Chapter 9

Rosabel La Rouge

You’re not disgusted by me.

The words weighed a hundred pounds each and I carried them on my shoulders as I walked through the backdoors of the mansion. Madeline didn’t really know I owned a bike, but there was no way I had the energy to leave it in the little woods at the edge of her estate like usual, so I just brought it to her garage. If she asked, I’d tell her the IDD gave it to me. She’d know it was a lie, but in those moments, I didn’t really care.

In those moments, all I could think about was a fourteen-year-old girl who wanted to win the Iris Roe when she grew up—what an impossible, impossible dream. A dream that was going to get her killed. A dream I’d planted in her head simply by surviving.

I didn’t see Madeline or Poppy while I made my way to the second floor on my tiptoes. Poppy had texted me to let her know when I got home, but I couldn’t bring myself to knock on her door or even text back. She’d want to talk, and I wanted to tell her that I was okay, but I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t ready for anything at all right now, and as strange as it sounded, I just wanted to lie down and cry and hopefully sleep. Eventually.

It was late anyway. I figured I’d tell her anything she wanted to know tomorrow.

The night was longer than most. I didn’t sleep for a while, but when I did, I rested. No dreams, no nightmares, but the thought of Taland was still there even when I was unconscious, just like always.

But tonight the thought of that girl remained with me through my sleep, too.

Poppy had exhausted me with her questions in the morning, but this time I hadn’t minded. It was a distraction—I didn’t think about much else as I told her about that meeting with Cameron and what the Council had decided and the press conference. She found it awfully exciting, which it wasn’t. Very much anxiety-inducing, the whole thing, but she thought it was wonderful, and she had a whole Notes page on her phone full of ideas about what she wanted to do, she said, to get the public’s attention and to meet and greet my new fans.

“It’s just for a couple hours every other day—not too much,” she said while I looked at her like she’d lost her mind, but she refused to acknowledge it. Instead, she continued with, “Just until you get your five-million dollar check! You’re famous now whether you like it or not, Rora. Might as well own it.”

No, no, thank you very much— no, I did not plan to own anything. I just planned to lay low, stay out of sight until people forgot about me and things went back to normal.

But I nodded and smiled and told Poppy I had to go because my boss wanted me in first thing—they didn’t. I didn’t even have an immediate boss right now. I didn’t belong to any of the teams. Cameron said I’d be appointed soon, but until that happened, all I could do was sit in my cubicle and wait for the day to end.

That was perfectly fine by me because I was going to spend every waking hour searching for Taland.

So, I did.

I searched the files I had access to, then spent over three hours looking at footage from surveillance cameras all around the City of Games the night the Iris Roe ended, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Hoping to find the vehicle he was taken away in, the people who made him disappear so quickly, but I had nothing. Everything surrounding the Iris Roe playground was labelled Classified and nobody had access to it except the Council’s personal team, and they had yet to release the bundle of videos for the paying customer. I was sure IDD agents would have access to the bundle, too—I mean, probably —but if we didn’t, I’d pay for it. Hell, I’d pay every penny in my pocket to find Taland or just to get a hint of where he could have gone.

Unfortunately for me, I got nothing. No tips, no mentioning of him or even the Tivoux brothers—nothing at all, which was odd as hell.

Hadn’t they opened a case on them when they thought I got kidnapped, and they found me in that basement at the Blue House?

How had my grandmother even found me, and who had she sent to get me? What exactly had the teams done when they found me? Why was the Blue House community now almost empty ?

So many questions, and on top of them was Taland. On top of them was Taylor Maddison, the Mud kid who wanted to win the next Iris Roe and get her magic— like me .

I don’t even know why that made me feel so filthy, so unworthy . I’d lied through my teeth, and then she’d looked me in the eye and told me that she knew. Fuck.

“Hey, stranger.”

I recognized Cassie’s voice and I wasn’t startled, even though my mind was elsewhere. It was late in the afternoon, an hour after my shift had ended, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about everything all at once.

“Hey, yourself,” I said when she came to rest her hip on my desk on the other side of my chair.

“Why are you still here and not out there celebrating your life?” she asked, an arched brow at the screen of my computer that showed four different locations of the city that I was—possibly illegally—looking at through the human police’s surveillance systems.

“Because I have work to do,” I said, then turned the monitor off with a press of a button. “Why are you at my cubicle and not in your office?”

“Pfft, what work?” She waved me off, then went on to pretend like she hadn’t heard my question at all. “In case you didn’t get the memo yet, nobody wants you on their team, Redfire. They’re scared shitless of you because you were Mud.”

She said that last one in a whisper that had the hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention.

“Haven’t you heard? That was just a rumor. I was never Mud,” I deadpanned, and she grinned so wide it transformed her face. Her blue eyes sparkled like jewels—like those sapphires on Madame Weaver’s face.

The reminder brought bile to my throat.

“Tell that to the people who didn’t put you in the trunk of their car to get out of here when you were half dead.”

