“Why are they all men?” I asked. “Women must be good citizens.”
Emory chuckled. “Not really, Princess. The women are housed in Hallway B.”
We looped into Hallway B, the women’s block. There were more men than women. And like the men, they watched us without reacting. I didn’t know whether it was normal for prisoners to be so docile.
“They’re so well-behaved,” I commented.
“That’s because they don’t want to end up in Block C,” Emory said.
We were back in the common room or the yard. “Is that the worst place to be sent?”
“It depends on how you look at it.” We followed him into the entrance to Block C. The hallway was wider. “This is where we keep criminally insane people.”
My feet faltered. “I didn’t know insanity was a problem among our people.”
“They have unstable psi energy and either killed people or destroyed property using their powers.” He glanced back and realized I had stopped walking. “Don’t worry, Princess. Most of them are in comas.”
Unlike the other cells, these had light cages. Their beds were narrower and each prisoner had his or her own cell. They looked so still and lifeless under the covers. Was I like that for six months?
“What are the lights for?” I asked.
“To stop them from teleporting out. These are not ordinary light crystals. They give off light that is harmful to us in any form, so we use them to create cages.”
A memory flickered in my head, then disappeared. I didn’t try to chase it. I was busy checking the faces of the prisoners for Bran. But it was obvious this wasn’t the first time I’d seen a light cage used.
“How do you keep them in comas?”
“We drain their psi energy regularly. Their psi energy surges come and go, completely unpredictable. It doesn’t matter whether they’re asleep or awake. One blew up his cell with omni balls while asleep and suffered severe burns. Another destroyed the crystals and escaped to the surface. Now we keep them in comas, and as soon as they stir, we drain their energy and they slip right back.”
I was in coma for seven months. Did that mean someone had drained my energy, too? The Archangels, perhaps? According to Gavyn, they hadn’t erased my memories. If I were to believe him, then they hadn’t drained my energy, either. The thought that there was someone here on the island who had done that to me was scary.
“How long do they stay in a coma when drained?” I asked.
“About a month,” the guard said.
I was out for nearly seven months, which meant I’d been drained often. By who, and why? Fear kindled somewhere deep inside me. Was it for my own protection? Would I have hurt people if they hadn’t? I must have been drained monthly to be in a coma for so long. According to Lady Nemea, I was the most powerful person on the island. Even Lord Gavyn had said my energy was limitless. More energy probably meant a higher chance of instability. No wonder everyone had freaked out when my energy powers had appeared.
“Do you drain their energy?” I asked, starting to feel a little sick.
Emory chuckled. “No one comes near the prisoners but Sir Malax’s team.”
Could Sir Malax have drained me, too? Did Lady Nemea know? She’d watched over me and considered me her charge. Did Father know? He’d do anything for me.
“What do they do with the drained energy?” I asked.
The guard pointed down. “They store them below us in large crystals until the P1s need them.”
Maybe the energy hum from the crystal was the relentless tug I kept feeling. It was beginning to give me a headache. We reached the end of the hallway and looped back. I forced myself to keep counting and fought the urge to teleport upstairs and demand answers. The problem was that I didn’t want to know the answer. Who in their right mind wanted to hear they were a ticking time bomb?
But this explained everything—why people feared me. Why even my own sister resented my powers. She probably thought I belonged down here. The only ones who didn’t seem to care about them were my father and Bran. Would Lottius and Katia, and their friends, start treating me differently if they knew? They were probably ignorant about them because their memories had been wiped clean by the Archangels. “I thought P1s are all-powerful,” I said in a voice that shook slightly.
Emory shot Callum and Ruby a weird glance. He could probably tell I was close to losing it. Deep breaths… Exhale… Princesses don’t lose it. They hide their true feelings.
“The P1s take care of the island, Princess,” the prison guard said. “The Air Primes clean the air circulating through the city. The Earth Primes take care of all solid waste. The Water Primes purify the water. The Energy Primes supply us with all the light and heating crystals, and the Psi”—he pointed at Callum and Ruby—“are in charge of security around the island and maintaining the shield. A couple of times a month, they all need to replenish their energies.”
Like rechargeable batteries. I pushed away the crazy thoughts threatening to drown me and focused on why I was in the dungeons.
“Have you had any new prisoners, Guard Emory?” I asked.
“Just the two traitors they sent down here a few weeks ago.”
Thirty-six comatose inmates and none, thankfully, was Bran. Just before we left, Ruby gasped and I looked over my shoulder. She’d been so quiet I’d completely forgotten her presence.
“What is it?” I asked.
She pointed at the last cell. There were movements under the blanket. “One’s waking up.”
“That’s Patient Thirty-Six. She’s due for a power drain,” Emory said as we exited the hallway. “I must contact Sir Malax at once.”
Who will boot us out, I thought. There was only one wing left. “Can we finish the tour first?” And confirm that Bran isn’t down here.
The guard frowned. “Sir Malax insists on knowing if one of the Specials wakes up.”
I blinked as though I’d been sucker-punched. “Specials?”
