CRYSTALLUM (The Primordial Principles Book 1)

by McMann, Laney

  After Danny left and Cole settled Kadence into her bed, he'd gotten himself into the most comfortable sitting position he could manage, but she'd scooted closer and closer to him. First her hand, then her arm, then her leg entangled between his. For the past couple of hours, he'd attempted to focus on anything besides the fact that Kade had wiggled out from under the bulk of blankets Cole had tucked her under and on to him.

  Her arm nestled around his waist, her head against his chest instead of her pillow. Leaving her coat on seemed like a good idea when she'd been shivering uncontrollably, but now Cole wasn't sure if it was her coat, all the blankets, or something else that had his entire body on fire. It was all he could do to breathe normally, so he focused on that. In and out, he repeated. Just breathe in and out.

  The crick in his neck had become unbearable, though, not to mention his throbbing bicep, so he had to risk moving. Slowly, he nudged his weight up and back. Kadence made a whimpering noise, and he froze. Her hand trailed over his bare stomach where his T-shirt had pulled up, and his heart rose into his throat. She moved her hand higher, gripped his shirt in her fist, and her steady breathing resumed.

  Cole exhaled and tried to shift again, this time rolling to the side. He eased over, and Kade rolled with him, not letting go of his shirt. Her legs molded against the back of his, her face nuzzled between his shoulder blades.

  Cole grinned. He couldn't stop himself. She was like a leech. The best smelling, softest, warmest...he stopped that train of thought. He needed to get up. Sit at her desk, on the floor, in the bathroom, anywhere else, and wait until he heard the doctor pull in so he could leave. He needed to check the time, but the alarm clock was on the opposite side of the bed, and there was no way he was going to turn around and be face to face with Kade. He also realized that he was lying down completely, in bed, with a girl he barely knew; a girl who was all over him. He had to get up. Now. Right now.

  Kade whispered something, and the shock of her voice sent Cole into a panic. Would she remember what happened? Know why he was there? He'd thought she had a concussion or worse, and she spoke again. His thoughts ended.

  "Thank you for finding me," she mumbled.

  Cole stopped breathing.

  Kade draped her leg over his hip from behind, snuggling even closer. Heat surged up his back. She was way too close. She mumbled again—talking in her sleep, he realized. Cole smiled at that. She was talking to him in her sleep. Dreaming about him.

  "I'm not good, though...like you," she whispered, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. "I want to be...but you should've...left me in the snow," she breathed. "Dracon will come back. He...always does. And eventually...I'll have to go." Her steady breathing resumed, brushing against Cole's neck, but his smile had vanished.

  Dracon will come back? And eventually I'll have to go? Go?

  Cole's phone vibrated in his pocket.

  The text said, The doctor should be there any minute. Meet him at the front door.

  Hurriedly, Cole carefully untangled his shirt from Kade's small fist and slid out from under her leg and onto the floor. She made a grumbling noise, and he bolted out of the bedroom.

  8

  PLUMB STOOD in the driveway, hands on her hips, a piece of bright yellow paper in her hand. Cole groaned, exhausted, as he made his way toward her. The only light was a dim one above the front door on the Brotherhood's front porch.

  Plumb waved the paper in the air. "It's four fifteen in the morning, and I'm afraid to even venture why I received a notice for you to appear in front of the Warden later today. And Danny has nothing to say, which could only mean one thing—" Plumb looked him up and down. "With the condition you're in, I'm not sure I want to know where you've been."

  "You probably don't." Cole held his hand out for the summons.

  Plumb handed the paper over, scowling, and Cole slipped it, unopened, into his pocket.

  "Are you going to tell me where you've been?"

  "Thought you didn't want to know." He walked toward the porch. There was a time, when Cole was much younger, that he never would have spoken so bluntly to his Lead, but those days, buried by all of his new responsibilities within the Ward, had faded. They were close to equals now, even though Plumb was about fifteen years older.

  “Cole."

  "I'm tired as hell. I've been up all night." He turned to face her. "Okay? I need to get some sleep."

  "What were you doing in the middle of the night that the Principals couldn't handle?"

  "A girl."

