“We wanted you to be happy, Aidan,” his mother cooed, but nothing about her energy spoke to that.
He leaned forward over the soup he hadn’t touched and placed his hands on the table. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have sold my soul to secure your reign. Maybe you shouldn’t have given me away to that place just to save your own asses—”
“Enough!” the king bellowed as his fist slammed against the thick glass table. Glass, glass, glass everywhere, everything in that place completely transparent except the intentions of those occupying it. I eyed the king, whose expression had quickly devolved, and remembered something Maddy had told me in the hallway at Wadsworth. She had seen Aidan’s file, and it hadn’t had a crime listed—a reason for his presence there. At the time, she’d thought him suspicious because of it. But now…now that missing info was starting to make more sense.
“It’s not enough,” Aidan countered, shooting to his feet. The scrape of the chair on the smooth marble floor echoed through the vast room, making his outburst all the more unnerving. “You sent me there—locked me away in that place—to serve your own selfish purposes, and I want you to admit why.”
“We did what needed to be done.”
“Did you ever expect me to return?” Aidan asked, voice tight with rage and a mix of other emotions swirling just beneath it.
The king’s silence impaled me.
“Sacrifices must be made at times to ensure the stability of our world,” the queen answered on her husband’s behalf.
“Your… darkness ...made you the most suitable for the task,” the king added.
“Suitable to do what?”
“To ensure that the magic wouldn’t fall.” The king’s sharp gaze cut to me. “But apparently, that has happened regardless. Foolish girl—you have no idea what you’ve done.”
“I dropped the wards so we could get out,” I said, though my confidence waned under his scrutiny and my voice faltered.
“No. You destroyed a very intricate system imprisoning the greatest threat to this realm in existence. You have quite possibly unleashed him on your world and ours…if he is able to find the body capable of bringing him back here.”
Aidan cocked his head and took a step toward the head of the table. “So you are behind the beast trapped inside Wadsworth. You and the headmaster…the Council…it all makes sense now. The timing…the addition...the death room. I knew you were providing the financial backing, but I never fully understood why.”
“Hagan”—the king sounded positively bored when he said the name, but I swore every surface in the room reverberated at the sound—“needed to be stopped at any cost. The only way to do that was to extract him from this realm and trap him in another. Malum magicae were the best source of power strong enough to subdue him.” The king smiled at Aidan, and I saw the devil in it. “We needed a way to power the wards. The Council suggested that malums would be the perfect source. And they were right.”
“Those kids were sent to their deaths when they were shipped to Wadsworth.” Aidan’s expression had gone blank. “Why did the Council agree to this plan?” he asked, his voice too even and calm for my liking.
The king’s vicious smile widened. “Because we promised them a malum in return.” Ice ran down my back. “You were promised to the Council when your powers fully emerged so that you could do your part to keep Hagan trapped.”
Aidan’s hands flexed at his sides. “And by ‘do your part’, you mean give my life.”
The king’s expression never faltered. “As your mother said, sacrifices need to be made.”
I shuddered at his callous tone. At how detached he seemed at the thought of killing his own flesh and blood to rid himself of a powerful fey. My father might have been an asshole and complicated at times, but even he hadn’t been anything like Aidan’s. He hadn’t sent Maddy to Wadsworth knowing she’d never return.
A pang of sadness tugged at my heart at the thought of him, but it was quickly eclipsed by anger. Anger for Aidan. Anger for what they’d done to him—and to so many other victims of Wadsworth.
“You’re the reason they’re all dead,” I said, rising slowly to my feet behind Aidan. “All of those kids—innocent or otherwise—went to Wadsworth thinking they’d get to leave one day, but that was never the case for some, was it?” My feet propelled me forward while my mind reeled. “My sister—she would have died there if I hadn’t gone after her, hadn’t gotten myself thrown into Wadsworth with a plan to break her out. And for what? To keep you safe from whatever the hell it is that’s trapped in that building?”
