A Demon's Wrath: Part II (Peachville High Demons) (2 page)

But deep in my heart, I felt the twist of an ugly
truth.

There was definitely something going on that the
king refused to acknowledge. I’d known it since the moments
after Aerden’s death. In the king’s chambers, he and my
parents had shared secret looks and spoken of things beyond my
understanding.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t
have you punished for speaking of me and my father this way?”
Lea stood tall, her eyes dark and angry.

“Because, like I said, I know who took his
brother,” Andros said, his eyes flicking toward me. He
shrugged. “I’m sure you’ve discovered by now that
no one else is going to talk to you. They are too scared of what
might happen if they tell the truth about what’s been going on
in the villages.”

“What truth?” I demanded. “Stop
speaking in secrets.”

Andros held up his hands. “The villagers are
scared to talk because the king has forbidden anyone to discuss the
takings,” he said. “What risk do I take upon myself if I
talk directly to the king’s daughter? You’ve already
threatened to have me thrown into your castle’s dungeons. If I
tell you the truth, what assurances do I have that you will not turn
me in to your father?”

“The takings?” I asked.

But he didn’t answer. He kept his eyes
trained on Lea’s face, waiting for an answer. He wanted a
promise that we wouldn’t turn his words against him.

“What assurances do we have that you’re
even telling the truth?” she asked.

“If you promise not to turn your father’s
Sentinels on me, I will show you proof of what I know,” he
said. “Proof that there is a group, not of this world, who has
been taking demons through portals to the other side.”

“Taking them for what use?” My lip
trembled as I asked the words. I struggled to keep my emotions in
check. Could Aerden truly be alive? And if so, what torture was he
being subjected to?

“We don’t know,” Andros said.
“But if you guarantee my safety, I will tell you all that I
know.”

Lea backed toward me, shaking her head. “I
don’t think he’s to be trusted,” she said. “You
said you saw an armband identical to his in your vision of the day
Aerden was taken. How can we know it was him who killed your brother?
How do we know he isn’t trying to kill us, too? He did, after
all, string me up with a set of very strong vines.”

Her wrists were bruised from the rope-like vines
that had held her captive. He was powerful, there was no doubt about
that. Probably powerful enough to have defeated my brother. But
Aerden had said it was a woman who had spoken with him. And I had
seen a portal in my vision. Some kind of bright light with a hooded
woman waiting inside.

“Tell me one thing in truth,” I said
to him. “Were you there when my brother was killed? Was it your
armband I saw in my vision?”

Andros shook his head. “I was not there. I
give you my word,” he said. “But someone from my group
was there on that day. A demon called Mirabi.”

“I want to speak with him,” I said.

“Impossible,” he said. “My
friend Mirabi died that day. Until now, I hadn’t been certain
how or why, but if he was there, he trying to save your brother, not
harm him. I promise you.”

“He’s lying,” Lea said.

I held my hand up to silence her. Lea had always
had such a quick temper. She had already judged this demon the moment
he attacked her. But I attacked him first.

And something in his story rang true to me.

I needed to see this proof he was offering.

“If we promise our silence, when can we see
this proof you spoke of?”

“Two nights from now,” he said. “Meet
me here in the forest. I will show you.”

I nodded. “You have our promise,” I
said.

Lea opened her mouth to protest, but I met her
eyes, begging. Her mouth snapped shut and she crossed her arms in
front of her chest and turned away.

When I turned back toward Andros to agree to his
terms, he was gone, leaving only a thin trail of black smoke in his
wake.

Lea and I barely spoke on the walk back to the
gates of the city. I couldn’t stop thinking about Andros. I’d
never met another demon like him in my life. He wasn’t afraid
to say it like it was, and he wasn’t afraid to speak against
the king. Even to the king’s daughter.

But how could I be sure he was trustworthy? How
could I know he wasn’t trying to trap or trick me in some way?

Still, I knew I had to see his proof. I had to
know.

