Chapter 8

Rosabel La Rouge

It was over.

No more reporters outside the building. Cassie had already gone home, but I’d stayed well into the afternoon, hoping I’d gather courage to go out there, get back to my cubicle, search for whatever I could find on Taland—or even the alias he’d chosen when he entered the Iris Roe. Maybe he left an address or a phone number or something. Wishful thinking, but it would get me started.

Except the moment I stepped out of the locker room and saw a bunch of workers stopping to look at me, I knew that I wouldn’t have the stomach for it. If somebody came up to me and asked me a single question, I was going to fucking lose it.

So, I ended up turning around and going straight for the garage. When I saw that my bike was still there, I grabbed the keys from the locker and decided to leave Madeline’s car in here for tonight. It would be safe, anyway. I could drive it back to the mansion tomorrow. Right now, I needed to ride my bike.

“You sure you want to go out there? They’re hiding behind cars and trees,” said a guard—Jerry was his name and he also maintained the IDD vehicles together with a bunch of others. I’d never really had an opinion about Jerry before, but now I decided that I liked him. He wasn’t smiling or congratulating me. He didn’t look at me like he thought I was disgusting, either. He didn’t make it awkward at all, just pointed ahead at the road that led to the main gates.

I turned the ignition off and stopped in front of him. “Are you serious?” The reporters were still there?

“Yep,” he said with a shrug, putting his hands in the pockets of his blue uniform. “Might wanna try the back.”

I was most definitely going to try the back. “Thanks, Jerry.”

“Any time, Rora,” he said, and I liked him a bit more.

I drove my bike slowly. I didn’t want to put on my helmet yet because then I’d have to take it off again when I got to the back gates.

But before I got there, I heard the cussing.

There were three bar gates just inside the tall fence at the back of the building—for staff and supplies, transporting prisoners, as well as releasing those who did jail-time. I’d come through the first earlier in the day. There didn’t seem to be any reporters anywhere that I could see, just the road beyond and the guards—and then one in particular who was dragging someone toward the first gate while she kicked and screamed and tried to get him to let go of her.

Her being a kid . A little kid thrashing with all her might as the guard cussed and continued to drag her.

Others laughed.

“ Hey! ” I called before I even realized what I was doing, but I could see just fine. Plenty of lights out here even though the sky was dark, so I wasn’t mistaken. I drove a bit faster until I was close enough so that I saw the face of the girl—yep, just a kid, possibly not even thirteen years old. She was thin, her clothes old, her sneakers almost completely ruined, her brown hair all over the place, but her eyes were alive. Alert. Her cheeks flushed as she breathed heavily—and then she saw me.

She stopped thrashing and screaming at once.

“Hey, what’s going on here?” I said and jumped off my bike. “Who’s that?”

More guards came closer. “She snuck in,” the one holding her by the arm said. “We just caught her in the back of a truck that brought in supplies.”

I raised my brow. “Are you serious?” Who would dare get on an IDD vehicle and try to sneak inside Headquarters? The girl wasn’t so young as to not know how dangerous that was.

“Yep. She’s a feisty one,” one of the other guards who’d been laughing said.

I shook my head, eyes on the girl. “What’s your name?” I asked her because, even considering the day I’d had, she was still a kid.

The girl said nothing, only pulled her lips inside her mouth.

“Why did you climb in that truck? Was it an accident?” Because that’s the only thing that came to mind that would make a bit of sense.

But then the guard who was holding her by the arm said, “She snuck in to look for you, Agent La Rouge.”

I straightened up again. “Excuse me?”

“A lot of people have tried to sneak in to talk to you today,” said the other guard. “She actually managed to get through the gates without us noticing.” He grinned like he was impressed.

To be honest, so was I.

I looked at the girl again. “Will you let her go, please? I’ll handle it,” I told the guard.

“She’s a minor. Standard protocols don’t apply, but I can’t just leave her?—”

“I’m not going to leave her here—I’m taking her out. Let go,” I told the guard. Technically speaking, I was his superior, but if he deemed a situation threatening, he had the right to turn to his supervisor first.

