Chapter 21
Rosabel La Rouge
We didn’t let go of one another for a while. It was easier to talk like that, anyway. He kept me grounded and I did the same for him.
“Talk to me,” Taland said.
As if on cue, angry tears burned my eyes. “They’re fucking sick .” Just as sick as David Hill, as my grandmother—as fucking Titus had been. Power-hungry assholes with no limits and no care for anyone but themselves.
“They are,” he whispered, kissing the top of my head. “Don’t lie to me, sweetness. Tell me what you think.”
I held onto his shirt with all my strength and squeezed my eyes shut tightly. It hurt everywhere all of a sudden. I just wanted to run away and disappear.
I bit my tongue and pressed my lips together as my silent tears wet his shirt because I didn’t want to talk , damn it. I knew what the consequences to both options were very well.
On the one hand, if Taland saved himself—which I wished he would do despite everything—he’d doom everyone else. And if he tried to save everyone else, if he even could with only thirty soldiers against the Council, he’d doom himself. There was no telling what it would do to him to keep those men linked to him like this. It had already drained him completely in less than two weeks.
“It’s an impossible choice, Taland. What can I even say? It’s an impossible choice,” I finally said.
He pushed my hair away from my face and reminded me, “We’ve faced the impossible before.”
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think a lot of things, but the most important is, what the Council can do to the world if we don’t stand in their way. And also what they can do to these soldiers if they get their hands on them somehow.”
That made me stop breathing for a second.
“What do you mean?” I dared to asked, even though I was pretty sure I didn’t even want to know.
“There are ways to take control of them,” he said. “Only a Laetus could do it, but by now I have no doubt that they’ve charged Nicholas, have given him colors, have prepared him for the bracelet.” Shivers ran down my back because I believed that, too. The Council had been ready to drain me and try to take my energy to give it to Nicholas before Taland came and stopped them.
“How? How could they possibly—you ruined everything Hill had with him on that mountain!”
“But who’s to say that they haven’t already found a copy of the original curse?”
Fuck, I was shaking. “Taland, that’s?—”
“It’s okay, sweetness. I would have to allow it. Even if they find the spells, I would still have to… share— and I am not going to do that.”
I laughed bitterly and leaned back to look at him. “Let’s be honest with ourselves here for a minute,” I said.
“I am honest,” he said.
“Good, good,” I said, stepping back to lean against the edge of the table. “So, I need you to promise me that then.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t—” he started, taking my face in his hands, but I cut him off.
“Promise me that if we do decide to go down there and fight, you will not let any Council member take control of your soldiers for any reason, Taland. Any reason—including if they get their hands on me.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “That’s not going to happen.”
“I know it’s not, but unless you can promise me that, I can’t really talk to you about going at all. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page, that’s all.”
Taland clenched his jaws so hard I heard it. “No.”
I grabbed his wrists. “Promise me.”
“No.” He kissed me on the lips. “They won’t get their hands on you. Nobody will touch you.”
“Then promise me—it shouldn’t be hard. Promise me.” He didn’t. He just continued to hold onto my face and touch my forehead with his. “Come on, promise me, please .” Because I wasn’t going to risk this—not this. If there was a chance that we gave the Council the only power that could stop them, I wasn’t going to agree to it.
“They won’t come close to you—I promise you that,” he finally said.
“Taland, I?—”
“I promise you that . There is no way that they will gain power over those soldiers because they will never come close to you. That is the best I can give you,” he cut me off.
And I knew by the tone of his voice that he wouldn’t budge. For now, it was going to have to do, but that didn’t mean that we couldn’t negotiate later on. I could get through to him, I thought.
But right now, the others were waiting on the porch, and we had a decision to make.
“Okay,” I reluctantly said. “Okay, fine. I’ll take it. Nobody’s going to take those soldiers from you. The question is, do you want to fight?”
“Of course, I do,” Taland said, lowering his head. “I want to fight. I can’t just let them win. If things are as bad as they say they are, and the soldiers are no longer here, the Council is going to get to us eventually. They’ll find us no matter where we run.”
“But if we do fight, the soldiers…” I shook my head, squeezed my eyes shut. “They’ll remain under the curse.”
Taland put his fingers under my chin and raised my head. “It’s temporary.”
“I know that, but they’re already becoming too much, Taland. Remember how I found you last night?” He’d been out there, carving their names on trees, and he had no idea he was even doing it. “There’s a reason why we decided to try to release them right away.”
“Sweetness, I don’t think it’s a choice anymore,” Taland said, his voice soft, gentle. “We’re not going to let them kill innocent people in a fit of rage. Look me in the eye and tell me you can live with yourself if we do nothing right now.”