He nodded. “All the inmates in Block C are Specials. The ones that came out wrong. I must inform Lord—”
“Of course you must.” These people were definitely like me. Specials with unstable energy. The difference was that I had people who loved me and had drained my energy to make sure I didn’t hurt anyone. “We’ll leave and finish the tour later. I’ll ask Sir Malax’s permission next time before I visit.”
The jailer shook his head. “You don’t need permission to visit us down here, Princess. You can come anytime.”
“Thank you, Guard Emory. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks so. Sorry we didn’t get to see the last block. Maybe next time we’ll start with it.” I got inside his head and planted a thought. Let your princess see the last block. Please.
“If we are quick, maybe the princess can take a look,” the guard said. “There aren’t many prisoners, so it won’t take long.” He hurried down the last hallway and we followed.
“Who is kept in this wing?” I asked.
“Traitors,” Emory said.
The cells had metal walls instead of glass, each with a small opening for feeding the inmate. Emory opened one, but the cell was dark and I couldn’t see the prisoner. CCs mounted outside the doors showed images of the inmates every few seconds. I recognized the two I had fingered. I still hadn’t figured a way to free them.
Emory stopped before we could reach the end of the hallway and I almost bumped into him. “There are only five prisoners in this block, so the rest of the cells are empty.” He glanced over his shoulder and frowned. “Prisoner Zero doesn’t count. They keep him apart from the others.”
Please, don’t let it be Bran. “Is he new?”
“No. This one betrayed Lord Valafar a long time ago. May the Principalities punish him for eternity. He was his right-hand man,” Emory said.
What kind of a person would betray my father? After everything he’d done, he should be loved by all, revered. I walked past the guard.
“Princess, where are you going?”
“I want to take a quick look at this prisoner.” I stopped by the CC and studied the image of the traitor. A hollow feeling settled in my stomach. He was a large man with smooth brown skin, serious gray eyes, and a nicely trimmed beard. Diamond studs twinkled in his ears. When the image rotated and showed us his back, I realized the heavy trench coat he wore wasn’t really a coat. They were wings. Like a bat’s. I hadn’t seen flyers around the island. I knew they were rare, which made my dreams about Bran and his massive wings insane.
The more I stared at the prisoner’s image, the more the weird feeling in my gut intensified. I knew him. Without thinking, I placed my hand on the door.
“What are you doing, Princess?” Emory asked.
“I want to see who dared to betray my father.” I visualized glass and let the image fill my head.
“No one has seen his face in nine months, Princess. He is not washed or bathed.”
I tuned out the jailer’s words as the metal underneath my palm changed and became clear. The glass surface spread until I could see inside the cell. It was dark, the only lights coming from the cage of beams.
“He must be powerful for you to use a cage,” I said, peering at the bed, but it was hard to see anything. The covers on the bed were crumpled up. If he was in there, he was rail-thin.
“He’s a P2. Psi and Energy. Very powerful.”
I kept peering at the bed. “I can’t see him.”
“You should leave now, Princess,” the guard said.
I stepped away from the wall, but I continued to stare inside the cell as the metal slowly re-formed. Just before the last section of glass disappeared, something dark coalesced into a person. Two gray eyes in a sunken face stared at me.
Don’t ever come back down here, little one, a voice said inside my head.
I gasped and stumbled backward, my heart pounding. It was the same voice that had told me how to control the panic attack in the tunnel, and it came from the prisoner.
“What is his name?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Dante, Princess,” Emory said. “He is Dante, son of Gorgas.”
Dante. His name was familiar. He knew me. Knew I was having a panic attack in that hallway and knew exactly how I could counteract it. He’d betrayed my father, yet he knew me. What was I to make of that?
We left before Emory contacted Sir Malax, but I planned on going back down there until I learned more about about Prisoner Zero.
“What are you going to do?” Ruby asked when we went back to my quarters.
I stopped pacing and stared at them. “Nothing. If Bran comes back, let me know.”
“We can ask around the city—”
“No.” That would only alert someone of his presence. I was going to wait for him to come to me. He always did. “I’ll know when he’s back.”
“Would you like to know when Lord Gavyn comes back?”
Katia had that covered, but it didn’t hurt to have more eyes and ears. “Sure, thanks.”
Instead of staying in my quarters, I headed to the library and spent the next couple of hours scouring books and CCs on articles about my father, Prisoner Zero, and the Specials. If the prisoner in the dungeon had betrayed him, I figured there must be a record. As for the Specials, I had to know more about their instability. It was like learning you had a debilitating disease. I had to know just how bad it was before asking anyone about it.
I didn’t leave the library until dinnertime and I still had no answers. There should have been a whole shelf of books on unstable Specials. There wasn’t anything except praises for Queen Coronis’s interbreeding program. And there wasn’t anything on Father and Prisoner Zero, either. Strange.
-17-
“Your father and sister are not on the island this evening,” Lady Nemea told me when I went upstairs to change for dinner.
“Eat with me,” I heard myself say.
She was more than happy to join me, but I didn’t know where to start with my questions, so I went with “How long have you known my father?”
