Chapter 10

Rosabel La Rouge

The Delaetus Army —a hundred percent sure I remembered right. Except I kept asking Google to find the story for me and it came up empty-handed. Nothing with that name existed on the Internet, which was absurd. It was 2024. Everything was on the Internet, and if a book existed in physical format, it sure as hell would be available for purchase or download online. Someone would have taken pictures of it and posted about it, at the very least. Or the name would have rung Google’s bell in some way—but no. Nothing. The search gave me nothing the fortieth time, just like it hadn’t the first.

Sweat on my brow.

“Ready?” Poppy whispered.

I blinked and the sun was still in my eyes, but that wasn’t why I was having trouble focusing or why I was sweating the way I was.

It was the cars that had already been let in. And the vans. And the people who would be in them.

Most importantly, the ones who’d gone to take a stroll around the mansion with my grandmother—representatives of the organizers of the Iris Roe themselves.

They’d come to give me the other half of my prize in person, and of course there would be other cameras to witness it, not just those of the crew of the Iris Roe who’d already set everything up—two cameras on tripods and a smaller one in the hands of a young girl who just wouldn’t stop taking my picture from every possible angle for the past fifteen minutes since their arrival.

I looked at the phone in my hands again, debating whether I could try to search for different keywords, or maybe in another search engine altogether before Madeline spotted me.

“Put that thing away,” Poppy said under her breath, and gently grabbed my forearm while her perfect smile remained on her face. Of course, she was looking her best with a cute red dress on, her hair flawless, her makeup to die for. She’d gotten me ready as well, had brushed my hair and tied it back, had put some blush on my cheeks because I resembled a dehydrated ghost, and had made me wear a decent pair of black pants with a red shirt. The red was under Madeline’s orders, so nothing could have been done to avoid it, though I could hardly look at the color now after the Iris Roe. It reminded me both of blood— so much blood —and the color of my new magic that didn’t feel like my magic at all.

All in all, I looked normal, ordinary, not at all like someone you’d expect to win the Iris Roe—and that’s not even counting the fact that I’d been Mud while I did it. With Taland’s help, of course, but I’d been Mud, no matter that these people refused to let me admit it. No matter that the Council had decided I needed to lie about it because they didn’t want other Mud to think that they could enter the game and actually win the Rainbow—and the money. And they would have made an example out of me had I not been Madeline’s granddaughter. They’d said so themselves, and I had no doubt in my mind that they’d have killed me, then labeled me a traitor, picked a completely different lie for the masses, just to keep everybody’s mouths shut—and the Mud far away from any future Iris Roe.

To think that these people were at the head of…well, basically the whole world.

“Just smile a bit, can you do that? She’s coming,” Poppy said, stepping to the side, her smile unwavering, and I appreciated it more than she knew. But her help and her persistence didn’t change the fact that I was about to stand side by side with Madeline and receive a check from the two representatives the Council had sent here, and I had to say thank you to them for the cameras, too. I had to smile and pose for the pictures.

I had to.

And I did.

“Don’t embarrass me, Rosabel,” Madeline whispered when she came to stand beside me, so low I barely heard it. Had I not known who she was I’d have thought I imagined it, but those were her favorite words to say to me so there were no doubts.

I smiled. I shook the hands of the people whose faces I didn’t even remember three seconds later. I received a thick piece of paper with a bunch of letters and numbers and colors on it, and then I held said piece of paper to the cameras and I smiled as a million flashes went off at the same time, taking away what little I already saw thanks to the panic.

That part, at least, I was thankful for.

My hands shook and my shirt stuck to my back and I had no idea what the hell I was even doing, but when Poppy whispered behind me, now!, I looked in the general direction of the representatives, and said, thank you.

That’s it. That’s all I was able to say.

They said something back, and they smiled and hugged me and shook my hand again, and another one, shall we? so I had to turn to the cameras again and if those flashes didn’t render me blind today, nothing ever would.

Eventually, it was over.

The representatives went inside the mansion with Madeline. Their team of cameramen and photographers were already packing up to leave. And one of the reporters escaped the guard who was trying to get her to hop in her van and leave, then called:

“... magic ! We just want one shot of her doing magic. The people have the right to see that she has it, don’t they?!”

In my head I screamed at her to back the fuck off, get in her van and get the hell out of here, but…

“Well, go on, then, Rosabel. Show them.”