  "Excuse me?"

  "No...I, no, I wasn't doing a girl. She just...never mind." He headed for the door, flustered. The last thing he needed to do was think about Kadence like that. His brain already went into some kind of jumble every time her name was mentioned, and it was bad enough that she'd had her hands all over him. His heart pounded at the thought.

  “You were with Tiffany? Until four in the morning?" Plumb sounded like a disapproving mother. "Cole, I understand you're seventeen, and boys—"

  "I was with Kadence." He wished she would shut up.

  "What? Wait what? How...you met her?" She ran up beside him, keeping pace with his longer strides. "Is she nice?" Only Plumb would ask why he was out with a girl until four in the morning in one breath, and was the new girl nice in the next.

  "Yes." He suppressed a grin and opened the front door. "She's nice." He thought so, anyway. It wasn't like he'd gotten to know her. Most of the time they'd spent together she was unconscious. Likely she wouldn't remember him. It was probably better if she didn't remember any of it, really.

  The large entryway of the Brotherhood was dimly lit and smelled of oatmeal and bran muffins. His stomach growled. Breakfast would be served at six A.M. sharp like always. The sweet aroma drifted down the hall, along with the sound of Plumb's footsteps behind his. The seventies psychedelic pattern of her long nightgown played tricks with Cole's tired eyes.

  "You like her," she said in a voice far too young for her age.

  "I barely know her."

  "But you like her."

  "No, I don't." He couldn't like her.

  "Oh, my god, you do." Plumb let out a high pitched squeal. "This is a first. I could barely get you to talk when you first moved in. Do you remember that? But all it takes is one person. I mean, look at Danny. You guys are inseparable now." She laughed. "I'm so excited. You never like anyone. "

  "Nope. I never do." Cole reached his bedroom door.

  "When is she moving in? I have to get her room ready. I'll put her far away from Tiffany, though. That wouldn't be good. But that's fine. Some of best views of the mountain are toward the back of the house anyway." Plumb practically jumped up and down. "Have you discussed it with the Warden?"

  Cole turned to face her. "She's not moving in."

  "What do you mean?" Her smile fell. "She isn't..." A hand went to her mouth. "Oh...Cole, Kadence isn't—"

  "Don't say it." He swung his door open. "Just don't." He fell face first onto his neatly made bed.

  ***

  "Miss Sparrow?" Someone kept repeating Kade's name, but words wouldn't come to her lips. "We will try again in the morning. She needs rest now."

  "I still don't understand how this happened." Kade's dad's voice. "Who did you say sent you here?"

  "Young Mr. Spires. With the Wardens approval, of course."

  "Spires?"

  "Yes, Cole Spires. The Brotherhood's Alpha. Very dependable. You're lucky he happened upon Kadence. She was in safe hands."

  "Alpha?"

  "Yes, the Brotherhood's lead Primori...well, next to Ms. Plumb, of course. Cole is first in line over all the younger fledglings and Primori in the Brotherhood."

  Her father released a breath. "Look, I've dealt with more head trauma to young kids than you probably know, and this is disturbing. She isn't responding at all."

  "Mr. Sparrow, we are aware of your service in various children's hospitals around the United States, but this is not a human patient we are treating. Ho
w many non-human head traumas have you treated in your career?"

  There was no answer.

  "I understand your concern, but let us do our job. We have our own methodology."

  Footsteps tracked to Kade's bedside.

  "Kadey?" her father said, but she still couldn't get words to form. Everything was a blur of images, shouts, and colors. And a familiar voice kept ringing in her head that she couldn't place. "I'll be back in a little while. You just rest." He squeezed her hand and his footsteps faded.

  Silence resumed, and an indistinct flash of white and green played behind her eyelids. A faint shout rang in her ears, followed by a multitude of pictures streaking through her brain, quick and irregular. Red ribbons, white snow, barren trees, and black wings. The sound of hands shoveling snow, the crunch of footsteps over ice, and someone whispering her name, touching her face.

  The remnants of dreams were weird. The harder a person tried to remember a dream, the faster it slipped away. Dreams were unfair that way. They never made any sense in glimpses. Kade wanted to remember. It was the first good dream she'd had in years.

