Save Seph.
There was no simpler action than that. Linford was right. I couldn’t live without him, couldn’t endure this life without my Virgo, and yet…
What had my grandmother said?
There was no such thing as coincidence.
Was I supposed to die after this whole thing was over?
Was I supposed to survive only long enough to make things right? To fulfil the vision that my tatarabuela had seen and no more?
If everything happened for a reason, why had this happened at all?
Shivering in my mates’ arms, lost and frightened, with so many different directions to take, I swiftly came to terms with the fact that if this Trude had predicted each and every one of the meteors, if she’d been hanging around, subsisting on her magic for this long, then she was the only one who truly would have any answers for me.
I tensed, stiffening inside and out as I thought about releasing her from my magic.
I wasn’t comfortable enough with it yet to understand the nuance of my powers. I didn’t know everything, after all. Just had a feeling for what I could do. But thus far, everything I had done was with the grace of a warrior wielding a mace rather than a surgeon with a scalpel.
How to liberate her while keeping her contained should have been my biggest obstacle. Instead, I was worrying about Seph. I wanted him here with me, sandwiching me between the three of them, and yet…
Principles.
I clenched my jaw, hating the situation I was in. I’d never asked for any of this crap, but here I was, knee deep in a pile of shit that had nothing to do with me or my mates.
Since when were we the road sweepers or the trash collectors of the world? Clearing out the detritus everyone else had tossed out, uncaring where it landed?
“Tell me your reasoning, Riel,” Matthew whispered in my ear, but even though the way he spoke felt intimate, his question was cold and hard.
I thought about a moment’s silence. A moment’s peace for us to talk, focused on it, concentrated on it so I could will it into being.
Just a sliver of time.
That was all I needed.
Licking my lips, I twisted my head to look at Lars. When I saw that his hand was hovering in midair and Linford was frozen in place too, I released a breath that was loaded with relief.
“I extended two people’s lives. By doing that, I messed with the balance of the world. I did that because I wasn’t thinking. I was feeling. I’d been without my grandmother for so long when she was the only one I believed understood me. As for Linford, my reasoning was both selfish and romantic. I wanted him to have more time with my grandmother, but also, I’d never had my grandfather before, and I wanted him. I wanted him close to me. He understood the other half of my nature, a part that no one else ever had, a part that I’d hidden all my life.” I sucked in a shaky breath, but even that wasn’t enough to empower me to say the next words.
“It’s okay, Riel. They’re your family. It’s only natural to—”
“But that’s just it,” I whispered. “What I’m doing is the exact opposite of natural. It’s the exact opposite of a power that shouldn’t be in the hands of a single person. It’s a power that belongs to Sol or Gaia. Not a single witch.”
Matthew, his somber eyes trained on me, dipped his chin with a solemnity that had me wanting to clench my own shut.
He understood.
And I hated that he understood, because that meant my reasoning made sense, and if that was the case…
I gulped as the endless white noise surged louder than ever, making me feel like I was drowning in a white sea of it.
“Your grandmother said everything happens for a reason,” Daniel pointed out, his voice as earnest as the way he hugged me to him. The hug did more to battle the sounds tearing at my senses than anything else could. “You obviously had to do—”
I felt dazed by what I was enduring, but what he said no longer fit. Maybe once I’d felt that way, but the vision with my great-great-grandmother had changed that. Had changed me because she’d opened my eyes.
“No. I don’t agree with her.” When he tensed in surprise at my words, I squeezed his hands. “I mean, she’s right, but if I live my life that way, if everyone led their lives that way, no one would ever be held accountable for their actions.” I shook my head “I don’t believe that’s right. My powers are—”
“Your powers are tied to us,” Matthew pointed out. “We’re a unit. Trust me when I say, Riel, that you don’t want to live without Seph. We’ve seen the witches in his father’s cirque du freak. Even though Noa’s intentions with them appear to be pure, their misery is unreal. Their powers are there, just as strong from what I gather, but that’s not enough to make them want to live.”
My mouth tightened. “Maybe this is the stepping-stone to the fate that’s been awaiting us all along.”
Matt scowled at me. “What fate is that?”
“Maybe this is the first step on a path that leads toward all our ends.” As the words passed my lips, my knees almost crumpled when that horrendous noise burst into my brain, overtaking every single one of my senses until I felt like I was going to swoon.
❖
Daniel
I could see she believed it. Could see that she believed every word she’d just uttered, and considering what we’d been through lately, I couldn’t exactly blame her.
Any normal humanoid who’d touched that meteor would never have survived the radiation that seeped into them as a result of coming into contact with an extraterrestrial object.
Instead of being afflicted by some terrible infirmity, we’d been granted powers.
Powers that existed for a reason.
While I could see her point, I could also see something that she couldn’t.
“I think we need to drain your magic a little,” I rasped, and when she tensed, I stared at her calmly. “You’re talking crazy, Riel. We don’t plan missions with the assumption we’re going to die. We don’t leave fallen comrades to suffer and perish—we heal them. We do everything we can to save them. To the best of our abilities.”
