Chapter 5

Rosabel La Rouge

Madeline didn’t let me say a word. As soon as we stepped out into the hallway, her magic, blood-red, invaded my senses again, slipped into my mouth and eyes and shut down my mind completely.

The last thing I remembered before passing out was that my legs gave up, but I didn’t hit the ground because the guard grabbed me and carried me in his arms. I could have sworn that for that tiny second, he looked sorry for me.

Then I was in a car.

The vibrations of the wheels and the engine spread into my head from where my temple rested on the glass of the window. It felt like I was being shaken awake by the car itself— wake up, Rora! Wake up!

My eyes opened and I sat upright. My heart was pounding, my breathing heavy as the memory of Madeline’s magic came back, so fresh I thought it was there still. I thought it was crawling inside my mouth and nose and eyes to get to my brain and shut it down—but it already had.

Wherever the Council chambers were, we weren’t there anymore. Now, we were in Baltimore, in Madeline’s SUV, and she was sitting in the back with me, looking out the window on her side.

All my thoughts wanted to spring to the front of my mind at first. Scenes from the Iris Roe, Taland’s face, all that fear and the questions, the magic that had left my hand just now, the magic that worked. I’d called for light, and it had given me light. Foreign magic that was somehow mine had come out of me at my command, painfully, right through my anchor.

I looked down at my hand to find my father’s ring was still around my finger, the gold cold against my skin just like always. It was there, the ring, and I wanted to sit and cry about how much I’d missed it. How I’d thought I would never see it again. How I’d lost my connection to the memory of my father without it, and now it was all back.

But I couldn’t cry right now. Madeline was with me, and the guard who’d most likely carried me in here was riding shotgun, the driver the same guy who’d taken me to the City of Games that night.

Now, he was taking us to Madeline’s mansion through the city, which meant the Council chambers were somewhere on the other side.

“It’s red,” I said because Madeline didn’t like to waste time with chit-chat, and saying something like, how long have I been out would be considered wasted time. That’s why I got straight to the point—so that I never gave her the chance to remind me how annoying she found me.

Pretty sure it had become a self-defense mechanism a long time ago.

“Yes, I saw it,” Madeline said, throwing me a quick look. “Well done, Rosabel.”

Well, fuck, I’m still dreaming.

Madeline was telling me well done for the second time now—this night couldn’t possibly be real.

But then she continued.

“I never actually thought you’d come out of the Iris Roe alive, let alone win and drain the Rainbow. Very well done.”

Third time.

She looked at me again and I was having trouble trusting my senses because they insisted that Madeline didn’t hate me right now. She looked at me and she wasn’t disgusted or full of hate, like usual. She looked at me and she seemed…impressed.

What the fuck-what the fuck-what the fuck am I supposed to do now?

I seriously panicked, and that’s why I chose to pretend she hadn’t said any of those things, just so I could continue to function.

“But…but my magic is red. It’s…different.” And didn’t the Council say that different was bad ?

“It’s as it should have always been,” Madeline said.

“Grandmother, my magic was orange—you know that.” She’d made a point of talking about it in the three occasions that she’d witnessed me using magic.

“Yes—because it was weak. Now that you’ve drained the Rainbow, it isn’t weak anymore—it’s strong,” she insisted.

But it wasn’t, I wanted to say. My magic was never weak—on the contrary. And strength has nothing to do with the color the magic manifests in.

“They said different was wrong,” I said instead because if there was a chance that something had happened, something bad had happened to me, I wanted to know before it became a problem.

To my surprise, Madeline laughed.

She actually laughed, and her laughter was never pleasant. Like it was new , like she never got the hang of how she should sound because she laughed so rarely.

“Oh, trust me, Rosabel, this is not the different they were talking about. You are a Redfire again—that is all that matters. Whether your magic appears orange or pink or red isn’t a problem—it’s still Redfire.”

Still Redfire, I said to myself, looking down at my hand, my ring.

But why does it feel like it isn’t ?

This I didn’t say out loud, of course.

“What different were they talking about?” I asked instead. “What…what was going to make that woman kill me?”

And with a sword, no less. A sword with the handle made of pieces of bone.

Shivers ran down my back.

