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1indigoisles · 7 days

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Chapter 5 - Excerpt 3

Kenneth

Uncomfortable silences were never my thing. It was a sign that we were all fighting mental battles with ourselves. I mean, I certainly was. I was still struggling to comprehend how I felt about Jolene, Rowan, Desiree and Scarlett.

Not Scarlett. I was positively sure that I hated her.

But the rest...

I decided not to think about it for now. I had more pressing issues on my mind anyway. Like my imminent death at the hands of the people of this town.

But even that didn’t make particular sense. Jolene, Rowan, Desiree and Scarlett hadn’t bothered to paint a pretty picture of Knightville and the Chambers in my head, and had made it abundantly clear that they wouldn’t hesitate to kill me first chance they got. But the thing was, they’d had their chances. More than one or two, in fact. I was literally blacked out for three days, during which anyone could have plucked out the right syringe and put me out of my misery. Not to mention that everyone kept Knightville a complete secret, just to accomodate Lila and me, like we were precious glass of some sort.

So why the princess treatment? Why was I currently sitting in a nice room with nice wallpaper and nice beds, in a building with nice showers and clean clothes? I was hated and feared. People who were hated and feared weren’t treated this way. The people of Knightville were probably even a little disgusted with me.

After all, I was the lowly pest that could bring the plague.

It was only then when I broke my chain of thought and looked up again that I found Jolene, Rowan and Desiree staring intently at me (not Scarlett; looking at me seemed to be beneath her), like they were expecting something from me.

No, ‘expecting’ would be the wrong word for it. They were staring at me like they wanted something from me.

“You really need to stop doing that,” I said uneasily. “Staring, that is.”

Jolene rolled her eyes, which was less insulting and more reassuring. Somehow I’d thought they wouldn’t reply. “Relax, Teigen,” she said. “You’re not that interesting to look at. We were just wondering whether the cat got your tongue.”

“You know, I always did wonder,” I mused mockingly. “Why is it always the cat that gets to steal our tongues? Why not a dog, or an ostrich, or another human? Using ‘human’ is much more practical anyway, since they – we – could actually steal tongues, you know, if we had the right kind of knife and a plastic bag.”

Jolene blinked. “You are one messed up human-Diaforian, Teigen,” she cackled. “I like it.”

“Yes, because the weird half-magical human-creature style is all the rage these days,” I deadpanned.

“Number one trending in Knightville,” Rowan agreed.

I stifled something that felt like a surprised laugh and looked at all three of them dead in the eyes. “You want something. Spit it out.”

“Your help,” Desiree said almost immediately, her voice intense in a way I somehow hadn’t thought it could be. She calmed down. “We need your help.”

Confused, I asked, “with what?”

“You know what,” Jolene drawled, rolling her eyes again.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “No,” I said, “I really don’t. Enlighten me.”

“I already told you.” This was from Scarlett, her voice curiously quiet. Her head was bent a little, and she was looking at Jolene with an expression I couldn’t quite put my finger on. “You need to give up on this.”

“Hell to the no,” Jolene stormed, but quieted under Scarlett’s intense gaze. Jolene frowned a little for a moment when the other girl’s face didn’t change, and then swiftly threw herself off the bed and at Scarlett, grabbing at her pale forearms.

It had been so sudden. The bed had creaked a little when Jolene jumped off of it, Desiree was rubbing her head gingerly and grumbling where Jolene’s knee had hit her on the way out, Rowan looked flabbergasted, and I-

I didn’t know. Somehow, I hadn’t thought that Scarlett could be touched, be it because of a magical condition, a consequence of being possessed by a demon-like creature, or simply something that she didn’t like. I half expected her to back away from Jolene’s advance, or recoil, or spit something jagged and hurtful at her.

But she didn’t. She went still as a statue under Jolene’s grasp, as if surprised, and Jolene had a death grip on Scarlett’s arms, and she was leaning in and hiding behind Scarlett’s dark hair, and it looked like she was about to tear off a chunk of the other girl’s neck for all her face was giving away at the moment, but she whispered something instead, only for Scarlett to hear.

