Chapter 9
Rosabel La Rouge
We put the scrolls on the grass in the open field at the back of Madeline’s mansion. The sun would rise from the horizon in front of us, and we’d catch the first of its rays here. The sky was already gray with the coming light, and every person in the backyard was jittery with nerves.
They all looked well rested, better than the night before. They all watched me and the bracelet around my wrist like it was both a thing of wonder and the most dangerous weapon they’d ever seen. I didn’t let it get to me, of course, and it helped that Taland was right there by my side—wearing green . It suited him, even if it wasn’t his color. And the grin on his lips remained even after Madeline continued to look at him like she was disgusted by his very presence. I thought he thrived on her judgmental attitude—he kept winking at her every time she dared to meet his eyes.
I loved him a little more for it.
“Just to be clear,” said Radock Tivoux, who wasn’t all that happy that he’d had to spend the night at Madeline’s. He seemed more aggravated than he had been the night before. “If this works and we have a location of the Army, we will be going there ourselves. We will not be sending soldiers to do the work for us.”
Silence for a moment.
Then Helen Paine, wearing white pants and a white shirt and her hair in a braid that made her look a decade younger, turned to him and said, “Of course. We’ll all be there. Madeline will be in charge of the IDD soldiers who will assist us. But Hill will be ours to defeat.” Her eyes suddenly stopped on me. “Just as soon as we receive that bracelet, we will be on our way.”
Ice in my veins.
“The bracelet is not going anywhere,” Taland said. “It belongs to Rosabel.”
Then Flora stepped forward and said, “I believe we can all agree that that magic will be much more effective and useful in our hands.”
And she could have been right, except… “You can’t use it,” I reminded her. None of them could.
“I’m sure Nicholas could. He is Laetus,” said Helen.
“Except he hasn’t received the power of that Rainbow,” I said, smiling bitterly. “That’s why you were going to kill me last night—or did you forget?” Because I hadn’t.
The women looked at one another, then back at me.
“It could help us win, that bracelet,” Helen said.
“You are but a child. To join us in this fight is suicide. We shall have the bracelet,” said Flora, and it sounded like a damn order.
“I am not a child,” I spit, stepping closer because right now I couldn’t have cared less about who she was. The shit we were in was equally deep for all of us. “And you can’t use the bracelet if I handed it over to you right now.”
“She’s right, Helen,” Radock said, playing with the bottle of water in his hands. “Don’t underestimate her—she’s tougher than she looks.”
I’ll be damned.
“We’re talking about—” Flora started, screaming now, but Helen stopped her when she turned to me and said, “Would you?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Would you hand over the bracelet and let us try?”
My heart fell all the way to my heels. Taland was beside me in an instant, his hand around mine. “Easy, baby. Breathe,” he told me, and I was breathing. But a part of me wanted to say yes to Helen because what if they were right and Nicholas could actually really use this bracelet as his anchor? What if we didn’t have to go with them and die in a fight with David Hill—what if?
Another part of me thought me a coward for even having that thought, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t a coward—I was trying to be rational here. Because as much as I hated it, Flora was right. Compared to them, I was a child, and if any of them could use the bracelet, they would be a hundred times more powerful than I could ever be. This was the Council we were talking about—the most powerful people in the world.
“Rosabel?” Taland whispered when I raised my hand and looked at the bracelet around my wrist.
Suddenly it had gotten so heavy. “If it works…” I started, but I couldn’t even speak the words out loud— we’ll stay behind. Goddess, I didn’t want to stay behind. I wanted to look Hill in the eye again and fight him until my dying breath if I had to.
“If it works, our chances of winning against him become much better,” said Helen.
I looked up at her. “And if it doesn’t?”
Silence in the air. The sky had become so light so suddenly, and the sun had just peeked from behind the horizon in the distance.
“If it doesn’t, we’ll return it to you.”
I searched for a hint on her face that would tell me if she was being truthful. I found none.
“Do I have your word?”
Are you seriously doing this!? my own mind screamed at me.
“You have my word,” Helen solemnly said.
I took the bracelet off.
“Rosabel, you don’t have to do this,” Taland told me, but he knew, too. He knew that it was for the better, that if one of them could use this bracelet, winning would be guaranteed.
“It’s okay, I want to,” I lied—but it wasn’t all a lie. Just half.
Helen came over and took the bracelet from my hand without a single expression on her face.
