“I suppose it’s possible,” she says finally. “I mean, technically speaking, Norhurst blood runs through your veins as well — but it runs through your father’s, too. Why would you and Apollo be any different?”
I chew on the inside of my cheek.
“Did Drarkodon ever say anything about my mom?”
She thinks for a moment, though shakes her head.
“Well, my mom is Mother Nature.”
By the look on her face, if she were holding something, she would have dropped it. Her jaw drops instead. She blinks. “I’m sorry?”
I tell her about what happened on Christmas day after I died. The way I saw my mother, and how she told me it would end with me and Apollo. I don’t tell her how I saw the hurt in her eyes when Jace left, though. I don’t bring him up at all.
“Maybe there’s something in her genes that’s interfering with the curse. Sometimes I have these thoughts — I’m supposed to have the courage to resist. Just a few minutes ago, I saw Stanton and I wanted to —” my fist clenches again.
“No one’s perfect. But maybe this isn’t a bad thing.”
“How could it be anything but a bad thing?”
“If it’s possible for you to show strength to kill — and that’s a big if — then maybe it’s possible for Apollo to show courage. Maybe it’s possible for him to be good too.”
“What if it’s at the cost of me going bad?”
“What if it’s not?”
“You’re surprisingly optimistic.”
“You aren’t.”
She shifts her body on the bed and crosses her legs as she turns to me. “What happened to the boy who continuously stood up for his best friend? The boy who stepped in front of Lerra?”
“He died. He was ignorant, and he got himself killed.”
She inhales sharply and turns away from me. It feels like an eternity before she turns back, slowly shifting her gaze over to me. “Would you like to do anything special? You’re two decades, you’re a man now.”
I shrug.
“Well, what if Lerra and I have something planned for you?”
“I don’t really like parties.”
“It’s not exactly a party, I promise.”
“Maybe,” I say. I reach to grab the mud pie and put it between us so we can share it. “It’s your turn to tell me about my brother.”
She looks down at the pie and drags her finger through it, just as I had done earlier when Amelia first brought it in. Rhiannon purses her lips together as she sticks her finger in her mouth. She pulls it back out and then turns to me.
“Okay,” she says, folding her hands in her lap. “What do you want to know?”
“What was he like when you met him?”
She presses her lips together, making a straight line with her mouth. “Not much like you described,” she says. “But I don’t want you to blame yourself for what became of him. Being with Drarkodon, it’s like being exposed to an airborne disease. His presence is infectious.”
“I won’t,” I lie. I have to know what happened to him — and she can’t read my mind anymore.
“I returned to the Underworld not long after Jubilation ran away from me,” she starts, tucking her blonde hair behind her ear. She looks away from me, staring down at the mud pie that she seems to have lost the appetite for. “I was there when the gorgons brought him, and he resisted as much as he could, your brother. But there became a point when he could no longer tolerate the pain they put him through.”
I shift on my bed, turning my body to face hers as I pull my knee up and slide my leg further onto the mattress.
“What pain? Show me.” I reach out for her.
“No!” She jumps to her feet. She’s keeping herself at a distance from me. “I can’t show you that. I won’t.”
Okay, fine. I drop my hands both back into my lap.
“Drarkodon tortured him, but never enough to kill him. He was careful of that. He already knew of the prophecy and if he killed his heir, he would end himself. Apollo was a strong boy, quite a mouth on him too. He never gave up, not until Drarkodon broke him. He tried to escape, but he couldn’t. So he... killed himself. That was when he turned into a necromancer, the Reawakener.”
“Escape from where?” I ask, even though I don’t want to know.
“The Underworld.”
“How old was he?”
“Fifteen.”
What was I doing when I was fifteen? Sitting around fires, being told stories about werewolves. Exploring the Woodlands, hanging out and laughing with my new best friend. The boy I already came to think of as a brother. Apollo’s replacement. All the while, he was getting tortured. He killed himself.
I close my eyes.
“It’s not your fault,” she tells me, but I have trouble listening.
“It should have been me,” I say. “It should have been me.”
“Okay, but it wasn’t. There’s no point in dwelling, Artemis, because there’s nothing you can do about it now.”
“Isn’t there?” I ask. “I’m the Time Traveler. ‘The Time Traveler will rise but not without force.’ Maybe this is the force.” I don’t quite know how to make my presence known yet, I hardly know how it works, but I’ll figure it out.
“You can’t change history!” She takes a step toward me. I don’t sit back. “You don’t know what kind of damage that could cause!”
She sounds just like Nova.
“Nannu said he needs me.” I stand up. She won’t intimidate me. “I have to help him somehow.”
“And you will. We’ll figure it out, okay? But you can’t just go back in time and stop them from kidnapping him. What about Jace?”
“Oh, now you care about him?” I snap.
“I never stopped.” Her voice is soft now. She sticks her hands in her pockets and rocks back and forth on her feet. Jace did that a lot, I wonder if he got that from her. “Meet me in the kitchen later. Dinner time.”
She averts her eyes, she doesn’t look at me again and she lets herself out.