“ That woman is Helen Paine, the most powerful Whitefire in the world,” she told me. “There are things that you don’t need to know, and this is one of them, Rosabel. Be glad that you’re my granddaughter. Be glad that the Rainbow only gave you your magic back. Be glad—and stop asking questions.”

Be glad that you’re my granddaughter. Ugh, never . I would have rather been anybody else. Anybody at all. That’s why the best time of my life was when I’d been Rosabel Miller.

Not that it mattered now, anyway.

“But what if this is the ‘different’ they meant?” I insisted.

“It’s not.”

For once, I wasn’t concerned about annoying her—maybe because she didn’t look annoyed right now. “How do you know?”

“You wouldn’t have been able to use your anchor if it was,” she said. “No more questions.”

I said nothing else until we returned to the mansion, and neither did Madeline. My mind was going to fucking explode with those same questions she wanted me to stop asking—so many of them. But the reason why I convinced myself to stop thinking about them was simple: Taland. I still had no idea where Taland was and as much as the urge to ask Madeline about him ate at me, I didn’t. So far it was looking like whatever magic Taland used in the Iris Roe had fooled the world. If the IDD had known it was him, surely Madeline would have mentioned it. She would have never in a million years told me that I’d done very well if she’d known that the man who’d carried me out of the Iris Roe was Taland. That the man who’d helped me finish the game and drain that Rainbow was Taland.

Still, when the SUV stopped in front of the entrance stairs of the mansion, I said, “What about the man who brought me out of the game?”

I couldn’t help it. Goddess, I didn’t want her to get suspicious or even ask a single question about it, but I had to know. I had to know if he was alive because if he wasn’t?—

No. I would not go there.

“Yes, that was smart of you to use other players,” Madeline said. “What did you promise him? Money?”

“I-I-I…” I had no clue what the fuck to even say.

“I imagine he’ll come to collect as soon as you receive your prize from the game. Whatever you owe him, take care of it in private. Don’t let the media or the IDD find out.”

Fucking hell, she thought I’d promised money to a random player.

A random player —not Taland. She really had no clue it had been him, but most importantly, he was alive. She said it herself, he’ll come to collect, which he could only do if he was alive. If he’d died, goddess forbid, Madeline would surely know.

The relief that fell over me was heavenly. I barely held back a smile when the driver opened the car door for Madeline and the other got mine.

I stepped out and looked up at him—he was a handsome fella, wearing a crisp black suit and an expressionless face, but there was something about him. He’d pushed and shoved me like it made him happy to do so when he took me to the City of Games that night, but then tonight he seemed different.

“Have a good night, Miss La Rouge,” he said as he stepped aside and bowed his head.

“You, too,” I said, surprised—guards didn’t usually tell me to have a good night.

But before I could think more of it, Madeline was already walking up the wide stairs to the entrance doors, bigger than the ones at the IDD headquarters. Madeline loved to live large, and every inch of her fancy mansion proved it.

“Grandmother, wait,” I said, rushing behind her to find that I was still a bit lightheaded—probably from the fear and the relief and her spells.

She didn’t wait, of course, but I was able to catch her before she entered the door Fiona held open for us.

“What-what happens now?” I asked. I knew what I was going to do—go look for Taland—but I needed to know what the world expected from me and why does it feel like something’s off, wrong, not the way it should be?!

“Now, you go back,” Madeline said, and never once did she look at me like she was annoyed or irritated or exhausted by having to interact with me, like usual.

“Go back where?”

“To your life, Rosabel. To the IDD. Do what you will with your money—I don’t care, but if you want to be smart about it, you’ll save it. Invest it. Make a bigger fortune out of it because I’m not planning to die soon.”

I waited a heartbeat, then another.

My goddess, that was a joke.

Madeline Rogan had just made a joke while she was talking to me.

Holy shit, this was stranger than the Iris Roe.

I shook my head because I was having trouble believing my own ears. “But what about Michael and Erid? How can I just go back after that?” She knew that my own team leader had tried to kill me, or at least I told her so. Whether she’s believed me or not was a different story.

“Michael and Erid are dead,” she said. “You will go back to your job, Rosabel. That is the only option.” She leaned in closer and whispered, “ Don’t embarrass me now.”

