Chapter 35
Rosabel La Rouge
2 years ago
My stomach hurt from laughing so hard at the awful joke Carlos, a friend of Taland, told us.
He asked—and with a straight face— what’s red and brown and bad for your teeth? And the rest of us gave it a good thinking, throwing ideas around until he shrugged and said, “ Nope. It’s a brick. ”
The most awful joke I’d ever heard, but his face was priceless, and the way the rest of us felt like idiots for actually trying to come up with the right answer…
We were still laughing when we made our way outside the second tower, headed for the fourth where the Feast of Hope was about to begin soon. Everyone was dressed up and so ready for the party—and for graduation. We only had two more weeks of classes left, and then school was over. We would all be free to pursue whatever career or life we wanted .
I would be free to start my life with Taland.
He wore a black tuxedo his brothers had sent him—he had three, all older than him. He had no parents, either, just them. They sent him a pair of expensive-looking, shiny shoes, too, but he chose to go with his boots, and he made it work effortlessly. He was clean shaven, like always, and I’d gone to his room to do his hair as soon as I’d gotten myself ready because I said I wanted to see it sleeked back, and he said, do with it what you will.
So, I did, and it looked fucking amazing on him, and I couldn’t believe that this guy was my date.
That this guy was mine.
My heart was about to burst into all the colors of the universe.
I wore a red dress, courtesy of Madeline, and it fit me perfectly. It covered me from my neck down to my wrists, and the flared skirt fell all the way to my knees. Not something I would have picked, but still, Taland loved it. Said the deep red of the slightly shimmery fabric made my eyes look even more on fire than usual—this when he bent me over his desk and fucked me from behind in his room as to not to ruin my hair and makeup.
It was perfect, as perfect as always.
After that he finally let me fix his hair, put his jacket on, and we were out the door.
All of us together, all friends arm in arm with our dates, walking through the backyard slowly, laughing and telling stories and telling each other how good we looked.
We were happy, all of us.
Before we entered the hall in which the party was being held, Taland pulled me to the side, down a dark corridor where other couples had already gone to make out. We went all the way around the corner, and he pressed me against the wall, and he kissed me like he might die if he didn’t taste me this very second.
My red lipstick was going to be smudged, but that’s why I’d taken it with in my purse. Knowing us, we’d be taking make-out breaks every half an hour tonight, so I was prepared.
“Almost done,” Taland whispered while we breathed heavily still from that kiss, forehead to forehead, arms wrapped around one another tightly.
“Almost. Two more weeks and we’re free.” I still had to convince Madeline that I would be going off on my own, and an ugly voice in my head tried to convince me that she would rather put me in prison than let me go, but I ignored it because I would be with Taland. He made me feel like I could do anything—even manage to keep Madeline Rogan off my back, make her forget about me, let me live my life far away from her.
“I can’t wait to start life with you,” he said, biting my lower lip.
My poor heart.
“I love you, Taland.” With all of me, every fiber of my being and every ounce of my soul.
He pressed harder against me, eyes squeezed shut, lips against mine.
“You’re my dream come true, sweetness,” he said, and my toes curled all the way.
He was my dream come true, too—a dream I had never even dared to dream until we met.
We had no idea what exactly we were going to do, Taland and I. He’d turned eighteen a month ago so he would have his anchor as soon as school was over. We’d have magic with us in case we needed it for anything. I wouldn’t turn eighteen for another few months, but it was okay. Taland’s would be more than enough. All that mattered was that we were going to be together.
We promised to talk about how we were going to make that happen once this party was over, and we had another two weeks to figure out all the details. We weren’t worried—of course, we weren’t. Everything was possible because—like I said—we would be together .
The party was fantastic. The band played all the right songs, and my feet were so sore from dancing that I took my shoes off an hour in. You’d think Taland was not the type to dance, and I honestly thought I’d have to drag him to the dance floor by force, but I didn’t. He was right behind me every step I took.
It was a night we would never, ever forget. Our friends were there, and we had wine and music and space to just be .
