Chapter 43
Callan
It’s been too long, I think, as Devon and I wait by the gates to the Estate.
I have a sick feeling in my stomach, and I’m driving myself to insanity, tilting my head at odd angles and trying to catch a glimpse of the ward that I’m praying isn’t there.
I can’t tell if it’s gone or not. It’s too bright with the red sky above us to see the shimmer in it.
Devon exhales, his breath a white cloud in front of him, eyes pinned on the servant entrance. If he’s worried at all, he won’t dare let on. That would be detrimental to my own faith, and I’m barely holding it together as is.
I believe in Lucina, I really do, but there’s so much risk of error in this, and that’s just our side of the plan. I have no idea what Lucina had to pull off inside to get this far. I have no idea what she risked or didn’t. If she’s hurt, if she’s caught…
If the ward is still up, there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it, and even then…
I scrub my hand over my face, glancing once more to Devon, then darting my attention skyward at the explosion that cracks from the other side of the Estate.
Pax and Phoenix are still sending up flares at random spots in the Madwood, drawing whoever has given chase further out, but there’s only so long that they keep it up. There’s only so long until they’re caught, and the Rogues catch on to the distraction.
I turn back to face Devon, but my gaze snaps on a flash of movement. A ripple of fabric behind one of the pillars lining the gate.
Blood rushes to my ears, blocking out the buzz of the night, and I take a sharp step forward.
Devon puts his arm out over my chest, and it shouldn’t make me as mad as it does, but anger erupts beneath my skin. I slap his hand away with more force than it required and surge towards the pillar.
“Cal,” his tone is sharp, “wait.”
I must have given him the impression that he’s allowed to give me orders.
There’s another flash of movement, and I can see the tail end of someone’s skirts as they push themselves against the column. An attempt to hide.
Pulling a dagger from my side, I stalk closer, my footsteps dull against the cold ground.
My body slips into an eerie state of calm, moving through the motions on muscle memory alone.
All I can hear is my own heartbeat, thundering through every cell, every organ.
It’s impossible not to surrender myself to it.
To allow the ebb and flow of power to control my limbs, my thoughts.
This is the predator Delia raised, I think, as I approach the pillar, noting a sharp inhale of breath that hadn’t come from me.
As soon as I’m in arm's reach, a woman takes off in the opposite direction. She’s running at full speed, away from the gate and into the city.
At first I don’t give chase, not wanting to risk being led into a trap of some kind, but when she glances over her shoulder to see if I’m following, the flash of her yellow eyes has me launching into a sprint.
My vision vibrates as I eat up the ground, moving much faster than she can. The thundering in my chest reaches a new pace, thumping so violently against my rib cage that for a moment I think I’ll vomit up my heart.
The Rogue dives into a nearby building, and I throw myself in after her.
She’s a threat. To our home, our people, our plan. She could ruin everything, and threats must be eliminated. We’re too close now to risk it.
She’s stumbling to her feet when I grab her shoulder, spin her around, and sink my dagger into her chest.
It all happens so fast. The widening of her eyes, the dark blood seeping from the wound, the sagging of her body. I keep my knife there until her eyes roll back, and when I drag it back out, she falls to the floor.
The pounding of my heart gives way to a shrill ringing in my ears, rising to a pitch so loud my body begins to vibrate with it.
“Boss!” I spin around to see Devon in the doorway, glaring back at me. His attention drifts to the scene behind me, and I watch his face drain of color, his eyes widening to the point that it looks painful.
Devon doesn’t move. He just slowly drags his staggered stare back to mine. “What did you do?” His voice is small and very much unlike him. I don’t understand it.
“What I had to do,” I reply, confused as to why he’d ask. “D, I couldn’t let her—”
My explanation dies on my tongue when I turn to her body and finally see what he sees.
The Rogue’s been completely mutilated. There isn’t a square inch of her skin not covered in blood. I hadn’t just stabbed her once in the chest. I stabbed her all over…repeatedly.
It had only been a couple seconds in my mind, but this kind of damage took at least a few minutes.
Tightening my grip on the knife, I tear my gaze away. “She was a threat,” I mutter, but I’m unable to meet Devon’s eyes as I say it. I know exactly the kind of concern I’d see there. “We can’t get caught,” I double down, but it’s not just him I’m trying to justify my actions to.
The crumbled building suddenly feels too small, and Devon doesn’t stop me as I push past him, stepping outside just as another crack splinters through the sky above us. He stays close behind as I hurry to retrace the path I’d run, not stopping until we’re back by the gates.
We settle in our spots, continuing our wait, and neither of us speaks.
She was a threat, I repeat to myself. I did what I had to do.
But between each affirmation, I can’t deny the deeply buried part of my soul that hums with satisfaction, and by the time the sky lightens, shifting from black to a very dark grey, my own psyche is damn close to eating me alive.