I lay back on my bed.
I didn’t mean to snap, but what good was being able to do anything with time if I couldn’t do anything with time?
There are so many things I want to change.
*****
I go down to the kitchen just like Rhiannon told me to, even though I’m not much in a celebrating mood. When I get there, there’s a door in the hallway that I don’t recognize. It’s old, and I’m not sure how I missed it before. Old wooden boards, bolted together with iron plates.
“What is this?” I ask, she just shakes her head.
“It’s temporary,” she says, and opens the door. “Follow me.”
The door leads right into The Wet Fish in Nevressea, and it’s nearly empty, aside from the cluster of people who stand in the center.
“Happy birthday, Artemis!” they all say.
Rhiannon goes to stand beside Lerra, who is standing beside Vihaan, Miko, and Amelia.
Amelia comes to hug me tightly while I remain standing in the doorway, dumbfounded.
“You’re not mad?” I whisper.
“I could never stay mad at you,” she replies softly, matching my volume. “Happy birthday, kid.” She nudges me with the side of her head against mine, before pulling away. “You’ll always be a kid to me.” She fondly rubs my shoulder before stepping away.
“What are you all doing here?” I ask, walking further into the pub.
“He doesn’t seem too happy to see you, Miko.”
“Shut up, Vihaan.”
“How’s your grandmother?” I ask.
“Ask her yourself.” She smiles brightly. She moves to help an older woman to her feet. There’s a white man sitting at the table with her, his hair isn’t long enough to hide his pointed ears. He must be Miko’
s father.
I walk to the table so her grandmother doesn’t have to move too far to come to me.
“You’re the boy,” she starts, and reaches for my hand. I give it to her. “Miko has nothing but nice things to say of you, of you and even your wolf friend.”
“Yeah, where is Jace?” Miko asks.
“I — uh — he left — when I died,” I say. I don’t know how else to phrase it.
“He hasn’t come back? You’ve been all over the news since Christmas. All of the munfolk territories must be printing about it, even we got news of your resurrection in Orvale, and we’re always the last to know anything.”
I look at Rhiannon, and she’s avoiding looking at me. I turn back to Miko and shake my head, trying to hint at her to stop talking. She notices, and presses her lips together tightly before mouthing ‘I’m sorry’.
I shake my head again. Don’t worry about it.
Miko’s grandmother and her father, Tanare, are both very kind, that I feel undeserving of it.
“I wouldn’t have survived in Mithlonde without Miko,” I tell them both. “When I was out on the platform of penitence, this platform that makes you relive your worst thoughts and memories, she made sure I was okay. You should be proud of her.”
“And let’s not forget — I saved your life.” She grins.
Her father places his hand on Miko’s shoulder. She looks back and up at him, and he smiles at her. “I am proud,” he says. “She’s just like her mother.”
“Her mother must have been pretty great,” I say.
Miko’s cheeks turn a slight shade of pink and she smiles, but she looks down at the floor.
We all gather around a couple of tables pushed together, and Vihaan tells us about how Stanton put word out to look for him and bring him back to Barrowhaven.
“Though no one has yet shown interest in trying to confront a dragon,” he says, blowing smoke out of his nose. His grin is in a teasing way, he’s not threatened by the guardians at all.
My fists tightened at the mention of Stanton’s name, but I try to calm myself when my nails start digging into my palms again.
“So where’s the stone now?” Miko asks. Vihaan smirks and blows the black smoke away. Despite being able to trust us, apparently he has no interest in telling us either.
Amelia walks in from the kitchen and puts a large, chocolate covered cake down in front of me. I shift a little in my chair and stare at the candles.
“Don’t worry,” she tells me. “The cooks in the kitchen made this. Now make a wish, kid. These candles aren’t going to burn forever.” The candles are already dripping wax onto the surface of the cake.
I know what I want, but a wish isn’t going to get it for me. Nonetheless, I look at Amelia. I smile, and I do as she asks.
“Happy birthday, Artemis.” Rhiannon leans her head against my shoulder. I wrap my arm around her and rest my head against the top of hers.
“Thanks,” I say softly.
“So what’s this force that’s going to bring the Time Traveler forward?” Lerra asks as she sits down on the other side of me.
I shrug with my free shoulder.
“Truthfully, I don’t know what any of that meant.”
“Well, happy birthday, Time Traveler. If you ever need anything, just ask me.” Lerra reaches to touch my wrist and when she does, her eyes roll to the back of her head. She tightens her grip around my arm, practically cutting off my circulation.
“The tale of two, cursed for destruction. One with the strength to kill, and the other, the courage to resist. Breaking the mirror destroys the reflection. Breaking the other, destroys the world.”
I can’t take my eyes off of Lerra and silence falls within the pub. I have to remind myself to breathe.
“Was that the rest of it?” Vihaan asks, disturbing the quiet with his loud voice.
I nod, but slowly. I’m having a hard time believing what I just heard. Lerra just finished the prophecy her mom never had the chance to. The one her mom died trying to keep secret. What did she say? Breaking the other destroys the world.
