Chapter 17
“Where did you disappear off to?” I asked a rather sickly-looking Felix as we walked to our first one-on-one session with Jax. “I looked for you after the dance, but you were gone.”
Felix dragged a big hand over his face and sighed as he mumbled something incoherent.
“Hungover?” I asked, jabbing a finger at his side that he swiftly swatted away, grunting in response to my question.
“Physical or moral?” I pressed on, having heard the gossip from the rest of the group when I joined them. He and Anna had apparently vanished at oddly close intervals.
He grunted harder, shooting me a deadly stare that only made me laugh.
“I’m not judging,” I shrugged. “In fact, I think you outdid yourself by going home with her.”
“Aren’t you chummy today, Prudence? Could it be that I wasn’t the only one getting lucky yesterday?”
I blushed but shook my head. I hadn’t been with anyone since that first time with Archie.
“Daegal and I sort of found common ground yesterday,” I said. “Might make our training sessions a little more pleasant.”
“Pleasant, you say?” he smirked, his reddened eyes winking at me in amusement.
I lifted my finger, threatening to poke him in his churning stomach again. “Not like that,” I snorted.
“Someone got lucky last night,” Jax sang loudly when we reached the training grounds. This only earned another annoyed grunt from Felix.
“I don’t know why he’s so upset,” I said, shrugging my shoulders at Jax. “Shouldn’t a night in the arms of a beautiful woman make you less… grunty?”
Jax cracked a laugh that quickly turned into a cough when Felix jabbed him in the side with a fist.
“Okay, okay,” Jax breathed as he clutched his stomach. “Let’s get started.”
Jax stepped onto the sand, and I followed him. “Please teach me something first,” I pleaded, and he smiled amusedly at me. “I don’t want to end up on my back again.”
“It can be fun sometimes,” Felix muttered from his sprawled-out position on the grass, a large arm draped over his eyes.
I rolled my eyes at him, and Jax snorted. “Okay, I’ll teach you the basics.”
He tried to explain how he’d conjured up those illusions when he fought Cannon.
“You have to imagine and really focus on the illusion you want to create. It’s more of a confusion magic than an illusion magic,” he said, chuckling at my dazed expression.
“You can’t just create any illusion for any reason. It’s also about your opponent. What would distract and confuse them?”
“I saw a guard in the prison create an illusion,” I said vaguely, thinking of the image Elio Boaz had conjured of Lili.
Jax scrunched his nose up, pondering. “Only a really powerful suncaster would be able to do that. They have to manipulate all the colors of the light. Not many suncasters can do that.”
I practiced on Felix, who was only half-paying attention to what I was doing. All I managed was drawing the shadows in, which I was already good at.
I also tried bringing up water manipulation, but Jax only frowned at me. “It doesn’t work like that, Prue. We can only manipulate the currents and create big things, like waves. Not whips or orbs of water.”
I thought about training with Jax as I trailed the winding paths that led to the strategy room from my hut. It only diminished my already dwindling confidence.
Ever since I discovered my moon powers over a decade ago, I’d only used them defensively. Jax had pointed out to me how I could practice using my powers more casually.
After he mentioned it, I’d started to notice how some of the mooncasters who’d lived at the base for a long time used their powers daily.
From quickly vanishing into the shadows to avoid a confrontation to scaring each other with illusions—they used their powers so casually.
They weren’t used to hiding their powers.
I wondered how it must be to use one’s powers as freely as the Defenders in Erobred. Then I remembered that if the rebels succeeded, I would be able to. Yet I was willing to sacrifice their entire cause for one person. Lili.
She and Archie kept themselves occupied. My little sister had told me she continued to sell paintings on the street despite my best efforts to keep her inside.
Archie was still working as a fisherman for one of the big harbormasters in the city.
I thanked Goddess Nyxe that they had each other, and that Kenric hadn’t made good on his promise to harass her.
I knew he’d said it just to torture me because he didn’t know I had the power to communicate with her. But the fear still lived on.
“Prudence,” Verena smiled when she saw me. It unnerved me for some reason. Verena rarely smiled.
My feet had carried me all the way to the meeting Hannan had told me to attend.
“Hi,” I greeted them before joining them around the table. Hannan had his hand on a large map that mostly looked like a desert. My stomach dropped. Desert.
