by S. J. West
“I know,” I say, looking at the scattering of dead bodies in the town square. “See you soon.”
I look over at Coltan and see his stunned expression. His eyes are glazed over, and he’s a bit pale. If I allowed myself time to let it all sink in, I would probably feel as bewildered as he does.
“Coltan,” I say sharply to gain his full attention. “I need you to get into the car and come with me.”
He does as I say with no questions asked. He’s in shock, but I really need him to snap out of it fast if he’s going to be of any use to me. Some people handle circumstances like this well while others don’t. I hope after the initial shock wears off that Coltan will be able to help me and not end up being a burden instead.
All of the glass in my car was broken by the blast, but the force blew most of it into the street, leaving the seats clean enough to sit on. I start the car’s engine and pop it into gear to head toward the source of the explosion. The farther we go, the more structural damage we see along the side of the road. As the signs of destruction worsen, it narrows down the possible places where the center of the discharge could have occurred, which leads us to Briardale Asylum. Knowing this and having seen the dome of electricity before it happened, my hypothesis is that the person who set off the supernova was my stepsister, Darcy.
A half of a mile away from the asylum I spot Maximus’s car. It lays belly up like a dead fish in the water, and I spot my godfather hanging upside down, his seat belt tethering him. His eyes are closed, and I pray that he’s simply unconscious because anything worse than that isn’t something I can handle right now. I’ve always kept a level head in high stress situations, but losing Maximus would break me at a time that I can’t afford.
I slam on the brakes, pop the car into park, and race out the door to get to Maximus. Coltan is right behind me, offering his help.
The buckle of the belt seems to be jammed. “I need you to hold him while I crawl in from the other side and cut the seat belt off of him,” I say. “Don’t let him fall on his head.”
“Okay,” Coltan says as I stand up and race over to the other side of the car. I crawl in through the smashed passenger door window and pull out the dagger in my left boot, slicing through the seat belt keeping Maximus trapped in the car. Coltan pulls Maximus out onto the street and checks to make sure my godfather is breathing and has a pulse.
“I think he’s just unconscious,” Coltan says. “But we should take him to the hospital in case he has any internal injuries.”
“Then I need you to do that for me,” I say, trying to hold my emotions in check. Guilt settles over my heart because there’s nothing more that I want to do than remain by Maximus’s side, but I have a duty to perform that I can’t shirk. “I have to continue on to the asylum. The blast must have originated there, and I need to secure the site and see if there are any survivors.”
“Do you think there will be?” he asks, sounding doubtful considering all of the damage we’ve seen so far.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “But I have to try. Isabel’s father was in there, Coltan. I know the chances of him surviving the blast are slim, but I have to check for her. If it was my dad, she would do everything she could for him too. Come on,” I say, bending down to grab Maximus by the ankles. “Help me get him into the car. The sooner he’s at the hospital, the quicker he can get medical attention.”
After we get Maximus situated in the passenger seat of my car, helplessness overcomes me because I can’t do anything else for him. I place my mouth next to his left ear and whisper, “Don’t you dare die on me, Maximus. If you do, I’ll never forgive you.”
I turn my head and kiss him on the cheek before pulling back so I can shut the car door. When I turn around to face Coltan, he draws me into his arms and kisses the top of my head.
“Keep yourself safe,” he orders me. “People get crazy in situations like this, and if there are any survivors at the asylum, they actually will be insane, Cin.”
“I’ll be careful,” I promise, hugging him tightly around the waist before letting him go. “Just get Maximus to the hospital as fast as you can. After I’m finished at the asylum, I’ll come to the hospital as soon as possible.”
Coltan nods and walks over to the driver’s side to get in and take the wheel. I watch him back the car up, turn it around, and drive as fast as he can down the road toward the hospital.
I run east to where the asylum is, or at least, what’s left of it.
The austere stone structure that used to be a private school before the curse was cast has been reduced to mounds of rubble. When more and more people began losing their minds because they couldn’t handle the idea of being trapped inside the city, the Circle claimed the property through eminent domain laws. For the past eighty years, the building has housed some of the most dangerously insane people in Briardale. As I stand next to the ruins, all I can do is hope that by some miracle at least a few people survived the blast.
The point of discharge is easy enough to find. A large crater gouges the earth, testifying to the power Darcy harnessed from consuming all of those fae hearts. But how was the bracelet nullifying her magic removed? And if going supernova was her master plan all along, why wait until she was inside the asylum to do it?
I peer down into the crater and notice a peculiar arched structure that is still standing and made out of the same stone as the rest of the building. It’s smack dab in the center of the crater, which indicates that Darcy was standing next to it when she released all of her magic. I squint at the rocks. They are all marked with oddly shaped rune markings.
“Wow, this is a mess, isn’t it?” I hear a man ask as he comes to stand beside me.
I turn my head in his direction and gasp in surprise because I recognize him instantly. He’s Isabel’s father. Unfortunately, that’s not the only thing I notice about him. His body is semi-transparent, exactly like Sela Prince’s was earlier today. Isabel’s father is dead, and tears spring to my eyes because I know I’ll have to be the one who breaks her heart with the news. She was so close to being reunited with him again after being separated from him for so many years, but it looks like that family reunion will never take place now. I fear my friend will collapse underneath the power of her grief, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to handle watching one of the sweetest souls I know endure that much pain.
