Chapter 3
Chapter Three
“Sunny, it’s so good to see you again,” Mr. Silk Tie croons.
“Have a seat?” He motions to a chair across from the sofa.
I plant my feet, declining to move farther into the room.
Seemingly unperturbed by my refusal, he offers me a pleasant smile.
Turning to a blonde woman in the corner of the room, he says, “Petra, if you wouldn’t mind, I think this conversation could use some bottle bravery. ”
Petra moves the cart out of the way and pours four glasses of champagne.
“Sunny,” he growls.
“Mr. Pretend Civil Servant.” I match his tone. He chuckles under his breath, amusement dancing in his striking silver eyes while I hold back fear from slipping through mine. Dmitri would have killed me for this fuckup.
“Sit,” he reasserts as the man behind me moves closer to my back.
I decide (totally of my own volition, and not because I’m flanked by a man larger than the entire Packers’ starting lineup) that whatever’s happening is going to occur regardless of whether I’m sitting or standing, so I take a seat. Petra places a glass champagne in my hand.
“Are you aware of why we’re here?” Mr. Silk Tie asks.
Nope. I do know, however, that I’ve majorly screwed up by entering a suite on the sixth floor without an exit strategy.
If the rippling biceps under those jackets are any indication of the heat these guys are packing, I’m outmanned and outgunned.
I should’ve listened to my intuition when that first little alarm bell went off downstairs.
They set a trap, and I walked right into it, vagina first.
My only option now is to try and talk my way out of this room.
“I know you’re not some government lackey, not with taste in booze and shoes like that.” I raise my eyebrows indignantly, taking a chance and pretending I know a whole hell of a lot more than I do.
“You’re right. I’m not some government lackey as you so eloquently put it.
” He takes a sip of his champagne. “I do work in government. I just didn’t specify which one.
I’ve never lied to you. You, on the other hand, have lied plenty,” he chastises me like he can read my inner monologue. “Like your name. Sunny, is it?”
“Yep, that’s my name, just like my disposition,” I deadpan. Covering my nervousness with bravado has always worked for me before.
“See, I don’t think it is.” He tosses a black folder on the coffee table between us. “I think you’re Vladlena Solis.”
I keep my face blank, refusing to react to that name.
“The rumored, but never confirmed, daughter of Adrik Solis, and the supposed only surviving sister to the deceased Dmitri Solis.”
My heart stutters, and I take a sip of my champagne, giving me time to wipe my face of all expression.
“I know you’ve been running since you were born, moving locations a few times a year. Look at it.” He tilts his chin toward the folder.
I hesitantly flip it open. The first page is a blurry CCTV photo of me and Dmitri outside a gas station in Florida from a decade ago.
I stifle the pained gasp from the unexpected startle of seeing his face.
I turn it over to find a photo of us from a grocery store checkout kiosk in Montana from a few years later.
“We’ve been trying to collect you for a while. I’m told you’re quite slippery,” Mr. Not-Quite-Pretend Civil Servant remarks.
I flip through the other photos, each of me and Dmitri in different locations, always on the run, caught on security cameras or in the background of someone’s family vacation photo, getting closer and closer to the present.
Until my first solo photo, from two years ago in South Carolina.
I wasn’t there long. It must have been taken not even a month after Dmitri died.
The final image is a crystal-clear photo of me behind the bar in the Huxley lounge.
“I’ve learned a lot about you over the last week,” he says. “What I don’t know is what you know about yourself. So, Miss Solis, I ask you again, do you know why we are here?”
They’re here because I messed up, and judging by these photos, I was never really that far from being caught. Dmitri and I thought we were so good at evading and vanishing. I guess we were just scraping by.
The truth is, I don’t know who these people are, not really.
I’m not even sure why we were hiding or what I’m running from.
I know The Rules, but not the details. The details were always Dmitri’s domain.
However, it’s not hard to deduce. Why would anyone run their whole lives?
Never putting down roots, never keeping any friends, never knowing how long they will have a bed to sleep in or where their next meal might come from?
You only do that if your life depends on it.
Dmitri made that one detail clear: Our lives depended on it.
I swallow the lump rising in my throat. “You’re here to kill me?”
“Hardly. Miss Solis, if we wanted you dead, we’ve had plenty of opportunities,” Mr. Macallan 25 says, pointing to the folder before glancing behind me to my linebacker of a shadow. “And I certainly wouldn’t waste good champagne on someone I intended to kill.”
