The Havoc Chronicles (Book II): Unbound (8 page)

With a grin, Rhys took my hand and skated alongside me. Hand in hand we skated together, simply enjoying each other’s company.

After a few minutes, Rhys began to speed up. To my surprise, I discovered I had no trouble keeping up with him. At one point he tightened his grip on my hand and turned hard so that we spun together in a circle, faster and faster. Instead of getting dizzy, I felt a thrill of excitement – this was fun!

For the next several hours we raced and played, leaped and turned. Rhys had been right, this was nothing like the embarrassing clumsiness of my last skating experience. I smiled at the looks of amazement the other skaters gave us as we played. At one point I jumped and spun around five times before landing. My sensitive hearing heard several people gasp in amazement and whisper to each other.

When we were finally done, Rhys went to take back our rented skates, and a little girl around five years old came up to me with a piece of paper and a pen. “Can I have your autograph?” she asked. 

I flushed with embarrassment. “Sweetie, why would you want my autograph?”

The little girl shrugged. “My Mom said you must be an Olympic skater.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart, but I’m just a normal person. I’m not famous, and I’ve never been to the Olympics.”

The girl looked up at me with such a pathetic look that I felt like I had just taken away Christmas from her. “But if you still want my autograph,” I said, “you can have it.”

“Yea!” She handed me the paper, and I signed my name to it. She grinned, took the autograph and skipped back to her mother, waving it excitedly.

“That was very sweet,” said Rhys, who had apparently watched the entire exchange.

“Yeah, well, I’ve got to keep my fan happy,” I said. “All one of her.”

Rhys reached up and brushed a strand of hair from in front of my face. “I think you will find you have more fans than just her,” he said.

I took a deep, calming breath. Was he saying what I thought he was saying? This wasn’t the first time he had hinted at a deeper interest than mere friendship. But every time things started to get serious, he would suddenly turn away and the moment would end.

As if my mental frustration were an audible cue, he abruptly dropped his hand and looked away, a pained look on his face. I wanted to bang my head on the ice in frustration, or better yet, bang Rhys’ head on the ice until he stopped being so confusing.

***

By the time Monday came around, I was pretty much a basket case. I had gone from extreme confidence that I would get the part, to certainty that my audition was awful and that I was a terrible actress, to confidence once again. I had then repeated that cycle at least once per hour during the entire weekend.

I met Amy at her locker before school started. “Are you ready to see the cast list?” I asked.

She was. She grabbed my arm and together we ran down the hall to Mrs. Abrams’ room.

There were several other people in front of the pieces of paper pinned to the bulletin board outside her classroom. I tried to be patient as I waited for the people in front of me to read the list, but I was practically shaking with excitement when it was my turn.

I spotted Amy’s name first. She was one of Guinevere’s ladies in waiting. I pointed it out to her and we squealed and hugged. But not for too long – I still needed to see whether I’d gotten a part. Turning my attention back to the paper, I read through the names to find that I had been cast as Guinevere.

Now Amy and I began to celebrate in earnest. We squealed again and jumped up and down with excitement. I knew it wasn’t very dignified and that I probably looked like an idiot, but I was too excited to really care.

“Who are the leading men?” asked Amy. We consulted the list again.

I sighed with relief when I read that Rhys had gotten the part of Lancelot. I must admit that I was looking forward to spending more time with him, and not just in combat training. There were some passionate scenes between Lancelot and Guinevere and I was definitely hoping it might transfer to a little offstage romance.

But my relief was short-lived. I scanned the other parts and saw who had been cast as King Arthur: Josh Lancaster.

Well, this was going to be awkward.

Rehearsals turned out to be just as awkward as I had anticipated. Fortunately there were no actual kissing scenes in the play, or I might have quit just to avoid the sheer awkwardness.

Rhys accepted the situation gracefully. I could sense he wasn’t thrilled about Josh playing King Arthur, but he managed to be polite and respectful.

Josh, however, wasn’t quite as good at keeping his feelings to himself. He maintained a semblance of civility when they were on stage together, but offstage he never acknowledged Rhys’ presence except to glare at him.

To make matters worse, Josh dumped Ginger the day he got the part and specifically told her – or so Amy told me – that he was still in love with me and wanted to get back together.

Ginger hadn’t liked me before. Now she loathed me.

Relationship awkwardness aside, I enjoyed the rehearsals. Rhys and I practiced every day after rehearsal, and I had my part memorized in less than two weeks – ok, I actually cheated and read through the part while I was pre-zerking, but what good are superpowers if you can’t use them to make your life easier?

As far as I could tell, Rhys never even opened his script. Somehow he had memorized his part before auditions. Apart from the blocking and determining where we delivered our lines on the stage, Rhys could have stood up and performed the whole thing on day one.

His quick mastery of the part clearly irritated Josh, who had a much harder time memorizing the part of King Arthur. He often had to refer back to the script or get prompted for his next line. This was most obvious when they were on stage together and Rhys would feed Josh his next line. Josh would grind his teeth and Rhys would simply wait patiently for him to deliver the next line, pretending he couldn’t see the smoldering fury in Josh’s expression.