“You know what they’re making me say,” I said, angry now—so fucking angry at the Council for making me lie, at myself for knowing I had no other choice but to do it, at Madeline for having smuggled me into the Iris Roe in the first place—all of it. I was so fucking mad at all of it any time I wasn’t thinking about where Taland could be. Especially when I was thinking about Taylor Maddison.

“Well, everybody here knows that’s total bull crap and that’s why Cameron is having trouble assigning you to a team—the team leaders don’t want to have anything to do with you. They still think you’re a freak, even though the Council cleared you.”

I thought about it for a second. “That actually suits me.” If I wasn’t in a team, I had time to search for Taland, and I didn’t even have to talk to other people at all during the day. I could make good on my plan to keep a low profile until everyone forgot about my existence.

“You were always a loner in disguise,” said Cassie with a wink. “But you look miserable enough that I had to come get you to stretch your legs.” She stood up and slapped the back of her hand to my shoulder. “Come on. I’m off to the Vault to look for a pair of earrings. Come join me.”

“Wait a minute—are you spying on me through the cameras, Bluefire?” I asked, eyes up on the high ceiling of the large space, where there were no doubt a lot of cameras that I couldn’t even see.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cassie said in a high-pitched voice because she wanted me to know she was lying. “Come on, Mud—I mean Redfire. ” She giggled like a little girl caught doing something she was told multiple times not to do. “Keep me company because I most definitely am not a loner, and I’ve been stuck at my desk by myself for long enough.”

I raised a brow. “Your shift started an hour ago.”

“Exactly,” she said, like she really didn’t get what I was saying. “Come on!”

I stood up right away. Not just because I basically owed Cassie my life and she was my friend, but my neck really was stiff and my eyes were really tired after staring at the screen all day—and also, the Vault .

It made me curious. Taland had wanted me to promise to help him break into it to steal something—probably the veler, the same artifact that he’d wanted to steal in our school back then. He’d tried to get me to agree to that insane request when we were in the Iris Roe. I said I wouldn’t, and of course not—this place was more secure than any other in the world. Cameras and guards and wards—all of it impossible to fool, and knowing he was a wanted felon who’d escaped from the Tomb meant he’d be shot on sight when they asked him to put his hands up and he refused (because he would.)

I didn’t betray him when we were still in high school for nothing. I did not sacrifice my love, my whole life with him just so he could come and die here instead. Fuck no—I’d never let that happen.

Then he’d wanted me to agree to just stand by and do nothing when he came, and I’d refused to do that, too. It was the same thing as letting him die. I hadn’t done it the first time, and I wouldn’t do it any other time, either. If I knew he was coming to steal from the Vault, I’d knock him out and take him away myself before the guards spotted him and shot him. Everything I could handle—even the Iris fucking Roe—so long as he was breathing. The guilt could eat at me and I could be disgusted by myself my whole life for doing what I did, but I’d handle all of it as long as Taland was alive.

I’d been to the Vault two times in the past but I hadn’t really paid it any attention. Me and the team had come through to lock in two of the dangerous artifacts we’d found while on missions—one a cursed sword which encouraged its wielder to attack anyone or anything in his path, the other sunglasses that claimed to enable the wearer to see spirits, but just fucked with your brainwaves and made you hallucinate instead. The guards who cared for the Vault had classified them under first level protection—the Vault had three within the same large room. Artifacts that were under second and third level were much more dangerous. As far as I knew, the veler was under second.

I’d seen it with my own eyes, that thing. Had been in the same classroom with it back at the Iridian School of Chromatic Magics. A classmate of mine, a Bluefire named Chris, had almost died when he touched it, when he tried to find—students speculated—his mother who had died a few years back. The veler had put him in a coma for two whole weeks.

That’s what Taland had been after. I’d found out after I came back from the school. Hill told me about it when he came to congratulate me, and it had made perfect sense. The veler could basically show you the location of anything as long as you had a clear enough picture of it in your head and enough magic to search with. People would kill to get it in their hands to find all kinds of precious, expensive things, treasures and art pieces and jewelry—you name it. Nothing was beyond the veler—not even other dimensions, which we Iridians knew next to nothing about.

I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t think about how easy it would be to find Taland with it as we went through the wards and the guards with Cassie now. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t wish I could just grab it and ask it where Taland was, then put it back in its place really quickly. Really quickly. Nobody would see me. Nobody would find out. I’d be in and out in a second, and I’d find Taland just as easily as he wished to find…whatever he and his brothers had been looking for when he tried to steal this artifact in school.

You have no idea what you’ve cost the world…

Even now those words haunted me. The face of Radock Tivoux remained in front of me, how he’d looked completely enraged. And I regretted that I hadn’t asked Taland in the Roe what his brother had meant, but there simply had been no time. I hadn’t been preoccupied with Radock’s accusations while he was in the middle of torturing me because I was focused on trying to survive the deadly game.

I would ask him, though. As soon as I saw Taland again—if I found him now, or if I met him on September twenty-first, midnight sharp—I was going to ask Taland what Radock had meant. Just as soon as I saw him.

