by Katie Cross
My stomach flipped at Merrick’s entrance. I’d forgotten he would come with Marten.
“Merry meet, Marten,” I said and turned to Merrick. “What are you staring at?”
Merrick’s gaze had focused on the slight bruising around my eyes. Luckily I’d scrubbed all the blood off my face, though it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d seen me with a bloody nose.
“Marten said they shot at you with a couple flaming arrows,” Merrick said, his tone coiled and angry. “He didn’t say they hit you in the face.”
“That was an accident,” I said. “The driver was panicking, and I somehow found myself in the path of his flailing arm. That’s all.”
“Should have kept your hands up,” he muttered, seeming to accept the explanation, but his scowl remained.
I threw a wet towel at him. “Want me to give you a black eye to match?”
He grinned and deflected the towel with a spell. I didn’t move fast enough to block it, and it hit me in the torso with a wet slap.
“See?” he replied with a smug grin. “Keep your hands up.”
Marten eyed me with fatherly concern. “How are you feeling, Bianca? I know you told Niko you didn’t need an apothecary for your nose, but it wouldn’t be a problem to get you one. Maybe we should.”
I shook my head and instantly regretted it. The jarring movement sent a deep ache through my nose. I grimaced, which also hurt.
“A bit sore,” I said with a pained smile, “but I’ve had worse.”
“How’s the driver?” Merrick asked, looking at Marten.
“Fine. Ariana stopped in to say that the driver is doing well, and the shoulder wound will heal nicely.”
“At least some of my training has gotten through all that hair of yours,” Merrick said with a wink. A sarcastic retort hovered on the tip of my tongue when Marten interrupted.
“As much as you two enjoy flirting, let’s not waste time. I want to talk about what happened.” Marten settled into a chair at the table and helped himself to a few dried grapes. “I want to discuss it before you speak with Diego’s Guardians, who are ready at your convenience.”
I plopped onto a chair and ignored Marten’s reference to Merrick and I flirting. The very idea of Merrick flirting the way Camille and Brecken did almost made me snort. Merrick and I didn’t flirt. I didn’t even know how to flirt. We bickered.
Big difference.
“What do you want to know?” I asked, grabbing a small puff pastry. Hot cheese and something that looked like spinach spilled out when I pulled it open. My stomach growled, so I popped the whole thing in my mouth.
“What happened?” Marten asked.
After chewing through the melted cheese, I recounted the events with detailed precision. Merrick stood back a few paces, arms folded over his chest, wearing a brow-furrowed expression of concentration that meant he’d slipped back into Protector mode. Likely he didn’t appreciate the flirting insinuation either.
“So nothing too suspicious happened,” Marten concluded when I finished. “The Guardians have confiscated the carriage, so I can’t have you look at the arrows, Merrick.”
With silent magic I called the arrow I’d broken off the carriage to me. It popped into the air from where my cloak lay on the bed and zipped to my palm.
“Here,” I said, tossing it to Merrick. “I took the liberty of stealing one of them.”
“Impressive,” Marten said, his eyes alight. “You’re well-trained, my girl.”
I looked at Merrick to make sure he’d heard the compliment after his insistence that I didn’t know what to do with my hands in a fight, but he’d turned his full concentration on the feather, which had barely survived the flames.
“The flanges are the right color of green,” Merrick said, running his finger over the end. “The East Guards use a very specific feather, with a certain pattern, that makes them identifiable. This is an imitation, but not a bad one.”
He handed the feather back to Marten. “The anti-war rebels wouldn’t try to imitate the East Guards’ arrows,” Marten said.
Marten and Merrick locked concerned gazes for a moment. Something in their expressions clued me in. Shooting at a peaceful delegation, imitation arrows, all in a bid to strain relations between the Central and Eastern Networks.
“You think it was West Guards shooting, don’t you?” I asked.
“I know it,” Merrick said. His low retort and the confidence in his gaze sent chills down my spine.
“Diego will never admit that there are West Guards prowling around his Network unknown. Likely he’ll be embarrassed, at least,” Marten said, stroking his jaw with the tips of his fingers in deep thought.
“What other excuse could he give?” I asked.
“East Guard training gone wrong, likely,” Marten said. “He won’t say anything concrete, I’m sure.”
Merrick scowled. “That’s because Diego is a fool.”
“We’ll see what the East Guards conclude,” Marten said with a sigh. “I wrote to Derek to inform him of what happened.”
“What?” I screeched. “You told him?”
“I certainly wasn’t going to tell him in person.”
“Ah. Maybe that was a smart move.” When it came to me, Papa had a protective streak the size of the Central Network. “How did he take it?”
“Tolerably,” he said in a dry tone. “He wrote back, Keep your hands up.”
Merrick tilted his head back and laughed. I set a sneezing hex on him.
“He’s not angry then?”
“Furious. But not so angry that he wants to pull you back. Besides, he thinks your … diplomacy could use some work.”
I thought over his explanation with little reaction. My diplomacy was fine. My patience with other witches was not. In truth, I felt too tired to sort out the details. I didn’t want to think about any Network shooting at me, let alone the one I was currently sleeping in.