Scarlett’s expression cleared in the way one would clear a desk by sweeping everything off of it in a grand and large gesture. Her eyes had a fixed and normal set to them, her shoulders dropped (before they had been tense as stone), and she finally looked her age. It was hard to decide whether the effect of what Jolene had said to her was a good thing or the high-pitched static noise in a movie where everyone was silent for a few seconds before the bomb went off.

What is wrong with this girl?

It couldn’t just be the Shadow-possession thing. Maybe it left a mental impression on her, like a dark charcoal handprint on a whitewashed wall. It had to be something psychological, something broken about the bell inside her that made it ring differently than others.

Was this a poetic way of calling her a psychopath? Why, yes, it was.

Now Jolene was dragging Scarlett behind her like a wagon, without loosening the death-grip on her forearms, to the corner of the room, far away from the doors, as if they could hide there. And Jolene looked... angry? Determined? Ready to murder? All three?

I glared at the two curiously for a moment, then at Rowan and Desiree while silently and clearly communicating, Explain. Rowan shook his head vaguely, not even paying any particular attention, and even Desiree shrugged her shoulders, as if she really didn’t know herself. She did, I was sure. They did.

Giving up when they weren’t willing to cave, I asked instead, “Why would you want my help? Even if I did give it to you, you’d be playing a messy, not to mention dangerous, game with me in the equation.” I stopped talking. My voice had sounded, even to my own ears, rather loud in the quiet air of the room. It was like we’d been so far playing the Silent Game, and I, embarrassingly, had broken the silence.

But Rowan answered anyway. “We’ve already been playing a messy game before you came along.”

“My point exactly-”

“So what’s one more variable? Everything’s already fucked up enough, and honestly? We could actually keep you safe from the Chambers.”

I stared at him in total disbelief. “You don’t actually believe that,” I said, half-smiling.

Rowan looked me dead in the eyes.

I raised an eyebrow. “That’s it,” I declared. “Life is officially crazy.”

“And you’re realising this just now?” Desiree asked, smiling humorously. I was not so cheerful.

“But why?” I asked. “No, more importantly, how?”

“Because,” Desiree replied, completely serious now, looking over at Jolene and Scarlett, who were now returning back to the group, “we think we’ve figured out how to escape.”

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1indigoisles · 13 days

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Chapter 5 - Excerpt 2

Lila blinked in confusion. “How long have I known what?”

“How long have you known about this?” I asked, with force, gesturing to the entire room. “Knightville, Diaforians, fucking magic, the way that I am?”

I must have looked angry, because Lila wore a slightly bemused expression on her face, as if scolded. The question had taken her by surprise. “I...” Her lips parted as she trailed off.

I shoved away my immediate assumptions. “Well?” I insisted.

Her expression turned glassy in the way that suggested she wasn’t looking at me anymore, but through me, as if she saw something that existed beyond me that she couldn’t stray her attention from. Guilt. I didn’t need to assume anymore. I knew.

I grit my teeth. “Before or after I was born? I asked.

“On the night before our wedding,” she said in a low and clear voice, hiding nothing.

I nodded slowly, registering, unthinking. “Leave,” I said thoughtfully.

“Kenneth, I-” Lila began, but I cut her off.

“No, just leave. You lied to me my whole life. I can’t look at you right now.” I didn’t shout. I said it like it was a fact, which it was. She had lied, and I really couldn’t look at her. I wasn’t even sure why.

I must have sounded colder than I thought, because Lila flinched and then abruptly turned around. Adam, completely unbothered, turned right along with her, whereas Tyler James shot me a strangely concerned (worried?) look, before turning and leaving as well.

When there were only five of us left, I turned to them.

Jolene looked at me as though she’d never really seen me before, and she looked uncomfortable about it, even more so when I sent her a glance that clearly communicted, Deal with it.

Meanwhile, Rowan looked bewildered, and Desiree frowned, as though she didn’t approve. Scarlett looked a little amused, darkly so.

And then we waited.

********************************

Jolene

“I need to take a shower,” Kenneth declared, getting up. He was very tall, and skinny in the way that made him look even taller, gangly almost. He looked almost intimidating as he waited expectantly for us to give him directions to the shower rooms, which existed on almost every floor because Hunters constantly needed to use them, if they ever wanted to get the grime and grit of battle and training off their skin.

Not to mention the expression he had worn on his face not minutes ago. At first, he had seemed to go completely expressionless, blank like he’d lost all his memories, blank like he couldn’t see anything, like a body of clear water, showing nothing because it had nothing.

