Chapter 13 #2
“They’ll blitz us in the middle of the night again. Or at dawn break. It would be another massacre,” I said. “I just hope Shadow can be trusted to keep his word on helping us remain undetectable.”
The beginnings of sunrise tinted the horizon in faint pinks as the caravan of Elementals trekked through untainted woods.
We headed northwest to skirt around the Kennesaw and Tennessee domains by hugging the borders.
According to Slate, the Celestial Castle should be somewhere near the Rocky Mountains out west. He and Kodiak worked together to create a map to pin down its location more accurately.
Not long after Arcadia combined with Terraguard, our Elemental scouts and Kodiak had mapped out the locations where Arcadia was overlapping with our world.
They’d found that each section resembled puzzle pieces that had yet to be connected, separated by the sections of Terraguard that remained untainted.
I really wished I could fade again. That would’ve spared us this long and treacherous journey on foot. And according to our calculations, we were heading for the mountainous region in Utah near Salt Lake City, which would take us a month to walk.
“Shadow,” I called out. “How long will your shield last?”
Shadow walked beside Cardinal Kittle, his black hair contrasting with Cardinal’s deep crimson.
The two leaned in toward each other, laughing as if they shared an inside joke.
Hearing my call, he straightened, his expression sobering as he cracked his neck, triggering something uncomfortable in me with how similar to Chrome it made him appear.
“I can hold this until my power is drained. As long as I can replenish or energy-share, I’ll be good. ”
I didn’t trust him, not one bit, but he was our best option to avoid Kinetic detection at this point. “Let me know if you start getting low.”
Cardinal’s stare lingered on me, a kind smile gracing his features that reminded me so much of Scarlett.
The other Elementals didn’t trust him, and I didn’t blame them for it.
Usually, they offered grace to refugee Kinetics, but Cardinal was a different case.
He’d been an Assassin in the Kinetic Guilds for King Forest. While he’d been friends with Chrome and Slate, he’d been loyal to Forest. It wasn’t until his little sister had been locked up and sentenced to death that he began to second-guess his leader.
The narrative that my father had been spinning to the public about her made him question everything.
If it hadn’t been for him, I would never have known about Scarlett, Cotton, and Hazel.
I turned to face Slate, Kodiak, Void, Aella, Onyx, and River.
They’d stayed close to me in their somber silence, still alert to their surroundings for threats.
“We might need to stop at a scorse at some point soon to re-up supplies. But trust me when I say, it’ll be risky.
And just shout when you see a cross in a field.
If there’s a speakeasy below, the human militia might let us in to rest and eat and drink. ”
We were exhausted. Between the adrenaline from the fight and the emotional toll from our losses and the last-minute departure, we didn’t have much left inside of us as we lumbered through the woods with slumped shoulders and heavy hearts.
Several hours later, the sun beamed brightly in the sky, bringing the humidity with it.
My stomach growled, and my body wanted to collapse.
“Let’s stop to eat soon, and then hopefully we’ll come across a speakeasy not long after.
If not, then we’ll crash in the forest somewhere,” I suggested to Onyx beside me.
With a nod of his head, he agreed.
“Hey.” I poked Onyx with my elbow, the leaves and sticks crunching beneath each footfall. “You wanna be my second-in-command?”
Onyx bumped me with his shoulder, a sad grin weighing his handsome features down. “It’d be my honor, my queen.”
“The honor is mine,” I responded with a shoulder nudge back to him.
A few hours passed before we finally found a clearing in the woods.
Trusting that Shadow’s shields worked, we parked ourselves so we could eat.
It wasn’t much, but Katia had managed to grab the essentials: fruits, raw vegetables, bread, and the like.
The food wouldn’t last long, but it was enough for now.
Once I made sure everyone was taken care of, I grabbed an apple and a piece of bread and found a tree trunk to sit against. Slate slid down beside me, not saying anything as we ate in comfortable silence.
“There should be a speakeasy not too far from here.” Slate’s knees were bent with his forearms dangling off the edges.
I winced. “Yeah…so, I’m pretty sure the humans in that one recognized me and aren’t a fan.
” I remembered the last two times I’d been inside a speakeasy—particularly the one where I’d confronted Chrome.
The pain from the Elemental blade resurfaced as I remembered how I nearly died from the black crystal poisoning.
