I opened the door to the Reformatory and stepped inside, finding myself in the rookery.
Impossible. I was on the ground level when I entered.
Yet here I was. Alone. But not for long. Thuds on the stairs sent me scooting over to stand where the door would rest when it opened. Stupid on my part. If it was Bixby or her evil brother, they’d zap into the room. Bixby would not take the stairs.
The door opened, and Brodin strode inside, his hair a wreck and his face red. “Tria!”
“Here,” I said, stepping out from behind the panel. “I…,” my hand flicked to the door. “I wasn’t sure who it was.”
He tugged me close and gave me a quick hug. “You made it.”
I rubbed his arm and smiled. “You, too.”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“Nope.” I peered around him, at the opening. “The others?”
“I didn’t see them while searching for you.”
“They must still be taking the test.” I wouldn’t think about them failing. Not even Kylie.
“Yup.” He dropped down onto the floor and leaned back against the wall, then patted the open spot between his knees.
My hands flexed at my sides. “Should we go on to the next test or wait?”
“We have a few minutes, right?”
I pulled my timepiece and was horrified to see I now only had 3 days left. And the dial was easing away from the three. “We don’t. I have to get through three more tests.” My eyes stung, and I let my tears fall. How could I keep doing this when the odds of me reaching the Academy in time to save my sister were next to nothing? My legs gave out, but I didn’t hit the floor. Brodin caught me. He’d always catch me, just like I would him.
He tucked me onto his lap and held me close while I pressed my face into his chest. He smelled like cotton and sunshine, which should be impossible. When had we last bathed? Although, I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. For all I knew, it had only been two days or no days since we entered the catacombs.
“Let’s take a few minutes to regroup,” he said. “Then we’ll go on to the next test. They’ll understand.”
“What if they don’t make it through the first?”
“They’d want us to keep going. Hell, I’d want them to keep going if they had something like this hanging over them.”
“Do you think they’re okay?” My voice came out small, hushed. “I’m worried.”
“We know time is weird here. Maybe they’re on their first part of the test still.”
I explained about running into Kylie.
“Then she should be here soon,” he said.
“Who should be here soon?” Kylie strode through the open doorway, and her gaze scanned the room. “No Jacey and Rohnan?”
“Not so far,” Brodin said.
I intended to tell him about my father, but I wouldn’t in front of her. She couldn’t do anything with the information, but I didn’t trust her despite her older version giving me something precious. This assumed it was what it was supposed to be. How would I know? I truly worried I’d need it and it wouldn’t do a thing for me. I internally smacked myself. I’d think about that when—if—that moment arrived. Right now, my focus was on the next test.
“Let’s go,” I said, climbing off Brodin’s lap. I extended a hand to help him up. “You’re right. Waiting won’t get us anywhere.”
“You’re sure we shouldn’t wait for them?” Kylie asked with fear in her voice.
“I want to, but I can’t.” I brushed past her, heading for the stairs.
“I’m worried about them,” she added to my back.
“I am, too, but we could wait here forever and they may never show.” Hard of me, but Brodin was right, this is what they would want.
Kylie caught up to me as I was hurrying down the stairs, and she was winded already. “What if we need them? The next test could be something that takes five people to complete.”
“Then we’ll wait for them, but if Brodin and I can do this and complete the next challenge, we can keep going. We need to get through the tests fast.”
She froze on the steps, and her hand whitened where she clutched the rail. “You and Brodin, you mean.”
“You, too,” I said reluctantly. “If you want.”
“What do you want?” Her voice lifted.
“Not much.”
She stomped her foot. “What do I have to do to show you I’m sorry?”
Tension swirled through the air, making my belly lurch.
Brodin stopped beside her. “Kylie, you need to give us time.”
“We don’t have time!” she said. “Don’t you see?”
“No, we don’t see,” I said calmly. “Why don’t you tell us what you haven’t?”
She flicked her hand out. “Go. I’m coming with you this one time, whether you want it or not. We can talk…elsewhere.”
Inside the next test. Did she worry she’d be overheard speaking here? Not a silly thought on her part. The walls probably listened and reported everything we said to Bixby.
I shrugged. Let them spy on us. I was going to beat her and her brother whether they permitted it or not. I’ll get out of here and save my sister. If they got in my way, well, I’d take care of that then. Permanently if I had to. Cold blooded of me, but I wouldn’t sacrifice Fleur for their greedy need for power.
“I don’t want to stand here any longer,” I said, nudging my head to the stairs below.
“Of course you don’t. You’ve got a friend to be with you through this.” Kylie’s lower lip trembled, and I hated feeling pity for her. “Did you ever think I might wish I wasn’t alone all the time?”
“We all make choices in life. And we can do whatever we please, but that doesn’t mean those actions don’t have consequences.”
She wasn’t alone in messing things up. My biggest mistake was going to the Master Seeker when I should have forgotten about my core magical essence and enjoyed the life I had, not one I dreamed might be better.
But if I hadn’t come to Darkwater, I wouldn’t have met Jacey and Brodin. Meeting them wasn’t worth trading my sister’s life, but I’d be a lesser person without them.
