Feudlings (20 page)

Shane sent Hunter an annoyed frown before turning back to Charity. “Char, you can’t see the Prodigy. Either of us. No Seer can. Remember?”

“I knew you’d say that!” She turned away, hugging herself. “But I did! I saw the whole thing. And I saw the Prodigy attack Taylor, too.”

“You what?” Hunter’s chin dropped.

“Well, not exactly. I didn’t see the
Prodigy.
It was like I was looking through his eyes. I saw— I saw the spell and Taylor…” She trailed off, turning back to them. “I did. No one believes me,” she whispered, a tear trailing down her cheek.

“Well, obviously you saw it or you wouldn’t have known I was in trouble to call me and get them to burn a
saldepement
. What’s not to believe?” Hunter asked, struggling for a casual comeback, but Charity only looked at the floor. Above her head, Shane and Hunter exchanged a look of concern, neither sure if this new development was a good thing or just more of a curse for Charity and her luminous silver eyes.

****

Ari spent the weekend recovering at Will’s house. She was exhausted and bruised, nothing that a warm bath and the healers in the colony couldn’t take care of. Will, too, was beat up, but that just made him more excited. “I was there, Ari! You needed me and I was finally there!” He yelled for about the sixteenth time.

“You shouldn’t have been. I only had Carules to worry about. You had Carules and Edren. You could have been killed,” Ari muttered from where she lay sprawled on the couch watching TV.

Will grinned at her. “Better me than you,” he said with morbid enthusiasm.

“Not even close.” Ari grunted without even looking at him, but a smile she couldn’t fight broke across her face, and she glanced up. “We do make a pretty good team though, don’t we?”

Will burst out laughing. “Yes we do.”

Ari tipped her head so she could see him better. “You know what’s strange that I’ve been noticing about Richard?”

Will rolled his eyes. “Everything?”

“Yeah. But no, I mean every time I come back from a battle, he is
thrilled
. Like, glowing, bouncing on his toes like a giant bunny thrilled. What’s his deal?” Ari stretched for the remote and flipped the TV off. Will just watched her, eyebrows furrowed. “And why does he keep pushing the war? What is he gaining?” she asked.

“I am not the right person to ask that, Ari girl,” Will said, turning to stare out the window. He was silent for several minutes before he glanced back at her. “The war is profitable for him. Edrens keep giving him money, lots of money, to fund the war. He’s the one that manufactures their combat gear. I suppose he keeps pushing it because it is making him rich.”

“How do you know all this?” Ari asked, a teasing smile playing around her mouth.

Will winked. “World’s greatest hacker, baby!” At her rolled-eyes-response, he glanced down at his watch. “You’ve got school in an hour and a half. Are you going?”

With a squeal, Ari sat up, swinging her legs off the couch. “I can’t believe I forgot to tell you! But with everything that has been going on…” At Will’s raised eyebrow, she shook her head. “Anyway, remember my friends I told you about? Shane and his cousin Charity and their best friend Hunter?”

Will nodded. “Yeah, kinda hard to forget about them when that’s the topic of every phone call I’ve gotten.” Raising his voice to a high falsetto, he continued, “Shane did this and batted his big blue eyes and my heart stopped beating and I was in loooove.”

Ari turned bright red and chucked a throw pillow at him as hard as she could, which wasn’t that hard since she had used most of her energy in the fight and the rest of it sitting up in such a rush.

Will caught it with a smirk. “I never said that!” She frowned at him.

“Not in so many words.” Will raised an eyebrow.

“Shut up. Do you want to know my news or not?” She threw her hands up in exasperation. “Of course, Ari girl. Please continue.”

Will fought to keep his face solemn. He failed, but Ari ignored him.

“Will, focus. This is important.” She sighed when Will continued, as if not hearing her. “Are you going to run away and marry—”

“They’re Carules, Will.”

“…Shane or Hunt…Wait! What?” Will exploded, mid-sentence.

“They’re Carules. Shane used his power to heal a girl at my school. He had no choice. So they had to tell me.”

“Please for the love of all that is good tell me you did not tell them who you are.” All the color drained from his face.

“Of course not. Do you think I’m an idiot?” she snapped. She thought it best not to tell her brother that she had, in fact, thought about telling them. But there hadn’t been time. And she had decided against it.
Yeah, that’s it,
she thought.