Then it froze. It stilled. It expanded. It tightened. His eyes gleamed with ice, and his mouth almost curled. I knew what it was as soon as I saw it; I’d seen it one too many times. He had looked the same way Scarlett looked when she was angry, uncannily so.

That was the conundrum, the dilemma that was Kenneth Teigen, or Kenneth Garamond, I should say. He was meant to be scary (it was quite literally foretold), but when you got to know him he wasn’t so scary after all, and then when you got to know him some more, you realised he could be scary if he wanted to.

Desiree stood up. She guided Kenneth.

Rowan watched as they left, and said, “he could help, you know. With finding the cure, I mean.”

“Hell, no,” I said. “He’ll be too busy keeping the Chambers off his and his mother’s back.”

“That is, of course,” Scarlett mused, “if he lives long enough. Five bucks says he won’t live to see the far end of this week, or, maybe, if we’re all being unrealistically optimistic here, this month.”

“Scarlett-” I began.

“And also,” she interrupted (I hated it when she did that; I hated her), “I keep telling you guys to drop the idea of this ‘cure’. There is no such thing. It’s not given in any of the scripts or the Old Books. Killing my Shadow means killing me, and vice versa. There is no other solution.”

“Or,” I retorted hotly, “there is a cure, but the Chambers are so hell-bent on their old ways of killing things they deem unfixable that they didn’t even think to look. You have to admit, there’s a good possibility that a cure for you exists.” A beat passed. “Or maybe you do realise that. You know there’s a chance that you can be saved, but you’d rather die anyway. Why? You have some death wish? Or you just don’t want anyone else to help you but you? Is it pride?” I demanded.

Scarlett glared at me, witheringly, like I had no clue, like I had absolutely no idea why she did the things she did, and that I never would.

I pursed my lips. This was just one of many rotten sequel movies to a conversation that had happened too many times to count. We, as in Rowan, Desiree and I, wanted to help, she didn’t want it. We forced it on her anyway, and she would say something razor-sharp, and at least one of us would be hurt. There would be a fight, and then we would decide it was pointless to fight, since we only had each other and the truth, and then we would begin again. The cycle continued. Sometimes it slowed, sometimes is quickened, but it always rolled.

We all knew what it was. We all knew it led to nowhere, but we did it anyway, because for all our talk of finding a ‘cure’, we actually didn’t have a single lead, and Scarlett knows it, and she’s merciless with it. Many would tire of her.

I wasn’t tired yet, though. I glared at her right back in a way that was supposed to say, Yes, Scarlett, I’m dumb. I don’t know anything, and I really don’t need to. We are doing this whether you like it or not, and if you don’t like it, well, deal with it.

“Kenneth could be the breakthrough we’re looking for,” Rowan conceded, interrupting our silent argument.

“Or,” Scarlett countered, “he could be a problem that we don’t need on our backs right now.”

“You really hate him, don’t you?” he asked.

“Nothing gets past you, Frost,” she deadpanned.

“Why though?” I asked. “He’s never been rude to you, and he even helped with your Shadow situation.”

“That is exactly what makes him so shady,” Scarlett said. “He helped us, even though he wasn’t supposed to want to, even though he knew he was risking his life. He even covered for us when Forrest practically accused us of tampering with the nightglass room. And he talks to us like it’s all completely normal, like we’re normal. Which leads me to believe that either he’s really, incredibly stupid like the rest of you, or he has an ulterior motive.”

I feigned heartbreak. “You think I’m stupid?”

“Incredibly so,” Scarlett says, “but I’m sure someone will find it endearing someday.”

“Yay,” I celebrated.

“Emphasis on ‘someday’,” Scarlett rolled her eyes.

“You find it endearing,” I said, “you love me.”

“I really do,” Scarlett said, and smacked me upside the head. “But I wouldn’t push it.”

“Ow,” I said, straightening my ridiculous orange hair like a Barbie. I was really going to have to make up for her constant mocking by whooping her ass in training today.

That was, of course, if we would even have training after this...

Because things were going to change, and we all knew it because it was here, he was here, and finally everything that was supposed to happen would happen.

How long would we live after this? Would I ever see the day before I turn seventeen, would Scarlett die before the world did, how much time until we lost it all?