It was the ultimate proof, I thought to myself, that Taland was not whoever Hill and the IDD were looking for. It was the ultimate proof that we hadn’t left each other’s side for a single second since the night began, and Hill knew it by now. That’s why the phone I’d hidden in the small pocket of my purse was silent—no calls, no texts, no nothing.
Taland was not who they thought he was.
He was just Taland. And he was mine .
Those three hours were easily the best hours of my life.
Then everything changed.
“I have to get away from the party for a little bit, sweetness.”
My heart fell instantly as if my body knew.
We’d just sat down at our table after dancing to ten songs in a row, and we needed to catch our breath and drink some water, before we returned to our friends again.
Even so, my smile didn’t falter.
“Where are we going?” I asked because obviously he was talking about getting away from the crowd so we could have a little time together. Alone.
Taland flinched. “Actually, I need to get away on my own. It’s just for a little bit. I’ll be back in thirty minutes.” He stood up, grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair, and leaned down to kiss me on the cheek. “Miss me.”
That’s all he said— miss me— and then holding his jacket over his shoulder, he walked out of the party.
All by himself, without me.
Left me all alone.
The music, the laughter, the lights and the people dancing around me faded away into nothing. I grabbed my purse, left my shoes by the chair, and I followed him outside like I was walking on clouds. Like I wasn’t really there, living that moment. Like it was only a dream, a bad dream, and soon I was going to wake up.
I didn’t.
I saw the shape of him, and I followed him slowly, soundlessly, walking on the tips of my numb toes, all the way outside.
Taland hid in the shadows, looking about him as he went, and I did the same, hiding behind the walls, my eyes never leaving him.
Taland disappeared inside the first tower seconds later.
Stop, stop— STOP!
I squeezed my eyes shut where I was hiding behind a tree.
Goddess, this was wrong . What the hell was I doing, following him like this? What would I tell him if he caught me?!
He probably needed to do something on his own. He needed his privacy—and I was going to give it to him, damn it. It was Taland— I had no right to follow him around like this!
But then I opened my eyes.
More shadows moved about the backyard of the school, and the phone in my purse vibrated with a new call at the same time.
Surreal.
Nothing but a figment of my imagination, this whole thing. The thoughts in my head didn’t make sense, like they were developing in slow motion. Even when I moved, took the phone out and brought it to my ear, and even when I said, ‘hello’— none of it felt real.
“Are you with him?” David Hill said to me on the phone.
Yes, I thought.
“No,” I said.
“Follow him, Rose. Keep him in your line of sight at all times. Do you understand?”
Of course, I don’t understand! That’s the man I love—I don’t understand anything!
“Yes.”
The line went dead.
Three men with guns in their hands had been hiding around me, near the walls and behind doors, and one underneath a bench in the darkness. They came out and slipped into the first tower in perfect silence .
I followed, shaking from head to toe, my mind still unable to grasp the concept of real right now.
Keep him in your line of sight at all times.
Maybe I should have asked why .
Maybe I should have said no.
Maybe I shouldn’t have followed those men inside the building, and down the corridor, turning corner after corner until we were in front of a staircase at the end leading down.
I stopped as I watched the shadows hiding in the doors of the classrooms along the sides of the corridor. Taland’s footsteps were barely noticeable as he walked down those stairs, going Iris knew where.
His name was at the tip of my tongue. I wanted to call out to him, tell him to come back here, that people were after him—- agents , I bet, dressed in all black, with hats on their heads and guns in their hands.
Just come back to me right now!
Instead, I went ahead, moved forward, to the agents, to the stairs, while the world around me went to hell. All of it went to hell at the same time.
A wonder I hadn’t collapsed yet.
The stairs were made of wood, and they led somewhere dark, somewhere I had never been before. Somewhere Taland shouldn’t have been now.
Behind me came the agents, silent as ghosts, their footsteps mirroring mine. I wanted to turn and tell them to give me a moment, that I would follow because Hill told me to keep an eye on him, that’s all. They didn’t need to come so close to any of us with those damn guns— just stay away from us, freaks!
