3. Chace
“Raven is where?” My chest felt tight, my breathing painful.
I feared a rib might crack. Conceivably, one or more were broken during my underground prison-cell visit.
Ignoring the pain, I shoved the last of my personal belongings into my duffel bag. At some point during my capture or imprisonment or torture, I’d lost my room key. A key that would identify where I had been staying, if not where to currently find me.
I was fairly certain I hadn’t outright told my captor where I was lodging, or even why I was in the citadel, but I harbored plenty of fuzzy moments and holes in my memories of the darkened cell that I couldn’t dismiss the possibility.
For all I knew, the parties responsible for my extensive suffering were already on their way here. Whether they came today, or several days from now, I needed to be gone when they showed up.
I rubbed against the blooming colors pressing in on the edges of my vision. Damn, unwanted auras continued to hound me. Too many days had passed without my meds.
I now understood why my supposed mother constantly pushed me to take them regularly.
Aoes stood in the open doorway of my room. He folded the courier note, delivered only moments ago, slid the message into his breast pocket, then shoved his hands deep into his pants pockets.
“She’ll be fine,” he said. “I promise you. She’s no doubt lounging in the kind of luxury you can find nowhere else. And Winter will take good care of her.”
A twinkle in Aoes’s eye led me to believe Winter’s motives might be less than a hundred percent innocent. And that…
I curled my hands into tight fists as I suppressed a growl burning in my chest.
A memory of the male…the crown prince…standing in the hallway, blood soaking his britches, jacket, and shirt cuffs, slipped to the forefront of my mind. I still had no answer as to whose blood Winter wore, or the circumstances behind the state of his apparel.
Royalty were rumored to get away with some unsightly and atrocious acts.
But I couldn’t dismiss the distinctness in the aroma Winter wore that day, be it a uniqueness to the blood or something else. At the time, that smell had piqued my curiosity, and I hadn’t forgotten.
“I don’t particularly share your trust in the male.” I heaved a sigh.
After my recent dealings with the queen…and others…I was far less inclined to trust anyone outside of my team. Including Aoes and Earl, the partially zombified pub owner.
Especially since I suspected Aoes had been involved with whatever shady dealings my sperm donor had been investigating. Smuggling monsters out of the citadel for purposes unknown. I had no proof, of course, but my instincts were usually spot on.
Pressing two fingers to my temple, I turned in a slow circle, scouring the room one last time. Where had my pills disappeared to? I’d been trapped without them for days, and now they were nowhere to be found. The aura-ensuing headaches needed to be quelched.
Aoes sucked his teeth. “Come on, Ace. If what you said is true, then she is likely far more protected in the castle than staying here.”
I grunted with disapproval, at both the nickname and the statement.
Based on the way things had gone down, the where and when of my abduction, I wouldn’t so readily agree that Raven was safer within the palace walls.
There was a slight chance I was wrong, but I wasn’t willing to gamble her life on that likelihood.
I’d already lost Aldine. I refused to lose her, too.
Giving up on locating my medication, I zipped my bag closed, slung the duffel over my shoulder, and stalked into the hall directly to Aldine’s room.
“Open it,” I ordered Aoes.
I could have used the key Aldine had slipped me in the underground cell, the key that opened any door, but Aoes had his ring of master keys. Besides, I didn’t want anyone to know about the secret advantage I held in my thigh pocket.
“I really shouldn’t,” Aoes replied with a frown pressed to his mouth.
A snarl vibrated at the back of my throat as I spoke through gritted teeth. “I already told you, the guy is dead. Murdered, to be precise.”
The memory of Aldine’s prone body on the prison cell floor flashed across the backs of my eyes. Of something unseen pulling the elder into the hereafter. The Killian—the reapers’ reaper. I shoved the flashback from my mind.
How had Aldine not become something like Earl? Was the power of the Killian to thank for such a mercy?
“Who did you say killed him?” Aoes studied me with wary scrutiny, even as he produced the key and unlocked the door.
I stepped back, avoiding any physical contact. “I didn’t.” The second the lock disengaged, I slipped past him and pushed into the room. “I didn’t get a name to go with the face. He was an ugly, smug bastard, though.”
I pulled Aldine’s bag out from under the bed.
It was empty. When the elder had been injured our first night in the citadel, neither I nor Raven had bothered with his belongings.
