Death Before Daylight (32 page)

“I did,” I said and stepped to Pierce’s other
side. I didn’t want Eric to stop me. I explained what I knew. I
told them everything—how the bar fight had happened, how Zac had
threatened Eric in the beginning, how Zac remembered everything,
how Robb took off my ring, how they wanted me to leave Eric behind.
I even mentioned Linda and Crystal. “So, we know they’re
involved.”

“We just aren’t sure which ones they are,”
Pierce finished.

Eric never budged.

“We can’t kill them all,” Luthicer spoke
directly to Bracke. “Not without knowing.”

“We know one of them,” he said.

My breath caught in my throat. “What?”

“This isn’t your responsibility,” Luthicer
was clear. I was not to question him.

“The elders said no more lies. You guys
promised—”

“And you promised to fight with us, and you
went behind our backs to do something alone.” As Luthicer argued,
his white hair spiked up. “Look where that got us. You could’ve
been killed. All of you.”

I was silenced.

Bracke laid a hand on Luthicer’s shoulder.
“Calm down.” This time, Bracke was holding Luthicer back. “Go find
Jada.”

Luthicer lingered, staring only at me, before
he disappeared without a word.

“What does Jada have to do with this?” Pierce
asked. While Eric and I didn’t speak, Pierce never let anyone
silence him. “She didn’t come with us. She—”

“Pierce.” Bracke was loud.

“We did what we had to do,” Pierce spoke over
the elder. “If you guys had done something, we wouldn’t have had to
do it.”

Bracke stared him, and Pierce looked directly
back.

“No one died,” Pierce said, “and we got
closer to winning.” He unfolded his arms as if he were prepared to
put himself in a fighting stance.

I grabbed him, and his arm shook beneath my
touch.
“Breathe,”
I reminded him of everything he had told
me in the car. Emotions wouldn’t get us anywhere. We were only
turning on one another.

Pierce took a sharp breath as if he realized
the same thing, and Bracke did, too.

We were a team. We couldn’t fight one another
if we were going to win.

“I’ll accept any punishment you give,” I
spoke up for my guard and me. “We both will.”

Bracke nodded, but his blue eyes flicked over
my shoulder. I knew he was looking at Eric, but I didn’t know what
he saw. “No punishment,” he said, “but no one leaves. Not even for
school. Not now.”

“That’ll just give us away,” Pierce
started.

“We’ve already been given away.”

Pierce stopped speaking.

“We understand,” I said again only because I
knew the order couldn’t stick. In the morning, things would calm.
We would miss two days at most, and a lot could happen in two days.
War could happen. The elders wanted to prepare. I could tell that
much.

Bracke looked at his son. “Get yourself
checked out.”

Eric stood up to go to the nurse’s quarters.
When he started walking, Bracke walked in the opposite direction. I
waited until the elder was gone before I chased after Eric.
Pierce’s footsteps echoed behind me. Both of us were following the
only person we wanted to help.

“Wait,” I spoke up, but Eric had already
stopped.

He had heard us coming. “What?”

I searched his face, expecting to see a
glare, but his eyes were heavy. I had to use all of my energy to
say what I had held back before, “It’s the rings.”

Eric’s lip twitched, and the movement caused
his injury to burn brighter. The blood reminded me of the blood he
had on his face in the Light realm where he had been tortured,
where we had both been tortured in different ways.

I had to close my eyes to speak again, “It
kept you alive, didn’t it?”

His hand was heavy when he laid it on top of
my head. I opened my eyes to see a small smile escape him. “Just,”
he whispered as he dropped his hand. “Just don’t take it off
again.”

He knew. He had felt it just as I had. His
heartbeat almost stopped. He started walking away like it was
nothing, like his life had always meant nothing.

“I felt you leave,” I called after him, and
he froze in the hallway. “I took it off, and I felt you leave.” My
voice cracked. “It’s my fault he attacked you. I’m sorry—”

Eric crossed the hallway. Before I could
finish my apology, his arms wrapped around me. His tight hold was
suffocating, but it was the deepest breath I had felt.

