Chapter 5
Rosabel La Rouge
Every thought in my head disappeared just as fast as Madeline’s magic that was holding me down on that couch. The doors to her office opened. Now I couldn’t get up for an entirely different reason—my legs would never hold me. Not when the face of Helen Paine was in front of my eyes, and not when I realized that the rest of the Council was coming in through those doors, too.
Had my heart stopped beating? Because suddenly I couldn’t feel it or hear it—I could only hear those footsteps slamming against the shiny wooden floor of Madeline’s office.
Then the doors closed.
Madeline was on her feet by the coffee table where she’d just been sitting, hands folded, not a wrinkle in sight on her red suit. The Council members stopped in front of her, and they looked so big from down here because I still couldn’t bring myself to stand. They looked so different, too, because they were wearing ordinary clothes, pants and dresses and jackets, not the black robes they’d had on when I met them the first time—but the suspicion, the rage in their eyes was the same.
The hatred they all felt for me was perfectly visible on their faces when they looked at me—except for the Mud councilman. I didn’t know his name, but when he looked at me, analyzed every inch of me, he looked more concerned than suspicious. More sorry than angry.
But I knew that that wasn’t going to make a difference.
“She just woke up.”
Madeline’s voice rang in my ears and it felt like the entire room held their breath for a moment until her words made sense.
“I suppose it was too much of a bother to put her in a car unconscious,” said the Redfire woman, her eyes just as fiery as I remembered, her dark skin shimmering like she had golden blood in her veins and it was just slightly peeking through—or maybe it was the warm overhead lights of the office.
“It wasn’t—but I wanted to bring her to you awake,” Madeline said, not in the least bit concerned, even though she could see the way the Redfire woman looked at her.
“Time is of the essence here, Madeline,” said Helen Paine. “No matter. We’re here now.”
With the fabric of her long white dress in her hand, she moved around Madeline and the table. She was now barely three feet away from me, looking down at me and assessing me with her eyes the same way I was assessing her.
The memory of her sword with the handle made of bones was in the center of my mind. How long until she drew it this time?
And was I really going to just sit here and take it?
No, I thought. Fuck that, I won’t.
Except…what exactly could I do against the most powerful Iridians in the world when there were six of them and one of me— without weapons or magic?
Sweat on my brow.
“Have you found him?” Madeline said, as the rest of the Council members came around her and spread about the room, all their eyes on me. Some—the Blackfire and Bluefire—were already helping themselves to a glass from the cabinet.
“No,” said the Greenfire woman, her copper hair shining golden, too, under the lights as she slowly crossed her arms in front of her chest and raised her chin so she could look down at me better. “We haven’t found David yet, Madeline.”
My stomach turned.
“And the IDD?” she asked.
“The IDD is fine.” The Redfire threw Madeline a look. “The managing body is perfectly capable of taking care of business for a few days without a director.”
Madeline didn’t look happy about that. Of course, she cared about the IDD. As far as she was concerned, that was her baby.
“She spoke to me, told me what happened,” my grandmother said in the end, her cold amber eyes falling on me.
Now every Council member was looking at her, as the Blackfire and Bluefire offered everyone drinks.
“And?” asked the Mud as he threw back the contents of his glass at once, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Please, sit down,” said Madeline, raising a hand as she whispered. Red flames danced on her fingers as her magic came to life. Two chairs that were near her desk and the armchairs on the other side of the room slowly slid toward us, and all the Council members took their seats, leaving a good distance between each other as if they were disgusted—no, as if they didn’t trust one another enough to sit closer together.
Only I remained seated on the couch, even though Madeline’s magic no longer held me back.
“I’ll tell you everything she told me,” she said, and she began without wasting time, while the others used their magic to bring themselves liquor bottles and filled their glasses and drank.
I closed my eyes, focused on breathing, on the way the air went down my throat. I focused on my limbs, my muscles, clenching and unclenching them to make sure they were working properly. I focused on my fingers, too, and my magic.