Or what if it was all a lie? I still can’t help but think...

Believing in the prophecies of Anna Lee Rose was like believing in god. Some people were devout believers, shaking their heads and preaching that there would never again be another Diaforian quite like her. Some people pretended not to believe, yet prayed in her name when things went bad, the way humans mocked God until they needed Him. But the majority of us believed that while she was legitimate, some of her prophecies were and could be batshit crazy.

We certainly hoped the end of the world was batshit crazy.

The Second and the First Chambers were split down the middle because of this. Some believed Kenneth Teigen needed to be killed. Others believed that problems needed to be solved not killed. Because of this debate, Kenneth could wind up surviving. But what about his life? His life would be over; it already was.

Fifteen more minutes passed in friendly banter and easy conversation. The kind of conversation where we kind of talk, but don’t talk at the same time. It was veiled with uncertainty of the future, and maybe even a little fear. Normally I would scoff at it. Fear had no place here. Fear was for those who didn’t know how to get rid of it.

But that was the thing. Fear was its own god too. We all mocked fear until we were actually scared.

It was something I’d realised when I was younger. The first time I had truly been afraid... I’d thought I was the second best thing to invincible, and I almost was. I was a good fighter, I wasn’t ashamed to boast about it, and I walked around like nothing hurt me, because nothing did. But then-

The doors creaked loudly open, and Desiree came in, Kenneth in tow. He had ditched his old clothes, and was wearing the simple ones you could find anywhere on this floor; grey t-shirt and dark grey sweatpants. They looked new and unused.

Kenneth, for his part, looked in a better mood than he had been. A tension in his shoulders that I hadn’t seen before seemed to have eased somewhat. He still wasn’t very friendly, but he didn’t need to be. He’d just proved whose side he was on.

“Man, I needed that shower,” said the boy who would end the world.

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1indigoisles · 16 days

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Chapter 5 - Excerpt 1

“Why are you here again?” I asked groggily.

“I already told you,” Jolene said irritably, sitting cross-legged on the bed right next to mine, “there’s something going on in the Chambers.”

“And what is it?” I asked, sitting up reluctantly. Who was Jolene to interrupt me in my night-long existential crisis?

Well, not that it was just Jolene either. Rowan was there too, lying on the same bed, his head sitting comfortably on Jolene’s lap as he absently played with a lock of her fiery orange hair. Desiree was sitting on the ground next to the bed, her head against Jolene’s knee, and Scarlett just stood in the space between the two beds and gazed at the arrangement before her darkly.

“You think I wouldn’t tell you if I knew?” Jolene positively snapped. “The Chambers aren’t telling us anything, which is idiotic on their part, since we actually work here and have the right to-”

“You work there?” I interrupted.

“Yes,” Jolene answered, “but the point is-”

“In the government?” I asked, just to clarify.

Jolene gaped at me for a whole second, and then nodded her head in an exaggerated manner. “Yes.”

“But,” I gaped, “you’re not even eighteen!” I was horrified. Was Knightville so out-dated and out of touch with the times that it enforced child-labour too?

Jolene looked positively annoyed. “Boy, you need to catch on.”

“We turn adults at the age of fifteen,” Rowan explained, “which is why it’s normal that we work here full-time.”

I seriously didn’t know if Rowan actually believed that that cleared up anything. “Fifteen,” I repeated. “Full-time.”

Jolene looked like she was at the very end of her patience, but Desiree cut in. “C’mon guys, you can’t blame him. It’s your fault for not explaining it.” She leveled her gaze at me. “The Three Chambers is split into five sectors, Hunting, Healing, Investigating, Researching and Travelling, although the Travelling sector is inactive, since we can’t leave. Hunters are our police; they track down Shadows and kill them before they can terrorize the town. Healers, well, heal people, specifically Hunters, and need to have a lot of knowledge about medicine, since the concept and the different types of medicine are very different here than in the outside world. And then there are Researchers, who are basically our alchemists. They discover elements that can only be found in places like Knightville, and try to find out how they could be useful to us. As for Investigators, they deal with people like the Garamonds, besides other things. They also track down Voids, which are portals of darkness scattered around the town where Shadows are generated. You know this. All of us are trained in these things until the age of fifteen, which is when we undergo an examination to find out which sector is best suited for us. And it just doesn’t depend on our skill in each subject either. It also depends on our power. For example, if somebody’s power is offensive, like Scarlett’s shadow manipulation, then there’s a higher chance they’ll be put in Hunting. And since my power is to absorb people’s pain and wounds, it was a no-brainer basically.” Desiree grinned.

