Chapter 28
Rosabel La Rouge
Present day
Must have been a dream.
Taland was right there, his face so close to mine, his hand on my cheek, then his fingers on my lips. He was watching me, as fascinated as ever by what he saw on my face, something I never really understood. He took his time analyzing me inch by little inch, and he never once got bored.
That part I understood perfectly—I could never get bored of looking at him, either.
Our story was…painful. A guilty, chaotic mess, and we were doomed from the beginning. We were never going to have a happy ending, Taland and I. Those who weaved our story had already decided it.
But even knowing that since day one, I couldn’t help myself. I still felt him all the way to my core. I belonged to him, heart and body and soul. Even when I betrayed him, and even when he was locked in prison, and even when he gave me to his brothers to torture when I went to him for… death ? Help? Escape?
I had no idea, but I went to him.
And then he watched and smiled from the shadows.
Suddenly, the memory of the pain his brothers had inflicted in me took over my mind, and I was back there again, chained to that chair, screaming. Looking at him for help, feeling so goddamn filthy for daring to.
Filthy. That’s what I was.
Except right now, physically I was clean. And dry. And had slept like a fucking baby when he jumped out of the window, and?—
My eyes popped open. I hadn’t been dreaming. It was still dark outside, and Taland was kneeling by the bed, looking down at me as he touched my lips, his eyes dark, the expression in them unreadable. I couldn’t tell you whether he wanted to kill me with his bare hands or kiss me until I stopped needing air.
He was really here.
My instincts were to move away, drag myself to the edge of the bed, get the hell out of the room altogether. My body, however, had a mind of its own when it came to Taland, so I froze and looked in his eyes, and despite my better judgment, I wished he’d keep touching me until the end of time.
Then he smiled.
A corner of his lips turned up and blood rushed to my cheeks instantly—it wasn’t a pleasant smile.
Now I had the urge to cover my face. “What?” I muttered, moving away slightly, angry that I had to.
“You really are deadly, sweetness,” he said, and a lump formed in my throat from the sheer willpower I exerted to keep those stupid tears at bay.
I pushed myself to the other side of the bed like I should have done right away, and I grabbed my pants and my jacket. But the moment I stood up to put them on, Taland grabbed me and pressed my back against the wall, his hand around my neck.
“Your lips are my favorite poison,” he hissed, brows narrowed like he was fucking mad, then licked my bottom lip like he wanted to spread fire on my skin. I gripped his arm with the mind to push him off me, yet all I did was hold onto him harder. “I remember how good you are with them. I almost want to tell you to get on your knees right now.”
My stomach twisted and rolled, and my legs shook. Fuck this guy—and my body for getting hot and bothered instead of disgusted.
“But I won’t do that,” said Taland, slipping his tongue in my mouth next, and I didn’t stop him.
Fuck—I didn’t stop him, didn’t want to, and I sucked on his tongue instinctively instead.
Silly, silly Rora…
“You wanna know why?” he said, then pulled my bottom lip between his teeth and bit.
He bit and I moaned. I fucking moaned as my eyes squeezed shut and my arms gripped his jacket and I wanted to pull him closer, but…
“Because I know you’ll do it, sweetness.”
I stopped.
“And it’s just too embarrassing for you. I’m not that cruel.”
This time, when my stomach twisted, it did so for a whole different reason. My hands were already on his chest and I pushed him back with all my strength while he laughed.
The fucker laughed.
My cheeks were heated up again. Tears pooling in my eyes. Fuck them and fuck him and fuck everything.
“ Cruel ? I wouldn’t use such mellow words, Taland. Handing me over to your brothers and smiling while they torture me—that’s not cruel. That’s downright monstrous.”
My voice shook.
Fuck, fuck, fuck —I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have just kept my mouth shut because I had no right to accuse him of that. Iris, I had no right to anything at all after what I’d done.
Taland’s smile dropped halfway. “ Monstrous,” he repeated like he was tasting the word on his tongue. “Yes, I like that word. It fits.”
My heart broke and broke as if I’d really hoped that he’d tell me he didn’t mean it. As if I was really stupid enough to hope that he would…I don’t know, apologize or something.
