Greg chuckled. “Yes, please, David.”
Dave punched Greg on the shoulder, and soon enough Robert joined in on the group shuffle. We stood back as the three large boys started getting a bit too rough, knocking a chair down to the dirt.
“Oh, you think you’re the man, don’t you,” Greg joked whilst in a headlock under Rob’s arm.
“Gross!” Greg shouted and pushed him off, wiping at his neck and face. “Why do you always want to rub your hairy, sweaty arm pits all over me? I told you, I am not in to that,” he said teasingly, and walked back into the tent mumbling.
“Well, Ava, I can see why you are so fond of this group, they are like no one I have ever come across,” Thandiwe said, ignoring my previously dark mood.
“You got that right, sweetie.” Robert beamed, and flexed his muscles once again.
She stifled a small giggle.
The sun gleamed off the golden and silver beads that clenched around Thandiwe’s beautiful collarbone – all the way up to her neck, cupping her jawline. It looked like her beautiful face was stilted on a golden chalice.
Her hands took mine, and the pins and needles slowly erupted to the surface. “We will prepare the morning feast. I await your company.” She smiled and bowed at each of us.
Kronan and the others bowed on her departure. I watched her leave, saw the breeze fluttering through her white robes, like clouds following a young angel. I continued to watch as her white gown flapped in the wind. The skirt rose, giving us a glimpse of gorgeous golden beads, which had been strung all the way up her calves, glimmering against dark skin. We all stared as she left, an effect she had on everyone; a true queen. The silence left us uncomfortable and I wondered what had changed; once, so much comfort and connection had existed between us all.
“We need to start our preparations, our time is valuable,” said Tatos, turning to Kronan. I fiddled with my fingers, thinking of what lay just over the hill in a mere forty-eight hours. My mouth watered at the thought of entrapping Enoch, torturing all kinds of truth from his bleeding mouth.
Kronan gently bumped my shoulder. “I warned you about those thoughts.”
I turned with a hard scowl. “If it bothers you, by all means, stop listening.”
He smiled, and parted with more wisdom, “Your thoughts will become your actions and no one, not even you would want that as your reality. I need to understand you in order to help you.”
“Is that not your son’s job as my guide, then?” I snapped.
Kronan and Tatos just glared at me, all disbelieving. Yes, I was on a war path to let it all out and yes, I had claimed to not have overheard him.
“You all think you are so high and mighty, but your self-righteous bull has done this to me!” I sneered. “You knew what was coming, and you just kept on shoving after I told you not to.”
Willard’s eyes widened in protest. I heard Tatos groan from behind me. Greg had come out of the tent. He wanted to smile, I could see it. Robert, in fact, did. David, though, looked just as stunned as the others, with a cemented face of pure disbelief at my brutal tongue.
“Ava.” Troy was behind me suddenly.
I closed my eyes, took in a deep breath.
“Yes…” I held back.
Turning to face him, I noticed his biceps bulked over his chest as he regarded me with crossed arms, giving me that I-cannot-believe-you stare. I hadn’t felt him approach, but the prickling sensation ran back into my skin suddenly. I should have thought of my bad behavior, but my fury had me blinded by his proximity. My need to learn the mystery of ‘us’ overpowered me.
“I don’t know what has gotten into you lately but seriously, it is not pretty,” he said, his velvet voice suddenly stiffening like parched cloth.
“I agree,” Kronan added.
Something had begun within me, and I wanted it to come. I had no need to stop it, for it gave me a sense of power where my former self had none. This is how I had to be to win this war. I would bite my tongue no more. That’s how my old life at school used to be, and I hated myself because of it. Kronan’s gaze pinned me, but I glared back with a grin knowing full well what he was about to say – I welcomed it. If Kronan thought he knew me, he would find that he was profoundly mistaken. Our conversational glare heated up.
“Dad?” Troy said after a long pause.
“The Shadow – it is her.”
And there it was. The sinking feeling was making its way like a wave over all of us. Swallowing us whole.
“There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.”
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
– A scribbled note found in the binding of The Broken Diaries
I was altered in every possible way; mind and body. It seeped into my soul, a slow, sticky syrup. Certain death hung in the air around me, a dark smoke that noosed us to a destiny that was indeed not my own. Everyone became suspicious of me – I was suspicious of me. I tried to fight it, to change it back, but what was done had laid the foundations of evil, an evil that was about to be unleashed. Could I change my fate, did I even want to? He was my antidote and that is what I wanted most of all, to be free of what I was, to be his and he, mine – bound together for all eternity – it was the only way I could live, for without the bounds that confined, I was death itself.
~ Ava. ~
I closed the leather journal and placed it back in the wooden box. Snapping it closed, I wondered about its odd behavior earlier. The box was a clue, something hidden inside its fragile walls. I was being watched, so I quickly placed it back into my satchel letting out a ragged breath because even for me, for someone who had lost all feeling on her skin, the heat of the day inside those tents was anything but bearable. We were stuck inside the narrow walls of the tent, hoping that the amplified shield would protect us from the tropical storm looming ahead. Cross-legged, I sat on the floor, boots unlaced and placed beside me.
