Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four (26 page)

And Ada is alive.

“At least we know our security’s sound,” said Lynn, indicating the doors. “That was a close call. I thought they were going to bring down the doors.” She glanced back at the semi-transparent cages.

“We did have a backup system,” said Mr Helm. “Our research is valuable enough to the Alliance that we have permission to set up a temporary doorway port—” He pointed at the cube-shaped machine in the corner closest to the doors.

“Doorway port?” I echoed. “Is that like a world-key?”

“Of a sort. Every Alliance building has one built in for emergencies only, in case a global catastrophe strikes. Valeria’s Alliance’s main Alliance branch has one, as do several other branches across the allied worlds.”

“Does
Earth
have one?” I asked.

“It might,” said Mr Helm, “but it’s low-magic, so it’s unlikely it’ll work to the same extent. Every world
does
have at least one emergency evacuation point put into place by the original Alliance.”

“I’ve no idea…” I hesitated.
The hidden Passage.
But the Alliance didn’t know. Still, it was a reminder I needed to check it again. “How many of those doorway ports does Valeria have? And how many worlds are they connected to?”

“All of the allied worlds, as far as I know. It works as a shortcut between Alliance branches, but only in cases of dire need. The amount of energy needed to power it is immense, and it’s not equipped to transport more than a few people at a time. Valeria is the only world where you can cross from one part of the city to another, because the level of magic is stable enough to allow it.”

“So not worlds like Cethrax?”

“Stars, no. Do you think the Alliance would have been fool enough to set up a direct link between the council and the world that hates the Alliance?”

“Fair point,” I said. “I have my suspicions the Stoneskins might be operating in Cethrax. If there was a shortcut there which didn’t involve walking through the swamp, it would help.”

“Good luck to you,” said Mr Helm, with a slight shudder. “That one looks like it’s waking up.”

He was right; one of the Stoneskins had begun to stir. I crossed the room quickly and crouched. “Can it hear me out here?”

“The cage isn’t soundproofed,” said Mr Helm. “It
is
unbreakable, however.”

“Good.” I rapped on the front of the cage. “Who are you?”

The Stoneskin coughed.
Human. It was once human.
I shook the thought away. “Where were you going? Where are the others?”

“Gone.” The Stoneskin coughed again. “Far away… our leader is the tracker. Not me.”

“Tracker… as in, a source?”

“The StoneKing alone knows our destination. He, and the girl, were to avenge our kind against those who ordered our creation.”

“
Who?”
I asked. “Was it Klathica?”

The Stoneskin laughed. “They wouldn’t have the audacity.”

“Then
who?”

The Stoneskin’s face split into a grin. “The Empire.”

My heart dropped as cold fear washed over me.

They were taking Ada back to her homeworld.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ADA

“You little bitch.” The StoneKing twisted my arm so tight, I screamed. “Do you realise what you’ve done?”

Crack.
Stars burst behind my eyes as he backhanded me. Blood filled my mouth where I’d bitten the inside of my cheek again, and I spat it at him.

“I’ve stopped your suicidal plan in its tracks. You can’t use me to blow up Enzar. Not anymore.”

“You’ve doomed yourself,” said the StoneKing, breathing heavily. “And you’ve doomed your fellow prisoners, too. There’s no way out of Cethrax now. There’s no escape.”

My heart sunk, but I said, “At least you bastards can’t destroy the Balance.”

“You would have been a queen, you stupid girl.”

“I’d have been a weapon, and
dead.”
I glared defiantly at him. “And even you’d be wiped out with the rest of the Multiverse. You’re deluded. I was never going to be your assassin.”

“No, you weren’t,” snarled the StoneKing. “You would have been much more, Adamantine, but you chose to doom yourself instead.” He pulled me after him, causing another spike of pain in my bruised arm.

“What do you even mean by that?” I asked.

“Thairon didn’t know what we know. Even the magebloods don’t, and as for the Royals…” He gave a mocking laugh. “They know
nothing
of sources, nothing of the true potential of magic. Even less than the Alliance do.”

“What the hell are you blathering about now?” I winced as his grip tightened again.

“Thairon created us,” snarled the StoneKing, “as a defence, to protect the mageblood soldiers. But their real quest was to gain control of Enzar’s ultimate source. The source that almost caused a cross-world war. The source that lives inside our skin, Adamantine. It’s ours by right, and we want it back.”

“What does that have to do with me?” I asked. “You mean—magic sources? Adamantine—the deposit is on Enzar?”

“They think it is,” said the StoneKing, face twisting, “but I intended to prove them wrong. As long as the search for the source continues, the war will never end. I intend to end it and claim all their sources for our own. They took away our humanity. Magic is all we have left.”

“Back up a step,” I said. “So Enzar are looking for a deposit and you’re saying you want it, too? What makes it any different from any other source? They
have
adamantine.”

Or, they had, because they’d injected it into
me.

“There’s a theory amongst Klathican researchers,” said the StoneKing, “who say every world where magic is above the second level has a major source of its power known as a nexus. When that source burns out, the magic in that world dies. In high-magic worlds, it is common for wars to erupt over control of the source. Like Enzar. In order to turn the tide of the battle, the magebloods believe they need this nexus. Power in such a quantity would wipe out the Multiverse even with the doors to the Passages cut off.”

I stared, open-mouthed. “I thought you wanted me to
assassinate
the magebloods. I thought this was about revenge. Now you’re telling me you want to save the Multiverse? Or am I seriously misunderstanding you?”

