Chapter Twenty-Five - The key
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The key
NICK’S VOICE CARRIED over the raindrops, “Come on, we’ll get that bandaged.”
My eyes dropped to my arm, tracing the singed and frayed edges where a string of light magic had sliced through my top. The wound tore and got worse as we ran. With all the adrenaline coursing through me, I hadn’t focused too hard on it.
I took his hand, he helped me to a stand. So many questions spun in my mind, pieces of a puzzle that didn’t quite fit together. So many people in prisoner jumpsuits were killed. Then they turned on us. I wondered how he ended up there, in the graveyard, and what it meant. He had to have known something more about what we saw there.
His white hair reflected the warm light as we walked around to the front of the building. Nick opened the door in front of me. I stared up at the “Ares Signature Suites” sign as we walked through.
The rain stopped pouring on us, though it seemed like neither of us cared about it in the first place. My wet clothes now dripped onto a marble floor. I gazed up at warm beige walls, outlined in black trim, up to elegant crystal chandeliers. The moment we entered, a woman rushed to us from behind a desk.
“Good evening, Mr. Ares. The weather is dreadful outside,” she said, looking us over with soft eyes. “Anything I can get you this evening?”
“I’ll just be heading up,” said Nick.
She waved a hand. “Well then, let me get that for you.” She smiled at me, crinkling her eyes after she made a portal.
Nick gave her a look, she returned the slightest of nods. “Thank you, Delores,” he added, and we stepped through.
We entered a foyer, a large window looked out to the town in front of me, draped with black curtains, matching the trim. The warm beige walls matched the dark wood furniture, with light brown armchairs. While it appeared like an upscale hotel, warm and cozy touches were all around, reminding me of the decor in the bar I was in earlier today. Everything in my body felt so detached, I had a hard time believing that could have only been this afternoon.
“Delores won’t say anything to anyone about your arrival here. You don’t have to worry about more academy gossip.” His hand went to the back of his neck. “I have no idea if they recognized us. The shadows kept us hidden most of the time. Thankfully, I don’t believe they’d even recognized you as a student.” He stared at my clothes. Shock of the night still reflected on his face, making me wonder if he really didn’t know the extent of what was going to happen by going there tonight.
“Who were those people? What were you doing there?” I asked, wrapping my arms around myself.
He opened one of the doors in the foyer, and we walked into what looked like a large living room. A light flicked on, bathing the room in a dim orange glow. One wall held floor-to-ceiling tinted windows. Black bookshelves were filled with books a little out of order, as if they were used often. Books were stacked on a low coffee table between two soft-looking couches. Nick gestured for me to have a seat.
The moment I stepped forward, I said, “I remember them.” The words just came out of me, I didn’t know why. I was still in shock from seeing the same hooded figures that plagued my nightmares, along with dealing with flashbacks that I hadn’t remembered in a long time. It was like my mind refused to remember, as if that time of my life was locked away and just now coming to the surface in pieces that had me stunned.
I was a mess of mud and water, but I sat on the couch anyway. It didn’t seem to bother him at all. I stared down the room to a sleek-looking kitchen, completely in the dark.
His whole body stilled, I hadn’t noticed until looking over at him. His dark green eyes nearly bulged out of his head. “What?”
“I’ve seen them before. The way they acted made me think it was the same people, but they could have been different. Who are they?” I asked again, in a firm tone. After what happened tonight, I needed answers about whatever freak thing I walked into.
“They’re a secret society.” He moved to sit on the arm of the couch a couple of feet beside me.
There was more he was clearly holding back. It was like even after what we went through, he still didn’t trust anyone. I needed answers. I didn’t know who they were there—I didn’t even know they were actually real until tonight. Now it was all I could think about. Fear raced through me like ice through my veins. “Caleb’s parents were there, and they’re council members.” I stared at him, hoping for more. He had to have known because he’d been following Caleb around.
He let out an uneven breath and reluctantly added, “Yes, Camille and Graham. Most of them are council members. It’s important that you never let anyone know what you saw tonight, it would put your life in danger. No one, Harper. Not even your phone is safe.”
It was easy enough to tell from what I saw tonight that those people were dangerous, but I had already been warned about this before. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone. Do you know who they are?”
“Only a few,” he said. “Those I do know are my leads to figuring out more about their operation.”
