Chapter 39

CHAPTER 39

CAMERON

T he orb transported us directly into a dank, dark cell illuminated by an anemic lantern fixed to the stone wall outside our prison. The bars had some kind of magical charge on them that not only hurt but also incapacitated. It reminded me of the charge on the bars in the cells at Ivor's base.

Serath and I had barely finished looking for any fractures in the structure of our cell that we could exploit when a shadow in the cell opposite us moved.

"Hello?" Serath called out. "Who's there?"

The shadow shrank away from the light. "No. You're not real."

Wait, that voice…I knew that voice. "Yarrow? Yarrow, is that you?"

Pale fingers curled around the bars, provoking no nasty effects, and a face peered out of the gloom. Gaunt and hollow-cheeked, with eyes too large, in a head that seemed too big for his body, it was still, unmistakably, Yarrow.

"What did they do to you?" Serath asked. "Blake…"

"Can you help me? Can you get me out?" His voice cracked. "I just…I want to go home."

Something was wrong. The way he was looking at us, as if we were strangers. "Yarrow, you know who we are, right?"

His gaze flicked between us. "I…I…Is this a trick question?"

"No," Serath said. "We just want to understand what might have happened to you. Do you remember who we are?"

He shook his head. "But I might. If you can help me."

Had he not noticed we were in a cell too?

"You look strong," he continued. "When they come with food, you can overpower them. You can get out, then get me out too." A dull light filled his eyes. "Then you can carry me. You, the big guy." He smiled wide, showcasing yellowing teeth. "There'll be a reward if you save me."

This was all wrong. He was too frail to have been here for only one night, and the way he spoke…his mannerisms… "Who are you? Who are you really?"

He squeezed his eyes shut for a beat. "Blake Anthony Yarrow. Born December the twenty-third to Marie and Byron Yarrow." He offered me that awful smile of his. "See, I remember. I still remember."

"Blake…" Serath said, his tone gentle. "How long have you been here? In your cell?"

"Oh…Um…Well. Let's see…" He dipped into the shadows for several minutes. "That's five and five and ten, and then another ten…" His voice dropped to a mumble.

I moved closer to Serath. "What's he doing?"

"I think he's counting."

"Two and a half…and a few…" Yarrow said finally.

"Two and a half days?" Serath asked.

Yarrow's chuckle morphed into a raspy laugh that dissolved into a coughing fit.

"Hey, you okay?" I stepped toward the bars. Serath grabbed my elbow and pulled me back.

"Careful," he warned.

Oh shit, I'd forgotten about the charge on our bars.

"Are you all right?" Serath called out to Yarrow.

"Fine, I'm fine…just…two and a half days? If only…only it was that…No. I've been here for two and a half years and…thirty-two days."

What the fuck? "That can't be." But none of this made sense and maybe… "Serath, I don't think that's Yarrow."

"Yes, I am," the man in the cell opposite said. "I'm Yarrow. I am Blake Anthony Yarrow. Me. Me! Not him. Never him ."

"That's right." A figure appeared to our left. "You are." Blake Yarrow, as we remembered him—tall and strong—fell to a crouch beside the gaunt Yarrow's cell. "You can sleep now, Blake. I'll wake you when it's time to go home."

The Blake in the cell shrank away from the bars, biting back a sob. "Please…please give it back…give me back my face."

"Soon," the Yarrow outside our cells said. "Very soon." He stood slowly and the face that we'd come to know rippled and shifted, his nose sharpening, jaw broadening before snapping back to Yarrow's face. "Cameron. Serath. It's time we had a chat."

"You're not Blake Yarrow, are you?" Serath said.

"I'm the Yarrow you know, but I am not the real Blake Yarrow. I stole his identity and his place at the academy."

I exhaled sharply, gaze flicking from him to the man in the cell, merely a lumpy shadow now.

"And Flora?" Serath asked.

"She's mine," Yarrow said. "It wasn't hard to convince the academy that a mistake had been made and that they'd hired not only me but my twin sister. The real Blake has no siblings. No family to come looking for him. He's perfect." A soft sob drifted out from the shadows of the real Blake's cell.

