Steel Lily ARC (26 page)

I was silent; horrified that Riggs was willing to harm my parents. Part of me wondered how I’d gotten reattached so quickly, but I’d do anything to keep them safe.

My body ached with mental fatigue, but I focused on the sloshing wine in Riggs’s cup. Flames, furious and unrelenting, filled my mind’s eye as I stared through Riggs and into the fireplace behind him, imagining them in his goblet.

Imagining he might burn for threatening my parents.

And then it happened.

The contents of the glass burst into a fiery lake. Flames danced across the top of the wine before sending sparks over the lip of the cup, burning Riggs before he could drop it.

The goblet turned end over end, as if in slow motion, before it hit the ground with a crash. Shards of crystal tinkered across the floor. The minute the fire hit the floor it turned back into wine and stained the rug under Riggs’s feet. Riggs looked at me, startled, but then smiled like he’d been crowned king. He clapped his hands and the applause echoed across the thousands of books shelved in the library.

His jubilation scared me.

“Miss Pike, you are the very meaning of an Elementalist! You have the capability to control the elements and manipulate them! Do you know how rare this is? How rare
you
are? Why, with training, you could very well be the one to bring us back to normalcy. If we could understand how you received your abilities, we could teach others to do what you just did.”

He continued to talk, but I tuned him out until his voice was mindless buzzing in my ear. The wine stained the floor like blood, and I wondered what I was really capable of. I felt my knees begin to give out. Everything around me began to spin, and the last thing I saw was Riggs’s triumphant face turn to horror as I passed out.

***

A hand waved in front of my face at the same time the noxious odor of smelling salts assailed my nostrils. I blinked and jerked my head away from the smell.

“Avery, you there?” Xander’s reassuring voice sounded in my ears. His fingers pressed gently against the inside of my wrist. “You had us worried.”

“Us meaning Riggs?” I muttered.

Xander chuckled. “And myself. And Jaxon, if I’m not mistaken,” he added onto the end, as he wasn’t sure he should include Jaxon. “You’ve made a few friends here in your short time.”

I tried to sit up, but one of Xander’s broad hands held me down. “Lie there for a second,” he instructed, in full doctor mode as he examined my pupils with a small flashlight, “so you can acclimate again. That was a nasty fall.”

“Did Riggs tell you what happened?”

“I got the gist. Care to tell me about it, or would you rather not?”

“Oh, I’ll talk about it.” I said grumpily. “Riggs threatened to not give my parents their rations this month if I didn’t turn his wine into fire.”

One of Xander’s eyebrows disappeared into his bangs. “And so you passed out?”

“After turning the wine into fire, yes.”

Both of his eyebrows rose. “You don’t control elements, you own them. You change them.”

“So it seems.”

I lay there in silence, looking at the tiles in the ceiling before I realized I wasn’t in Xander’s office. I sat up before Xander could push me back down.

His eyes were wide. “What’s wrong?”

“Where are we?”

“My real medical ward,” Xander said. “This is where I usually take care of students, but Jaxon took it upon himself to make my office a personal haunt, and now he brings you and Sari along as well.” His smile indicated he didn’t mind it.

“And now Legs,” I added.

“And now Legs,” Xander repeated. “Speaking of which, would you come visit him tonight? He’s been asking about you today.”

I smiled. It was good to know Legs was coherent again. “Sure. Would you mind if I brought Alice?”

Xander looked confused. “Alice?”

“My roommate,” I explained.

“Isn’t Sari your roommate?”

Before I could respond, Sari ran into the room, wide-eyed and winded. When she saw Xander sitting beside my bed, she halted.

“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t know you two were talking.”

Xander laughed and waved Sari’s embarrassment away. “Not to worry. We were just chatting.” He looked at me seriously. “How are you feeling?”

I shrugged, unsure how to answer the question. There were so many things running through my mind that I was far from fine, but medically speaking, I didn’t think I’d suffered anything life-threatening. “I’m good, thanks.”

“Well then, you’re free to leave.” He pointed a finger at Sari. “Make sure she doesn’t sleep for more than two hours at a time tonight. I think she has a minor concussion.”