And the thought sent my stomach into a riot as imaginary butterflies beat their wings relentlessly inside me. As soon as I saw Taland.

After everything, after spending almost two years trying to come to terms with the fact that he would spend the rest of his life in the Tomb Penitentiary and I was never going to see him again, now I knew that I would. Now I knew that he was out there. If I couldn’t find him, he’d asked me to meet him on September twenty-first, which was only eighty-four days away—yes, I’d counted. He said he’d send me the location before then, but that I had to be there at midnight, and I planned to get there even if I had to travel to the other side of the world by foot.

Eighty-four days, that’s all. That’s how soon I’d see him—if I didn’t find him myself first. Which I really, really hoped I would.

And that’s where this sudden greed to find the veler came from, this urge to find out if I could, in fact, take it and use it without anybody knowing, and figure out where Taland was. I could be on my way to him right now; I could see him, touch him, kiss him, make sure he was okay.

Goddess, please let him be okay…

“Rosabel.”

I blinked my eyes and realized that I’d been too distracted by my own thoughts that I’d forgotten to pay attention to the real world—namely the guard who was telling me to spread my arms to the sides so he could run his magically enhanced X-ray wand all over me. This to get to the other side of the maze of hallways at the other end of which was the Vault.

“Sorry, I got a little carried away,” I muttered and spread my arms while my cheeks flushed.

The X-ray wand remained green.

Cassie raised a brow in question. “Do I even want to know?”

No, you really don’t. “Let’s just get to the Vault,” I muttered.

The maze-like corridors went on for about three minutes, no doubt made to distract and confuse people who came here on their own for the first time. Another protective measure, though with the number of wards in the air I doubted anybody would even make it past the first turn.

Another guard searched us when we made it to the doors of the Vault, then cleared us for entrance. Both mine and Cassie’s badges opened them, and the two guards who stepped by the wall watched our every movement while we went through.

Another three were in the reception room, where they cleared and took note about who came through and who walked out with what. On the other side was the actual Vault.

It was huge —so big you could hardly see the other end of it, even though most boxes made of reinforced glass were on the walls, one over the other, so many of them I got dizzy just looking. In the middle was the pillar that held the ceiling up, a thick piece of concrete full of led lights that changed color every now and again. There were also these smaller cabinet-like stands spread all over that served as containers with little transparent drawers full of smaller artifacts underneath, and a flat top that served as tables. The first half of the oval-shaped room was chockfull of wards that guarded artifacts that fell in the first level protection protocol. The second half was about thirty percent under second level protection, and the very end was third level. I’d never been to the second half of this room, and now as I looked at the many glass boxes and tried to catch a glimpse of the veler, I’ll admit I was a bit afraid. A bit freaked out. Knowing that in here were artifacts that could destroy the world as we know it made me a bit sweaty.

Cassie laughed. “Scared, Mud—I mean, Redfire?”

I forced myself to roll my eyes. “I’m not a weakling like you.”

“ Pfft—you’re the weakling in our midst, baby.”

“Me—the girl who won the Iris Roe while being Mud—I mean, Redfire?”

Cassie didn’t see that coming, so her loud laughter echoed in the tall ceiling. She brought both hands to her mouth to stop herself, and her eyes teared up instantly.

“Good one, good one,” she said when she got herself under control again.

“What are we here for?” I asked, trying to talk myself out of looking —impossible. I couldn’t help but search every box I could see for the veler.

“Just a pair of dice, believe it or not. The Hershman trial is coming up soon and the DA office wants to present them in front of the jury—blood and all.”

This time I was the one flinching. “Do I want to know?”

“How a man killed his parents by spelling dices to crack their skulls and go through their brains? Nope. No, I don’t think you want to know.” She grinned.

“You’re awful.” I could have done without that information, especially since it triggered my memories of blood —so much blood, puddles of it all over the ground… ugh .

“Thank you muchly,” she said with a deep nod. “Go ahead and explore. I’ll be right back.”

Opening the folder she’d had under her arm, she began to walk toward the middle of the room, to the cabinets full of drawers to look for the murdering dices. Iridians did some fucked up shit with their magic. Some twisted minds they had—and not just the people, but the Council, too. The IDD—everyone, especially those in charge of the Iris Roe.

I began to go closer to the walls made of boxes, the glass revealing everything inside them. So many ordinary things—pots and wallets and picture frames and even books, things you’d never even suspect could actually harm or even kill you, but they could. They were spelled to do so, cursed to obey their master. Innocent objects becoming deadly at the whisper of a few Iridian words. And nulling them, taking away their magic didn’t always work. In fact, in most cases traces of the original curse remained in objects forever, and that’s why the IDD kept everything here to make sure something didn’t accidentally kill people out there because it was deemed harmless when it wasn’t.

The heavy magic that hung on the marble floor and concrete ceiling, every inch of thick class surrounding me could suffocate you if you spent enough time in this room, despite the size of it.