Goddess damn him. “I can if it means you get to be free, too.”
Except it was a lie and he knew it. “Sure—for one day and two and three, but what about the fourth? What about the first week and month and year?” His sad smile said it all. “I know who you are, and you know who I am.”
Yes, I knew. And I was well aware that neither of us was ever going to be happy if we walked away now.
Here I was, thinking I’d pull Taland aside and he’d convince me to stand back, give me all the reasons why it was a better idea to do nothing, when I knew that he would be the first to refuse.
“We’re fools—that’s what we are,” I said, and I was crying now and laughing when he wrapped me in his arms again.
He laughed, too. “I think we’re worse than that. We’re fools in love .”
That we would be for as long as we lived.
Everything changed so suddenly again. We invited the others inside the safe house, into our living room, and Taland told them that we’d decided to fight. Seth wasted no time in grabbing our laptop and pulling up a news channel, where they were talking about the number of people that had been imprisoned without trial in the past three days.
Fifty-seven people —that’s what the news said. Fifty-seven people were put behind bars for no reason and no trial or chance to prove their innocence, and Seth insisted that twice that many were already dead in the past week alone.
The Council wasn’t planning to stop. Apparently the IDD had started a systematic cleanse of Baltimore first, and then they had plans to expand through the whole country. They were the Council—they called the shots here. The IDD was under their orders—Headquarters and all offices throughout the States.
“We have word that every CEO of every IDD base around the country has been invited in for briefing in person. They’ve been assigned roles and numbers, have been ordered to see their new program through step by step,” Radock said as he drank the wine Taland had offered him.
“Which basically is to wipe out third- and fourth- degree casters completely. Those who resist, die. Those who don’t, go to jail for one charge or the other. They’re bringing people in for parking tickets—any reason goes,” Aurelia said.
“Is this information coming from Cassie?” I asked because the idea that she was still inside Headquarters when the Council had lost control like this freaked me out.
“It is,” Zach said. “She’s chosen to remain inside. Said that she could help us a lot more by feeding us whatever information she could, rather than be out here.”
“She also said to tell you hi ,” Aurelia said.
I swallowed hard and drank from my bottle of water, urging myself not to start cussing—or worse, cry in anger. It was Cassie’s choice. She knew what she was doing. She was a smart woman—one of the smartest people I knew.
“I’m assuming you have a plan,” Taland said from where he stood behind the couch where Aurelia, Seth and I were sitting. It wasn’t a big room, our living room, but it fit us just fine.
“We do. Go to the Council’s chambers and kill them,” said Zach, raising his wine to us, and Radock, who sat beside him, nodded.
“Exactly. There really isn’t much more we can do. We could organize small attacks and push back soldiers when they come for certain areas we have people in, but that would just make them double their forces and come back twice as hard,” he said.
“We have to uproot the Council from their position completely. We have to kill them all,” said Zach. “That’s the only way to stop them. The IDD soldiers and agents and every other employee they have is loyal to the Council. They are not going to abandon them because being in the IDD provides them and theirs safety from this cleanse.”
I believed that with all my heart. Every person who worked for the IDD was loyal to a fault to it—and to the Council.
“So…that’s it? We show up to their chambers and we kill them—that’s it?” Because it sounded so… simple, but I also knew that when dealing with situations like this, nothing ever truly was.
Look what happened last time when we all went after David Hill.
“If you have a better idea, Agent La Rouge, we’re all ears,” Radock said, and I knew he called me that to try to get under my skin. I wasn’t about to let him.
“Just La Rouge to you, Radock,” I said, and his smile only grew. “And because I am a former IDD agent, I know what they’re capable of. I know that if the Council is using even a quarter of their forces to protect themselves, it’s going to take a lot just to get to them—assuming we make it to their chambers.” Which also reminded me, “Do you even know where they’re located?”
“We do. They’re no longer keeping it a secret,” Aurelia said. “But you’re right—it’s a damn fortress, that building. Full of soldiers and agents, not to mention the Council themselves.”
“How many people do you still have?” Taland asked them, and Radock looked at Aurelia first, then Zach.
“About two hundred,” Zach finally said. “They’ve hit most of our communities. Have killed a lot of our people already.”
“That’s not going to cut it.” Two hundred wasn’t enough.
“Except it is,” Kaid said, standing from where he sat on the armrest of the couch near Radock, his eyes on Taland. “With your army, we can get through easily. In West Virginia, we all saw what they are capable of.”
I looked at Taland, too, the question in my eyes. Everything that happened in that valley from the moment I fell from the landing and until I passed out was a blur to me still. I’d been wounded, tired, so weak.