“Are you Henry Hollan?” I ask him. My voice trembles, and I struggle to steady it. “Are you Isabel’s father?”
“Yes,” he says, tilting his head as he answers. “Who are you?”
“I’m Cin d’Rella—one of your daughter’s best friends. We basically grew up together at Thorn Hill Academy,” I tell him.
“Thorn Hill?” he asks as his eyes sweep me from head to toe as he takes in my uniform. “Is she a Thorn too?”
“Yes,” I tell him. “She’s one of the best ones at Shadowspire.”
“Where is she?” he asks, looking around the area. “Is she here somewhere?”
“Not yet,” I tell him. “Do you remember what happened here?”
His face scrunches up as he tries to recall the past. “Honestly, I don’t, but there’s very little that I remember of my time in this place. They were giving me so many drugs I couldn’t even remember my own name most days. Do you know why they did that to me?”
“We were told that you had become a danger to yourself and to Isabel,” I tell him. “Recently, you became violent with the other patients here and had to be taken to the isolation ward.”
“I don’t remember that,” he says, looking confused. “I do remember being moved to a padded cell, but I don’t recall the reason why. Goodness, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I ever hurt someone.”
His gaze shifts to the bottom of the crater where the stone arch with runes stands.
“That’s not good,” he says worriedly as he continues to stare at the arch.
“A mage went supernova here,” I tell him because I’m not sure he understands t
hat he’s dead.
“I wasn’t talking about the crater,” he says as he continues to keep his eyes trained on the arch. “I was referring to the fact that the beast’s room isn’t there anymore.”
“The beast?” I ask, wondering if even in death Henry Hollan is still off his rocker, yet he’s been very coherent during our talk so far.
“It was kept in a special room in the basement,” he tells me as he forces himself to draw his eyes away from the arch in the crater. “The orderlies talked about how they never liked going down there to check on it and how the runes on the doorway were supposed to keep it locked in its cell forever. I guess forever isn’t that long after all.”
“What kind of beast was it?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says, but I can see by his pained expression that he wishes he had more useful information to give me. “Whatever it was, it scared the people who worked here.”
Henry jerks his head to the right like he hears something off in the distance. His body begins to fade away, but it’s different than when Sela Prince vanished. His ghost isn’t breaking up. It’s staying whole as it disappears from my sight.
“You need to find me,” he says desperately. “I’m not dead yet . . .”
Panic sets into my soul. Is it possible that he was dead while he was speaking to me and now, by some miracle, he’s alive again? But where is he in all of this rubble? I only have two clues to go on. I know that he was in the isolation ward of the asylum, and I saw him look off to the north right before he faded away. With nothing better to go on, I walk north in hopes of finding another clue. The possibility of Isabel’s father surviving a supernova is astounding. She was upset that her father was sent to the isolation ward, but it could very well be that the padded room he was in inadvertently saved his life.
As I kick aside a stone, I hear someone moan in pain. I can’t quite tell where the sound is coming from, so I close my eyes and pray that I hear it again. When I do, it’s much fainter than before, and I fear by the time I reach him I’ll be too late. When I arrive at the place where the sound was coming from, I’m faced with a pile of broken stones as tall as me. Underneath the mound of gray rocks, broken wood beams, and drywall, I spot a painted white metal door. As rapidly as I can, I move the debris away in a desperate attempt to get to Henry before he dies again—possibly for good this time.
“Cin!” A friendly and unexpected voice calls out to me.
I take a second to look up from my frantic digging to see Kalder running over to where I am.
“Help me!” I scream to him as I continue to burrow down to the door.
Kalder doesn’t ask any questions, and I don’t bother to ask why he’s here because I could care less what coincidence brought him to me when I needed his help the most. I’m just thankful that he is here so we can get to Isabel’s father twice as fast.
When we finally reach the door, Kalder helps me push it out of the way to look underneath it. What we find is nothing short of a miracle. Curled up in a fetal position is Isabel’s father. He’s lying on his right side atop a pile of white padding that must have lined his room. His left arm hangs at an odd angle. When I see the bloody collarbone jutting out from his shoulder, I understand why. The left side of his head is covered in blood, but his skull doesn’t appear to be caved in, which is a good sign. I can’t tell what other injuries he suffers from, and I’m afraid if we move him, the action might cause more damage.
Without warning, Kalder jumps into the padded depression with Henry.
“What are you doing?” I ask him in alarm. “Don’t try to move him yet. We don’t know how bad his injuries are. You might do more harm than good.”
“It’s all right, Cin,” Kalder tells me, sounding far calmer than I feel. “I’m a doctor. Give me a minute to examine him.”
“You’re a what?” I ask, reevaluating the man before me.
“Doctor,” he says as he crouches down to examine Henry more closely.
“How can you be a doctor?”
“Years of training,” he says, sounding irritated with me. “Would you please stop asking me so many questions so I can assess his injuries?”
