes me to my molten core.
“I won’t need to, Cece. According to what Lee has told me, your Astral abilities have begun to manifest. I sensed little bursts of something...odd in the Soul of Fire around you, but…I didn’t know what to make of it. This has never happened before. Sooner or later, something you do will catch their eye,” Thise tells me.
“What if…” I grasp. “What if we just seal my abilities again? Dorian said Horace sealed my Astral abilities with a trick when I was a baby.”
“And now you’re a woman, and a damned fierce one. No one Magician, or even ten, could cage you now. You would need a massive amount of them. A massive amount of witnesses, all of whom could never be trusted to keep your secret.” Every door slams shut. Every window latches. I’m left trapped in a corner, surrounded on one side by a Council whose predecessors voted me out of existence, and on the other by a supernatural separatist sect led by my father.
“Thise…what are you saying?” I ask.
“Every Councilmember is familiar with the case of your mother and father. I elected to keep from them that he claimed to be your father, until now. But…when your abilities begin to manifest, they’ll connect the dots. After what happened at the Ahwahneechee Thanksgiving…I doubt you’ll be looked upon favorably,” Thise tells me. For the first time since I’ve known her as my mentor, I ask her outright:
“What should I do?” The dodge of her eyes around the lava-rivers and rocky walls frightens me more than any answer could. “Thise, tell me! Tell me what I should do!”
“I can’t,” she rasps. “I’ve told you what would happen if you stay here. But you must know by now…that’s not your only choice. Life is not a straight path on level ground. You learned that easier than most, Cece. It’s a fumble around crooked switchbacks up a mountain, at night. For Astral-Dragon hybrids…and for Dragonlords,” Thise chokes. Her voice is hardly strong enough to carry across her desk when she adds, “Where your path leads has always been, and will always be, up to you, Cece.”
My mouth hangs open. Every thought plunges down straight into my rising stomach acid, on its way to my tongue. Nothing. I can’t say a damn thing. Thise stands up, rounds her desk and heads for her door. She stops for five seconds beside me, to grab and squeeze my shoulder. In that grip I feel all the warmth and wisdom she wanted to share with me. Everything we no longer have time to share. I lift a hand to grip her shoulder right back. The thank you that glows around me in the Soul of Fire is more potent than words could ever be.
When we let one another go, she leaves first, then me. Lee follows me out of the room, but makes it no further. He stands dumbfounded in the center of the administrative wing. He watches me walk away for the last time.
“Wait,” he calls for me just as I reach the top stair.
Cece,
With all the voices screaming over one another inside me, I’m sure Thise knows. She can all but see me pack my bag. She senses the conversation I have with Stephanie through the Blue Plane, though not make out what we say. She hears me tiptoe across the Broken Academy at the crack of dawn, with Lee and Stephanie in tow. She knows when we group up with Bart, who followed me back and waits knowingly at the Tether Teleporter.
In all that time, she says nothing through the Soul of Fire. She only watches, right up until I close my eyes to look right back at her.
“Goodbye,” even my mind whimpers, as I snap our connection apart. My unique, Astral-sapphire ember disappears from her sight in the Soul of Fire.
Broken
Serge,
The Sierra Nevadas, Academy Training Zone
I’m woken by a warmth and chime that was once painfully familiar to me. I haven’t seen it for some time now, so when my Room Monitoring Amulet shines on the end table behind my head, I shoot up straight. I glance at my clock in passing. Five-thirty? Who in the hell gets into trouble at five-thirty in the damn morning? My state of alarm doubles when I hold the Amulet up in front of me to see which room it is.
It’s not one of my dorms. It’s the Tether Teleporter in my Wing. Someone’s in the Adjustment Lounge, both long after and before they should be. There’s no question as to the violation. As I jump into my pants and yank on my shirt, I marvel at the fact that no other alarms have tripped.
