Chapter 40
40
Sonny
G riffin has been extending our training sessions a half hour with each passing day. We’ve graduated beyond physical blocking techniques—moves that even Beatrix and Jonah were able to master—and have run through defense mechanisms against every bloodline. Everything from what to do if someone is attempting to hijack our emotions to how to draw up a mental shield and prevent someone from intruding on our minds. I was grateful for the extra tips to keep Raze from randomly dropping into my thoughts. All I’ve had to go off was whatever random things I found to work when he was around, like thinking of a song nonstop or going through a grocery list.
He’s stayed longer each day to help me master my other new gifts. If he doesn’t have an answer to a question or can’t figure out how to do something, he asks one of his friends and comes back the next day with the information.
They’ve brought in another Luminara to train Beatrix and Jonah on honing in their use of shadows and light. I’m not sure what her name is. She’s too flighty and shy around everyone else to know anything about her. Beatrix has discovered that she’s excellent at using her gifts to move within the shadows of places most people can’t fit without being seen. Jonah has become an expert at blinding opponents with his light without affecting the person standing right next to them. It’s an important tool in hand-to-hand combat, when there could be a rebellion member standing beside his victims.
Ava has been pulled into more meetings with my parents to discuss strategy. With her love of history, she’s got a wealth of knowledge to pull from and learn from past mistakes.
Things are ramping up. I can feel the energy of the entire town shifting as we all start to home in on our roles in this war. My parents seem to be working overtime to see their vision through. There’s been several times I’ve wanted them to take a break to have dinner or a cup of coffee together, but they’re always being pulled away for this or that.
That’s why I’m shocked to find my mother standing in my bedroom doorway in the middle of the day.
“Are you busy?” she asks, lingering in the hallway like she expects me to say yes. I’m probably the least busy person here.
I shake my head, tracking her movements as she carefully enters my bedroom for the first time since I’ve moved in.
“You know, you could have picked one of the bigger rooms,” she says through a laugh, reaching on my nightstand for the old music box that’s sitting there.
“I kind of like how small this one is. It reminds me of my room growing up.” Which is funny that I chose it before I knew it was their home.
Her lips spread in a tight toothless smile. “I can’t believe you still have this. It’s been in our generation for hundreds of years. My dad used to say it came with us when we first built the town.”
That would mean it belonged to the Landrys. I’ll have to ask Finley if he recognizes it.
“So...you and Raze?” she begins hesitantly, her fingers toying with the box.
“I’m not having girl talk with you.”
She rears her head back, hand covering her heart in mock offense. “Why not? I’m good at girl talk.”
“Let’s just assume I know exactly what you’re going to say and then move on without ever mentioning it again.”
I swipe my hands against each other and hold my palms up. See, easy.
Of course, it’s never that easy.
“Raze is a dangerous man,” she warns. “One with very little moral compass. He’s been honed as the perfect weapon for both sides of this war.”
“I’m well aware of what he’s been forced to become because of one run-in with you and Aunt Divina,” I jab, my chest swelling with the urge to defend him.
Her expression falls. “None of us had any control over how that was handled.”
I roll my lips into my mouth, choosing not to comment on that.
She goes on. “I’m just weary of his ability to be a good man when he’s been forced into nothing but evil.”
“And I’m telling you, as someone who actually knows him, that he’s more than good,” I insist, my cheeks heating. I don’t know why I feel the need to defend him so strongly. It just doesn’t seem fair to judge the monster he is when she had a hand in creating it.
And who is she to talk about evil when she’s spent the past decade hiding from her own daughter?
Her lips purse into a disapproving pout. “Fine, we’ll drop it,” she relents, even though her expression says the opposite. “We need to talk about why your presence here is so significant.”
My ears perk up at that. Finally. “I would love to.”
“You and I are descendants from the Landry bloodline,” she begins.
“That much, I know.” Thanks to Finley’s regular visits. “Why didn’t anyone care that your parents were related to them?”
I’ve wanted to ask her for so long—before I ever realized I could. It doesn’t make sense to me that the Midnight Syndicate didn’t begin targeting us until she came along.
She carefully sets the music box back down and sits at the edge of my bed, her back uncomfortably straight. “They’ve always cared, but my family never gave them a reason to worry. They’d offer a large sum of money for their silence, then quietly strip them of their extra gifts and everyone would turn a blind eye.”
I can hardly stamp down my anger at that. Cowards—all of them. No wonder Finley has latched onto me so tightly. Who knows what sort of offenses he’s witnessed against his bloodline from his own descendants?