“We will need her outside the premises right away ,” he said, and I was pissed off in a way that was very unusual, but the day I’d had was catching up to me, even though I’d actually slept on that bench in the locker room for a whole hour.

Still, I managed to keep my face as neutral as ever when I said, “Then you should help her up here, and I’ll take her out right now.” And I patted the seat of my bike. Plenty of space for her to sit comfortably.

“We don’t—” the guard holding her started but his friend cut him off.

“Just get her on the bike, man. You heard Agent La Rouge—she’ll take her out.”

I could kiss the guy for making this easier for me.

“Here, put this on her,” I said and gave him my helmet before I got on my bike as if to say, it’s a done deal now. She’s coming with me.

I couldn’t really tell you what I was thinking, but I didn’t want to leave this kid in the hands of that guard. That—and where would she go when they took her outside? Where did she even live? It was dark already, and she didn’t look like she’d have money for a cab or even bus fare.

It worked.

Still chuckling, the guard put my helmet on the girl’s head while she refused to take her eyes off me.

“ Move ,” the one holding her said, and he pulled her with more force than was necessary toward the bike.

In normal circumstances, I’d have kept my mouth shut by reminding myself that the more I talked, the more reluctant he’d be to let us get the hell out of here. The sooner that girl got on my bike, the sooner we could disappear outside those gates and be done with it.

Except today the circumstances were everything but normal for me, and I couldn’t have stopped myself if I tried.

“For fuck’s sake, watch yourself. She’s just a kid,” I said and actually imagined myself jumping off my bike again and breaking his fucking teeth. It would have probably felt great.

The guard looked at me like I was a two-headed alien. “She’s Mud ,” he told me, and the sound of his voice alone showed me how disgusted he was by that word without having to see his face at all.

Mud, he said.

The girl was Mud.

Now I saw red. “She’s a kid ,” I hissed, and my magic reacted in a way that I’d forgotten it could. Bright red flames danced on my knuckles as I tightened my grip around the handles of my bike, and I didn’t notice until the color, so damn vivid, demanded my attention. All of their attention, too.

“Let her go, now .”

Nobody was laughing or chuckling anymore. The other guards even stepped farther back. I had never— never before in my life spoken to a guard or to anyone at all like that before. I’d always held back, always kept my mouth shut, so I had no idea how freeing it could be to just speak my mind and not hold the anger back when it wanted out.

My magic hurt. It fucking hurt as it traveled down my arms without my even thinking it, and it really was more vivid than it used to be.

The guard let go of the girl, though reluctantly. She didn’t hesitate—she jumped on the back of my bike and wrapped her thin arms around my waist tightly.

It shocked me, how quickly she moved, how fully she hugged me. No hesitation; no holding back.

And I moved, too, before that asshole had the chance to stop us again.

I barley remember how I drove to the gates and showed my badge to the guard in the cabin. He must have been the same one who let me through earlier in the day because he said, I thought your wallet was lost while you were being tortured in a basement, he he he.

I ignored him, didn’t make eye contact at all, and I drove out.

Reporters, only a few, took my picture using their flashes, but I didn’t even bother to turn my head toward them. I went all around the fence of the building and to the front, where a lot more of them were basically camping in front of the gates. I didn’t stop, didn’t look anywhere but at the road ahead for the next five minutes, thinking, no way is this real. But the arms of that girl were still tightly wrapped around my waist and they were pretty real. There every time I glanced down.

When I spotted a dark enough alley at the edges of the city with barely a few people coming and going, I decided to stop. Enough light still reached us from the street in there, so when the girl jumped off and took the helmet off, I saw her perfectly fine.

She pushed back her hair furiously as she looked at me with eyes wide and flushed cheeks. “Hi. Hello, hi,” she told me, and I myself had to fix my hair because the wind had made a mess out of it.

“Hello to you, too,” I said, not entirely sure what the hell to even say to her yet, so I went with, “What’s your name?”