Perhaps, if I told my own story to the only person who seemed to know who they were, I might finally have been able to make sense of what happened. I stared into the dark kitchen from my spot on the couch, drawing my knees back up. The words already wanted to bubble out of me, to make sense of everything becoming vivid at the forefront of my mind. “They were there that night, when our parents died. They wore cloaks just like those. It felt the same when I saw them again.”
“What do you mean? You were there—in the building?”
His gaze could be felt on me without looking. I nodded.
“There were no reports of children in the building,” he said, as if he had the reports memorized, when I had never even looked at them.
“I was the only child, and I got out before anyone arrived.” I kept my voice low to steady the shaking. “I, um… threw a tantrum, so they’d have to bring me with them.” I paused, details that were pushed down for so long flooded into my mind as if they were only yesterday. “They worked a lot, so I missed them. I promised to be quiet so I could stay with them for the day.”
He leaned forward. “What did you see in there?” he murmured quietly. I could tell he was ready to hang onto every word.
Tears pricked my eyes as the memory flashed before me completely. “Fire. We were in the council building, the adults started arguing, and the building caught fire. It all happened really fast. The doors and windows were blocked with rising flames. They kept trying to put it out but they couldn’t.” I shuddered, then felt Nick’s hand on my shoulder, rubbing across my back.
I kept going, it all started to fall from me. I didn’t want to keep it in at all anymore. “All of them focused on the door, even when it burned them. They could only make an extremely small opening. Everyone told me to hurry through, placing me in front of it. It felt like it wasn’t real. My father told me not to tell anyone, no matter what. He said it was a secret, that no one could ever know that I was there and that I needed to get out and hide. I looked through the small opening, only big enough for me to barely crawl through. Ducking below, the figures in black cloaks were on the other side. There were so many out there while it burned, doing nothing to help us. I just stood there and started crying while everyone in the building told me to go. They were choking on the smoke.” I wiped my eyes, still feeling the heat of the fire. “My mom kissed me. This woman grabbed me, her eyes studied me so hard that I stopped crying.” I looked up to Nick. His jaw was set hard as he listened to every word, his thumb brushing over my shoulder still.
Staring into his dark green eyes, it wasn’t until now that I could clearly remember their faces. I knew they were the council members because it was a council meeting, but I was so scared, leaving them as they burned, that I blocked it all out. For years, most nights I’d wake up from night terrors, without being able to remember the details.
Taking a shaky breath, I continued, “The woman looked just like you. I—I think it was your mother. I saw her picture in the library, she looked so familiar then. She shoved me through the opening because I wasn’t moving. By the time I crawled out, the cloaks were gone, and my uncle was standing there looking terrified on the other side. He took me and told me to hide in the bushes. I was still crying, but he told me not to make a sound, so I didn’t.”
Nick was silent for a moment that stretched. His hand held on my back, radiating warmth in that one spot. Something tight lingered in his expression. Finally, he said, “I believe those are the same people we saw tonight, at least the same group with some of those responsible in it. They would have killed you if they knew you were in there, not knowing what you might have seen or heard. Just like they would hunt us down if they knew we were there tonight. It’s a secret group working within the council that had to have set the magic on the building. Our parents would have made it out otherwise.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “But the other half of the council did show up.” Watching his brows furrow, I said, “Not at first. It was just my uncle while I watched, curled up in a bush. With the building mostly in flames, my uncle tried water magic to put it out. It wasn’t working. He must have realized it was light magic burning so hot, creating the flames that barred the windows and doors.I was too young to understand what was happening, but I remember when my uncle switched to shadow magic and it started working against the fire. When the council showed up, he insisted it was light causing the flames—that it was light and not fire. Either way, it wouldn’t stop burning, there was so much. The council didn’t believe him. It was too late anyway.”
“They let him go? And they never found out you were there?”
Staring blankly ahead, the words kept pouring from me. “They took his magic away for illegal use. They left him with a little to keep his sanity. They said they couldn’t risk the shadows growing in him and taking over after his use.Because he was trying to save council members, he didn’t get into more trouble. I watched them take his magic, almost like they did with the prisoners in the graveyard. They left him on the ground until he woke up. Eventually, they asked him questions about what he knew. I stayed in the bushes until they were gone in the morning. I think it messed with his memory because he didn’t really seem to remember much. Then, he took me to the States and we got a fresh start. I wasn’t supposed to be at the meeting in the first place, and he hated when I brought it up. Eventually, I just pushed everything away.”