“I thought it might be a last-drink kind of situation,” I mumble. The man behind me barks out a laugh, and Mr. Designer Shoes throws him a sharp glance.
“Miss Solis,” he continues, “I’m here to offer you a deal, an opportunity really. What do you know of your family?”
Very little. But I’m not going to tell him that. “What kind of a deal?” I narrow my eyes. “Who even are you?”
He lets out a sigh. “Kian Amani.” His gaze is steady and scrutinizing, judging my reaction—of which I have none.
Not just because I’m purposefully keeping myself as emotionless as possible, but because his name doesn’t ring a single bell.
“This is my…associate Teariki”—he gestures to the giant—“and my assistant, Petra.” He tips his head toward the blonde. “We’re traveling from Sidera.”
I blink twice at him.
“We are Sidus-gifted, also known as magicae.”
“I don’t think those are words,” I scoff.
“More of a word than Cynar,” the man behind me chuckles under his breath. I have to force myself not to crack a smile.
Wait, maybe he was lying and he really didn’t like the drink I made him? Ugh, why would I care?
Mr. Macallan 25—Kian—looks up at the ceiling, as though if he squints hard enough, he’ll find extra patience up there.
“As you’re aware, you’re also one of us.
At least half seraphim, although who your mother is, and thus your full lineage, remains unclear to us.
However, since Dmitri was half human, we have reason to suspect the two of you have different mothers. ”
As confusion hits me like the MAX light rail train, I can’t keep the emotion off my face any longer.
“No, there’s been some type of mix up. Dmitri wasn’t—I’m not—” My thoughts are coming at me too fast as I struggle to explain.
My head feels cloudy as my adrenaline rush meets a wave of relief that this must all be one big mistake.
“Sidera, sidus-gifted, seraphim? Too much alliteration, not enough clarification.” I bite my lip, wrestling with the balancing act of somehow gathering information without giving any away.
Knowledge is power, and I need to hold on to every ounce I have.
Kian cocks his head in that predatory way. “Sidera is where we are from. Though, it’s not so much a place as it is a state of citizenship. Sidus-gifted, magicae, is who we are, including you. It refers to those who have magical abilities.”
I picture magic wands and fairy wings, the notions ridiculous when juxtaposed to my very human life.
“Why would you think that I have magical abilities?” I scoff, trying to maintain my air of calm while knowing full well I’m either in a room with people who have lost their damn minds, or I’m embarking on a world-shattering conversation. Either way, this is dangerous.
“House Solis is a venerable magica house,” Kian expounds, his silver irises seeming to swirl, darkening and pulsing like the clouds of an oncoming thunderstorm.
I’m dizzy with confusion, like I’ve got altitude sickness and I’m standing on the high precipice of change.
“Adrik Solis was seraphim. As his daughter, you are seraphim. And it stands to reason that you would have inherited considerable magical talents. Though, I’m hoping you can enlighten us as to what they are. ”
I bite my tongue so hard a metallic tang builds in my mouth; they don’t know as much about me as they think they do.
But they do know some things about my family, and this might finally be my chance at getting answers I’ve longed for.
“Are there…others?” I push cautiously, staring down into the hazy abyss of my rapidly shifting personal ontology.
“Seraphim?” Kian cocks a dark brow.
“Solises with magic,” I clarify.
“Of course. All Solises have magic,” Kian explains.
His hand shifts from where it rests on his knee, and an inky nearly opaque wisp of a smoke-like substance, no bigger than a garter snake, slithers and dances between his fingers.
It wraps around his index finger, tracing a ring shaped scar below his knuckle.
It then travels up the back of his hand and curls around his wrist before disappearing up his shirt sleeve.
Something in my center flickers at the sight, like my heart skipping a beat.
And in this moment, I have no choice but to believe him.
I know deep down, beneath the bones of my rib cage, he’s telling an incontestable truth; magic is real.
“Though, most of the Solis line is thought to be deceased,” he adds.
My chest continues doing that strange flickering thing—heart palpitations?
“Or lost.” Teariki shrugs. “If they’re ever found, Vladislava and Vsevolod Solis would be your other closest magica relatives.”
That name cracks through the haze in my mind like a whip telling me it’s time to run.