My stomach turned. Bile in my throat while I watched her put it on and close her eyes and look up at the sky, then chant, whispering Iridian words with her hand raised.
Try once, and twice, then try again the third time, harder.
It didn’t work.
“ Breathe,” Taland said.
But I couldn’t breathe easy when Flora took the bracelet next and put it around her wrist, either.
“You’re wasting time, but what the hell.” Radock shrugged. “We’ve got a few more minutes to kill. It’s not going to work.”
Helen stepped closer to him—and I could have sworn that she wasn’t looking at him the same way she did last night. She was… wary of Radock now. Almost like she feared him, which made me wonder about what had happened in this mansion while Taland and I had been locked up in my room, how many conversations had taken place within those walls.
“How do you know?” she asked him as we all watched Flora chant—in vain.
“Because we tried it,” Radock said.
“All of us. Didn’t work,” said Aurelia from the other side where she stood next to Zachary.
“It will for Nicholas,” said Helen, and that’s why when Flora was done, the others didn’t bother. The Redfire, angry now, put the bracelet on the Mud councilman’s hand.
His eyes were wide as he looked at me and stepped forward, almost like he was saying sorry. I liked Nicholas; he had never hated me, not since the first time he saw me. Maybe because he understood or maybe because he was a good guy? Didn’t really matter.
But the bracelet didn’t give him magic, either.
He tried. With four spells he tried, called up simple ones, then more advanced, with his eyes open, then closed, whispering, then screaming until the fresh sunlight reached us.
It didn’t fucking work.
And when he was done trying, he didn’t hesitate. He strode over to me with a smile, like he was glad of the outcome, and he put the bracelet around my wrist while Taland loomed over him at his side, watching his every movement like a hawk.
“There. Where it belongs,” said Nicholas, smiling down at me, his brown eyes warm. He patted my hand and stepped back, looked up at Taland. He just nodded at him, then went back to his place near Ferid.
Nobody spoke for the longest time, as long as it took for the sunlight to finally fall on the ground and touch those parchments laid out in wait.
It hadn’t worked . The bracelet refused to work for any of them—the most powerful mages in the world. Yet I felt it when it touched me, like it was a living thing. Like it was whispering to me—just like it did the night before. It whispered.
Taland took my hand and pulled me to the side, toward where they’d set the open scrolls. Everybody was already standing around them, eyes wide and breaths held.
Everybody except Madeline, who was on the other side, a few feet away from the rest of us, watching me without an ounce of emotion in those cold amber eyes.
A strange feeling settled over me, one I’d never really felt before. Detachment. I almost saw strings being cut between us in the new light, as if my mind was trying to tell me that nothing tied me to her anymore. I was my own person now—because I had power. Because I had Taland.
And, most importantly, because I’d never had her.
“Look,” someone said, their voice full of wonder, and it was Aurelia with both her fingers pointing at the parchments, but I couldn’t see anything yet. Just my parchment, those shapes that looked like mountains—that’s all.
“I don’t…” Helen began, but her voice trailed off just as my breath caught in my throat.
Because slowly, so slowly, shimmer was appearing on the surface of the parchments that had been empty to my eyes until now. That same shimmery ink that painted the one I’d been given, was now creating shapes on every inch of those yellowed surfaces.
Within the minute, the ink had created all that it was going to create, and it was really difficult to make out, too, because it was almost translucent when the light hit it right, and…
“It makes no sense,” Helen said, kneeling so she could see it better. “None of this makes sense.”
And she was right.
“A puzzle,” said Zachary. “It’s a puzzle.”
“Like the ones we used to do when we were kids,” said Aurelia, lowering to her knees on the grass and picking up the first parchment.
“Yeah, I remember those,” said Kaid, squatting down, too. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”
“I can’t really see anything,” said Natasha, and she was trying, leaning closer, squinting her eyes. “What puzzle—I can’t see shit!”
Some laughed. Even I was tempted to crack a smile.
Taland said, “Wanna play?”
I shook my head. “How about I just watch you?” Not because I was lazy or didn’t want to help, but because I was still processing all these feelings. It was amazing how I could postpone feeling something for a while if needed, but then when it got to me, it got to me good.
The Regah chamber. Seeing Taland chained to a wall, knowing he had been tortured. Having the Council almost kill me by sucking out my energy not even half a day before, and then having them all trying to get my bracelet to work because they thought they could do a better job, be more powerful with it.