Word would’ve spread about me after that incident and the time I’d fought the human woman.
Slate chuckled. “I remember that. You almost had him, though, didn’t you?”
I punched his shoulder, trying to ignore the fact that he’d been watching from a distance the whole time. “I did!”
“It was cute…” Slate’s laughs came harder, which lightened my soul just a fraction by the sound. I’d missed that so much.
“Wait.” I froze, realizing something. “Did you give me the antidote on the train that night? When I’d been unconscious?”
Slate shook his head. “No. That was Chrome.”
“He never told me that.”
“At the time, he was slipping further into devolution; his mind was going. He didn’t remember most of the important people at times, including me.
And especially not you, which, if you had known him when he was still living at the King’s Palace, you would understand how shocking that was.
But I suspect there was more to that than devolution at play. ”
“He said he could always feel my emotions.”
Slate plucked a blade of grass and began picking it apart as he spoke. “He did. Even back then, he was hellbent on keeping you safe from your father’s wrath.”
The wind breezed through my hair, brushing it into the corner of my eyes. “He thought having you train me would keep me safe from him.”
“Yeah,” Slate admitted. “It was better than you being completely defenseless and at his mercy.”
I reflected on my earliest memories of Slate. How he had seemed to pop up out of nowhere in my life. “I know it was all planned now, but that day you found me in the gym is still a special one. It’s the day that changed my life.”
Slate grinned a soft, crooked smile. “I got out of class early that day and looked for you. I hadn’t expected to find you upset.” He grabbed my hand, which was resting in my lap. “Please don’t think it’s all been a lie since the start. I’ve always meant every word I told you.”
I still had so many questions, but I was too exhausted to keep pushing.
“Don’t worry about the humans in the speakeasy. I’ll handle it,” Slate assured me. “I built a rapport with them a while back.”
“So, can you explain something to me?” I asked, having enough energy for one more question, after all. “How have you been able to travel back and forth between Arcadia and Terraguard so easily all these years?”
“Portals.”
I angled my head. “Like the one that Chrome and I could create?”
“Yeah, similar to that, but it came from Valik. He’s able to open them whenever he needs.
” Slate squeezed my hand. I forgot he was holding it.
“But it requires a lot of energy for him. And it drains him for a while. So once I came through, I stayed here for days or weeks, monitoring things and keeping Chrome from depleting. During those times, I got to know the human militias in the speakeasies quite well.”
I still couldn’t help the sting of betrayal when he spoke of his time behind the scenes. “Happen to know when the next scorse is coming through? We’re gonna be out of food if we don’t find one.”
Slate thought on it for a moment, mindlessly swiping away gnats that buzzed around our heads.
“I might, actually. Chrome spent some time in the underground fights, so we figured out the rotation patterns and where they’d likely crop up.
It took some time, but we also learned how to decipher most of the codes that they’d spray paint on the buildings. ”
“Gods, he really held back so much information from me,” I said, running my fingers through my hair. I felt as small as the gnats flying around us.
“He had to, Gray. We didn’t want to risk Forest getting hold of you. If he suspected you knew anything out of the ordinary, he’d have tortured you to death if you ever ended up in his hands again.”
I understood it from a practicality standpoint. It made sense, and I would’ve done the same thing. But it didn’t stop the hurt as it triggered that insecure and unworthy little girl that my father had always made sure I’d been.
“I hope Scarlett and Cotton are okay. Wherever they are.” I looked up at the sky, cloudless and pale blue, wondering where they had gone.
“They’re safe.”
I snapped my attention to Slate, narrowing my eyes. “You know where they are?”
“In Arcadia. With Valik.”
“You’ve known this whole time and haven’t said anything because…” I prompted, not bothering to hide the accusation in my tone.
“You’ve been actively avoiding me and refusing to hear me out, Gray. Plus, no one else here knows them, so I had no reason to inform Orion…” He trailed off at the mention of Orion’s name, his death slamming into us with the harsh reminder.
I inhaled a deep breath. “Right.”
“When you and Chrome opened the portal back in the King’s Palace, Valik was waiting on the other side and took them in, I assume. I’d already been here, but after Chrome turned Infernal and walked away, he spoke to me and informed me before disappearing.”
At least one thing had gone right that day.