“Get out, Taland,” I said, and again, my voice shook. I went for my pants, but I’d barely grabbed them when he wrapped his arms around me from behind and hugged me to his chest. My instincts kicked in, and this time I was pissed enough to let them, so I moved my head back with all my strength, hoping to slam it to his nose and break it.
Unfortunately for me, he saw it coming and moved his head to the side, then brought his hand to my neck, long fingers wrapping around my jaw. He held my head back against his shoulder, and his tongue trailed a line from my shoulder and up my neck, all the way to my earlobe.
I fucking died.
“Such delicious poison,” he murmured in my ear, easily pinning my arms to my sides. “You’re going to get me in that vault, sweetness. One way or the other, you will.”
And he let me go.
I fell on the bed on my hands, bent over all the way— just like he liked.
He growled like a fucking animal when I stood up and backed away to the wall again, lowered down slowly to grab my pants off the floor, and put them on while I watched him.
While he still growled. While he was hard—so painfully hard I saw it clearly through his pants, just like I had last night.
Or had it even been last night ?
Because the lamp on the table was still on and the window was half open and the sky was just as dark as it had been when I slept. When was that?
“Dangerous little traitor,” said Taland in a whisper as he shook his head, retreating toward the window.
I forced a laugh.
“You can’t hurt me with those words, Taland.” I had much, much worse names to call myself than simply traitor. “What the fuck do you want from me? Why won’t you just leave me alone? I am not going to help you.” I put on my leather holster and my sheaths, and once my gun and daggers and knives were on my person, I breathed a little easier.
“I can hurt you plenty,” the asshole said, now trying to seem at ease as he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed in front of him.
Except he was still very much hard—and I looked.
He arched a brow. “Want me to pull down my pants so you can see better?”
Oh, goddess …
“No! Don’t you dare.” I lowered my head to tie up the laces of my boots and jumped to my feet to put my jacket on. “I’m leaving, Taland.” Kill me now or let me go.
But I’d already said that to him a hundred times, hadn’t I?
“You need to bring someone back from the dead,” Taland said. “And unless you already found where they buried bodies for us—which, if you did, you wouldn’t have come here at all—you have nowhere to go right now.”
I shook my head. “They buried bodies?”
“Oh, yes. Elves and orcs and trolls. They’re in the city somewhere for the players to find, but you will need days to find them, I assure you. I barely managed to find one—and that’s in the very beginning of this game.” He grinned. “Now all the easy places have been found, the bodies used.”
I took in a deep breath, trying not to think about the IDD burying people all over this place so we could use them for a goddamn game.
They were fucking sick.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I have a plan. I know how to find a dead body.”
That certainly surprised Taland. “Oh?”
I raised my chin. “You don’t have to believe me.” But I really did have a plan, one I genuinely thought would work.
“Oh, but I do.” He grinned and pushed himself off the wall. “After seeing you with that vulcera? I absolutely believe you. Here’s an interesting question, though: what will you do with a dead body when you find it?”
I looked down at the floor. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
The body came first, and if I focused on this one step at a time, I could do it. I’d figure it out.
“You can’t cross any bridge without magic, I’m afraid,” the asshole said. “Magic I have. Magic I could help you with—to complete this and the other two challenges, if you so choose.”
“Yes, you’ve told me that before. But I’m not going to take your magic, Taland. We don’t know what happens when you give magic to a M?—”
“ That is my decision to make, and I’ve made it. It doesn’t concern you,” he cut me off. “You will take my magic because you have no other choice.”
“You—”
Again, he refused to let me speak.
“You are not allowed to think about what happens after. You will just take it.”
Fucking hell, this guy. What the hell was it about him that made me so damn submissive?
I crossed my arms in front of my chest.
He wanted me to use his magic? Fine, I would, but, “I won’t help you get in the vault.” As if he still needed the reminder.
“Why not?”
“Do you seriously need to ask me that question?”
“Well, yes. By now I would assume that you well know who the IDD is. They’re not the saints they paint themselves to be, Rosabel. They’re the villains in our world, even if they don’t look the part.”
Oh, no, they didn’t.
He, on the other hand, absolutely did. (And he nailed it, unfortunately for me.)