“Don’t,” he spoke against my ear. “You did
the right thing.” As his fingers moved across my spine, shivers
traveled over my body. It was the warmest I had ever felt, warmer
than any power the Dark had given me, warmer than any slice of
Light energy, and when he pulled away, his words kept the warmth on
my skin, “He’s losing because of you.”

He walked away without saying another word,
but this time, he didn’t limp. He marched, and I knew I was seeing
Shoman—the first descendant that trained me in the beginning. I had
done well because he had taught me, but it had never occurred to me
that I was the same strength for him.

Darthon wasn’t getting me on his side any
more than he was defeating Eric, and it was because we couldn’t be
broken. We were together even when we were apart.

42

I was right about two things. Eric knew who
Darthon was, and the elders couldn’t keep us away from our enemy.
After today, the Dark had to let us go to school, and if I had to
make another guess, they had protection in place. Even then, we had
missed one day, but it had dragged on longer than the February day
should’ve been. I hadn’t even been allowed to step outside. The
only reason I knew it was dark out was the sizzling in my veins.
Nighttime always brought on the urge to shift into my shade form,
but below that feeling was another desire. After I had taken off my
ring, transforming into a light had never felt so close. I painted
to distract myself, and for the first time in months, I used the
color blue.

It flew across the canvas, and it spiraled
down in swirls. A mask of black drew across it, hitting the hues I
had created by mixing colors together, and everything took over me.
I didn’t think. I didn’t even feel. The brush was the only part of
me that existed. I didn’t even realize the amount of time that had
passed until knocking broke through the blockade my passion had
built.

Before I turned around, the person spoke,
“Hey, Jess.”

It wasn’t Jonathon, and it wasn’t Eric or the
elders. “Brenthan.” I expected to see my guard’s little brother by
himself, but he wasn’t alone.

A middle-aged woman stood by his side, and a
young girl stood behind her. The child’s thick, brown hair sprang
up around her face. She never looked at me, but Brenthan did.

He pointed back at the girl. “This is
Raquel.”

“And I’m her mother,” the woman spoke, but
she didn’t offer up a name.

“They wanted to meet you,” Brenthan
explained.

I forced a smile at the two. “I would shake
your hand, but—” I raised my hands to show the splattered
paint.

The woman didn’t laugh. “That’s okay.” Her
voice was soft, but her face wasn’t. Her sharp cheekbones made the
rest of her expression sink in, and her blue eyes defined her as a
warrior, but her daughter had swirling eyes, remnants of a preteen
that hadn’t gone through the Naming yet. It wouldn’t be long. She
might have one year left.

“Why don’t you two go train?” the mother
suggested, but she never looked back at her kid. Her eyes were
locked on my painting.

I fought the urge to cover it.

“I can’t train yet—”

“Go, Raquel.”

The girl straightened up, but she left.
Brenthan ran after her, but I only heard his voice as they
disappeared down the hallway. My door stayed open, and the entryway
remained empty. I half-expected Pierce to walk in. He was always
chasing his brother around, but today, he was training, and rumor
had it that he was training with Eric. The two were talking
again.

“Do you know who I am?” The woman’s question
tore my concentration apart.

I searched her face, but she was unfamiliar
to me. “No. Should I?”

“My name is Ida.”

Her identity made my heart sink. Eu’s wife
was standing right in front of me, but now, she was a widow, and
Raquel didn’t have her father anymore. He had died in the Marking
of Change, and Ida had lied about her identity to the Light. To
them, she was Eric’s mother, but the lie had died over the
winter.

“I didn’t know Eu very well.” I stood up.
“But he seemed like a really good man.”

Ida’s eyes finally landed on me, but her
stare was cold. “Do you know why I lied that day?”

My mouth was dry. It was her tone, sharp, but
low, a momentary growl.

“I only lied to protect my family,” she
finished when I didn’t ask. “Shoman was supposed to win, and now—”
Her fingers curled against her hips until they disappeared beneath
her jacket. “I hear he’s being controlled.”

I didn’t have to confirm it. She was
practically an elder herself. The others would’ve told her.