“You’re a living source like us, Adamantine. You must understand. You’re pulled back to your homeworld. You were meant to bring an end to it all. If the magebloods die, the war ends. The Multiverse survives. And you will be its queen… alongside me.”

I choked on a laugh. “So you want to be king of the world. Right. There I was thinking you might be making sense for once.” About the nexuses, anyway. Every magic-high world had a source? It didn’t sound implausible with what I knew about magic.

Stop. He’s trying to trick you with half-lies.
“How do you know?” I asked. “How would you know every high-magic world has a… nexus?” It sounded like the kind of information limited to the higher-ups in the Alliance. Hell. “Did the
Alliance
experiment on you?”

A pause. We’d reached the other side of the marsh by now, and the Stoneskins had surrounded the humans, forcibly dragging some of them around the remains of the trees we’d knocked down.

“The Alliance are blind to what’s in front of them,” said the StoneKing. “Thairon created us on Enzar’s orders, but Thairon wanted the source for themselves. We were nothing to them.”

“Enzar… and Thairon?” I glanced at the other Stoneskins. “They created all of you. So you escaped?”

“They didn’t know,” said the StoneKing. “They didn’t know back on Klathica, I had already volunteered to be implanted with a tracker. Even the adamantine coat has not affected it, because it lives under my skin. I broke out, gathered my comrades, and set out to find the one person who can end the war—the one surviving Royal with a heart of adamantine. You.”

“Holy shit,” I said. “No offence, but you could have done better. You’re saying you were used as experiments, but instead of revenging yourself on the people who imprisoned you, you decided to go searching for a random girl who’d never even been in the war? You expected to find me, or find the nexus. Or destroy it?”

“You don’t understand at all, Adamantine,” said the StoneKing. He looked into my eyes, long enough to set my heart pounding and my skin prickling. “You
are
the nexus.”

My mouth hung open. I couldn’t move, even to shake my head in denial.
Impossible.

The StoneKing continued to stare at me, a blazing intensity rising in his green eyes. “You’re our secret weapon. If we tell Enzar we have you, the fighting will cease. If we threaten your life, both sides will immediately call for a ceasefire. All fighting will end, and you and I will have a willing Empire to rule over.”

I finally found words. “What… the hell? You think
I’m
the nexus? You think I’m the source of all Enzar’s power?” A wild, irrational laugh escaped me. “You’re… I have no words. That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard, and seeing as I’ve been listening to your idiotic wittering for the past ten minutes, that’s saying a lot. If I’m supposed to be the source of Enzar’s power, they sure have done a good job fighting with magic without me the past twenty years.”

The StoneKing watched me, expression unfathomable. “It would seem unlikely, if they
knew
you’d been on Earth for twenty years,” he said. “But they don’t. For all they know, you’ve been in hiding on their own world or one of the others in their old Empire. They’re desperate for an end to the conflict. Desperate enough to believe anything. Adamantine as the heart of Enzar… it seems plausible, doesn’t it?”

I laughed again. “You get points for originality, I’ll give you that.” I had to taunt him, to crush the creeping sensation under my skin. There was no way—absolutely no way I could have a
source
living inside me. Magic, yes, but not the heart of all magic on Enzar. That wasn’t possible.

It couldn’t be possible.

“Well, congratulations,” I said. “Only one flaw in your plan—we’re stuck here.”

“Precisely,” said the StoneKing. “We are stranded in a world which is severely hostile to your kind. My fellow Stoneskins will not leap to defend your fellow humans from attack.”

“You don’t scare me,” I snarled through gritted teeth. “I’ll make you sorry. You wait.”

“You mean your Alliance friends you sent a message to?” he said, and this time, real horror coursed through me. “You are sadly predictable, Adamantine, but I rather fear your efforts will cost many lives. You told your friends to follow you to the ruins of Xervec, did you not? Pity… I almost decided against leaving the bomb there.”

I stopped dead, the panic rising to a fever pitch. “You—what? You’re lying. You don’t have a bomb!”

“You were the one who provoked their plant,” said the StoneKing. “Two of my own nearly died stirring it up, but the energy gathered would kill anyone who set foot near the place. If the Alliance has picked up your signal, I’m sure they’ll take the initiative and send representatives there to find you—as you’re so valuable, they’ll send their best. But they’ll never find you. Xethet will devour them, if they don’t step on the bomb first.” His face stretched into another inhuman smile. “None of them would be fool enough to step into Cethrax, even if they did know you were here. And they don’t. Adamantine blocks magic signals, even yours. As long as you are with us, no one can track you. No one can find you.”

As his words hit me one after another, like rocks, the last lights of hope burned out. If he hadn’t been holding my arm, I swore my knees would have given out.

A bomb. He’d rigged that city with a bomb. And I’d given an exact description. If the Alliance sent anyone there, they’d be blown to pieces or obliterated by high level magic.

I’d seen, not fifteen minutes ago, what that level of power could do.

“Nothing to say, Adamantine?” said the StoneKing.

I wasn’t sure I
could
speak. I reeled, images of Kay and the others being caught in the explosion warring with stark images of my homeworld, lightning raining down from the sky, magic sources, death and destruction, and Kay.

My breaths came shorter and shorter.
Kay.
If only I had a way to warn him. To save one life.
You can’t save everyone,
Nell had said to me. Repeatedly.

I couldn’t save anyone. Not even the surviving humans following our group.

Did they knew their days—hours—were numbered?

The world shrank to marsh, mud and the red sky, and the StoneKing’s grip on my arm, all but dragging me along.
No. I can’t let them die.
But neither could I escape, and there was no way back to the Passages now. Not for me, not for any of us.