  With a slight grin she couldn't be sure touched her lips, she remembered the familiar voice. "You're safe now," he'd said. "Sleep."

  ***

  Cole stood in front of the bathroom mirror, a towel wrapped around his waist, his wet hair sending rivulets of water down his face and neck. The cut over his eyebrow was deep red; the butterfly bandages the doctor had reapplied that morning were white in contrast to his golden skin. It reminded him of candy cane stripes. Dark purple circles stained the wells underneath his eyes.

  He didn't regret not sleeping, though. Although Primordials healed quickly for the most part, unless there was a life threatening injury, he hadn't been comfortable leaving Kade alone. Not with a knot at the base of her skull, and her shivering uncontrollably. He would have stayed awake next to Kade all night and not thought twice about it. Well, he would have moved to her desk chair at some point, he thought with a grin.

  Kade had been so out of it when he'd carried her back to her house from the woods and settled her in her bed. Cole had been scared to death she'd suffered a concussion; or worse, that Dracon had done something to her when he was looking for Danny in the snow.

  Cole tried talking to her after he'd gotten her situated under the blankets on her bed, repeating her name over and over again, placing a warm washcloth on her forehead, but Kade never said a word, other than talking in her sleep, and the couple of times her eyes opened, it seemed like she couldn't see him.

  Hoping her crystal would quell the worst of any injury she may have sustained, he'd searched her disaster of a bedroom for it, but when he couldn't find it, he'd ended up using his own. For all he knew she'd lost hers in the snow. But the second Kade touched the crystal, she'd screamed and writhed, and Cole thought his suspicion had been confirmed.

  Draconis blood had to have been coursing through her veins. It was the only explanation he could think of that would cause her to react that way—but then he saw her palm.

  Kadence had the moon's mark.

  She wasn't a Primori, like him. Like he'd thought—and hoped.

  She was like Jake.

  And Giselle.

  Like Danny had thought.

  That was why she'd been with them at Crystalline. Cole just hadn't wanted to believe it.

  Kade was a Primeva.

  A child of the moon. A Primordial, and one of the Ward's kids, but one on the other side of the circle. The ones who had traces of Filios Daemoneum blood. The Devil's Children blood. Only small amounts in most cases, but enough to separate the race.

  The Primori Brotherhood and the Primeva Kinship. Both born of the Celestial Plane thousands of years before, but in order to keep the balance between light and dark, positive and negative energy, the Primordial had been divided into classes. Each house protected their own, lived with their own, and dated their own, just as the Doctrine stated. Forbidden to intermingle, as the Ward referred to it. It lessened the risk of tainting the blood of the Primori any further. Friendships were fine, but it was rare any of them became friends. Devil's blood descendants stayed together, and Celestial Children of the gods stayed together. If they weren't working toward the same goal: derailing and guarding the Leyline grid that protected the Planes, they would never have associated with each other.

  Cole glanced at the star on his palm. All Primori bore a star and they all wielded a telum made of crystal. Primeva wielded moonstone telums. They matched the moon birthmarks on their palms, marking them for what they were. How Kade had been carrying a crystal weapon in the club, a stone only a Primori could hold, Cole didn't know. She shouldn't have been able to touch it, much less use it. It should have burned her skin.

  Kadence being a Primeva also didn't explain why she was out in the clearing by her house in the middle of the night with Dracon. And the various reasons that went through his head as to why that could be made him want to vomit into the sink.

  Dragging a hand through his damp hair, he slid on his dress shirt, careful of the clean gauze on his bicep. Buttoning the cuffs at his wrists, he fiddled with the knot of his tie. He'd never figured out how to tie one just right, so they always ended up off center and loose.

  Outside his bedroom, the scuffle of footsteps and voices moved up and down the hallway. The Brotherhood always had newcomers in late summer, early fall who took the place of the kids moving out after graduation. Cole barely paid attention to any of them. Besides saying hello and offering a few words of encouragement to the youngest, most afraid, kids, he didn't care to make new friends. They were too easy to lose and too hard to trust.

