“It’s okay, Tommy. It’s okay,” I soothed, angling my hips so he couldn’t kick my belly.
Mike landed on his knees beside me in a scuffle, losing his balance for a second, and we both stared into each other as the howling filled the deathly silence.
“Blood.” Mike’s voice cracked with fear. He touched Tom’s head, cupping his big hand over it. “Why is he covered in blood?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered into Tom’s baby-soft hair. “God, please let them be okay.”
“Is he hurt?” Mike asked, checking every inch of the toddler. “Is it his blood?”
“I don’t know.” I looked around me, checked the treetops, the pathway, the shadows, but there were no other children with Tom. “Call David.”
Mike pulled out his phone.
“No. Wait.” I put my hand over Mike’s. “I can feel him.” I tilted my face to the sky and sent out a quiver of light, calling David’s name in my thoughts. I felt it connect with him, felt him stop what he was doing and tune in. “David!” I screamed aloud, sending out another pulse.
Only a second passed before he appeared at the end of the path, surrounded by the shadows of a coming dawn. “Ara?” he called, clearly unsure what he’d just felt.
“Over here,” I sobbed weakly, holding little Tommy so tight I wasn’t sure he could breathe.
David walked slowly over, cautious, and stopped dead when he saw the child in my arms.
“The children,” was all I could say. “The children.”
If hearts could be seen to leave a person’s body and land on the floor, that’s what it would look like—the way he froze, the way his eyes reshaped—the way he paled.
I buried my face in Tommy’s neck and cried for a moment, breathing him in as though he was the last one left, praying to God that he wasn’t. When I looked up, David was gone.
“Ara?” Emily appeared from thin air and landed behind Mike, one hand cupping his shoulder, looking from him to the child. “What’s happened?”
I couldn’t talk. My throat was so tight with fear I just couldn’t get anything out. And Mike was unresponsive, too—didn’t even know she was there. He just knelt there, on the ground, whispering something to his hands.
“Mike?” Emily said, putting her ear to his lips. She looked up at me then. “Give me Tommy.”
I peeled the frightened child from my neck and placed him in Em’s arms. “Take care of him—keep him away from the Damned House. Get him to the manor and call his new dads.”
“Okay.” She hugged Tommy tight, and I left her and Mike alone in the forest, speeding across the island before slowing down as I saw the Institute over the rise. I walked numbly from there, each step a new prayer for every one of the twelve little lives in that place.
But as I reached the base of the hill, David’s bloodcurdling cry echoed out over eternity, and I knew. I knew what I’d see when I walked in that door.
Falcon darted out from the nursery, covered in blood, and just dropped to his hands and knees on the grass, gagging on his own vomit as I walked past. “Stop,” he tried to say, but I ignored him, falling onto the doorframe when the flicker of a broken light overhead lit up each of the twelve blood-stained beds around the room. There was no sound. There was no crying, no whimpering—no heartbeats. They were dead. All of them.
The light flickered one more time above me then, and finally died, leaving everything in total darkness.
I stood for a time that had no measure, my eyes closed, with the images of those innocent little bodies burned into the backs of them and, centre to it all, David kneeling on the ground a few feet in front of me.
“Ara.” A hand caught my arm, snapping me unwillingly back to reality. I turned my head as Mike’s eyes absorbed the horror, two words coming from his lips to stop my heart again. “The boys.”
A metal vice tightened my lungs and we both looked to the secure wing—the door ajar, ripped off its hinges, held on only by the state-of-the-art lock.
“Oh God!” I wrapped my arms around my stomach, folding over a little. I couldn't take it. I just couldn't take it if those boys were dead.
Mike ran past on legs of jelly, tripping and falling to his knees as he entered that room. And my own legs failed me too. I sunk down and listened as he cried out, breathless and …
I looked up.
Breathless and thanking the gods.
My arms filled with an icy cold rush of hope. I got to my feet, stumbling a little, and darted into the secure wing, falling back against the wall when I saw Mike wrapped completely around two terrified but very much alive boys.
“Ara!” Max called, reaching for me.
I slowly shuffled over to them and threaded my arms into the mix, kissing their heads over and over and over. “I was so scared,” I cried. “I was so scared.”
Mike leaned back, keeping one hand on each boy, looking at them like he’d never seen anything more precious in his life. “I thought you were … I…”
“You have to go, Mike,” I said, touching his shoulder. “You have to leave—tonight. Get them out of here. Get them away from this world!”
He stood up and drew them both into him.
“Don’t just stand there!” I screamed, shoving him with both hands. “Go. Take a full year’s pay from the treasury and just go!”
He dug the heel of his palm into his eye to wipe the tears away and then shook his head, snapping out of his trance. And he said nothing as he walked off, leading the boys away with him. I knew he’d be gone by the time the sun completely rose. I knew there was a chance I might never see him again—not when he had to protect the boys. But I was okay with that. As long as they were safe.
“Goodbye, Mike,” I whispered, blinded by the tears of relief and fear.
“Ara?” Falcon said delicately.
I didn't want to turn around. I didn’t want to see the agony in his eyes and know that what I just saw out there was real.
“Ara?” he said again.
“What do we do, Falcon?” I took a long, jagged breath. “How do we … I thought they were protected.”
“They were,” he said, stepping in to the room. “And we sent more guards down here after the initial attack last night. They were fine then. But.”
“’But’?” I asked, spinning around, my eyes wet and cold. “Is this what Drake wanted—why he sent men in to attack?”
Falcon’s mouth sat open, his lips dry and cracked. “I think, maybe … it’s possible.”
I cupped my mouth. “Why?”
“Perhaps that is something you should ask your husband,” said a cold, stern and very familiar voice.