The bag’s current state indicated the reaper not only possessed the strength to unpack after his healing, but that he had planned on staying longer than a handful of days.
Likely because I’d been missing at the time.
Guilt dug its thick claws into my core, but I had no time for the emotion. Not at present. I had no time for any emotion that didn’t aid my swift action.
Aoes leaned against the doorframe, watching. “You said the guy experimented on you but simply killed the old man?”
With a nod, I took to riffling through dresser drawers. Anything that wasn’t clothing I would take, which, after a quick search, turned out to be a partially filled journal, the citadel’s task file, his reaper’s scythe in compact form, and a handful of flash bombs.
I shoved all the items into my bag.
“Then Raven should be relatively safe.”
“How do you figure?” I tightened my gaze on the pub manager.
Aoes picked at his teeth with a pinkie nail and shifted out of the doorway, allowing me to step into the hallway. “Based on what you’ve told me, which isn’t much, by the way, it sounds like they were interested in what you are.”
“What we all are,” I interjected. “And what do you know of it?”
“I know the old man…was not the same as you. Neither is Raven.”
My stare intensified. “I’m sorry. What are you saying exactly?”
We shouldn’t have this conversation in the openness of the hallway, but the shock of Aoes’s words had my feet rooted in place.
Aoes sighed and leaned against the adjacent wall. “I don’t know how to explain it other than I see signatures.”
My face must have conveyed my confusion because Aoes jumped into an explanation.
“Before whatever curse befell our city, the people of Veritas were a community of magic wielders. Descendants of the fae, some say.”
I was aware of the stories. The lore.
“Everyone had their own gods-given talent.” Aoes tapped his chest. “Mine was the ability to see signatures. It’s like seeing the truth of a person’s roots.
What I’m capable of now is a mere fraction of what I used to perceive.
But I can look at you, or Raven, or the old man and see not only your individual energy signal, but I can identify your roots. ”
I folded my arms across my chest. “By roots, you mean…?”
Aoes shrugged. “Bloodline, species, whatever you want to call it. The scary thing you all think you are.” He glanced over me. “You and your team definitely share a root, but none of you are the same in that manner. The old man…”
He lifted a chin to the room at my back. Aldine’s room.
“He was pure in his roots, but you…” He shook his head. “You’re not.”
“I’m not pure?” I arched my eyebrow.
At the moment, the only roots I felt were the roots of skepticism and irritation.
He nodded, his lower lip puckering. “The old man…Aldine…was like the one I told you I once worked with, Bogart…and his associate. They even brought a kid with them once.” Aoes’s brow creased. “Can you believe that? Bringing a kid to this place? Before the curse, sure, but after…”
He shook his head once more. “Anyway, that was some fifteen, twenty years ago, and they were all the same. Those three, plus your old codger, were all the same. But not you. You are partially the same, yet something else is mingled with that signature. Something that I think might want to dominate. In fact, I think it’s more dominant now than it was before you went missing. ”
“Something else?” My tone sounded cynical while lacking its usual conviction.
Emotions rocked through me. Emotions I didn’t want to acknowledge. Emotions I too often considered weak and pointless.
Only what else could I be other than a reaper like my so-called parents? I was ninety-nine percent certain they were my blood-given parents. I’d familiarized myself with the family line, and nothing other than reapers filled the tree.
Yet that something else Aoes claimed existed in my signature energy was supposedly growing in dominance, and nothing about that possibility sat comfortably with me.
Aoes had to be spewing bullshit.
Still…
My forehead pressed with deep consideration. What had changed in the past few days that could explain such a transformation? I’d been tortured and practically starved. Kept in subpar conditions that, at times, bordered on freezing. And…
I’d missed my daily medication dose. The lack of medication; that was definitely outside the norm. Different. I’d missed a day or two before, but not five or more.
I rubbed the back of my neck. Was that the true nature of my pills? To suppress something “other” dwelling within my energy, my DNA?
And now, that medication was missing.
Without a word to Aoes, I turned back to my room and began tearing the space apart, searching all the corners and shadows for my misplaced bottle of meds. Aoes lingered in the open doorway, continuing to shadow my movements.
I checked under the bed and behind the dresser. “If you don’t believe I am the same as Aldine, then what do you think I am?”