Over the years since Aerden died, I’d
nearly gone insane from the lack of answers and information. I was
convinced my parents knew more than they were saying, and I’d
suspected the same was true of many of the villagers I’d spoken
to. What were they all so afraid of?

What were they hiding?

If there was even the slightest chance Andros had
the answers, I had to see this through.

And if there was a chance my brother was alive…

I was terrified to even allow myself to think it,
but the seed of hope had already been planted. After believing I was
doomed to an eternity without him, my heart ached for the possibility
of seeing him again. If there was any chance Aerden was still alive,
I had to see this through. No matter the cost.

“We should talk to our parents,” Lea
said the next morning over breakfast.

Now that we were officially promised to each
other, we were free to come and go in each other’s quarters as
often as we wanted. Right now, that was both a blessing and a curse.
Lea wanted so much more from me than I could give, and after she’d
seen the strong love inside the heart stone, she believed I cared for
her so much more than I truly did.

It was Aerden’s love she saw, not mine. It
had been his final sacrifice to protect her happiness and my honor.

Only honor didn’t seem quite as important
anymore. Not considering the depth of the sacrifices we’d all
had to make. Honesty seemed more honorable now, but I didn’t
have the courage to tell her the truth. Instead, like a coward, I
kept up the lie that I knew would eventually tear her apart.

“I don’t think it’s a good
idea,” I said. I didn’t want to get into an argument with
her first thing in the morning, but I had a feeling it was
unavoidable. I wasn’t going to back down on this. “Not
until we have more concrete answers.”

She shook her head and stood up from the small
table in my outer chambers. She walked over toward the balcony. A
gentle wind blew through the archway, lifting her long black hair up
from her neck.

“We can’t do this alone,” she
said. “If Andros is right and someone has actually taken your
brother through some portal, we’ll need to act fast. We’ll
need an army to go in there and get him. No one is better equipped to
deal with this or to fight back than my father. We should go to him.”

“No,” I said. I pushed my plate of
fruit and pastries to the side. I had no appetite these days. “Don’t
you see? If we have no proof other than some rebel who lives outside
of the city, our parents and the council will all tell us we’re
reaching for something that isn’t there. They’ll tell us
it’s nonsense and insist we look no further. Then we’ll
be trapped. We won’t be able to even investigate the truth
without directly disobeying the crown.”

“So you’re saying we should go behind
everyone’s back, risking Aerden’s life in the process?”

“It’s riskier for him if we go to the
king and he doesn’t believe us,” I said. “We need
proof. Or at least some kind of solid evidence that will convince
them we’re on the right track. Andros says he has that. Once
we’ve seen whatever it is he’s going to show us, we can
talk about the next step.”

Lea turned to me, sadness etched across her dark
features. “What if he’s just gone?” she asked.
“What if this demon has no idea what he’s talking about?
What if he’s wrong about Aerden and you spend the rest of your
days searching for a ghost?”

I turned away from her, not wanting to hear this.
She’d been with me every step of my search so far, but lately,
she’d been mentioning our future more and more. She was ready
to move on.

But how could she ask that of me? Especially now,
after all that Andros had said?

“If there’s any hope he’s alive,
I’ll search for as long as it takes,” I said. “I
won’t abandon my brother.”

She moved toward me, placing a gentle hand on my
arm.

“I’m not asking you to abandon him,”
she said. “I’m just asking you to open your mind to the
possibility that he’s gone and he’s never coming back.
Maybe there’s nothing you can do to help him, because his light
has gone out.”

“If that’s true, then I need to
understand how. Why. I need to know who did this to him,” I
said.
And I need to make them pay.

“Ten years,” she said, pulling away.
“We’ve been looking for answers for ten years and we’re
no closer to the truth after all this time. No one will talk, Denaer.
No one will tell us what they know, if anyone knows anything.”

“Andros knows,” I said.

