Endless Night (Fate's Intent Book 3) (9 page)

Kole perked right up in his chair and became alert. “Calla lily?!”

“I don’t know maybe.”

“That’s not Trever.”

A loud pounding came from the large metal door locking us in and a loud voice with it. “Kole! Open this door right now!”

It was clearly Jaylyn and she was clearly angry.

“I don’t see the point in that! Sorry!”

She screamed and there was more banging but then it suddenly went silent.

“Did she go away?” Kole asked Ryon.

He shook his head and lifted his nose in the air again. “No but I smell smoke.”

I smelt it too but before I could even confirm it or even get a sound out, Ryon and Kole jumped out of their chairs, flipped the table up on its short end so it stood tall and pushed it between us and the door.

BOOM!

My ears were silenced.

Chapter 16

Jaylyn

Fire swirled around me. I shielded my head but I still got burned. I felt it but it didn’t seem to matter. My only goal was to get inside that room. I had to know that Troy was okay. I had to see it for myself, not just feel it.

The dust clouded the air and I could hear several coughs, mine were even drowned by them. My eyes opened and the flesh of my arms was ripped away to the bone but I almost didn’t feel it. I stepped inside the room and Kole and Ryon pushed a table to the floor and they looked at me with horror. It probably did look bad. My dress was singed up to my hips on my left side and my leg got hit badly. I looked as if I had died but was still walking around.

It didn’t last very long. I felt my body calming and healing itself while I stood with my eyes right on Kole.

“Are you crazy?!” He asked me. “You could have just killed us!”

He was breathing like he had just ran a mile but my voice was relaxed. I came here to do one thing. “You lied to me.”

“No. You really could have killed us.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about and I actually—I actually fell for it, didn’t I?”

“Well—”

“No! No more words from you. I’m done even trying.” I extended my hand to his head and he fell to the floor where he stood.

“Ooh.” Ryon muttered. “He’s going to feel that later.”

“Leave or join him.”

“Sorry. I can’t leave.”

“Fine.” I stepped towards him.

“Wait. Put me down gently.”

“And why should I show you that courtesy after this?”

“Because we just kind of saved their pathetic lives from your explosive need to get in here.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it surprised me too but the General would like to see them alive.”

“Fine.”

He lowered himself to the floor in front of me and I reached for his head. I was able to catch it before it hit the floor and I let him down easy like I said I would.

Now that that was over, I turned around to the three behind me and had my full attention right on Troy. “I’m so sorry about this.” I reached for him but he seemed different somehow and tried to lean away. “What’s the matter?”

“What did you just do to them?”

He seemed almost worried from asking and I didn’t waste time to set things straight. “Oh, no. They’re not dead. I just put them to sleep so they’re out of the way.”

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

“I only do it when I need to heal a traumatizing wound that would be better if the person were asleep so they stop feeling it and don’t go into shock. That’s a more complicated type of healing.”

“Oh, in that case, nice job and you can touch me unless you plan on putting me to sleep because I really don’t need to do that right now.”

“I wasn’t going to. I’m going to get you free.” I walked around him and untied the binds around his wrists.

“Thanks.” He leaned forward and untied the ones around his ankles and I went to Darius.

“Where’s Ruby?”

“She’s still there. I didn’t have time to find them when I knew Trever knew you were here.”

“He told you?” Troy asked.

“Yes, he said—”

“Wait!” I looked up and Trever was stepping over the door I blew down and stopped Troy from untying Zayden with just his voice.

“What?” I asked.

“Don’t untie him just yet.”

“Why?” It seemed weird that he would say that since the other two were already fully untied but then I looked at Zayden. His eyes were black and Trever seemed focused on it.

“Something is wrong.”

Oh, no. Now I was getting worried.

“Where’s Adele?”

I tried focusing to answer his question. “Ah, she’s still at the palace.”

“You didn’t bring her?”

“You made it sound too urgent. I didn’t want to waste time looking for them when I could have done it myself.”

He looked down at Kole and Ryon on the floor. “Yes. I see. Thank you. Now, go get Adele.”

“Why?”

“Because she might still be there looking for you and I’m sure you can imagine she’s not happy about it.”

He was right, wasn’t he? Great. Why didn’t I just look for her first? Now she’s going to be mad at me. I just thought I had to get here quickly. Who knows what they really had planned? Whatever it was, I was glad I stopped it.

I didn’t want to leave Troy again but I did know that I had to get Adele even if that meant going back there and looking like my dress had just caught on fire. Maybe no one would notice. It was a costume ball anyway. I could be a burning meadow instead of just a normal one.

“It’s okay.” Troy said. He must have been watching my hesitation. “I’ll still be fine. Go find her.”

I nodded and slowly started backing away. “Okay. If he bothers you or threatens to, I’d like for you to step in Darius and put him on the floor next to his friends.”

“I absolutely will.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Jay.” Trever said. “But thank you.”

I was still nervous to leave but there was something wrong with Zayden. He hadn’t said a word and I needed to find Adele.

