Chapter 2
Slate
Late-night traffic in downtown Atlanta blared below us. We had school in the morning, but Chrome and I always met on the rooftop of this particular abandoned building after a mission to decompress before we returned to the King’s Palace. Regardless of the weather, we always ended up here.
My feet dangled on the edge of the concrete ledge fifty feet above the street as I fiddled with the Kinetic knife pinched between my forefinger and thumb. The angular sigils associated with our race were embedded on the blade. Strength. Power. Honor. Courage.
“So, you sure we lost him?” I asked my cousin beside me.
A bitter breeze wafted through us, pushing me to huddle into my jacket more. I wished I had a thicker and warmer jacket, but those weren’t practical for missions.
Chrome nodded, the black hood from his coat pulled low over his brow to hide his chromatic strands from human eyes. “Yeah, but I’m sure he’ll turn back up.”
“But you got the other one, right?”
He breathed in deeply, his breath pluming from his mouth against the icy temperature. “I did.”
I wasn’t surprised. Being only sixteen, he was the most powerful Kinetic in living history and fast working his way to earning the most Kill Marks bore by any single Kinetic Warrior.
“So, another branding ceremony tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Chrome responded, running his hands through his closely cropped hair. “Always a good time.” Sarcasm dripped from his tongue in bitter distaste.
“Before or after school?” I asked, my eyebrows raised.
“Late afternoon,” he mumbled. “Amethyst informed me on the phone before we left The Phantom.”
I nodded, knowing he always had to fill her in on missions’ outcomes. “I’ll be there.”
Chrome snorted. “Thanks, man.”
“No need to thank me.” I waved him off. Another horn blared below as someone cut off another driver, sparking the typical road rage within the city.
The lights from within the skyscrapers surrounding us illuminated Chrome’s profile, highlighting his pensive thoughts.
“So, what happened? It’s not like you to let one slip past you like that.
” Chrome stared ahead at the building across from us.
The office building’s lights glowed with the typical fluorescence of corporate America.
I pushed my awareness toward it, feeling the energy the light emitted, and drew it into my aura to fuel my magic.
“There was this guy there,” Chrome started, seemingly confused as if trying to make sense of it himself. “He said some things about…”
A heavy silence dropped as I waited for him to continue.
I wouldn’t push him. I never did. He was older than me, but only by a year.
And he’d never made me feel inferior, despite his esteemed status.
He always assured me that I was highly regarded as well, especially for my age, but I never felt like it.
More than likely, he was simply humoring me.
But it was unrealistic to hold the expectation of becoming his equal when he was an Elemental and Kinetic hybrid.
“I don’t know where he came from, but judging from what seemed like a portal of some sort, he wasn’t from this world,” Chrome explained, his brows pulled together. “He said that Forest had orchestrated my and the princess’s existence.”
No one, other than myself, the king, Chrome’s mother, stepfather, and sister, knew about Chrome’s hybrid nature.
I imagined that a mass revolt would ensue if the Kinetic population discovered that truth.
I often wondered if the Elementals would ever go public with this info.
The fallout would be horrific if they tried to claim him for their own.
As for the princess, no one was supposed to know that she was a hybrid, or that she was even the king’s biological daughter, for that matter. I only knew this because Chrome had told me years ago. Again, if the rest of our people learned this, it would cause an uproar of epic proportions.
“He said…” Chrome sighed, tilting his head and twisting his features in confusion. “He said that my father was Elemental King Jonas. And that Princess Gray’s mother was Queen Lilliana. I’m not sure if I should believe him.”
Unconsciously, my mouth opened in disbelief. All noise faded, smothering the space between us as I took a few seconds to process what he’d just shared. “That…” I managed to say, my tone deadpan, “is not what I was expecting.”
“According to Valik, the king raped Queen Lilliana, and my mother did the same to King Jonas in order to produce a hybrid pair for whatever long-term plans they have.” Chrome’s jaw tightened, and the sound of his heavy swallow even outweighed the cacophony of the traffic below.
I cleared my throat, pulling my stare from Chrome’s shadowed profile to gaze at the moving cars. “Do we know what their plans are?”
Chrome shook his head. “No. Not yet.”
“Well, what do we know, then? And who are we telling this information?”