I wondered how Taland would have done it. I wondered what his plan was, if he even had a plan to break in here when he asked me to just stand by and do nothing. Let him try to steal the veler.

Would he use a disguise like he did in the Iris Roe? Because those would be useless in the IDD Headquarters. The wards here were meant to strip anybody of any standard concealing magics, so he wouldn’t be able to even get through the gates while wearing someone else’s face. The Iris Roe had been different—Billy Dayne had said it himself. They wanted the players to cheat so the wards were weak.

Curiosity got the best of me when I found myself in front of the red line on the marble floor that separated level one from two. I shouldn’t have wanted to go in there—I really shouldn’t have, but then I looked back at Cassie and she was still going over the files in her folder, searching the smaller drawers somewhere to the other side of the room, and I just wanted to see the veler. That’s all—I just wanted to see it, nothing more. Just see it through the glass.

So, I stepped over the red line and to the other side.

I expected sirens to go off somewhere. I expected guards to come in running, telling me to stop right there, put your hands above your head!

The fear was crippling, and it took me a second to realize that nobody could actually see inside my head. They didn’t know what I was thinking, and even if they did, I wasn’t going to steal anything, for fuck’s sake.

Get a grip, Rora, I shouted at myself in my head. I was being silly, that’s all. I was only being silly, and the proof was in the fact that nobody came running with their wands and guns aimed at me, and no alarms went on anywhere. Cassie hadn’t even looked up from her folder, and other than the air getting much heavier on this side of the red line, nothing else had changed.

So much magic.

I breathed in and the air was so thick it felt like my lungs were contaminated. These artifacts that were under the second level of protection were more dangerous, and that’s why they locked them in so tightly. Not because someone might break in and steal them, no—the entire room was equally protected from outsiders. It was the magic that these artifacts leaked into the atmosphere that made us extra cautious. That’s why the IDD ensured that their energy, whatever they leaked, remained inside the box with them.

Not as many things in these boxes as in the first part of the room, but there were still plenty. Not as usual as books and pens and ashtrays and sunglasses, but here the artifacts looked more like actual artifacts. That’s because they were made for bigger magics, and they were much harder to create. You couldn’t just curse these things into existence. Their creation required a great deal of thought, and their creators had picked a variety of different materials. Wood and glass and metal shaped mostly in circles, but also in triangles and squares. Each artifact had their file underneath in their glass box, and if I wanted to open one of the boxes on the walls, I’d need the unlocking spell just to glance at the files. Only the ones in the drawers in the stand-cabinets were accessible without that spell, hence why Cassie was here alone without one of the guards to help her get something out.

I went in deeper and deeper, searching the boxes, even though there was a very good chance that I wouldn’t even see the veler. So many things, and what if its box was somewhere on the other side of the room?

But then I saw it.

My heart stopped beating for a good moment, and I felt suspended on air. The veler was inside a glass box about three heads higher than me, on the very last row. I had to move farther back just to make sure that it was it. I recognized it because I’d seen it in class—a circle just bigger than both my fists together, and it was made of pure black obsidian that somehow didn’t even reflect light as it should, as my father’s ring did. It looks like it can absorb your soul and imprison it forever, my friend Kayla had said then.

That thing was it. The very reason why Taland was now a wanted criminal. The reason why he’d tried to sneak into the Strongroom, why he’d spent almost two whole years in prison.

Goddess, now I wanted to destroy it. I wanted to climb up there with my bare hands, grab that thing and destroy it, break it to pieces—which I knew couldn’t be done, but still. I wanted it gone because the urge to blame it for everything was so strong just now. The urge to blame anyone but myself.

But maybe David Hill was responsible for this whole thing instead.

What was it that Radock Tivoux told me when he had me chained to a chair in his basement? The mission didn’t exist on paper. You were never hired by the IDD, and Taland was never a suspect before his capture. Yes, those had been his exact words.

Was he telling the truth?

Now I was itching to go back to my cubicle and start searching the archives. I’d search every single day until I found Taland’s file, until I found the mission that Hill sent me on, just to prove to myself that they were liars. The Tivoux brothers—they were liars. Of course, the mission existed, and I was going to find proof of it.

But before I did, I wanted to see the veler better one more time, so I moved further back on my tiptoes, fully focused on that black orb.

That’s why I didn’t see the cabinet full of drawers until I basically slammed onto it with my hip and almost knocked it to the floor.

My heart almost beat out of my chest. Instinct took over and I moved before I’d even realized it. I just found myself with my hands on three of the glass drawers that had been in the process of opening and falling onto the marble floor, but the last one still slipped out of its place. Just the last one, and it was close enough to the floor, so it didn’t break and it barely even made a sound.

Meanwhile, I was breathing like I’d been running for days, and the whole Headquarters could hear my heartbeat. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Sweat beads lined my forehead. My hands shook when I slowly pushed the drawers back in place, as the magic, so heavy and thick, coated my throat with every breath.