I want to ask Kalder a million and one questions, but I don’t. Saving Henry’s life is more important right now than satisfying my curiosity and not just because he’s Isabel’s father. He may hold the key to solving the riddle we found in the books Coltan brought over with him. It’s very possible that he’s the only person in Briardale who knows how to get to the land where winged beasts exist. For years, everyone assumed he was insane because he tried to convince people he had been to a strange world. Now it looks like it might actually be real and that Isabel’s father wasn’t crazy after all.
Yet he wasn’t placed in the asylum solely because of his stories about this strange place. I was told that he also became physically violent, and they were scared he might harm himself and Isabel. The details of how he placed their lives in danger were never told to me, but whatever he did earned him a spot among all the other crazies in Briardale.
“From what I can see of his wounds, I believe he’ll survive,” Kalder tells me. “But we need to get him to the hospital as soon as possible. He’s losing a lot of blood, and from the bruising on his chest and abdomen, it’s very likely he has some internal bleeding.”
“What should we do?” I ask, prepared to help in any way I can.
Kalder stands and looks up at me. “Can you see if there’s an ambulance in the area that can come here? It should be equipped with what we need to safely move him out of this hole.”
“Let me see what I can do,” I tell him.
I switch the channel on my com bracelet to contact all available Thorns instead of only my squad. Thorn Starling answers my call for help and tells me that she’s currently driving an ambulance and will bring it directly to my location. I don’t mention who the transport is for because I’m certain Isabel is also listening in on this channel. Odds are she’ll arrive before the ambulance does, so I can fill her in on her father’s condition when she gets here. It would be better for her to hear the news in person instead of over an open channel.
“Cin,” Commander Ford says to me through the bracelet, “a group of us are on our way to the asylum now. Are there any more survivors there? Was it the epicenter of the supernova?”
“Yes, the source of the blast was here, and I’ve only had time to find one person in the rubble,” I tell her. “I have a doctor here who can look after him while I search for more survivors, but I don’t expect to find any, Commander. The destruction at the site is pretty extensive.”
“Do what you can, Cin,” she tells me. “We’ll be there in under five minutes.”
“We’re here, Cin,” Gretel announces over the com.
Near where the gate to the asylum used to stand are Gretel, Scarlet, and Isabel all driving their cars as close as they can get to the asylum’s entrance. They get out of their cars when they can go no farther, and I’m glad to see that Gus rode with Gretel to help out. We all walk toward each other, but Gretel reaches me first and hugs me tightly.
“Girl,” she says, “as soon as it happened, I cursed myself for telling you to take Coltan for ice cream.” I hear tears in her voice. “I thought for sure I had lost my best friend.”
“I’m fine,” I reassure her, hugging her even tighter. “I didn’t even get a scratch.”
“I saw all the dead people in the town square,” she says, openly crying. “That could have been you, Cin. That could have been you.”
“But it wasn’t,” I remind her. “I knew what to do. I dove to the ground and held on to Coltan for dear life.”
Gretel pulls back from me and wipes the tears from her cheeks. “How’s Prince Perfect?”
“He’s fine. Like I said, I kept him safe.”
Gretel looks around the area like she’s trying to locate him.
“He’s at the hospital with Maximus,” I tell her before she can ask me where he is now.
> “Is Maximus all right?” Gus asks worriedly as he and the others reach us. “We saw his car overturned up the road, but he wasn’t inside it.”
“Maximus was unconscious when we found him,” I tell everyone. “Coltan took him to the hospital in my car to have the doctors examine him.”
“Where’s the survivor?” Scarlet asks as she surveys the devastation all around us. “I can’t believe anyone could have lived through this.”
Isabel’s eyes are red from crying. She must have known the odds of her father surviving at the center of the supernova were slim to none.
“Isabel,” I say, holding out my hand to her. She takes it like a woman drowning in despair who’s holding onto her last chance at hope. “You need to be strong right now. The survivor is your father, but he’s in pretty bad shape.”
Isabel begins to cry, but this time they are tears of joy.
“Where is he?” she asks, her eyes moving from my face to search for him.
“Don’t worry. He isn’t alone. Kalder’s with him,” I tell her. “He says your father needs to be taken to the hospital as soon as possible because he thinks Henry may have some internal bleeding.”
“What does Kalder think he is, a doctor?” Gretel asks with a sneer.
“Apparently, he is,” I tell her and the others. The simultaneous look of astonishment on everyone’s faces would be comical if the circumstances weren’t so dire. “Yeah, it shocked me too, but he seems to know what he’s doing.”
I tighten my hold on Isabel’s hand and gently pull her over to where her father and Kalder are. As soon as she lays eyes on the battered form of her father, Isabel’s tears fall freely and harshly.
“He’ll be fine, Isabel,” Kalder reassures her kindly. “We need to get him to the hospital and into surgery to patch him up, but this is nothing to be sad about considering the situation. It could have been much, much worse.”
Isabel attempts to pull herself together as she nods her head and wipes the tears from her eyes.
“What can I do?” she asks him, sounding strong and determined to do whatever it takes to help her father.