Will fell back against the armchair he was leaning on. “Okay we’ve got to get you out of there. You’ll stay here until we find somewhere else for you to—”

“No.” Ari stopped him, her hand out.

Will stared at her, baffled. “You can’t be serious. Ari, I know they’re your friends but they’re the enemy. They’d kill you if they found out what you are.”

“I’m not stupid, Will. I know that,” Ari said, but it hurt. It felt like she was stabbing herself in the heart to say it; believing it hurt even more.

“But they don’t know who I am. And they aren’t going to find out.”

“Yeah but Ari, you can’t be sure. One slip up and they’ll be running to their Prodigy with your head on a platter.”

“You don’t know that. You say they’re the enemy, but you don’t believe in the war. Isn’t that hypocritical of you? Will, you live with Carules every day!”

“Yeah, but these Carules aren’t fighting the war. You’re
friends
are.”

“We don’t know that. They’re children. Teenagers. We don’t know if they’re fighting the war,” Ari said, her voice cold; it felt wrong to speak to Will that way, but she didn’t agree with him. Shane would never hurt her, right? Neither would Charity. And Hunter… well, he wouldn’t hurt her unless she got between him and the football.

“Ari, in this war no one lives much longer than that.” Will’s voice was sad and serious.

It took a lot of arguing, but finally Will was at least partially convinced that Ari would be okay and he let her go back to school. Mostly, because she was more stubborn than he was and she wouldn’t back down, even a little. She couldn’t stand to.

But the panic was still in his eyes as she turned back on the other side of the portal to wave goodbye. She put her fingers to her lips and held them toward him, and he did the same.

As she walked toward her school she hoped she was right, that they wouldn’t find out who she was. It would be awkward to have to fight off three of the only friends she had ever had.

Chapter Fifteen

“Hey. How was your weekend?” Nev plopped her tray down at the table with an unceremonious thunk.

Ari, Hunter, Shane, and Charity were already there. They all mumbled something barely coherent, none of them looking up from their trays.

“Well, that’s too bad. Sorry you guys were all sick. That sucks to be stuck in your rooms all weekend,” Livi said as she came up behind Nev.

“I think it was the stress of our whole ordeal,” Charity murmured. It took Ari a minute to remember
what
ordeal Charity was talking about. Their flight through the woods three days before seemed like an eternity ago.

“Yeah… I didn’t feel good all weekend either. Maybe we stumbled into some kind of poisonous plant or something,” Ari lied without looking up. Her head rested on one hand, the other toying with her fork. She had no appetite, and the whole morning was a blur. She was pretty positive she had failed a test in her English class.

“How is your brother?” Livi asked. Ari had told them he was in an accident and she had rushed to his side, which is why she was gone all weekend.

“He’s doing much better now. He’s pretty proud of himself for how well he… um… handled the situation.” Ari smiled inwardly. It was the truth.

“That must have been pretty stressful for you,” Shane said quietly, and she looked up to be caught in that metallic blue gaze, although at the moment he wasn’t looking quite as hot as normal. He had dark bruise-like circles under his eyes and he moved like he’d been hit by a truck. Ari was pretty sure they had been at Adlington. Pretty much everyone on both sides of the war had been there. Charity had no active powers, so Ari wasn’t sure what she might have been doing, but she looked like she’d been through a nasty fight. Anyway, Ari hadn’t exactly had time to watch for them, and she wasn’t sure what she would have done if she had seen them. The thought made her head hurt.

“I’m exhausted. I’m gonna go lay down until fifth period starts.” Ari pushed her chair back, wincing as it scraped across the linoleum.

“You haven’t eaten anything.” Shane pointed his spoon at her tray.

“Not hungry,” she mumbled over her shoulder as she walked away. Seconds later he was falling into step beside her as she left the lunch room.

“Bad weekend?” she asked, glancing at him just as several girls stopped them at the door to the lunch room. It was an ambush. Poor Shane.

“Shane! I’ve been trying to call you!” One yelled while another one of them squealed. Ari turned to stare at her, wondering why every girl she knew had to squeal in Shane’s presence. So obnoxious. Under Ari’s scowl, they broke up and skittered away, casting her evil glares from a safe distance.