Nick said, “The council that showed up so fast were likely those who set the light magic. I have no idea how your uncle got away alive after witnessing that. There was a news story that a passerby tried to put it out but might have made it worse, which prevented them from helping. They made the whole thing look like it was awry magic cast from the council in the building.”
“It all looked so similar to tonight,” I said, still having a hard time letting it sink in that it wasn’t an accident. That they were likely murdered by those same people tonight. When I saw them tonight, remembering everything, I knew it had to have been connected. “I wondered if you somehow knew that I was there and that’s why you’ve hated me.”
“I don’t hate you,” he said softly.
“It doesn’t feel that way.”
He stayed silent a moment before he sighed. “And it would have happened if you were there or not. With the dark magic they are using, I doubt anyone else would have made it out alive.” He swallowed, his voice lowered even more. “That’s why you struggle with fire and light magic, it’s fear. ”
I nodded. “I thought it was fire. That was all I could see all around me, all I could feel.”
“And the shadows you used so casually on the training field and tonight? That’s very advanced for a first-year using illegal magic.”
“I don’t mind using shadows, it never feels like it will take over. It might have saved everyone if they listened. Except, I suppose there was never really a chance of them listening, not if they were the same group who killed all those people tonight. Water and shadow were what came to save me, my uncle. And he likes plants.” I tried to laugh but it came out as a sort of sob.
“That’s understandable,” he said. His hand went to his chin in thought.
I inhaled a deep breath, turning to stare at him. The warm glow of the light in the room didn’t do anything to soften his sharp features, but there was a softer expression in those normally cold eyes.
“Are—are we…” I started. His eyebrows shot up and a mask fell over his face. It didn’t deter me. That was a lot we went through tonight, and it all happened to be connected to my past, our past. “Are we the only ones looking in on them? Have you been doing this alone?”
He nodded slowly.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
He smiled sadly, then he surprised me. He opened up like I just did, but I wasn’t ready for the words that came from him. “Release the magic from them and prevent anyone from taking that much power again, once I have proof of exactly who was involved. The council doesn’t want people using shadows because it can fight against what they are doing if someone had control of it. Light and shadows are opposites and also so similar. For taking over the Realm, light magic, enough of it has the potential to do more but it would have been impossible to get enough of it for a group of people to take over. The secret society can’t control shadows as easily in large amounts. Their years of siphoning and dark rituals make me believe that it’s not so impossible anymore.”
We sat in silence. I felt sick from everything that happened tonight. So much of what I believed was a lie, and my uncle had been hurt. I really believed now he couldn’t have remembered it. I stared down, my clothes were drying with mud caking on me.
Nick leaned forward, glancing at the cut on my arm. “May I please clean that for you?”
I stood abruptly. “Can I take a shower?”
His throat bobbed with a swallow, his white hair fell a little in his eyes. “Yeah, sure.”
I followed him into a dark bedroom. A large, king-sized bed took up the center of the room, draped in black silk sheets. Books were stacked on a side table, a stack of papers sat beside them with a pen from the academy on top. This must have been his bedroom.
His hand brushed my arm to lead me to the bathroom. The bathroom was completely made of tile and glass with a plush rug that I accidentally dragged mud onto. The room was cold but he cast warm air magic and it heated instantly.
He placed a hand into the glass shower stall, turning the water on before facing me. He looked completely stunned, like his mind was whirling .
“You can’t be seen in this outfit, not anywhere, never again,” he said.
“Okay. I wasn’t attached to it anyway,” I murmured.
“I’ll find you something to wear. Once you’re out, I’ll patch up your arm.”
“Yes, sir,” I said at the sudden change in his voice, putting on his professor tone.
He arched a brow, leaning in the door frame. His eyes turned heated, despite the mess we both were, despite how much we both revealed to each other, and that we had just been running for our lives. I found I didn’t mind. Instead, I liked that I could finally reach those memories that had been mostly blocked off and being able to tell someone without feeling an ounce of guilt or judgment. Then he turned, quickly heading out, making me think I imagined the quick look.
“Hold on,” he said over his shoulder.
A moment later, he was back with a large white tee shirt and pajama bottoms. He cleared his throat. “I think these will fit. It’s all I have in the suite. I can ask Delores for something else.”
“These will be fine,” I said, without really looking at them and started to undress.
He closed the door.