“We know that Princess Gray needs to be trained in sparring. The king has been withholding it from her, but if she’s trained, she can become valuable to the insurgency,” he responded in a monotone, as if talking about the princess like this was the least interesting thing to him.
“No one is to know about Valik and what he told me, yet. We just need to convince them to get the princess trained.”
“Not even my parents?” I asked, since they were basically in charge of the insurgency.
“No.” Chrome’s glamoured crystalline blue eyes pierced through me, daring me to object.
It was rare for him to be completely unglamoured, but when he was, his molten, quicksilver irises and gilded skin unnerved me as he radiated pure power.
“If they know about the potential of my and Gray’s lineage, it would put them and the entire cause at risk.
No one else can know about it. Not even Peri. ”
My eyes bulged. “Damn,” I said on a breath and then nodded. “Okay.” If he didn’t even trust his sister to know about it…
“What about the princess? How do we go about getting her trained?” I asked, genuinely curious how the king had been holding her back on it.
Chrome stared into the illuminated office windows ahead of us. “I haven’t figured it out yet, but I know you’ll be the one to start training her. I would, but I’m not allowed near her due to both of our hybrid natures.”
“Me?” I asked, dumbstruck. “Why me?”
“Because you’re the next best, Slate,” Chrome answered, matter-of-fact. “Plus, you have the personality that I think she would trust. That I trust.”
“You still feel her emotions?”
Chrome closed his eyes and breathed in deep. “Yeah. It’s never stopped since that day.”
“Do you think she can feel yours?” He shrugged and dropped his focus to the street beneath us. “I don’t know. If she does, she wouldn’t be able to show it.”
“What do you think it means?” I asked, intrigued about this odd phenomenon.
“I wish I knew. Perhaps it’s because we’re both hybrids.”
Another silence blanketed us as I pondered everything he’d said, trying to make sense of it.
“So, back to this guy–Valik, was it?”
Chrome nodded, his face a tight mask of blanketed emotions.
“How do you know you can trust him and anything he says? He just literally came out of nowhere, right? What makes you think he’s not lying for the Elementals?”
Chrome grimaced. “I don’t know. I just didn’t…
get that vibe from him. I don’t fully trust what he says, and I’d like more confirmation, obviously, but he sounds like he could be really helpful in getting Forest permanently removed from the throne.
And think about it: that would leave Princess Gray in line for succession.
If we can train her and get her on our side, then that would be better for everyone. ”
I shivered, the cold burrowing into my cells. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
“Just gotta present that to your parents in a way that they can get on board with so they can find a way to convince Forest to get the princess trained. By you.”
I agreed. If I could get Dad to talk to either the king, Amethyst, or Grim, we maybe stood a chance at getting a win in this regard. “So, then what? You kill the king, and then…”
“Then I leave.”
“To where?” I asked, my panic rising and sinking at the same time.
Chrome shrugged. “Anywhere. I just wanna be free.”
“But,” I asked, my brain a swirling mess of questions and thoughts, “what about the Elementals? Are they going to come after you?”
One side of Chrome’s lips pulled upward. “They can try.”
I let the quietude envelop us again, registering Chrome’s downtrodden state. “How bad is the punishment going to be this time for letting the other Elemental go?”
With a snort, he shook his head and sat up. “Nothing I can’t handle. I’ll be sure to have my fake smile ready for my branding ceremony.”
The roar of my bike’s engine reverberated off the parking garage’s concrete structure. I pulled it into my usual parking spot and sat back on the seat, letting the weight of everything I’d just learned sink in.
Chrome wanted to hang back on the rooftop for a bit longer in solitude, but I needed to return before my parents started to blow up my phone.
I might’ve been a trained and inducted Warrior in the Guilds, but I was still a fifteen-year-old who had a curfew if it could be helped.
The only time curfew didn’t apply was when it involved a mission.
However, my parents trusted me, and I wasn’t the reckless type, so I tended to have a bit more leeway.
But still, I didn’t want them worrying.
As I sat and processed everything I’d learned, I wondered if I stood a chance of being the one to train the princess.
The thought felt as if I were trying to grab smoke.
Though she was our princess, she was elusive and rarely seen.
She didn’t interact with many of the Kinetics within the Royal Domain, and there were some who simply despised her altogether for not being the ‘true heir’ to the throne.