“An intervention.” I smiled up at them as silence lingered.
Anaya sat across from me, twirling a crystal pendant between her fingers. She tucked her golden, brown locks behind her ear, the fine hairs clinging with moisture to her collar bone. She smiled weakly.
“So, this Shadow?” Troy enquired.
“Yes, I am afraid it’s powerful, and it has poisoned her mind,” Kronan said.
“How do we fix it?” Dave asked.
“We need to take her to Legentium,” Tatos said from the door, where he had taken his position to monitor the troops outside.
“It will have to wait until after,” Anaya stated looking up at Troy.
“Look, I know that whatever is happening to me is his fault,” I said. “We should go back soon.”
“No. It would be too easy to blame him,” Troy added. He wasn’t really listening to me at all. “It is what he wants.”
I snickered, eyebrow raised. “So, what, it’s me?” Incredulously, my voice came out a little high pitched.
“Once you start realizing that, it will be a hell of a lot easier for you and everyone else,” he said, almost afraid to meet my gaze.
“Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it!” I shot back, suddenly aware my behavior had upset him sorely.
He moved from across the tent silently. Light flickered across his face as dark patches on the tent’s roof cast shadows below. For me, he moved in slow motion, counting each step he took toward me. The closer he came was parallel to air filling lungs, taking all the ache and sorrow with it. Heat slowly prickled over my skin as he sat before me on his haunches. His beautiful lips pursed, he held his forehead to mine, my life flickered on, and gently he stared into my eyes with that deep, intense sadness burning beneath the surface. And instead of being angry with me, he was kind.
“We will get through this.” His words, his presence, pushed the disease down, but it was only for that moment when he was near, and in its place a hard unsettled guilt brimmed to the top.
I nodded, staring i
nto big, hazel eyes, green clusters dancing around brown irises. I held on to the arm cradling my head. The bulge of his muscle had my stomach aflutter.
“It’s time. The storm shifts for an instant,” Tatos said, crushing the moment where for the first time in a long time, I had totally lost myself in.
“What about my sister?” I asked, pulling back.
No one answered, because they thought they knew why she had wanted to kill me. Our kind, my sister and me, were supposed to be hunters of the very thing running through our veins. I had turned – she had not. But deep down inside, I knew that wasn’t the only reason.
“She needs rest, she has been through something horrible,” I said on a sigh, the words coming from a place I did not own. Something foreign had hooked its claws into me, protecting the truth of what I was so well at hiding that not even my mind could confess it.
Kronan bowed his head in defeat.
“We will figure it out, I promise.” Troy pulled me to stand into a hug. Resting my head on his moist shoulders, I believed him; the antidote of him leaked back into a prickling sensation and the heat flowed into and onto my skin, taking all doubt with it.
“I hate seeing her like this. I hate the way things are going.”
“Things happen the way you need them to, didn’t you once say that?” Troy smiled shyly.
I pushed back from him. “Yes, but that conversation was between me and Maya the day of the first attack. How would you know that?” It was a slow memory, one with no pictures, but the conversation was suddenly knowledge to me.
“Do you need me to say it, because I think you already know the answer.”
“He is a stalker!” Willard cackled at his own joke.
Tatos joined in.
Troy’s eyes met mine again.
“You have always been there, haven’t you?” I asked.
“Yup, and you remember that I will always be there, even when you don’t want me.”
I kept my gray eyes on his – he knew from my reaction the last time I had shifted in front of him that when I finally turned, I wouldn’t want him anywhere near me.
“And that’s okay, too.” He smiled.
I forged a smile, feeling confusion get the better of me, the hurt coiling in the pit of my stomach. He would always be there, because he had no other choice. I was his assignment and when the task had been accomplished, what would become of me? Would he leave?
“Now,” he said, straightening up, “we have arranged for your training to start immediately.”
He turned his hand to those in the tent around us. “If we are to have your back, we want to know you have ours.”
“Of course I do,” I said quickly. I would never leave Troy.
“Finally!” Willard jumped from the bed where he and Rion had been sitting, sharpening their weapons.
“Whoa!” Anaya laughed slowly, moving before him. “You are needed elsewhere.”
“But…” He gave her a big, pleading, green-eyed glare.
Kronan shot him one solid glare.
“Yes, master.” He accepted disappointingly.
“It is here,” Tatos said, and opened the flap to the tent. Bright light illuminated the entrance, and for a second I was engulfed in the golden glow again. With Troy so near, I could feel the heat of the sun dance over my flesh, but I was robbed of the pleasure as my blood-shift twisted its intention inside of me when Troy walked over to the crate. I was back on that moon trying to get away. Viciously, I grabbed for Troy’s arm. The fist in my throat released as Troy told me he wouldn’t leave me. But did he really understand what had happened in those few passing breaths? Should I have told him? Probably. Young military boys entered with the wooden crate from the ship, everyone oblivious to my life threatening changes. We all stood aside as four boys lay the crate down in the center of the huge, rectangular tent. Eagerly moving away, he rubbed his hands with a pleasurable grin. The young boys stood aside, soaking from the storm earlier.
They nodded to Troy, bowed to Tatos, and left silently.
“What is in there anyway?” I stood closer.