Taland said, “I think so, too. They can get past any defense they have. They can get to the Council members.”
And I believed him, except… “They’ll know we’re coming. They’ll be prepared.”
“They will,” Radock said. “I am actually counting on it, and I think they will want to fight themselves because they want the soldiers. They’ll try to take Taland out quickly, and I don’t think they’ll trust others to do that.” That actually made a lot of sense. “Your soldiers will fight them, while the rest of us keep everyone else off their backs.”
The more he spoke, the more I saw the whole thing unfolding before my eyes. Maybe because I’d been in a lot of fights, or maybe because I’d been face-to-face with death so many times, but I felt like I could taste the blood on my tongue, feel the magic in the air, hear the screams in my mind.
Goddess, I didn’t want to do this anymore. I never wanted to have to fight anybody ever again, but I knew I had to. All of us did. Like Taland said, there was no way I’d ever be able to live with myself if I sat back and watched now.
But if we were all lucky, this might be the last fight any of us ever needed to have.
For a while there, everyone was lost in their own thoughts, trying to imagine a scenario in which this worked in our favor. Incredibly hard to do, or maybe just for me. Because I knew what the Council was capable of. What the IDD was capable of.
“We’ll have a system that David designed himself,” Zachary eventually said. “I’m sure he never expected the day would come when we’d actually use it, but I believe it’s a good system. We might have only two hundred people to fight with us, but if we know what we’re doing, they’ll be enough.” Then he looked at me. “And if we have help from the inside, that would be even better. I’m sure Madeline Rogan is still in charge of the?—”
“ No. ” I spoke so fast it was almost funny.
“He’s right, though,” Aurelia said. “She is in charge of the IDD army right now—there is nobody more qualified that the Council trusts. If we can get her to help us?—”
“She’ll serve us to them on a silver platter,” I cut her off, too. Just the thought of actually working with Madeline or trusting her in any way made my skin crawl, made me want to start screaming at their faces until they came to their fucking senses. “You remember how you found me when you came to her mansion. She had already served me to the Council. They were about to kill me when you arrived. Right there in her office, on her couch, in front of her eyes.”
They all flinched and lowered their heads, except for Radock. “What if we offer her something, though? She doesn’t care about you , but I’d say she cares a great deal about herself.”
“There’s nothing you can offer her that she doesn’t already have.” Money, power, the Council’s favor—and now she got to run the IDD and command its army, too, at least until they picked someone else to do it.
To her, that was everything .
“We still have Cassie,” Kaid said. “She can still give us information.”
“What little she has access to isn’t going to be very helpful to us,” Radock said, then looked up at me. “La Rouge here is a former agent, like she said, and she might know a thing or two about how they build their defenses.”
“In such a way that you die if you get close,” I said because I knew he was trying to mock me. “They’ll have three layers of protective wards, if they’re treating the Council chambers like the Headquarters, which they probably are. And they’ll have three soldiers assigned per head of opponent, with another three lying in wait close by.”
“Which is basically what they did in West Virginia,” Aurelia said in wonder. “And that’s fine, isn’t it? We can put David’s strategy to good use. We’ll separate our forces into three, deal with the wards, and the soldiers, and then…” She looked up at Taland as her voice trailed off.
“I think Radock is right,” Taland said. “The Council will be there themselves, and the soldiers will engage with them right away. If we’re lucky, we won’t have to make anyone else fight at all.”
“You’re certain they can defeat all the members,” said Radock, and Taland nodded.
“Half of the soldiers, if not more, will be destroyed, but they can defeat them.” The ease with which he spoke left no room for doubt.
Suddenly, Radock stood up, and everyone else followed. I did, too, and Taland was already beside me, taking my hand in his.
“That’s all we really need to know,” he told us. “Pack your bags then, brother. La Rouge. We’re going back to the real world.”
Hold on, I wanted to say.
This is too fast, too sudden.
I was getting used to living here with Taland, watching movies and reading books and being at peace for once in my life.
Just hold on a minute!
The words remained inside me, though. I’d always known we were living on borrowed time when we came here. The fact that we were surrounded by the IDD, and that every day soldiers had to go down there to get them to back off was proof enough.
And even though I knew what was happening out there in the world, and I knew what Taland and I decided to do when we spoke in private earlier, it still came as a surprise to me. As a shock to have to leave. Now. Just like that.
But we did.
Taland put his arms around my shoulders, and I put mine around his waist. We took a moment just to breathe in, to prepare mentally, and the others waited outside to give us a little space.
We didn’t really take much with—we didn’t have a lot of things that belonged to us here. Not even the clothes we wore were really ours.
Fifteen minutes later, we walked out of the house together and we didn’t look back.