Madeline had heard. She and the representatives had stopped in the middle of the hallway, had turned, and they were waiting for me to do just that.

“Good idea, actually,” one or the other said.

Now I was sweating again.

I have no clue how I managed to raise my hand, to call for a spell—that same spell I’d used in front of the Council. Here nobody was standing in front of me with a sword at the ready. Only people with cameras, and that was almost worse. Maybe because I knew that the whole world would be able to witness this moment forever as many times as they pleased when the video went live. Everybody could see me— everybody, including Taland, wherever he was. If he thought I was trying to show off after what he did to take me out of the game alive, I was going to fucking set something on fire—but I had no choice. Madeline was there, waiting. The spell was already leaving my lips almost involuntarily, and my magic was responding, more violently than ever. Vicious as it slipped down my arm and searched for the heated gold of the ring around my middle finger. It used it almost reluctantly, like it would rather not use a ring at all, my magic, just burst out of me everywhere at once. I had no idea how I could even tell, but that’s how it felt to me.

Then red flames sprung to existence over the open palm of my hand, and a ball of light shone as brightly as the sun in the sky. So bright, in fact, that people gasped and stepped farther away.

I’d thought because it was daylight they wouldn’t be able to see the magic very clearly, but I was wrong. Madeline had been right—this was powerful . So much more powerful than my real magic because the flames were so red you’d be tempted to think they were solid.

When they faded away a second later, the ball of light was twice as powerful as any I’d ever made before.

Stabs at my gut.

A few reporters started to actually applaud.

Behind me, Madeline smiled, and the representatives brought their hands together, too. So did Poppy.

It was a fucking miracle I managed to put that light off without passing out.

I looked at the wide street with longing, then at the trailer on my right, wondering, what the hell are you doing here, Rora?

No fucking clue.

I’d just gotten on my bike again, and I’d wanted to drive as far away from everything as possible.

I’d just wanted to get away from the mansion, from the reporters, from the IDD—and I had nowhere else to go but here. The Blue House was no longer an option, and my own body had simply brought me to this neighborhood before I’d even realized where I was headed. I’d left my bike a street down because I didn’t want anybody to see me coming, and then I’d walked between two houses, and all the way to the end of the street near the forest. Near the trailer that had its door and windows closed, and it didn’t look like anybody was home.

Of course, there wouldn’t be—it was eleven a.m. and people were either at work or in school at this time, but I still couldn’t help myself. I still couldn’t keep from going closer, inspecting the trailer, the spigot on the rock in front of the first tree of the woods, the house closest to the trailer that looked just as empty as the rest of them right now.

I breathed in deeply for a moment and I reminded myself that this was not any of my business. Just because I had been Mud for a few days, it didn’t mean that everybody else who was Mud was like me, and it most definitely didn’t mean that they were somehow my responsibility now. They weren’t.

And I should have argued with myself before coming here, but no matter because now that I’d seen the trailer in daylight, I was sure that I wasn’t going to come back ever again.

With that thought in mind, I turned around to leave, when…

“I saw you last night.”

The voice came from somewhere on the other side of the silver and white trailer, and my heart all but jumped out of my chest.

It took a second for my legs to start working again, and when I went to the other side, I found Taylor Maddison sitting on the ground with a coloring book on her lap, and two wooden colors in her hands.

I don’t know why the sight shocked me as much as it did when it was just her sitting there with her back against the trailer. Clothes were hung on a thick rope tied to the nearest tree branches behind her, and there were a couple of plastic buckets near the trunk, too. A basket full of dry clothes was by the edge of the trailer, and near it a trash can with the lid broken—definitely not something shocking.

Yet I still had to urge myself to get my shit together before I could speak.

“You did?”

She hardly looked up at me once before she nodded and continued to color.

“I was playing with my brother and sister. You didn’t come to say hi.” Her voice hadn’t changed. Her appearance hadn’t changed at all—she was the same girl with the same brown hair and old clothes and big, bright eyes—yet she was different, too. She sounded like another person altogether and I couldn’t even tell why.

“I didn’t know you had siblings,” I said because what the hell else could I say to her when I had no idea who she was?

“Tom and Trinity,” she simply said. “What about you? Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“No, actually. I only have a cousin.”

“Why did you come here?”

The question took me off guard, just when my heartbeat was starting to slow down.

“I, um…” Fuck, what the hell was I supposed to say to her when even I didn’t know the answer? “Are your parents home?”

