Chapter 22
Rosabel La Rouge
Soldiers ahead, at our sides, at our back.
“So, they just know everything?” Aurelia asked as we went down the mountain, far away from the wide pathway at the front of the house, in a much denser part of the forest that covered this mountain like a green blanket.
“If any of us has seen it, they know it,” Taland said. “The soldier who found you and brought you to us saw. The rest know where you came from.”
“That is…” Aurelia shook her head, but she couldn’t find the word she was looking for, so she never finished her sentence.
Apparently, we weren’t going to walk away from this mountain through the main pathway because it was chockfull of IDD soldiers and wards. We were going to walk away through an uncharted pathway, where there were no soldiers and no weapons and no wards to slow us down.
“ Insane is what it is,” Seth said after a moment.
“It’s okay, brother. Who knows—we might convince Tal to abandon those ridiculous ideas when this is over. I have faith,” said Radock who was walking in front of us with Zach and Amelia, and he turned and looked at Taland in such a way that I wanted to tell him to keep his eyes in front of him.
My body must have gone rigid and Taland must have noticed because his arm was still around my shoulders. He pulled me closer and kissed my temple and said, “We’re going to be just fine, sweetness. Nobody will see us.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” I muttered, even though we both knew it wasn’t the IDD who made me want to start running in the other direction right now.
“I can. Zach and Amelia created this ward themselves. They know what they’re doing,” Taland said. “Nobody’s down there. I can see it.”
He could see it—meaning one of the soldiers was already at the edge of the mountain, and Taland could literally see through his eyes.
Goddess, it was like I was only now realizing what that meant. How… incredible that really was.
“It’s not that,” I said with a sigh.
“And my brothers can think whatever they like.” He kissed my hair. “That’s not going to change a single thing.”
I wanted to believe him, but…
“Me, too,” Zachary continued, throwing us another look with a sneaky little grin. “It would be a shame to let all of this power go. This is next level stuff, Tal. It really is.”
“Think it through is all we’re saying,” Aurelia said. “You could be invincible.” She thought about it for a second. “You are invincible.”
“Which makes me wonder, why in the fuck would you want to give that up?!” This from Kaid.
“Because he’s not well in the head,” said Seth. “This is sad, really. Fucking sad .”
“Can’t you just give it to us or something? If you don’t want ‘em, give ‘em up. We’ll adopt them,” said Kaid again, and every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps.
The thought of those soldiers the way I knew them, with all the stories Taland shared, belonging to someone else to do with them as they pleased made me sick to my stomach.
No. Fuck, no—none of these people could have them.
Again, Taland pulled me closer to and whispered in my ear, “Ignore them, sweetness. None of it matters.”
And he was right, of course.
But the others kept on talking and I couldn’t help but be afraid that they’d somehow find out that Taland could share the soldiers with someone else if he chose to. I couldn’t help but feel like they would be just as big a threat as the Council, and as ridiculous as that idea seemed on the surface, Radock was absolutely someone who’d use me to get Taland to do his bidding. He wouldn’t even hesitate. There was no doubt in my mind about that part.
Which was why it was important to keep that information to ourselves.
When we made it to the bottom of that mountain, there really were no cars and no IDD, just the soldier that Taland had sent first, waiting for us. I looked at him and I tried to figure out which one of them he could be, what his name was, his story.
I couldn’t, of course. The helmets didn’t let anybody see their faces, even notice the white of their eyes from a distance.
“Our cars are just a couple minutes away,” Kaid told us, nodding ahead at the large trees.
Before walking under the thick canopy of the forest, I looked up at the sky and I saw the little machine far away—so far it looked like an insect to the untrained eye. But I knew what it was. I’d seen those magically enhanced drones countless times, had gone on missions with them leading my way with the team. Maybe there were no soldiers on this side of the mountain to stop us, but the Council had eyes here as well.
The Council saw us, possibly live right this very second, and they knew we were coming. They would prepare and they would put up the fight of their lives. I had no doubt about it.
I just hoped for our sake that what was left of the Delaetus Army really made the difference we thought it would make.
It took us almost five hours to get back to Pittsburgh. The farther away from the safe house we traveled, the heavier my shoulders became.
The soldiers had to run behind us until we reached the nearest town from the mountain and found a big enough vehicle to fit all of them in. A bus would have been ideal, but all Radock managed to buy was an old van that barely fit twelve of them, and a large truck for carrying trees that we made work for the rest.