“He’s not here.” I stepped away from the
canvas, so I could gesture to the door. “If you want to talk to
him—”

“I want to talk to you.”

Her eyes brightened, but the rest of her face
lingered in the dim light. Even though her hair was short, the
blackness blended over her, and her powers heightened.

Every nerve in my body spiked. “Are you
okay?”

“Is it true Shoman left you?”

I stepped back, but she stepped toward me
like she was my second shadow.

“Is it true your death causes Darthon’s?”

“I don’t think we should talk about this,” I
snapped, trying to focus on her abnormal movements.

She lunged at me. When she tore her arm out
of her jacket, a blade caught the lamplight and gleamed as it
streaked through the air. I didn’t have time to breathe.

I lifted my arm, and her forearm slammed
against mine. A sickening noise snapped through the room, but I
wasn’t hurt. She screamed, but it wasn’t out of pain. She kept
lunging at me, and her cheeks burned red below her widening
eyes.

“Stop!” I shouted as we fell to the
floor.

Ida—Eu’s wife—was trying to kill me, and her
body was on top of mine. When she brought her hand down, I barely
moved in time. The knife hit the floor.

I screamed.

She was a shade, and I was still a human, but
in that instance, I transformed. Every piece of my human skin
shattered into the form I hadn’t taken in weeks, and my powers
rushed through my veins.

When she tried again, I was faster.

I grabbed her wrist, but she twisted, and my
wrist was in her hand instead. My lack of training was at fault.
Her knees slammed into my sides, and I gasped as she restrained my
other hand. She could hold me down with one grip.

“I’m sorry about this,” her voice tore out of
her as her eyes glistened. It was the same glisten her knife had as
she brought it down.

My adrenaline took over.

Power rippled through my veins, and my
descendant sword split out of my hands. It tore right through her
torso.

The knife fell from her hand and sliced my
cheek before it clanged against the floor. It was the only noise I
heard. She didn’t even let out another breath. Her blue eyes slid
to brown, and her shade’s complexion disappeared into a human’s
right before all the color left her cheeks.

My sword zipped back into me before she fell
on top of me, and warm liquid soaked through my shirt.

Ida was dead, and all I could do was
scream.

43

As Pierce and I trained, three hours passed,
but we didn’t talk, even when the machine was off. The stifling
room took another ten minutes to cool down, and we sat drinking our
water with our backs against the wall.

Pierce was the first to speak. “Too bad we
can’t go for a flight.”

“It’s been a while.”

“Too long.” He tipped his water toward me,
and we hit the bottles together like we were having beers
instead.

Even though we had fought, both of us
understood the circumstances now. It was beyond us, but we could
still be friends. As far as I was concerned, everything had been
forgiven, and things felt normal for once.

After he took another sip, Pierce cleared his
throat. “I should probably get going. I told Jess I would see
her.”

Just the mention of her took all normalcy
away. It wasn’t her fault that things had changed so much. In fact,
she was the only reason Darthon didn’t have as much control as he
thought. I hated to admit it, but her actions had helped. If she
could figure out who he was without me telling her, then we could
all fight back. We could find a way to win, and I wouldn’t have to
do it alone. I didn’t want to anymore. For once, I wasn’t alone,
and I was comfortable with it. She had changed that about me, and
when I could tell her, I would explain everything. It was only a
matter of days. I could see it in Darthon’s desperation. He would
snap soon. Robb would have to die.

Pierce stood up and brushed his clothes off,
but he didn’t say goodbye. He asked the last thing I expected to
hear, “You really know who he is?”

I wanted to nod, to speak, but my neck
burned. The spell, imbedded deep inside of me, hurt, but the pain
was succumbing to repetition. I didn’t even flinch anymore.

Pierce chuckled. “I guess it’s useless to
ask.” Unlike Jessica, he was just now accepting the circumstances.
“I should get going.” The words left him before the air split.

The surge of power was both deafening and
energizing. It filled the entire room, and it made my own abilities
increase inside of my veins. My fingers twitched with temptation.
It was unmistakable. Jessica had used her sword.