The king’s expression soured as he glared at me. “Hagan was the only being that posed a threat to us as a civilized realm; the only one powerful enough to wage a war against us and unseat our rule. So yes, little girl, your sister would have died there, and I couldn't care less, because securing him in that prison was the most important thing.”
“You heartless bastard—”
“Guards!” the king shouted. “Remove this girl from my sight—”
“Lay one hand on her and it’ll be the last thing you do,” Aidan growled, cutting off his father. The guards paused at his threat, and the king raged.
“Take her now!”
Guards rushed toward me, but they soon found themselves taken hostage by black wisps of magic. Bodies slammed brutally against the far walls, then fell to the floor, unconscious.
“I came here for two reasons,” Aidan said, his voice barely his own, his aura darker than night and completely terrifying. “To get the truth behind why you did what you did—”
“And the other?” his father asked as he rose from his seat, body thrumming with magic.
“To get revenge.”
The second that word left his mouth, Aidan blasted his father with a cloud of black magic. It rammed him in the chest and knocked him back, but he did not fall. The queen took her place at her husband’s side and took his hand in hers. I looked on as she, like her flowing dress, glowed white, creating an orb of protection around them that starkly contrasted Aidan’s magic. It grew wider and taller with every passing second, slowly engulfing everything in the room. The table flared red, then began warping like molten glass as it liquified.
It wasn’t a shield; it was a magical kiln . One she and the king were apparently immune to, but I was willing to bet the rest of us were not. As it crept closer, the king arced his arm, and a shard of ice as long as a car and as thick as my leg with a nasty point on the end appeared. Hefting it like a javelin through the white-hot bubble, he threw it toward Aidan. It missed by only an inch, knocked aside by one of Aidan’s inky appendages, but that didn’t matter. It shattered on impact, and the shards spread all around him, creating a frozen web that came alive. Tiny ice spiders crawled up his legs, encasing him in an immovable fortress of magic. The harder Aidan tried to move, the more trapped he became.
“Aidan!” I screamed as I ran toward him. One of his tentacle arms shot out and held me back.
“Don't let them touch you,” he yelled at me. “You need to get out of here!”
“I’m not leaving you,” I yelled back as I racked my brain for a way to do something—anything. Sarah had already retreated to the back of the room, away from the dome of heat that could melt flesh from bone.
The king drew his arm back again, and yet another icicle of death appeared. This time, when he let it loose, it didn’t miss. It grazed Aidan’s side, freezing his flesh to ice, then hurtled toward me. I dove out of the way—barely—but the breeze froze my cheek, and it burned as it slowly thawed.
The royals would take us piece by piece if we didn’t escape.
But I couldn't get Aidan free.
Then I saw it in his back pocket—the painting from the reformatory. The one with the talking dragon whose smoke could escape the canvas. I wondered if his fire could, too.
I sprinted toward Aidan as his father prepared yet another death javelin, and I pulled the painting from his back pocket. The dragon inside swirled and
spun, and my heart raced as I tried to figure out what to do.
“I need your help,” I told him, and he drew nearer. “I need your fire!”
“You have to call me out,” he said, and I nearly screamed in frustration.
“Great. How?”
“Only the one who can knows that.”
I felt the whoosh of another ice bolt and heard Sarah yelp as it crashed against the wall somewhere near her.
“Cece, get out of here!”
“Who is the one?” I asked, ignoring Aidan’s demand. The dragon pressed to the edge of the fabric and huffed in my face. “That’s not a fucking answer!”
“ Now !” Aidan roared as the ice around his feet cracked. I jerked my head up, thinking this was a good sign, but I realized it was the heat of his mother’s dome melting it—but not fast enough for him to escape.
“Let him go!” I screamed at them, pushing every ounce of emotion I could into those words. They slammed into the wall of magic and dissipated like the worthless attack they were. There was nothing I could do to stop them, and the helplessness was maddening. Once again, I found myself unable to thwart an enemy without the help of outside magic. Tears welled in my eyes as that fear and frustration turned to anger, a living thing as hot as the web of death headed for us. A rage that could not be contained.
