The Order of the Elements 01 - Breaking Point (46 page)

Her pulse picked up, and she felt uneasy. “I don’t know. Shouldn’t he have been back by now?”

Hector chuckled. “Am I that bad of company?”

Phoebe stopped dancing and turned several times as she frantically searched for Dorian. “Something’s wrong.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hector glance around. “Phoebe, what are you talking about? Everything’s fine.”

Her breathing became uneven, and her heart beat painfully. “No, something’s wrong.”

She started shoving her way through couples, with Hector following behind her. She kept pushing through people, ignoring their exclamations of surprise and irritation, as she followed the smell of food. That’s where Dorian should have been. There were so many people packed into the training arena that she couldn’t keep track of the scent of his skin. She strained her ears for the sound of his voice.

In the rational part of her mind, she couldn’t figure out why she was acting so unreasonably. All she knew was that her instincts were telling her something was definitely wrong. Not just telling her—screaming at her.

Phoebe brushed by someone and felt a blazing hot hand on her arm. Cynthia. She pushed past her and Jared, and Hector quickly gave them an explanation for her odd behavior. Evan was dancing with Anna just ahead of her. Upon noticing Phoebe’s peculiar behavior, he apologized to the girl and came to stand in front of his friend.

“What’s going on?” he asked as he looked over Phoebe’s shoulder to those who were following behind her.

“Dorian. Have you seen him?” she asked frantically.

“He went that way a few minutes ago. Why?” Evan pointed to her right.

Phoebe didn’t bother to answer because as soon as she turned her head, she picked up his scent. She followed the trail, and as it got stronger, so did her anxiety. She could feel many eyes and hushed whispers following her. She didn’t really care. Finally, she saw the light dance off of the silver of his hair. He had his back to her, but he clearly looked all right. She pushed closer to him as she sighed in relief. Then he turned gracefully, and the two couples blocking her line of sight moved.

Ice slipped down into Phoebe’s stomach.

She froze in place while blood rushed into her ears and the music became muted and far away. Her breaths were shallow and quick, and she felt like a pillow was being pressed over her face. Her lungs were not taking in any oxygen from the air as she stared at the scene before her.

She wanted to run, to scream…to kill. But she couldn’t make her body move.

Hector stepped up behind her, and she felt a solid hand in the small of her back. “Phoebe? What’s wrong? What’s going—”

“What the hell?” Evan exclaimed, cutting Hector off.

“No way,” Cynthia breathed.

“I can’t believe it,” Jared said, and his tone relayed his disbelief.

“What?” Hector asked.

“That’s Kali,” Ethan whispered in horror.

Hector sucked in a breath of comprehension. “Oh.” He had heard the stories, but he had never actually seen Kali before that very moment.

Phoebe wasn’t sure when Ethan and Lucy had joined them. All she knew was that Ethan’s two little words had confirmed exactly what she was seeing. She had desperately hoped that it was an illusion, that maybe she had unknowingly been sucked into one of Kali’s fantasies. Her elixir was due to wear off within the next twelve hours, so it was a plausible explanation. Except for the fact that everyone else could see it too.

“Is she okay?” Phoebe heard Jared ask.

“I don’t know. What should we do?” Cynthia muttered.

They couldn’t do anything. Kali had a blissful smile on her perfect face as she leaned against Dorian’s chest. The two of them were dancing together, lost in their own little world. Dorian twirled her long, curly hair between his fingers as his cheek rested against the top of her head.

Tears stung Phoebe’s eyes.

She felt a small hand squeeze hers. “Phoebe? Phoebe? Come on, let’s get out of here.” The soft melodic voice of Lucy was easy to recognize.

She still couldn’t move. And no matter how much the couple horrified her, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from them. She couldn’t even tell how she felt about it. Angry? Betrayed? Destroyed…yes, that one seemed fitting. Her heart was shredding into a million painful pieces. She wished someone would take her away, far away. But she couldn’t believe that Dorian would do this to her. He couldn’t. She was sure that something about what she was seeing was all wrong. Hector’s hand clenched into a fist in her back as Evan leaned down to assess her expression.

Evan’s face hardened into angry lines. He glanced up at Hector. “Let’s go,” he muttered.

