Chapter 39
Taland Tivoux
Present, five days ago
Rosabel La Rouge was in my arms. Unconscious. Bleeding. Dying.
My own whispers startled me. I hadn’t realized I was using my magic until it came out of my hands and slipped into her body, a third-degree healing spell that would take away that infection on her leg that they hadn’t healed. That they had caused.
Which begged the question, why ?
My magic slipped into her body and I didn’t need to look at her leg to know it had worked. My magic always worked. And she was still there, passed out in my arms while the world around us continued to exist. While the residents of the Blue House continued to eat and party like always.
My thoughts were struggling to catch up with what my senses were telling me. Here I was, trying to think of a way to see her again, to get close to her without anybody noticing, and she came right to my door.
She came to the Blue House, wounded and bleeding and alone—and in those moments, I didn’t care what had happened before, what she’d done, where I’d been, how we’d ended up here. In those moments, I just wanted to find those responsible and break them apart limb by limb. I would take my time with it, enjoy it more than anything in the world.
“Rosabel,” I whispered, as if hearing her name might make this make more sense.
It didn’t.
She was still here, still in my arms, and I was already chanting another healing spell to make sure that wound on her leg closed for good.
You shouldn’t have come here, sweetness, I thought, as my mind raced—now for a different reason. As my mind raced to figure out how to take her away before anyone saw. Before anyone noticed?—
“Taland.”
Every drop of blood in me froze. I turned to look at Radock, my eldest brother, a spitting image of our father if the pictures we had of him were anything to go by. He was already here, his eyes on Rosabel lying limp in my arms, and I already knew it was done.
My options just became severely limited.
Fuck.
No time to get angry now, only time to figure out my next move.
What could I possibly do?
I knew what I wanted to do: take her away and disappear in the night somewhere, where nobody saw or heard or knew we existed. I wanted to hide here in a place where nobody could get to her ever—least of all my brothers.
And I had planned to do exactly that.
I’d lie all day if I had to, but I couldn’t lie to myself. That’s what I had planned to do once I figured out a way to get close to her: get her far away from my brothers.
But now she’d come right to their door, and Radock wasn’t the only one there to witness her existence. Kaid and Seth were right behind him, laughing. Cheering. Hi-fiving each other. Shocked by our good luck.
“Our stars must have finally aligned…” Radock whispered, looking down at Rosabel’s face with a gleaming in his eyes that I didn’t like. That made me want to burst into flames. That made my magic want to come out violently, kill him right on the spot for daring to look at what was mine like that.
Except this was Radock.
This was my brother, for fuck’s sake. This was the man I owed everything to.
His eyes met mine. “How?”
When I spoke, I didn’t sound any different. “She came by herself.”
An arched brow. “How would she know? Have they discovered us?”
I shook my head. “She’s alone. Wounded. Bleeding.”
Why, sweetness? Who did this to you? Tell me, goddess, tell me now…
“How the hell did she know how to find us?” Kaid said, as he, too, looked at Rosabel.
The urge to move away, hide her in the darkness, grew. I stayed put .
“I don’t know,” I lied.
Of course I lied. It was bad enough that I had to endure their bullying for letting a girl fool me for the rest of my life, but if they knew I’d told said girl where to find their hidden lair if she ever needed me, they’d never let me live it down.
Worse yet—they would trust me even less than they already did.
“A trap,” Seth said. “Could it be?”
It’s not.
It wasn’t a trap. She was wounded. She’d passed out. She was feverish, which made very little sense. She wasn’t faking it. I’d know. And maybe I was a fool to think so, but I’d know if she lied. I always did.
Except the time it mattered.
She betrayed me.
Those three words that I somehow had to remind myself of even now. She was in my arms and I wanted to forget everything and everyone, especially those three words, but I couldn’t.
Because she’d come to my door. My brothers had already seen her.
And simply put, I couldn’t win against them.
Fucking hell, that I was even considering fighting them or escaping from them was fucking absurd, but I couldn’t if I tried. Together, they were more powerful than me. They’d never let me get away.
No, I couldn’t take Rosabel to safety, not right now.
I had to wait.