“Well, they didn’t hit me, so let’s stop talking about it and go to bed. I haven’t slept in days.”
“I’ll do some research early tomorrow morning before the meeting,” Merrick said to Marten. “See if I can find anything.”
“Get some rest, Bianca,” Marten said kindly. “Do you need a potion to help you sleep?”
“No, thank you.”
Marten nodded and patted me on the shoulder. “Good night then.”
Merrick followed him out, but paused in the doorway. “I’ll be sleeping in the hall,” he said, glancing at me from over his shoulder. “Marten’s room is directly across from yours, so let me know if you need something. I’ll send the East Guards in to get your story after you’ve eaten.”
“The hall?” I asked, standing. “Why the—”
The door closed on my question, and it dissolved into the night.
Nightmare
A nightmare gripped me tight that night, seeming to hold me by the neck. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t wake up.
Darkness assaulted me from all sides, coming with such force that it ripped the air from my lungs. No matter where I turned, nothing but a vast emptiness stretched around me. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. A voice spoke through the thick, dim blackness.
Bianca.
A pulse waved through the darkness in long, undulating motions.
Bianca.
The voice sounded familiar, like looking at someone I’d never seen before but recognized.
Let her go.
The thick smoke grew heavier until a moving shape in the distance caught my eye. Miss Mabel stepped into my nightmare with her usual coy smile. Her blonde hair fluttered around her shoulders, glowing in lines of white-hot fire, and her ruby-red lips smoldered like coals when she smiled at me.
Merry meet, Bianca darling, she whispered. I do miss you.
Let my daughter go.
I shot straight up in bed, panting. Viveet glowed bright blue, clenched so tightly in my hand she nearly caught fire. I blinked, taking in my unfamiliar surroun
dings until I remembered traveling to the Eastern Network.
“Ugh,” I whispered, pressing a trembling hand to my face. The voice in my dream slipped through my mind one last time.
Let my daughter go.
“What happened?” a deep voice asked, and I jumped into an instant crouch on the bed. A hand slapped over my mouth before I could yell. “Don’t make a sound,” Merrick whispered. “You’ll wake the East Guards, and the last thing you need is more attention.”
He removed his invisibility incantation and materialized as a dark, broad shape next to my bed. His sword gleamed a deep, burning purple. I relaxed and dropped to my knees on the fluffy mattress. Viveet calmed, settling into a hazy sapphire glow. But the dream remained, replaying itself in flashes of black oppression and Miss Mabel’s bright blue eyes.
“What were you screaming about?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed next to me.
“Was I screaming?”
“Once or twice.”
“Bad dream,” I said, dismissing it. “That’s all.”
“You going to be okay?”
“Yes. I’ll be fine.”
“Can I do anything?”
Don’t leave, or I’ll dream again, I wanted to plead, but Papa’s admonition to leave Merrick alone held me back. I pressed my fingertips to my lips, which burned after the touch of his hand.
“No,” I said. “But thank you.”
Slivers of moonlight reflected in his eyes as he stood. “I’m outside if you need me.”
He left in silence. I ran a hand over my face and through my still-damp hair, and fell onto my back with a heavy sigh.
“I’m going mad,” I muttered.
The door closed behind him while I stared at the heavy canopy above the four-poster bed, wondering why my heart was still pounding.
Let my daughter go.
Another weak wave of darkness washed over me, and I shuddered. Her daughter? That could only mean Angelina had been in my dream. But why would I dream of her? I’d only caught glimpses of her last summer. Angelina was a ghost, a rumor. No one even knew her face.
Was it a dream? Could Angelina have been trying to communicate with me? I snorted. “Impossible,” I said aloud, hoping the sound of my own voice would comfort me. No magic in our world allowed a witch to invade the mind of another. Thoroughly unnerved at the idea, I scrambled into the linen dress I’d worn before bed and slipped into the hallway. Papa didn’t have to know.
Merrick glanced up when the gentle croak of the door announced my presence. I sat on the stone floor next to him. Unlike my room, which stayed warm from the banked fire, the hallway was chilly from a gentle draft.
“I can’t sleep,” I said without meeting his eyes. I leaned back against the wall. “I thought I’d keep you company.”
“Here,” he said, lifting his cape and spreading it around my shoulders. “It’s cold out here, and your hair is still wet.”
“Don’t you need it?”
“No. It’s fine.”
A musky scent of evergreen clung to the cape, and I wondered where he’d been. A comfortable silence swelled in the air until he broke it with a quiet admission. “I used to have nightmares after my father died. My mother would wake me up because I’d scream and scare my sisters.”
I glanced at him in surprise. I knew about as much about Merrick as I did political history. He was unusually close-lipped about his family, and I realized then that I didn’t even know he had siblings. A torch above us highlighted strands of blond in his hair.
Did you dream that your most frightening enemy wanted you to free her daughter, the woman who killed your mother? I wanted to ask, but said instead, “What were your nightmares about?”
“The night my father died. I was always lying in a storm, my leg broken. Sometimes I could even feel the pain again, and I’d wake up with my leg throbbing. The mind has a funny way of dealing with stressful events. It may seem like you’re all right when you’re awake, but when you sleep you realize that you’re not okay at all.”