“Is it a mandate?” I asked. “This examination?”

“Afraid so,” Rowan said grimly. “If you haven’t noticed yet, none of us have choices here.”

I considered Rowan for a few silent seconds. “And what happens,” I began, “when whatever is going on in the Three Chambers clears up? What will happen to me, to my mother?”

“We don’t know,” Jolene answered honestly, looking around at her friends and brother. “It’s annoying, I get it, but the Firsts won’t tell us anything-”

“The Firsts?” I asked.

“They sit at the top of the government, the First Chamber,” Jolene said. “There used to be five of them, each one representing the sectors, but since Travelling is down, we only have four now.”

“The fact that you think all your half-boiled explanations clear up anything is commendable,” I said, glaring.

“Ugh, I keep forgetting how much you don’t know,” Jolene grumbled, and rubbed her temples. “Okay, let’s see. The Chambers have three main levels of authoritarian power, the First, Second, and Third Chambers. There are four members in the First Chamber, and they are known as the Firsts. Similarly, people from the Second and Third Chambers are known as Seconds and Thirds. The Firsts are the ‘supreme leaders’, and they basically control everything. The Second Chamber also has some pretty powerful connections, but they’re definitely not as powerful as the First Chamber, and don’t have half the decision-making power. They’re basically in charge of the stragglers, as in the Third Chamber, which is basically the rest of us, and they get to bully us around whenever they so please.” Jolene rolled her eyes somewhat aggressively.

“Adam Forrest is in the Second Chamber,” I remembered. “He’s an Investigator.”

Rowan groaned, sitting up, his hands palms-down on the mattress, supporting his weight. “He’s the worst of the lot of them. Got promoted pretty young, but mind you, it’s not the fame that’s given him a swollen head. Apparently, he was always power-hungry, never bothered to make friends or be friendly with anyone. Was always cold as ice, and rude too.” He quirked his eyes at Scarlett, who was standing with her arms crossed over her chest. “Kind of like you.”

Scarlett scoffed. “I am nothing like Adam Forrest,” she said without any particular defense to her tone, looking completely bored. “He lives for power and privilege, I couldn’t care less about either.”

“He’s friends with Tyler James,” Desiree suddenly mused. “And he doesn’t think Adam’s too bad.”

Jolene’s eyebrows shot up to the skies. “Tyler James Thorne? As in, the person who instructed you in your first three months here and your long-time friend?”

Desiree laughed. “Yes, him. I’ve seen-”

Suddenly there were loud voices coming from outside the door, three voices, to be exact, only one of which was loud, thus making all the voices seem loud and simultaneous.

“Fuck you,” came Lila’s uncensored vigor, and I wondered who’d she’d picked a fight with this time. Kids these days. “I have a right to see my damn son!”

Another voice, low and mediating and gentle and somewhat familiar, started, “We completely understand that, Ma’am, and we would help you if we could, but you see-”

“There are rules,” came a third voice, deep and commanding, responsible and authoritarian. “No one here is allowed to just barge into this institution whenever they see fit-”

The double-doors banged wide open, and Lila, the picture of barely contained rage, swivelled on a person standing behind her. “Look at me,” she said, low and furious, “look at my face and tell me if I look like I give two shits about your ‘rules’.”

No response.

Then she made a stark and precise one-eighty-degree turn and stomped over to where I sat on the bed. Behind her followed two people, men, one of whom was a slightly hesitant Tyler James, who I immediately recognized. He was still in his Healer’s uniform. Behind Tyler James was a man who sort of towered over him. Stark black hair, paired with black eyes, vampire-pale skin, neat blue suit. He was frowning disapprovingly at Lila, but Lila had her head turned, so she didn’t see it.

Not that she would care even if she had.

“Lila,” I greeted, “always good to see you.”

“Shut up,” she said, and considered me for a minute. “You look terrible.” She looked at my face, which must have sported dark circles under the eyes, from lack of sleep.

