9. Chapter 9
Chapter 9
T he next morning, I leave the Main Hall where they’ve set up a temporary bed for me — just until they ward the rooms for us newcomers.
Determined to find a way to help, I head straight for the meeting. The plan is to start by asking questions about the Resistance and go from there.
When I arrive, despite being early, I find everyone waiting for me, Nuala sitting at the head of a large round table with a blackboard behind her back. While I myself am feeling eager, Finn’s attention seems to be wholly on me, Lorcan is glancing at his daughter apprehensively, Dryden is observing me suspiciously, and de Groot seems downright bored. Alaric, Raven, Jaeger and Nuala, they’re… just tense.
As soon as I get settled in, she clears her throat and glances around the room. “I’ll need you all to bear with me for a bit,” she tells the senior Embers. “We have newcomers here so we’ll be going through the information you already know.”
She turns her focus onto me. “Now, as far as I could gather, Aurora—”
“I’d prefer it if you’d call me Anna,” I interrupt with a smile.
“Anna,” she repeats with a somber nod. “You… you haven’t been with us in a while.”
“I left this timeline around two years after Baldur rose again.”
“Alright, so…” She gets up and pulls a world map over the blackboard. “The parts in green are what we call the Free World. It’s all areas he hasn’t managed to conquer yet.”
I frown. It’s just a few parts of South Africa, North America and Asia.
“And the parts in red,” Nuala continues with bitterness in her voice, “we call those the Enslaved World. It’s occupied and highly controlled through patrols, curfews and free use of Mind Magic. Shifters are practically all imprisoned by now, faes are being coerced into serving the Emperor and vampires aren’t objecting because it’s all serving them very well. No one is rebelling, simply because the regime is too strict and the army too powerful.”
With that, she takes her seat again, leaving me to stare at the map in dumbfounded silence. So much of the world he has in his grip already. “Is that why there are only six of you here?” I ask in a near whisper. “Is it some kind of cell-structure you’re organized in, to avoid being wiped from the face of the earth?”
Nuala exchanges a surprised glance with Dryden. “Yes. Within this particular cell, I’m the leader, Dryden is my right hand and our magical artifact man, Jaeger our tactics, intelligence and supply woman.”
“We’re generally the ones going on missions,” Jaeger says, “Finn, Sieger and de Groot will always be the ones staying behind.”
I raise my eyebrows in a silent question.
“Finn is our housekeeper,” she starts explaining. “Sieger is new. We’re giving him time to become valuable within Baldur’s army, and we can’t allow his cover to be blown by the enemy finding him anywhere near us. ”
“What about you?” I ask as I turn to de Groot.
She quirks an eyebrow, but it’s Jaeger who replies. “De Groot is the most powerful Mind Magic wielder among us. She’s the only one with information about the other cells and their members.”
I glance between the two of them, frowning because of this unusual change in Jaeger’s tone. Or maybe it was just my imagination?
I dismiss it all. “If that’s how things are these days,” I start as I lock eyes with Nuala again, “how did you survive this long?”
She glances around the table, exchanging looks with the senior Embers. “The Academy’s magic mostly,” she says with a touch of bitterness in her voice. “Whenever it’s on the verge of being destroyed, it...” She pauses, seemingly searching for the right words. “Disappears.”
“Zaps itself to another dimension,” de Groot cuts in. “That’s what we believe the magic does. In any case, the underground part of the Academy — the castle itself — stops existing here and appears somewhere else, where it’s safe.”
Frowning, I exchange a surprised look with Raven and Lorcan. How have I never heard of this magic, let alone the possible existence of another dimension?
Just as I’m about to ask these questions, Nuala gets up. “Now,” she says as she gets up and starts pulling stuff out of a table drawer, “as the newcomers, you’ll be asked to get familiar with your uniforms, learn our enchanted graffiti means of communication and undergo our defense against Mind Magic training.”
She passes a uniform around and then demonstrates the use of enchanted graffiti on the blackboard behind her.
“That’s all fine with me,” I say as soon as she’s done, eager to get to what really interests me. “But what exactly is your strategy? What is this mission you’re going on? I understand you need to lay low, but how are you recruiting, liberating shifters, fighting the army…?”
There's silence in the room. Nuala shakes her head. “We don’t do any of those things. The Empire is too powerful for that. Right now, we go on missions to try to find information on how to kill Baldur himself.”
Sad, that’s just sad.
Nuala just continues. “But this mission in particular… It’ll be about trying to stop the shadow curse from being released.”
I frown.
Raven asks, “Shadow curse? What is that?”
Dryden shakes his head. “We don’t know yet. All we know is that Baldur is in the process of devising it to help him conquer the rest of the world within the year.”
What the… “Alright,” I say with eagerness in my voice, “I’ll go on the mission with you.”
I feel Dryden’s eyes on me and hear De Groot let out a scoff.
“That’s not happening,” Jaeger speaks with anger in her voice.
I frown at her and turn to Nuala, who’s shaking her head as well. “I’m not asking you to let me lead it,” I protest.
“This is much more dangerous than the stuff we normally do,” Nuala explains. “If anything goes wrong, there’s a chance Cain will show up.”
My frown grows deeper. “Who’s that?”
The senior Embers around me all exchange glances. “Cain is Baldur’s general,” Nuala replies.
“Cain who?”
Dryden lets out a laugh. “Just Cain. As far as we know, he has no last name, but it’s not like he needs one. In that regard as well, he’s a lot like his father.”
What the… “Baldur has a son? With whom?”
“Word is he’s sort of… adopted. Despite being a vampire, we don’t believe he’s his biological son. But he is in status.”
I lean forward in my chair. “Could he be a weakness of Baldur’s?”
Nuala shakes her head. “I don’t think either of them have weaknesses.”
“Still, we could use this,” I insist. “If we get our hands on the general—”
Jaeger appears in front of me. “Let’s make one thing clear. All of us here, every single one of us, we’re all willing to give our lives to this cause, but heroism is one thing and idiocy a whole other.”
For a moment, I just look at her in surprise.
“It doesn’t matter that you’re the Aurora. Regardless of whether you choose to join us or go your own way… Cain, he’s the most powerful shadow wielder alive, he controls the hounds of Nasgard, and he commands the biggest army the world has ever seen, with such skill it took him less than three years to bring half the world to heel. To make it even worse, he—is—ruthless. He’s a weapon the likes of which I’ve never seen. Some say he’s more powerful than Baldur himself. Wherever he goes, death follows. You don’t go looking for Cain …”
She holds my gaze. “You run from Cain .”
Shivers run down my spine.
“You run, Anna,” Nuala repeats as Jaeger returns to her seat. “Are we understood?”
I nod. “Understood.”
There’s a moment of silence before Nuala clears her throat. “So, suffice to say, we won’t be indulging your self-destructive whims. We’re proceeding with the mission we’ve been planning for the last two weeks, and you’re not coming. The last thing we need is for Cain to get his hands on you .”
I grit my teeth. “Come on, people, I understand it’s dangerous, but you can’t expect me to lounge around the Main Hall while you’re all out there fighting for us all.”
The senior Embers all exchange a glance. When they look at me again, Nuala’s eyebrows pinch in annoyance, and there’s so much reluctance and worry on Jaeger’s face. But de Groot seems downright intrigued by the possibility, and Dryden… It’s much softer, the way he’s observing me now.
It gives me hope, my lips starting to curl into a smile.
“Fine,” Nuala finally relents. “But you’re expressly forbidden from using your Aurora magic, and your orders are to stay back and let the rest of us execute the plan.”
The smile slides right off my face, not returning even after Alaric says, “Now, about that initiation party…”