Prologue
"Get it back!" The king grew frustrated, shouting at the prisoner. The king had forgotten his poise; he had forgotten the rest of the kingdom that would bend at his every whim. His brow began to sweat and a purplish, blue vein bulged from his neck, signifying a dangerous spike in the temperature of the room. His angry and violent magic swirled around the prisoner, choking off his supply of oxygen.
"No," the boy, just seventeen, replied simply. His brow, too, was sweaty, his face beaten beyond recognition and his arms tied tightly behind his back, while one shoulder hung awkwardly lower than the other. The smallest smile played at the corner of his lips, infuriating the king beyond what his stubborn disobedience could have ever hoped to accomplish.
"This is not a game!" The king yelled into the face of the defiant prisoner.
The boy was exhausted, both physically and mentally. He had been tortured, beaten and abused repeatedly, but always just to the brink of death, never beyond. He longed for death, that sweet relief, the peaceful afterlife, the great beyond that would end his suffering and finally offer silent rest.
He stayed silent now, even as his king yelled at him, even as the guards beat him. He did not speak. He did not cry out. His bloodied body and broken bones the only friends he had left, the only reminders of the war that was being waged beyond this cell, this four-walled prison of insanity. And of why he would never give up.
"Enough," the king ordered quietly, and the guard took a step back, dropping the strong arm that was about to strike against the boy's face again. "This is dangerous, this game you play," the king stood towering over the slumping child, hundreds of years his inferior. The boy did not look at him. The boy could not look at him, his tired, broken head hung down to his chest, lolling with the effort to keep from slipping into unconsciousness.
"But worth it," the boy spat in a hoarse and pained whisper.
"Is it?" The king couldn't help but laugh, the child reminded him of another he had once tortured, a prisoner arrogant, confident, sure of his cause. But that old man had perished at his own hands and this child would follow the same fate. "Will it be worth it when we find her? When we take the magic from her instead?"
The boy grunted his contempt at the reference to the girl. He struggled to hold his head higher, to sit up straighter. How dare this evil tyrant refer to her.
"Ah, now I have your attention." The king's lips turned upwards in the snarl of an evil man. His eyes darkened and narrowed to ominous slits of suspicion. He had found the right words, the right incentive. "She is being hunted as we speak; it will not be long before we find her. Get the magic back from her and we will leave her alone. She can live out her life; she can be free from us. You have my promise. My word as king, I will pursue her no longer. Just get it back."
The sound that pierced the damp stone walls frightened even the king. The deep, authentic laughter mocked the king and his guards standing around. The small prison cell reverberated in the sound of a child not fooled by empty threats or wasted efforts.
And then suddenly, the laughter stopped, the boys head raised and he stared into the eyes of his king with the passion of a man living out eternity in the splendor of a victory already won. "You are the ones being hunted!" He screamed, shouting through the stone walls of his prison cell, reaching beyond the depths of the pit they had thrown him into, far into the recesses of the castle and reverberating the truth in every ear that could hear. "She will be the one to find you, not the other way around. Your reign is over, the countdown clock has begun. You are the hunted," he finished quietly, with stone cold resolve.
"Remind him that I am king," the king addressed his guards with cruel intention. "Remind him he has no magic, that his life has been left to my will and that I will treat it as
such." He took off his black, leather, work-gloves with an air of disgust and dropped them at the feet of his prisoner.
He would get what he wanted; it was only a matter of time. He was the most powerful man in the universe and an insignificant child that had been abandoned and left without magic would not stand in his way for long. No, the child's resolve would weaken, his courage would dissipate and his faith in the lost girl would diminish. It was only a matter of time.
He left the prison cell, closing the door to the horrified screams of the boy and found that he was smiling. No, it would not be long. Not long at all.
----
The girl woke screaming into the darkness, her body drenched in cold sweat and her hands trembling from the nightmare. The pain had been too much. The searing, sickening pain that would not quit.
And the man. The ominous eyes and determined grin. He would not give up. He would not stop.
But already the dream was fleeting, disappearing into the gray void between consciousness and the sleep state. She tried to grasp on to it, tried to keep the memory sharp, but it was too late. The images were not even memories anymore, just a fuzzy idea that reminded her she was alone.
Completely alone.
Chapter One
"Where will you go?" Angelica asked quietly from the doorway. I felt her magic as she approached, but refused to turn around and greet her.
I focused on my backpack, packing what essentials I thought I would need and trying to keep the bag as light as possible. I had a long journey ahead of me and I couldn't be weighed down with those things that weren't absolute necessities.
But that wasn't why I refused to turn around and greet the old woman that offered me sanctuary after my grandfather had been murdered, my brother stolen for evil intentions and my friends captured in the name of a depraved justice. After innocent blood was shed and my life ripped into hopeless shreds of misery, she was the only one left to give me a place to stay and help my body heal.