If Drarkodon kills me, that’s the end of Aridete.
I’m going to cause the end of the world.
Lerra’s eyelids flutter and she releases her hold on my wrist. “I — um — what just happened?”
I look at Rhiannon, who’s sitting up, alert in her seat now. “You’re a seer, Lerra.”
“What?”
“After your mom was put to rest, she must have passed it down to you and now that Artemis is of age, I think something triggered it. You finished it.”
“Don’t worry,” Amelia cuts in, waving her hand absent-mindedly. “A lot of weird things happen when people touch him.” She arches an eyebrow in my direction. I turn away from her.
That wasn’t on purpose.
Lerra bumps into the table when she stands, her chair slides across the floor. She’s looking at her hand still, the one that grabbed my wrist.
“I have to go,” she says as she forces herself to look at me. “Happy birthday, Artemis.”
She leaves before anyone has a chance to stop her.
“What do you think it means?” Rhiannon asks Amelia. She shrugs, trying to distract herself with cake and Vihaan fumbles with the cuffs around his wrists. Neither of them are looking at me. “Breaking the other, destroys the world,” she repeats.
“I heard her the first time!” I snap.
Vihaan sits up. “Easy,” he says to me. He looks at Rhiannon. “Drarkodon’s of Glasskeep blood too. So if he murders Artemis, does he become both?”
“A chronomancer and a necromancer?” Amelia scoffs. “It’s unheard of.”
“But not impossible,” Miko chimes in. Her dad grabs her wrist and seems to tell her with his eyes to butt out.
Despite being nearly empty, the pub is beginning to feel stuffy.
“I need some air,” I say and let myself out. They continue talking behind me, but I don’t turn around again.
I walk over the bridge and look out at the dark sparkling waters of the Nevressea lake. The night is cool, the winter air no longer cold enough to ice my skin. I chew on the inside of my cheek and lean my arms against the wooden rail.
It’s weird to think about everything that happened here, and I can see it replaying in my mind. Lerra and her mother, Jace hugging my lifeless body.
I really don’t want to think about that moment anymore.
Staring out at the water, the vision of my left eye blurs. Faces start coming into view, but I don’t recognize them. Faces. They’re all looking at me with wide eyes, one after the other. I back away from the lake and they start to fade out of sight.
I’m not sure what I see.
‘I don’t know what I see,’ I hear Jace’s voice, back when he was telling me about the change in his sight after I gave him that scar. ‘I’m not even sure if what I see is really what I see. Or what I see — I don’t know.’
“Artemis?” Rhiannon pulls me from my thoughts. “Did you hear me?”
“What?” I ask, somewhat discombobulated.
“I have a confession.”
I don’t turn to look at her. My eyes are fixed on the water. “What do you mean?”
“I know what happened here, with Lerra’s mom.”
I furrow my brows as I turn to face her now. “What?”
I notice her eyes are red, they’re watery. She doesn’t move from where she stands, her fingers are fumbling with her charm bracelet.
“Remember when Jace wasn’t healing? In Thealey?” She asks me and I nod. “There are a few of us who are — different.”
“Different how?”
“The first few vampires, they have toxins beneath their nails,” she says. “Malachi, he’s the reason Jace’s family killed Hennessy. He poisoned them, poisoning their minds.
Manipulated them to do the work for him.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because they’re not dead. As far as I know, anyway. They didn’t die in Thealey.” She swallowed hard. “They left him there.”
The whole time I knew him, we thought he was the last.
“He doesn’t know.”
“No, and it’s a secret I’m tired of keeping. I had to tell someone.”
“Why is that even a secret, Rhiannon?”
“My kind did that to his family, Artemis. My kind made munfolk question the loyalty of the werewolves. I never wanted him to be afraid of me. He never looked at me like I was a monster, I didn’t want him to start.”
“If he finds out you kept this from him,” I start, “the way he looks at you will be the least of your worries.”
She nods at my words. She starts to turn to walk back into the pub and I stop her.
“But he’ll get over it.”
She turns around. “How do you know?”
“Because it’s Jace,” I say. “He’ll be mad for a while, but he’ll understand why you did what you did.” I look out at the water. “People always have a reason for doing the things they do.”
“Are you talking about Thealey?”
I shrug.
I’m not going to answer that question for her.
Chapter FOUR
living in the past
She left me alone with my thoughts.
I feel like that can be a dangerous time, for even the most stable person. Which — I’m not. I know I’m not, and I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. I can lie to myself and to others all I want, that I’m fine. I can pretend and I can smile like they want me to, but I know it’s all fake. I’ve been hiding behind a multitude of masks since I came back to life. I don’t even know who I am anymore. Not that I ever really knew to begin with.
“You did a good thing, you know.”
A voice comes from beside me. Though I only heard it once in my life, I recognized it immediately. My mother. But I don’t turn to look at her. I don’t want to see the disappointment she’s likely wearing on her face. I remain facing forward, staring out at the lake.
The Midnight Strider (The Chronomancer Chronicles Book 2) Page 4