They were trying to locate Orken. The King had purposely not drawn the prison on any map.
“That’s a map of the desert,” I said before I could stop myself. “What—”
“Prue, I want you to listen to me before you react,” Hannan said, removing his hand from the table to walk towards me. “Come.”
He guided me to the adjacent room, the library that I’d almost burned down.
“Hannan, what’s going on?” I asked him the second he closed the door behind us. Bile rose in my throat as I imagined the possible plans they’d thought out.
No matter what, this would hurt Lili somehow.
“Do you know why your father was killed that night?” Hannan asked. “Tiny village with no Defenders, and twelve show up in one night?”
I shook my head, willing the tears in my eyes to stay put. It was a question that had haunted my early memories. Over the years, I’d learned not to dwell on it. But now, I could actually get answers.
“Why?”
Hannan sighed deeply and sank into the couch. Before he spoke, he gestured for me to do the same.
As we sat across from each other, his eyes turned glassy when he looked at me. “You look so much like him, Prue.”
He took my hands in his and squeezed lightly.
“Your father was researching something for us. He snuck into one of the big libraries in Erobred and barely escaped with his life. I reckon the King wasn’t too pleased when he found out exactly what your father was working on.”
“What was he working on?” I pressed on because Hannan seemed reluctant to continue.
He looked at me for a long moment, gaze flickering between my eyes.
“How to break the spell.” Hannan stared at me like he expected me to jump up and down in delight or indignation. Instead, I just stared at him, wondering what spell he was talking about.
He tapped against my palm gently, leading my attention to my hand. To my fingertips that were always dancing with the night’s darkness.
“He wanted to break the spell that King Sol cast over a century ago?” I gaped. “How?”
Hannan shrugged, saddened. “I don’t know if he ever found out. He started researching it after you all moved to Perifer. We were still in contact with him, but he’d been silent for days before his murder.”
My mind wheeled around, spinning with endless ideas and outcomes. Hannan frowned at me, trying to decipher how I took this news.
“Why did you stop researching it?” I asked, suddenly furious. “This could end the suffering of every Mooncaster in the kingdom!”
Hannan mimicked me as I shot to my feet. I paced around the room, trying to relieve some of the buzzing energy that built up inside me.
“Because, Prue, every script and scroll was burned when King Sol won the war. It’s a pointless mission.”
“Pointless?” I almost yelled, the tears flowing down my face now. “The mission my father sacrificed his life for is pointless?”
Hannan squeezed his eyes shut before answering. “It’s not worth it. From what I know, he worked on it for years without getting anywhere.”
“But he continued. That alone should tell you he believed it was possible.”
“The only way we can win this is with numbers. We are going to break into Orken and free every single prisoner in there.”
I felt nauseous. If they tried to break into Orken, they would fail. They would also get themselves, the prisoners, and Lili killed in the process. Elio Boaz would see to it that every person involved, and every person I cared about, would suffer the consequences.
“I pulled you aside to tell you this because I want you to know how much your parents sacrificed for the Rebellion in the best way they could. Because in a minute, Verena is going to ask the same of you.”
“How—”
“You’re going to show us how you escaped.”
My palms grew sweaty as I wrung my hands together. All the information about my parents fought a losing battle against the sheer terror of losing Lili.
He led me back to the strategy room, where Verena and some of the other council members stood waiting.
“Well?” Verena asked briskly, her deep purple hair swaying as her head whipped towards us. Her dark eyes bore into mine with such intensity I felt like she was trying to will the memories of my escape from my mind.
“It was a lot to take in,” Hannan explained when I didn’t answer. I felt like an idiot, surrounded by the Rebellion’s most important people, too stunned to speak. Too stunned to properly lie my way through possibly the most important meeting of my life.
“Can I come back tomorrow?” I asked, turning my attention to Verena. “I promise I’ll tell you everything, but right now I—”
“Fine,” she said, her tone both impatient and dismissing. “At first light tomorrow, I want you back here.”
I nodded and stormed out of the room, ignoring Hannan’s words of comfort from behind me. I rushed back to my hut. My motivation to fulfill my mission had re-ignited with full force.
I had to find that crown and bring it back to Boaz, and soon. I’d spent too much time pretending like I was a part of the Rebellion, and now Lili’s life was in even greater danger than before.