It was there. It was livid as it slithered under my skin, searching for a way out, for an anchor, a gateway through which it could protect me. I had none on me, though. No bracelet and no ring.
I was completely naked in front of these people.
Madeline told them everything I had told her in detail, and she didn’t stutter. Her voice didn’t waver.
And even though I was constantly trying to think of a plan of escape as I looked in the faces of the Council members, I came up empty-handed.
The windows were on the other side, the drapes drawn, so I had no clue if it was even daylight outside. I had no clue how much time had passed since Radock took Taland away from Silver Spring or when I came to this mansion. Goddess, I wished I could see Poppy right now. She’d tell me what time it was and what had happened. She’d help me—I was sure she would.
But Poppy couldn’t even come through the doors now that the Council was here. And I was glad for it—the ugly voice in my head knew that I wasn’t going to get as lucky as I did with them that first time. The ugly voice in my head insisted that I was going to die soon. This time it sounded like it really meant it.
And in the mansion. In Madeline’s fucking office, the place I despised the most. Here was where I’d die, after everything I went through. Taland in prison and the torture of the Tivoux brothers and the Iris Roe and the Devil’s Regah chamber. I survived all of that just so I could die at the hands of the very people who were supposed to protect me. The good guys—what a fucking joke.
No way out. For real this time. There was no way out. Even though no magic was holding me back now, the moment I tried to stand they would turn on me. The moment I tried to move they would attack me.
No way out .
“And you believe her, Madeline?”
My attention fell on the Greenfire woman, who spoke after that moment of deafening silence when Madeline finished telling them the story as I’d told it to her.
“I do,” Madeline said, but at this point I wasn’t even surprised. “I do believe her, not only because the story makes sense, but because hearing it now, I can connect the times I found David’s behaviors strange but didn’t even realize it. I know that man.” Madeline drank her whiskey slowly where she sat on the recliner—the white one. The same as the one she’d had to throw away last time because I’d made it dirty when I’d sat on it.
“We all know that man,” said the Redfire. “We all know what he’s capable of. The question remains, would he dare?”
I almost laughed. If she thought David Hill was afraid of anything, she was fucking delusional.
“He would,” Madeline said. “He’s smart enough. Powerful enough. Arrogant enough to convince himself that he will win.”
“Why—you don’t think he will?” asked the Blackfire—Ferid was his name if I remembered correctly.
“You do?” the Bluefire guy asked him in turn.
“I don’t have an opinion about it yet, nor do I know enough to make an assumption, at least not an accurate one. What I do know is that if it were me wearing his shoes, I would have done anything in my power—and I mean anything —to keep this a secret until I knew that I was absolutely one hundred percent ready,” Ferid said.
“He’s right, George,” said the Redfire, shaking her head at the Bluefire. “He’s right—I wouldn’t have let word get out if I wasn’t ready, either.”
“Except he didn’t simply decide to let the word get out, did he?” This from the Greenfire, and she looked right at me.
Shivers rushed down my back.
“You broke the screen of the Regah chamber, did you not, girl?” she asked me.
My nails dug into my palms. I was most probably bleeding, but I didn’t even feel it. All I felt was their eyes on me. The weight of their attention. The cruelness of my fate. The knowledge that my life ended right here, today, by these very people.
“Rosabel, answer the question,” Madeline said.
“I…” My voice was so dry. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to help these people, but the truth was that I wouldn’t be helping them. The truth was that, as much as I hated it, they were the only ones who could put a stop to Hill’s absurd plans of bringing back the Delaetus Army.
And wasn’t that just fucking comical?
Because I had to help them. Taland lived in this world. Taland would no doubt try to stop Hill—and you know what, I’d rather these people did. Taylor lived in this world, too, and so did Poppy and Cassie, every other person who had done absolutely nothing to deserve the fate that Hill would bring upon the world if he really took over.
Tears slid down my cheeks so fast I hardly noticed them. For that moment when all of these things crossed my mind, I felt like I wasn’t me at all.
How cruel was life. How very cruel.
