Elemental Heir (Ridley Kayne Chronicles Book 3)

by Rachel Morgan

  Like a pinball, her thoughts zigzagged every which way, striking each major revelation from the past few days and bouncing immediately to the next.

  Archer’s betrayal.

  An orchestrated Cataclysm.

  A father who wasn’t her father.

  A best friend who couldn’t be there for her.

  Manufactured elementals.

  Yellow magic.

  A failed revolution.

  Yellow magic. Her mind circled back to this detail again and again. So small, but so … unnatural. Magic was supposed to be blue. It had only ever been blue.

  A recent memory surfaced of Ridley hastily sitting up on the couch in her home as magic warned her someone was coming. Now that she thought about it, a flickering yellow light had illuminated the near darkness in the moments before she was knocked out. It wasn’t a detail she’d considered before, but now she realized it probably came from one of these unnatural elementals.

  Her brain continued cycling endlessly through everything that had happened, exhausting her, bringing her closer and closer to despair. Was this how it would end? She would die as part of some secret, illegal experiment. Dad would never know what happened. Elementals would never free the world from all its arxium. The Shadow Society would remain in control of everything.

  She was roused from her fog of depressing thoughts by the sound of a door opening. Was it Alastair Davenport, back to interrogate her again? Someone in a lab coat, ready to stick more needles into her? She squinted as the door swung shut behind her visitor and the lock clicked. He was young, dressed in a button-up shirt and jeans. He flipped a switch. Bright light pierced Ridley’s eyes. She squeezed them shut, then blinked a few times.

  “Ah, good morning, good morning,” the man said. “You are awake.” His voice was bright, energetic, and slightly accented. Ridley lifted her head to get a better look at him.

  “Are you the guy people keep referring to as ‘Doc’?”

  “I am, yes.”

  Ridley’s eyes narrowed as they traveled over him. He was lean, tanned, and entirely too good-looking for someone who spent their days carrying out evil experiments on innocent people strapped to hospital beds. “Where are we?”

  “Well, thanks to you,” he said as he crossed the room, rubbing his hands together, “we are no longer out in the wastelands in the state-of-the-art facility Mr. Davenport promised me when I came to work for him.”

  “You mean that crappy building I burned to the ground?”

  Doc paused. “He warned me you would be difficult to work with. Fortunately, I like a challenge.” Indeed, the smile he fixed on Ridley suggested he was genuinely enjoying their interaction so far.

  “So … we’re in the city somewhere?”

  “All I will say is that it’s fortunate we have a small backup facility, and it’s fortunate I kept duplicates of many of the samples I’ve taken and serum versions I’ve been working on over the past few years. As for specifics … well, no, I won’t be confirming exactly where we are.”

  Ridley dropped her head back down with a groan. “Fine. It doesn’t matter where we are. Just … please tell me what’s going on in Lumina City. And around Lumina City. The wall, the other elementals. What’s happening?”

  He pressed a button somewhere on the side of the bed and Ridley felt the top half of her body slowly rising until she was half sitting instead of lying flat. “I don’t think I should be telling you anything about that either,” he said.

  “Please. It’s not as though I can do anything with the information. I just can’t stand not knowing.” She lifted her head again. “It will help my mental health. That’s important, right?”

  “I suppose so.” He moved to a counter that ran the length of one side of the room and picked up a commpad. “There isn’t much to tell, though,” he continued absently, tapping at the screen a few times. “The wall is fine. Or it will be, after some repairs. And the other elementals … it is my understanding that some were killed, while others got away. They don’t appear to have returned—at least not to strike the wall. Things are mostly back to normal.”

  Any remaining hope that Ridley may have had vanished. ‘Back to normal’ was the last thing she wanted to hear. “So you didn’t capture any of them? You know, so you can force them to be lab rats and test out all your horrible arxium weapons and who knows what else on them?”

