“Maybe,” Ridley murmured.
On the other side of the coffee table, Archer swore beneath his breath. Ridley had almost forgotten he was there, but now she looked at him. “You’re one of them,” he said softly. “You’re an heir. You must have inherited it from your …” He trailed off, frowning as he looked at Saoirse. “But you said both. And Ridley’s father isn’t …” His eyes slid away, focusing on something in the distance, and Ridley could almost see his mind working. Then his gaze snapped up to hers again, and there was something like pity in his eyes. He’d figured it out. And he’d accepted it immediately, not arguing about it the way she had. Not saying that it was impossible, that Saoirse must have got it wrong. He was probably thinking it made a lot of sense. He was probably thinking, So that’s why she looks nothing like her father.
“Ridley …” he said slowly.
“Don’t,” she said tightly. “Whatever you’re going to say, just don’t. And actually—” she tilted her head to the side “—now that I think about it, if you know about these so-called heirs, then you should have already figured out that I’m one of them. I showed you the pendant Saoirse gave me.”
“The … oh. That’s the family stone.”
Ridley rolled her eyes. “Yes, Archer. Your father recognized it, so I assume you would too. Maybe you’re the one who told him what I am. Maybe that’s the reason he told his guys to bring me back to him instead of just killing me.”
Archer shook his head. “If someone told him, it wasn’t me. I’ve heard of elemental heirs, and I know about the family heirloom stones that are passed down from generation to generation. I’ve heard stories of siblings and cousins killing each other over the single stone passed down from their ancestors. But I don’t remember anyone ever telling me what they look like. Honestly, it never even crossed my mind that that’s what it might be when you showed it to me. Didn’t you say it was a healing stone or something?”
Ridley looked at Saoirse. “You mentioned healing properties. I’m guessing that was a lie?”
“Your mother did actually mention that she could draw power from the stone and use it to heal herself.”
“Oh. But you didn’t just happen to be wearing it when your community was discovered.”
“No, that part was a lie.” Saoirse looked appropriately contrite. “I’m sorry. When the Shadow Society found us …” She swallowed and took a deep breath. “Cam had taken Bria to the park nearby. I went to your parents’ home first, as it was the closest. But they were already … they were dead. You weren’t with them, but I hoped you were in the nursery. I knew about the stone pendant being part of your heritage and linked to your power, so I took it off your mother’s neck. I intended to search the house for you, hoping I would find you alive. But by then there was so much arxium in the air. I was so dizzy and sick, and I’d barely made it through the next room when someone returned. It took everything in me to change to air and flee.
“By the time I found Cam and Bria, fire was already raging through everything. I don’t know who started it—perhaps it was one of us, fighting back, or perhaps it was them. But everything was burning, and there was so much arxium, and we had to get out of there.”
Ridley tried not to imagine the scene. She tried not to imagine her parents’ dead bodies. “Why did you wait two weeks to give me the stone?” she asked quietly. “You could have given it to me as soon as I arrived at the reserve.”
“I thought … well, I don’t know exactly how it works. You’re supposed to be immensely powerful to start off with, and then the stone amplifies that even more. But when you arrived at the reserve, you had only just begun to embrace your own magic without restraint. I thought perhaps you needed to first stretch yourself, to discover the potential of your own natural magic, before adding a magical booster to your power.”
Ridley nodded slowly. “You wanted me to be strong on my own first, so I could then become even stronger.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re telling me that with this stone, I should have enough power to burn through the entire wall around the city and all the panels overhead?”
“I think so, yes.”
Ridley hesitated, then said, “You’re going to be rather upset when I tell you I don’t have the stone anymore.”
A heartbeat of silence passed through the room. Then another. Saoirse shook her head. “Sorry … what? Why? What happened to it?”
“I’m pretty sure Archer’s father has it. I was wearing it when someone discovered me back at my old apartment, but when I woke up, it was gone. Alastair Davenport told me that’s how he knew what I was.”