“Guess we’ll find out,” Radock said, eyes up at the sky now, as if he was curious to see if he’d find some fancy IDD device flying over us. He wouldn’t—Rosabel was alone. I had nowhere else to go. She was alone and she needed me.
And I couldn’t take her away .
“Basement, now,” Radock ordered, eyes up still, waiting for something that wasn’t going to come.
Kaid and Seth were by my sides instantly, waiting for me to move. I had no choice but to suffocate my anger, push it down, bury it deep inside me. Now was not the time to make mistakes. I needed to be calm if I was going to think straight—for her sake. For mine.
So I walked with them, with her still in my arms. I took her to the damn basement, even though I knew well what awaited her there, and I couldn’t stop it.
I couldn’t stop any of this right now, and it was okay.
You shouldn’t have come here, sweetness…
But I was going to take her out one way or the other.
“Apparently, she’s Mud. ”
Noise in my ears.
I continued to read the words on Kaid’s lips as he spoke, but those three words remained in my head.
Mud.
Rosabel, my Rosabel—Mud.
It couldn’t possibly be.
“She got drained on the job. Escaped from the interrogation room where they put her when they came back from their mission. She got shot, too. They didn’t heal her.”
Radock’s eyes met mine.
The noise in my ears came to a halt. “Which means you did,” my brother said.
To deny it would be stupid—he’d know. And if he didn’t, he’d asked the men who were there, who came to get me when she first came.
I nodded. “I did. She would have died.”
“It was a wound on her leg ,” said Radock with that little smile, playing with his shiny pen over his gigantic desk full of documents that he refused to sort out because he thrived in chaos.
“The infection was in her blood,” was all I said.
He’d practically raised me since Mom died, so I knew how much to say to my eldest brother to sound believable. The more I tried to convince him of something, the less he’d believe me.
“So now she’s wanted ,” said Seth, shaking his head, smiling. “By her own people.”
“They are nobody’s people,” Kaid said. On that, we agreed. The IDD was nobody’s, except its own. It existed to serve the council and the leaders—everyone else be damned.
“But Madeline Rogan’s granddaughter, though…” My hands fisted tightly. I hated that name with all my being. Hearing it always reminded me of the day I’d found out who Rosabel really was.
“She actually wants her dead,” my bother said.
When in prison, I’d had no choice but to learn to keep my feelings off my face quickly, but that skill was being tested today, in these very moments.
I looked at Radock as he spun his fancy pen between his index fingers and smiled at himself like he did when he felt superior.
It was all I could do not to ask, who wants her dead? Speak— now . Speak faster.
I didn’t, of course. That would be out of character for me. Radock could not know exactly how affected I was by this thing.
“Who?” asked Seth, which was accepted. Expected.
“Madeline wants her granddaughter dead,” Radock finally said, looking at Kaid, grinning. “My spy said she wanted the girl delivered to her after her interrogation. He said she insisted on being the one to take care of it. She was, apparently, offended by her granddaughter’s new, erm… status. ”
My brothers laughed.
I laughed, too.
And I really wanted to know who Radock’s spy was.
“So, she’s really not a trap?” Kaid again.
“She really isn’t,” Radock said with a nod. “We have been blessed by Iris Herself, brothers. Tonight, we get to avenge our little brother. We get to kill the girl who took him from us for almost two whole years.”
Radock stood up.
Seth and Kaid smiled and nodded.
“No.”
The word left my lips while I still had my smile on.
No, you will not kill the girl who took me from you, brothers. Not ever. Not for any reason.
Their smiles froze. “What’s that, Tal?” said Radock, pretending he hadn’t heard me.
“I said, no. ”
Kaid stepped forward. “Little brother, little brother,” he said with a sigh, shaking his index finger at me. “Have you forgotten your place so quickly?”
Oh, but I hadn’t.
“Let him speak,” Radock told Kaid. “Speak, Taland.”
I looked at Kaid as I smiled and said, “Her life is mine to take. Do with her what you will, but I will be the one to kill her. It is my right.”
The words were nails that I pulled up my throat. They left me a bloody mess—but most importantly, they worked .
My brothers agreed. More than that, Radock was so fucking proud of me I wanted to crawl right out of my skin.
“Very well, little bother. Very, very well…”
“Your word,” I said. “I’ll take your word.”