“Good morning to you too,” I raised an eyebrow.

“Ugh, I knew I shouldn’t have left you here,” Lila grumbled. “These... people,” she managed to grind out, stabbing a finger in the direction of Tyler James and the stranger who I was pretty sure was Adam Forrest, judging from the expressions on Jolene and Rowan’s faces, “tried to stop me from seeing you.”

“Well, technically,” Tyler James interrupted, “you’re not exactly supposed to be here. Adam over here is using his authority as a Second to give Miss Teigen here a free pass.”

Lila glanced at Tyler James witheringly. Tyler James just looked calmly back.

After a few seconds of that mini staring competition, Lila turned back to me, her green gaze trained on me. “Listen, Kenneth. I heard about what was going on in the Chambers,” she told me.

“What? How?” Jolene immediately demanded.

“Catherine,” Lila answered. “She’s one of the Researchers working in the Second Chamber. She knew what was going on.” Lila then continued lightly, “and when she wouldn’t tell me what it was, I threatened her with a kitchen-knife and she caved.”

“Of course you did,” I said.

“Catherine?” Adam asked, frowning. “Catherine Jordan? She gave up classified Second Chamber information? Why? That’s a serious offense, and it could potentially rebuke her status as a Second altogether, and she knows it.”

“You’re not going to tell the Chambers anything,” Tyler James asked, “are you?”

Adam shrugged. “Even if I didn’t, the Chambers would find out anyway. You know how it is. They always know.”

Tyler James didn’t say anything to that, and looked away.

“And you,” he addressed Lila sharply, “aren’t going to repeat what you heard, understood?”

“And why not?” Jolene spoke up, apparently tired of keeping quiet. “If some human can know what’s going on with the Chambers, why not us?” She said this in the tone of someone who knew they were being childish, but didn’t give a damn about it just the same.

Adam turned his frown on Jolene, glaring at her. “I don’t need to tell you, Frost, that you are Thirds, and you have only been working here for a year, which makes the lot of you severely unauthorized-”

“Bullshit,” Rowan cut in. “Granted we’re Thirds, but we were specially tasked by the Firsts to babysit Kenneth Teigen. No offense, man.” He directed this last part at me. I waved him off.

“That doesn’t give you any extra rights,” Adam replied icily, “and anyway, you weren’t very responsible with him either. On the day of the attack, you managed to get him both injured and exhausted, and still I caught the both of you off-duty yesterday when you were supposed to be here.”

Jolene restarted hotly. “So you’re saying that something serious could be going on in the Chambers and we don’t have the right-”

“Forrest, why are you here?” Scarlett asked, completely interrupting Jolene. “There’s a meeting going on between the Seconds, right? So why are you on our tail now?” She sneered. “Not important enough?”

Adam Forrest wasn’t perturbed, and even if he was, he hid it well. “One of the underground storage rooms in Basement 1 has been tampered with,” he said coolly. There was a strange and dangerous gleam in his eyes. “A couple of Thirds and I were going to go and investigate just now.”

Silence.

It took a considerable amount of effort to keep my expression still after hearing that. My heart was beating almost double-time, pumping blood into my neck. It was all I could do to affect boredom, and not let the lies show in my eyes as I looked away from Adam in what I hoped was a nonchalant manner. I didn’t look at Jolene, or Rowan, or Desiree, or Scarlett, or even Lila. I didn’t dare to look at anything but the ground.

Internally, my mind was racing. Does he know? How does he know? He can’t know.

Adam Forrest is the worst of the lot of them.

He might be just a bit older than us, but I could tell he would be the farthest thing from empathetic if he found out about Scarlett’s Shadow. In fact, I was prepared to bet that he would be the first to drag us all by the hair to the Firsts or some sort of jail or whatever it is they do to people with Shadows and other people who help control people’s Shadows. Adam was the enemy here and we needed to treat him as such.

I didn’t know why I was so concerned with the problems of people who I practically didn’t even know. Why had I gotten involved in the first place? What business did I have, meddling with these people’s lives? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I had gotten myself involved. They didn’t bring me in. I did. I brought this on myself. I could’ve said no whenever I wanted, yet still I chose to help. And now the consequences, the possibility of repercussions, stood right in front of us in the form of an extremely forbidding person. I had enough responsibilities. I should’ve looked out only for those. Myself and Lila, myself and Lila.

