Chapter 21 #2
Venay reappeared, announcing herself with another soft knock. “Are you ready?” she asked him.
He hesitated, so I answered for him. “He is,” I said, then slipped out of the room.
I had hardly made it to the end of the corridor before I heard his scream as Venay cracked his ankle.
A book landed on my lap with a thud, and I looked up at its pitcher.
“There you go,” Sawyer pointed to the journal, “all unenchanted and ready for your viewing pleasure.” He threw himself down next to me on the sofa in the common room.
“Awesome,” I mumbled, my tone bleak.
“Don’t sound too excited,” he quipped, his smile sinking when he noticed my unenthusiasm.
Chewing my lips, I passed the book between my hands.
“What’s wrong? I thought you’d be halfway through this thing already.”
I shrugged. “It seems wrong to read it without Sebastian seeing it first. He doesn’t even know we have it.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. I wanted him to be back to somewhat full health before throwing more shit onto his plate. And I know we were gonna start reading right away, but I’m kinda scared of what I’ll discover.
” I turned my attention away from the journal and towards him instead.
“The first journal ended with something about what happens when too much godly power is stored in one body. And then when I was distracting Beaumont, he mentioned my markings and how some say those who wear them may be considered some kind of god.”
“Maeve, I love you, I really do, but you're no goddess, if that's what you're implying," Sawyer teased, and a smile fought a way to my lips.
“You really know how to make a girl feel special, Sawyer.”
He took the journal from my lap. “There’s no rush to read it. We can wait until Seb is better and let him check it out first if you want. I’ll hold on to it for now, so no pressure.”
“Thanks.” I offered him a half grin. “Have you seen Kohen yet?”
Sawyer huffed a laugh. “Yeah, for all of two seconds before Pia pulled him into their room. They’ve been locked up there together since we got back.”
I scrunched my nose. “Ew.”
“Jealous?”
“Kind of,” I admitted through a scoff. Sex had been the last thing on my mind, but I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t be a good emotional outlet right about now.
Sawyer shuffled in his seat, ripping his eyes from me. “Well, Seb is back now, so…”
I opened my mouth to clarify that just because he was home, didn’t mean we were back together, but Kade entered the common room, dropping down into a chair across from us.
“I have some important shit to tell you guys.
I was going to tell you on our way back, but Hawthorne was such a bloody mess that it didn't seem like a good time.”
Sawyer couldn’t even get a sarcastic comment out before Kade started to ramble.
“When I got Hawthorne out of the dungeon, we saw something. Some kind of mutant, I think. It looked human, but also…not. And get this—it had a fist full of gemstones. Five of them. It was just wandering around at the top of the stairs. It didn’t see us, luckily, but Leighton seemed scared as all hell when she saw it.
” Kade drew a deep breath, and my eyes sunk into my skull.
After a brief moment of contemplation, Sawyer rose to his feet, approaching Kade and laying the back of his hand along his forehead. “You feel alright, Lyrise? Because you’re talking like a fucking crazy person. You may have a fever.”
“I feel fucking fine. Screw off,” Kade growled, swatting Sawyer’s hand away. “Leighton said that Beaumont calls the things his children. She said she’d heard about them, but that it was impossible they actually existed.”
“Hold on.” I held out a hand to shut them both up. “You’re being serious? You’re saying that you saw some kind of creature, just lurking around in the dungeon? Did Sebastian see it?”
“Yes, Willawood. That’s what I just fucking said,” Kade spat. “And yeah, he saw it. But he was so out of it at that point that I doubt he even remembers.”
“Enough with the attitude, Lyrise. We aren’t the ones spewing nonsense,” Sawyer replied, returning to his seat beside me.
“It’s not nonsense,” a female voiced.
I looked towards the door to see Leighton with her hair tied back, her petite figure leaning against the wall. She stepped into the room a few paces. “I saw it, too. I had heard about the things before from one of my friends, but I didn’t believe him.”
The way she spoke, as if the fate of the world depended on her sharing this information, made me believe what Kade and her were claiming.
“What is it?” I questioned the girl.
“I don’t know exactly. But the one we saw had more than one strain of jewel embedded in its skin, and we all know that is not the doing of the gods,” she answered.
The only way for a mortal to get more than one jewel was by stealing it. The mineral had to be torn from someone’s live flesh, then implanted in the skin of someone else. The act was forbidden across the continent, not that it stopped everyone…clearly.
“So he’s creating mutant magic wielders?” Sawyer cracked his knuckles. “That's kind of badass, not gonna lie.”
“It’s more than that,” Kade added. “The thing had a fucked up jaw. All distended like it had been forced open. And it was taller than any mortal I’d ever met.”
“What do you think he’s doing with them?” I asked Leighton directly, and she shrugged.
“I don’t know. But by seeing it with my own eyes, so much makes sense to me now.
” She moved deeper into the room, stopping in front of the burning fireplace, her back towards us.
“People would go missing out of the blue, with no trace of where they could have gone. That friend I mentioned was one of them. Shortly after he informed me about his suspicions, I never saw him again. When people began to question the disappearances, King Beaumont told us that the Caelestians were to blame. He said that you were kidnapping our people and torturing them for information.” She shook her head, turning back to us with her fingers tucked deep in her pockets.
“I never questioned his explanation…not really. But I should have. He was sneaky—requesting certain manuscripts from the archives, and then locking them away in his study.”
My body froze to my seat. Was this the chaos Blythe had warned me about? Was this why she gave me her magic? These creatures?
I didn’t ask the question out loud, because I already knew the answer.