Willard practically pushed me out the way to take a look. Troy handed his father a flat-ended, metal pipe.
“All yours.” He grinned, and stood aside.
Kronan pushed the pipe into the tiny crack between the lid and the box. Lifting the edge with tiny splinters flying through the air, the box opened.
Next to me, Willard gasped loudly. I followed his eyes.
“You went on a treasure hunt without me?” he hissed under his breath.
“We didn’t.” Troy gave him loud slap.
“Ouch.” Willard rubbed his bare shoulder, giving Troy a displeasing fake smile.
Standing on tiptoe, I peeked in. The crate was filled with silver weapons. My curiosity got the better of me as I took a step closer and the silver daggers, which looked like bracelets – huge, heavy, silver bracelets – emitted a soft glow. A silver shield lay tucked in the corner. Moving even closer, I could see the familiar Eteocretan symbols etched on every hilt and blade in the ‘treasure’ box.
“The day the Council’s vault was raided, we found this in the bushes a few meters outside the city walls,” Kronan said to me.
Troy smiled proudly. “We sealed them inside the military crates amongst all the archived weapons. We thought it suspicious they would leave it there, but the Zulus had no use for useless old weapons.” His smile widened.
“I agree,” I said. “Really, those things look ancient.”
Everyone looked at me, and for a moment a look of confusion shadowed their faces.
“To everyone in the Circle, they see it as it really is.” Anaya looked at me questioningly.
“Okay.” I shrugged.
Her eyes and Kronan’s met with disapproval.
“Step closer and take your weapon,” Troy invited.
“What?” I snickered.
“This is your inheritance,” he said, grinning.
“I… what?” I spat, almost choking on the ball of air I had sucked into my throat out of outrageous disbelief.
“This is the way of the prophecy.” Kronan bowed.
Tatos groaned, standing back.
I laughed, but stopped once I found I was the only one chuckling to herself.
“I need to find this manual you are all working from,” I said, shaking my head, “because I was told it would be the institution itself.”
“Did the Keepers tell you that?” Troy met my eyes.
I exhaled through my nose. “Yeah, Kim told me.”
Anaya stepped closer. “When, because as far as I know, I was in all of your counselling sessions.”
“Kim liked to visit our apartment quite often, actually.”
“Favoritism.” Willard nodded.
“No,” I interrupted.
Suddenly, I felt like a fool. I was told my grandfather left me the Institute, and that one day I would inherit his legacy. Had Kim been trying to tell me something? Why else would she have done it from within the confines of my room?
“Enough with the pity party,” Willard said. I looked to him with a drop to my stomach, because he had taken the phrase from Maya.
Anaya moved forward and tied an amethyst pendant around my wrist with a thin, brown, leather string. My hand went to my neck – it was supposed to replace the one I had lost. The effects were immediate as the pendant touched my skin. The heat, the soft prickle of moving air on my flesh, the dampening of the disease left me feeling afloat. And it was almost as if my eyes took on a deeper appreciation of everything around me. The depth between the colors of my friends, the contrast between light and dark stood stark against the ugly, brown tent.
“Ava, you need to find one that calls to you,” she said, looking into the crate.
“I’m actually gonna learn to use all of this?” I grinned, way too much.
Troy took my hips as I dug into the crate. I pulled something free. I went for it because, well, it was on top, and in its own way i
t was probably pretty once. I turned my head back wanting to find Maya. It was odd not having her around. So instead of a grinning blue-eyed girl, I stared at her curled up on the gray, metal bunk bed, a white sheet covering her silent sleeping body.
Disappointment soured me. I wanted to share the moment with her. “You gave her the elixir again?” I asked, the words coming out clipped and cold.
“We all hate what is happening to her, but it’s a distraction right now,” Kronan said.
“Wow, you sound just like them.” I kept a solid stare.
“Our intentions are pure, I assure you,” Anaya solemnly replied.
“Don’t be scared.” Willard was beside us again.
“I am not scared, Willard.” I stared at the dirt encrusted inside the symbols, twirling around the hilt of a three-toothed, fork-looking dagger when a voice lifted the heaviness from the room.
“Troy!”
We all turned toward the voice.
“Set up has been completed,” David said from the door, the angle of the sun on his face lit his blue eyes like two glowing orbs.
“Dave!” I waved.
He frowned looking unsure. “What got into her?”
“I did.” Troy smirked.
“Finally, well done boy!” Robert popped his head in.
Anaya giggled.
“No.” Troy shook his head hard in aversion.
“Not like that you dork!” Dave slapped Robert on the head.
“What?” Rob smiled. “Get your mind out of the gutter, guys, that’s not what I meant.”
“Sure it wasn’t.” Dave stared at Rob.
“You guys are pigs,” I said.
“Hey.” Rob’s hand went up. “Everyone does it.”
“No.” I stared back. “It is a forbidden act.”
“Says who?” Rob smirked.
I stared blankly, they all knew, right? How could they not know that our kind could not cross-breed? If any of us became pregnant – death by insanity. The Council were resolute on that being the cause of our breeding mothers’ deaths.
“It’s called a joke, Ava,” Dave said chuckling.
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