But I didn’t. I forgot.

What did that make me then, if I helped prisoners who lied without a second thought?

“Well?” Scarlett demanded at last, as though she herself didn’t understand why this incredibly awkward silence had been born in the first place. “Anything else you have to say?”

Adam looked at her, long and hard, and so did I. “No,” he said, “nothing more.” He turned to Lila. “And you really need to leave.”

“Make me,” Lila struck out defiantly.

“You don’t want me to. That’s my point.” Adam sighed. “Later, there’ll be a meeting including the Second and the Third Chambers. You and your son can attend that together.” The way he said ‘your son’ was admirable. For someone who was talking about the end of the world, he seemed to be pretty unafraid of me, considering.

That, I thought, was a good thing.

After a light squabble between Lila and Adam Forrest, and an interruption from Tyler James, Lila finally agreed to being escorted out of the building.

And then I suddenly remembered something. “Wait,” I said, slowly. “Can Lila stay here for another ten minutes? There’s something I need to ask her.” Adam opened his mouth, but I interrupted. “No, it’s not about whatever’s going on in the Second Chamber, but it’s personal,” I made my tone forcibly polite, “and I would appreciate the space.”

“I’m sorry,” Adam said, in the tone of someone who was not sorry at all, “but I can’t do that. You understand.”

“Fine then,” I said slightly aggressively, and turned to my mother, “Lila, how long have you known?”

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1indigoisles · 22 days

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Chapter 4 - Excerpt 3

It was night, I was lying on an unfamiliar bed, the window was open, and the moonlight was...

There was no moonlight. The moon and the stars and the sun never shone in Knightville. All that existed in the sky was an endless canopy of dark grey clouds, from which even darker water sometimes fell. Maybe it was all part of the ‘punishment’, but I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to think about that right now.

Because it was all I was doing. Now that I was alone and there were no life-threatening situations to occupy my mind, every thought, question, and surprise I had pushed aside bounced right back into the void and it was all I could do to keep my head above the water.

My first thought after getting into bed was, I’m in way over my head.

I already knew that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I was in a cage with no holes, and the oxygen here was too thick to swallow. The air in Knightville really was so subtly yet noticeably different from the outside world that I wondered at how it had taken me this long to figure it out.

The outside world, I scoffed to myself. As though I hadn’t been born and raised there my whole life. As though my subconscious had already accepted that Knightville was my home, had always been my home, and it had happened while I wasn’t paying attention.

I remembered the day of the attack, when the Shadows had come for me. I had been running. I had run with the speed of someone trying to outrun the truth, as though it were possible. I remembered the voices that weren’t voices at all, distorted, confused winding noises trying to be one thing but failing somewhere along the line. I remembered the words, We have been waiting a long time...

Waiting a long time for what? For me? For what I would do when I finally came here? Or for what I brought with me when I did?

I didn’t know much, but I did know that I had been a part of Knightville’s history long before I was born. A place had seemingly always been very reluctantly carved out for me here, an estranged hole, an assumption of what I could be, as though it were only a matter of time before I filled it in. Like I was supposed to be there, and these people were supposed to accept me. As though there were no choices, and would never be, for anyone.

And maybe that was it. Maybe I had never been angry at Jolene or Rowan or Desiree or Scarlett at all. I had just been angry at the fact that I didn’t get to choose.

Not that I would ever choose to not know about Knightville, my heritage, the truth about who I was. I would never want to not know the truth. No one ever does, really. It is only that sometimes, we wished the truth was different.

And then there was my strange power. I didn’t know what it was, but something had changed after I’d used it three days ago. Something about me, as a person, as a half-human, half-Diaforian, was different. Maybe it was just a new piece of knowledge being registered in my head, maybe it was a shift in my very subconscious, or maybe it was an irreversible something that had happened to me when I killed a Shadow with a beam of light that I had created, or it was still happening, like growing up. Whatever it was, I was stuck with a power that could potentially kill me if I used it too much, a power that I didn’t even want-

No, that wasn’t right. There was too much happening all at once for me to know what I wanted anymore. What I had previously wanted followed the rules of a world I had never really belonged to. I didn’t even know what I was doing here anymore! And I wasn’t even sure if I wanted my life to go back to normal, get out of this hell-town the way David and Victor had. Too much had changed already, too fast, too soon, and none of it was reversible. And as of right now, asking myself if I wanted my power was weird in the way asking myself if I wanted my hand or my leg was weird, minus the obvious answer being yes. Because although it was an extention of me, I didn’t really need it, did I?

