Premonition

by Rachael Krotec

  “Let us tie?” She laughs. That day is now a blur in Lilah’s memory, stamped with the feeling of blood draining from her body. A red haziness drifts over those memories, obscuring the truth in its shadow. The hair on the back of her neck stands erect. Verna.

  It was the damn butterflies.

  She shifts in her seat and licks her lips. “Would you be willing to swear an oath, then?” Under oath, it would be impossible for him to lie. She keeps her gaze steady on his blue and gold eyes. That light, that light in his eyes is so familiar.

  Caleb clears his throat. “If you insist, then yes, I will swear an oath.”

  “Lilah!” Deirdre yells from the doors. She waves her hands in a frenzy, black hair turning into snakes with the movement. “Time’s up!”

  Ragged breaths wake Lilah from a dreamless sleep. She moves to lift herself up and realizes she is back in her own bed, at the sanctuary. Cautious of making the pain return in her side, Lilah turns only her head to see who dreadfully snores on the ground beside her bed. It is Marcus, and although caution lingers within her, she shifts in the bed with relative comfort at his presence. Did he realize I was gone and send Deirdre after me?

  She slips from the bed, tip-toes around Marcus, and goes down the hallway to Deirdre’s room. Her hand rests on the handle for a moment before she pushes the door open.

  Deirdre rests on top of the bed’s blanket, her legs crossed beneath her and her arms behind her neck. She feigns sleep with a slight grin across her lips. Lilah can’t help but notice how healthy her skin looks, how shiny her hair is, how corded her muscles appear to be. She has changed so much since they found her. How? Lilah takes a step forward and touches Deirdre on her elbow.

  Deirdre opens one eye slowly. “Don’t you know it’s rude to come into someone’s room unannounced?”

  Lilah clutches her arm at the elbow. A tinge of pain begins in her side. She exhales and sits at the edge of the bed. She covers her eyes with a hand, the light of the room suddenly causing her to feel a sharp nausea in her gut.

  “You should really get control of yourself.”

  With her eyes closed, Lilah says through her teeth, “I don’t know how.” Deirdre hoots with laughter, and the sound reverberates through Lilah’s core, a drop of water in a pond. She covers her ears with her hands and bites the soft flesh of her cheek. “What’s happening to me?” she whispers.

  Deirdre stands and moves in front of Lilah, then lifts the bottom of her chin. Lilah drops her hands and looks up into Deirdre’s ebony pools.

  “You’re ascending, Lilah. Unfortunately, it’s only going to get worse.” She gives Lilah a pat on the shoulder and resumes her repose on the bed.

  “Why did you come here?”

  “You nearly killed him.” Deirdre laughs.

  “That’s not what I—”

  “He’s a good boy.” Deirdre winks. “Be kind to him.”

  Lilah steps back from her. “You work for Alessandra—”

  “Or does she work for me?” Deirdre sits up.

  Lilah narrows her eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t hurt yourself thinking about it.” She smirks.

  What’s wrong with this woman?

  “I’m not here for you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Marcus, then?”

  “Marcus?” she repeats, her tone humorless.

  Angry with her own ignorance, Lilah storms from the room. She stands in the threshold of her room. Marcus sits on the chair with a hardened expression. “We need to—”

  “Talk?” Lilah walks to the dresser and pulls out a pair of jeans and a blue blouse. She turns to Marcus. “Do you mind?” He points to the door, then leaves. Lilah quickly dresses, and runs her fingers through her hair to braid it. She glances at the reflection in the mirror. The image is a fiction. Dark, puffy circles now underline her eyes and her mouth droops in a slight frown. The color in her cheeks has dimmed to a cool paleness, which the sun will never be able to warm. The wheat tinge of her hair shimmers with corrupt patches where a darker hue takes hold. Her blue eyes shift to such an extent, she grows dizzy watching.

  Lilah swirls away from the image and opens the door to see Marcus leaning against the opposite wall, a small paring knife in his hand as he carves a piece of wood. Their eyes meet. He frowns.