Shane didn’t show any sign that he even noticed them. “Yeah… we weren’t sick.” He glanced guiltily back at Hunter and Charity, still sitting at the table in the lunch room.

“Really?” Ari asked, widening her eyes innocently.

“Yeah. I can’t tell you more than that. It could get you in trouble.”

“Shane, I’m tougher than I look. I can handle it,” she said, although she wasn’t sure she wanted to know any more about his magic than she already did. It could get
him
in trouble. But she couldn’t just leave it alone. Part of her wanted to know. Maybe the monster-killer part of her.

She squashed that thought.

Shane stopped, studied her. Under his intense blue gaze her heart started to pound and she thought giddily that her favorite color just happened to be the exact color of his eyes. What were the odds? “I’m serious, Ari. There’s this war going on, and knowing anything about it could get you killed.”

“Killed?” Ari tried to look dubious.

Shane glanced around and grabbed her hand, pulling her with him out the front doors. The air was crisp and cool; Ari could see traces of her breath. If Shane was aware that half the student population was watching them speed-walk into the woods, he didn’t show it, and after a final glance back Ari ignored them too.

When the school was out of sight, she stopped and pulled her hand away. “Okay Shane. Spill,” she commanded. She crossed her arms over her chest and tried to look cold. Normals would be cold right now, but because of the flames flowing through their blood, neither she nor Shane could feel it.

Shane sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Where to start? Even the short version is long. We’re sorcerers, and there are two sides to this war… of course, because that’s what makes a war, right?” he rambled. Ari raised an eyebrow at him as she tried to shiver. “I’m a Carules. I have magic that stems from these blue flames that, well, they’re in my blood. Hunter, too. And all other Carules. The other side is Edren, and their magic comes from red flames. Basically, we spend all our time trying to kill each other. It’s a lot of fun,” he said with a bitter frown at the ground.

“So you hide your magic because if an Edren found you…”

“They’d kill me. Or try to, anyway,” Shane finished for her.

Ari flinched at his words, and she knew right then that if she had seen him on that battle field in Adlington, she wouldn’t have been able to kill him. Her eyes widened in shock, her mouth opened into a silent “
Oh
”, and her heart started to pound. This was a very, very dangerous revelation she’d just made to herself.

She had a weakness. And it was Shane.

Clueless, thankfully, to her internal shock, Shane rushed to continue, “It sounds crazy, I know. At one time, magic didn’t need to be hidden. But after the war started, hiding your powers was essential to survive. Sorcerers are common. At least they were, until we all started trying to kill each other.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and scuffed his boots in the dirt, making little mountains.

“Yeah. No, it does sound crazy, but I saw you heal that girl, so I believe you,” Ari said, trying to jerk herself out of her own head. Her eyes focused on his face and he was once again studying her with that intense blue gaze she loved so much.

Wait, what?
Loved? Her heart resumed pounding and she felt like a fish, her mouth opening and closing but unable to breathe.
Breathe!
Okay, yes, loved. She loved his eyes, she told herself firmly. He had pretty eyes. That was all.

“Are you okay? You’re pale,” he asked, dark eyebrows drawing down in concern.

“I…” she started, but trailed off, her eyes caught in his. He was a Carules. She should be killing him, but instead she was thinking about his pretty eyes. What was wrong with her?

“Come on. You were going to lie down. I’ll walk you,” he said, stepping forward.

“No, I’m okay.” She put a hand up, the other rubbing between her eyes. “I just… it’s a lot to take in. That’s all. The thought that someone is trying to kill you. It’s bizarre.” She gave a quick shake of her head.

He stopped again. “I’ve grown up with it. We all have, Hunter and Charity too.”

“So Charity is a Seer and a… um… Carules?” she asked, hesitating over Carules, trying to sound like she had no idea what she was talking about.

Shane bought it, shaking his head. “No, she doesn’t have any magic. But since she’s my cousin, it puts her right in the thick of things.”

They both whirled toward the trail as footsteps approached. “Shane, you’re a blasted idiot.” Hunter snarled like a big, enraged animal. A wolf, maybe.

“I had to tell her. If she knows, she’ll understand why it’s so important not to say anything.” Shane crossed his arms and glowered at his best friend.