“Andros is a wildcard,” she said. “A
rebel. He works and lives with those who would betray my father and
my family in order to gain power. We can’t trust anything he
says. He may have ulterior motives for turning us against my father.”

“I agree that we should move forward very
carefully when it comes to Andros, but I still need to know what he
knows,” I said. “This is the first real lead we’ve
had since Aerden disappeared. You can’t ask me to walk away
from that.”

She sighed and leaned against the pillar, looking
out onto the streets of the king’s city. After a moment, she
finally turned back to me, her green eyes dark and stormy. “Promise
me you’ll go into this with your eyes open.”

“My eyes are wide open,” I said.

“Open to the past,” she whispered. She
took my hand in hers and pressed it against her lips. “But what
about the future?”

The look in her eyes made my stomach tense. I
turned away, unable to meet her gaze. I knew she wanted me to comfort
her and tell her that our future was something I dreamed about, but I
didn’t have the energy to lie to her right now.

The truth was that a future without Aerden meant
nothing to me.

A voice stopped me in the hallway of the castle.

My mother.

I hesitated, then turned back toward her. We used
to be so close as a family, but I knew she was hiding something from
me. Every time she lied and said she knew nothing more about Aerden’s
disappearance, I felt us moving farther apart.

“Where are you headed in such a rush? And at
this hour?” she asked.

“I’m meeting a friend.”

“It’s nearly nightfall,” she
said, her face wrinkled.

I didn’t offer any more information and she
didn’t ask again. Over the past few years, I’d learned it
was better to be vague and give very few details about my life. I
already knew she didn’t approve of the way I’d continued
to search for answers.

In the early days after Aerden had disappeared, I
went to my parents with every single tiny shred of evidence about who
might have wanted to hurt him. Even the tiniest clue was something I
wanted to discuss with them. I wanted to hear their feedback and see
what they had to say or if they’d heard anything. I didn’t
understand why they weren’t out there searching with me. Why
didn’t they need answers like I did?

After a few years, it started to sink in that my
parents had no interest in finding out the truth.

In fact, they began to get upset with me for
continuing to ask questions.

“Let him go,” they’d said a
thousand times. “Your life is with Lea now.”

Their words burned me to the core. How could they
ask me to let him go? And how could they forget him so easily?

Any time I tried to question my father’s
lack of emotion over losing his son, he said he only wanted to be
strong for my mother. He said that she had been unable to grieve and
move on because of my constant questions. He’d said we all
needed to let Aerden live on in our hearts and memory but to move on
with our lives. He told me that’s what Aerden would have
wanted.

But instead of quieting my search and letting my
brother’s memory rest, my father’s blindness only made me
angry.

He should have been by my side searching for the
demon who had killed Aerden. They both should have.

It had always bothered me that my parents kept
pushing me to put Aerden’s disappearance behind us.

But after hearing what Andros had to say, I
wondered how I could have been so blind all this time.

The reason they weren’t searching for the
truth was that they already knew the truth.

Their questions and anger had nothing to do with
my mother’s ability to grieve and everything to do with the
fact that they did not want me to find the real truth. There was
something important they didn’t want me to know, and they would
stop at nothing to make sure I never found out.

“Who are you meeting?” she asked.

“Lea,” I said, which was true.

Her eyes narrowed into dark slits. “And who
else?”

I swallowed. “Why do you need to know?

I was tired of her questions. Her constant lies. I
would never forgive her if I discovered Aerden was still alive and
she knew about it. My anger would know no limits. I could feel it
growing inside me even now.

“Denaer, there are those out there who would
see you fall into madness,” she said. She moved toward me and
put her hand on my cheek. I pulled away and she frowned. “Be
careful of the lies those people would tell in order to manipulate
you, son. You are the future ruler of this kingdom. That comes with a
great deal of responsibility. I hope you understand that. There are
dangers out there you can’t possibly understand.”

I gave no answer, but I understood. Yes, there
were those who would use me for their own personal gain, not the
least of whom was standing right in front of me.