With that, she turned and walked inside with her chin up.

“Fiona, prepare a bath for me. I’m in the mood for some relaxation tonight,” she said as she went—words I’d never heard coming out of her mouth before, and I was so sure that she would never say stuff like that to anyone.

The truth was, she’d just never said stuff like that in front of me.

I walked into the mansion with my head shaking still, exhausted. Drained—not just by the magic and the car rides and that little meeting with the Council or our talk.

It occurred to me that it was the longest talk I’d ever had with Madeline. Ever— and wasn’t that just sad? That I had to do the impossible, survive a deadly game, be deemed worthy by some strangers for her to look at me as a person, not an annoying little insect she couldn’t get rid of?

“Rora!”

Poppy was running down the main stairs of the big, round-shaped hallway, a huge smile on her face. And I knew for a fact that she wasn’t going to let me out of her sight tonight.

More than that, I could hardly stand on my feet, so exhausted my muscles were screaming.

How in the hell was I going to get to Taland now?

Rest, I thought. I would take a couple of hours to rest, and then I’d be as good as new, more than capable of driving all the way to Darville. So, when Poppy basically dragged me up the stairs and took me to my bedroom, I let her.

Sleep took me before I even lay down on the pillow properly with all my clothes still on.

I snuck out of the mansion at six in the morning. The plan was to grab my bike and drive all the way to the Blue House, but then I remembered that I’d left my bike in the garage at Headquarters, so one of Madeline’s cars would have to do. She had three that only Poppy ever used—Madeline herself liked to ride in her SUVs with drivers. I had never had permission to use any of them, but I had snuck them out once or twice in the past just to go for a drive on nights I couldn’t sleep. Now, I had the feeling that even if Madeline saw me, she wouldn’t mind me driving it out of the gates.

If Madeline saw me, she’d probably think that I was on my way to Headquarters with it, and that was perfectly fine.

Poppy had been kind enough to offer me one of her—what she called— old phones that had come out just last year, because mine was probably still in my locker at Headquarters, if they hadn’t thrown it away. But this old phone that was brand new had a GPS for the app to use and take me all the way to Darville within two and a half hours.

In those two and a half hours, I thought about everything and nothing. I thought about everything there would be to think about after I found Taland, but mostly I thought about Taland.

Seeing him. Hugging him. Touching him to make sure he was okay. Slapping him for daring to walk through the Drainage with me. Then slapping him again for good measure before I kissed all the air out of his lungs. Before I clung to him and didn’t let go for at least a couple of hours straight.

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do, I thought, because he would be okay, and his magic would be perfectly intact and then he’d tell me how he managed to fool the whole fucking world while he was with me in the Iris Roe.

But when I arrived at the Blue House behind The Hill hotel, all my hopes went down the drain the moment I laid eyes on the wooden doors that were wide open.

Barely a dozen people were inside.

I left the car by the side of the main road, right where that Uber had dropped me off when I came looking for Taland that first time. I don’t know why I’d been so sure that he’d be right there by the doors, waiting for me, or that he’d come running the moment I stepped out of the car.

He didn’t.

My palms were sweaty. I wiped them against my jeans and moved forward, the sun falling on my head. Even though it wasn’t too warm, I felt like it was burning me as I made my way to those open doors. To the people who’d noticed me approaching and had stopped what they were doing—setting up a couple of tables with food, probably for breakfast.

Which was strange because last time there had been so many tables and chairs and people. So many lights, and the place had been so lively, had seemed so big to me with those trees and that open space.

Maybe I’d imagined it? Or I’d been worse off than I thought what with having just been turned Mud and having been shot in the leg and walking around with an infected wound. Yes, a lot had been going on that time, but I was pretty sure that I hadn’t imagined all of it. Pretty sure there had been a lot more people here, and now…

“Can I help you with something?” said a woman who’d come out of one of the houses and had put a basket covered in a dish towel on one of those tables. Now she was coming toward me, and the two girls who were playing hopscotch to the side and the men who were moving to and from the tables to carry their food stopped to look at me.

I went through the gates, feeling strange as hell.

“Hi, my name is Rora,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’m, um…I’m looking for Taland.”