“But you couldn’t.”
She slowly shakes her head. “No, I couldn’t. The Landry family wouldn’t leave me alone. They were angry that they’d been betrayed for so long by people of their own blood. When I came around and they realized they could communicate with me, they wasted no time ensuring I knew everything.”
“That had to have been hard, juggling those two sides.”
She drops her chin into her chest, her foot tapping against the floor nervously. “I know you’ve been able to speak to spirits here and there and you’ve read the journals, but don’t expect to speak to any of them. They don’t like to be disturbed.”
I purse my lips. It appears she’s feeling possessive over the Landry ghosts. “Actually, Finley has been coming to me almost every day,” I admit.
If I’m going to expect her to start being honest with me, I have to do the same.
She blanches. “He has?”
“Is that so shocking?”
“No, it’s just . . . Finley has always been the most elusive.”
Elusive? He’s certainly eager to show up for me.
She sighs. “Then I’m sure you know that the Landrys have access to gifts from all six bloodlines.”
“Yes, not the Mirranes,” I agree, remembering what Quinn had said before. Ironically, Finley has been the least helpful when it comes to providing information about exactly where we come from. Unless it gives him the opportunity to complain about all who have wronged him.
Which I get. But at some point it’s like...move on, man.
He can never know I said that.
“No, they’re separate,” she confirms. “In the nearly two centuries since the Landrys were murdered, there hasn’t been a descendant whose gifts fully matured. Not in the way yours have. Do you understand what that means?”
I shake my head. “Not entirely. I thought you had gifts from multiple bloodlines.”
“I do, but not all of them. Not like you’ve demonstrated.”
“O-kay.”
“This is the entire reason we did all of this.” She holds her arms out, gesturing toward the house. “It’s why we left you the way we did. Why Divina was hell bent on having you grow up outside of the Midnight Syndicate’s eye. We’ve been waiting for your gifts to mature, buying as much time as possible.”
So, this must also be the reason behind locking us up here, inside the mountain. And why Griffin has been testing us so thoroughly on all the bloodlines.
They were trying to see if I would measure up.
“What makes you think I have all six?” I question. Last I checked, I haven’t been able to set things on fire or heal injuries. Not that any of that has ever been put to the test.
“We’ve been keeping track. As of this afternoon, you’ve officially mastered the Viridian gift.”
My smile wavers. “When?”
“Griffin says you experienced a vital surge in training and ended blasting Jonah clean across the garage.”
“That’s not . . . no—” I sputter. “That was just a small accident.”
“That was the final gift settling into place,” she chirps, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think she was happy about this. “I told them not to underestimate you. No one wanted to believe it was possible after I stopped having mine manifest after five. I knew you’d be the one.”
“This is why the Midnight Syndicate has been targeting me? Why they wanted me to join them in the first place?”
Her face sobers instantly. “Yes, that’s what I was getting at. Has anyone explained how the Midnight Syndicate came to be?”
“Finley certainly loves to talk about how they destroyed the Landry dream,” I scoff, then jump when I flick my gaze over toward the corner of my room and find him sitting there, glaring at me.
I shoot him an apologetic grimace, which he responds to by throwing a vulgar gesture in the air.
“Is he here now?” she breathes, glancing around aimlessly.
“You can’t see him over there?”
She shakes her head, her shoulders falling forward. “No, I can’t.”
“Is this what you and Aunt Divina were talking about in the woods that day? When you ran into Raze and Bane?”
Her expression grows guarded. “What do you know about that?”
There’s no use in lying now. “I saw it in a vision before the Syndicate caught me. You were arguing over whether you should say something or not. Aunt Divina wanted you to keep your mouth shut.”
“If you saw that, then you must have seen . . . ”
I nod.
“She didn’t mean to kill that boy. The current was uncharacteristically wild that day. In fact, I haven’t seen it that bad since. And she panicked.” Her eyes drop to her hands, cheeks blotchy. “I tried so hard to save him. I know Raze hates me for what happened to his brother. That’s why he had no problem coming after us when the Syndicate sent him. And Quinn . . . she’s never been shy about how she feels. But there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think about those two boys in the woods and what would have happened if they’d never run into us.”
“I’m sure a lot would be different,” I agree.
Who would Raze be if he never ended up in the Midnight Syndicate? Would we have still crossed paths?
“That’s what all of this is for. When Bane died and I was expelled from Ravenshurst, I saw how corrupt their whole system is. How much unchecked power that society has over...well, everyone . I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I went on with my life as if there weren’t innocent people being taken advantage of. People who truly believed they were doing something good. I came home from Ravenshurst with a broken heart and a dream, and your father hopped right on board.”