“He definitely would have taken it,” Archer said. “He’s been hoping to find an elemental heir for years. Not that it was a top priority of his, but he mentioned it every now and then, how it would be useful to find one.”
“And I’m the lucky one he eventually found,” Ridley muttered.
“Okay, so this explains why whoever caught you at your apartment didn’t just kill you,” Archer continued. “They probably saw the stone and, unlike me, they recognized it. I thought maybe my father was hoping to get other information out of you, but it’s obviously because you’re an heir.”
“Well, I guess I really am lucky then,” Ridley said, no sarcasm this time. “I’d be dead if I was just a regular old elemental.”
Saoirse leaned forward, rubbed her fingers against her temples, and groaned. “It would really help us if we could get that stone back.”
“You know, if it’s so vitally important, you probably should have told me to be more careful with it. I thought it was just jewelry with a bit of magic in it.”
“I told you it was your mother’s. I thought that would make it important enough to you.”
Ridley bristled at the accusatory edge to Saoirse’s voice. “That did make it important. But if you’d added, ‘Oh, and we need it in order to save civilization,’ then maybe I could have hidden it somewhere on myself.”
“Then we’d be back to you being dead,” Archer said quietly, “because if no one saw it, they would have killed you.”
“Look, it’s not that we need it in order to return the world to the way it used to be,” Saoirse said to Ridley. “After all, we’ve been planning this for a long time without an heir. But I think we have a much higher chance of succeeding with you on our side. With you and your family stone. There’s so much arxium around the city, and so many of those panels in the sky. We just don’t know how much power it’ll take to burn through them all. The more we have, the better.”
“Okay, so I’ll get it back then. I’ve stolen things before—I’m pretty good at it, actually—so if we need it, then I’ll get it. I want this plan to work. I don’t want the Shadow Society controlling things anymore.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Archer said. “You don’t know where my father is keeping it, and even if you did, it’s too dangerous to try to get it back. This isn’t like breaking into some random apartment. If he catches you again, he’ll make sure you can’t get away.”
Ridley pinned Archer with a level gaze. “You probably know where the stone is.”
He sighed. “If I knew—”
“Or, if you don’t, you at least have a good idea of where he might be hiding it.”
“Sure, I know of all the places we could look for it, but that doesn’t make it any safer. And what if he has it on him?”
“Well then I guess I’ll just have to get it off him. If I have magic and a gas mask, I’ll be fine. I’ll get him on his own somehow, and—”
An ear-splitting crack tore through Ridley’s remaining words. Saoirse’s hand shot out and landed on Ridley’s leg as a bolt of magic flashed outside and thunder reverberated through the building. “Just another storm,” Ridley said, though her own heart raced from the shock of the abrupt weather change. Rain began to shower against the windows.
Saorise stood and crossed the room, raising one hand to the window pane. “We’re out of time,”
she said, her quiet voice barely reaching Ridley over the sound of the rain.
“No, it’s normal here,” Ridley said. “That was maybe a little angrier and more out-of-the-blue than usual—and magic itself doesn’t often make its way past the panels—but storms are common over the cities. Not like out there at the reserve where magic has learned to be calm around elementals. You’re probably not used to it.”
Saoirse shook her head. “This isn’t an ordinary magical storm. The attack has begun.”
It took a moment for the words to settle into Ridley’s brain. Then she stood abruptly. “Attack? What attack? Like … Nathan’s plan? Elementals destroying the arxium around the city?”
Saoirse turned and met Ridley’s eyes. “Yes.”
“But … now? Since when?”
“Since we were attacked and everyone decided to retaliate without waiting any longer. Since …” Saoirse took a deep breath, and there was something apologetic in her gaze. “Since I told everyone you’re an heir and that I’d be able to find you, and that we could win this.”
“You—you what?”
