Chapter 21
ARES
Things were tense between Ember and I for the next week, but we fell easily into our antagonistic relationship. I hated it, but at the very least, it was familiar. We made no headway on learning more about Briony, and the girl needed rest.
Those who’d been possessed often needed months of recovery.
The stronger the Rider, the more time the possessed needed.
And, of course, she’d been injured. Now that we knew what she would become, it was easy to see the way her body already prepared for ascension and immortality.
She healed faster than humans did, though not so much that it would be noticeable to people in her everyday life.
I wondered if her stepmother had noticed—if she’d been the one to report her own child to Fairchild.
We came up with very little there as well.
Whatever Fairchild’s covert operations were, he’d gone deep underground.
He would resurface, I had no doubt. As a result, despite the way things were developing with me and Ember, my commitment to helping the Maere deepened.
We’d uncovered something dangerous about the Authority, and we would need the protection.
Stealing the Maere’s swords back would be complicated, but it was more important than ever.
We’d done several recon missions to the National Gallery, with Avaline on point.
She was the least recognizable of the six of us, and with the power of her spirits on her side, she was able to move in near invisibility.
It was little more than misdirection, but the vast wealth of talent it took to manage so many souls at once was remarkable.
The five of us waited for her return in the kitchen, Lara making breakfast, and the rest of us sitting quietly, practically ignoring one another.
Briony was still sound asleep, and would not wake even if we shouted at one another.
And yet, the kitchen was perfectly silent, but for the sound of bacon sizzling in the pan.
Eryx, Bronte, and I sat on rustic stools at the marble kitchen island, while Ember sat at the small bistro table placed under the only window in the kitchen, sipping her coffee.
Every few minutes, I stole a glance at her.
She was beautiful as ever, in a long silk robe.
It was emerald green, with aubergine lining and hand-painted peonies.
Her hair was messy, and there were mascara smudges under her eyes, as though she hadn’t removed her makeup the night before.
To be fair, she had been up half the night watching footage of the human guards in the National Gallery.
We had the basics on their movements, but Ember insisted we also do real-time surveillance to see what the outliers might be.
Right now, the plan was to steal the swords before the night of the auction.
Especially as a group, we were too recognizable to attend the actual auction and expect to make it out without consequences.
So we had to learn as much about the security teams the Gallery employed as we could.
Ember and Bronte began trading off night watches after they’d managed, with Avaline’s help, to hack into the CCTV feed.
Since they needed less sleep than the rest of us, it was logical.
Lara spent her evenings on watch, with Eryx and myself to cover her.
We weren’t becoming friends, certainly, but the six of us worked well together.
Bronte glanced at me, raising an eyebrow as she followed my gaze.
She shook her head slightly as she sipped her latte.
It was obvious she would not approve of any relationship between Ember and myself, which was fine.
The mistake we’d made the night we arrived was just that, a mistake.
There wouldn’t be another. At least, that was what I told myself about a thousand times a day.
Eryx, who watched the news on his phone in tandem with his usual newspaper, drew a sharp breath in.
Bronte glanced over his shoulder to look at the screen.
I watched as my brother tensed with anticipation.
It was so obvious to me that he admired Rhiannon Bronte on some level I couldn’t quite understand, but she didn’t appear affected in the slightest.
Not that I expected her to. She was one of the coldest creatures I’d ever met in my life, rarely showing even a hint of emotion. And yet, her actions were deeply thoughtful, sublimely considerate of others, and almost altruistic. She was a bit of an enigma.
“Play it aloud,” she murmured to Eryx. Her face was very close to his ear, and he flushed as she breathed on him. I did my best to stifle a laugh. My little brother was so far gone for this woman, it would be funny in any other circumstance.
“You all need to hear this,” Bronte said.
Eryx dragged his finger across the screen to back the news report up, then took out his headphones, switching to the phone’s speakers.
A familiar news-anchor’s voice played. The man had been dead for nearly thirty years, but he’d been a favorite, so the Corps had simply replicated him with AI tech.
It was, to say the least, disturbing. I tried to ignore the unsettled feeling in my gut that appeared any time the dead were replicated and focus on the message.
…waves cresting at a usual forty to fifty meters may reach the height of one hundred meters before the end of the week. If conditions continue, the seawall will be breached by the increasing wave height by the end of the month.
The Senate-approved evacuations of the Center for Oceanic Vigilance have begun, and will continue remote observance of both Ceti and Krakenic movement as wave height increases. The Authority has set a restriction of movement order along the coast until such time as the waves decrease…
Bronte shook her head as Eryx shut his phone’s screen off. “This hasn’t happened since…”
Lara murmured, “Since I ascended.”
Ember made a soft humming noise before speaking. “There was one after you, of course.”
Lara shrugged. “The last of the Aradios Maere.”
“Calypso Montague,” Bronte murmured absently, sipping her coffee again.
Eryx frowned. Clearly, he was trying to puzzle out the significance of all this, as I was. “Are you suggesting that more Maere are ascending?”
Ember sighed. “They’re not suggesting anything.”
I turned quickly in my seat. Her tone was serious, not mocking. “Do you mean to tell me that there are more Maere somewhere?”
Rhiannon Bronte looked as though she might explode with frustration. “Have you never wondered why there are so few of us, and so many of…” she gestured elegantly at Eryx and myself. “You.”
My heart beat faster. This wasn’t something I’d ever considered. There were only three known territories on Kraitos, the three cities—Orphium, Aradios, and Palladiere. It was a little odd that out of millions of people, only fifteen were ever Maere, or ever had been Maere.