The woman stopped walking at the mention of his name. Her brows rose and her lips parted and she folded her hands in front of her stomach.

“I’m afraid you won’t find him here anymore. He’s gone.”

Stabs at my gut.

I took a step closer. “Gone where?”

The woman shook her head without a word, the look in her eyes hardening.

“It’s you, isn’t it,” said one of the men as he and his three friends stopped right behind the woman. “You’re the girl they came here for. The IDD.”

“The winner of the Iris Roe. Rosabel La Rouge.”

This from the younger boy who had his arms crossed in front of his chest and his teeth gritted as he looked at me like he was just now thinking up ways to murder me.

Fuck, I shouldn’t have come here like this, I thought. I had no weapons. I was on my own. I had nothing to protect mys?—

All my thoughts came to a halt.

Magic. I had no weapons on me, but now I had magic. It was back, and my anchor was around my finger. It would let me use spells—all the combat spells I’d learned at the Academy, fast and effective.

I had magic again, and it was incredible how fast I’d gotten used to not having it when I thought I couldn’t live without it, and it was incredible that I decided I’d rather use my own hands to fight these people off than turn to my spells— if it came to it.

Not the best time for this, but in that moment I understood just how much being Mud for those few days had changed me.

“Yes, that’s her, all right,” said another man—couldn’t even tell you which because I was looking at the woman still.

“You dare show your face here?” said the boy, who seemed to be very angry with me, indeed.

“Is the IDD on their way again? What more do you want to take—you’ve taken everything already.” Another man.

I shook my head. “Is he okay?” I asked the woman.

She sucked in a deep breath as if I’d assaulted her.

“I just want to know if he’s alive,” I insisted—and I wasn’t going anywhere without knowing that, at least. Because I believed them when they said Taland wasn’t there—if he was, he’d have come out by now. I was looking at the houses every few seconds, hoping for a door to open, for him to show his face, but he didn’t.

“He’s alive,” the woman finally said, and even though the relief was instant, it wasn’t absolute. Because I still didn’t know if Taland was okay, his magic intact. I still had no idea what the Drainage had done to him.

“And he’s—” okay, I was going to say, but the two men stepped around her and came closer.

“I think it’s time for you to leave,” the one on the right said, and I could feel the magical energy about him before I noticed the edge of his wand slipping down his sleeve that he held between two fingers. Not yet drawn, but he would the moment I made a move.

“I just need to know if he’s okay,” I tried again, but the men wouldn’t have it. And the woman was rushing to the little girls, telling them to get inside, while another two men came out of the houses to our sides.

“Isn’t it enough that you drove everyone away? You’re not welcome here, Redfire. Get out.”

My stomach twisted and turned.

Please, I wanted to say. Please just tell me where to find him…

I didn’t. It was written all over their faces—all seven of them wanted me to give them a reason to attack. Just one reason, and they wouldn’t hesitate.

And I couldn’t blame them. Who knew what the IDD had done to this place when I was chained to that basement and Madeline sent them to get me? I had no idea under which house I’d been, but it must have been within these walls because these men were pissed, and they had no reason to lie.

Drove everyone away, he said. All that was left from over a hundred people I’d seen here that night was them. They were most definitely not going to tell me anything even if they knew where Taland was hiding.

“Of course,” I said, lowering my head. They were aggravated and they had every right to be.

I’d figure out another way to find Taland, no matter how long it took. I was still an agent and Madeline told me to go back—I would. If only to use their tools to find him, I would go back.

“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” I told the man. “I’ll be on my way.”

I turned around to go back to my car and get the hell out of there, but I’d barely stepped outside the doors when one of them called, “Is it true?”

I stopped. I turned.

“Is it true that you were Mud and you won?”

No, I wanted to say—that was my first instinct because I still hadn’t even had the time to come to terms with the fact that I’d turned Mud, let alone everything else that had happened to me since.

But I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t lie—what would be the point? “Yes,” I said, and I said it proudly.

Yes, I’d been Mud, and I’d won the game with Taland’s help. I’d beaten over two hundred Iridians and I’d won .

The men said nothing. They didn’t look impressed in the least, and that was okay. This time, when I turned around to leave, they didn’t stop me.