Regret coursed in my veins as thick as blood—I shouldn’t have let that woman have it. I shouldn’t have let any of them touch my bracelet; I should have kept it myself. After all, the only reason these people hadn’t killed me was because Taland stopped them and offered them something they wanted. The only reason these people allowed me to have my bracelet back was because they couldn’t use it, and they were afraid of Hill. Afraid of what he could do. Afraid they wouldn’t be enough, and so they’d agreed to work with Selem. With me.
And it made me wonder, when this was over, what exactly was going to happen to us? What would the Council do to us, assuming we managed to defeat Hill and make it out of that fight alive?
Too much. It was way too much to think about right now, so I didn’t. I just kept my eyes on the others who were moving the scrolls around, the Mergenbachs, Kaid and Taland, Helen and Flora. Even George the Bluefire had decided to join them, too curious not to.
They weren’t bickering, which was surprising. They actually worked together, and they were confident that they knew what they were doing, even if it didn’t look like it to the rest of us. I mean, it was shimmery, almost transparent ink on old as dirt parchment.
But when I noticed Madeline coming toward me slowly, I forgot to pay attention to what they were doing completely and focused on her. I didn’t turn, didn’t make eye contact, pretended I didn’t even see her when she stopped at my side. Just her presence had such a good hold over me that it took me a few moments to get myself under control.
“Here,” she said, raising her hand, and it was impossible not to look down. My father’s ring was in the middle of her palm, just like the last time she’d found me when I was unconscious.
Shivers ran down my back.
“It was in your pocket. Take it if you want,” she continued.
I did. Of course, I did—even if that ring was no longer my anchor, it was still mine. My father’s. I inspected the golden band and the red ruby in the middle, and my heart ached. It was too big for my fingers, so I put it in my pocket again, just for good luck. Maybe it was time to finally take it to a jeweler and make it my size. I wanted it on my finger the whole time. Just as soon as this was over, I figured.
“There’s a good chance you’ll die if this thing actually works and we find David,” she said when she realized she wasn’t going to get a thank you any time soon.
“And what—you want me to leave you my money?” Goddess forbid that she would care about me, and we both knew it.
“This isn’t about money,” she said. “I am not a good person, Rosabel. I couldn’t be one to achieve the things I wanted, and I’ve made my peace with it. This isn’t about me, either. But if this works, you really might die soon. If you do, I’ll bury you next to my daughter, and if you don’t…”
Her voice trailed off and I resisted the urge to rub the goose bumps from my arms. Taland must have noticed her approaching me so his eyes were on me, on her, watching us intently as he pretended to be focused on the parchments.
“If I don’t, what?” I spit because how dare she speak about my mother now ? Call her her daughter now?
“If you don’t, you will take the position of the IDD Director when you come back. With my guidance.”
“ No. ” I said the word so fast it was a miracle I didn’t scream it. But she must have been out of her goddamn mind if she thought I was going to ever return to the IDD as anything ever again.
“Yes, you will,” she said. “Under my guidance, you will continue to keep the power in our family.”
This time I laughed. Out loud, and people heard me, but most were busy with the parchments so they didn’t stare for long. Except for Taland.
“You really are a piece of work, you know that?”
“Yes,” said Madeline, hands folded, her hair perfectly combed and her eyes burning amber with the fresh light of the morning. “I understand what having power means, even if you don’t yet.”
“I understand?—”
“ Nothing, Rosabel. Not yet,” she cut me off. “And to paint the picture for you, had you not had power, you wouldn’t have been in a position to do something against…well, the threat of the end of the world, now, is it not?” I clamped my mouth shut. “You would have been in your room, reading or watching a movie or doing whatever it is that you would be doing, clueless that it was even happening until it was too late. It’s power that has brought you here.”
I shook my head because I actually couldn’t find it in me to argue with her about this, not now.
“Our family will continue to be the power in the front lines and trust me when I tell you that I tried to prepare Poppy for this role—I tried.” She gave me a look. “However, she doesn’t have what it takes. You do, as much as it pains me to admit it. You’re made for this.”
Made for this, she said, and it took me a good moment to understand that she wasn’t kidding. Madeline was not joking—she meant everything.
“ Never ,” I said because I wasn’t going to waste a single second more with this. That she would think I wanted to be in power so that she could be in power with me was too absurd a concept to engage in right now, so that word would suffice.
Her eyes widened.