My hands shook when I raised them to wipe the tears. “I broke that screen, yes. Hill tried to stop me. The Devil held us all motionless in the air from his side of the Regah chamber, and Hill swam in the air to get to me. Both he and the Devil knew that they wouldn’t make it, so the Devil let us go at the last second. Hill reached me when I had already finished the spell. Grabbed me by the head, tried to pull it off my shoulders.” My hands were on my neck now, too, like I thought maybe Hill was still here trying to pull my head off for real. “My magic released before he could hurt me.”
Silence in the room, another eternal moment.
“He didn’t want his secret out and he hoped to keep the Devil silent before he told us, but he couldn’t. He sent his guards to the Devil’s cell in the Tomb to try to stop him, but they didn’t get to him in time. He told us everything in front of him, too, and Hill confirmed it. Hill hoped to kill us all before we left the Regah chamber—but again, he couldn’t get to me in time. We made it out.”
“Because of you,” said the Redfire. “Because you broke the screen.”
“With the bracelet that you claim is an anchor.” The Greenfire woman raised a red brow as she looked down at me even though she was sitting on the couch across from me. “A Mud anchor.”
“It seems to have behaved the way an anchor does,” said Madeline before I could answer.
“Colors,” said the Mud councilman. “You really made magic with colors .”
“I did.” And he’d had no idea it could be done—it was plain to see. These women and men who held themselves above all others hadn’t bothered to try to figure out if something like an anchor for the Mud even existed. I doubted they’d cared much to learn anything at all about the people they had labeled with that name, with that fate.
I realized this was exactly what Taland had been talking about when he spoke about our elders leaving us in the dark, blinding us to the real world.
And I wondered, had they been left in the dark, too, by their parents?
“So, it really exists,” the man said.
“Of course, it exists,” said the Greenfire. “And you’re going to use it, Nicholas. As soon as we find it.”
“All of it exists—it isn’t just tales,” said the Redfire. “David has really been stealing from us from right under our noses. All our noses.” The way she looked at each and every one of her colleagues made me flinch, and her eyes stopped on Madeline. “You vouched for him, Madeline.”
“And you agreed with me,” said my grandmother without batting a lash. “All of you tested him, and you agreed.”
Most of them looked down at their laps for a moment, but not the Redfire. “All of us trusted your judgment, too. Throughout your whole career.”
“It has served you, that trust, hasn’t it?” Again, Madeline couldn’t have cared less about the accusations.
“Flora, we don’t have the time to dwell on the past now. The future isn’t looking very bright for us at the moment,” the Greenfire said. “That is what we shall focus on.”
“And who put you in charge, Natasha?” snapped the Bluefire—George.
“Oh, don’t start with me,” the old woman said.
“You are all ridiculous—a circus, a circus!” the Blackfire said, throwing back his whiskey before he reached for one of the bottles on the table to refill it.
For a moment, most of the Council members spoke at the same time. It was so surreal to sit there and watch them, like they were ordinary people, not the ones who held the fate of the world in their hands.
Meanwhile Madeline played with her glass and looked at me, her face perfectly passive, and for a moment there, just a split second, I could have sworn she looked bored while the members went at it, accusing one another, bickering about useless things.
“Enough,” the Mud councilman finally said. “That’s enough. We don’t have time for this. Put yourselves under control.”
I thought for sure they’d burst out again and ask him who put him in charge, but nobody did. The rest of them closed their eyes and took in deep breaths and drank more alcohol, but none said anything for a good moment.
“Enough time has already been wasted,” the Redfire continued. “I’m afraid we’ll have no choice but to believe Rosabel’s tale and to take action before it’s too late.”
“He wants to raise a dead army? Fine,” the Greenfire muttered. “Our ancestors have stopped a mad man once. We’ll stop another again.”
“Of course, we will,” said George. “As soon as we find him, we kill him. I’ve always wanted to see the light die in his eyes, to be frank.”
Through all of this, Helen had remained silent, sitting near Madeline in the second armchair, sipping her drink slowly, thinking.