A dozen purple marbles were in the third drawer from the top, the fourth empty. Some feathers carved out of wood in the fifth drawer, and on the last was this strange-looking, dark brown circle made out of what could have been mud. Dry, hard mud. The drawer was still half open and I couldn’t help but touch that thing with the tip of my finger just to make sure that it wasn’t soft—it wasn’t. In fact, it was cold to the touch and felt like metal against my skin. No magic came off of it that I could tell—it felt like nothing in particular, and that’s why I took it out and brought it closer to inspect it.

A bracelet.

The band was maybe three inches wide. It looked like one of those bracelets that didn’t come together full circle around the wrist but had an inch between the edges so you could adjust the size however you wanted. This one didn’t move when I tried to squeeze it—whatever it was made of, mud or metal or something else, was thick and sturdy, and heavy, too. No engravings and no other shape on it, and I almost put it around my wrist just to try it. Thank goddess Cassie called me from the front of the room.

“Hey, Mud—I mean, Redfire. Still alive?”

I put the bracelet back in its drawer to find that it didn’t have a folder at the bottom like all the other objects above it.

“Coming!” I called because there was no time to inspect if the folder had fallen somewhere—it wasn’t on the floor, and that was good enough for now. If somebody needed it, they’d look for it. It had probably slipped in the back of the cabinet anyway.

I went back to Cassie, and by the time she saw me, my face was perfectly expressionless.

However, nothing could be done about my cheeks.

“ Still flushed, ” she muttered, looking down at my body as if she expected to find a limb missing. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. Just a lot of magic in the air. Let’s go,” I said, and she believed me.

“True, true. I can barely breathe myself,” she said. “Lookie here—I got them.” She waved a transparent plastic bag in front of my face. “Neat, right?”

Two black dice with white dots on all sides, perfectly ordinary if they hadn’t been decorated with dried blood here and there.

Shivers rushed down my back. “Yes. Neat. ”

She laughed at the look on my face, and the sound of it drew out my own laughter so that by the time she signed the papers at the reception desk and we were let out of the Vault, I was smiling, too.

I didn’t think about that bracelet again until I returned to the mansion four hours later.

Reporters outside the front of the building, but Cassie said that Cameron had given the order to keep them off the backdoors because staff and supply runs were being delayed. I was damn thankful because I didn’t want to have to go through another one of those statements, and I’d come to hate cameras and their bright flashes with all my being. So, when I got on my bike I went straight for the back, leaving my grandmother’s car in the IDD garage for another night. It was perfectly safe. I’d get a cab on my way here tomorrow, so then I could return it to the mansion at the end of my shift.

Well, at the end of the day . No way was I leaving this place earlier than I had to, especially since I’d started searching for those case files on me and Taland when we were in high school. Especially when I couldn’t find said case files anywhere—but I had barely searched a couple hours. Tomorrow was another day.

“Hey—did you get the kid home last night?”

I hadn’t seen the guard on the other side of the cabin when I stopped to show my badge on my way out the first back gate. It was the same one who’d laughed his heart out yesterday, impressed that Taylor Maddison had managed to sneak all the way into the backyard.

“I did,” I said, and instinctively looked around for the other guard, the one who’d been dragging her before I put her on my bike.

She’s Mud —the way he’d said it. The disgust in his face was still right in front of me, but luckily, that guy didn’t seem to be here tonight.

“Appreciate it,” the other said with a nod. “Saved us the trouble.”

“Hey, don’t mention it,” I said and started my bike again. “Any other kid attempted to break in today?” I wondered, and I was talking about Taylor again, because I expected her to try to talk to me again. I don’t know why but she just gave me the feeling that she was stubborn like that.

“Nope. Not a one. They’ve reinforced security and expanded the perimeter. So far so good,” the guard said.

I believed him, but when I was on the road and passed the reporters by the front, who ran after me while taking pictures and shouting questions like they really thought I’d stop my bike to answer, I still wondered if maybe Taylor was hiding there somewhere. If she was maybe planning to sneak in when she thought nobody would be looking.

I wondered—and maybe that’s why I was driving toward her trailer home before I even realized it.

I just wanted to see that she was okay. I just wanted to make sure that she was home and not at Headquarters because she didn’t understand the kind of trouble she could get in if she got caught again. Who knew which guard would be on duty, and how much they’d hate her for being Mud?

One could never be too sure about these things—and that’s the excuse I gave myself until I made it all the way to that quiet neighborhood.

I stopped my bike near a tree in front of a one-story house that seemed to be empty. The few people who were on their porches and passing by saw me, but none of them looked at me twice, which made me think maybe they were human. Not that humans didn’t watch the Iris Roe—they did, but one needed money to pay for the videos or to enter the City of Games, and judging by their houses, these people were better off doing their spending elsewhere and they knew it.

I continued down the street on foot, and I found Taylor right there by her trailer. I didn’t need to get close or even cross the street to make her out—she and another girl and a boy were sitting on the ground in front of the trailer’s open door. Orange light came from inside, illuminating the sides of the kids’ faces enough that I recognized Taylor sitting to the left immediately.