Taland assured me that they didn’t feel discomfort and they didn’t mind sitting so close together, that the wind didn’t bother them, that they weren’t uncomfortable in any way. Still, I couldn’t help but feel guilty. I couldn’t help but feel they were vulnerable out in the open like that, where anybody could see them, attack them, or call them in at the very least.
But the Council already knew where we were—they’d seen us through that drone. And we weren’t trying to hide, Taland said. They should know we’re coming, and they did. I had no doubt about that.
Even so I didn’t stop fidgeting until we made it to that warehouse near The Diamond Club where Radock had ordered Kaid and Seth to kill me the night I came looking for them.
The bad memories settled on my shoulders, too, but the warehouse attached to the strip club hybrid had plenty of space to accommodate the soldiers. Ten remained outside, spread out to watch the perimeter. The others came in, took their places by the walls of the room we brought them into—I’m sure by Taland’s orders. And once they did, they all closed their eyes in unison as if they’d clicked off completely. Like they’d disconnected .
This because it was easier on Taland’s mind when they were asleep—fewer voices in his head, less information to process at any given time.
Meanwhile, Radock and the others continued to look at him, to be amazed, fascinated by the way he and the soldiers were connected.
Don’t get me wrong—I was, too. It was amazing and fascinating and incredible, but they only saw half the story here. They only saw what Taland allowed them to see—which was the surface. The benefit of this curse, if there even was such a thing. They had no idea about the voices, the pleading, the stories that Taland carried in his head every second. They had no idea what the price to pay for such control over these men was.
And a part of me was certain that they wouldn’t be paying this price at all if it was them. If any of them had had the power to awaken the Delaetus Army, they’d have had no trouble silencing the soldiers even when they were awake. They had what it took to wield such weapons—just like David Hill would have had. Like Titus did.
Not Taland, though. His heart was too pure. He could never live with the guilt of knowing he did nothing to help these men—and neither could I.
So, in the end, it didn’t really matter what they thought, just like Taland said. It didn’t matter if Radock hoped to change Taland’s mind about releasing them, or if they thought he was a fool for wanting to in the first place. They couldn’t stop us. When the time came, when the Council was no longer the Council, Taland could do the ritual and release them.
Then and only then would the two of us be really free as well.
For two days, we remained in the warehouse, slept in these rooms made of concrete walls and low ceilings that made me feel like I was suffocating any time I felt a little anxious. There were no doors to these rooms, and so we could hear the others sleeping in the ones near us in the basement as well. I barely got any sleep at all.
Taland was the same. Not just because of the rooms or the uncomfortable mattress, but because of the soldiers, too. Their voices that he was trying extra hard to keep at bay now that we were in the company of others. He didn’t want them to know, he told me that first night when we went out for a walk to get some air behind the warehouse. He didn’t want anybody to know the toll it took on him because he didn’t trust Radock not to try to take advantage of it somehow.
The plan was to attack the Council in their chambers—which was on the other side of the city from Madeline’s mansion, at the very edge—on Saturday, which was three days away. I thought we needed more time to get properly ready, to make sure we prepared as many wards as we could. To make sure that we’d gathered every single person who wanted to fight against them, to train them just a little bit longer on basic combat spells. It surprised me because the moment they put out the call, over three hundred responded—people who’d never been in Selem before, people who’d been of the Council through and through. I guess they didn’t agree with how they were handling the public now that they felt threatened, that they feared their control had slipped. And it wasn’t just in Maryland; the IDD had already started to go absolutely crazy in every other part of the country as well.
It was chaos, worse than anything I could have ever imagined, which was the story of my life. Reality had a way of finding more twisted and surprising ways to be than what any of us had the capacity to foresee.
Meanwhile, Taland insisted that we shouldn’t wait at all, that the bulk of attacks on both the defense forces of the Council and the wards would be done by his soldiers. Radock and Aurelia didn’t agree, though. They wanted to save the soldiers for the Council because they knew that they couldn’t win against them.
We alone couldn’t win against them, unfortunately. That I knew. Taland and I had beaten Hill only barely—together, using the bracelet and our Laetus magic, after he was already exhausted by having used those soul vessels to basically give flesh and skin to the soldiers, preparing them to be alive .
Imagine what five people with that kind of power could do, and then add countless soldiers and state of the art weapons and protection wards and shields and gadgets…
Yes, the soldiers of the Delaetus Army were going to have a lot on their hands. And we couldn’t really control what happened when we got there, but what we could do was calculate our risks and prepare in order to give ourselves the best chance we could.
That evening, while the others planned and plotted and made a list of all wards and shields and spells to use when we first got to the chambers on Saturday, I decided to go to bed a bit earlier because I could hardly keep my eyes open. My head was killing me as well from lack of sleep the previous nights.