  “Oh, no, that is not my focus at the moment.” He turned to face her, the commpad still in hand. “Replicating elemental magic is what Mr. Davenport has had me working on for some time now. I have already interviewed a number of elementals, so it was not necessary to capture any more of them. You are the only one we were hoping to find—or someone just like you.”

  “You interviewed elementals,” Ridley repeated with skepticism. “Are you sure ‘interrogate’ isn’t the word you’re looking for? ‘Torture,’ perhaps?”

  “It has been most fascinating,” Doc said, sidestepping Ridley’s question, “discovering exactly how they use their magic. How they change instantly to other forms, how they communicate with the magic that exists naturally in all the elements, and how it responds instantly.”

  Ridley was quickly figuring out that as long as Doc focused on his research, he would keep talking. He didn’t seem to have the same fear or hatred of magic that other members of the Shadow Society possessed. He had the curiosity of a scientist. Perhaps, if he kept talking, he might reveal something useful. She breathed in deeply, feeling a fraction less ill now that she had a sliver of hope to cling to. “And you were actually able to take all that information and create something that could give regular people magic?” she asked.

  “After several years of experimentation, yes. However, regular people—as you refer to them—are not always able to do much with their power once they have it. Some of them die before figuring anything out. Others, after being told how it works, seem to get the hang of it immediately.”

  “Yay for them,” Ridley muttered with some bitterness. She’d spent so many years being afraid of her magic, doing as little with it as possible, that she’d only recently figured out she could use it to actually commune with the magic in the elements. “I guess Lilah is one of those who got the hang of it immediately.”

  “Ah, yes, Delilah Davenport. Quite the natural, from what I’ve heard.”

  “So … she’s still okay?”

  “Yes, yes. Still healthy. Which is excellent news for us. Your blood has made all the difference to this latest version of the serum.”

  Ridley gave Doc her best deadpan stare. “Excellent news for Lilah too. You know, not dying and all that.”

  “Of course, yes. Her father was … not happy. If there was someone else who knew all the things I know, I think he would have fired me.” Doc spread his arms wide, palms up, and shrugged. “Not my fault, what she did, but still. Mr. Davenport blamed me.”

  “Lucky you that she’s not dead, I guess.” Especially since ‘fired’ probably means ‘killed,’ Ridley added silently.

  “Lucky indeed.”

  “So all the other people you gave magic to—before you had a sample of my blood—they all died?”

  Doc nodded, his bright expression turning serious. “It is unfortunate. None of them lasted long. That is why the attack on your people—and the other groups the mayor was told about—was not successful. The mayor convinced Mr. Davenport that his elementals would be able to follow anyone who got away, but I warned him that they would not survive the journey if it took more than a day. Sadly, I was right.” He placed his commpad on the counter and removed what looked like a ring box from his pocket.

  “Hey, uh, can I get out of these restraints?” Ridley asked as casually as possible. Maybe Doc would release her before he remembered he was talking to a prisoner and not discussing work with a colleague. Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite as distractible as Ridley hoped. He gave her a look that clearly said, You’re joking, right? “I just … I need to move,” she moaned. “I’m so stiff and
uncomfortable. And it’s not like I’m a threat to you. There’s definitely still arxium in my system.” Her stomach churned as if to remind her that this was true. “If there wasn’t, I could turn to air right now and these straps would mean nothing.”

  Doc nodded. “True, but it would be a bit complicated to free you from the IV and the catheter.”

  “Catheter,” Ridley repeated. “Are you kidding?” She wasn’t her normal self, but was she really so out of it that she hadn’t noticed that bit?

  “I’d like you to turn your attention to this,” Doc said, changing the subject. He stepped closer to the bed and raised the box, which, now that it was closer, Ridley could see was larger than a ring box. He opened it to reveal her family heirloom stone. “Tell me everything you can about it. How does it enhance your power? How does the use of your magic feel different when you’re wearing it? Does it have any limitations, or is it like a battery that never runs out?”

