Chapter 30 Rhiannon
RHIANNON
Rain pelted the SUV that barreled down narrow side streets and back alleys towards the helipad. The spring monsoons had swept in overnight, pummeling the city with a near-constant downpour. At the very least, it provided a bit of natural cover for us.
Some part of me listened as Ember briefed Lara, Calypso and myself, with Max on speaker phone.
We were meeting her at the helipad, since Sera was still a few months out from being cleared to fight.
I understood the plan well enough. Get in.
Get my mother. Get out. There were complications galore, security that was going to be a pain in the ass, but we weren’t finessing this.
Ember’s plan was going to be an absolute shitshow, a carnival of chaos that only she could have come up with. I understood exactly why the Necrolines and Sera weren’t coming with us. We were going to take heavy fire doing things this way, and we needed to move with confidence.
We needed to move like the immortal warriors we were, not what the Authority had forced us to become to protect our people. Orphium needed a swift, brutal reminder that while parapsych numbers dwindled, we were still powerful. And our people still had us.
The howling wind shifted directions as Calypso pulled into the helipad parking lot. Max was already here, already in the helicopter. She threw open the door, shouting over the wind, “We’ve got a window, let’s go.”
Calypso got out immediately, giving the rest of us a second. I sensed that she was still getting used to our dynamic, and wanted to respect anything private we needed to say to one another.
As the door closed, dulling the sound of the wind, Ember grabbed my hand. “I love you.”
All I could do was nod. The reality that humans had gone to Otrera and known their way around well enough to steal my mother and Myrine was mind-boggling.
If I thought about it for more than a few seconds, I froze with anxiety.
There were so many possibilities about what this all meant. It was enough to scramble my mind.
Ember squeezed hard, bringing me back to the present moment. “I need your worst today, babygirl. You can give me that, can’t you?”
I fought back tears. I hadn’t let myself think about what it might mean for humans to have my mother until just now.
The things they might be doing to her. I had a whole dossier on Archibald Blaire that I hadn’t dared think about.
The things the old man had done to get what he wanted went miles beyond heinous, but now what I knew all rushed back in.
“Bronte,” Ember hissed. “Pull your shit together.”
Lara pushed the door open against the wind, and jumped out of the SUV, apparently not caring that Ember and I were having a pep talk. She turned back smiling, that wicked gleam in her eyes. “Rhi’s got this, Ember. Remember Abritus?”
Ember grinned, and there was none of the soft woman I’d seen helping Briony with homework at Hemlock House left in her. She was all ancient warrior, battle worn and wiser for it. “I sure do. You made them pay for what they did to that sweet little cognoscente.”
The human contingent had martyred the Seer they’d stolen and forced to serve them.
She’d been a friend of Sera’s, and when Sera was devastated, we all felt it, especially back in those early brutal days of the Authority’s grip on us.
I’d killed them all in a haze of fury, not caring a whit for the consequences.
But now there was more to worry about. The world was more complex. Our ties to the parapsychs of Orphium deepened with every passing day. There were people that the Authority, that Blaire and people like him, could use against us.
It had to end somewhere.
The world might be different now, but this was a tale older than even us. Human men taking parapsych women, forcing them into service, only to use them up and murder them. It was always the same story. It didn’t matter how powerful the victim was, these men found yet more ways to stoop to new lows.
A memory of the island, from when I was just a little girl, sprang to the forefront of my mind. I had been playing music by the lake with Lara, strumming a lyre and singing bawdy songs to make her laugh, when a fox had tried to nab one of the spring cygnets from under their watchful mother’s eyes.
It had been over in seconds, the swan clobbering the fox to death in four elegant beats of her wings. Not a single feather on her family’s heads were harmed. She had protected them with a ferocity that had inspired something in me. I’d never seen anyone behave that way before.
Otrerans weren’t precious with their children. We were raised to be valuable to society, not the other way around. After the mists closed the island off, some of that changed, but neither I, nor any of the Maere, benefited from that change in views.
Our childhoods were brutal. It wasn’t until I met Lara and Ember that I found family, that I found home—and now we’d created a complex web of love, a place for us to be our true selves.