A few feet behind her, Natasha watched me like a damn snake, her eyes as green as the grass we stood on. She had heard us, I was sure—and I was glad for it. Let everybody hear because I had nothing to hide.
Luckily, before Madeline could try to say something else, Aurelia Mergenbach shouted, “It’s working!”
My heart leaped. I rushed forward, Madeline and her dreams of power forgotten, to see the parchments on the ground in the way that they’d arranged them under the sunlight. And I saw with my own eyes how the ink, once almost translucent, was gaining color little by little, line by line, becoming a dark blue, the shimmer still there, like stars in the night sky.
Until it revealed the whole image to us, and it was a map, indeed.
It had no names and addresses, only shapes, but shapes that made sense now. The image had become whole, and the people were already trying to guess where the mountains and the curved roads and the towns that were depicted in that strange dark blue ink were—or were they cities? I, for one, had no clue what any of it was, and I didn’t even have an idea to offer. Meanwhile, Seth had his phone in his hands, reaching up his arms as far as he could, standing on his tiptoes, taking pictures of the map.
Taland came to stand by my side again. “This could be anywhere,” he said, almost like he was talking to himself more.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, taking his hand in mine. “We’ll take the day and figure out where this place is.”
I had a mind to go grab a pad and a pen like George was doing to draw the shapes so that we could see the whole thing on a smaller format, when…
“Got it!”
This from Seth.
He was grinning ear to ear as he looked at the screen of his phone, and we all narrowed our brows at him in confusion.
“You… got it?” asked Aurelia, as skeptical as the rest of us.
“Yep.”
She shook her head and whispered, “How?”
Seth shrugged. “I asked ChatGPT.”
I burst out laughing together with a few others, while we all rushed to Seth to see what his phone was telling him. He had pulled up the maps app on his phone and was showing us someplace called Triades in West Virginia. According to the map, it was about four hours away by car.
“Are you sure that’s the same?” asked Radock, and Seth zoomed out the map again to show him.
“Look,” he said, pointing at the roads, and then at the curved lines on the parchment that had come to life with sunlight. “And this town here—Franklin. And a branch of the Potomac River right here—look! And the North Folk Mountain in the west. It’s all right there.”
Hard to see with so many people trying to look at that small screen at the same time, but I could just make out everything he was saying.
Holy shit, Seth was right.
“Send it to my phone,” Kaid said.
“And mine,” said George, and Aurelia, and soon Seth was sending the location to everyone, while Taland and I stepped aside and continued to look at the beautiful shimmer on the parchments.
In the heart of it was the location we were looking for—or at least where we thought David Hill had gone to find a dead army of Laetus soldiers.
No way is this real, a part of me said, and I almost laughed at it, but how could I blame my own mind for being skeptical of this reality?
“Perria,” said Taland, putting his arm over my shoulder. “Over there—that’s Perria. It has to be.”
He was pointing at the middle of the map, right where I’d been looking, too, to those big pointy structures that could only be mountains. Five of them, two bigger, three smaller, set in an almost perfect circle.
“That’s where they buried the Army.” And the words sounded just as strange out there in the world as they did in my head.
“Assuming this map opened to Hill, that’s where we’ll find him,” Taland said.
“I can’t believe you actually memorized all that spell.” Impressed was a small word, and despite knowing that Madeline was behind me somewhere and could probably see me, I leaned in and kissed him on the side of his neck.
Shivers erupted down his arm that was over my shoulders, and I saw the hairs on his forearm rising.
He growled low in his throat. “I’ve memorized your moans and screams of pleasure even better,” he whispered, so low I would have never heard if his mouth hadn’t been right next to my ear.
Those butterflies that hid in my stomach and only ever came out when he was around went nuts.
Heat between my legs.
“Not the time,” I told him because everyone else was preoccupied with that map location and we were over here, getting turned on.
“It’s always the time, sweetness,” Taland said with a chuckle and kissed my temple. “When we’re done with Hill and we come back, every second of every day will be the exactly right time.”
Didn’t that sound like heaven. “When we’re done with Hill and come back, we’re going anyway, Taland,” I said. “We’re going far away from Maryland, to another country, maybe another continent. And we’re going to just… be .” That’s all I wanted, to just be with him, take our time together without fear and without lies and secrets keeping distance between us.
“Done,” said Taland. “We’ll go wherever you want and stay as long as you want. We don’t ever have to come back.”
He stuck his nose in my ear and sniffed hard, making me laugh a little.