“You’re right,” Kylie snapped. “We do make choices. Mine is to go with you into the next part of this test.” She stomped down the stairs ahead of us.
Brodin and I shared raised eyebrow looks that said everything and nothing.
I shrugged and followed her, with Brodin behind.
We exited the building and took the main path to the right. When I entered the building after speaking to my father, night was falling. Now, the sun shone down on us, reminding me I had no perception of the passage of time inside the Reformatory.
I pulled the timepiece from my pocket and was dismayed to see I lost half a day. How was this possible? We only talked a few minutes then had the confrontation with Kylie in the stairwell. It didn’t take more than a few minutes to get to the first floor.
Brodin leaned in close. “We’ll do this next test fast.”
“I don’t think it matters,” I said. “I can hurry and an entire day disappears, or I can lounge around and only miss one minute. There’s something bigger going on here, and someone who is determined to see me fail.”
“All of us, really,” he said. “But I know what you mean.”
“Our paths are linked in many ways. I want to stop a death, and you want to bring one about.”
“If I can get to him before he sends the person after your sister, we could end this.”
“Or end you.” I put my arm around his waist. “I’m afraid of saving her only to lose you.”
“I can do it.” Certainty rang out in his voice, but I couldn’t stop remembering the possible future I saw for him when we took the test to enter the Reformatory Challenge. He’d battled his father and lost, and his father had carried out what he asked me to do—kill Brodin.
“What do you know?” he asked, his voice dropping to keep Kylie from overhearing.
&n
bsp; “About what?”
He stopped on the trail and cupped my face. As his thumbs stroked my cheeks, he wouldn’t let me break eye contact. “Don’t be evasive. You saw my possible futures. What did you see?”
Was there harm in telling him? I wasn’t worried he’d panic.
Would I avoid telling people in the path of a tsunami that the wave was coming to keep them from panicking? Nope. Knowledge was power, and I had an inside scoop.
“I’ll tell you,” I said, taking his arm and urging him along the path behind Kylie, who pulled ahead of us. It didn’t matter which trail we took. We had three left to complete. Let her choose the next. “We each saw two different paths for the others. I saw for Jacey, Kylie, and you.”
“What did you see for me?” He studied my face, but he knew I’d be honest, right?
“In one, you took an internship with your mother at the Academy and we met. We…” I smiled softly. “We were happy. So was your mom. We were having a picnic with her, and she offered us glasses of verdeen. But then her face shifted, and she raised a toast, saying, to you and Tria. May you both find whatever you deserve.”
“And…?”
“Her face turned into the Master Seeker’s but you didn’t see it. You drank the verdeen at his—her—urging. Your face went red, and you choked and gasped, and then the image cut out.”
“Nasty.”
I leaned away from him and widened my eyes. “You’re not upset by what I just shared?”
“That path was sent by my father, I guess. There’s no way it could happen now.”
“You’re right.”
“The others?”
“But what about what he—she—said?”
“That we’ll get what we deserve? Sounds like a threat made from someone who’s scared.”
I huffed. “I’m not sure about that.”
“I know dear old Dad. If he can scare someone, he can make them act.”
Ahead, Kylie stopped at the entrance to the trail on the far right corner of the Reformatory building. She pinched her hands together and drilled us with her gaze. She could wait. If anyone was in a hurry, it was me, but Brodin deserved to hear everything.
“In the next possible future path, you beat down the door of the Seeker’s headquarters, and your father waited inside,” I said. “You grabbed a fillinette on a shelf near the entrance and attacked him.”
“Please say I won.” When I frowned, he sighed. “Maybe I don’t want to know.” He stared past my shoulder before his gaze met mine. “Okay, tell me.”
“You got one blow in, but he flung you against a wall. While he held you in place, he stole the fillinette from you. He turned it on you and…”
“But you didn’t choose either of those paths for me, so…” Pausing on the trail, he blinked slowly. “My mother is dead, so there’s no chance of falling into that future, which means—”
“You’ll one day fight your father.”
“Which I already knew. Mostly. I mean, I didn’t expect him to greet me with wide, open arms.” He faced me, his back tighter than a rod. “For what it’s worth, I look forward to this, no matter what the outcome might be.”
I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I feel the same, but maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He leaned close to my ear. “Maybe instead of waiting for the path to catch up to us, we should cut our own way through the woods.”
He didn’t mean now, not during this part of the test, but after we left.
“Who we going after?” I asked with a grin.
“The person who set up the Reformatory Challenge.”
We spoke at the same time. “Bixby.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Brodin and I caught up to Kylie.
“This one?” she said, tipping her head toward the path beside her.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “But before we get into whatever’s next, do you want to talk about your two possible futures? The ones we saw when we stood in front of the pillars and the basilique before entering the catacombs? I’m beginning to think they’re a key to what might happen to us if we get through these tests and escape the Reformatory.”
“I don’t want to know about mine. I’m willing to accept whatever fate shoots my way.” She turned to the path, speaking over her shoulder as she strode away. “We need to go. We’re wasting time.”