To be safe with one another. And if Blaire accomplished what he meant to with my mother, they would come for us.
It seemed a foregone conclusion that he would use her up, kill her, and start a war with the Maere.
I had seen too much war already. The Battle of Abritus had been our last victory as parapsychs, and it hadn’t mattered one bit. The humans still won. The Authority still prevailed. I glanced at my wrist, Briony’s bracelet shimmering from just under the sleeve of my tactical jacket.
Thinking of her having to endure what we had as children—both times—was too much. The Authority needed to know that the Maere still had fight left in them. An ancient anger mounted in me, wrapping its way around my heart—a swan hissing at those who threatened her family.
Whatever they were doing to my mother, this is where Archibald Blaire’s last chapter ended. “Let’s go.”
Ember and Lara nodded, and the three of us jogged across the helipad to join Calypso and Max, fighting the downpour. We were soaked by the time Max closed the helicopter doors behind us.
Kara Asterion, the Aradios Maere’s version of Ember Verona, turned as the door closed, her dark brown eyes glittering with the same feral energy that snapped around the rest of us. She pushed back her ponytail of microbraids as she nodded to me in greeting.
I nodded back. “Thanks for this.”
Kara glanced back at me. “Not a problem. Palladiere’s dealing with their own issues, but my team is disabling as much of their communications network as possible right now.”
I only had half a second to wonder what was going so wrong in Palladiere that their Maere couldn’t come to help their queen before Ember spoke. “Did you bring the cuffs?”
Kara grinned. “Sure did. Took ‘em straight from the armory.”
My heart nearly stopped as their words sunk in. “You didn’t.”
Max laughed, unzipping a duffel bag at our feet. “We sure as shit did.”
Finely wrought metal arm cuffs sat inside, shimmering with unearthly power.
There were just five sets. All the osmium left in the world.
No one wearing it could be harmed by adamantine.
The island had determined that they’d say when we were allowed to use it.
Since the general belief had been that the adamantine problem had been dealt with, the island had decided we couldn’t have it.
Each of us took a set, clamping them around our wrists. As we did, they changed size to fit us perfectly. The metal came from a meteor, and when the humans had found we could use it to protect ourselves against adamantine, they’d done everything they could to destroy what little of it there was.
This was all that was left. At the bottom of the bag was my mother’s osmium torc. She hadn’t worn it since the days when she led us into battle to protect our people. I couldn’t help thinking that if she’d been wearing it they couldn’t have taken her. I handed it to Ember.
She shook her head. “You wear it until we get to her. In theory, it should counteract the shackles.”
Kara nodded. “It will. We tested it.”
I leaned forward in my seat as the helicopter took a sweeping turn towards the center of the city. We were heading straight for the Asylum now. “How?”
She glanced back at me, her brown cheeks flushing a bit. “We confiscated a set a year ago.” Her eyes met Ember’s. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
All the softness Ember’s face had taken on over the past few months disappeared. “When this is over, shit has to change between us.”
Kara swallowed, the same hardness in her own eyes. “I know. We’ve made mistakes. We’ll fix them.”
Ember clapped a hand on the other leader’s shoulder. “We will, sister.”
Watching them, I was glad they were in charge.
This isn’t what I’d ever wanted, and they were perfect for their jobs.
Kara’s hand gripped Ember’s in return. We knew what we were up against, and it wasn’t each other.
Too many years had gone by of us not trusting one another.
Of the Three Cities parapsychs keeping secrets from one another so there were fewer chances for the Authority to gain access to knowledge we didn’t want them to have.
Enough was enough. This too had to end now. We had to be together, or we’d never succeed. The Chiorics last fall with their god-killing thrysos. Blaire kidnapping my mother. It was obvious. The Authority was done tolerating our existence. They were planning to wipe us all out, once and for all.
Ember sat back, her face still set in grim lines as she looked out the window. “We’re here,” she said. “Time to fly.”
Below us, Asylum guards broke through the barrier someone had created on the roof. As they streamed out, Max threw the door to the helicopter open and simply jumped out. Calypso and Lara followed her.
“Kill them all,” Kara shouted as Ember and I leapt into freefall.