But a second before I gathered the courage to turn around and whisper the words, I heard .
I heard a voice coming as if from very far away, from whatever device the agent walking behind me had close to him, a voice that I wasn’t supposed to hear.
“ Shoot on sight .”
I froze.
The men behind me froze, too.
“Sir, we don’t have a confirmation—” the agent whispered back, but he was cut off again by a voice that could have been Hill, or maybe someone else.
“The moment he steps into the Strongroom, shoot to kill. That’s an order.”
I couldn’t tell you what I was thinking in those moments because I wasn’t. I couldn’t tell you what I was feeling, either, other than these instincts that took control of me before I knew what the hell I’d decided to do.
I moved forward, continued to walk and my step didn’t falter, as if I wasn’t going to lead these men to Taland at all. As if I wasn’t going to be there to witness the whole thing with my own eyes.
That’s what Hill had brought me here for—as witness.
He didn’t need me to confirm anything for him. He’d already decided to kill Taland, but I was to be there as the witness, and to this day, I still had no clue why. To this day, I didn’t understand why he’d chosen to involve me in this sick, twisted game of his.
And to this day, I couldn’t bring myself to wish anything had been different because, if it had, I would have never met Taland. I’d rather die than regret any moment I’d ever spent with him.
I went through doors, trying to see in the dark, trying to hear his footsteps again, refusing to think that Taland was really the guy Hill thought he was. Refusing to acknowledge what it meant that Taland really was the guy he’d sent me here to spy on, that he was a criminal, that he was going to try to steal something from the Strongroom of this school.
A Strongroom I hadn’t known even existed.
Taland took us deep into the underground, and the four agents kept following behind me, and I hid whenever he stopped to look around, to make sure he was alone. Only a few lamps were on at the corners of the hallways he passed, so I barely saw his silhouette. But the first plan I’d made without actually realizing it, was to make our presence known. To tell him that I was here, that someone was watching him.
Screw the IDD and Hill and these agents—it was Taland. I was on his side, even if I had no idea yet that I’d picked a side.
So, as Taland continued down a narrower corridor on the other end of the hall he took us to, I let go of my purse.
It was velvet, but the clasp and the holder were made out of shiny metal, and the sound of it echoed in the complete silence so many times, it was impossible that Taland wouldn’t hear it.
Impossible, yet he didn’t.
He never turned. His step didn’t falter. He just continued ahead.
“Pick it up and keep going,” the agent behind me said.
My heart shattered into a million pieces. Of course, they’d put a ward around themselves— around me, too. Of course, Taland wouldn’t hear nor see us until it was too late, even if I stopped and screamed out his name at the top of my lungs.
Tears streamed from my eyes, so fast. I kept walking, one bare foot against the marble floor after the other, until we were at the end of the corridor, and in a round hall with three doors on its dark brown walls.
Taland was in front of the one in the middle, pressing keys on the panel at its side.
The password that he had no business knowing, but he did.
The spell he had no business knowing how to deactivate, but he put what looked like a compass made of wood on the floor in front of the doors, then stepped aside for a moment to let it work whatever magic it was infused with.
And while he waited, Taland turned to look around once more, eyes wide, breathing heavily.
He turned and he should have seen me—I was standing right there, half of me visible from the corner of the wall.
He didn’t.
Whatever signal he received from that device, he left it there, took in a deep breath that I felt as if my own lungs were being filled, and he pushed the door open.
Something like the sound of locks turning from the inside filled the hall. The door gave.
Taland disappeared into the darkness behind it.
My tears turned everything around me to a blur, but I moved as if I knew exactly what the hell I was doing. I moved and I went through that door that led to another room, this one rectangular, with display tables with lamps and candleholders on them, lots of paintings on the walls, and shelves full of books near them. It had two doors on each end, and Taland was going for the one on the left. He was rushing to it, no longer looking behind him at all.
It was a second’s decision I only realized I’d made when I actually did it—slammed the door shut in the face of the agents and turned the golden lock.
I ran .