She and her friends seemed to be playing some sort of a game and had their heads down, their eyes on whatever was in front of them on the ground.

Something in me twisted in a very unpleasant way. She looked so different now than she had the night before. Just a kid, no matter how stubborn she’d sounded. She was just a kid for real.

And hopefully she had already gotten over her absurd idea of getting me to teach her how to win the next Iris Roe when she turned eighteen.

Good, I thought when I turned around to get the hell out of there, and now I was being absurd, too, because I was almost sad that I hadn’t gotten to say hi . It was for the better, obviously, but I was still almost sad all the way back to the mansion.

Until I saw Poppy and Madeline wearing fancy dresses and sparkly jewelry right in the middle of the hallway.

Fuck.

“Rora, you made it!”

I should have gone for the stairs down the hallway…

The neutral expression on my face that camouflaged the panic and the desperation I felt so suddenly was automatic. I didn’t even need to try when Madeline was around—it was my default setting.

“Hi, Poppy. Grandmother,” I said when I approached them, mentally checking if my hair was out of place, if I had stains on my clothes, or maybe blood on me. But then I remembered that I’d spent the whole day inside Headquarters, so…

“You’re late—I thought your shift ends at five?” said Poppy, and she looked me over as if she, too, was making sure that I was presentable.

“They needed me at Headquarters,” I lied—easy enough to do.

“ Senairos is hosting a charity event tonight. Join us,” Poppy said the next second, and I almost threw up all over her. Join us? Was she serious? She knew I was only invited to the most important events by Madeline—like New Year’s. And I was sure Madeline would remind her of that, but to my surprise…

“If you must,” she said.

I heard it with my own ears, saw her lips moving with my own eyes; otherwise, I would have never believed it.

“Come on, I’ll help you get ready,” Poppy said, reaching her hand for me. “You can match my dress—look! Do you like it?” And she showed me the red dress she wore full of shimmer and sparkles, gorgeous on her petite frame, but I couldn’t even say so because I was panicking so badly.

“I-I do, but actually, I, um…I’m tired. And I have work to do. I promised a colleague I’d do some research tonight.” The lies flowed. Poppy flinched. Madeline seemed relieved.

“But—” Poppy started.

“Don’t waste our time then. Best to rest—tomorrow morning, they will be coming to bring your check here to the mansion,” Madeline said and turned around to where a guard was holding the door open for. Her limousine, which she only ever used on special occasions, was just barely visible from where I was standing.

Fuck. They were coming tomorrow.

They were actually coming tomorrow to give me a check for five million bucks— FUCK!

But, no, I wasn’t going to think about it at all, I decided, simply because I couldn’t afford to stay up all night.

“No fair,” Poppy said, wrinkling her nose—and she was talking about me joining them at the party “You’re lying—just come to a boring party with me for once!”

“Don’t do that—you’ll ruin your makeup,” I said, smiling because tomorrow was out of my mind and now I was just relieved that Madeline wasn’t forcing me to join them. “And go, have fun. You know you always do.”

“But I don’t?—”

“Pretty sure there’ll be cute guys there. Cute and rich, just like you like ‘em,” I said with a grin.

She rolled her eyes—slowly—but had no choice but to move for the doors when Madeline called her name.

“One day I’ll be the one watching you leave, Rosabel. You just wait,” she told me, and I bit my tongue before I reminded her that Madeline would rather be caught dead than to go to an event alone with me.

Instead, I just waved until she got in the limo and the driver took them away because I needed to make sure that they were gone. Really gone.

The guard finally closed the door. I breathed again.

Nothing better than to know that Madeline was not in the mansion, and she wouldn’t be for at least the next few hours. Nothing better than to feel this kind of mental freedom—not because I did anything out of the ordinary when she wasn’t there, or because I invited people over or snuck to the pool and sauna in the basement—no, I did no such thing. It was just knowing that she wasn’t here that made me feel at ease, even while I was in the kitchen and Fiona set up the table for me to eat, and later while I took a bath, and even when I lay on my bed to sleep. All very ordinary things that I always did—no difference. But that she wasn’t here made the entire experience a hundred times better.

I must have been more exhausted than I’d realized because I slept with my hair still wet.

An hour later, I woke up covered in sweat and breathing heavily while images of dragons and gigantic spiders played in front of my eyes.

“Shit,” I whispered to the empty room, closing my eyes, rubbing them in hopes those images would go away—they didn’t. The nightmare had been too powerful, too vivid. And those things hadn’t been coming after me, no. They’d been chasing Taland, and there was nothing I could do to stop them, to give him more time.

If I hadn’t woken up when I did, they would have caught him—in the nightmare, that is. But the fear, the panic, the desperation had followed me into waking life, so now I was breathing like I’d been running after them for real.

Damn it, where the hell was he?! I checked my phone again to see if he’d texted me with a location or something. I checked my windows, almost expecting a raven with a message around its neck to be there, tapping the glass with its beak.