  Walking along the stream that runs beside the home, her breath comes out in siphons of white. The ground is brown, and in some spots, there are puddles from where the light snow melted and the dead grass pokes through. A lone bird whistles.

  Where to start? She breathes deep. “I don’t understand you.” Marcus chuckles. “Laughing doesn’t help your case.” He shrugs; Lilah sighs. “I’m ascending, but I don’t really understand what that means.”

  “No one explained it to you?”

  She glares at him. “My guardian was a Lux, so . . .”

  “Ah, that’s right.” He wags a finger. “Well, the closer you get to your eighteenth birthday, the more the effects will show. It is a process only Nox go through.”

  “Where does it come from? I mean, anima can’t be made or destroyed, so how?”

  Marcus shrugs nonchalantly; Lilah’s irritation grows. “We don’t understand, but there are theories. One theory says anima is like a well. Only so much water exists in it and once it’s gone, it’s gone. That’s the concept of ‘generational folding.’ When people within your family die, their anima goes back into the well. When you’re born, you have innate anima, and when you ascend, it comes from the well. But that theory doesn’t always hold true. No one can explain why some are innately more powerful. It’s as if anima chooses who it will be born within. The truth is, we don’t really know how it works.”

  “Are you saying some—some force chose to give Alessandra all the power she has? To what end?”

  “Do I look like a philosopher?” he says, his tone somber.

  Lilah swallows and shakes her head, then contemplates what Marcus has told her. Can it be destiny working the strings? Is it Alessandra’s fate to be a monster? Her head aches. She rubs her temples with both hands. “Do you know Deirdre?”

  “I don’t think anyone knows her.”

  “Don’t be vague—you know what I mean,” she says, sinking her fingers into her palms.

  “Yes, I know her.” He stops walking and stares down at Lilah. “But I’m not an agent of Alessandra’s.”

  “You know, the harder you try to convince me, the less I trust you.” She glares at him.

  Marcus laughs, then turns solemn and crosses his arms. “Alessandra and I grew up together. And I did serve her for a time in the war, but things changed and I could no longer support her cause.”

  Lilah wonders if it’s as simple as he makes it to be, but oddly, she trusts him the most out of everyone here; it is the sadness in his voice that confirms his authenticity.

  She stops, and Marcus does, too. “The prophecy . . .” Lilah’s voice falters. “Do you believe it?”

  “I’m not one who puts much thought into other people’s ideas of who I am or might become.” He gives her a sideways glance. “Something tells me you aren’t either. Plus, I made a promise.”

  A promise? She balks, then steps away from Marcus to the clear white waters of the stream that runs by the sanctuary. She walks in a small circle, listening to the crunching of the snow underfoot. “Can you tell me about my father?” she says in a soft voice, almost inaudible over the sound of the water.

  Marcus meets her gaze and lifts an eyebrow. “Rowley Eadwig. He was a member of the Six. More of a socialite than even Alessandra grew up as. He was pyrokinetic and—”

  “Yeah, I know all of that. Can you tell me things about him that I won’t find in a history book?”

  A dark shadow falls over Marcus’s face. He clears his throat before saying, “There is the matter of Aza’s death. The others . . .” his voice trails off.

  “They require me to be punished.” Lilah looks over her shoulder and smiles. “Will you
do it?”

  Marcus begins to shake his head. “I’m not a sadist, the position as castigator at Waterstone was only convenient for me at the time.”

  “Please, will you? I can accept it, if it’s done by you.”

  Marcus blinks, then nods in agreement. “They think you should be—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Pain is pain, right?” She smiles without teeth, then kicks a spot of snow on the ground. The ice sloshes up her ankle. “Can I have a moment alone?”

  “Of course.”

  She watches him stride back to the sanctuary, then turns to the water and kneels beside it. Sticking one hand in, she twirls a pattern into the surface. As the water ripples around her hand, she can’t help but think how one tiny finger can send such waves through the torrent stream. Pulling her hand out, the water drips from her fingertips and splashes back into the mother. She stands.

  “No time for caution.”

  At the steps of the sanctuary, the others circle around as Lilah kneels—naked from her waist up, shirt dangling around her hips. She doesn’t try to cover her exposed body.

