Marked

by Jasmine Derriman

  “If it was a simple as a case of hidden identity of what she is until now, then there would not be a council meeting about it,” a different one stated.

  I saw Isaac grate his together slightly as he shook his head. “No, I guess not. So you believe it then? She’s part of whatever prophecy you refuse to show me?”

  “We are not sure yet,” the first man told him. “We don’t have all the prophecy.”

  “So there might be no way of knowing?” I could tell Isaac’s patience was wearing thin.

  “No, that’s not true.” I couldn’t see who belonged to the voice; he must’ve been near the grate.

  I couldn’t really make out anyone’s face besides Isaac’s honestly, and I think I could only make his out because I knew his face. I guessed there were about four others in the room, but that was only including who I could see.

  “She gained her mark quite quickly,” the first one said as he appeared to sit down on a chair that I could barely see. “With any luck she will get her second one just as quickly…that is, if she is what we think she is.”

  “So what, you are going to force another mark on her, see if it happens?” Isaac asked.

  “We do not see another way,” said the one I couldn’t see.

  “It is dangerous out there for her,” Isaac suddenly protested. “She can’t take a step without her life being in danger, and you want to just ‘see what happens?’”

  “It is the best way,” the first one told Isaac.

  “Oh, don’t give me that crap, Odon,” Isaac rolled his eyes. “You all just don’t know what to do because you just want that damn dagger.”

  “She will stay here for a few days,” the same man spoke, ignoring Isaac’s comment about the dagger. “I think its best Eve and Seth teach the girl what they can about us, and then you will stay with her, be her protector.”

  “Whoa, whoa,” Isaac cut in. “Protector? I’m no one’s protector, Odon, I’m a fighter.”

  “You are the one who found her, are you not?” a man near the one sitting down walked over to Isaac as he spoke.

  “Yes I found her-,” Isaac said softly.

  “You took responsibility for her when you took her back to that house,” the man in the chair sat up as he spoke and Isaac hung his head a little.

  “Heard about that then?” Isaac asked. “Wonder who gave me up there.”

  “It does not matter,” the man said. “You wanted to see what she could do though. You knew that demon would be hard to take on, but you took her in there anyway. You tested her.”

  “I knew she could do it,” Isaac admitted. “I just needed her to see it, and there was more to that house than just that demon.”

  “You found her in that house, didn’t you?” the same spoke now, entirely fixated on Isaac. “You took her back because there was something that drew you to that house, and there had to be reason she was there too, and know nothing makes to you, does it?’

  Isaac didn’t speak and I couldn’t tell what look he gave the man, but I gathered from the silence that it wasn’t a very nice look.

  “She doesn’t know how to find the dagger even if she is the one,” Isaac spoke. “So I see no point in sending her back out there.”

  “She just doesn’t know her potential yet,” one said.

  Isaac shook his head again. “She’s a human being, okay? Not a soldier and you can’t expect her to do your dirty work. I will not force her to find that dagger if it’s proven she is the one or whatever crap you make up, and I will protect her, but I won’t stop going after demons either.”

  “You’ve never been an easy one to control, have you?” the man in the chair sighed. “Very well, you may have it your way. We will be keeping an eye on you though, and at the first sign of the second mark, we would like to be informed.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Isaac said as he started to walk across the room. “Whatever. Just know if she dies, that’s on you.”

  I heard a door open and close and I realised that Isaac had left the room. I felt myself sigh a little. I was surprised about how angry Isaac got about protecting me. He was already doing that anyway, maybe he was just sick of it. That wouldn’t surprise me.

  “Do you think he is right?” one of this voices made me jump a little as I realised they hadn’t left the room yet.

  “I don’t know,” the one in the chair admitted. “She fits what half of the prophecy we have, but she was not an Insigne until three days ago. If she is, however maybe we truly can end this war for once.”

  “The boy though,” the one close to the chair spoke, “he will put her in danger.”

  “Which is the exact reason I want to leave her with him,” the man nodded. “If anyone can find enough danger to force another mark out of her, it’s Isaac Hanson.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I found myself trying to remember how to get back to the guest rooms a few minutes after everyone in the council chambers had left and I had managed to get out of the secret package. After a few wrong turns and my memory kicking in, I finally started heading in the right direction and did I finally reach my destination. I reached the room Isaac was staying in and found he had shut the door. I was kind of hesitant to knock and I honestly wasn’t sure why.

  There was complete moment of silence before I heard shuffling from the room and then the door finally swinging open. The moment he saw me he just sighed at me.

  “I thought you would still be with Eve,” he said, walking back into his room.

  His room was practically similar to mine, expect for the desk on the right hand side of the room.

  “Well, I’m not,” I said, following him, and shutting the door behind me. “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like?” Isaac said in a frustrated tone as he sat down at the desk.

  “Are you trying to fix your arm by yourself?” I exclaimed, rushing over to him.

  “Hey, no, don’t touch it,” Isaac said, stopping me immediately. “I’m just going to stitch it up a little so I can stop the bleeding until we can get back to Felix and he can heal it.”