Then I just sat there and held my breath and willed him to just pop out of thin air the way he used to do while we were in the Iris Roe. Just come out from under my bed or something equally absurd, and I actually believed he really might for a moment.

He didn’t.

“Where are you, Taland?” I asked the room and looked at my phone again to check for the time, thinking I’d slept hours, but it had only been one. Madeline and Poppy were probably not even back yet, and so I was very confident when I put my robe on and walked out in the hallway.

“Poppy?” I called and knocked on her bedroom door. No response, so I opened it.

The room was dark. Empty. They were most definitely not back yet.

Letting go of a deep breath, I had a smile on my face all the way to the kitchen—also empty—and by the time I sat on the isle with a pack of Ben & Jerry’s in my hands, I had almost completely forgotten about the nightmare.

A moan escaped me when my tastebuds came alive. Strawberries and sugar and cold—yes, I’d forgotten the small pleasures life could bring. For so long now I’d been just surviving, just running from this or that, and I always forgot to just sit and breathe and enjoy the little things that I could enjoy—like ice cream in a dark kitchen at ten p.m. Small things, things that I could do even while I thought about Taland.

Because I always thought about Taland. His eyes and his smile and his scent and his hands, those lips of his and every little inch of his body—goddess, it was insanity how I missed him. How I craved him.

Even when I was done eating ice cream and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge—the reason why I came down here in the first place—I still missed him, craved him, yearned for him.

Going back to sleep was impossible. For thirty-three minutes I tossed and turned and tried to distract myself with all kinds of thoughts, tried to remind myself that I was all alone in the mansion, that Madeline and Poppy weren’t here. Nobody was, just the staff who were long asleep by now, probably.

Thinking that had always brought me peace and quiet, a calm I could never really understand since nobody ever came to my room or anything—except tonight it wasn’t working.

The thought of Taland refused to let me sleep. My heartbeat wouldn’t slow down, and I couldn’t stop imagining him all over me.

Goddess, I was so horny now that I’d had him again in the Iris Roe, it would have been funny if it wasn’t so damn painful.

Eventually, I gave up trying, stood up, and paced in circles in my room.

Eventually, that didn’t work, either, so I paced out in the hallway, forward and back.

And when that stopped working, too, I went to the stairway, to the other side of the mansion, to Madeline’s office and bedroom and lounge area.

But she wasn’t here now, was she? I could go exploring in this part of the mansion—why was I so damn afraid of the idea? Why was I frozen there in front of the dark hallway wearing my pajamas, begging myself to turn back?

Taylor Maddison hadn’t been afraid to break into the fucking IDD Headquarters.

I wasn’t going to be afraid to take a walk in my grandmother’s side of the mansion no matter what happened to me next.

So, I walked ahead, knowing full well that I wouldn’t run into any guards when she wasn’t home. And the place was blissfully empty, the hallway twice the size of the one in front of our doors. Here there were only three—what she called a lounge room to the right, which was locked, her bedroom at the end, two gorgeous double doors behind which was a room the size of a small apartment. And on the left was the door to her office, which I hated with all my being.

I went for the bedroom first.

The lights were off, save for some small lamps at the corners of the giant room which had twice as many windows as mine looking out at three different parts of the estate. She had a bed and two desks and enough liquor to host a dozen parties on the two identical cabinets made out of glass and golden foil. She had a fireplace shaped like a lion’s head, four different kind of carpets on the floor, and I couldn’t see details other than the two doors on the far left because it was too dark. If I turned the lights on guards outside would notice, no doubt, and I was thankful for it. It smelled too much of Madeline’s perfumes here, intense and overly sweet, and I didn’t want to throw up all the ice cream I’d eaten.

I walked out and closed the door again. Even the idea of her presence was scary to me, and that’s why I considered skipping the office altogether.

Except I was here for a distraction, and I was going to get it because I needed to sleep. I needed to rest so that I could spend the whole day tomorrow searching for Taland, for those files. So, I opened the door of the office and looked inside, and I almost turned around and ran away.

Not that there was anything in there that wasn’t supposed to be, but the memories—of that night years ago when David Hill had chosen me for his mission, and that day when Madeline saved me from the Tivoux brothers, then reminded me that she’d have to throw her armchair away because I’d made it dirty by sitting on it.

She had—only one white armchair remained near the coffee table on the side of her desk. And that just pissed me off enough that I forgot my instinct to run away, and I stepped into the office instead.

Low lights in three corners of the room. Thick dark red drapes over the floor-to-ceiling windows. Paintings and gold and liquor bottles and so many fancy things, but then there was that oval-shaped mirror she’d taken such good care of for decades and the record player as well.

I went to it as if hypnotized, pulled the lid open, turned the volume down, and I placed the needle right over the vinyl that was already in there.

The music started a moment later, and Madeline’s favorite tune filled my ears. Right now, it was exactly what I needed because nothing distracted me better than her.

And while the symphony played, I walked around the office slowly, carefully, and took in the details that I’d never dared to look at before. Just let my mind wander to how they were made and how long Madeline had had them, and what I’d have done with this office if it were mine.

