Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Not a single bite of food or sip of drink was taken as I recited my story of what Ash and I saw far beneath the factory floor. Their emotions were mostly hidden, but I could feel them in the silence. Their disbelief, sadness, rage, and fear coated the room like paint.
The little girl was the hardest to talk about, and I had to bite my cheek to keep the tears back.
The memory of her face, her tiny body going through so much pain.
My emotions were high when I saw her—I made an empty promise.
And that killed me the most, knowing I didn’t stop her pain.
I didn’t help her, and she was most likely dead by now, like Rodriquez’s little sister.
“It’s true.” Maddox leaned forward on his arms. “Under the factory, this Markos has people torturing fae for their essence and is already making this drug?” His dark eyes were incensed. We had seen the bodies, figured out what was happening, but I think deep down, many here hoped it wasn’t true.
“And it looks like they are advancing quickly.” I nodded my head.
Maddox turned slowly to Caden. “Did you know about this?”
Caden hadn’t even had the opportunity to respond. In a breath, Maddox leaped at him, wrapping his hand around his neck and slamming Caden backward to the ground.
“Maddox!” Birdie and I cried out, both of us rushing to where he pinned Caden to the floor.
“Did you?” Maddox seethed, clutching his neck tighter, smacking his head roughly against the cement.
With his arms cuffed, Caden kicked out, trying to fight back, his face turning red from lack of air.
“You sick fuck. Torturing and killing children? You vile piece of shit! You’re fuckin’ dead, Markos! ”
“Maddox, stop!” I crouched down, trying to get Maddox to loosen his grip.
“He can’t breathe!” Hanna cried. “Stop!”
Maddox’s wrath was so laser-focused it didn’t even feel like he heard us.
“Maddox. Stop!” Scorpion’s voice cut through the commotion, jolting Maddox.
“There is no honor in killing the unarmed. No relief in the vengeance. Only more blackness on your soul to carry.” He said it like it was a creed.
A principle they knew between each other.
Their longtime friendship seemed to be the only thing that brought Maddox back.
Sneering, Maddox huffed and shoved away from Caden. As he rose, he spit at him. “If you are part of this, I will kill you.” He strode out of the room.
As he was hacking and gasping for air, I tried to help Caden sit up.
“Don’t touch me,” he croaked, jerking violently away from me, humiliation burning him with rage and resentment. But he didn’t refuse Birdie’s help to get him back up on the bench seat, his eyes watering, his skin patchy, a snarl on his lips.
The room stayed quiet. He rubbed his neck, gradually lifting his head to me. Hate shone from his eyes.
No, not just hate. Betrayal. “You are a liar.”
Agony pinched my lips together. “I’m not.”
“My family took you in, took care of you, loved you. I loved you,” he gasped roughly over his words, not listening to me. “I thought you were my best friend. Someone with a soul, but I guess I was wrong. You do belong with them now.”
I could see both Birdie and Kek wanting to intervene, but I held up my hand, stopping them.
“I have never lied to you.” I exhaled, though there were a lot of truths I kept from him.
“I know this is hard to hear. I fought it, too, not wanting to believe. It broke me in half, thinking the man who helped raise me the last five years could do this. But when I came back, I wasn’t the same.
I had been through too much, saw too much to believe what was instilled in us since childhood.
Istvan also sensed it. He was planning to have me killed and then blame it on the fae. ”
“What?” Caden’s brow wrinkled. “Why?”
“For you.”
“For me?” He dropped his tied hands into his lap. “How is having you murdered for me? I barely held it together when I thought I lost you the first time. I wouldn’t have handled it a second. That would have made me go off the deep end . . .” He tapered off as if my point was coming to him.
“Exactly.” A closed, sad smile inched up my cheeks. “What better way to have you completely join the fight against the fae if you thought they were the ones who killed me. Your need would be for retaliation, to do anything necessary to avenge me.”
Caden sat stiffly, his shoulders high, trying to block my theory, but his eyes tracked back and forth as if he was recalling memories of times with his father.
“He kept you mainly in the dark on this project, only telling you enough to ease you into the idea slowly. He found the formula to raise humans to fae level. He thought once I was dead, he would bring you in completely, telling you it was necessary.”