She shakes her head, holding her hands in front of her as if she’s trying to sort her thoughts out.
“But that’s not what I was trying to talk to you about. I wanted to make sure your gifts would mature before we started bothering you with the logistics of everything.”
“That’s why no one would tell me what was going on...” I guess again.
She tilts her head guiltily. “Yes. Your father and I told them not to. It can be a lot, learning about these new things your body is capable of. I didn’t want to overwhelm you.”
So, they opted to bore me half to death.
I bite the retort back, deciding I don’t care either way. There’s nothing we can do to change how everything was handled, but now that I know the truth, I expect to be included in the conversations surrounding my life.
Lowering my voice, I shrug one shoulder. “Not much can overwhelm me anymore.”
She shifts in her seat to fully face me, her fingers rubbing against her forehead uncomfortably. “We haven’t talked about what happened to Poppy, and I’m sorry about that.”
“Oh, no,” I push out, holding up my palms to stop her. We are not talking about Poppy right now. The only way I’ve been able to survive this long is by placing all thoughts of her in a perfect little box and shoving it as far deep into my mind as possible.
Sensing my hesitancy, she frowns. “I know it’s hard to lose someone so important to you, especially alongside the emotional whiplash you’ve had over me and your father. You don’t have to spill your guts to me, but I want you to know that I’m here if you need someone to listen.”
“Okay,” is all I can say, my throat growing tight. We’ve already been on the topic for too long. The proverbial lid to the box threatens to pop off, but I try to hold it on by pivoting my thoughts.
She makes a tutting sound. “It’s wrong, what they did to her. They’ve made an enemy out of Divina.”
Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask. Questioning will only lead to deeper conversation, and the last thing I need right now is more conversation about Poppy.
“What do you mean?” The words fly off my tongue as if they’ve grown wings.
The lid is off. I repeat, the lid is off.
Her brows knit together in a frown, lips pursing. “You didn’t know...” The question dies off, lingering in the air between us.
No, Connie. No one was in a rush to share the gory details with me when I was locked in a cell beneath the ground.
Instead of snarking back, I shake my head. I want to cover my ears and blast her with questions at the same time. I want to know everything, but my heart can’t handle it.
“When the Syndicate found out who you really were, they targeted Poppy. She was already in a bad spot, so when they offered to fly her in, claiming they were speaking on her mother’s behalf, she trusted them.”
“No,” I say, my mouth going dry. I refuse to believe it. This is too much. It goes against my strict, no-Poppy conversation rules. The tiny, delicate box I’ve kept her safe in my mind is about to blast apart into a million tiny pieces, releasing a tsunami of emotions I can’t handle right now. If I allow them to escape, there’s no telling what will happen.
I can’t do it. I won’t.
Shut it down . I need to change the subject pronto.
“They flew her here and killed her,” my mother explains, her voice breaking.
No, no , NO .
That can’t be true.
No, it doesn’t add up. They said they found her in Eugene, Oregon. Aunt Divina was standing right there when he told me. How could she stand beside those monsters after what they did to her daughter? How could she look at me like I was the traitor?
How could she lie so well?
Grief tightens its fist around my heart, squeezing until I can hardly suck in a breath. My defenses are crumbling. The box is wide open, giving way to a storm of emotions I can’t even begin to process before the next one replaces it.
This feels worse than when I first found out she was gone. The adrenaline of being captured is gone, leaving no excuse to shove it all away or pretend it isn’t real.
She’s truly dead. My other half.
None of it was a lie or some sort of endless nightmare—not like I’ve been secretly hoping it would be.
“Sonny, what is happening?” my mother’s worried voice asks from somewhere off in the distance.
I can’t form a response. I can’t do anything but sit here and feel everything I’ve been avoiding for the past few weeks.
The agony of losing Poppy.
The shock of my parent’s lies.
The betrayal from Raze.
The suffocating weight of new gifts appearing every day.
The starvation. The dark. Matilda’s murder.
It’s all too much. Way too much to handle. I’m breaking apart into a million, fractured little pieces—my mind shattered.
I can’t take this. I can’t do this without Poppy. I don’t want to do this without her.
Until the world burns—that’s what we said. Well, my world is burning, and she’s not here.
She's not fucking here.
“Help!” My mother’s muffled voice rings out into the raging storm. Hands wrap around my arms as I fall backward, my head slamming into something. “I need help!”
Her panicked cries are the last thing I hear.