And just as I had at Wadsworth when the headmaster had threatened to harm my sister and my friends, I unleashed an unholy sound that shattered the parts of the glass table that hadn’t already been melted and ripped through the queen’s magical kiln, shredding it to bits. The king’s icicle of death exploded in his hands and fell to the ground at his feet.
Everyone in the room stopped and stared at the hysterical witch whose aura now glowed like a star—like a beacon in the night. And it was in that moment of silence that seemed to drag on forever that a most unexpected thing happened. An inhuman shriek split the air outside, rattling and cracking the walls of the castle—and the painting in my hand.
My call had been answered.
I was the one.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Maddy
“Your uncle’s on the Council?” I shouted at Rhys. I scrambled to my feet, wincing when I saw the wet mark on Rhys’s mom’s sofa. But wet clothing and sofa stains were the least of my worries. “Maybe you should’ve mentioned that little fact before we came here? We need to leave. Now .”
“It’s okay.” Rhys tugged me back down to sit beside him and took my hand, linking our fingers. “He’s a former Council member.” His gaze met his mother’s, and I sensed wordless communication. “He left for a very good reason, didn’t he, Mom?”
“Of course.”
“You’re saying we can trust him?” I asked.
“With our lives,” Rhys said with full confidence, but shadows lurked in his eyes, giving me doubt.
“No worries. He’ll behave.” Olivia’s gaze fell to our clasped hands, and she smiled. “I’m glad to see you found a bit of happiness during your time away, Rhys. After what happened with…” Her smile faded.
Did Olivia mean his girlfriend? The one who’d supposedly committed suicide?
“Do you plan to share what happened with Maddy, Rhys?” his mother asked.
His lips tightened. “I already did.”
Olivia nodded slowly. “Good.” Her gaze fell on me. “They called it a suicide.” She scowled. “I’m convinced that the school killed her.”
“It’s just like what happened with you and Cece, Amelia got into trouble and was sent to Wadsworth.” Rhys’s gaze met mine. “She wasn’t strong like you. She was a gentle person; she wouldn’t hurt anyone. And I knew being in prison would break her. So I made sure I was sent there, too.” His hand clenched tight around mine, and I winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Anyway, I knew Amelia wouldn’t last long at a place like Wadsworth, and I was right. I’d barely arrived before she was dead. They called it a suicide but she never would have done anything like that.” His shoulders slumped, and anguish came through in his voice. “That’s when I started to suspect something horrible was going on there. You know what they did to her. We saw the evidence in the basement.”
“They murdered her like they tried to murder my sister. Like they would’ve killed me, given time.”
“My uncle was working out an escape plan when I met you. He had an in with one of the keepers, who would get me out for a stiff price.” He and his mother shared a worried look. “I told him I couldn’t leave. I had to stay and figure out what was going on. And then I met you, and I couldn’t leave you to the same fate as Amelia. Actually, I couldn’t leave anyone to that fate. I had to do something.” Strain came through in his voice. “I had to end it, but I couldn’t do it alone. My uncle and parents were trying to find evidence of what was really going on there. But by then all hell had broken loose.”
“I’m relieved that you’re out of that horrible place,” Olivia said. “But you started a chain of events no one could have predicted. We need to act, and fast, because—”
“Because if we don’t, everything is in danger,” a deep voice said from the doorway.
A tall, burly man walked into the room. If I’d met him on the street, I would have known immediately that he was somehow related to Rhys. Same dark hair and green eyes; similar build. It was clear that Rhys took after his mother’s side of the family.
He flashed his fangs as he approached a high-backed chair beside the fireplace. He dragged it closer to us and settled on the cushion. When he smiled again, his fangs had retracted.
My beast grumbled deep inside me.