  Folding the summons from the Warden, Cole tucked it in the pocket of his black dress pants, removed his suit jacket from the closet, and grabbed his keys off the night stand. The summons was in an hour. He still wasn't sure what he was going to say, how he was going to explain putting his life on the line for someone who wasn't one of his own. Someone who wasn't even a member of the Brotherhood or the Kinship.

  Cole spotted Plumb gripping an afraid-looking little boy's hand. Fledglings had a hard time adjusting to this life. Moving away from their parents, finding out what they were ... he didn't envy Plumb's job. She shouldered a huge responsibility. It made Cole feel guilty for coming home at four in the morning. He didn't have the time, or the patience to stop and tell her he was leaving, though; she'd only drill him with questions about Kadence anyway, so he sidestepped her, and headed out the front double doors.

  "They summoned you for breaking the Doctrine?" Danny stood at the bottom of the stairs in the large front yard, hands lifted in the air, dark eyebrows cinched.

  "Oh, hey there, my most loyal friend. Were you waiting for me?" Cole gave a smug grin. "Don't worry, I won't mention your name."

  "Are you...no, we've already established that you're insane. Completely, utterly insane." He rested his hands on his hips. "Don't take the blame for this. Seriously. Don't."

  "I'm not mentioning your name," Cole repeated. "Shouldn't you be off to school at this early hour?"

  "You never should have gone to Kade's last night," Danny went on as if he didn't hear Cole. "Now look what's happened. You spent the night!”

  "I sat up next to her, I didn't sleep with her." He eyed Danny. "And I couldn't just leave her there alone. Even you couldn't have done that. And my suspicions were right. As usual. She was being tracked." Cole sat down on the freezing front steps. "By Dracon no less. Draconis kill. None of this makes any sense." Cole had never known Dracon to hunt a fledgling on his own. He had others do that, so seeing him at Kade's had been a shock. Not to mention he'd said she belonged to him. Nothing about that statement gave Cole anything to feel good about.

  "I'm aware of what a Draconis does," Danny said. "But we...shit, Cole, we lose people. And I know you hate that part, so do I, but we can't protect every fledgling Primori, or whatever the hell Kadence is, who gets into trouble!”

  "I couldn't just leave it to
chance!” Cole's temper spiked. "I had to check, and I was right. And what the hell's her dad playing at leaving her by herself? The Filios Daemoneum were hunting her, Dan. Isn't that obvious now?"

  "Just say Devil's Children."

  Cole shook his head. "She can't be a Primeva. She can't."

  "You do like her.” Danny's voice was so low, Cole barely heard him.

  Cole didn't answer.

  Danny sighed. ”This will never end the way you want it to. I hope you understand that."

  "You don't know how I want anything to end." Cole had still been able to smell the sweet scent of Kade's skin on his clothes when he'd come home that morning. With a groan, he leaned back on his hands, extending his legs down the porch stairs. He couldn't get involved with Kade even if he'd wanted to.

  "We don't know what Kade's abilities are." Danny's tone softened. "You don't know. Maybe she's not helpless. Not all fledglings are. And her birthmark...we don't know for sure. It was dark in her bedroom. Maybe it wasn't a moon. Primeva can't carry crystals."

  "I know," Cole mumbled.

  Danny stared at the sky. "You are so screwed."

  "I'll take the blame. Exitus acta probat.” The result validates the deeds. He exhaled. “I don't think Kadence has any idea what's after her, Dan, but she seemed to know Dracon. I don't get it. I don't think she knows what she is. Why's she living at home otherwise?" Cole stared at his black dress shoes. "She asked me what I was, and I told her I was Primori...like her," he said. "Her eyes got all wide, but I thought she just didn't know. I had to tell her. She was scared, and she had to know she could trust me, but—" The idea of Kade being on the opposing side of the Primordial circle made him physically ill. "I don't care if she's my responsibility or not. Or if she's not one of us." He lifted his head. "Do you think the Warden would be happy if I let them kill her? If I wouldn't have gone to her house, knowing she was probably a target? I could feel it." He stared at Danny. "If the Ward knew I could stop it, and I didn't?" His forehead creased. "Well?"