  Ridley considered attempting to bargain with him: Answers in exchange for him removing her restraints. She wasn’t trying to trick him. She was aware that she currently had no way to get herself out of this room. She really did just want to stretch her aching body. But he’d been through this ‘interview’ process with other elementals, and something told her he had ways of extracting answers, whether she was willing to give them or not. Probably better to just be honest.

  “I wish I knew,” she admitted, “but I haven’t had the stone for very long. I only just found out I’m an heir. I didn’t even know elementals like me existed until … yesterday? I don’t know, my days are all mixed up. Anyway, I know it’s supposed to help me focus my power so I’m even stronger. Something like that. But I’d already lost the stone when I was told that, so I haven’t had a chance to test it. I mean, I knew it had some magic in it because of the way it lit up when I touched it, but I guess I never noticed that it didn’t do that for other people, so I thought it was just some old—”

  “It lit up?” Doc’s wide eyes sparkled, betraying his excitement.

  “Um, yeah.” She almost asked if she could show him, but he might be suspicious if she offered. If she waited, letting the idea simply hang there, his curiosity would probably get the better of him and he’d—

  “Show me,” he instructed.

  She almost smiled in triumph, but her stomach chose that moment to turn itself upside down again, reminding her not to get too excited while there was still arxium being pumped continually into her system.

  Doc held the stone near Ridley’s right hand and she raised a finger to touch it. The silver veins running across its smooth, gray surface glowed magic blue. A sense of relief seeped slowly through her body. She watched Doc’s delighted smile stretch even wider. “What else do you know about it?”

  “Um …” She was about to say ‘Nothing’ when she realized the relief she felt was due to the never-ending nausea finally easing up. She remembered Saoirse saying that her mother had been able to draw power from the stone in order to heal herself. Was that what had just happened? She ran her finger along the stone’s surface again, imagining pulling magic from it. Get rid of the arxium, she thought. Please, please heal me of all the side effects of this horrible arxium poisoning. Incredibly, her stomach felt like it was almost back to normal. Gone was the sense that the room was rocking ever so slightly from side to side. She swallowed, hoping Doc hadn’t noticed any change. “Honestly,” she said, her finger still resting on the stone, “it sounds like you know more about it than I do. How did you learn what you know? Did someone tell you? Or do you have, like, some old forbidden text or something?”

  Doc pulled the box away and snapped it shut. He gave Ridley a knowing smile and wagged a forefinger at her, which made him seem about fifty years older than he probably was. “Fishing for information, are you?”

  “No, I’m honestly curious.” Honestly curious and honestly exhilarated. The stone would be her way out of here. She just had to convince Doc to let her use it. “I never got a chance to experiment,” she said, infusing her voice with the kind of sad weakness she imagined it must have had when she was feeling ill and hopeless. “I have no idea what I’m capable of with this stone, and now we’ll never know.”

  Now we’ll never know. She tried not to emphasize the ‘we’ too much, but she wanted Doc to be aware that he was missing out on groundbreaking discoveries just as much as she was. Not knowing or understanding something was probably an intolerable concept for someone like him.

  “Do not say ‘never,’” Doc said with a grin, shoving the box into his jeans pocket. “I will find a safe environment in which we can experiment. Perhaps the new containment—” He paused as someone knocked on the door. Ridley looked over as it opened, revealing a woman in a lab coat—and a gas mask similar to the ones Ridley had used recently.

  Doc let out a hoot of laughter. “Amateurs,” he said to Ridley as he waved the woman in. “Always funny to see how scared they are of elementals when they are in the same room with one for the first time. As if a mask could protect her from you if you decided to become air. He shook his head, still grinning. “Now, one more thing, Ridley.” While the woman fiddled with the IV bag, Doc asked, “Are there others like you?”

  “I—oh. No.” His expression, while still keen, had become suddenly serious. Clearly he’d been hoping to catch her off guard. “I mean, I suppose there must be,” she added, “but I don’t know any of them.”

  He nodded slowly. “No siblings?”