“Taylor,” she said, pulling down the sleeves of her brown shirt. Now she was nervous, and it showed in every small movement. “I-I’m Taylor Maddison.”

“I’m Rora,” I said but didn’t offer her my hand for fear I’d make her even more uncomfortable.

“Yes, I know who you are,” the girl said.

“You do?” Which made sense because the guard said she’d snuck in through the gates for me, but…

“Yes. Mhm. I know everything about you. You were Mud and now you’re not—I saw your magic. You were Mud and you won the Iris Roe, and when I grow up, I’m going to do the same. I’m going to win the Iris Roe and I’m going to get my magic and my money, and my family and I are going to get a real house to live in,” she said in a breath. “I just need you to teach me how.”

Fuck.

I blinked my eyes slowly— surprised is a mild word. “That’s…that’s, uh…” Literally speechless. I had no words.

“Teach me,” the girl said, and she took a step closer to me, her voice unwavering. She demanded it, not just said it. “All I need is for you to teach me how to do it, and I’ll prepare, and in the next Iris Roe?—”

“ How old are you?” I cut her off, still trying to make sense of this—of her.

“Fourteen and a half,” she said in a defying manner, like she was expecting me to argue with her about it.

I shook my head. “You’re fourteen years old and you’re thinking about the Iris Roe?” At that age I don’t think I even knew the game existed.

The girl raised her chin. “Fourteen and a half, ” she reminded me.

Laughter burst out of me out of sheer surprise. She was fourteen and a half —and she wanted me to tell her how to win the Iris Roe, and I don’t know why I found that so damn funny.

“Just…just help me,” she said, while I still laughed. Leaning against the seat of my bike, shaking my head at myself, I still laughed. “I’ll be eighteen when the next Iris Roe begins—I’ll be eligible.”

It kind of broke my heart when she said that, and my laughter faded. “Eighteen and a half ,” I said—a bad joke, but I thought she might smile.

Instead, she flinched. “It’s my only chance,” she said, and it killed me a little bit—how she stood tall and kept her chin up. How she fisted her hands so I wouldn’t see them shaking. How she meant every word she said.

“The Iris Roe is a death trap,” I said, defeated, only now realizing that she really did mean all that she said. This girl wasn’t kidding—she’d actually thought this through.

She stepped closer to me. “A death trap that you survived. You look perfectly fine to me.” She made a point of looking up and down my body.

I shook my head, more afraid by the minute, as if I was picked up and thrown into the City of Games all over again.

“You’re…you’re a kid .” She couldn’t be serious about this—she was fourteen years old.

“I won’t be for the next Iris Roe. I’ll be an adult, just like you,” she argued, and yes—she still meant it.

It made me panic so badly. It made me want to grab her and shake her, this stranger, just make her understand the absurdity of what she was saying.

“You’re Mud ,” I told her—she had to know what Mud meant. She knew plenty about the Iris Roe—she had to know that it was a game of magic.

She tried to hide another flinch, really tried. “So were you.”

Stabs at my chest and gut and the back of my head that was suddenly threatening to explode with an ache that came out of nowhere. Like it had been lying just there in hiding, waiting for the perfect moment to jump out and take over. Make me see double from the sheer intensity of it.

“Didn’t you hear the news?” I said, now pissed off all of a sudden, and so many different emotions in such a short time were making me dizzy. Or maybe that was just the headache? And the lies that came out of my lips? “I was never Mud. Those were just rumors. I was a Redfire all my life.”

Filthy, filthy, disgusting Rora…

“I don’t believe it,” the girl said without batting a lash, and the look in her eyes defied me. “I saw the news. I’ve read everything there is to read online, including what they said about the players who were conscious after the end of the game. Everyone on social media says they said that you were Mud and then you drained the Rainbow and now you’re not Mud anymore—I saw that for myself.” She looked down at my hands fisted tightly—so she wouldn’t see them shaking now, but not because I was afraid. Just because I was tired of feeling so damn awful about myself.

“You can’t drain the Rainbow if you’re Mud,” I forced the words out through gritted teeth, going against every instinct in my body.