Saoirse pressed her hands over her face. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. So fast. But after we made it to the mountains, everyone decided enough is enough. They want to fight back now. Which is good—we’ve waited long enough—but you were supposed to be with us, and you were supposed to have the stone, and you were supposed to know exactly what you need to do.” She lowered her hands and looked at Ridley. “But they’d already decided. They didn’t want to wait even a day. So I told them about you, and then I went ahead of everyone and caught up with Nathan and Maverick. They told me about you taking off and how they were so worried about you. Nathan couldn’t sense you anymore. But now I’ve found you. You’re okay, and we can still do this without the stone. We just need to get outside the city and join everyone else.”
Archer was standing now too. “Why didn’t you tell us this the moment you got here?”
“Perhaps because I saw you,” Saoirse retorted. “And because I’d just discovered your affiliation to the Shadow Society. And because I knew Ridley had found out the truth about her parents, and I didn’t know what kind of mental state she was in. We needed to talk before I mentioned that oh, by the way, we’re doing this now. And because—” she dug her fingers into her hair and sucked in another deep breath “—because they were supposed to wait. Nathan was supposed to wait. He was supposed to trust that I would find Ridley and not begin any of this without us. But none of us could sense her anymore, and he thought that meant she might be dead, and—”
“So let’s go,” Ridley said. “Now. We can be outside the city walls in less than—”
“No.” Mrs. Adams stood in the doorway. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me exactly what’s happening.”
“I’m guessing you haven’t been in the kitchen this whole time making tea,” Archer said.
“What were you saying about elementals destroying the arxium around the city? Do you mean all the arxium that’s protecting us? Because that sounds insane. You can’t—”
Saoirse launched toward Ridley and vanished. A rush of air swept around Ridley, and an instant later, she was invisible too. She had never done this before—disappeared because of someone else’s magic and not her own—but she let Saoirse’s elemental form whisk her away. Out of the room, through an air vent, into an air duct, racing along pipes, up and up and up, until eventually they shot out above the building.
17
They flew between the skyscrapers, over the poorer districts, and beyond the wall. Saoirse’s magic lowered them both to the ground where the ruins of the wastelands began. “I’m sorry,” she said as they reappeared, her voice barely audible above the storm. The ground shuddered beneath them, and they were drenched within seconds from the pelting rain. “I should have gotten you out of there the moment I found you. It’s just … all of this—attacks and search-and-rescue missions—it’s way outside my comfort zone.” She dropped her bag to the ground beside her feet. “I don’t know what I’m doing half the time.”
“We … we left Archer,” Ridley said, her mind still racing to catch up.
“I thought you didn’t trust him anymore?”
“I … yes. You’re right. I don’t. He’ll be fine.” She shook her head. She wasn’t supposed to care anymore whether Archer was fine or not. “Okay, so—Whoa!” She ducked as the front half of a truck soared overhead and crashed into the ground nearby. “Holy freaking—”
“It’s fine,” Saoirse assured her. “We’ll be fine. Magic knows us. It’s not going to hurt us.”
Ridley remembered the first time she’d ended up out here, when magic had whipped her up and flung her back and forth before returning her, unharmed, to the ground. It had figured out then that she was no threat. She sincerely hoped it hadn’t forgotten her.
“Um, okay.” She tried to gather her scattered thoughts. “Just … just hang on.” Her skin glowed and her magic rose to the surface, and in the next moment she was air, picturing those she knew—Dad, Nathan, Callie, Malachi—and pushing her questioning thoughts out to the magic around her. The answers came back instantly, from every direction. Elementals were all around her, mostly in the ground. Not Callie, which made sense—she had always seemed too nervous to take part in all of this—but everyone else was nearby. Except Dad. It took Ridley longer to sense him, and when she did, she felt herself drawn toward the city, somewhere on the other side of the wall.
“My dad—he’s in the city,” she said the moment she resumed her human shape. “That’s where he’s supposed to be, right? That was part of the plan?”