Hector’s hand left Phoebe’s back, and he brushed past her. Evan turned and moved forward with him as they bore down on Dorian and Kali. Cynthia became hotter and hotter as her anger flared. Lucy went rigid beside Phoebe as she watched Hector and Evan reach Dorian. She wanted to hear what was being said, but the sound of her racing heartbeat and the blood rushing in her ears was too loud.

Hector grabbed Dorian’s arm and flung him back. Dorian winced in pain. Hurt as Phoebe was, she wanted to yell at Hector to stop hurting him. She clamped her mouth shut and felt angry with herself for feeling even the slightest bit of sympathy for the man who had just ripped her to pieces.

Evan didn’t even give Kali the chance to process what was happening. As she glanced around in surprise, he drew back his fist and swung. There was a sickening, but satisfying, crunch as his fist connected with her jaw. Her head snapped back, and she crumpled to the floor. Phoebe’s eyes snapped back to Dorian, and she saw that he was fighting against Hector’s iron grip. His eyes were firmly fixed on the crumpled figure.

Fire burned through Phoebe’s veins, and for the first time, she moved with her hands clenching into fists. Sound burst back into her ears.

“What’s wrong with you?” Hector demanded of Dorian.

“You hurt her. Let me go, now,” Dorian commanded.

Hector snarled and twisted Dorian’s arms behind his back as Evan stepped into his face. “No,
you
hurt
her.
Phoebe? Remember her?” Evan growled as he pointed at her.

Dorian’s eyes flashed to Phoebe’s for a fraction of a second. That’s all it took for her to see the emotion there. Pain. But this pain he was feeling for Kali—not her. Phoebe’s hope that there was some other explanation for his behavior vanished. Dorian looked back at Hector and Evan with a fierce expression, so fierce that Phoebe didn’t even attempt to assess his thoughts, scared of what she’d hear.

“Let me go,” Dorian said firmly.

“Let him go, Hector.” It took Phoebe a moment to realize that it was her whispered command that made Hector back off.

Hector and Evan took one look at her before they both backed away from Dorian. He glared at both of them briefly before he knelt beside Kali. The fire faded from Phoebe’s veins and was slowly replaced by ice. Literally. Her blood froze into place, and her heartbeat slowed. The pain was too much. She was trying to numb the ripping, shredding, and gouging pain inside her chest.

Phoebe slowly realized that the music had stopped as people and creatures gathered around to see what was going on. There was noise, noise all around her. Whispering. Idle gossip. Yet another infamous display put on by the Masters of Elements to keep things interesting. Their whispering was as loud as screaming in her ears. She had to get out. She had to get away from the sickening display of concern that was being shown by
him
for
her
.

Phoebe couldn’t move. Every fluid in her body was frozen solid. Her heart had stopped beating. She wondered how long it would take for her to die if she stayed frozen like this, her tissue denied a fresh supply of oxygen.

Hector and Evan turned back to her, and Hector’s eyes widened in horror. He reached out and touched Phoebe’s arm but quickly drew back, like he had been burned.

“She’s frozen.” His voice was filled with concern. The others immediately turned to look at her, and each one of them touched her arm to confirm the diagnosis.

“What do we do?” Jared asked.

Hector thought for exactly two seconds. “Cynthia, get your arms around her and get your temperature as hot as you can get it without bursting into flames. Evan, try to reverse the freezing process. If her heart is stopped for too long, she’ll die.”

Cynthia moved into action immediately, and her sizzling hot arms locked around Phoebe. This time, Phoebe could feel the heat. She was sure her skin should have been melting beneath Cynthia’s, because that’s what it felt like. Although, given the choice, Phoebe would choose this physical pain over her broken heart any day.

Evan stared at her intently while his eyes blazed with concentration. Cynthia became hotter and hotter, and if Phoebe had been capable of doing so, she would have been screaming at the top of her lungs. And still, even when she thought it was impossible, Cynthia’s temperature escalated. Surely, if Phoebe’s own frozen body didn’t kill her, then the unbearable pain of the heat would. Suddenly, miraculously, it all faded as her entire body unfroze and her powers blocked out the fire.

Hector breathed a sigh of relief. “Great job, guys. Now, let’s get out of here.”