“I know who the IDD is,” I said, even if it sucked. To admit that I was part of something that was more rotten than I’d ever realized was definitely not something I did proudly. I’d been an agent. I would have given my life in the missions they sent me to. So many before me already had— and then my own team leader had tried to kill me because he’d had orders. Then the people I’d worked with so many times had locked me in an interrogation room and had left my leg bleeding and infected, not bothering to put a fucking healing spell on me that would cost them nothing at all.
“So, then why do you insist on protecting them, sweetness?” Taland said as he stopped in front of me, way too close, but his hands were in his pockets and he wasn’t smiling at the moment. He looked at me earnestly and expected an answer.
I gave him one.
“I am not protecting them. They’re all I know, and despite what you believe, I can’t get you in the main vault if I tried. Too much security and cameras and spells.” I shook my head. “But I wouldn’t, even if I knew I could. I know what you want to steal, Taland, and I can’t just let you have that.”
The artifact he’d been at the school to steal. The same thing he went to prison for. It was taken to the main IDD vault after his arrest, and it had remained there since.
For a moment, Taland closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Do you have any idea…” His voice trailed off, and when he looked at me again, I could have sworn it was the Taland from before. My Taland.
And it ruined my heart all over again.
“Do you have any idea why?” he finally whispered. “You never asked me. All that time you knew, yet you never asked me why .”
My mouth opened and closed and opened and closed…
“I know why.” I knew what they told me. With a powerful artifact like that, it was pretty obvious, wasn’t it?
Except Taland smiled like he knew secrets I didn’t. He smiled like his heart was broken, like he was disappointed, like he expected better from me and was sad because of my words.
Which made me want to get out of my own fucking skin.
“No, sweetness—you don’t .” He stepped back and cleared his throat. “Very well—you don’t need to promise to take me to the vault, but I will still need a promise before I help you, and that’s for you to not stop me.”
“I-I-I…” I couldn’t speak.
“It’s simple. You won’t stop me when we go back. You’ll tell no one. You’ll simply stay out of it.”
He was absolutely crazy. “But you’ll die.” If he tried to get into the vault, he would die. Not only was that place protected better than the White House, but he was a wanted felon who had escaped from the Tomb. They’d shoot him on sight.
“Let me worry about that.” He reached out his hand. “Do we have a deal, Rosabel?”
I used to love it when he said my name. It was the only time I had ever loved it, even though Madeline had named me.
And I wanted to shake his hand, I really did. If he helped me with his magic, this challenge would be as good as over, if my plan panned out.
But I couldn’t. What he was asking me, to sit back and do nothing, knowing he was going to die…
I shook my head. No, I couldn’t do that. I never could, not in the past or the present. I would never agree to it in the future, either.
“I’m sorry, Taland. I’ll figure it out on my own.” I turned around and walked out the door with my heart in my throat .
Taland didn’t follow.
Vuvu insisted that I was better off inside, that tomorrow had come, according to him, but when I asked him about the time again, he said, “This is Night City! The time is nighttime—we have no other time.” And he sounded a bit freaked out about it, too.
He let me go when I promised to be back for another meal and bath and bed later on, even though I was hoping I wouldn’t need to.
Outside, nothing had changed beyond that alley. The streets were the same, the people the same, and the players even more agitated and more confused than before as they looked around themselves, searching, disappearing into the shadows. I doubted anybody had tried to get to the rooftops again. Right now, I saw no dragons flying over us, only crows, and I saw no flames, but we’d all seen enough when we first came here. So even though it would have made my life so much easier to get higher up and see where I was headed, I stuck to the ground and tried to find my way back where I’d come from.
The feeling of being watched was right there on the back of my head, like someone was standing behind me, breathing down my neck. It was Taland, I knew it, but every time I turned around and tried to catch a glimpse of him, he wouldn’t be there. He was good at hiding, the asshole.
And I was good at feeling all kinds of weird things even when all he did was stalk me.
I saw other players, plenty of them, and it made me wonder how many were still in this challenge, and how many were in others. It made me wonder where they all found the bodies that Taland thought they’d buried around here for us to complete the challenge.
And were they human bodies or animals?