Chapter 17

Darius

I was standing ready for him to say something threatening so I could act on Jaylyn’s request. I imagined getting to do it over and over in my head but he didn’t seem much bothered by what she said. At first maybe I thought it was because he was apparently one of Kalu’s secret fighters. I haven’t forgot about them mentioning that to us back in Randal then I thought maybe it was how these two unconscious fools on the floor talked about him being too good of a fighter to fight anyone publicly. Well, he hasn’t fought me and I was definitely up to the challenge.

“Sorry about this.” He said after Jaylyn had walked over the door and left. “I don’t think I can apologize enough for them but you know how it is. Ask your friends to do you a favor and all they can think about is how it’s going to ruin their lives.”

“Huh.” I mumbled in a complete unimpressed tone.

“But it seems he got to you worse than I thought. How do you feel?” He looked down at Zayden and I was careful about anything he was about to do.

“I’m tied to a chair.” Zayden said to point out the obvious. “How do you think I feel?”

“No. I mean about that.” Trever pointed to his own eyes while looking at Zayden’s. “You can’t shut it off can you?”

Zayden’s black eyes glanced at me and he seemed surprised somehow. “How did you know that?”

Was Trever really right? He couldn’t shut it off? We’ve never seen him not be able to do that before. Even I was becoming curious about what he may know.

“I know a lot about you. First time it’s happened?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ve never reached this stage in your gift before. It’s triggered by anger and the only way to get rid of it is to bite on something.” Trever reached into his pocket and pulled out a palm size object. “Here.” Zayden looked at it in his hand and up at Trever, unconvinced. It sounded a little ridiculous so I knew where he was coming from. “I’m not tricking you, Zayden. You should believe it. How else did I know?”

“I’m sure I don’t even want to know.”

“Then look at it this way, you can’t get out of here unless you do it. You’ll be a danger to everyone, even those closest to you.”

Zayden sighed and looked down.

“How did it happen?” Zayden didn’t reply and Trever looked at us.

I wasn’t closest to him so I wasn’t even sure when it first started. It could have been from anything they said but then the answer was clear.

“Ryon said something about father lying to him about his mother being alive.” Troy muttered.

That had to be it. Zayden did get really mad about that with every right to. If someone tried to tell me my mother was still alive, they’d be missing their head already. I knew for a fact she wasn’t. I saw her.

“I apologize again.” Trever said. “He didn’t mean it. Mothers around here are never well thought of. It makes those of us quite used to the insults. Kaluian mothers are a hard breed to love.”

“But was he right?” Zayden looked up, his eyes still black with hate. “He certainly was about me not knowing my father. I just couldn’t tell him that.”

Trever paused. I was wondering what he would say. Was it really true and he was thinking about telling him or lying to him? “That wouldn’t be up to me to say. It is your father whom you should be asking these questions.”

“And so the list keeps growing.”

“You’ll soon find that the longer you’re here, the longer it will become.”

“You mean us staying?”

“We’ll have to see won’t we?”

Zayden glanced to the object in Trever’s hand and leaned in for it with this bit of hope he had for us staying. Personally, I wasn’t sure how well it would work out with how our night has gone so far.

“You made the right choice.” Trever got closer and held it right in front of Zayden’s mouth for him and he carefully sunk is teeth into the hard surface.

He changed from it. He took a breath out like some pressure was released and his eyes gradually faded back.

“Good.” Trever turned slightly towards the mess on the floor from the flipped over table and pulled out a syringe from the other instruments. I watched him put the needle down into the tooth imprints and extracted a few drops of a clear liquid into the syringe.

“What is that?” Zayden asked. I think we all were thinking it.

“Perhaps we should take this conversation elsewhere.” Trever took the scalpel in his hand and cut Zayden free. I expected him to do something else or maybe just hoped for it but I guess he did the right thing. He would have been dead if he hurt Zayden.

“What about them?” Zayden stopped before following and looked at the two still on the floor. “Are you just going to leave them there?”

“I didn’t think you would have been one to care.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, now that you mention it, I should do something.” He grabbed a wrist from each of them and shown some of his strength by dragging them towards the back wall.

“Why don’t they wake up?” Troy asked.

“Well, when Jay puts you out, you have to wake up on your own. It’s a dark deep sleep that nothing else can wake you from.”

“Now what are you doing?” I asked it aloud the same time I thought of the question from watching him attach shackles to their wrists.

“Well, normally, another downfall to being put to sleep like this, you wake up angry and right now, these two angry around you wouldn’t be the wisest of choices. This will only buy you some time if they happen to wake up before I can get back down here to get them out. Come on.”

“Where are you taking us?” Zayden asked.

“To a more respectable place unless you like it down here. Your choice. It’s called freewill.”

Freewill? Did we really have that or was that a nice way of telling us to follow. I didn’t like it one bit but I did it.

Chapter 18

Zayden

Trever led us back up the stairs into the dining room and offered us a seat at the long table. “Please, sit. Do you want anything? Just say the word and you’ll have it.”

“How about some answers?” We sat down and that’s all I was looking for. Answers.

“About your—inherited gift?” Trever put the syringe on the table’s surface and my eyes found it. “I thought you didn’t want to know?”