  “Do you understand that you have been charged with the murder of Aza Hara? Do you understand that such a charge must be severely punished?” Jia says, rueful.

  Lilah nods.

  “Do you accept the method of punishment to be performed by Marcus Gyfford?”

  Lilah nods. Cold dirt presses into Lilah’s clothing where her weight sits heavy on her knees. She glances at the faces and spots Deirdre standing near the porch, her expression blank.

  Twelve lashes. That is all Aza’s life amounts to. Lilah doesn’t know whether to feel grateful that this is all she is to receive as punishment or whether she should pity Aza that this is all she amounts to. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. A foreign image appears in her mind: Alessandra standing in a field, not so unlike the one at Lilah’s back, eyes consumed with darkness. Lilah grits her teeth; her hands shake.

  The first strike lands and licks across her skin, the immediate pain demands her attention. But she ignores it. Instead, she focuses on Alessandra’s eyes, how they seem to be looking at her, almost through her.

  The second and third lash seem to reinstate the need to be present, to feel the skin where the whip slices her flesh. Again and again, the leather makes contact, shredding the tender skin of her back and shoulders. It isn’t until the tenth that Lilah’s refrain falters. She ducks to the side after the lash pushes her off her knees and forward into the dirt and snow.

  She composes herself before the last two, squeezing her eyes shut; her palms grow moist with blood as her fingernails dig into the flesh. With the twelfth and final lash, it is done. Blood from her shoulders and back seeps copiously down into the ground. Lilah opens her eyes, her lips quivering, to find only Deirdre remains beside Marcus. Deirdre sits on the top step of the porch, an enthusiastic smile displayed over her lips. When their eyes meet, she claps. The echo rings in Lilah’s ears.

  A heavy wool blanket is thrown over her shoulders, and she pulls it around herself, then makes to stand, but stumbles. Marcus grabs her arm. She gazes up at him, a grimace over his features—hazel eyes glossy. Promised who? She pulls away from him, and he turns to the valley, disappearing into the woods.

  “I was hoping you would faint.” Deirdre holds Lilah, helping her to her room. “It would have been better for you. If you had fainted, he would have stopped.”

  Deirdre sets Lilah on the edge of her bed. Next to her, on the floor, is a jumble of first-aid supplies.

  “Lie on your stomach, and I’ll do my best to fix you up.”

  “No,” Lilah says, looking straight into Deirdre’s dark eyes. “Leave me.”

  “The whip they used was enchanted—”

  “Leave!”

  Lifting her hands—palms forward—Deirdre leaves. When the click of the door rings through Lilah’s buzzing ears, she drops the blanket and stands in front of the mirror. Turning, she gazes at her back. Partially dried blood plasters the gaping wounds that bleed profusely down her back onto her pants. She reaches over her shoulder and touches one that runs from shoulder to hip, then paints a line down her cheek with her own blood.

  Look at what they’ve done. Look at who they’ve made you.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It isn’t until a drop of blood dribbles down his wrists that Caleb realizes his fingernails have dug into the tender tissue of his palms. While his eyes had fixed themselves on the spectacle, his hands molded into fists. Sitting in the tree, Caleb releases his grip and stares at the raw flesh. Lilah sits, unmoving, until the tenth lash where she falters slightly. His breath shoots from his lungs, catching and falling. This would never happen in Lux communities, and he keenly feels how privileged his life has been without such punishments or violence.

  Caleb tracks her as Deirdre helps her inside. The impulse to jump down, to run to her, and heal her wounds weighs heavy on. Who am I to care? He rubs his neck but stops when the bruises he can’t see pain him. Alessandra never told him her plans with Lilah, only that she was the pinnacle of her “new world.” He is to stay by her side and not intervene. But after seeing what she did at the Ludi, Caleb is sure that Alessandra plans on killing Lilah, because she sees her own daughter as a thing that will only thwart her plans of returning to power.