She smiled. “Since he was a child. When he was born, the queen herself placed him in my arms. I was only seventeen at the time. She believed he was the one, the red-headed child from her family who would have the powers of Principality Azazel. The Chosen One.”
I frowned. “What happened to his mother…my grandmother?”
“She was around, but the queen decided they were not equipped to raise him. She took him from her, brought him to the castle, and asked me to be one of his nannies. He never wanted for anything. She watched him grow and watched him train.” Lady Nemea smiled. “He was special and she never let him or anyone forget it. Then he turned sixteen and his abilities appeared.”
“He didn’t have powers early like the Specials?”
She chuckled. “No, dear. That only happened with the last batch of children. First to appear was your father’s energy power, then solid, and finally psi. She waited for the rest to appear. Waited and waited.” Lady Nemea went silent and I felt her anger. “When they didn’t, she cast him aside, exiled him to the human world to watch over the other Specials. He was only eighteen.”
Poor Father. “Was he happy? As a child, that is?” I asked.
A pensive expression settled on Lady Nemea’s face. “As happy as a child who knew the fate of an entire race was resting on his shoulders could be. I tried to love him as a mother would, but I was a child, too. It wasn’t enough. He needed her love, but got her approval when he ran faster than everyone, outfought boys his age and older, and was at the top of his class academically. He knew she loved seeing him excel at various things, and he worked hard to impress her, but deep inside he would have preferred a hug or a kiss instead of a nod. It was heartbreaking watching him wait patiently as she read his report, then patted his head before sending him away. Yet he never complained, acted up, or cried. He worked harder, grew distant, and shunned everyone who tried to show him kindness or love.”
My heart ached for him. “Even you?”
She shrugged. “We had our moments when he was younger. Leaving home was hard. It was the only time I ever saw him show emotions. He was devastated. He knew what she was saying by sending him away. He wasn’t the Chosen One and therefore he was no longer worthy of her time. For years, he worked hard, hoping she’d call him home. She just gave him more and more responsibilities.”
“What about his parents and grandparents? Didn’t he have siblings, half-brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, anyone?”
“He did, but he didn’t know them, and Queen Coronis made sure he didn’t have anything to do with them when he was growing up. Like most Specials, he wasn’t really close to his family.”
His family meant my family. Excitement coursed through me. “So, are they here on the island?”
She sighed and shook her head. “Maybe third or fourth cousins. No close relatives. Like most of us, you lost them when the Guardians attacked Coronis Isle.”
Great! Not only had I killed my people, I had killed my relatives. Talk about dysfunctional. “Did he ever go back to Coronis Isle?”
“Oh, yes, for meetings. She refused to find him a mate. Decade after decade, he waited while she approved mates for his cousins and other young men around his age. He met Solange’s mother and went to ask the queen’s permission to marry her, but she said no.”
“She was punishing him,” I said, fighting tears.
“Yes. It is a good thing he didn’t tell her the woman was already pregnant with his child. There’s no knowing what she would have done. He was afraid she’d take Solange and raise her the way he was raised. He made sure Solange and her mother were cared for, but he kept away from them. He visited whenever he could, but he couldn’t be in her life. Sometimes…” She sighed and blinked as though fighting tears, too. “I try to explain things to Solange, but she doesn’t understand that he was protecting her.”
No wonder Solange was always competing for his attention. I gripped Lady Nemea’s ha
nd to console her. It was obvious all this distressed her. The smile she gave me was wobbly.
“So, when he met your mother, he made sure no one knew about her. He panicked when you were born and you had his hair. Anyone who saw you would know you were a descendant of Azazel. We had enough redheads on the island being treated like they could be the Chosen One, but none had hair like his, except you.” She reached up and touched my hair. My hair was various shades of red, totally weird, and everyone was always staring at it. “He worried that Queen Coronis would find out about you. Just like Solange, he didn’t want you raised like he was. Unloved. Every movement scrutinized. Every mistake treated like it was the end of the world. He was thinking of leaving everything behind, finding a place like this”—she waved to indicate the island—“and disappearing with you and your mother.”
Lady Nemea went silent, but I knew what was coming. “Someone betrayed him,” I said.
She blinked and stared at me for a moment without saying a word, then nodded. “Yes, someone close to him betrayed him, and Queen Coronis sent her guards to Seattle to get him and you. The orders were to kill your mother. I hid you and your mother in a secret room under the floor. When they started the search, I used my energy to hide hers and yours.” She cupped my face and wiped my cheeks with her thumbs. “Don’t cry, sweetheart. We triumphed. You and your father are back together now, and that’s all that matters.”
“He’s been through so much,” I murmured.
She shrugged. “He’s a tough man.”
“Even tough guys need love,” I said.
“He’s loved. By you. By your sister. By everyone on this island.”
I studied her. She was young for someone who used to babysit him. “Do you?”
She cocked her brow. “What?”
“Do you love him, too?”
She smiled, her eyes twinkling. “I’ve known him since he was a baby. I changed his diapers. Of course I love him.” She stood. “We need this food warmed. We’ve been talking and completely forgot to eat.”
Forgotten (Guardian Legacy Book 3) Page 24