He spoke with a quiet, even tone, but his eyes were far-gone. I studied his profile. The handsome chin, the stubborn jaw, the dusting of facial hair that shimmered gold in the faint light. I looked away before he caught me, surprised to feel a knot in my stomach.
“Do you still have dreams?” I asked.
“Yes, but not about him.”
I didn’t ask him what they were about. His life as a Protector lent itself to far more barbarous, nightmarish situations than he ever would or could speak of. Our dreams might have been different, but I felt a moment of kinship with him all the same.
“Papa has dreams too,” I said, though I’d never told another witch. “I hear him talk in his sleep. I can’t really understand what he says,” I clarified when Merrick looked at me with a sharp gaze of concern. “He doesn’t reveal any secrets or speak about his work. He mostly calls out for Mama, or says something to me.”
“You’re his life,” he said, bending one knee to rest a forearm on it. “I doubt your father will ever be able to really give you up.”
I wondered at the odd pitch in his tone, but it faded so quickly and seemed so strange that I shook it off.
“Tell me about your mother.”
“You want to know about my mother?” he asked with an amused crook of his lips.
“I’m curious about the woman who dealt with you for so many years,” I said with a playful grin. “She must be extremely patient.”
The unreleased laugh in his eyes faded back into strict solemnity. “Not my whole life. But a good portion of it.”
A question hovered on the tip of my tongue, but I held it in, afraid that I’d lose him if I asked.
“I haven’t really been home to stay in a long time,” he said, propping his head against the wall. “I couldn’t handle my father’s death and … Mother sent me away. Said I’d always suffer under his ghost if I didn’t find my own life.”
Though he’d still left much unsaid, I let it slide without questioning him further.
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
My eyes widened. “But you’re twenty-three now.”
He grinned with very little amusement. “Yes. Six years is a long time.”
“You haven’t been back even once?”
“I’ve seen them a few times, but I have my job here.”
I noticed that he said job and not life and wondered if they were one and the same for him. Papa’s admonition crept through my head again.
“Do you miss them?” I asked, shaking the thoughts off.
“Every day.”
The finality in his tone suggested that he wouldn’t speak of them again, whoever they were. I didn’t press it, and stared at the other side of the hallway in deep thought. The castle moved quietly in the background. A soft murmur of voices passed in the stairs at the end of the hall, and if I listened hard, I could hear the quiet hiss of the ocean outside. The Eastern Network, while not without her perils, calmed me.
“So,” he drawled, drawing my attention from the deepening thoughts of my dream about Angelina. “I spoke with Nicolas the other day. It sounds like things between him and Michelle are getting more serious than you’d like.”
My attention popped to alert like a Guardian to the bugle. “What?”
“Told me all about … his plans.”
“Tell me!” I demanded in a low whisper, grabbing his arm. “You must tell me! Is he going to propose? Is he going to take Michelle away from me?”
Merrick laughed, but didn’t shake my hand off. The feel of his skin against mine was so foreign and startling that I let go. We normally lived under an unspoken no-touch policy. To feel him so close made me dizzy.
“Nicolas and Michelle’s relationship is not your business,” he said with a chuckle. “Why do you care, anyway? Shouldn’t you be happy for your friend? She’s living the dream. Graduated from school, lived at the castle for a while, now she can get married and live her lif
e.”
I scowled and folded my arms across my chest when a chilly breeze whispered past me. “Yes, of course I’m happy for her. I’m just not happy for me.”
“Oh, there it is. A nice, friendly attitude.”
“It’s not like that!” I cried in frustration. “It’s just … I just wish things wouldn’t keep changing so fast. I’ve never lived without the weight of a curse on me. I’m used to surviving. For the past few months I’ve been able to just live and be normal, and it’s been—”
“Irresponsible?”
“Freeing,” I countered. “I don’t want to let that go yet.”
“Life is never the same from day to day, Bianca. You’re going to have to accept that eventually. Leda, Camille, and Michelle will live their own lives, which means you should too.”
I said nothing, but let out a long sigh. He was right, but I didn’t want to admit it.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said, perking up when a new idea came to me. “How about you teach me a few more words from the Guardian language? I’m dying to know what Tiberius is saying when he yells at the recruits. He’s swearing, I just know it.”
Merrick tilted his head back in a full laugh, and, finally realizing I meant it, gave in with a shake of his head.
“All right, all right. You’re right. He most definitely is swearing. This is what he’s saying.”
Spunky
I woke to the sound of gulls.
When I scrambled out of bed—though I didn’t remember climbing back into it after my conversation with Merrick regarding the advantages of a bow and arrow extended into the earliest hours of morning—I glanced out a circular window. An eternal, massive line of blue stretched across the horizon. White-tipped waves rolled and crashed on a golden, sandy shore in front of the castle, breaking on rock cliffs that rose a short distance to the left.
“Blessed be,” I whispered. “This is beautiful.”
I’d never seen the ocean before, so I was eager to get a full view. I was pleased to find I still wore the linen dress I’d slipped into the night before.
“Perfect. Now I won’t have to change.”