The rehearsal schedule meant that my Berserker training had to be done later in the evening and was often cut somewhat short. Dad clearly didn’t like it, but he reluctantly admitted that cutting back on the training didn’t seem to be affecting my skills – too much.

Between school, rehearsals, and Berserker training, I spent the majority of my day with Rhys – something that I certainly wasn’t going to complain about. I loved spending any time with him that I could. He still confused me to no end, switching off between showing interest in me and coldly distancing himself – sometimes both within less than a minute – but I could feel the emotion between us when we were on stage.

Our scenes together as a forbidden relationship felt so real to me that when I spoke the lines of Guinevere, I felt them as Madison. The desire to leave everything behind and spend my life with this one man was at times almost dizzying.

My parts with Josh were fine. He clearly enjoyed the opportunity to interact with me and took every advantage he could to get close. He took his time, releasing me slowly when he was supposed to take my hand or pull me in for an embrace. I endured it patiently and watched Rhys for his reaction to Josh’s advances.

Unfortunately Rhys maintained an outer façade of calmness that gave me no insight into his feelings. I just couldn’t understand that boy. It was like he was two separate people. When we were alone together I would get a glimpse of the funny, warm, and charming Rhys – what I was starting to think of as the
real
Rhys. But just as it would seem like things were progressing, the real Rhys would be replaced by some standoffish doppelganger who treated me like his kid sister.

Ginger was less reserved about her feelings. She didn’t confront me openly – she seemed reluctant to face me after the basketball incident – but she tried all sorts of passive methods to make me miserable. Unfortunately for her, I no longer cared that much about the things like social status and popularity, so Ginger’s efforts to get back at me were less effective than she had hoped.

For example, the weekend after Josh broke up with her, Ginger and her friends had toilet papered my house. Rhys and I were home at the time. Instead of rushing out to stop her, I grabbed some extra toilet paper rolls from the bathroom closet, slipped outside, and then tapped Ginger on the shoulder offering them to her. I think I sort of took the fun out of it because they dropped the rolls they still had and slunk away. 

***

Several weeks into rehearsals, something happened that temporarily took my mind off of Rhys, Josh, and Ginger.

When we arrived home from practice Dad was waiting for me on the front porch. I could tell by how stiffly he sat in the chair that something was wrong.

“Hey, Dad. What’s going on?”

Dad’s gaze shifted from me to Rhys and then back. “I just got a call from Mallika,” he said. “She asked me to have you come to the Berserker house as quickly as possible.”

“Why?”

His mouth tightened into a thin line. “The Binder’s Conclave is here with the Sarolt stone,” he said.

It had finally happened. After months of waiting, the Conclave finally sent the stone Mallika had requested. Part of me was excited, but in some ways the announcement was anti-climactic because I doubted the stone could tell us anything we didn’t already know.  

What I didn’t understand is why Dad looked so upset about it. His grim expression while he relayed the message had made me think someone had died.

I dropped off my backpack and climbed back into the Range Rover with Rhys. As he drove to the Berserker house, he too looked tense and gripped the steering wheel hard enough that his knuckles turned white.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Nobody seems too happy about this.”

Rhys shrugged. “It’s nothing, really. Just more of the politics of the Berserker world.”

I managed to keep my groan inside. Being the new kid was frustrating enough without the Berserkers trying to protect me all the time. I wanted to grab his shoulders, and yell at him to stop being so overprotective. Instead, I managed a tight smile and said, “Well, fill me in before we get there.” Boys could be so dense sometimes.

Rhys let out a breath and relaxed his grip on the steering wheel. “It’s not a big deal, really,” he said. “There are just some power struggles between the Berserkers and the Binders.”

“Really?” I asked. “You and Mallika seem to get along. And Kara and Aata, well, they got along fine until their relationship went nuclear.”

“True,” said Rhys. “The Binders who are paired one to one with the Berserkers for each of the five Havocs get along fine with their Berserkers. It’s the seven Binders who together bind Verenix that are the problem.”

“How so?”

“Like I said, it’s not a big deal, so don’t read too much into this. There are just... disagreements about who is in charge. The Berserkers want to do things their own way, and the Binders think they should be the ones giving orders. They created the Binder Conclave and seem to think that it should make all the decisions about where the Berserkers go and when. The seven Berserkers who are part of Verenix’s binding don’t mind because, well, they’re more interested in showing off and one-upping each other than actually capturing Havocs.”

“Don’t they want the Havocs bound?”

“They want them bound. They just don’t think it’s their job. As long as Verenix is bound, they consider their duty completed. They each take their turn going into hiding for six months and that’s it. The rest of the time they’re about pushing the limits of their powers to have fun.”

We pulled up to the gate of the house and Rhys punched in the code. As we drove up the driveway, I noticed an unfamiliar black BMW out front.

Inside we found Mallika and Kara sitting in the living room with two older ladies. Kara practically jumped to her feet as we came in, her mascara slightly smudged as if she had been crying. She put her arm around me rather protectively and brought me over to the visitors, one of whom had stood.

“Madison, this is Naki.” She gestured to a rather tall woman. She wore a white scarf decorated with bright yellow flowers wrapped over the top of her head and draped around her shoulders. Her skin was a deep brown and heavily wrinkled.

Naki smiled and inclined her head. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you in person, Madison,” she said. “I have heard so much about you.”