Little did they know…
My chest expanded from the deep inhalation as I ran my gloved palms down my face, exhaustion setting in from the night’s mission and then the mental overload immediately afterward.
Finally, after composing myself, I climbed off the bike and made my way through the parking garage with drooping shoulders and a lazy gait.
Once I entered the street level, I stepped back out into the Atlanta night.
Now that it was approaching eleven p.m., cars still passed, but it wasn’t as busy as it had been an hour earlier.
Another icy wind knocked into me, stealing the oxygen from my lungs.
Cold weather had never been my favorite. Spring couldn’t get here soon enough.
I dragged my boots across the cracked sidewalk during my short walk to the King’s Palace.
Once the cameras detected my presence, I knew the king would be curious to know where my partner was.
I would just tell him that Chrome was out tying up a loose end.
The growing headache didn’t allow me the energy to figure out a believable response, so I only hoped I didn’t get stopped and questioned before I reached my parents’ penthouse floor.
I pushed on the rotating glass doors leading into the King’s Palace, already feeling eyes on me from the cameras above as chills trickled down my spine. The lobby was relatively empty, with only guards standing about in their black gear, colorful currents on display at their necks.
I ignored them as I made my way to the elevator, lighting up the button for the twenty-eighth floor to my family’s suite. For the building having been renovated recently to better suit King Forest’s lavish tastes, the elevator was still slow as fuck.
My eyes began to droop as I waited for the doors to open. Gods, I was ready to scrub the stale sweat, cigarette smoke, and alcohol from The Phantom off my body and then immediately crash into bed. Getting up in time for school would suck, but that was a tomorrow problem.
“How’d it go?”
I jumped, swinging at whoever snuck up on me. Had I not been so tired, they wouldn’t have got that close. I knew better.
Onyx Valor dodged my fist swinging at his face. “Shit, man.”
“Sorry,” I said on an exhale. “Don’t sneak up on me like that after a mission.”
“I take it the mission went bad then?” My friend winced, his perfect teeth shining brightly beneath lowered brows.
I leaned my head back to where my eyes faced the arches in the ceiling and forced out an exaggerated breath. “It was…an unusual mission.”
“By unusual, you mean Chrome got stabbed?” Onyx asked in a bland tone, an eyebrow arched.
I snorted. “Not that unusual.” With cameras and ears everywhere, I couldn’t let any details slip yet.
Not until Chrome and I debriefed everything ourselves.
Amethyst already knew the rough overview of what happened, but Chrome didn’t tell her about the Elemental who got away.
If the king discovered he was the last to find out what happened on tonight’s mission, we’d both have to suffer the mystical gods’ wrath.
“Ah, I see.” Onyx nodded. “Classified information,” he said lightly, motioning with air quotes.
“You’ll find out soon enough, man.” I patted his shoulder. “Where’s Royal?”
“Ah, she’s back in her suite. All tuckered out from the…”
“Gross.” I cringed, not wanting any visuals. “Please stop there.”
Onyx chuckled. “It’s always fun getting under your skin, Helair.”
“Such a blast,” I retorted dryly. After a few moments, I asked, “I take it you’re down here for training?”
“Yep. Boring as hell, though. Nothing to do tonight, so when I saw you coming in on the cameras, I had to come greet my favorite Warrior.”
“Lucky me,” I drawled. “Just what I wanted after a semi-successful mission.”
“You know I just brightened the stars in your sky.” Onyx shook his hair, showcasing the white specks sprinkled like stars amongst the pitch-black of his hair.
“Gods above,” I whispered to myself. None of us knew where the phrase came from, but we presumed it stemmed from our culture’s died-out beliefs from millennia ago. “You have no shame, do you?”
“Not in the slightest.” My friend flashed his beaming smile that contrasted with his warm brown skin.
The smile that earned him the attention of any Kinetic—male or female—he set his sights on.
Turning around, he headed back in the direction he came from.
“See ya, Helair!” Onyx called over his shoulder.
I gripped the back of my neck as a weary chuckle lightened my chest. The elevator doors finally opened, and I heaved a relieved sigh as I stepped inside. My shoulders drooped, and I debated if I would crash out before I made it to the shower.