“So… arrogant , indeed,” said Ferid with a frown on his face as he no doubt thought back to whenever he had met Hill.
“Thinks he’s entitled to everything,” George muttered next, shaking his head at his almost empty glass.
“Behaves like he has the world in his pocket,” Natasha the Greenfire whispered to herself.
“We will do this away from the public eye,” Helen finally said, and when she spoke, the rest of them fell silent. “We will find him, and we will take care of him in private. Is that understood?”
They all nodded at the same time.
“There’s a lot wrong with this system that we’ve inherited, and it’s time we did something about it. It’s time we made changes to ensure that the power doesn’t slip from us again the way it has been doing for a decade now, apparently.” Her eyes locked on Madeline’s. “We will restore the order once more, Maddie, and you will help us.”
“I will,” Madeline said without a moment’s hesitation.
Words were in my mind, coming up my throat, ready to slip out my lips in a rush. I wanted to tell them exactly how wrong everything was right now, inside the IDD and outside, too, in the Tomb, a penitentiary that was controlled by a criminal, an inmate, and the fact that Selem even existed; about how awful the Iris Roe was and how absolutely absurd draining people was, or labeling them Mud, treating them as the scum of society for no reason at all. I wanted to talk to them about every single thing in detail and demand that they fixed it, fixed everything, made it better. That was their fucking job!
Except now was not the time, was it?
And let’s be honest—they would never listen to me, would never even let me finish speaking.
I tried anyway. “There’s a lot going on at the IDD that isn’t right. And out there, too, in the world. The Mud are treated like?—”
“The bracelet,” Flora cut me off. “Where is the anchor?”
I swallowed hard and my magic raged. “I don’t know.”
Helen turned to Madeline. “Where is the anchor?”
“She’s telling the truth. It wasn’t on her when they found her. It was taken.”
“By whom?” the Greenfire asked me.
By Radock Tivoux, I thought. “I don’t know,” I said.
“You stole it from the Vault,” said the Mud councilman—Nicholas. “Did it speak to you—is that why? Did it connect with you right away?”
I shook my head. “No. I just saw the picture of it in that book.” I looked at the copy of The Delaetus Army still on the table where Madeline left it. “I got curious. I took it. I didn’t find out what it could do until”—the memory of those colors in the woods coming out of Taylor Maddison’s hand was at the center of my mind— “later.”
“We tested you,” said Helen in wonder. “I saw your Redfire with my own eyes. We all did.”
“I was under the impression that the Mud can’t do magic of one color at all,” said Flora. “That’s what I’ve known my whole life.” And she sounded pretty fucking frustrated about it.
“That’s what we all thought,” said the Greenfire with a bitter smile. “I knew about the bracelets. I’ve seen drawings of them—I knew they wore them, but never did I even entertain the idea of finding one or trying to make it work. Never .”
“David Hill did,” George said, then clenched his teeth. “He thought about it and he actually found it.”
“It’s lucky, I guess, that your granddaughter stole it,” Helen said to my grandmother.
“Lucky, indeed,” Madeline said.
Goddess, how I hated that world— lucky. I despised it.
“Not only the bracelet,” I said, like something suddenly came over me. And I knew—I knew exactly what awaited me, yet I couldn’t help myself, refused to keep my lips sealed. Refused to not help them, at least with what I could. “He found everything else—the Devil told us. The veler that you allowed to be locked up in the Vault when I stopped Taland from stealing it at the school, something called soul vessels, the bracelet, the Script of Perria. And he said he still needed more soul vessels and…” My eyes closed and I was violently thrust back into the memory of that Regah chamber, and the Devil was laughing and Hill was pissed off. The words came back to me despite the fear and the panic. “ His bones. ” I raised my head and looked at the Council members. “The Devil said that Hill still needed his bones .”
Silence, that heavy silence.
“The bones of Titus,” Flora finally whispered.
“Yes,” Helen said with a nod. “I imagine he would need the bones to bring back the army.”