“But you did it anyway,” the girl said. “Which is why you need to teach me how.”

Goddess, it was so hard to breathe.

I looked into those wide brown eyes, her young face, her skinny limbs. She looked beaten up, fragile, yet tough as nails at the same time. Someone who’d never give up out of sheer stubbornness. Someone who was actually worthy of winning a game like the Iris Roe. Her conviction shocked me all over again—how did she look so old and mature at just fourteen?

I shook my head again and stood up straighter because it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

“I was never Mud, kid,” I said, not even half as guilty to lie as a second ago because if I didn’t lie, this girl was actually really going to attempt to get into the Iris Roe. And I’d lie all day for the rest of my life to make sure that didn’t happen.

“Yes, you were,” she said. “You were Mud—everyone says so.”

“But I say that I wasn’t. Who are you going to believe—me or them?” I tried to sound convincing, and I was good at pretending to feel something I didn’t feel.

Or maybe I should say I used to be good at pretending because the look in her eyes remained suspicious. The girl didn’t believe me, not a hundred percent. But before she could say so, I forced a smile on my face.

“Now, you can either tell me where you live so I can drop you off myself, or I can get on my bike and go, and you can find your own way home. What’s it gonna be, Taylor Maddison?”

I would never leave her here, obviously, even though something told me she’d be perfectly capable of going back home on her own. Maybe because she’d actually managed to get through the gates of the IDD without getting caught?

“Fine,” she said with a defeated sigh, and she looked angry now. Very angry. “I’ll tell you where I live. But keep the helmet this time. I can’t breathe in that thing.”

I didn’t, of course. She ended up putting the helmet on, anyway, but when I got on my bike and started driving to the address she gave me, I couldn’t help the smile on my face. This girl was really something, and she had balls. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind and make demands, and it occurred to me that she was everything I always wanted to be as a kid. As an adult. The courage to stand up for myself, to say what I really thought, to not be so afraid to ask for what I wanted all the damn time. I envied her a little, but more than that—I found I actually had respect for her.

She lived on the outskirts of the city, and I had to enter the street name on my maps app to find it because I’d never been to it before. It was a wide street lined with houses, close together and on the smaller side, and there were kids playing in their yards, and people sitting on their porches, teenagers hiding in the shadows, smoking cigarettes. All pretty standard.

I thought the girl lived in one of these houses, but then she told me to drive all the way to the end, to this trailer chained to a tree at the edge of a forest near a kids’ playground, currently empty. The trailer was one of the bigger ones, and it looked to be in good condition, but it was still a trailer.

I stopped my bike close to it, near this thick grey rock shaped almost into a perfect cube with a spigot in the middle that marked the beginning of a narrow path into the forest at the trailer’s back.

“Is this it?” I asked when the girl took the helmet off.

She pressed her lips into a tight smile, and her eyes looked a bit bloodshot, but maybe I was just imagining things. She wasn’t crying that I could see.

“Home sweet home,” she said, and the way she looked at me with her arms crossed and her brows narrowed…

I was suddenly so ashamed. I’d lied to this girl through my teeth, and she knew it. It felt like she could see right through me—she knew it.

“Go on, then. Get inside.” I put my helmet on and got on my bike, desperate to run away now.

And when I started moving backward to the street, I could hardly bring myself to even look at her, so I didn’t. I just pretended I was busy getting ready to drive away.

Then…

“You’re lying.”

I stopped. I looked at her, then decided it was better to pretend I hadn’t heard anything.

I turned to the street again.

“You know how I know you’re lying?!” It was all I could do not to pull the visor of my helmet down. “Because you put me on your bike. You let me touch you. You’re not disgusted by me. You don’t care that I’m Mud.” Her words fell like rocks in the pit of my stomach. “If you hadn’t been Mud, you would have.” My eyes closed and I breathed in deeply. “Everybody always cares.”

I don’t know how I turned on the ignition and drove away, but I hardly remember the trip back to Madeline’s mansion from the white noise that remained in my head.