Pax and Phoenix are still lighting up the sky, thunderous explosions shaking the ground beneath us, but the servant door remains closed. The Estate and the courtyard out front remain undisturbed and eerily quiet.
Deciding I’m out of patience, I shift to the right, moving towards the part of the gate that I’d been trying to avoid.
The bodies of our high-ranked Sol have decomposed, and only their skeletons remain. Their bodies dangle from the highest point on the gate, draped in the now tarnished fabric that they’d been wearing when they died.
I keep my head down as I inch closer to the entrance, eyes locked on the servant door.
“What are you doing?” Devon appears at my side. It’s the first thing he’s said to me since I chased a Rogue into the city.
“I’m going to see if the ward is down. There’s no point in waiting for the servant door to open if they can’t pass the threshold.”
I can sense him side-eyeing me without taking my attention off the door. “Cal, if the ward is still up, there’s nothing we can do.”
“We’ll have to come up with something,” I snip back. “I can’t just sit here.” Checking both ways before crossing the open courtyard, I take long strides to the small door beside the main entrance.
Devon gives up his protest and follows.
My heart rate increases as we approach the exterior wall of the Estate, and the servant’s door is only a few feet ahead when an achingly familiar knot tightens in my chest, urging me forward.
I wonder if it’s because this is the closest I’ve come to home—the place I was born in and should have been raised in.
Squinting up the pale stone surface, I search for any evidence of the ward shimmering against the building.
When we went through the mines this summer, we almost didn’t see it in front of us. It wasn’t until we were actually looking for it that we could see the iridescent ripple. It was a sheen similar to heat rising from scorching pavement, and I can’t see it now.
I glance back at Devon, finding that his eyes are narrowed on where mine had been, searching for the same evidence. He tilts his head back, taking his gaze all the way up to the eaves on the roof.
“Can you see anything?” I ask.
He shakes his head, and the knot in my chest tightens. I look down at the brass knob on the small door, gathering the courage to grab onto it. If the ward is still up, touching it would hurt like hell—on top of our entire plan being screwed.
I take one steadying breath.
Then another.
And just when I’ve psyched myself up to do it, the knob turns.
From the inside.
I jump back, giving space for the door to open, then I pause mid-step, every muscle in my body locking in place as I freeze.
My father leans against the doorframe. His dark hair is long, peppered grey, and his eyes are older—wrinkled at the edges and heavy with the kind of exhaustion that’s reached your bones.
The kind that settles when too much time has passed without any relief.
There are cuts on his face and a bruise beneath one of his eyes.
I’d be concerned for the injury if it weren’t for the slow smile spreading across his face. “I knew you’d grow into those gangly limbs of yours,” he says.
I forget the risk of the ward entirely, half-laughing as I rush forward and claim the hug I’ve waited twenty years for.
When he shifts the chains around his wrists, reaching his joined hands up to pat my shoulder, all of our memories come flooding back. Ones that used to hurt too bad to relive, so I would push them down.
His lessons with me in the library and the garden maze he’d chase me through. The dozens of questions he’d always answer when I was just starting to become curious about the world. The stories he’d tell me of my mother and how bright she’d been in his life. In everyone's life.
For what little time we had, it had always been him and me.
I screw my eyes shut when they begin to burn.
Losing my father never made any sense. He was there one minute and gone the next. I watched him go, saw what happened, but it still muddled my young brain. How could someone so unshakeable and important just…vanish?
Finding my dad is sort of like losing him. He was gone one minute, absent from my entire life, and now suddenly he’s here.
His palm cups the back of my head just like he used to do when I was a boy. As if twenty years haven’t passed without him. As if it doesn’t matter how different I look, how much I’ve grown, it will always be the way it was—him and me.
“I’m so sorry, Dad.” Sorry for what happened to you. Sorry for whatever you’ve endured—even if it wasn’t my doing. Sorry for not finding you sooner.
He laughs then, but I can hear the choke of emotion he’s trying to hold back. Pulling away from my hold, his eyes crinkle with his smile. “Sorry for what, Cal? This is the best day I’ve had in years.”
I trace his gaze as it falls—to the ground between us—and that’s when I notice that both of his feet are in the courtyard.
The ward.
I look over my shoulder at Devon, his expression shifting from shock to triumph, eyes comically wide. The revelation kickstarts my heart. A deep thud beating against my ribcage.
She fucking did it.
Of course she did it.
“Well,” my father claps me on the shoulder, “what are we waiting for?”
I avert my attention back to him as he gestures to the shadowed tunnel beyond the door. With dawn nearly upon us, a red-grey light spills into the servant passage, illuminating what I’ve been fighting my whole life for. The very thing I’ve been after all these years.
So many eyes blink back at me—the hall so crowded that I can’t even see where the line ends. Our people. Weary and thin but not broken. Hope in their eyes despite it all. Alive. Ready.
When I look back at my dad, he’s grinning at me. “Where’s home, Cal?”