“This isn’t a stupid mission the Assembly has sent us on!” she ground out, shoving away from me and Matt. I watched as her hands came up to cover her head a second, she plucked at her ears, making me wonder what she was doing—could she still hear that noise? When her fingers scrabbled at her hair, I thought she was going to tug at it, but then Seph released a low moan and it distracted her from whatever was afflicting her. The second he made that sound, her own discomfort was forgotten and she headed over to Seph. Squatting beside him, she traced her fingers over his brow.
What once had been free from lines, the golden silk of Fae skin, was now withered and creased. In a handful of seconds, I’d watched my troupe brother morph from a handsome bastard into a male so old he looked like he could turn into dust if we so much as breathed on him.
How, in Sol’s name, had the old bitch managed to do that? How had she transferred her sickness onto Seph?
The thought had me frowning. “Guys, if Trude could do what she did to Seph, why hasn’t she done it before?”
Matthew tensed, then, slowly reasoned, “If she’s been living here all these years, she’d have had ample opportunity, Riel.”
Her brow puckered. “You’re right.”
“She did it for a reason,” I murmured uneasily, tossing a glance at the witch.
To be honest, I was surprised Riel had managed to fell her. Especially since this woman was so damn powerful that she had managed to outwit time itself.
Yet, when I looked at her, she was frozen. There was no feigning it either. I wasn’t just talking frozen like whatever the Sol Riel had done to the clock which let us speak as though a second was an hour. There was something about her and about Gabriella that spoke of… My mind caught on a pair of words that made me feel even worse.
Rigor mortis.
Lars and Linford were frozen in place. Whatever they were doing, they’d carry on doing i
t until Riel let them go—Linford was wringing his hands and Lars was holding a cup.
But the pink haze of Riel’s magic did something to the two females. It seemed to be using their muscles against them—they looked like they were in pain, whereas Linford and Lars didn’t.
They weren’t suffering.
The women were.
My throat felt tight at that, and the ordinary Dan wanted to feel pity. But Seph was down, Riel was stumbling, and all because those two witches had misled us. How could I pity them when Gabriella had brought us to this situation, intentionally leaving us in the dark? How could I wish they weren’t suffering when Seph was suffering thanks to both their actions?
My mouth was tight as I stepped away to crouch at Seph’s side. He wasn’t frozen in time. Whatever Riel had done, she’d included him in the circle. It figured. Riel would never forget about him. Not even in a panic.
He was breathing, deep, drawing rasps that made my ears hurt.
“You can’t function without him, Riel,” I reminded softly, unsure why I even needed to say that. But Riel wasn’t functioning normally either. Her eyes were glinting more than usual, and I had a feeling that whatever she could hear that we couldn’t, was fucking with her head somehow.
Making her judgment questionable?
Evidently so from her hesitation to save Seph. Then, I looked at the two witches and reasoned that some part of her was in full working order.
What the fuck was this place doing to my mate? We needed to get out of here, but with things as they were, that wasn’t looking likely, was it?
“You think I needed you to tell me that?” she growled.
“Why did she steal Seph’s youth from him? Why not yours? Why not anyone within the years she’s been chained to that chair?” Matthew pointed out calmly, so damn calmly I wanted to smack him.
He spoke like he was a lecturer just waiting for the students to call out the answer to a question they should have studied the previous night.
When neither of us replied, he murmured, “She must have done it because you weren’t going to help her.”
Riel’s head whipped around to stare at him. “So this is my fault?”
I cringed. “No one’s allaying blame here, Riel.”
Her mouth pursed into a tight ring. “I wouldn’t blame you. All of this, all this shit, it is my fault. All my fucking fault.” She reached up and scrubbed her hands over her face. “This is—”
“We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you,” Matthew stated, more collected than ever. “But how many times, Riel? We are creatures who are versed in kismet. You are our destiny. We were born to be here. By your side. Acting as your…” He sighed. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to be. Since the meteor, everything’s changed. I figured we were supposed to be your protectors. But you don’t need us for that. You don’t—”
She rushed over to him and before he could do more than blink, her arms were around his waist and she was huddled into him. “Don’t say that.”
He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head and closed his eyes. I watched the intimate move with no distress. I wasn’t even jealous, because there was nothing to be jealous about.
If any woman alive needed three males to keep her on the straight and narrow, it was Riel.
Being her Virgo was a full-time job, and Sol, even the Fae needed to sleep. I needed Seph and Matthew’s help with my Virgo. I saw that now. She wasn’t a regular female, and she would never be satisfied with a regular male.
“He’s right,” I said softly, breaking the love-in, because Seph’s breathing was making my own chest hurt. I’d never watched anyone die, but that was a death rattle if ever there was one. “We’re not your protectors. We’re not your warriors, which, sweetheart, means we’re something else entirely.”
Matthew caught my eye. “What?”
“We’re to help her. Gabriella wanted Seph to touch Lars’ wind for a reason. Whatever we’re supposed to do here, she knows. What do you reckon that all three of us are vital to doing whatever the fuck it is she wants?” I bit my lip. “I think we’ve been played. I think, all along, Gabriella has known what we must do, and she’s let us think we’re in charge. Has let Riel have her way, gone to the AFata to deal with them because, let’s face it, they’re allies now. She has no reason to fear them.”