“The hell is Thise?” I ask myself, for lack of better company as I rush for the door. After all, her Amulet does much more than glow and chime, when a violation like this occurs in her wing. I should have heard her voice through the amulet immediately. And it should have stopped glowing. I slam and lock my door behind me, all the while wondering, why the hell is no one stopping them?
My stomping sprint probably wakes the whole Wing as I clear ground in record time. I’m at the Adjustment Lounge for the Sierra Nevadas in seconds flat. My Amulet darkens to its normal shade just as I throw the door open. There’s not a soul inside. I feel the heat hang in the air from the Tether Transporter. Students have fled the Academy in my wing, and there’s no one here to do a damn thing about it. Well, no one but one.
“What the hell is going on?” I murmur to myself, and take off down the length of the Lounge. I burst through the french doors, surge down to Earth through pure light, and jump out ready to strike. “Hold still, all of you!” I shout, before my eyes even adjust. Then they do. All of my aggression drains out to be replaced instantly with shock and adrenaline. “What…what is this?” my voice barely escapes, hoarse as it suddenly is.
“Something I didn’t want to pull you into,” Cece tells me.
She’s the only one able to face me, and even then, not directly. She looks somewhere between my neck and collar, like I’ve somehow captured the powers of Medusa. Lee looks at the ground. Bart looks off to distant peaks, deeper into the Sierras. Stephanie hovers down beside Cece, her features more defined than I’ve ever seen them. It’s almost like looking at a double-image of Cece. The dry clay between us jumps with neon rays of orange as the sun fires them over the highest peaks for the first time today.
“Want to tell me what you mean?” I counter. “Did Thise send you?”
“No,” Cece admits. Then why wasn’t she all over this? I struggle with.
“Then what are you doing?” I ask, instead.
“I’m…leaving, Serge,” Cece says. Those words can’t exist in that particular combination. Not on those lips. It doesn’t make any sense.
“Leaving…the Academy?” I ask, as my brain twitches in an attempt to understand. Cece’s lips peel apart, but they’re too dry to actually respond. She just nods her head. I want to scream at how ridiculous it is. But the stress lines etched deep in Cece’s face are nothing ridiculous. They carry more weight than anything she could have said. “Why?” I manage to ask.
“I found some things out that… I can’t stay, Serge. The Academy’s not right for me anymore,” Cece says.
“The Academy is the only place that’s right for you. For all of us. What could-”
“They see me as a threat, Serge. I can’t stay. They killed my mother, and tried to kill me, too,” Cece spills over. Tears threaten to froth with each further word.
“What? When did-”
“When I was born. They crashed into my mom and dad, before I was born. The only reason I made it this far was because my father hid me and gave me up. They thought I died, but here I am. Once they figure that out... ” Cece grabs one arm with the other, while Stephanie rests a comforting blue hand on her shoulder. Looking at the two of them beside one another like that…knowing that Stephanie died many years ago… Holy shit.
“You…you two?” I blurt. Stephanie nods.
“They killed me because my daughter was an Astral like me, and a Dragon like her father,” she tells me.
“But…but that couldn’t have been this Council! It’s a new age now. They could… They might…” my voice rumbles down as I begin to understand. The more I talk it out, the more I hear for myself how futile it is.
“Exactly. They might. And, after River and I blew up the Ahwahneechee Thanksgiving, on top of my playing double agent with the Kyrie… It’s not going to work, Serge. I won’t deliver myself to the Council to finish off, twenty-three years later,” Cece defies. I know that fire in her voice. I hear the unspoken message in the words already so sharply spoken. She’s decided already.
“But…where will you go?” my voice grates out from between my clenched teeth. I wait for an answer, but all I get are a few dodges from Cece’s eyes. With every shift I make to find her gaze, she evades me. It takes me several attempts before I realize this is an answer all its own. There’s only one destination that even Cece Ford would be afraid to speak out loud. “Cece… Where are you going?” I ask again. I don’t know why, but I need to hear it with my own ears. If I don’t, it can’t be real. This can’t be happening. “Where, Cece?”