Sari nodded weakly. She acted as though she’d seen a ghost. “I can manage that.”

Xander helped me off the pristine white sheets that covered the simple gurney. This place spared nothing; it was like being in a hospital.

I also noticed it looked like the same ward Riggs and I passed not hours ago. The thought that Mom might have been poked and prodded in one of these rooms made me nauseous, and I swayed on the spot.

Sari gripped my forearm and steadied me, her hands cold against my skin. “Let’s go. Thanks for taking care of her, Xander.”

Xander inclined his head and his broad smile set my heart at ease. “My pleasure. Try not to pass out again.”

I nodded and turned to go. “Avery,” he called out. “If you use your abilities too much — push yourself beyond your limits — it could kill you.”

Both Sari and I stood there silent at his dire warning. Xander’s gaze was filled with concern. “You want to continue to practice, of course. Practicing will build your abilities like a muscle, but going overboard won’t result in a strained ligament. It could end in death. Be mindful of your limits.”

What was I supposed to say to something so heavy?
Thanks for that little informational nugget. Would have been great to know that before I started trying to push myself.

I swallowed, but it felt like cotton was in my throat. “I’ll be careful.”

Xander seemed mollified, because he shooed us out of the medical ward. “Go find some trouble, but don’t come back needing stitches, please!”

Sari pushed me out of the medical ward and into the blinding light of the corridor I’d walked with Riggs. When we were through another set of metal doors, she jerked me to a stop, pressed me against the wall, and grabbed my right arm. She turned it over to expose the crook of my elbow and let out a sigh of relief as she let my arm fall to my side.

“I thought…” she didn’t finish the sentence as she leaned against the wall beside me and slid down to rest on the polished tile.

My stomach roiled. I knew what she must have thought happened. I brushed my fingertips against my still smooth inner arm. “He didn’t track me.”

Sari’s head jerked up to look at me, her eyes wild with fright. “How’d you know?”

“My mom.”

She jumped back up and grabbed both my hands. “How did you know
that
? It took me all day to dig and unencrypt files that I should have never even know were in the system.” She stopped and looked thoughtful for a moment. “Actually, I’m impressed with myself that I found them, and that’s saying something. I’m nosy as all get out and find everything.
Everything
,” she emphasized, “and these were so hidden, so locked away, that it makes Guantanamo Bay and Alacatraz look like little city jails.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“Guantanamo Bay? It was a prison for the worst criminals. Alcatraz, too.”

“What are prisons?”

Sari threw her arms up in exasperation. “You’re missing the point. Bad people were locked away, never to be heard from again in those places. Sound familiar? The files of those people were locked up. These files,” she jutted out the palm of her hand to display half sweated away ink pen scrawls, “should have been impossible to find.”

She paced back and forth like a caged animal and ran her hands through her hair. “Oh God, what am I going to do? What if Riggs finds out?”

I grabbed her shoulders and stopped her in mid-pace. “Finds out what?”

“Finds out I learned all his secrets. I mean, everyone has skeletons in their closets, but Riggs, damn, he’s got a whole Tyrannosaurus Rex in his. And Xander…well it’s like he popped out of nowhere before being here.” Sari looked over her shoulder. “Look, we need to go to dinner. Afterward I’ll explain everything.”

As we walked, I leaned into Sari. “Have you seen Alice today? Was she at lunch?”

“Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her all day.” Sari frowned. “Do you think she’s okay? Does she usually skip lunch?”

I felt a creeping sense of unease. “No. In fact, she’s always on time.”

Sari scrunched her face in thought and she took a seat in one of the crevices at the fountain’s outer wall. “Go back to the room and check on her, then. I’ll tell Riggs you were tired if he asks.”

“Will you get in trouble?”

Sari laughed. “I ended up here because I was constantly getting into trouble. It wouldn’t be far-fetched for me to find myself in another predicament.”

“But I don’t want it to be because of me.”

“It won’t be. It’ll be because I’m taking care of my friends, and that’s all I have.”

I jolted at her words. I was her
friend
.

“Thank you,” I said, my voice thick. “You don’t know how much that means to me.”

“You’d do the same for me.”

“You got that right.”