Falcon and I held our breath as the eerie, devilish form of my uncle glided into the room, like Death in a black cloak.
“
You
did this?” I screamed.
“I did.” He nodded once.
“Why? What reason could
anyone
have for killing innocent children?!” I stormed into him like a mad woman and shoved him into the wall, hitting his chest with the full force of my Cerulean Light. But all he did was look down at his chest, and laugh.
“Is that all you’ve got?”
I looked at my hands, horrified. “Why didn’t it—”
“Because I am too powerful,” he said, his jet black eyes small with amusement. “A Cerulean attack will do nothing to me.”
“Then let’s see what a blade can do,” Falcon barked, stepping up with his hand to his sword.
Drake put both hands up calmly. “Before we point the finger of blame, I suggest you ask your king why this happened.”
Falcon stopped walking, and we both looked to the pale, haunted face of the king as he walked up slowly behind Drake and leaned on the doorframe. He couldn’t look at us, couldn’t even stand straight.
Drake presented the weaker state of the king and then grinned back at me.
“David?” I said. “What’s he talking about?”
David’s venomous gaze sliced layers off Drake. “I don’t know.”
“Of course you do,” Drake said, taking the floor like an actor on a stage. When he stopped walking, his jaw set tight and the hatred of a thousand years of war crossed the space between he and David. “Tell her what you did to my niece.”
I frowned at him, then my husband. “Is he talking about Morgana?”
“Ara,” Falcon said calmly, touching my shoulder.
I faced him, seeing that same look in his eyes that he’d had earlier tonight. “What is it?”
“When David woke up last night—after Morgana lifted the spell, he—”
“He hunted her down,” Drake snapped. “He tore the terrified girl from her cell and he killed her.”
I looked at David, who shrunk slightly, his eyes cast to the ground. “But she can’t die,” I said. “She’s a Pure Blood, like me.”
“She
can
die!” Drake yelled, spitting and shaking. “She can die if her body is dismembered—her remains burned in separate pyres and her ashes strewn upon the wind!”
My jaw dropped, allowing my throat space to maybe cry or protest, but all it did was draw a huge jagged breath. “You killed those children because of Morgana?”
“No. I killed them because of
your
king.”
“Don’t you dare blame him,” I said, the anger and hurt and fear rallying together inside my chest, bringing my voice out in a high, overly emotional squeak. “Morgana is the one who started all of this! And what she suffered in the end is nothing compared to what you will be made to suffer now at
my
hand!”
Drake just smiled malignantly. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Mind your temper, niece. We must remember who holds the power in this relationship.”
I shook my head a few times, the hurt and anger morphing into a rage so large I felt a ball in my chest. I reached across and grabbed Falcon’s sword with both hands, swinging it through the air before we even heard the sound of it leave its sheath. But Drake dodged my attack and vanished, my blade falling on empty air with nothing but a clanging ring to end my rage.
My shoulders rose and fell with heaving breaths. I dropped the sword and buried my head in my hands.
David and Falcon stood frozen, watching me cry for a moment.
“That’s what you were all hiding?” I said. “He killed Morg tonight—that’s what you didn’t want to tell me? That's why my dad was so cold to me in my bedroom when I said
I
wanted to kill her.” I looked out from behind my hands at Falcon. “She was already dead.”
“Yes,” he said softly, that single word carrying the weight of everything that had come of that.
“What now?” I pressed my fingertips into my brow, rubbing firmly. “What do we do now?”
Falcon laid his hand on my shoulder. “Go upstairs to your room. You don’t need to be here for this.”
***
I pushed my bedroom door open and peeled off my dirty sweater, then my jeans and shoes, tossing them to one side. The dawn light finally broke through the wall of smoke and fog and crept slowly along the floor until it reached the blanket box at the end of the bed, lighting up the edges of a king sitting there, his elbows on his knees, face in his hands, bare feet covered in dirt and blood.
Jason’s painting was still there across from him, the journal on the bed—everything just the way I left it, but with a change so great in the air now that nothing looked the same. As if I’d stepped into an alternate reality, where nothing had the same meaning anymore. Not the past, and not the hopes for the future.
David didn’t look up at me as I shut the door quietly, didn’t even seem to notice me standing here, which is why it shocked me so much when he said, “Do you want me to leave?”
“Leave?” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat. “Why would I want that?”
His body jerked as if he were heaving into a bucket, and a breathy sob left his lips, foggy in the cool dawn air. I walked slowly over and knelt by his feet, watching for a moment as his thick tears dripped down and landed between them like fat drops of rain.
“No,” I said, touching his leg with the very tips of my fingers. “I don’t want you to leave, and I don’t blame you for this.”
He sobered with a quivering breath, wiping his face with both hands as he sat tall. “Nothing you say can change the facts, Ara.”
I held his gaze for a moment, searching his thoughts for some clarity, but it was a mess in there—a mess of confusion, guilt, pity and remorse.
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” he added, a rising air of shame forcing him to look away.
“Twelve deaths does not—”
“Please.” He cupped my elbow, angling his head loosely to one side. “Just not today.”
“Okay.” I nodded, standing up. I offered my hand. “Come to bed then. All we can do now is pretend we can sleep.”
“I’m sorry.” He stood and turned toward the balcony doors, folding his arms across his cut and bloodied shirt. “I just don’t think I can do that, Ara.”
“Then tell me what to say,” I said, moving toward him with one sweeping step. “Tell me what to do to make you okay.”
He glanced back at me. “I don’t deserve to be okay.”
I stood motionless for a second, muted by a ball so tight in my chest that I couldn’t breathe. He held my gaze as he walked past me and opened the bedroom door, and I did nothing as he walked slowly and calmly out into the hall, pulling the door closed behind him.