Chapter 5 #3
“Raccoon came by this morning. Said the kid is pissed at you, but safe and sound. He also told me to tell you that you’d better be missing him.”
A breath of relief flowed from my lips. “That’s good. Next time he stops by, let him know that we made it safe and we’re alright.”
She waved one hand in my direction as if she was already done with that conversation and on to more important matters.
“Those beasties you ran into. Very interesting.”
That was not the direction I’d thought she’d go. “Why interesting?”
“The Nights of the Horned King always are unpredictable. But even more so where you are now, in the land where magic began. So much more to learn for you and your little friends, and you’ll have to find my kraken coin on top of it all . . . I don’t know that you can do both.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “And you can’t help us find it?”
“I don’t even know who took it, girl.” She swam up fast so all I could see was one big yellow eye, reminding me of Nanala and Fred. “If I knew, I would tell you.”
“Right, but you knew it came here for sure?”
“I felt it touch the water there at Heathermoor. That’s a huge help, if you ask me. How about a little gratitude?”
She let out a snort and disappeared from sight for a second before her tail flapped, sending a swirl of water my way as she swam off.
I let out a growl of frustration. Sure. Yeah.
Knowing a coin was somewhere on or around Heathermoor, a massive school with countless buildings on an island that had to be two square miles was super helpful.
Talk about a needle in a haystack. Once we’d settled in, I had to narrow our focus if we had any shot at finding the thing.
But there was nothing to do about it right now.
“I should be sleeping,” I said out loud as if that would convince my mind to settle down. Or maybe one of my friends would point out that I was correct and I would agree and close my eyes and sleep.
Neither happened.
Which officially left me with nothing to stop me from thinking about my father’s journal.
My fingers traced over the butter-soft leather, wondering how many entries there were – and what I might find if I could open it.
Still magically sealed, I had no idea what was within the pages and . . . and part of me didn’t want to know.
Nocta, scourge of the Dwimmer world, and the monster my friends and I needed to face and ultimately defeat.
This journal was his life, in his own words – my father’s life.
Did he see himself as the villain we all saw him as?
Surely not. In my experience, people rarely saw the truth about themselves.
My anxiety spiked, my heart hammering out of sync, and far too fast for sitting quietly.
I reached for the pouch at my hip and slipped my fingers inside, momentarily soothed by the feeling of the smooth stones inside.
Each of my friends in House Phoenix had etched their names and a bit of their energy into a stone and had given them to me as an Abundance gift.
Part tactile, part magic, part just the sheer reminder that I had people who cared about whether I lived or died, they had been a real blessing to me.
Even now, I clutched one between my thumb and forefinger and could sense Ellie’s gentle healing spirit.
But an image of Nocta ran through my mind again, and the panic returned, a thousandfold. The stones weren’t going to do it this time.
I pulled my hand from the bag, stood and took a few wobbling steps. The world fuzzed, and I reached for the counter, steadying myself, doing what I could to get the anxiety under control. Sweat beaded and rolled down my spine, and the room began to spin as I struggled to get enough air.
Not once during the Solstice Games had my anxiety hit me this hard. But of course, I’d not been given a moment to really freak out and lose control – we’d been too busy fighting for survival.
But here, in the quiet of Liam’s home, knowing my friends were safe, knowing that there were no big bad monsters gunning for us, at least for the moment . . . the monster inside me reared its ugly head and took a hold of me.
Shaking, I lowered myself to the floor, knowing that if I passed out in the chair, I would end up crashing to the floor, waking everyone up, and end up trying to explain why I was on the floor.
“Messy,” I gasped as my back flopped a little too hard on the tiles. The cool touch of the stone floor was welcome.
Legs and arms tingling, my vision going in and out with dark, sparkling spots, I just laid there and let it wash over me, wondering if this time, my heart would indeed stop.
Every fear, every worry grabbed hold of me, like the monster inside me had developed several heads and they’d all latched onto me at once.
What if Opie was so angry with me that she never forgave me?
What if something had happened to Liam – what if he’d been caught by Runecoats for helping us escape?
What if we couldn’t find the kraken coin?
What if the bond wasn’t truly broken between Typhon and me?
What if Tarquinius or the Senate tracked us down and separated us?
What would I do if Nocta tried to sway me to his side? That last one was perhaps the worst of the questions in many ways . . . because, when he’d spoken to me at the end of the games . . . I could see some logic in what he’d said.
He didn’t seem mad. He didn’t seem power hungry.
But that’s what people like him did, wasn’t it?
They were masters of manipulation. Nocta had fooled countless people.
He’d tricked Phyllis, he’d hung me and my mom out to dry, he’d killed Fable’s brother, and family members of just about every one of my housemates.
Not to mention the recent attack in Central Park in the Unlit world that I saw with my own eyes.
And sucking the magic from children who trusted you? Came to you for learning and guidance? Typhon was no better than my father.
But was I?
Bile tickled the back of my throat as the questions hammered at me: Are you just like him? A liar? A manipulator? until tears trickled from the edges of my eyes, and I was shaking hard enough that my bones hurt from banging into the floor.
I’d gone to Typhon’s room that night to break our bond. To deceive him, too, before I’d even known what he was. And there was no denying that the loss of that bond felt something like a death. I’d lied to Opie, and to all my friends about my father. Even now, only Fable knew the truth.
Maybe I had found my Quirk, and maybe I was House Phoenix, but what if I was a monster too, like Nocta?
Which opened me up to the darkest question, the one I’d been avoiding all this time, the one that I’d been running from.
What if . . . in the end, no matter how much I didn’t want to . . .
What if I hurt my friends, just like he’d hurt his?