As Hector moved and unblocked Phoebe’s view, and the original reason behind her frozen body rammed through her chest again. She had almost forgotten, through all the pain, what had led to it in the first place. Why couldn’t they have let her die?

She turned and fled from the room. Running felt good, but she had nowhere left to go. Nowhere that they couldn’t follow her. As she ran, she thought over every possible place she could go. The tunnels—they could follow her and she could only go so far before she ran into people again. Outside—this appealed to Phoebe, but no matter how much she wanted to fade into blackness, she couldn’t doom all these people to that fate along with her. The garden—too easy to find her.

They weren’t following her, yet.

Then it occurred to her. There was one place inside these walls that only she could go. No one could follow her there. She could be alone. She turned up the next hallway leading to the entrance halls. She ran through both halls, flung open the front doors, and then turned left and ran flat out toward the lake.

The freezing air and calf-deep snow hardly bothered her. She ran to the edge of the lake and jumped into the air. Phoebe’s legs bonded together and erupted in scales as they transformed into a flowing tail. Her dress faded into her skin as scales covered her chest. Gills erupted down her back, in between her ribs, and she dived gracefully into the icy water. She swam down a hundred yards and turned to freeze the surface of the lake behind her. They could get through the ice easily, but it was a sign that she wanted to be left alone.

31. Protect

As soon as Phoebe had fled the ballroom, the tension dissipated and everyone sighed in unison. Nobody—aside from Lucy—paid the slightest bit of attention to Dorian and Kali anymore.

“What do we do now?” Evan had asked. He was perched on the balls of his feet like he was going to go after her.

“Nothing. Not yet anyway. We need to give her some time to cool off. If we go after her now, it will just make her angry.” Ethan was surprised that these words had come from Jared.

“Are you crazy? You know what she’s capable of when she’s upset. We need to start moving before she gets too far!” Ethan exclaimed.

They didn’t have to force themselves on her; they just had to know where she was to make sure she didn’t do anything she would regret later. Ethan felt a prickling sensation on his neck, and it suddenly occurred to him that the entire room was still watching and listening to them. He glanced around at the hundreds of blank expressions directed right at them.

Then he heard the most welcome voice in the world. “Let’s move along, shall we? I am at a loss to understand why our extremely talented band has quit playing their delightful music.”

Cassius strode into sight, looking thoroughly nonchalant as people parted to let him through. He smiled genially at the band, causing them to immediately reassemble themselves and start playing. Cassius turned his smile on the watchful crowd, which immediately dispersed and headed off to other parts of the room.

Kali still showed no signs of consciousness—Ethan was going to have to ask Evan exactly how to do that so effectively. Once the crowd had left them and the band mercifully resumed its normal playing level, drowning out the sound of Dorian weeping over Kali, Cassius turned to them. His pleasant smile vanished and was replaced by absolute seriousness.

“I was delayed in coming to the ball this evening. I only saw Phoebe fleeing from the hall. What happened?”

They all started talking at once. “One minute everything’s fine…” Cynthia started.

“Yeah, Phoebe and Dorian were opening the ball and showing off, of course.” It amazed Ethan that Evan could still use sarcasm in this situation.

“Then the song ended…” Jared continued.

“…and Phoebe was hungry…” Ethan added.

Cassius held up his hand to stop the excess flow of voices. “Perhaps it would be prudent if only one of you spoke at a time. Ethan?”

Ethan took a deep breath to steady his voice and organize his thoughts. As he did so, he took a second to realize that Lucy’s thoughts were nothing but a nonsensical blur. Like something was being censored from him. But he could tell that she was completely focused on Kali and Dorian. Ethan wasn’t even sure if she was aware that Cassius had arrived.

Ethan let out his breath and answered Cassius. “I’m not sure, sir. One minute everything was fine. When the first song ended, Dorian went to get some food for Phoebe, and we all talked for a few minutes until the next song started. Phoebe danced with Hector while she waited for Dorian. Then sometime during the third song, Phoebe started acting weird, and we all found those two—” he jabbed his finger at Dorian and Kali “—dancing together. Dorian completely ignored Phoebe, and she froze herself. Hector, Cynthia, and Evan managed to unfreeze her, but then she took off.”