30. Lea
30
LEA
M y eyes scanned the recently repaired living area.
Upstairs was still a disaster, but with the city so hard at work rebuilding other places in a much sorrier state than mine, I was happy to make do with what I had left. Not having my bedroom back for a while wasn’t as bad as not having a home left to go back to at all.
But I couldn’t ignore that my apartment seemed to have been placed on some special priority list, for it was one of the first to receive repairs.
Did Jax have something to do with it? I shook my head as if to rid it of the thought, and angled my eyes back at Ravana. She was waiting for me to speak again in that nonchalant and devil-may-care way of hers.
“It's very important that we find this woman. She's the key to making all the bad things in this country go away.” I tried to explain to Ravana as delicately as possible, but I could see her eyes spinning around in her head.
“What are the odds that I would end up working for a spy looking to take down my previous employer?” Ravana laughed nervously to herself. “I hope you can understand that as a person who grew up on the streets, I don't have an allegiance to anyone. That means I won't sell you out to Diesel, but that also means that I won't stick my neck out for you. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is.”
“I understand. It's getting too dangerous anyway. You're free to leave whenever you want, but just know that if you stay you'd be fighting for a better future for yourself.” I tried to reach out to her, but she recoiled away from me.
“Every adult that's ever offered me a better future has proven to be full of shit. It's much easier to not get my hopes up.” Ravana went quiet for a moment, and that was the first time I had seen her truly vulnerable. Almost as quickly as it appeared, she suppressed it with a cheeky smile. “So, I'll stick around for as long as it benefits me, okay?”
“That sounds fair,” I conceded, giving her a knowing look.
Out of nowhere, someone started knocking on my front door frantically, making both Ravana and I jump out of our skin.
For numerous moments, we just stood there watching the door as if it was something we didn’t know what to do with.
If Rowan had been captured, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to think she’d given up my name. I wouldn't blame her if she did.
What if it’s Diesel knocking at my door? No, he isn’t exactly the kind of person to knock…
“Are you going to get that?” Ravana asked in her usual monotone voice. She barely gave me a moment to respond before sucking a tooth and jumping to her feet. She was at the door before I could stop her.
“Ravana, wait!” I shouted, holding out my hand toward her.
“What? It's just Kiyan.” She turned to me, opening the door more to show me.
He was a sweating, heaving mess. I rushed over to Kiyan, ushering him in as he struggled to catch his breath.
“What happened?” I searched him all over to make sure he wasn't wounded.
“My father is what happened to me. I received a message from my mother that she was going to leave him, and I was trying to catch her before she left. By the time I got home, she was gone, and he was there. He's completely lost his mind. What he was saying didn't even make any sense.” Kiyan plopped himself onto the couch as even Ravana checked him over carefully.
“What did he say?” I had to know exactly what kind of Diesel I was dealing with.
Despite Diesel's notorious hot temper, he always managed to keep some level of decorum. So for Kiyan to be saying this wasn't a good sign.
“He made it sound like my mother isn’t really my mother…and that he should never have spared me. None of it makes any sense.” He tucked his face into his hands, trying to get a hold of himself.
Somehow I got the feeling that he wasn’t revealing another crucial part of the encounter, and I couldn't help asking, “Did he elaborate on why he said that?”
Can it be that Diesel took Kiyan from his real family when he was a baby?
Finding out he’d murdered an entire household wouldn’t be in the least bit surprising, but for him to not only spare but raise the child as his own…
“There wasn't much elaborating to be done. He looked like he was going to kill me, Emma, I didn’t think an interrogation would go down well for me.” Kiyan looked confused, even a little annoyed at my prodding.
A thought crossed my mind for an instant, but it was so fleeting that I wouldn't have noticed it if it wasn't so completely insane.
Could he be…? No. I won't even dare to think about it. It’s impossible.
Rowan was missing, and I needed to focus on finding her.
“Regardless, we will need to go there. I have reason to believe Diesel’s holding my friend prisoner.” My eyes narrowed at Kiyan, who started shaking his head from side to side in vigorous denial.
“You're kidding, right? Didn't I just tell you the man's on a rampage, and you want to walk up to his doorstep? I can't think of a worse idea.” It was the first time I'd ever heard Kiyan raise his voice. He was usually reserved, always seeming to be carefully calculating the next best move.
What happened with Diesel had to have really shaken him.
“It doesn't matter. I'm not leaving her behind. You can come with me or stay here, but you're not going to stop me.” I stubbornly lifted my chin, letting him know I wasn’t about to budge on this.
A hush came over the room as Ravana and Kiyan exchanged worried glances.
Then Kiyan sighed heavily, “Fine. If it's that important, then we don't have a choice. Do you have any way of tracking her?”
I pulled out the Beacon Stone that was now rapidly flashing purple. “She gave me this in the event of an emergency. I noticed it was blinking today, but I don't know when it started.”
This was just another reminder of how behind I was on the magical inventions of today. This thing was completely foreign to me.
Akil had taught me as much as he could, but it’d been more important for us to focus on potions rather than the technological advancements made in the two decades I’d been out of touch.
“This device is pretty out of date, but if I'm not mistaken, it should work like this…” Kiyan twisted the top and the bottom parts in separate directions, then pulled them apart about an inch to reveal a mechanism in the middle that resembled an eye.
I jumped back as an image shot out from the object. It looked like a translucent map hovering in the air.
“Weird. According to this, this friend of yours is right on top of us.” Kiyan analyzed the image multiple times just to be sure.
“Something must be wrong with it,” I surmised.