Iris help me, I prayed.
Taland finally heard.
Maybe it was because the guards couldn’t see me, so the ward they had with them didn’t extend to me anymore. Maybe it was because I’d gotten farther away from them and closer to Taland—it didn’t matter.
Taland heard and Taland turned.
He saw me, and it was like he was seeing a ghost.
He started shaking his head and raised his hands.
“No, no, no, sweetness—no! What are you doing?”
That’s because he had no idea who I was. He had no idea that I’d followed him. He had no idea anybody knew where he was headed—to that room that was apparently the Strongroom, behind that door where he would meet his death.
No.
I was no longer crying. The door behind us groaned when someone outside slammed something against it—the agents. I dropped my purse again as I ran to Taland and grabbed an empty golden candleholder from a display table in the middle of the room.
It all happened so fast that he still hadn’t formed an opinion about what the hell was going on by the time I was close enough, and his eyes were still wide, unblinking.
I swung my arm with all my strength.
Taland didn’t understand that I meant to hit him on the face with that thing until I did, and he fell to the floor as blood gushed from his temple.
The candleholder fell from my hand.
The door behind me exploded with what could have been a gunshot, and people came in—agents, more than four. Perhaps six or seven. I only looked at Taland, his eyes closed, his face calm, the blood coming out of his wound seemingly black in the darkness of the room.
But then someone turned on the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and there was plenty of light to see that it was him. To silence the part of my mind that thought maybe it wasn’t. Maybe this guy only looked like Taland, and we were all just mistaken. Because no way did this happen so suddenly on this very night. On the best night of my life. No way.
Yet it was happening right in front of my eyes.
I couldn’t move. I was completely paralyzed, torn between wanting to kneel by him, wipe away his blood, kiss him until he woke up—and running until I found the edge of the world and jumped into the abyss beyond.
A man was beside me when Taland finally began to blink his eyes. Two agents dressed in black suits grabbed him by the arms and dragged him to the wall, pointing their guns at his face.
The man beside me wore a suit, too—dark green with an emerald-colored tie.
“Did he attack you?”
Taland blinked and blinked, and saw the agents at his sides, and the guns pointed at him…and me.
My eyes were dry.
“Yes . He attacked me.” Because if I said no , I had no way of justifying the fact that I’d closed the door on the agents, and I’d attacked Taland before he made it into the Strongroom.
“Sweetness…”
My heart was in pieces.
“One moment,” the man in the suit with a heavy grey mustache said, then brought his wrist to his lips, and whispered something I couldn’t understand .
I looked at Taland.
“What…what’s going on?” he whispered.
I said nothing.
“How did it happen?” asked the man.
I shook my head. “He must have seen me following him. Closed the door with his magic as soon as I walked in and tried to knock me out.”
Each word made a bloody mess of my throat as it came out.
The man in the green suit whispered in his wrist for another moment that lasted an eternity.
Then he put his hand over my shoulder. “Well done, Miss La Rouge. Very well done. I assume you’re okay? He didn’t hurt you?”
The look in Taland’s eyes when he heard the name.
The way he never blinked.
The way he showed me exactly what he felt because I was too much of a coward to look away.
“No,” I barely managed. “I’m fine.”
“Very well, Miss La Rouge. Your grandmother will be proud,” the man in the green suit said, and I didn’t even have it in me to flinch. “And the IDD thanks you for your service. Please, follow the agent outside. Your work here is done. We’ll take care of the rest.”
The look in Taland’s eyes…
An agent, one of those wearing black suits that extended to their heads, too, so that I only saw their faces, grabbed me by the arm gently.
I’m sorry, I thought, but could never speak the words.
The agent pulled me back—again, gently.
I love you. I’m sorry. I can’t let you die.
The agent pulled me back—harder .
Taland broke right in front of my eyes when I wasn’t strong enough to resist the pull and took a step back.
“Somebody’s about to find themselves in the Tomb soon. You’ve gotten yourself into big trouble, boy. Big, big trouble…”
The agent with the green suit had squatted in front of Taland, and he was smiling, as if this was a good thing.