“Would you shut it, Serge?” Lee grunts finally. He can’t bear to look at me either. “You know where we’re going. Why do you need to hear her say it?”
“You can’t even admit where you’re going for shelter… How is that any safer?” I beg, “There has to be another way! Somewhere else, or-”
“You think I’d be doing this if there was another way?” Cece shouts. Smoke puffs out from beneath her stomped foot. Heat mirages distort the air around her clenched fists.
“That’s it, then? You’re just going to switch sides? Join the Kyrie in their conquest for power across Realms?” the words foam from my mouth raw before I can hope to catch them.
“It’s more than that… So much more. You’re not that naïve, Serge.” Cece simmers. Then she takes a deep breath to undo her fists. Just some of the heat dispelling around her is enough to cool the air between us. “You know I would never lie to you about something like this, Serge… The Council murdered my mother. They tried to murder me, before I was born…from fear. Fear of something different. All because absolute power rests in the hands of very few. I know I can’t live in a world like that…can you?”
“What are you saying? Why don’t you just come out and tell me what you mean,” I challenge her. It’s all I can do to endure the inevitable break. Maybe, just maybe if I thrash and kick enough, something will change. Maybe this doesn’t have to happen! It’s all I can think about. But it’s not Cece’s voice that answers first.
“They…send me out on rescue missions,” Lee murmurs, “to rescue prospective students in the Norman world, in distress… The same Council that orders the death of a mother and child. The same Council that okayed the experiments at the Point Arena Facility. How could they expect to build a school where everyone is accepted and welcomed…on such a rotten, bloody foundation?” My mouth pops open to rebut, only to be cut off by another.
“The Academy only opened its doors to my kind…after they found they could not eradicate us,” Bart interrupts. “Vampires were never really welcomed at the Academy. The same was done to Demons, on their arrival here, which was the Council’s doing, too. It has always been a circle of fools who call themselves wise.”
Now it’s my turn to clench my fists. What can I say to fight back? They’ve said nothing false. All accounts used here are public knowledge, available to any student in the Academy Library. The Broken Academy is an organization responsible for beings of immense power. It is an institution hundreds of years old. Of course some bad eggs have found their way into power. Of course
decisions have been made in poor judgment and fear. Is the Kyrie no different? They were the ones who compelled Cece to kill one of their own, my best friend, as a test. They were the ones who tried to use Helena Bartos as a human battery at the Point Arena Facility, even if the original plans for the building were Council-passed.
But in the eyes for the four before me, I see how little any of that matters. In truth, I see why, too. I’m not thrilled about returning to the same building where the order to murder the unborn Cece was passed. But that age has also passed. It’s a new Council, now. And my family is part of the Kyrie. Bad as I might want to go with Cece now, they would never welcome me there. I don’t want their welcome anyway. Not ever again.
“Serge… You could come with us,” Cece’s voice echoes through the darkness of my mind. How long have I had my eyes clenched shut like that? “I know you and your family don’t see eye to eye, but I could talk to Dorian and-”
“No,” I stop her, hand up in warning. I touch my index finger and thumb together – the threat of a trick. Stephanie and Lee brace for impact. Bart fixates on my fingers, watching for the slightest hint of the decisive movement. Cece locks eyes with me. Damnit, why does she have to do that now? Look at me with those huge, teary eyes? “I can’t go. I won’t. And if you won’t come with me…I’ll have to take you.”
“You think you can take all four of us?” Lee answers. I watch the muscles coil tight in his arms. If he could get them anywhere near me, I know I wouldn’t stand a chance. But I could have Lee three mirror-dimensions away before that happened. Bart shifts his shoe quietly to its edge, ready to zip at any second. Whether or not I could keep track of him through it all remains unknown, as a sound behind me derails the focus of our aggression. A quiet breath of light lets another body through the Tether to join us.
“Five of us,” River says as she stumbles toward me. I turn sideways to manage her on my one side, and the four on the other. Then she looks right past me, at Cece and Stephanie. “I can’t believe you were going to leave me behind!”