"I said sleep," Yarrow snapped, his voice tailing off in an echo.

The man in the cell fell silent.

"Why?" Serath asked. "Why are you doing this? Who are you really? Why are you working with the faction?"

He let out a soft laugh of surprise. "Oh, Serath, I'm not working for the faction. I am the faction."

Blake's confession sat in the silence between us for several stunned seconds before I found my voice.

"What's your real name?" Serath demanded.

"It hardly matters now," our fake Yarrow said. "You've known me as Blake Yarrow, so we'll keep it that way." He smiled. "I like this skin. This…persona."

Yes, we knew him, and he'd helped us. Been a friend to us… "Why are you doing this? Any of it. You're not evil."

His hard expression softened a fraction. "No. I'm not evil, Cameron. But this world is. The people are, and things need to change."

"And you're going to change them?" Serath asked. "How? By letting the gray back in and wiping out this world? By killing Cameron and sucking the soul out of innocent goyles to create graynites?"

His expression pinched. "All necessary things to achieve a higher goal. There are powerful relics beyond the rift. Artifacts that we can use to heal this world and make it a better place."

"You're telling us your motives are altruistic?" Serath scoffed. "Bullshit."

"You're right," Yarrow said. "I have other reasons. Personal reasons."

I needed to know, to understand why the man I trusted and believed in, a man I'd looked up to, would betray us like this. "Tell us. We deserve to know, don't you think?"

He seemed to consider this for a moment. "I suppose you do." He chewed on his cheeks. "I've never spoken my story, not in all these years. But I suppose there is a first time for everything. Where to start? My origins? Yes, that will do." His eyes glowed amber in the gloom as he continued. "I'm no simple man, Cameron. I never was and never will be, and because of that, I lost everything. How old do you think I am?"

"I don't know."

"Centuries. Too many to count. They kept me bound. Me and my twin. They used our power, our magic, for their own ends."

"Who?"

"The witches. The covens. We were their secret. They used us time and time again, but the last time, things did not go as planned." The corner of his mouth lifted. "The last time they used us, I succeeded in breaking free, but in doing so, I lost my better half."

My heart pounded hard in my chest. "What are you talking about?"

"The ritual to close the rift was powered not by the covens but by me and Flora. We're what you call conduits to the weave. Our bodies, our souls, can channel power, and because of it, we have been used for centuries by the witches who claimed to own us.

"When the rift occurred, it was no accident. A small sect, growing in the shadows, succeeded in opening the breach. They hoped to obtain relics spoken of in ancient texts. The sect was made up of human scholars, what you might call men of science —people you now know as alchemists. At that time, neither the witches nor the goyles were aware of their existence. The alchemists wanted power to rival the witches but were unable to control the fallout.

"Naturally, the gargoyles came to the witches, begging them to help close the rift, and Flora and I were brought out of our prison to be used in the ritual that would create the mystical implosion device. It wasn't the first time we'd been abused in this way, and we were resigned to our fate.

"But as the ritual continued, we sensed that something was wrong. The power coming through us felt different. Tainted. Other. It burned us, and the distribution was all wrong. It flowed more through Flora than me, searing her, hurting her." His eyes took on a faraway look as if he was peering into the past. "She screamed in agony, her skin glowing with an overload of energy. I slammed against the wards of the arcane circle, bellowing at the top of my lungs for them to stop. That they were killing her. That it was too much, but they kept chanting. Kept channeling and fueling their device, and my sister…" His voice cracked, and he paused, swallowing back emotion. "My sister burned in front of my eyes, swallowed by arcane flame. Only then did they realize. Only then did they stop.