  I sighed and put myself down on my knees so I could lean on the desk. Isaac had done a hopeless job at even trying to fix his arm up. The desk was covered in bloody tissues and he hadn’t even cleaned the wound properly.

  “I can help,” I told him.

  He gave me this look, this look that told me he didn’t believe me.

  I rolled my eyes a little. “My uncle is a nurse. He’s taught me a thing or two, because not surprisingly I do tend to be a little clumsy.”

  “You know how to do stitches?” Isaac said, raising his eyebrows.

  “Not exactly, but I know what entails, which you don’t, plus I can clean if for you, so it doesn’t get infected at least,” I pointed out; looking at the mess of the first aid kit he had gotten hold of.

  “Fine,” Isaac sighed.

  I found what I needed in the first aid kit and proceeded, first to clean the blood away from Isaac’s arm. He never flinched as I used an antiseptic solution touched one of the three large flesh wounds he had obtained, he barely even jolted.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t asked yet,” Isaac muttered.

  I didn’t look up from his arm. “Asked what?”

  “How the meeting went,” Isaac answered simply.

  I paused a little from whipping the blood before I spoke. “Because I heard most of it.”

  “What?” Isaac said quickly.

  I sighed and looked up to meet his face. “Eve told me of this… special room thing, I don’t know, but there was vent thing I could open and I could hear everything, but you couldn’t see me.”

  “So you actually heard it all?” Isaac said.

  “Most of it,” I said shaking my head, as I looked back down at his arm. “I suppose I missed a far bit in the beginning.”

  “The beginning was the best part,” Isaac told me. “I had a good yell at them, gave them a thing or too.”

  I paused again as he spok
e. He didn’t defend himself or anyone else in that room, he only said what he needed to make sure I was would stay safe, well safe most of the time. It was clear Isaac wasn’t best buddies with the elders, but he wasn’t with me either.

  “Why….why did you get so…defence about me leaving here?” I whispered to him.

  He didn’t speak straight away and I saw his arm tense slightly and it caused me to look back to his face to see he wasn’t even looking at me directly anyway.

  “Because they don’t see you like they should,” Isaac answered.

  “And how should they see me?”

  “As you are,” he said, turning back to me. “A seventeen year old girl, not a weapon.”

  For that moment our eyes met and neither of us broke the gaze. I didn’t know how Isaac saw me. To be honest I thought he saw me as…some stupid little girl who was way over her head.

  “Ow.”

  Isaac flinched as my hand accidently touched part of his wound. It was the first time I saw him flinch in pain, and even then it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

  “Sorry,” I whispered.

  He shook his head at me. “Its fine doesn’t hurt that much honestly.”

  I found myself rolling my eyes a little. “Don’t lie. This must hurt; it’s quite a large flesh wound.”

  “I’m tougher than I look,” Isaac joked.

  I just smiled a little as I finally cleaned off most of the blood that had taken over his arm, and at least now the wound looked clean.

  “If…you don’t mind me asking,” Isaac said suddenly. “You said your uncle is a nurse…and why do you live-

  “Why do I live with my uncle?” I finished for him, looking up as he just nodded a little.

  I could tell this question had been on his mind since he first realised I lived with my uncle. “My parents are dead,” I answered simply.

  I only look a second to slightly glance at his face only because I knew exactly the look he would be giving me.

  “Oh,” I heard him say as I looked away.

  “I don’t tell anyone because I don’t want to see the look you just gave me,” I said, putting down the tissues and the solution and searching for the stitches in the first aid bag.

  “I didn’t give you a look,” Isaac stated as he moved his other hand over to show me the stitches pack I had been looking for.

  “Yes you did,” I said plainly, pulling on the wrapping. “But I’m used to it, I guess.”

  “How did it happen?” Isaac said softly. “If I’m allowed to ask that…?”

  “I was three, and I was at day-care and they were just coming to pick me up, and some other idiot on the road didn’t know how to drive and there was an accident.”

  I didn’t say the story very often, and honestly I saw no reason to. I was surprised at how casually I managed to get that sentence out, and how easily it just flowed out of me.

  “My mother’s dead.”

  It wasn’t just the way Isaac said that, but more the way he slipped it into our current conversation, but I guess it wasn’t totally off topic, but it surprised me. I had been so caught up in this world as how they trained and lived their lives that I had never considered Isaac’s family life. Felix had mentioned they lived with Isaac’s grandparents, but I had barely taken notice of it at the time.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him, looking back up to him.

  He shrugged a little. “I never knew her. I lived with my grandparents for as long as I could remember. I was probably only a few weeks old when it happened.”

  “What…happened?” I said slowly.

  “She was killed by a demon,” Isaac stated. “It came for her and I was told she did anything she could to protect me, and in this case it involved dying.”

  “And…your father then?” I asked him slowly, hesitant about asking the question.