“This is Rhys’s uncle, Lucerne,” Olivia said. “Lucerne, this is Maddy, Rhys’s friend.”
Lucerne’s gaze focused on the ring I’d found at Wadsworth.
“Interesting, is it not, Lucerne?” Olivia said, waving her hand at the ring. Lifting her empty wine glass, she fiddled with it before rising and crossing the room to the sideboard to refill it. She returned and took her seat on the sofa, placing the glass on the coffee table. “Another variable to consider.”
I held up my hand. “Tell me about it.”
“I don’t know much, but I recognize the setting,” she said. “It’s very old. Have you had it long?”
“No. I...found it recently.” I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t tell them where it had come from. I waited to see if Rhys would share. When he didn’t say anything, I turned to him. “Why didn’t you tell me about your escape plan?” I asked, looking back and forth between Rhys and his family. Unease wiggled through me, but I had to admit that we hadn’t actually known each other for very long. “And about what was really going on with the building?”
“He was not privy to that knowledge,” Lucerne said. “We couldn’t risk everything falling apart.”
Rhys leaned forward. “I was able to get word out to my family, but only once since you arrived at Wadsworth.”
“And you told them about me? I wish you’d mentioned that .”
“I told them that you were a malum , that your sister was an empath and had also arrived at Wadsworth, and that you were part shifter. They needed to know, because I wasn’t leaving without you.”
“Did you tell them what I shift into?” I asked
Lucerne’s hands twitched on his lap.
“No,” Rhys said.
“Why not?” I snapped.
“Because they didn’t need to know that.” He shifted on the cushions and released my hand. “I can tell you’re upset, but what would you have done if it had been your family trying to get you out of there?”
My shoulders curled forward. “You know my dad didn’t care.”
“Shit. I’m sorry, Maddy.” He put his arm around my shoulder and kissed my cheek.
I held myself stiffly. “I wouldn’t have said a thing to my dad. My mom is always straight-out busy, working to keep food on the table. But I would’ve shared everything with Cece. I would have told her what she needed to know. Knowledge is power, right?”
“This was about more than control or power,” he said in a reasonable tone. “It was about getting us out of there alive. They needed to know that it was more than just me.”
My hands ached. I loosened the fists they’d formed and allowed some of my tension to leave. I still needed to be on guard, but his words made sense. And we couldn’t rescue Wolfy—or stop what was happening at Wadsworth—if we didn’t find out everything we could from his family.
Lucerne said nothing; he just watched me with his stormy green eyes. When I interacted with Rhys, the rich color calmed my soul. With Lucerne? Its intensity kept me on edge.
Olivia lifted her glass and took a sip of her wine. Her hand shook when she returned it to the table. The liquid sloshed inside, leaving thick streaks on the glass. Blood red. “I have suspicions about your abilities, though they’re likely groundless. Why don’t you tell us, dear?”
My gaze met Rhys’s, and he blinked. If I decided to share, it would be for my benefit and Wolfy’s. And for my sister. We were the original team; we’d added the others.
“I shift into a dragon,” I said.
Olivia gasped and lifted the glass again, draining it. Her hands fluttered and she rose, holding the glass up and glaring at it as if in accusation. “I’m terribly sorry. I...I need to get more.” She rushed from the room.
Lucerne steepled his fingers beneath his chin and watched us.
“When did you leave the Council?” I asked. I didn’t trust this man. Not one bit.
“When I suspected what was going on.”
“Yet you let Rhys go there?” My hands clenched to fists, and I wanted to pull a Cece and smack him. “You suspected what they were doing and you did nothing.”
“There’s no way we could handle it alone,” Lucerne said in a steady tone, studying his knuckles as if my anger meant nothing to him. But he hadn’t met my dragon. “We were still trying to fully understand the situation. It doesn’t involve just us, but the fey, too.”
Rogue Reformatory: Breakout (Supernatural Misfits Academy Book 3) Page 11