Frowning, I followed her and Brodin down the path but paused as she drew ahead of us. “I’m confused,” I hissed to Brodin.
“This place is one big puzzle after another.”
“Back at the prison, after we formed our symbols,” I held up my hand where the four-sided symbol still gleamed green with yellow streaks on my hand. “Jacey said she saw Akimi’s path, her own, and the group’s. Akimi said she saw the same. Yet here she is saying she doesn’t want to know.”
“What are you suggesting?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know but…” I grumbled, wishing I could remember better. “Now that I think of it, when we were inside the catacombs, Akimi said she didn’t see her own or Jacey’s path.”
“She wouldn’t forget.”
“There’s a key here, and I’ll figure it out eventually.”
“Why would she lie?”
“Why not lie? Seems to be her modus operandi. I don’t understand what she gets out of it. We know what could lie ahead for her, either death by Bixby’s torture via Titan, who is now dead, unless that’s another trick that’ll spring on us later. In the other possible future, she was punished by Bixby for her help in getting us into the catacombs. Hmm. That’s not exactly how Bixby phrased it. She said, for your part in this escape attempt, I sentence you to no movement and no true one. Bixby rooted her in front of the prison, leaving her unable to move.”
“So which path would fit her situation best? Titan or…”
“The second.” I knew it with all my heart. “Sure, I think Titan might have survived, but we know he doesn’t kill her, because I saw her and spoke to her when she was old. She wasn’t dead then or rooted out in front of the prison, either.”
“Assuming that was her. Don’t forget glamour.”
“I thought it was her.” Now, I had doubts. Or did I? Could I be fooled that easily? “The second path. I thought her punishment related to getting us into the Reformatory Challenge but what if her crime hasn’t been committed yet?”
He squinted forward, his gaze taking in Kylie stopped at a fork in the trail. “You think she’ll help us escape the Reformatory?”
“Not…” Was I out of my mind for even suggesting this? “Not this Kylie.”
“You’re suggesting they’re two different people?”
“You mentioned glamour. We know Bixby is great with disguises.”
“I can’t imagine Kylie is Bixby.”
“I don’t think she is, either, but what if this isn’t the Akimi we knew back at the prison?”
“Wow.” He scratched the back of his neck. “It could be a stretch, but…Shit, I don’t know.”
I picked up my pace to catch up with Kylie, and he gathered speed to keep up.
“I don’t know, but if there’s even a speck of a chance this isn’t Akimi, I need to find out,” I said.
As for Jacey? In the first of her two paths, Bixby, masked as the gorelon, the amoeba-like creature who killed and absorbed the kill, had attacked, pushing Jacey down the prison stairs and killing her. That could still happen if she was returned to that part of Darkwater.
In the second possible future, she killed the fae king who had murdered her beloved uncle, only to see the king’s face morph into Rohnan’s; he’d been bespelled to attack her in a glamoured form, and she’d killed him. That could still happen, but we could talk about that when I saw her, and I could share my worries that our paths could still come true.
Unless we did what Brodin suggested: killed the pathmaker, Bixby. Wha
t were the odds of that happening? Less than my chance of saving my sister, but we’ll see. I wouldn’t give up yet.
“One of these days, I need to know what my choices are,” I whispered to Brodin.
“Yeah.” There was no hiding his grim expression, but we’ve all faced things we might not overcome, which wasn’t much different than life itself. I might not be able to make a difference, but I wouldn’t give up without a fight.
“The second we have down time, I’ll tell you,” he said.
“Good. We can strategize.”
“Right or left,” Kylie said when we stopped beside her.
“Brodin?” I wasn’t foisting the decision on him, but my mind still spun with the idea that Kylie might not be Akimi. Where was Akimi if she wasn’t here, and who then was Kylie?
Akimi could already be rooted in front of the prison.
If so, and it had been done with a spell, I’d break it. As for Kylie? She was on her own.
Chapter Twenty-Two
With no other way to decide, we flipped a coin. Sorta. We had no coins. But we found a flat rock, scored one side, then tossed it into the air and followed it to where it dropped on the ground.
It sent us right.
As we walked down the narrow, pine-needle strewn trail, the scent of evergreen filled the air. Not a sound reached us, the insects and birds flown from the area for whatever reason. The woods cupped us with leafless tree limbs arching overhead.
I paid attention to where I placed my feet, as well as my surroundings. I’d be foolish not to. But I also watched Kylie. Was I crazy to think this wasn’t the person accepted into the catacomb Challenge with us? If so, it was right to dislike her, but wrong to be angry with Akimi. How could I test this theory?
The opportunity didn’t present itself by the time the trail came to an end. We walked across a flat, open expanse made up of huge slabs of ledge that ended at a steep cliff with an enormous cavern spanning the distance in front of it.
“Have we come the wrong way?” Kylie asked. “Maybe we’re supposed to take the left trail.”
“I wonder what’s over there?” Brodin asked, pointing to another, matching cliff on the opposite side of the cavern. “I saw something sparkle there for a second.”
Wicked Rebellion (Darkwater Reformatory Book 3) Page 14