Something told me it wasn’t the latter, and I really didn’t want to know for sure. I didn’t want to search for said bodies, either, so that’s why my goal was to make it all the way to the beginning of the challenge, right where I’d fallen on that hill. Where I’d met Erfes and where I’d seen all those other shops—one of them the Cloud Maker.
There were plenty of spells and potions and rituals that could bring about rain, though never ones that could drive clouds away. Nobody quite understood why it only worked one way and not both, but for now, I was hoping that whoever was inside this shop would be able to help me.
Otherwise…well, I was as good as dead.
The Cloud Maker shop was on the other side of Erfes’s bar, very close to where I’d first landed and hidden when people had seen my color. Very close to where I’d seen the vulcera for the last time.
Stabs at my gut at the memory of those moss-green eyes. Fuck, the way it hurt that I didn’t know where she was. The way it killed me that she wasn’t here with me, like I’d known her my whole life. Like I’d lived with her by my side all this time.
It made absolutely no sense, but then again, nothing about my life right now did. This pain was already becoming a part of me, and soon I wouldn’t be able to tell it apart from who I was.
So, I breathed in deeply and pretended that I was okay, and with another look around to make sure Taland wasn’t right behind me somewhere, I walked into the store.
The sound of music and chatter and footsteps from the city outside cut off abruptly even before the door fell closed behind me. A corridor with its walls covered in silver-framed pictures of clouds led to a round room with lots and lots of shelves and transparent bottles on them. The floor was set in a thick, colorful oriental type carpet, and the walls were painted a deep maroon. In the middle of the room was a tall stand that reached my chest, and on it was a glass bowl half filled with water, while a single drop of it came from somewhere on the ceiling every ten seconds, and fell right in the middle, rippling the surface.
The only sounds in there were the drip and my footsteps.
“Hello?” I said, wondering if I should go back outside and knock, but a second later…
“It all starts with water.”
The voice came from behind me— right behind me.
I jumped and turned, and I bit my tongue until I tasted blood to make sure I didn’t scream. The man who’d spoken was close enough to touch if I just reached out my hand a little bit. He was skinny and tall, with a big, pointy nose, warts all around his left eye, and a bowler hat as if to hide the tips of his ears. He had golden crosses hanging from his large earlobes, and when he smiled, his teeth were more pointy than square. The dark grey suit he wore should have been thrown away decades ago, and the once-white handkerchief on his chest pocket had long ago turned yellow.
I never really cared to judge people based on their appearance, but this guy I was judging, and I didn’t even feel guilty about it.
“Oh, no—don’t be afraid, Iridian. I’m only Refiq, and I am at your service.” With a hand to his stomach, he bowed deeply, and I had to move back to give him space. I’d prefer for Refiq not to touch me at all.
“Hello, Refiq. I’m Rora,” I forced myself to say, and his hat almost fell off his head when he made to straighten up again. I saw strings of grey hair, as well as his ears—wider on the upper middle, with the tip slightly leaning toward the back of the ear. A halfling, though what half of what species he’d inherited was debatable.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Rora. As I was saying, everything always begins with water.” And he waved at the bowl in the middle of the shop, just as the ceiling dripped again—a single drop—and we watched in silence as the surface of the water rippled. “Without it, none of us would exist. Without it, there would be no clouds.” He raised a hand toward the dark ceiling of the store, as if he could see beyond it.
“I actually don’t have a lot of time,” I said, just in case he planned to continue.
“Understandable,” the halfling said, bringing his hands in front of his chest like one does for a prayer. “May I ask, what brings you to my shop, dearest Rora? I’ll admit not many come to this old door during the Roe. I get lonely.” And he laughed.
I don’t know why that made me want to start running out the door and never look back.
“Right,” I said, trying my best not to be rude. “That’s, uhm…that’s unfortunate.”
“But I understand, certainly. It is hard enough to play this game as it is, but to want to make it rain on top of everything else? Of course, of course. No judgment,” Refiq continued, and I took a step back and to the side as casually as I could, wanting some distance between us, just in case.
Refiq didn’t look like he cared.
“No judgment,” I repeated with a nod. “Do you mind telling me what you do here? Are you really a cloud maker?”