Caden’s lids narrowed. “How do you know this? You wouldn’t know—”
“Unless I was hiding in his office like we did when we were kids.” I tried to smile, but it fell flat. “I overheard him and Kalaraja, who, known or not by your father, is fae.”
Caden started to shake his head.
“He’s a chameleon.”
“A chameleon?” Half the table responded in shock. “Seriously?”
I nodded to them, returning to Caden to explain.
“Chameleons can adapt and blend into any situation, making Kalaraja an excellent hunter. The night I overheard them was the same night I found proof of what your father was doing. I found out Andris and my father had searched for Dr. Rapava’s formula for Istvan for years.
Sometime after my father died and Andris went into hiding, your father found it.
He has already begun to manufacture the substance, sending it to other countries like Prague.
” I licked my lip. “The pills I stole the night we were on the train, before I was gunned down and taken to Halálház, were them.
“I’ve seen what they can do, what Istvan is hoping to do, not only to equal the fae, but to surpass them, rule over everyone, no matter the costs. That night I overheard him, I took one of those documents.”
Caden’s head tipped back. “The night of my engagement party.”
My head lowered in agreement. “I had no choice but to leave you. I already knew his plan and how he’d make my death a martyrdom.”
“He made it sound you were mentally unstable,” Caden replied lowly. “That catching you was for your own good.”
“Do I seem mentally unstable to you?” I arched an eyebrow.
Kek laughed-coughed into her hand.
“You shut up.” I pointed at her.
“You were crazy from the day I met you, little lamb.” She winked at me. “But my kind of crazy.”
“Not sure you’re helping me.” I tucked hair behind my ear.
She laughed while I watched Caden’s expression start to lock down. I knew that look. When he didn’t want to face something, he shut off. He would double down and fight against whatever shifted his world or understanding.
“Caden . . .”
“No. You are wrong. Father doesn’t even care about the formula anymore. He’s after the nectar stuff.”
I swallowed hard, my eyes catching Kek and Lukas. Scorpion knew the truth as well, but his eyes still didn’t meet mine.
“Nectar?” Wesley snorted. “Your daddy is going after that? The substance that is supposed to give humans fae-like powers and life, like fae food used to?” He laughed. “That shit is a myth!”
“Really?” Caden snarled back. “Because they found leads to it in China.”
“And I found the Stone of Fail hidden in my underwear drawer.” Wesley chuckled mockingly. “You humans are so fuckin’ gullible. Wanting so bad to be like us, you believe in these fables.”
“We don’t want to be like you,” Caden spat.
“Then why else are you running after a fucking fairytale to give you powers like ours?”
The two debated back and forth, and I felt the words come out before my brain understood what I was saying. “Caden’s right.” I swallowed. “The nectar is real.”
Wesley guffawed, his eyes rolling. “You believe in that shit, too? It was a story to make humans believe they had a chance against us.”
“It’s not,” I countered. “I know for a fact it is real.”
“I doubt—”
“She’s telling the truth,” Scorpion finally spoke, cutting Wesley off.
“What?” Wesley and Birdie both gaped, jarred by Scorpion’s claim. He was not one to buy into that crap unless he knew it was accurate.
Scorpion’s gaze quickly shot to me; the decision on what to share and how much was up to me.
“I have it.” I am it. Folding my arms, leaving the last bit out.
“WHAT?” Another chorus rang out, even Kek and Lukas joining in, not knowing I had gone back and retrieved it this time.
“I’m not going to get into all the hows, just that I do.
It’s boxed up and safe right now.” And useless.
I faced Caden. “And I will do everything in my power to keep it away from your father. I’ve seen what he can do.
The lives he’s already taken and destroyed, fae and human.
I don’t want to imagine what he’d do with the nectar.
” Istvan was too warped with greed and selfishness to use it for anything but to destroy and conquer.
Caden sat still. I watched his demeanor darken, his head start to shake.
He was burrowing in. Stubbornly resisting all the information dumped on him.
Because if it was true, it would tip his entire world over.
Throughout our childhood and teen years, I could get him to do a lot he declared he didn’t want to do.
But he had a line when he wouldn’t budge.
Like the night up on the roof. He could have kissed me, could have chosen me, and our entire future would have been different if he had.
Looking back now, I’m glad he didn’t. I would still be a soldier in HDF, fighting against the family I have come to love.
That path wasn’t meant for me.
Caden wasn’t meant for me.