The Tomb, he said.
Prison.
Taland was going to prison, yet he couldn’t look away from me for a second as the agent dragged me all the way out of the room.
I couldn’t look away from him, either.
But though he was completely broken, and I’d seen the pieces of him all over the floor of that cursed room, he changed .
I was at the door, about to be dragged out, and the agents at his side pulled Taland to his feet, then cuffed his hands behind his back. By then, the look on his face had changed completely—from broken to evil.
Pure, raw evil, even if I didn’t understand it in those moments.
I understood it after just fine.
The agent pulled me out of the room.
“You will not kill him,” I whispered, my own voice strange to my ears.
The agent kept pulling me down the corridor.
I stopped, jerked my arm from his grip. “You will not kill him, will you?”
He met my eyes. “No, Miss La Rouge. We have orders to bring him in unharmed.”
Unharmed .
He grabbed my arm again, continued to pull me forward.
Unharmed— which meant not dead.
He took me out of the building, all the way to my room in the dormitory to get my things because I’d apparently be leaving the school right away, as per Hill’s orders. Taland, too—except he wasn’t going home.
He was going to the IDD Headquarters— unharmed. Alive. Not dead.
That night, and a lot of nights afterward, that was the only thing keeping me from losing my mind.
When I made it home early in the morning, right after sunrise, that’s when I finally began to believe that last night had, in fact, happened. That I’d been to that party and I’d followed Taland and I’d hit him with that candleholder and he’d heard my name.
Madeline saw me only briefly, to tell me that the artifact that Taland had wanted to steal had really been in that Strongroom, and that it was still there, thanks to me. She told me that the IDD would transport said artifact to their own Vault because they were afraid someone of the organization Taland belonged to would try to steal it again from the school.
You could have just taken it to the Vault before you let Taland try to steal it, I thought, but didn’t say—what would be the point?
Why didn’t you, you sick bastards?!
Why would you let an eighteen-year-old go to prison when you could have kept that artifact safe all along? !
The words remained inside my head.
Everything had changed within the hour, and I didn’t sleep for three days and three nights straight because I couldn’t believe it still.
I was no longer going to have a happy life. I was going to remain under Madeline’s clutches, all by myself. There was no way she was going to let me out of her sight, and without Taland, I wasn’t strong enough to even want to oppose her.
But Hill offered me a position as an agent when he came to visit me, when he came to tell me that my testimony wouldn’t be needed at trial, after all.
They’d found proof in Taland’s room, and in Taland’s phone records—enough to prove his plans of stealing that mysterious artifact. More than that—Taland had pled guilty to all charges, and though he hadn’t given away any names of who he was working for, he hadn’t tried to deny it at all. That’s why his trial had been so short.
That’s why Taland was already in the Tomb.
Hill congratulated me.
He said he’d had no idea that I even knew how to protect myself from Taland the way I had. They still thought Taland had closed the door on the agents and that he’d tried to attack me, knock me out, use me as a hostage to get out of the school alive.
They had no fucking clue.
Hill also said he was glad I hadn’t been hurt—though the way his eyes shone when he said this, I didn’t believe it for a second.
Had he been the one to give the order to shoot an eighteen-year-old boy as soon as he stepped into a room?
Probably.
And I hated him with every fiber of my being.
But Hill had the power to change my life still. And he said that, when he heard about how I’d knocked Taland out with that candleholder, he just knew that I was meant to be an IDD agent.
I accepted because what other choice did I have? If I was at the IDD Academy, I wouldn’t be home with Madeline.
If I was training to be an agent, if I had a job at the end of the training program, I wouldn’t have to see Madeline on the daily. I wouldn’t have to think about Taland, the look in his eyes, how I’d betrayed him, how I’d become everything I despised with my whole being.
I accepted because I couldn’t stand myself, and I was sure that I’d have no time for any of that.
I did.
The memory of the look in his eyes when Taland realized that I’d betrayed him haunted my dreams every single night since, until I stopped dreaming altogether.