  He knows Lilah’s ascending, turning completely into the grip of the anima, and that she’s not stable. Yet, seeing her bleed, Caleb’s resolve falters. That look of quiet suffering in her eyes. He has to help her mend this pain. He fears the wound too grave. He sighs a billow of white smoke before glancing over at Lilah’s window only to quickly turn away. She stands half naked, staring over her shoulder. Caleb slowly brings his eyes back to her, her bloodied back visible.

  He will try to procure her once more and pray to Aura for absolution.

  Ren recovers from traveling by promptly vomiting in a bush. He has never been able to stomach the twisting sensation of teleporting, since it feels like every cell of his body breaks down to reform elsewhere. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then glances around. “Where the—” A dagger whizzes past his head. Ren pivots and nods his head at Channery. He takes a deep breath of the heavy night air. As he exhales, he feels a surge of power spread through his core and limbs, resting just beneath his skin. “I can’t let you kill me.”

  “How could you betray us, Ren?” Channery cries. Farah appears out of the corner of his eye, the glint of her weapon catching moonlight. But where is— “It doesn’t have to be this way,” Channery says.

  Ren inhales vehemently, filling his lungs with the ripe smell of Channery’s nervous sweat. “It does have to be this way.” He reaches within his cloak and produces a small vial, his last from Nira. He spins a dagger from another pocket and empties the vial over the blade. The metal whines against the incantation, which turns the steel a sharp red, like dawn. Ren directs his focus back to Channery, who positions herself in a casual stance. He will have to win this fight with cunning rather than brute strength.

  A murder of crows circle like vultures above, their laughter echoing like thunder. The time to strike, Ren knows, must be precise and rapid. He curses under his breath.

  “How long, Ren?” Farah yells behind him.

  Ren shrugs. “Long enough, it would seem.”

  “How pathetic to be her lap dog. You never had dignity, though, so it doesn’t—”

  “Ren!” Channery screams. But the blade pierces through Farah’s neck, and she clutches at the spurting wound for a moment before falling. Channery rushes to her side, applying pressure to the wound, but Farah was dead the moment the blade touched her skin.

  Ren whisks a hand in the air and the blade comes back to his hand. “I was sick of her prattling.”

  Strident screams erupt from Channery as she charges toward Ren, but her mistake was made seconds ago when she touched Farah’s wound. Delayed, her movements are easily predicted, and Ren jolts to the left as she skates by. When she turns, he
sends her back a step with a blow to the chest. Her wrinkled hand yields a violent orange incantation, which fizzles out as she reaches for Ren’s chest. He hears the blunted air gush from Channery’s mouth as the toxin works through her blood. She struggles, clutches at her throat, and he braces himself as they fall to the ground. Channery stares into his eyes, her grip of his cloak growing weaker with every breath. “Ren,” Channery gags, grabbing hold of his arm. “Ni—ra.”

  Her grip releases. Ren closes her dead, staring eyes. He sits, raking his eyes over Channery’s face. Blood drips from her nostrils and ears. “Rest easy,” he mutters.

  “Ren,” Nira whispers. He glances over his shoulder. Nira speaks softly into her hands and sparks begin to fly around her body. She takes a deep breath and drives her body forward. Yelling, she heaves the ball of electricity at Ren. As she races toward him, twisting and turning, Ren throws himself to the side, avoiding the hurling ball of white sparks. Nira turns as Ren slings one of his blades in her direction. The blade catches Nira in the shoulder, but the damage is minimal; the toxin won’t affect her since it’s of her own conjuring.

  Ren tears off his cloak, the weight lifting from his back and allowing him to move freely. They parry around each other, following each other’s movements, each attack seconds away from landing on the other’s body. Ren sidesteps another forward dive of Nira’s electric spell.

  “Stop insulting me! Fight me like a real opponent!” Nira yells, her chest heaving.

  Ren pauses, ducking his head to avoid another swing of her leg. He stabs down with his dagger, this time landing a blow in Nira’s chest. A small noise escapes her mouth, and she reels backward, her right hand reaching up to the wound, but it does not stop her for long. Instead, she comes crashing forward with both hands holding conjured sparks. He doesn’t move and lets both spells hit him. A yell pierces through the air.

  “Why?” she says, grasping his chest. “Why didn’t you move?”