“We’ll see about that. We’ll see—but first, we leave here.” Everything else we could figure out.
“Your attention, everyone,” Radock said as he stood on the other side of the map with Helen, the sun at their back. Everyone stopped talking and speculating, though most had their phones in their hands and that map on their screens.
“It seems we have a location already, and it’s only a four-hour drive,” Helen said. “Mister Tivoux and I have agreed that our best bet is to be there today, in case David already is—which we’ll know soon as we’ve sent teams to scout the area.”
“The plan is to arrive at our location by three p.m. at the latest, so that we’ll have plenty of daylight at our disposal should a fight happen with David Hill and whoever he has working for him,” Radock continued, and he was so at ease standing there with Helen, like they’d both done this a thousand times before. “Which is why we have to prepare to leave in approximately three hours.”
“By then Madeline will have agents and soldiers at the site waiting for us, and I trust they’ll remain there as backup should we need them,” Helen continued. “More will be on standby close to our location.”
“We will act right away,” Radock said. “We will engage in the fight and chances are it will be bloody.”
“Some might not make it,” Helen added so effortlessly—again, like they’d done this a thousand times before together.
“So, if you have any doubt in yourselves, by all means, stay behind.” This Radock said with a wide grin on his face.
“That is all,” Helen concluded with a nod.
“Is it just me or is my brother rather… friendly with that woman?” Taland whispered in my ear.
I shook my head—it did seem like it. “I wouldn’t trust Helen Paine even if she looked like she was in love,” I whispered back.
“And I wouldn’t trust Radock, either,” he said.
“Let’s just get inside and rest.” I pulled him toward the back door as everyone else moved for the mansion, too. Madeline was there, watching them like a hawk, chin raised and shoulders back. I imagined it was a dream come true that the Council had basically put her in charge of the IDD once again. I didn’t even glance at her until we were inside, and Taland whispered in my ear again.
“ Rest? I’m afraid you have the wrong idea about what the next three hours will look like for the two of us, baby.”
A miracle my cheeks didn’t melt off my face completely. “There’s rest there somewhere. There has to be,” I said, and he chuckled.
“Not today, there isn’t. You’re going to come again and again and again, on my cock and my fingers and my tongue. I’ve got to make the best out of these three hours because who knows how long that fight is gonna last?”
“We need to rest ,” I insisted.
“We will on our way there. Unless you want to make a couple stops…” He wiggled his eyebrows with that devilish grin, and laughter escaped me before I thought to bring my hands in front of my mouth.
He was absolutely insane because he meant it. That’s why I laughed—we were in this situation and he actually meant what he said, and if I asked him, he’d really stop while on the way to Hill to have sex with me as many times as I wanted, everything else be damned.
Then…
“Hi.”
Poppy.
Black dots in my vision for a moment, probably from the shock of hearing her voice, but Poppy was right there at the top of the stairs on the second floor, hands folded behind her back, hair neatly tied behind her head, eyes big and sparkling and her smile painfully fake as she tried to hide what she was feeling but failed.
I envied her for it, to be honest.
On instinct, I made to let go of Taland and step away from his reach, except he didn’t let me. He held me right there by his side with his arm draped around my shoulders still.
“Hey, Poppy, hi,” I said, almost choking on my own spit, and I couldn’t even tell you why I was so mortified all of a sudden.
“Hello, Poppy. Good to see you again,” Taland said, and I heard the grin in his voice just fine.
“You, too.”
I couldn’t see her hands, but I could just tell she was trying to rip her fingers off from nervousness. I realized we’d never done this before, never saw each other with guys, and that’s why it was equally weird for both of us.
“Ro, I was wondering if you wanted to grab some coffee in the kitchen?” Then she looked at Taland. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“He doesn’t,” I said before Taland could say anything. “I’ll be right there. Go ahead, Poppy.”
She didn’t even hesitate.
“No fair,” Taland muttered when she disappeared behind the stairway.
“Looks like I’ll be resting for a little bit after all,” I teased, and with a quick peck on his lips, I made to follow Poppy.
Except he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to his chest and squeezed my ass like he couldn’t fucking tell that there were others coming up the stairs. He licked the side of my neck just a little. Just to get me perfectly breathless.
“ Taland! ” I hissed, but he was already letting go.
“Don’t take too long. I’ll be waiting.”
My heart was still trying to beat out of my chest when I made it to the kitchen.