I had plenty of time for a nap, I thought, when I lay down and the two soldiers who came with me stopped just outside the doorway on other side to keep watch. I thought about the ocean, of calming, foamy waves and a bright blue sky with no cloud in sight. Of an empty beach with just me and Taland on it, nobody else.
It worked. I must have fallen asleep at some point because the next thing I knew was that I heard my name being called.
My eyes popped open right away, but my ears took a moment to adjust to the sounds around me, to understand what was actually happening. Someone was right outside the doorway, calling for me to wake up, waving his hands around to get my attention.
Seth.
I sat up, heart in my throat already.
“They won’t let me through!” Seth was saying, pointing at the guards. “Just tell them to let me through! I’m not going to fucking hurt you, for fuck’s sake—I’m your master’s brother! ” he ended up shouting at the face of the soldier on the left.
I jumped off the bed and I went to Seth, completely disoriented still, pushing him back to give the soldiers a bit of space.
“What happened? What happened, Seth?!”
My words were slurred together, my voice thick, and I thought I knew exactly what he was going to say— The Council is here; they’re right outside the door!
Except… “Come upstairs, now ,” was what Seth actually said, and cursing under his breath as he gave the soldiers another look of pure rage, he turned around and started running down the narrow corridor that ended with the stairway.
“ Seth!” I called because I needed to know why he’d come down here to wake me up like this, but he didn’t stop. And I had no choice but to go back and put my boots on, then run behind him like crazy, while the two soldiers ran after me.
A million thoughts, each new one more terrifying than the last, rushed through my mind. I thought they’d found us—which wouldn’t have been difficult to do considering we weren’t trying to hide. The Council knew where we were all along, and the only reason they hadn’t come to us was because they knew we would go to them and they wanted to fight us on their territory—which was smart of them.
But something must have changed because they were here. They must have come to terms with fighting in our territory now because probably over a thousand soldiers were outside, waiting for us, and I couldn’t get to the top of those fucking stairs fast enough!
Eventually, though, I did.
Eventually, I made it down the hallway and to the main room where we usually hung out to plan, and I found everyone there still, hunched over the large table where the map and all those plans and lists were. Taland heard me coming in, and he started walking toward me, his eyes—though white—alarmed. He reached out his hand for me and I nearly fell on my face because I always seemed to want to just let go when he was near me. But thank the goddess, I didn’t.
“What happened? Seth woke me up—are they here?!” I asked breathlessly, but Taland shook his head.
“No, baby. They’re not. But you need to see this.” He kissed my forehead and led me to the table where there was a phone in the middle, right over the map where we’d drawn our potential plans of action.
The screen was on and it was showing something—a picture.
At first, I didn’t realize what the hell it was, but the more I looked at it, and the more I leaned in to see…
The scream caught in my throat. This time, my legs did weaken, and if I hadn’t been holding onto the edge of the table, I’d have fallen to the ground.
The picture on the screen was of Cassie, tied to a chair with her head to the side, motionless, bleeding, bruised.
Cassie all alone in a dark room with a strong bright light falling on her body so we could see her face and know it was her.
“She was captured this morning,” Aurelia said, her voice deep, dark, strained, like she, too, was trying to hold back tears.
“They sent us this ten minutes ago,” said Radock.
“She sent us intel about the number of soldiers they have lying in wait at their building. They must have caught her as she sent the message out,” Taland told me.
White noise in my ears. “Is she…”
“She’s alive,” he said because I couldn’t even say that word, couldn’t focus long enough to keep my eyes from blinking to see if her chest was rising and falling.
Get a grip, Rora, my own mind called to me when I wanted to cry out in relief. She’s alive. Cassie was alive, and I needed to be able to think about how to keep it that way.
“It’s a trap,” Zachary said.
“It’s really not,” said Kaid. “They know where we are. We know where they are. Bait is what this is.”
“I agree,” Taland said. “They want to lure us out, get us to go to them sooner. They don’t want us to be more prepared.”
“Then why not send forces to attack us?” Aurelia asked.
“Because they know they can’t win,” said Radock. “Not their soldiers alone, at least. Not against ours.”
Ours, he said, and it took me biting my tongue hard to keep from reminding him that these soldiers were not his by any means. They were Taland’s, and Taland’s only.
“And they won’t be coming here themselves—too risky. They feel safer in their own home,” said Kaid.
“So, the question remains, really—do we take the bait?” said Radock.