The liquor bottles were gorgeous. The frames of the paintings, the drawing on the ceiling, the smallest details were exactly right, and I analyzed everything as the music continued to play. Right now, by some magic, it wasn’t making me feel on edge. It was actually a beautiful melody, and it was keeping me company like an old friend.

Then there were books.

She had this big shelf to the far right of her office, with two paintings at its side—one of a feather dripping red ink, which could have been blood, the other a man reading a letter under candlelight, while the corners of the painting were dipped in darkness.

The whole thing came together wonderfully, and I found myself touching the spines, running my fingers over the expensive-looking leather of the covers, and eventually, I even picked one up and began to read.

Strategy Analysis the title said, and it was written twenty years ago by some D.D Harris, who’d signed this copy for Madeline. To Madam Rogan, the strongest woman I know. May your mind continue to sharpen forever.

“Somebody was trying to lick Madam Rogan’s ass,” I muttered to myself, then laughed almost completely silently.

A lot of the books she kept on this shelf, even a few fiction novels, were sent to her by the authors, all of them signed and with messages like the first. Strong, most called her, and one even said she was a kind soul, which made me laugh even harder.

I did read some paragraphs here and there, mostly non-fiction, and it did wonders in taking Taland and the Iris Roe and Taylor Maddison away from my mind completely.

Good call, I thought to myself as I put the sixth book in place, and I planned to go back to my room now, certain that I would fall asleep. My phone said it was almost midnight, anyway—Madeline and Poppy were probably almost home.

But then just as I put the fantasy novel about talking trees in its place, the title on the spine right next to it caught my eye— The Delaetus Army . I doubted I’d seen that book anywhere else, but something about that word army that made me curious. One more book wasn’t going to hurt, so I picked it up and it was heavier than I expected so it almost slipped from my fingers. The covers were to blame, thick and sturdy and looking like they were made a long time ago, but also brand new, perfectly preserved.

The pages were thicker than normal, their surface rough against my fingertips. The ink was thicker somehow, too, raised so that I could have traced each letter easily if it was too dark to see properly. And the color of it, a shimmering gold, was mesmerizing.

It was obviously a novel, and this one wasn’t signed. This one didn’t have a name of the author, either, which struck me as odd, but still. Maybe it was an old story. Maybe the name of the author was lost.

What mattered were those words on the thick pages and the drawings, too. I didn’t go through every word because the colors of those figures held my attention, but the story was about a man who’d created a curse he called a blessing, and how he used that curse to control living beings, to infuse their minds with his own thoughts, to make them obey his every word without regard for their own lives. The man then gathered these men he called his trata, which was an Iridian word that meant belongings, but it was used for objects, not people. With his trata he created this incredible army, more powerful than any other in history, past or present, and with it he planned to conquer the world.

Very basic, standard story stuff, but the drawing of the man wearing a hood and a cape that covered him completely kept my eyes glued to the pages. I only saw the bones hanging by these almost invisible strings around his fingers when the artist had portrayed him holding up his hand, doing magic.

Whitefire. “ Figures,” I whispered to myself because Whitefire and Blackfire were the most powerful out there, no matter what the rest of the Iridians thought or how hard they insisted that all colors were equal.

Then I turned the page, and it was like the whole story came to life right before my eyes with a drawing so detailed, so lively that goose bumps spread all over my skin. The man with the hood and the bones hanging from his fingers and two thick bracelets around his wrists was atop a mountain, looking down at the people he called his trata where they stood in formation with their heads up and their eyes on him. Nothing around them but more mountains and a sky, blue and orange and purple while the sun set behind them.

Fuck, I had to know who the illustrator of this book was because his work was incredible.

I turned another page and was fascinated all over again to find a close-up drawing of the army as they started up the mountain to where I assume the man was, with stars in their eyes like he was their god. They all wore helmets so they all sort of looked the same, and they all had brown leathers on them, and the same expression on their faces. They all had those bracelets around their wrists, too, and leather pants and leather boots that went all the way up to their knees.

I’d give my life in those moments to swear that they were real or they had been at one point, and if I could just reach out my hand inside those pages, I could actually touch them.

Then I heard a sound coming from outside, and my paranoia insisted that it was a car driving nearby. Madeline and Poppy must be coming back.

I’d never moved faster than when I put the book in its place, turned the record player off, and got the hell out of that office. I didn’t even breathe until I was in the hallway, running on my tiptoes back where I came from.

Before three minutes were over, I closed the door to my room without making a single sound, and I tiptoed my way to my bed like someone was right outside in the hallway, listening.

Fuck, that was close. There was no telling what Madeline would have done if she’d found me sneaking around her office. I really didn’t want to know how creative she could get.

But only when I closed my eyes and got my breathing under control did the images I’d seen on that book come back to me.

And only when my heartbeat calmed down did it hit me that the bracelet I’d seen in the Vault that day was the exact same as the ones around the wrists of the soldiers in those drawings.