Chapter Forty-Five
REMI
I’m running with no direction.
The same as I have all my life.
All around me, the meadows of my home are catching fire. The wildflowers are burning up into ash. And I am screaming and running.
Xaden was the first to lash out.
Faster than I could see, faster than I could breathe, Xaden was behind Ryder. I was freed and told to run.
So I’m running.
Now, I look over my shoulder to see the Demon Slayer’s hand on either side of one of Ryder’s men’s heads. He twists violently, and the male’s neck snaps.
But Ryder doesn’t seem…dead. Not fully.
Some twisted, disabled version of him rises from the floor and continues to fight. I see the white of his bone in the moonlight and–I think I’m going to be sick.
With the echoing of violence in the distance, I lean over a Great Oak and throw up.
Someone from behind me screams. And my heart lurches because I know it is one of the boys.
It takes everything in me not to look back.
I hate to give it to Xaden, but he was right when he said my magic was basically useless. At least until I am trained, I can’t even pull a spark of it from my blood to save my life.
I keep running down the tree-lined path until I hear the whizz of a blade from over my left ear.
I barely have enough time to dodge it, skimming off into the high grass, and screaming as the blade cuts the top muscle of my shoulder.
I scream at the contact, then clamp my mouth shut. I only have one advantage in this fight, and it’s that we’re at my home.
And I know how to run and hide in these forests better than anyone.
Within minutes, I lose my purser. I hear him curse as I creep away silently, then begin a swift jog again.
I’m running further and further away from the fight, towards my father’s old greenhouse, until–
“Hey!”
I smack into another female figure with all my might. She’s a similar height and a similar build, and we both go flying in the opposite direction in an equal distance.
I pull my blade faster, though.
“Wait a second, Rose?”
My cornflower blue-eyed, golden-brown hair sister is also in a protective crouch. She still wears a royal white dress, but something is different about her.
“Y-you,” I can barely find the words.
Rose pockets her sword and stands up straight. It’s only been weeks since I last saw her, but she looks…aged. As if somehow the last few weeks have been months, years.
“Are you okay?” I ask her. Then I take notice of the crest pinned to her clothes. It's Reiyna's.
"You're Commander of the Solis army now?" My sister brushes me off, that’s nothing new. Despite her sweet, and innocent name, Rose has always hated me. And now a Rose is Commander of the Solis Legion, how fitting.
"Father did always say that the prettiest flowers have the richer poison," I offer, trying to bridge the gap.
Still, nothing.
We sit in the night air for a moment. Rose refuses to make eye contact.
“Are you running for them or from them?” She finally asks, and I get it, for the first time.
She thinks Keiran and his men are the monsters.
I used to, too.
“I’m helping them,” I say back. I have to be careful with my words, very, very careful.
Rose raises her buttoned nose. It’s an exact replica of mine, minus the sun-kissed freckles. Her words are sharper than they used to be, icier.
“Why?” That is all she asks.
“There’s a village, of two hundred and fifty--” I begin, lighting in the distance goes off, but not in its usual yellow. It’s electric blue, a sign of Keiran’s power.
They’re not doing well if he’s using such limited resources. We only have a few minutes left at best.
Rose tenses her shoulders, and tries to make herself taller than me. “We have a village, too. A population of a similar number. Why not come back and help them when there is a war on the horizon? Why fight for the demons?”
A few weeks ago, I would have cowered from her intimidation, but now that I sleep with the twins, I could almost laugh at her.
And I do.
Rose scowls when I laugh. And once I’ve had my moment, I scowl, too.
I can’t believe I used to be so afraid of her. I can’t believe I used to be that girl.
“I need your help,” I say to her, not even bothering with an explanation. “I need to find a Black Pearl, it’s round, like a marble, and looks like it’s filled with smoke. Have you ever seen anything like that?”
My older sister looks me up once, then twice. “Reiyna had something like that, said it was important, she hid it in dad’s greenhouse…” She looks over at the run-down shack. “Why do you need it–”
Without waiting for Rose’s permission, or approval, I throw myself into the barricaded door of the shack.
I haven’t been in Dad’s greenhouse in ages, and we wanted it that way. In a way, it looks like he’s still alive, about to come drink from his ceramic teacup, or journal in his half-open notebook.
Tears well up in my eyes. It looks like he’s never left.
Too bad now.
“Will it save lives?” Rose asks as I begin to shift through the metal shelves. Dad had so many little boxes and trinkets, the Pearl could be anywhere.
It’s an urge not to roll my eyes. “Reiyna–Rose, I mean. It will end wars.”
Maybe it’s the maturity in my voice, or the desperate searching, or the crackle of power and wave of thunder that goes off from the war being fought on our estate’s east meadow, but Rose gives in.
“Here,” she says, handing me a locked, black box. It’s carved in florals, and covered in cobwebs, and when I shake it, several things rattle inside it.
“How do we open it?” I ask Rose, and my sister shrugs.
“Reiyna didn’t leave any instructions, she said dad was given it as a gift from a wealthy merchant when she was born and never managed to get inside it. He said it would protect you, and you know how dad was with superstitions and knick-knacks.”
My teeth grit. Ryder, it was fucking Ryder.
Fuck him, and fuck the trinkets.
Keiran is going to die.
I raise the box high above my head, then bring it down hard against the corner of dad’s oak desk.
When that doesn’t work, I raise it again, and smash the contents as hard as I can against the floor.
This time, it works.
And nestled inside, aged by decades of secrets, and waiting, is a glowing, white box.