“Goddess,” the Greenfire said after a moment. “He really is going to do it!”
I found myself in a state of disbelief, too, even though I had already known that Hill wasn’t fucking around since the moment the Devil told us his plans.
“We have to find him—now,” Ferid said, and his hand shook a little as he brought the glass to his lips.
“It’s gone, it’s all gone,” said George, and all our eyes turned to him. He was sitting on my grandmother’s desk chair with a big phone in his hand as he typed furiously. “Everything—gone, gone, gone.”
We were all sweating by then, even Madeline.
“What’s gone? What’s gone?” asked Helen, but she knew. We all did.
“The veler. The vessels. The-the-the Script of Perria—it’s gone,” said George, looking up at her with bloodshot eyes. “He took everything, burned the physical reports, erased the digital footprint. Everything.”
Suddenly Flora jumped to her feet. “This is madness! How are we to find him now— madness! ” Her voice was so loud my ears whistled.
My eyes closed, and those angry tears returned. I cursed myself in my head over and over for not returning for the Script that night when Taland found out it had fallen off him.
If we only had it now. If we only had something to make sure Hill failed…
“Enough,” said Helen, drinking the last of her wine. “That’s enough. We focus on one thing at a time.”
“But we must find him! Now, before it’s too late—we must,” Madeline said, and for once she wasn’t as perfectly composed as ever.
“And we will. We’ll find him. We’ll search every inch of the world,” Helen said. “But first we must do what needs doing to ensure that we win when we do capture him.”
The sky fell right over my head. Every set of eyes in the office turned to me again.
It’s over, the ugly voice said.
“We’ll find that bracelet,” Helen continued, putting her empty glass on the table slowly. “And you will use it, Nicholas. With the magic of the Rainbow in you, you will.”
I swallowed hard, raised my chin. “So, you’re just going to kill me.” Goddess, I hated that my voice shook.
“Not necessarily. We’ll take the magic of the Rainbow back. You… might survive,” said Ferid.
“We can’t harness a new Rainbow in such a short amount of time,” Nicholas said, shaking his head as the wheels turned in his head—he was the only one trying to find an alternative.
“No, we can’t,” Helen said and stood up, slowly undid the buttons of her silver jacket and took it off. “We’ll take back the Rainbow, Rosabel. Now. With it, we’ll defeat Hill.”
My stomach twisted. My magic raged, went wild inside me, nearly split me wide open when I stopped it from bursting out of me. Never again. I would never open myself up like that again.
“Then what?” I choked the words out. “Then what happens? Will you really make the changes you know you ought to make, or will things simply…go back to the way they were?”
Not a single word. They all looked away from me, too, except for Helen and Madeline.
My grandmother who was going to not only stand by and watch them kill me but would help them if needed.
Not a single fucking word.
“Very well then.” Two big tears released themselves from my eyes and I saw their faces clearly again. “Get on with it.”
I was ready, as ready as one could really be to die, I guessed.
I was ready when all of them slowly stood up and left their glasses on the table.
My eyes closed. I didn’t pray. I didn’t think—I just imagined Taland’s face. After all, that was the only thing that had ever brought me any peace, and right now peace was all I could hope for.
Magic in the air, thick and heavy, buzzing in my ears. I felt them coming closer, heard it when they pushed the table farther back to give themselves more space.
Then one of them began to chant—could have been Helen or Flora. Not that it mattered, anyway.
My magic began to react, too, instantly, but this time not in rage. This time not with the intent to burst out of me to protect me.
No, this time, it was being pulled, like the words of that spell they were chanting so furiously was a magnet for it.
My magic was being torn off me. My own energy, my life force was being cut off with every new word that woman chanted. There was no way I’d survive this, and they knew it. They would take the Rainbow out of me, they said, but the Rainbow no longer existed inside me; it had become me. It had merged with my own magic and energy. That’s what they were going to take out— me.
“Nicholas, are you ready?” someone asked, and I imagined the Mud councilman nodded.
Then someone knocked on the door.