Taylor raised a brow. “No, they’re at work.”

“Siblings?”

“School.”

“What about you? Aren’t you supposed to be in school, too?”

She shrugged. “I lied and said I have a tummy ache. Mom let me stay home.” Another shrug. “It’s not like I have a lot to learn in a human school, and Iridian schools won’t teach us so I’d rather color.”

Closing my eyes, I took in a deep breath and thought about a reply, just to realize that I had, in fact, zero ideas about what to say to a fourteen-year-old girl who thought school was a waste of her time.

I had no clue what to say—none.

A second ticked by and my mouth had opened and closed about a hundred times when Taylor said, “Wanna see my treehouse?”

Goddess, the relief I felt was almost comical.

“Sure,” I said breathlessly. “Sure, why not?”

So, she stood up, left her half torn coloring book and the two colors right there on the ground, and she led me toward the trees at the back of the trailer.

I followed in silence.

Her tree house wasn’t far, and it wasn’t a tree house at all. It was just a tree that was very easy to climb, and it had a very nice spot to build a tree house on, plenty of space to fit at least two grownups to sit there comfortably. It reminded me of the Tree of Abundance in the Greenfire challenge of the Iris Roe as I climbed behind Taylor, but only for a moment.

“I’m going to build my treehouse here when I get just a little bit older, and I have all the tools I need. It’s easy to do. I’ve saved a bunch of videos,” she told me as she settled on the thickest branch.

I sat next to her and looked around us, and wow.

We weren’t too far up, and the forest wasn’t big—I could see the rooftops of the houses on the other side—but it was so quiet here. Or maybe the birds were too loud and their chirping didn’t let the sound of cars and people get to us—who knew?

“What about your dad? Can’t he make you one?” I wondered, not really paying attention to her face still.

But I heard her just fine when she said, “My dad can’t be bothered.” She sounded both pissed off and hurt at the same time. “I’d rather do it by myself, anyway. That way I don’t have to say thank you to anyone.”

That sounded so, so wrong—and so damn familiar.

“Taylor, I—” I started, hoping to be able to say something smart, something she’d find helpful, but she cut me off.

“Are you here to tell me about the Iris Roe?”

Goddess, my stomach twisted a million times in a second. “No.”

“Why not? You were Mud and you won.”

“I-I-I wasn’t.” Fuck, why am I stuttering? “I wasn’t Mud.”

“Liar,” she said, and when she met my eyes now, I knew why she’d seemed so different before. She’d lacked this fire, this determination, this anger while she was sitting there, coloring. She’d looked…depressed, whereas now she looked about ready to bite my face off.

I don’t know why that made me want to smile, but thankfully I stopped myself before I did.

“I’m sure you saw me give that speech in front of the IDD.”

“Yes, I saw it. You were lying there, too.”

I raised a brow. “How do you know that I’m lying?”

She looked at me like I might have turned green in the past minute. “Because you have to be lying.”

“I do?”

“Yes. Because if you were Mud and you won, then so can I.”

The way my heart broke…

Hope. That’s what she saw when she looked at me—hope. A way out. An opportunity.

“I’m sorry, Taylor,” I said. “But I wasn’t Mud, and you can’t get in the Iris Roe. You just can’t win without magic.”

She wrapped her skinny fingers around my wrist so tightly it surprised me. “Then teach me how you did it!”

“I didn’t,” I said, looking down at her hand where she grabbed me, and she let go. “I didn’t win without magic.” Which was the truth. “I wasn’t Mud. You can’t get into the Iris Roe.” And I started to climb down the tree again, cursing myself twice as loud in my head.

What the hell was I thinking, coming here and talking to this girl, getting her hopes up just so she could get her heart destroyed again?!

“I can and I will!” she said, but at least she wasn’t climbing down with me. She stayed on that branch and looked down at me, so angry she could be fuming.

“No, you can’t, Taylor. Just go to school. Get a degree. You can still win in life without magic.” And I hadn’t said a truer word to her since we met.

But she didn’t listen, of course. And when I made to go back to her trailer through the trees, she called, “ Watch me!”

A bad feeling settled in my gut because I believed her. She was most definitely going to try to enter the next Iris Roe, and nobody would be able to stop her.

On my way back to Headquarters, I just thanked the goddess that there wouldn’t be another Iris Roe for four years, and she had plenty of time to grow up and forget.