“But if it weren’t for the vision, we’d have been with the Assembly now,” Riel rasped, twisting in Matt’s arms to look at me. “What would have been her purpose there?”
“I don’t have all the answers,” I stated. “I just think she knows more than she let on. She knew that old witch there. She wanted you to save her. Her motives are compromised.”
Matt rubbed her arm. “He’s right. We can’t trust her. Whether she wanted us to go to the Assembly or whether she had a vision herself about us coming here, either way, I feel like she’s using us.”
“My tatarabuela said the first families will know what to do when I come to them,” she said quietly, her eyes distant. Gaia help me, they were so distant they were on another plane entirely. “Lars wanted to offer his magic.”
“He looked like he was offering his life,” Matt declared. “He looked scared. I was glad when Seph wanted answers first. That wasn’t right.”
“Gabriella could have told you that she was the head of the first family, but she didn’t. She also said that she comes here often enough to know the way, but Lars didn’t know her, did he? You could see that. So who was she visiting?” My gaze drifted over to the witch, because I had a feeling I had my answer.
Riel sucked in a breath. “What do I do?”
“You save Seph,” Matt and I said in unison, but I carried on, “You save him because without him, you’ll be an empty shell. You save him because he is integral to you, and for whatever reason, you’re integral to a plan that has been centuries in the making.
“I-I applaud you, Riel, for trying to stick to your guns. And sacrificing Seph is definitely one way to stick to your principles, but what are principles if you don’t have him?”
She clenched her eyes closed. “How am I even questioning losing him? Why didn’t I instantly save him?”
I licked my lips, treading warily now because the last thing you did when dealing with someone on the edge was point out how close to the edge they fucking were.
But there was no prevaricating where this was concerned. There was no soothing ruffled feathers or trying to make her feel better.
“I think your magic is going to your head.”
For a second, the silver in her eyes glinted, then she whispered, “Maybe.” She pressed her knuckles to her temples in a way that had to hurt. I wanted to reach for her hand, wanted to kiss the knuckles she was scraping across that tender cartilage, but instead, I gave her free reign to act and move as she wanted—Riel was listening to us. I didn’t want to give her leave to stop.
“You know things you shouldn’t, Riel,” Matt inserted, his gaze drifting to mine in approval—he agreed with what I was saying. “It’s there, in your eyes.”
“I didn’t know this, did I?” she whispered. “Didn’t envisage this.”
“No, but somehow you knew how to catch the AFata’s wind and use it to trap the battalion. Somehow, you knew where to put them. Somehow, somehow, somehow.”
“It’s almost like your brain knows something but your hands are working separately,” Matthew mused, his brow puckering as he thought about what he was saying. “I don’t mean that to insult you, love, it’s just… something isn’t in sync.”
“Probably because the power inside her wasn’t meant for one small, human frame.” I cut Gabriella a look. “She was genuinely taken aback when she realized what you’d done with the meteor, Riel. Whatever you were supposed to do, it wasn’t that.”
Matthew’s nod was slow. “He’s right. She was surprised. She was angry. I think she thought it had killed you.”
“So, whatever she wants, she doesn’t want me dead,” Riel spat bitterly.
“At least, not yet.”
I winced, wished I could smooth over that for her, but couldn’t. “I think that’s a fair assumption.”
Seph punctuated my remark by releasing a shaky, soughing breath. The noise was loud enough to have Riel jerking, and when I looked, I saw her eyes were a bright blue. She rushed over, skidded onto her knees at his side, and then pressed her hands to his face. As I watched, curious now, I saw her eyes flitter over to the silver glint I was coming to recognize, and watched as she healed Seph, drawing the malady the old witch had cursed him with, and shedding it from him as though he were sloughing off an old skin.
When he started coughing, he twisted onto his side. He was the same Seph as before, but what he coughed out was, in a word, gross.
The black smoke spewed from him like it was a dark ribbon he’d somehow ingested. It was dense and pure in its color, and he choked on it as he hacked it out. Only once he was free from it, his face a bright red, did he throw himself onto his back and try to catch his breath.
For a second, Riel watched him, and I took note of her eye color—silver.
Her regard was clinical. It wasn’t Riel. There was no affection as she stared at him, there was no caring, no recognition even. Then, slowly, before my eyes, the silver began to recede to be replaced with the blue, and the second the blue was in play, the recognition was there.
“Seph!” she sobbed, hurling herself at him, wrapping him up in her until he got enough strength back to lift his arms and curve them around her.
I got to my feet, wanting to give them a private moment, then headed over to Matt.
“What is it?” he asked quietly, his gaze focused on them.
“The magic… it overtakes her.”
He nodded. “I know.” Reaching up, he rubbed his chin. “When her eyes are silver, it’s like she’s not in there.”
I tensed. “You noticed as well?”
“Yeah. I did. When I approached her to hug her, they were bright silver. Shining like a new coin. They were like that all through that little speech about how she couldn’t save him.” He released a shaky sigh. “The second they were blue again, she began to show emotions.”
Finally Faeling: An Eight Wings Academy Novel: Book Three Page 18