"Their device was complete. My sister was dead. But I wasn't done. I was still connected to the weave, to the strange, tainted power, and I continued to channel, and they couldn't stop me because my sister's death had dispelled the magic binding us. I was free for the first time in centuries. I let the power flood me, pushing it out into the world to annihilate the witches. I didn't care if I died. There was no point in living without Flora, but in that moment, I was somewhere else. In a place where the past met the future and the present stood still, I saw the cosmos. I saw it all—the pain, torment, and injustice. I saw what lay beyond the rift—relics gleaming bright. One that can heal any wound, one that grants wishes, another that can turn back time, but the one that called to me the most was a relic that can bring back the dead.

"When I surfaced from this other place, the room was empty. The witches dead. The device I'd been forced to power gone. I was weakened, and so I ran, taking the knowledge of what lay beyond the rift with me."

His sister was dead.

Flora was dead. "Who's been at the academy with you? The Flora we know…"

"A remnant. A memory. I created her. She is everything Flora was."

The last thing I wanted right now was to feel any empathy for him, but I couldn't help it. He'd been used and abused. The witches had killed his sister. He'd been alone…

"I'm sorry for what they did to you."

He snorted softly. "When I first met you…When I discovered Derek, I was incensed. I believed you were exploiting his power. It helped me feel justified in wanting you dead, but that isn't who you are. I realized soon enough that you would give your life to protect the people you love, which is why I hated that I'd have to kill you."

Serath bristled.

"Calm down," Yarrow said. "Killing her is no longer necessary. If you cooperate, she can live." His gaze flicked back to me. "I want you to know that I would have brought you back from the dead. I would have reunited you with Serath once the world had been put to rights, once all the people who abuse power were made to pay for their sins."

Who did he think he was? God?

"So you've found a way to open the rift, and you need me," Serath said. "Say that you succeed in opening the rift, how will you get your relic? The air is toxic."

"Not to me," Yarrow said. "I told you that the weave felt different when I channeled it a century ago while the rift was open. What I felt were the threads of a different weave, one that exists beyond the rift. Those threads settled in me. Echo within me to this day. The atmosphere will have no effect on me."

Shit, maybe he was a god.

"All right, then, say you get your relic," Serath said. "How will you close the rift? The air might not be toxic to you, but it is to everyone else."

His smile sent a chill down my spine. "I wasn't the only one that the weave touched that day a century ago. Many souls were touched, creating humans and supernaturals with the ability to withstand the gray. How do you think I was able to form the faction?"

"Honestly, I thought you teamed up with the people that opened the rift in the first place."

"I did, for a time. Enough to discover the secrets they'd harvested. But those alchemists are gone. A new generation has been born. One that is infiltrated into the highest reaches of the goyle and human government. We are everywhere. We are the future."

Oh god. He planned to change the world. To wipe out goodness knows how many people. "Yarrow, I understand why you'd think this way. You were treated abysmally, and Flora…I can only begin to imagine the pain of losing her, but think of how many families you'll tear apart if you do this."

"Sacrifices needed to be made for the greater good."

"Pretty certain the witches said the same thing when using you and your sister."

His eyes flashed dangerously. "What they did was vile. A slow death. An imprisonment. They used us for their own gains. I am not like them. Once I have the power, I'll make sure that no one is exploited ever again. And you're going to help me, Serath. You'll come willingly. You'll let Ubron take control and shift to his graynite form. Comply and Cameron lives. Fight me and I will kill her, and I won't bring her back."

Serath's shoulders drooped. "You've been listening to us all this time?"

"No. Not till recently. After the elite exam attack failed, I knew I had to keep a closer ear on things, and so I bugged the feline."

Taz? He'd bugged Taz?

"It's been frustrating only catching snippets of conversation depending on which room the feline strays into, but I heard enough."

"You could have fake kidnapped yourself at any time and had us come save you," Serath said. "Why wait till now?"

"There was no need to unduly distress Flora. I had time."

"The remnant?"

His jaw ticked. "She's more than just a remnant."

He hadn't wanted to hurt her. Frighten her. He'd become attached to her. There was still good in him. There had to be.

"The machine is ready now," he continued. "The stars are aligned, and the weave is at its most powerful tonight."

My heart sank, stomach hollowing.

Tonight…They were going to open the rift tonight.