Radock laughed. He sounded happy, more proud than before. “You have it. You have my word that we will not kill your girl. But we will play with her for as long as we want.”
And right now, there was nothing I could do to stop them.
My mind worked. My thoughts were chaotic. Whatever scenario developed in my head, it all ended the same way—with me dead at the hands of my brothers or my brothers dead at my hands.
And I couldn’t let either come true.
The smile on my face hurt. Rosabel screamed harder. Kaid’s magic was underneath her skin, torturing her. I chained her to that chair myself. I made sure she wouldn’t be able to escape it myself, while my brothers watched. I gave her to them because I knew that I couldn’t take her away, couldn’t protect her.
And that was my torture.
No matter how she’d betrayed me, this was monstrous.
No matter that she’d served me to the IDD, this was a different level.
And I kept on smiling, because this was the only way I knew how to save her life.
I kept on smiling because she, at least, would remain alive for as long as it took. She would not die—I’d claimed her life, had to call fucking dibs on it so that Radock wouldn’t kill her. Had to make him swear he wouldn’t end her life but would leave that privilege to me .
I’d met plenty of ugly people in the Tomb, but I myself put them all to shame tonight.
Then she passed out.
I forced myself to sit there in the shadows and see and hear all of it—I deserved to. And I kept smiling for my brothers, who needed extra convincing about everything I did since I escaped the Tomb and came back. Didn’t blame them, but that smile was like hammering needles all over my own body.
For now, at least, it was over.
For now, my brothers would take a break.
For now, I had a few minutes to do what I knew— I knew was a mistake. A big mistake, one that could haunt me for the rest of my life. A fatal mistake.
I’d accused Rosabel of being a traitor for two years. Now I was about to become far, far worse.
I didn’t join my brothers when we left the basement and they went back to Radock’s office, to snack and drink and talk about the great time they had while torturing her. I kept a smile on my face all the while when I said I had business to tend to, and—like I said—the less I elaborated, the more Radock believed me.
So, I walked away, out of a hidden door on the outer wall of the Blue House, and straight into the dense woods that stretched for miles at its back.
The community had started small, with barely fifty people at first, when Iridians chose to marry different species, mainly humans, and society decided to make their lives a living hell because of it. The man who’d founded the Blue House had been a Bluefire, married to an elf himself, and though he’d died decades ago, he’d left a good thing behind here.
The people were free. The people were safe .
The people had no idea that the head of the Selem organization lived among them and operated the businesses of the Blue House on the daily. The Mergenbach siblings and the Tivoux brothers. Bluefire and Blackfire together, watching out for the people, not only in the community, but in the whole world. Preparing themselves as best as they could for when the IDD took over completely—or tried. Preparing themselves for what they called the Ruin.
I had been part of it since I could remember. I was part of it when I was homeschooled here in the Blue House and then when I went to an actual school, too. I was part of it, and I failed them when I failed to deliver the one artifact that would have changed everything—but that wasn’t the point now.
The point was that my cabin in the woods, shielded by three layers of wards so that even Radock couldn’t find it, was right there, and the old phone I kept there for emergencies was dead, so I had to plug it in.
When the battery was charged enough that the phone turned on, I made the call.
Finding the number hadn’t been hard. This was Madeline Rogan, former director of the IDD, a public figure with all her information available online. Not her private phone number, but her home’s landline was good enough.
It rang and rang, but nobody picked up for a while. Maybe because it was a little past midnight.
I called again. And again.
And a fourth time, too.
Eventually, the thick voice of a woman brought my thoughts, the memory of her screams, to a halt. “ Hello?”
“I need to speak to Madeline Rogan.”
“It’s past mi?—”
“About her granddaughter, Rosabel La Rouge. ”
My eyes were closed, the cabin small, empty, the wards active, strong.
I breathed deeply.
“Please hold.”
I held.
My breath and my thoughts and my phone to my hear—I held it all.
“How dare you.”
Those three words she said first.
Those three words she said, after her maid or whoever had picked up the phone told her that I was calling about Rosabel.
That’s how I knew that what Radock said before in his office was true. He hadn’t lied to us, and his spy hadn’t lied to him, and now I wondered if those times when sweetness had cried in my arms all night had something to do with her.