I took a breath, a long inhale of oxygen, closing my eyes and clasping my trembling hands together to steady them. Those miserable thoughts had become my constant companions, the fuel that fed my purpose. But they were dangerous, the burning passion to find justice for those that I loved teetered too closely to the depths of despair that threatened to swallow me whole.
And, that was why I refused to look at the ancient woman standing in the doorway behind me, radiating with concern and emitting the faintest hint of a magic almost completely lost. She was a reminder of a different life, of the family that I held so dearly, destroyed. She was the talisman of a promised hope gone forever, a symbol of the deepest kind of betrayal.
"To see Silas, to find out what he knows." I shook my head quickly, banishing the thought train before the forbidden name, the source of my betrayal, resurfaced.
"And then what?" Angelica pressed, her voice shaky.
When I found Angelica, weeks earlier, half-buried in bloodied snow, and nearly torn to pieces, I thought I would be saying another goodbye. She was left for dead; the Titans had not even bothered to load her old and broken body onto the prison trucks. And, I was too weak from applying the mark of the Resistance on my neck to be of any use. But then, something happened.
Something I still couldn't explain.
The blue smoke appeared from nowhere. The magical wind from India that fused with my magic months earlier was unexpectedly there, wrapping the near-death woman in its wispy, cobalt folds and lifting her off the ground. I watched on, stunned, but somehow unknowingly in control. When Angelica returned to the cold slush that covered the ground, she was healed.
She was weak, and she lost a significant amount of magic during the battle that night, but she returned from the brink of death by the power of the blue smoke.
"And then I will find my parents," I answered firmly, deciding my course of action exactly at the same time I voiced it aloud.
"Do you think he will know where they are?" Angelica took a careful step into the room, and then walked over to the window looking out towards a wooded area that spread out across the backyard. The trees were still bare, and the remnants of icicles still clung to the stark branches.
When Angelica was finally ready, she suggested we move into Amory's house. I agreed, feeling as though there weren't many other options. But now, with him gone, the house felt more like a ghost town, filled with lost memories and a side of my grandfather I never knew.
I was still recovering from the painful magical ceremony I conducted on myself the night of that fateful battle. I touched my fingers absentmindedly to the still sore imprint on the space of my neck where my jawbone and earlobe met. The imprint had not faded like the other members of the Resistance. Unlike theirs, mine still burned brightly in the sapphire blue that colored my magic.
"I don't know," I replied truthfully. "But it's a start." I turned to her, watching her silently as she stared out into the distance as if waiting patiently for someone to come home.
They weren't coming home.
"It's a place to go," I whispered more to myself than to her. She was nothing but gracious to me, nothing but hospitable in the wake of our shared tragedy. But she had always been kind, even before I betrayed her people.
"And do you know how to find Silas?" she inclined her head to me. The once vibrant violet eyes, now dulled to a deep, purple that burned with heart-wrenching sorrow. I looked away, unable to bear both her pain and my own.
"I'll start at the ruins of Machu Picchu," I cleared my throat, trying to banish the pain that wanted so badly to resurface. I was following Avalon's directions, my lost twin, taken away to be sacrificed. Remembering his name alone was enough to send me over the cliffs of sanity into the abyss of anguish.
"And follow the magic...." Angelica whispered the directions more to herself than to me, as if remembering a conversation held in a different time, a different life. "I will watch after Sylvia." She came back to herself and back to the present.
"Thank you," I said simply, not allowing myself to dwell on my human guardian for a second longer than necessary. I swallowed the anxiety that warned me not to leave her alone, unprotected and vulnerable.
I had begged her to come with me, or at the very least to go somewhere else, somewhere where they couldn't find her, somewhere she would be safe. But she wouldn't listen to me.
Sylvia had been broken with grief at the news of Amory's death and Avalon's capture. She had changed. Something had snapped inside of her that warned me she could take care of herself. A dangerous anger had risen inside of her and I was afraid that she was waiting for them to come find her.
A wave of panic washed over me as I weighed the consequences of leaving her behind, but she insisted. She refused to slow me down on my journey or uproot her life in Omaha. We both knew that this part of my journey must be taken alone, but that did not make doing it any easier.
I was glad that Angelica offered to look after her. The happiness that my Aunt would not be completely alone felt foreign and disturbing. Only two weeks earlier, I almost burst with happiness and now the emotion was altogether banned from my body.
"Do you think they'll come after her?" I asked, my voice shaking in part from fear, the other part unadulterated anger.
"No," Angelica assured firmly, turning to look back out the window.
I knew she was lying, she was offering a false truth to comfort me during the task ahead. I took it, accepted it. I didn't have any other choice but to believe her. I let the lie wash over me and bath me in false comfort. Without it, I wouldn't be able to leave. I wouldn't be able to walk forward.