“Of course, I am.” With his hands in front of him again, he nodded his head deeply. “The best in the Roe—and the only, too.” He smiled brightly, and though I really wished he hadn’t, I still managed to hold back my flinch. “All these bottles have clouds in them—pay attention and you’ll see for yourself.”
He looked around the shelves lining the walls of his store, and I was going to say, yes, I saw them, but then when I looked again, most of the bottles were full of what looked like cotton candy.
White cotton candy trapped inside glass.
Clouds . Actual clouds. “Oh,” I ended up whispering.
“I’ve been making them for a long time, and they’re always here because…” He paused a second, as if the reason had just occurred to him again. “Well, nobody really wants rain.” And that made him sad. “Which is such a shame, really. Rain is beautiful. We have rain in us, too, when we’re sad, don’t we?”
I forced a smile. “We call those tears. ”
“Same difference,” he insisted. “Would you like to see a cloud? I can make a demonstration before I give them to you to prepare for the sky.”
“No, thank you,” I said, feeling like I was standing on needles already. “What I’m looking for is a bit…different. But first, if I may ask, Refiq— how did you make these?” One needed magic to make it rain.
His expression turned sour. “With these hands—how else?” he said, showing me the back of his hands.
“Yes, but?—”
“With the magic that I’ve inherited from my late mother,” he continued, taking off his bowler hat next, showing me what was left of his grey hair around his head, and his ears. “I’m sure you noticed I’m a halfling. My father was an orc, my mother of your kind.” Something flashed in his dull brown eyes, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I was usually very good at reading people, but he evaded my senses easily. “I don’t really have any other magic except to make these clouds, but I do that very well. Like I said—the best in the Roe, and the only!” He spread his arms to the sides and laughed again, but this time it was fake.
An Iridian mother and an orc father. How curious—I’d never seen a half-Iridian before.
“I’m going to be honest with you, Refiq. I want to buy a cloud from you, definitely, but I need a little bit more than that.” I wet my dry lips for a moment. “I need you to prepare it for the sky as well.” Because that, too, required magic, and I didn’t have any.
“Oh, I’m afraid I don’t do that. I only sell the clouds as they are,” he said, waving at the shelves again.
“I know that, but I need you to prepare one for the sky as well. I’m sure you can do it. If you have enough magic to create one, you should be able to make it large, too.” Or at least I hoped so with all my heart.
“But…but…” Refiq shook his head, at a loss for words for a moment as he looked at the shelves with a new light now.
“I have a silver coin right here,” I said, pulling one of the remaining two from my pocket to show him. “You can have it. All of it.” And maybe I had no clue how much these silver coins were worth, but if one paid for a meal and a room at Vuvu’s inn, it surely would pay for a cloud.
Refiq’s eyes brightened up again. “I see,” he told me. “If I were to agree to this, would you pay me in full? In advance?”
Now he was just plain greedy—very easy to see—and that put me at ease. Greed, I could handle. “Yes,” I said because I didn’t really have any other choice .
“And if I were to agree to this, when would you need the rain?”
I flinched. “Actually, rain is not what I need.”
His silver brows shot up. “What do you need, then?”
“A hailstorm.” Lots and lots of hail. “Right over the roundabout at the other end of the street.” Where there were the most birds, Iris help me. Because if a bird died in a hailstorm, it would be of natural causes, I was sure of it. Even if magic-made, a storm was still natural, and it was considered a natural disaster by all laws. I’d dealt with damages like this in the IDD. And nobody said what kind of a creature we’d need to bring back. It didn’t have to be a person—Blackfires brought back ravens to make their anchors all the time. Maybe I could figure out a way to do it, too. Without magic.
Without Taland.
My stomach fell all the way to my heels.
“A hailstorm in the middle of the game,” Refiq whispered.
I nodded. “Can you do it?”
A long and heavy silence followed as the halfling looked everywhere around us but saw nothing, lost in his own head. I could see the wheels turning, and I prayed and prayed and nearly pulled my fingers off my hands until he said, “I’ll need a tomorrow, and I make no promises. If it works, tomorrow it will hail over the roundabout. And if it doesn’t, I keep the coin.” He offered me the palm of his hand. “That is my offer.”
Once more I bit my tongue to keep from cursing out loud.
“Do you accept?”
I did.