“Madeline Rogan,” I said, the magic in the cabin thick to alter the sound of my voice.
“How dare you call at this hour,” the woman on the other end said, and if I’d had it in me to be surprised still, I would be.
“I have information about the whereabouts of Rosabel La Rouge,” I continued. “Your granddaughter.”
Silence.
The guilt tried to squash me under. After all, I was betraying my own here, even if I refused to acknowledge the fact. I was betraying my people, my brothers, no matter how hard I was ignoring the thoughts and just forcing myself to focus on the phone. The woman. My changed voice.
Easy enough to do altering magic—both for the eyes and the ears of my subjects. Easy and painless, and that’s what I focused on.
“My granddaughter is better off wherever she is,” the woman whispered.
Again, I’d have been surprised under different circumstances.
“Your granddaughter is being tortured.” I said this simply. Calmly. To hear me you’d think I didn’t care.
“You seem to know an awful lot about my granddaughter. Who are you? Speak your name, coward.”
My eyes closed and my fists tightened.
“I am willing to give you an address.” I couldn’t keep all that I felt from my voice this time. That’s why I sounded so…robotic, even though my voice was coated with magic still.
“And what do I need an address for, coward?” the woman spit, and I understood. No doubt in my mind that she would kill her own granddaughter. “Did she make you call me, is that it? Is she there with you?”
Goddess help me if I ever came face to face with this woman.
“No, I’m afraid she’s being tortured at the moment. She couldn’t be here to hear your voice.”
Another second of silence.
“You know so much about her. Do you know what she’s become, coward?”
That word— coward . That fucking word.
“Mud.”
“Yes, that,” she said, her voice lighter by the minute as she became more alert. “So, what do I need her for? If she’s being tortured—good. She’s better off there, anyway.”
Goddess help me if I am ever within eyesight of this woman.
“She’s your granddaughter. ”
“And she’s Mud. That’s humiliating enough. I’d rather she stayed dead. That way the people never have to know. I can get out of this with my name unstained, at least. Do you have any idea what it’s been like for me? All those years, all that work…”
Easy. Calm. Those words I kept in the center of my mind as I continued, even though my ear was sweaty and my hand was shaking from how tightly I was holding that phone.
“Well, then it would be awfully inconvenient for you if my next call would be to the IDD. I’d offer them the address, and then they’d have to come save your granddaughter, because…you’re too weak to do it yourself? Too powerless, maybe?” I gave it a second. “Yes, I’ll use that word— powerless. I like it better.” Just because she seemed like the type.
“What do you want, coward?”
Her voice changed yet again.
“I want you to come and get Rosabel out. Tonight. ” And that’s where my focus was. Not on the fact that I was the traitor now.
I was the traitor.
“She is of no use to me anymore—she’s Mud! ” This was a scream. I had to move my phone farther away from my ear. “What good is she to anyone without her color? What good is she?!”
Calm. Easy . Patience, Taland. Patience.
But an ocean of it wouldn’t suffice.
“The Iris Roe,” I said, as the absurd idea that had taken place in my mind when Radock first told us she’d become Mud. Such an absurd, ridiculous idea, and the only one I had.
“What?!” Her voice sounded like screeching tires .
“Put her in the Iris Roe. The Rainbow has enough power to restore her color.”
That silence. So fucking suffocating.
“She’ll die in the Iris Roe.”
Never.
“Or…she’ll win.”
My eyes closed once more. The darkness of my mind exploded into colors.
Traitor, was the word around which revolved everything now.
Traitor —and her. Rosabel La Rouge. My blessing and curse and my fucking undoing—but the worst part?
Through all that guilt and that shame and that fear, I couldn’t find a single ounce of regret for this anywhere in me. No part of me had second thoughts. No part of me wanted me to stop and think and just be reasonable for a moment. No part.
Madeline Rogan cleared the throat. “I’m listening…”
So I spoke.
By the end of the conversation, it was decided: she would send for her granddaughter after all.
By the end of the conversation, not only had I betrayed my brothers, but I was going to be a player in the Iris Roe and make sure Rosabel won.
—THE END
Thank you for reading MUD !