“Maybe Kiyan is doing it wrong. Here. Hand it over.” Ravana reached for it, but Kiyan pulled away.
“Excuse me, I know what I'm doing, alright,” he said, grimacing at her.
“I doubt it!” Ravana scrunched her nose and made a face at him as well.
“Why are you always so mean?—?”
Their shouting match was interrupted by a bright blue light suddenly beaming from the ceiling.
The swirling magic was so powerful that the air crackled around us.
My ears popped from the pressure, and I had to avert my gaze from the light as it felt like it was literally beginning to burn my eyeballs.
“Why does weird shit always happen around you?” Ravana screamed, pressing her palms over her ears.
Kiyan pulled her into his arms protectively, and to my surprise, she didn't resist.
A loud thud rumbled the floorboards, and the swirl of magic was sucked back up into the ether.
“Damn, I never can seem to stick the landing just right.” Rowan’s voice graced my ears, and I turned so quickly that my neck strained.
“Rowan! You're alright!” I rushed over to her, nearly knocking her over. “What happened? What's with the beacon?”
“I was captured by that bastard, Diesel. He somehow knows who I am… I can't help but wonder if there's a leak at the BPR…”
Rowan continued rambling despite my facial cues that we weren't alone. She finally looked over her shoulder, and her eyes almost fell out of her head.
“Um, Emma, you could have warned me before I started babbling my head off,” she hissed through her teeth before reaching out to grab Kiyan's hand. “I'm sorry for what I said about your father. It's very much true, but I'm sorry nonetheless.”
Nice save, Rowan! Even if the sentiment was oozing with sarcasm.
Kiyan's face twisted, unsure of how to respond. “I… Don't worry about it. I'm not exactly on good terms with him either right now.”
“Oh, great!” she responded before thinking. Then she let out a nervous laugh and released his hand. “Well, it's not great for you…”
I can't watch this carriage wreck anymore.
I grabbed her arm and dragged her away from Kiyan. “What's wrong with you, Rowan? Have you never talked to anyone else other than Akil and me before?”
“I'm sorry if my social skills aren't up to your standards. I didn’t know that Ryklira offered communication classes better than anywhere else,” she snapped back at me in a whisper, but I was still worried about Ravana and Kiyan overhearing her.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. That was one of the things I hadn’t mentioned to the kids.
The last thing I want is for either one of them to look at me like I'm a criminal.
I gritted my teeth as I murmured, “Low blow, Lexie.”
Ravana stepped in front of Kiyan with her arms crossed. The look on her face hinted that what she was about to say wasn’t going to be anything pleasant. “So let me get this straight. You've actually been working with the Department of Potion Regulations to take down Kiyan’s family. At what point did you think it was a good idea to pretend to be his friend in order to use him to get closer to your targets?”
My stomach dropped. A sickening feeling came over me. “Ravana, that isn't at all what happened.”
“You're trying to tell me that from all the research you must have done on the Ransom family, you had no idea Diesel and Omara had a son?”
I’d only found out much later, but there was nothing I could say that would make her believe me. It’d only end up making me look more guilty.
“Guys, stop fighting. This isn't helping anything.” Kiyan got in between us.
“Where is the potion sample we made?” Ravana turned to Kiyan with fire in her eyes. There was a vengefulness inside of her that echoed mine.
I watched in horror as it consumed her.
“Ravana, no,” he warned, but his words fell on deaf ears.
She grabbed a vial from Kiyan’s robe pocket. “That portion I created that was supposed to be for hunger didn't work out, but it did have an adverse effect,” she said as she made her way over to me.
She pulled the cork out of the top of the glass bottle, and threw its contents out on me.
I turned and closed my eyes just in time to protect myself. “What in Lunaira’s name are you doing?”
“What were your real thoughts when you discovered that Kiyan was a Ransom?” Her eyes were as sharp as daggers. Her face morphed into something horrifying. She became General Achlys right in front of my eyes.
A full-body shiver came over me as I backed away.
I was so frightened that it felt like my heart stopped in my chest.
Every breath was filled with ice.
“What is this? Why do you look like her?” My knees became weak as I fell to the ground.
“Answer the question, Emma—if that’s even your real name.” Ravana’s voice fluctuated between hers and the General’s.
“I thought of all the different ways I could use him to destroy his family! I knew there was a possibility that he’d end up getting hurt in the war between us, but I was willing to take that chance. I want to protect him, but I want to destroy the Ransoms more!” The words came bursting out of me, each one feeling like a small blade ripping up the inside of my throat as they passed through.
I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling tears pouring down my face, and when I opened them again, everything was back to normal. “What did you do to me?”
“It looks like you were wrong, Emma. I can't do anything good with my hands. I can only create horrible things. That potion to cure hunger ended up being a potion for eliciting your worst fears—making it easy to get someone to tell the truth. Glad we know where you stand now.” She threw the empty vial to the floor in front of me and walked out.
I slowly let my eyes find Kiyan, who looked beyond heartbroken. “I'm so sorry… You were never meant to find out like this.”
He pressed his lips into a hard line, hesitating as if he wanted to say something, but turned his back to me and followed Ravana out the door without a word.
My mind fell into deep silence and despair.
I couldn’t tell for how long I was enveloped by nothingness before a gentle hand on my shoulder brought me back, if only for a second. “Lea?”
“Don’t call me by that name. I don’t even know who she is anymore.” Without even looking at Rowan, I said in a flat, emotionless tone, “Just leave me alone.”
She hesitated for a moment, but obliged silently.
I was back in that dark cell. I was alone again.