“Yes. Along with everyone else who isn’t elemental. They’ll use conjurations to protect people, if necessary.”
“Risking getting caught,” Ridley said, “and unable to get away like one of us.” Why hadn’t that occurred to her before, when they were going over these plans?
“Possibly, but once this is all over and magic isn’t forbidden anymore, they’ll be freed. And that’s if they’re caught. There’ll probably be too much chaos for that.” They were both shouting now to be heard over the storm, but the wind still seemed to sweep their words away almost the moment they’d been formed.
“Okay, but also …” Ridley wrung her hands together. “He doesn’t know I’m all right. I just—I just left yesterday. I was angry with him. And when you last saw him, you said you couldn’t sense me anywhere, so he’s probably worried, and he probably thinks I hate him now, and—and what if he’s looking for me instead of—”
“That’s fine, Ridley. He’s in the city, which is safer for him than if he was out here. I’ll find him and let him know you’re okay. Right now, you need to focus.” Saoirse gripped Ridley’s shoulders as the earth trembled again. “Are you ready?”
“I—I …” Ridley shook her head, though she didn’t mean ‘no.’ She wanted more than ever to rid the world of all its smothering arxium and the Shadow Society’s influence, but, as Saoirse had said only minutes ago, everything was happening faster than anyone expected. “Just tell me exactly what’s happening right now. Is this—is this the part where everyone’s in the ground doing the earthquakes to break those arxium gas machines?”
“Yes. I assume that’s why the storm is so bad now. If the machines are broken, all the arxium gas is probably escaping into the air.” Saoirse looked behind her. “If we were a little further into the wastelands, or up there—” she turned her gaze to the sky “—I don’t think we’d be able to change form without gas masks on.”
“They know where the bunker is, right? They know which section of the wall to avoid?”
“Yes, Malachi told Nathan exactly where it is.”
“So we wait for the storm to calm down—so it won’t damage the city—and then we burn through all the arxium protection?” Ridley asked.
“Yes. You go up to the panels, and you do exactly as we practiced. Just on a bigger scale. You were already more powerful
than everyone else the last time we practiced this. I know you saw that. Now you know why. Now you know you can push yourself even further.”
“Okay, but …” Ridley wiped a hand across her eyes, clearing them of the raindrops that stuck her lashes together. A futile exercise, since more rain streamed down her brow and into her eyes within seconds. “Archer mentioned there are arxium panels in the ground around all the cities. They were put there before the Cataclysm. We never knew about those, so we didn’t plan—”
“That’s fine. The others will sense any additional arxium down there. It’ll crack because of the earthquakes, and then they’ll burn through it. They’ll move on to burning the wall, and if they’re not done by the time you’re finished with all the panels, you can take down the rest of the wall.” She squeezed Ridley’s shoulders again. “It’s happening, Ridley. We have you, and this is finally, really happening.”
The knot of anxiety that had begun to form in Ridley’s chest jerked a little tighter at the reminder of the responsibility that rested on her. “But … what about the rest of the details? We haven’t done that video recording Nathan wanted to broadcast across the city to explain everything. And what about all the other cities across the world? I thought we wanted this to be a synchronized event. Happening everywhere at the same time, so the Shadow Society chapters everywhere else don’t have a chance to fight back. It’s not that I don’t want to do this. I really, really do. I just don’t want us to end up failing.”
Saoirse paused, then said, “Change has to begin somewhere, Ridley. There are others ready to act. When they see that the revolution has begun, they’ll follow suit. The Shadow Society won’t have time to stop anything.”
A shiver crept across Ridley’s skin at the word ‘revolution.’ It was so huge, so dramatic, so … historical. The kind of event that belonged in textbooks, not in everyday life. But that’s exactly what this was, wasn’t it? They were overthrowing the current order of things. Ridley had just never put the label ‘revolution’ onto it before.
Elemental Heir (Ridley Kayne Chronicles Book 3) Page 14