“I was of the mind to leave sooner, to stop them from killing more people, in the beginning,” Zachary said, and his eyes were rimmed red, like he was holding back his own tears as he looked at the screen. At Cassie tied up like a fucking animal, bleeding. Unconscious.
Goddess help me, I will burn them alive…
“But now I’m not so sure,” Zach continued. “Now, I’m thinking they sent us this bait because they don’t want us to be better prepared for a reason…right?”
My eyes closed. I couldn’t keep looking at that screen for a second longer. My mind was full of images of Cassie’s face, full of those laughs and the strange way she talked, the warmth in her gaze when she looked at me, the way she’d always been there for me, even when everybody else I knew turned their backs on me. Regret ate at my insides, too—for not forcing her to leave Headquarters, for allowing her to stay there with those people, for not being more afraid that she’d get caught. For not going there to get her out myself.
So many things…
The others were arguing—some of the mind to go now because the Council was already feeling threatened if they sent us that picture, some of the mind to wait and prepare better because they obviously didn’t want us to—and if they didn’t want us to do something, then that was exactly what we needed to do.
A part of me agreed with the latter. If they were trying to force us to go to them sooner, chances were that the Council was afraid of what we could do if we saw our original plan through. It made sense when I looked at it as an agent, it really did.
And then…
“Enough, all of you,” Aurelia said, slamming her hands on the table. My eyes opened to find her looking at Taland who was by my side, and she said, “It’s futile to argue about who wants what right now. We all know that Taland is the only one who can make the call here.”
I swallowed hard, and though everyone was looking at Taland, I felt the heat of Radock’s attention on me .
“Which means…” He smiled, showed me all his teeth, the fucker. “Rosabel will decide for all of us.”
My heart skipped a long beat. Taland’s hand closed around mine while I still gripped the edge of the table with all my strength.
Goddess, I wanted to slap that grin off Radock’s face so badly, but the fucking table was between us, and it was a big table. I’d have to walk all the way to him to reach him, and my legs couldn’t carry me just yet.
“What’s it going to be, baby?” Taland asked, and Radock flinched—I saw it because my eyes were on his face still.
And he hated it—oh, how he hated that my opinion mattered to Taland more than his. He could try to mask it with his words and his smiles all he wanted, but he fucking hated that I was more important to Taland than him.
Suck it, asshole, I thought, and had we been in another situation, I’d have flipped him the bird, too.
“What do you think—do we really need to wait?” I said to Taland instead because I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but I couldn’t carry everyone’s lives on my shoulders. Not based on a feeling , at least.
And Taland said, “We don’t.” I looked up at him. “Three days is not going to make a difference. The soldiers will fight the same way.” Once more, I envied his calm. The way he spoke—so perfectly sure of himself.
“They called,” he continued, nodding his head toward the phone on the table still showing Cassie’s picture. “It’s only fair that we answer.”
The corners of his lips were slightly curled. I so rarely saw him smiling since we got here that my stomach tied up in knots at the sight of his beautiful face.
“Then we will,” I said, and there was no guilt weighing my chest down at all. If he thought we were ready, then we were. I believed it. Everyone else in the room believed it, too.
Radock clapped his hands.
Some cheered and some cursed under their breath while Taland and I held each other’s eyes.
“Looks like it’s already time to party!” Seth shouted.
It wouldn’t be a party, but it was time, all right. It was time to get rid of the Council that had ruled our world for centuries now. The same people whose job had been to protect us , who were now slaughtering their own, killing innocent people, taking back the power they were so terrified of losing. Taking back complete control.
It was no different from what Titus had tried to do at all, except the Council had found a way to make it look legal, too.
No more.
Taland pulled me to his chest, and I rested my head on his shoulder for a moment, just to gather strength, to breathe in deeply, to get the image of a bleeding, tied up Cassie out of my mind. It worked, but only halfway.
“Hey, look at me,” Taland said after a moment, and I did. His white eyes had become so normal to me now, like he’d never had color in them to begin with.
“We’re going to get her out.”
“And we’re going to take them out as well. Once and for all.” I strangely sounded much more confident than I felt.
Taland grinned. “I love it when you talk dirty to me, baby,” he whispered against my lips, and it was impossible not to smile.
“I’ll talk dirty to you all day when this is over.” When Cassie—no, the whole world was safe from the likes of the people who made the fucking Council.
“It’s a promise.”
Taland kissed me—right there in front of all of them.
Some told us to get a room and others called for us to keep going, that they loved to watch (Seth and Aurelia), but we didn’t care. We kissed for a moment and we breathed each other in, and when we let go, we were both fuller.
Then we got to work, and I didn’t allow myself to consider even once that we would not make it out of this alive.