  “I don’t know him,” he admitted with a small shrug. “My mother never told my grandparents who he was, and as far as I know she never told anyone, and if he knows, he’s never came to find me, so I guess short answer is, I don’t have a father.”

  I felt myself just nod for at him and neither of us really needed to speak. We had this common ground on something that wasn’t so pleasant, but it was something we both knew wasn’t easy to deal with and it was something I think that only someone who had gone through it could understand. We both understood the death of someone important to us, and whilst I didn’t exactly know what I felt like to have an absent father, we both knew it was like to not be raised by our parents. I found myself slowly breaking out gaze and moving back to the stiches, but Isaac grabbed my hand.

  “I think I should do this part,” Isaac said. “I’ve done it before, so don’t give me that look. We need to go see Eve.”

  “What, now?” I frowned at him, standing up as he took the medical equipment away from me.

  “Well, not right now, let me finish this.”

  Turns out I was a little bit squeamish when it came to the stitches part, and I had to look away a few times as he put the needle through his skin, but it became apparent that he had done this before, as whilst his stiches weren’t perfect, they would hold for bit and keep it from bleeding any more than it already had. I ended up helping him put this bandaged back on and stuff everything back into this medical kit he had before we left his room.

  I was starting to figure out my left from rights in this place and how to get to the kitchen and possibly back from the portal that could take me home, but other than that, I don’t think I would ever figure this place out, and the fact that it was possibly some ancient castle didn’t help. Each hallway was similar, the wholes made from the same grey stones and a maroon carpet lining the hallway. The ceiling being low down and small tiny windows lining the wall that I couldn’t even see out. Each step would echo as I stepped on the smooth stone floor, and each room kind of felt cold, which wasn’t too surprising as stone didn’t exactly hold heat. It made this place feel kind of eerie though.

  Most of the doors here were an average size and made from polish wood, but this door, the door Isaac stood in front of now was big enough to fit a bulldozer or truck through its frame. The door was also made from darker wood than the other, it was long planks that went from top to bottom, the door felt really old. I saw Isaac smile at me as he grabbed onto the handle forcing both doors open and letting them glide open as they creaked and came to a stop.

  I think I was frozen from amazement or something very similar as my eyes laid open the room before me. It was a library, and I mean it wasn’t like any library I had ever seen before. We seemed to be standing on what I could only say was the bottom level of the room. In front of me I saw a long wooden dining table, on I believed to be similar to that I possible saw in the council chambers. On either side of the room there was a spiral stair case that led to three different levels, and on each level there were different rows of books. There were hundreds of books, probably thousands, maybe more; I could hardly believe my eyes.

  I was an extreme book lover, and that was probably Rhys’ fault. I had always read when I was younger, but I never really feel in love with books until he introduced me to everything imaginary. He showed me a world of fantasy through books and I fell in love with the idea of world’s that could be created and written onto pages, but then again, I started if the life I was living now was something that was meant to be kept on paper.

  “Ah, glad to see you found your way out.”

  I hadn’t noticed Eve at the end of the table, with her glasses slid down her nose as she had her head titled over a book. Behind her I noticed that wall was in fact a large stained glass window, but the more I looked at the window I realised I could see anything on the other side, it was just a faint white light that kind of shimmered and glowed.

  “I managed to guess my way back,” I admitted. “After ten minutes.”

  “Sorry,” she apologised. “I didn’t know how long you were going to be.”

  “Its fine,” I waved it off.

/>   “I take it the council have already spoken to you,” Isaac said, stepping forward.

  “Of course they have,” Eve said, taking her glasses off and putting them on the book. “You know I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  “And Seth?” Isaac said, looking around.

  “He’s up there somewhere,” Eve said, pointing to one side of the room. “He thinks he can rearrange the order the books are in, but he’s mad.”

  “Well, we all knew that,” Isaac stated.

  “Hasn’t anyone told you it’s rude to talk about someone behind their back?”

  My head immediately turned up towards the sound of a voice. He was on about the second level from us and he leant over the ledge of the veranda to talk to us. From down here I could see he had shaggy kind of dark hair, and dark type of skin tone, kind of attractive to be honest, but also maybe a little skinny.

  “Is this Lily you were telling me about?” Seth asked as he started to descend the staircase.

  “Of course it is, who else would it be?” Eve said as she smiled slightly.

  “Well, it is nice to meet you, Lily, my name is Seth,” he said as he finally reach the bottom floor.

  “Hi,” I said slowly.

  “Oh, Isaac didn’t see you there,” Seth said suddenly.

  “Ha, ha,” Isaac said with an eye roll. “Long time no see.”

  “Agreed,” Seth said, “right, so what are we supposed to do here?”

  Isaac looked at me as he smiled as he walked over to the table and sat down on one of the chairs in the room and he then turned away from me and looked at Eve.

  “I only want to be for three days,” Isaac stated, “at the most. I don’t like keeping her here, especially not since the only thing the council wants is the stupid dagger.”

  “Well, it may be a stupid dagger, Isaac, but it’s also very powerful,” Eve said. “You can understand why they want to get it, especially now.”