  “No,” she answered immediately. Neither Dad nor Saoirse had mentioned other children, so she was fairly certain this was true.

  “Hmm.” Doc rubbed his chin. “I see we may have to use other methods to ensure we get the truth out of you.”

  “I am being truthful,” Ridley insisted.

  “Of course, of course. Well, we are done for now.”

  “Really? That’s all? Didn’t you want me to try experimenting with the …” She trailed off as sleep tugged irresistibly at her head, her body, her eyelids. A pull too strong to be natural. She turned her swimming head toward the woman on the other side of her bed—but she was gone. The IV bag swung gently bag and forth. Ridley managed to raise a finger and point at it. “Did she … is there …” The world began to slip away. “Ah, seriously?” she moaned.

  “Seriously,” Doc said as Ridley’s eyelids became too heavy to hold open. “Mr. Davenport is taking no chances this time.”

  20

  Ridley dragged her eyelids open.

  Then again.

  Again.

  This happened several times as she struggled to recall what had happened. Doc was questioning her … the stone seemed to heal her … she’d finally had some hope! Then a woman sedated her again … And now she just could. Not. Wake. Up. Why was it so much harder this time? Had she been given drugs that were too strong? Something different? And crap, what was that sudden stinging in her cheek?

  She forced her eyelids apart again. This time, her blurry gaze landed on Lilah. “You’re alive,” Ridley murmured.

  “You don’t have to sound so happy about it,” Lilah said.

  “I am happy. I don’t … want you … to die.” Ridley’s head lolled to the other side and then back. For another few blinks, Lilah seemed to be gone, but then she was there again. Closer now. Whispering. Ridley’s cheek was stinging again, and she couldn’t really hear what Lilah was—

  “Ridley, are you listening?” Lilah hissed. “Why did Archer mention the Cataclysm when we were talking about my father’s secrets?”

  “Cata … clysm.” Ridley’s tongue felt thick and useless as she tried to wrap it around the word. Her mind was just as useless as it tried to wrap itself around the actual question. “He … did it,” she managed to say. Was that right? Was that what she meant to say?

  Lilah’s face shifted in and out of focus. “What do you mean? What do you mean? Ridley, what do you mean?” Lilah was saying the same words over and over. Or perhaps Ridley’s brain was repeating them ove
r and over. She couldn’t tell the difference. “I think I’m dying, Ridley. What if I die? What if I die? Your magic was supposed to be stronger, better, but what if it kills me?” Lilah’s voice shook. Her eyes were large and desperate. “Doc says there’s nothing that can heal me if it turns out my body can’t handle the magic.”

  “Heal … healing … The stone has healing properties.” The words were Ridley’s, but she imagined she could see Saoirse standing next to Lilah, the words coming from her lips instead. Ridley needed to get Doc to give her the stone again. She needed to draw enough magic from it to heal herself of this horrid, sickening, head-spinning confusion. Then she could understand what the heck was going on and get herself out of here.

  There was a bang, and the squeak of chair wheels, and Lilah’s face was gone, replaced by Doc’s face. No, Lilah wasn’t gone. She was next to him. They were talking. And then Doc was leaning over Ridley, and everything was fading to darkness again.

  21

  When Ridley woke again, there was no needle in her arm. The metal stand with the IV bag had been pushed away from the bed. “Ah, good morning,” Doc’s bright voice said, startling her. She turned her head to the other side and found him standing there, tapping away on the commpad again. “I did not expect you to be awake for another hour or two. Well, this means we can get on with the fun earlier rather than later.”

  “The … fun?” Ridley blinked a few times. Her head didn’t feel nearly as muddled as the last time she’d woken, when Lilah was in here. Unless … had she dreamed that?

  “I have good news and bad news.”

  “Um, okay …”

  “The good news is that I have been granted permission to stop sedating you,” Doc said. “I will also stop administering arxium. A new containment chamber has been under construction and was completed yesterday. You will be free to experiment with your power and the heirloom stone to see what more we can learn from you.”