Parapsychs had always existed in the margins of history, and yet, these fifteen were the only Maere we’d ever actually known.
There were historical accounts of others, of course, of ancient predecessors, but that did not make much sense, when I really thought about it, since the Maere could not die.
Where had they all gone?
Ember’s laugh as she set down her mug on the stone bistro table was irreverent, dry. “Ah, you’re puzzling it out, aren’t you?”
Lara rolled her eyes. “No one ever gives it much thought.”
Rhiannon pursed her full lips. “Don’t be so hard on them. They’ve been conditioned not to ask where our forebears skittered off to.” Though her tone was even, her words were sharp.
“So where are they?” I asked. “If there are others, where are they?” Both Rhiannon and Lara’s faces were carefully neutral. I turned to Ember. “Well?”
She shrugged, suddenly casual. “Who knows?”
Briony appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, her eyes glassy, as though she still slept. “There is an island. A land of hope.”
The kitchen went so silent I could hear the electricity running through the veins of the building. My heartbeat turned erratic, only for a moment, before correcting course.
Ember got up from her chair to place her arms on the girl’s shoulders. “Yes, love. That is what the lore tells us.”
I might not know much about the Maere’s origins, but I knew an obvious lie when I heard one.
Briony blinked a few times, her eyes clearing. “Was I sleepwalking?”
“Not exactly,” Ember said, in a tone so soothing it surprised me. The hard edges of her personality were gone.
On instinct, I glanced back at Lara Achilles.
There was a soft look in her eyes that was mirrored in Rhiannon’s.
Ember had been the first of them. She was the eldest, and if I understood timelines correctly, had been alone for what probably felt like a long while when she first ascended.
They all had nearly a thousand years on me, and usually, with such long lives, these differences didn’t matter so much.
After long enough, any age over a few hundred years just felt similar.
But now, given what we’d just discussed, I wondered what it had been like for Ember to be alone.
To be without people like her. She’d grown up as a human, believing she would have a human life, and then one day, she ascended outside of the Aradios and Palladiere territories, where there were other Maere establishing their cohorts. She had been alone, hadn’t she?
“Were there Maere here when you ascended?” I asked. The question was impulsive, rather unlike me, but curiosity took over. “In Orphium?”
Ember glared at me. “This is not the time.”
Rhiannon’s attention flicked to Ember. The change in her countenance was small, but significant, as I’d come to expect very little variation in her outward emotional state. She was worried for her.
Briony frowned up at Ember. “Are you trying to hide something from me?”
Ember sighed. “No. We just…”
“Don’t talk about these things in front of civilians,” Lara finished for her—she too looked towards Ember with concern. Or some other emotion I couldn’t quite understand. The sense that the Maere were having some sort of interaction with one another outside what I could perceive strengthened.
Eryx snorted, breaking my train of thought. “We aren’t exactly civilians.”
I held my hand out to Eryx, stopping him from speaking further.
The three Maere had changed in the span of a breath.
He was far too comfortable here, but I saw the shift.
The way Lara Achilles set down her spatula and ignored the bacon burning.
Rhiannon Bronte might look collected, but somehow she stood between us and Briony, while Ember shifted into a defensive stance.
They were ready for us to attack them. Whatever secrets they protected, not even our loose alliance here afforded us safety. Though only a moment had passed, it felt like an eternity. Eryx finally noticed what I did.
Slowly, he set his phone down and raised his palms. “I apologize for whatever offense I’ve caused,” he said, his deep voice soft. He turned to Rhiannon, speaking to her directly. “This is not something we have to discuss. I promise, I won’t press further.”
She nodded once to him, and once to Ember, who glanced back at her, seeming to need Rhiannon’s confirmation before she could back down.
For her part, Briony’s eyes contained a fierce light that I hadn’t noticed before.
The Maere had told her what I’d sensed within her right away, and had been monitoring her closely.
It was clear the girl felt more aligned with them than with us.
Briony had mentioned an island. I tucked that away for later. It would be too noticeable if I whipped out my notebook and started writing in it.
The scrape of Lara’s metal spatula broke the tension. “The bacon is fucked.”
Rhiannon picked up the wired house phone. “I’ll call down to Delicia’s for pastries.”
Only Ember did not return to her relaxed state.
Instead, she perched uncomfortably in her chair, watching closely as Rhiannon made Briony tea.
I wasn’t sure exactly what had just happened, but we’d tread too close to some essential secret of the Maere.
My senses were heightened from the near miss we’d had with a true confrontation, and I heard the soft noise of the front door opening. Av had returned.
I called down the back hallway to her. “We’re in the kitchen.”
She smiled at all of us as she entered, all sunshine and ferocity.
Briony grinned at her. The teenage girl could see all of Av’s spirits as well as any medium could, and she especially liked Stanley, who was playing the part of a giant alley cat today, a black tom with a notch carved out of his right ear and a missing left eye.
He rubbed against the girl’s ankle as he raced past Av, purring loudly.
Briony reached down to pet the Poltergeist, and I nearly warned her that he was about to do something disgusting, but the spirit cat simply accepted ear scritches. My brow furrowed as I watched the two of them together.
Av slapped my arm. “I told you Stanley was a good boy.”
My fear that the Poltergeist would do something horrendous wasn’t going to die down so easily.
The thing had been with us for years and it never failed to do something awful eventually, though I’d seen it use its cat form most frequently when alone with Av.
Perhaps Stanley was only cute with people he liked.
At least I knew where I stood.