“Get going. We don’t need Riggs showing up right now.” She hopped off her perch and started toward the commons, on the opposite side of the atrium.

I nodded and headed toward the dorms. In the waning daylight, the long shadows seemed more foreboding than usual. My mind raced a thousand miles an hour, and everything put me on edge.

A hand grasped my shoulder and I jumped with fright. “Jesus!”

“Nope, Jaxon. Although I can understand why you’d confuse the two of us.”

I clutched my chest and felt my heart threatening to pound its way out. Jaxon smiled, but it wasn’t his usual conceited visage. His cheeks were flushed and it gave him a much younger look. His head was turned downward, but his eyes held mine as he looked up.

“Can I borrow you?”

“I have people in line before you. I can pencil you in around midnight.”

Jaxon didn’t flinch. “Then midnight it is.”

“Are you kidding?”

“I never joke about midnight rendezvouses with fiery beauties.”

“You’re a torrent of sarcasm.”

“That’s vastly different than kidding. Kidding is frivolity, and I am not frivol. Is that even a word? If it isn’t, insert something else. Serious; brooding, perhaps?” He turned to the side and stroked his chin. “Does this look brooding to you? Wait, don’t look. You’re over your five minute ogling allotment.”

“You do know that sarcasm is the refuge for a shallow mind, right?”

“Depth is irrelevant when you can’t find the lake, my dear.”

I opened and closed my mouth, unable to think of a comeback. Jaxon always one-upped me. One day I’d come up with something. I’d start writing comebacks down to practice for when the occasion arose.

Because that’s not lame at all
, I thought to myself.

After floundering for a retort, I remembered that I was supposed to be checking on Alice. I shook my head clear of the plague that was Jaxon. “I need to go.”

He leaned in and placed a stray hair behind my ear. His fingers lingered on my neck. “That’s fine. Be ready at midnight.”

I pulled away from his touch, but found myself yearning for it the moment it was gone. “And what do you want to do in the middle of the night?”

“Take advantage of your naivety and your virtue, of course.”

I felt my mouth drop.

He laughed and continued, his hands up in submission. “I want to talk, Avery. Talk. That’s all. Explain.”

“I don’t want or need your explanations.”

He leaned in, his soft lips tickling my ear. “All the same, you’re getting them. Midnight. You said it.”

I needed to get away from him before his intoxicating cologne made me forget all reason. I turned down the hall to my room, away from Jaxon and away from his frustrating ability to make me lose all train of thought. “Whatever, Jaxon. Go to dinner.”

He followed me. “You’re not?”

“Not hungry.”

“What a coincidence. I’m not either. Watching my figure and all. God knows I haven’t found a treadmill in this place yet.”

I huffed in annoyance. He was infuriatingly persistent. I rummaged in my pockets for the key to my room and swiped it through the scanner with more force than needed.

“That card didn’t do anything to you.”

“But you did, and I don’t think you’ll fit through the scanner.”

“I didn’t tell you about your parents for your safety.”

The reader beeped and the light turned green.

But instead of going in my room and slamming the door in his frustratingly good-looking face, I stood there and glared at Jaxon. “How is it any safer here if you withhold information?”

Jaxon reached around me and opened the door, then swept me up into his arms and crossed the threshold, a smile playing at the corners of his lips.

I knew I should have slammed the door in his face.

I wrestled out of his embrace and glared at him. “What is wrong with you?”

“My father’s been trying to figure that out since I arrived in this world.” He said it casually, but a tinge of anger laced his words. “Clue him in if you happen to stumble across the answer, will you?”

His self-deprecation made me uncomfortable. How could someone so arrogant be so insecure on the inside? Maybe the two went hand in hand. I headed to the bedroom without answering Jaxon’s question.

“Alice? You here?” I called out.

I neared the small hallway that linked our room with Sari’s.

Running water echoed from the shower, and I cracked the door to be heard over the waterfall. “Alice? You okay? Sari said she hadn’t seen you today.”

Still no response. Panic began to set in. It wasn’t like Alice to ignore me. I stepped into the bathroom to find the floor soaked with water, the carpet squelching under my feet as walked toward the shower.