No, of course I do, I thought. How else will I fight Shadows?

But, I don’t fight Shadows. Rowan, Jolene, Scarlett, and perhaps Desiree do.

But I live here now. How am I going to manage without it? I can’t throw a blade to save my life.

There can’t be that many Shadows here. It’s only a small town. Maybe I’ll never get to use my power again.

Maybe I should practice. It might come in handy.

I tried to shut my brain down. I didn’t want to think. I wanted to repeatedly bang my head against the wall and curse my luck.

Not that I actually did that.

All this, I figured irritably, was because of the Garamond brothers, who were both highly unimpressive, in my opinion. I will admit that Knightville can seem confining, but they had family, responsibilities, and their entire lives right here. Why would they drop it all to venture in a world they’d probably only ever read about? Not to mention that over-ambitious drama queen Victor over here thought it was a good idea to abandon family and potentially ruin the lives of two college students with rash decision-making skills and an unwilling elder brother with no spine or strength of will whatsoever. And because of all that, the consequences of their actions led to their untimely deaths, causing pain to both Lila and Cassidy-

Cassidy. I’d completely forgotten. Victor had been her boyfriend too, and he’d died right along with David. She’d been living with pain just as much as Lila, and hiding it as well.

My first thought after that realisation was, I never knew.

I was shocked.Shocked not in the normal way, but in a deep-inside-self way, like there was a pendulum that had been hanging completely still for a long time and this realisation had struck it back into shaking motion. Because Cassidy losing Victor hit differently in my mind from Lila losing David, because of the simple reason that I was born with Lila’s truth, and I had to find out Cassidy’s in a strange magical town with no way of leaving, from complete strangers (who were also magical), with the possibility of death hanging above my head like the yellow light bulb in the storage room.

It made me wonder how much of Cassidy’s happiness had been fake, how many of her smiles had just for show, how many times she’d lied to me.

It was settled. For as long as I could remember, I’d never felt any particular emotion for the name ‘Garamond’, always teetering between indifference and a vague sort of contempt for it, choosing to reserve it as an uninteresting fact of my origin. A name from Lila’s past that had nothing to do with her anymore and even less to do with me. But now, thinking back on the picture of the family painted here, in Knightville, burnt down and ripped at the seams...

I just hoped the Garamond shittiness didn’t run in the family.

But now I was panicking. Panicking because of what would happen to me in the morning. Because something was going to happen all right, and I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be anything good. I was currently trapped in the facility of the Three Chambers, which seemed to me, even though I didn’t have complete information, by all accounts a cruel, corrupt and overall terrible government system that had no qualms about eliminating anyone or anything that may seem like a threat, like how Scarlett would be a threat if they found out about her Shadow. And that was bad for me, because I was basically the father of all threats that could ever exist in this town. It was a one-in-an-eight-billion chance to have an outdated prophecy made about you depicting the end of the world, and of course, of course I got landed with the part.

But it didn’t matter, did it? In the end, I was trapped here, and I would have to face whatever was going to happen when it happened. I was falling down a rabbit hole into a broken world, from the tears of which darkness escaped, with people tied together by rusted chains, the holes doing nothing for escape.

Shackles around their feet, a dome around distopia, hiding behind clouds filled with dark water...

I closed my eyes. I opened them. It was morning, and my voice tasted vile.

I’d had a nightmare.

Welcome to the cage, came the lingering voice of real dreams, true and terrible.

Taglist: @jeahreading, @damn-this-transgirl-hella-gay, @mayaheronthorn, @cherryblossempearl.

Ok, I promise, lots more fight scenes to come (and just maybe a touch of romance?)

In other news, my novel title has changed to Land of Crooked Magic. You can also find it on WordPress. (Please ignore my feeble attempt at promotion).

#Land of Crooked Magic #Chapter 4 - Excerpt 3 #Novels #Writing #Writers on Tumblr #Writerblr #bookblr #Writing stuff #My novel

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