Savior (34 page)

Suddenly, the flames burning in the torch behind her lengthened to a thin line, stretching across the cell, and engulfing her. Her body was slammed violently against the rock bars, and she sank to the ground, unconscious, skin searing.

“NO!” I screamed, running for her. The bars stopped my body but not my arms. Reaching through, I took hold of her ankle, gritting my teeth against the searing pain, and uttered, “Incantatio sana."

Kalisha was more composed, rushing for the bars, and sliding down them, clinging to them as she watched Maggie hopelessly burn.

“
Incantatio sana," I repeated, again and again, until the flames had extinguished and her skin had healed to its once smooth perfection.

Sartorius watched with mild amusement.

“As I was saying,” he sighed. “She failed and that is where you come in, Jocelyn. You will be the force, my power, that leads my army through the new world, the world that I create, that I will dominate.” As he began to detail out his plan, relishing each step, I cut him off.

I knew Maggie would recover. I had made sure of it. But there was one person who summoned the anger it took to defy Sartorius. “You will suffer the same fate as Jameson.” I said this in the same commanding tone as The Sevens use, so there would be no questioning my determination. Sartorius stopped his pacing and slowly looked at me, a glimmer building in his eyes.

“You believe him to be dead….” He said this with equal amounts of humor and perplexity. “He fought well. Very well. A magnificent show of strength and strategy. His escape was…” he contemplated the correct word to use, “…elegant. One that I’m sure the world will recount for years to come…if it survives, of course.”

I heard nothing of his threat, nothing beyond the word “escape”. My heart leapt, settling in my throat. We had evaded my birthright once again. “He-He’s alive?” I replied, struggling to contain my excitement.

“He does live, I assure you.”

“Then he will come for me.” I grinned with narrowed eyes. “And for you, Sartorius. He will come for you, too.”

I couldn’t have cared less whether Sartorius was affected by that threat or not. His confidence would be his downfall, an easy access to Sartorius, and ultimately to me. That was what I thought, at least, until he spoke again.

“Oh,” said Sartorius, through a brazen chuckle. “He already has.”

My grin deepened; however, Sartorius didn’t seem to notice. He clasped his hands behind his back and began strolling in slow, wide circles just outside my cell.

“Strange boy. He escapes, manages to secure his freedom, and then he gives it all up.” Glancing in my direction, he smiled. “I can see you don’t know what I mean, once again. When one finds what one seeks, they typically cling to it, risking all that is important, every minuscule piece of their life, to preserve it. After several hundred years on this earth, I have seen it time and time again."

Having reawakened, Maggie moaned, but he ignored her. She was now no more important than a bug he might have some use for in the future.

“Now, one would think freedom would be what Jameson desired. It is what you both have been fighting so valiantly for. And yet only hours after he is given the freedom he struggled to claim, he is found wandering the ministry halls, without protection, without a single weapon for use. When he is approached by my men, he surrenders without conflict. And when he is brought to me, he makes only one request. Would you like to know what that request was?”

I turned my back to him. I expected to hear him demand that I face him and bow for my insolence, but he had something far more cutting in mind.

“He asked to give himself for you. So, you see, I was wrong all along. It was not freedom he sought. That was not what he gave up every miniscule piece of his life for. It was you, Jocelyn. He gave himself up for you.”

I felt a sudden, sickening emptiness deep inside me that I didn’t want to feel, a dark space where Jameson had been and was now gone. The image of him wasting away in a cell resembling the one restraining me surfaced, and I shuddered. He was better than that. He deserved freedom, to live a full life, to experience all that was wonderful, amazing, and worth living for. Of all people, he deserved to live freely.

Sartorius took a great amount of pleasure in watching my reaction, a devious smile twisting around his dark eyes. “I will now reap what I have sowed. This world
will
be mine, Jocelyn. And you will make it happen.”

“No.” I spun back around, shaking my head in denial. “No, I won’t.”

“Yes…," he countered, with an arrogant snicker, “…you will. You will do as I say or Jameson will pay the price. He will do as I say or you will pay the price. And while you do, know one fact with absolute certainty - he will be yours no longer. He is mine now, Jocelyn, to do with what I wish. You will need to accept that – my dear granddaughter.” There was something sinister behind the smile that followed his statement.

I returned to the bars, wrapping my fingers around them, and shoving my face through the opening. I wanted to be as close to Sartorius as I could while delivering my message to him.

“There are some things you cannot change, Sartorius. There are some things inevitable, things that even you, in all your simulated grandeur, cannot alter. Jameson will always love me, and I will always love him. Our army will find a way here and break us free. And then, Sartorius – my dear grandfather – then
we
will destroy
you
.”

His disturbing confidence didn’t fade as he turned from me, walking back to the door from where he’d come as if he hadn’t heard a word I said. As he strolled, something began to move on his back. First the pressed, white, business shirt he wore ruffled, as if something living was clinging to the skin beneath it, and then the seams began to rip. The splitting sounds of cloth and Sartorius' paced footsteps toward the door became the only sounds in the room.

They seemed deafening.

The remnants of his clothing drifted to the ground behind him, the white pieces forming a trail, as if he were literally shredding innocence in his wake.

By the time he reached the door, the skin between his shoulder blades had parted and unfolded as something began to force its way out.  Whatever it was unfurled gradually, tauntingly, before reaching its full extension. I couldn’t see it clearly until it split down the center and broadened outward. There were two of them now, stretching to each side. Both were covered in grey feathers and were long enough to encircle five men within them.

It took me several seconds to understand what I was seeing, because it just didn’t make any sense. My knees weakened as I gripped the bars even tighter, thoughts swirling and threatening to overpower me. My body was acting solely on impulse, my mind being too confused to lead it.

Wings?
My mind screamed suddenly, as if the word was surfacing from the depths of it. Sartorius. Has. Wings? He stopped at the door, scowling prophetically over his shoulder at me.

“You think Jameson is still yours. You think your meager army of Dissidents will save you. You still think it’s possible to protect your world from me.” The side of his mouth lifted in an arrogant smirk before he concluded his diatribe, an action that sent a shiver through me. “My dear – you have absolutely no idea what you are in for.”

He disappeared through the doorway, his wings ruffling as they drifting along the edges of the corridor beyond. Despite his warning, one truth became absolutely clear to me then:

Our war had just begun.