Secrets of the Guardian (Waldgrave Book 3)
Read Secrets of the Guardian (Waldgrave Book 3) Online
Authors: A.L. Tyler
Secrets of the Guardian
Waldgrave Part
3
A.L. Tyler
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Cover art by A.L. Tyler, using the public domain image "Wild purple Iris on the Kodiak Archipelago, Alaska 2009 200" by Nancy Heise found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wild_purple_Iris_on_the_Kodiak_Archipelago,_Alaska_2009_200.jpg.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination and used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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For my family, my husband, and my friends.
And for Ashley, who has saved more than one character's life.
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Preview: The Spider Catcher, Redemption Book 1
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Lena spent most of the rest of that day collecting books and diaries written by Edward Daray; they were numerous and varied. Edward seemed to be quite the politician, and she found manifesto after manifesto, books containing detailed analyses of political events and movements of the past and his present; he wasn’t an optimist, either. Over and over again, he predicted that the Silenti world would tear itself apart as a culture because the political climate was becoming so polarized; he feared for his life and those of his family. He feared the revolution that Lena had recently been living.
His diaries were few and far between, and the ones that Lena perused were not much different from the books he had written on political perspective. She collected the diaries she could find amongst the masses of unorganized literature, and then walked back up the spiral staircase; it looked as though Griffin had closed the skeleton back over the opening, but when Lena tried to slide it with her hand, it easily gave way. She climbed out and into the office, and then replaced the skeleton over the secret staircase.
When she turned to leave the office, she found Daray’s cat sitting square in front of the door, watching her, as though he were waiting for her.
Have you always known about this?
She asked, clutching the books to her chest and walking slowly toward him. He had no name; he wasn’t a pet, after all.
The cat’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned toward her, sniffing the air uncertainly. His face contracted into a pointed grin that was almost a snarl. He walked across the room and past her without another glance, but as he passed her, she heard a belittling whisper, hardly louder than her imagination,
Yes
.
She took the diaries back to her room and threw them on her bed. She stretched, her back aching after so much time searching through books, and walked over to the window. Summer was just coming into focus; the grass was a deep green, and the waxy new leaves of spring were growing and filling out the branches on the trees. Only the early blooming flowers were open, and the sky was just beginning to turn to dusk.
She wasn’t sure what she was going to do about Griffin; maybe he was right. Pyrallis had been a master of lies, and it was possible—and even probable—that the woman she had known as Ava wasn’t the child referenced in Edward’s diary. The whole family could have burned in the fire, and then Pyrallis could have claimed that any child was Avalon Daray.
But then, how had Pyrallis come to power? Surely people would have known him, and who he was. Someone had to know about the family and Olesia. Lena went to the diaries spread out on her bed and started flipping through them, trying to find the diagram of the family tree that had caught her interest earlier that day. She thought she had found it, but then did a double take when she looked closer.
It wasn’t the family tree from earlier. In contrast, this one listed the only child of Edward and Melinda as Pyrallis Daray—and his wife’s name was Olesia. Confused, Lena continued to look through the remaining diaries until she found the earlier diagram and then compared the two. One of them claimed that Olesia was a Daray. The other claimed it was Pyrallis. She read the pages immediately before and after the diagrams, and was surprised to see that they contained roughly the same material, and in the same handwriting.
In one, Edward spoke of his daughter Olesia, and someone named Jack Durand, who he had apparently known for some years as he spoke fervently about his talents. In the other, Edward spoke about his son Pyrallis, his wife Olesia, and their daughter, Ava. Lena stared back and forth between the two accounts; they couldn’t both be true. And annoyingly, though Lena had never noticed before, there wasn’t a word in Latito to describe an in-law; in both accounts, the spouse of the child was referred simply as being either ‘daughter’ or ‘son.’
Lena tried to find some sort of thread that she could follow back to an answer, but the harder she pulled the more tangled the situation became. Ava and Lena could read the manuscripts, which Silas Cassius had clearly stated was an attribute of the royal line, but Pyrallis couldn’t. Griffin could be right that Pyrallis had somehow found a child with a special gift, someone that could read the manuscripts for him, but it made no sense with the story about the fire—unless Pyrallis had lit the fire to begin with. But then, how had he managed to fall in as Daray’s heir?
But that in itself made no sense, because Pyrallis had been obsessed with the religion, and he wouldn’t have killed the entire family only to make it his life’s mission to find the portal. If Pyrallis wasn’t Edward’s son, then why had so many people so readily accepted him as the Daray heir? And if he
was
Daray’s heir, then why couldn’t he read all the manuscripts? And where, for God’s sake, was Olesia? Who was Olesia?
Olesia and Jack were the only people she could cling to, because they weren’t in urns in the basement. If they were dead, with the extensive collection that Pyrallis had been stashing away, she was sure he would have had them. So where were they? And more importantly, what was she going to tell the Council to let her go looking for them?
Rubbing her head, Lena got up and went back to the window. What to do about Griffin…
Something had changed on the lawn. Lena squinted to see across the grounds. There was a group of people standing off in the distance.
Howard!
She screamed.
Howard, they’re here!
She watched as someone, a figure wearing a dark hood, was pushed to the front, a tall, blond young man walked up behind him. It was Rollin.
The back of the house! They’re on the property!
Lena watched as Rollin pushed the hooded figure to his knees, and with a sickening realization in the pit of her stomach, she watched as he pulled a gun out of his waistband, aimed it, and shot the hostage twice, sending twin jets of blood spraying out of his back before the figure fell face first and onto the grass. Rollin raised his gun and fired several shots at the house, shooting with such indifference that Lena dove onto the carpet, though none of his shots found her window. She listened to the bullets embedding themselves into Waldgrave’s exterior like so many pieces of hail on a cloudless eve. When the firing stopped, she looked up and out the window again; the group turned and started to walk away. Frozen in place, Lena watched as the hooded figure laid there, a lump on the ground. She could feel her heart pounding as Rollin and his small entourage disappeared over the hill. And then the hooded figure moved.
Panic rushing through her veins, she shot out of her room and down the hall and the stairs, out through the greenhouse—there was a group of armed men, standing at guard, just in front of her as she sprinted toward the fallen hostage; emboldened Council Representatives and their sons who had come to stay at Waldgrave “until the situation resolved itself.”
She was brushing past them. People everywhere were yelling, and she thought there might have even been some gunfire, but she didn’t hear any of it. Someone tried to grab her arm, to stop her from running toward the danger.
Lena!
He’s still alive! I saw him move!
It didn’t occur to her that it could have been a trap. She didn’t think about the fact that once she was passed the line of Waldgrave’s armed militia, she would easily be caught in the crossfire that could ensue. As she neared the body, she felt her whole being suddenly sink; she didn’t need to see his face to recognize him. He was wearing the same shirt he had the night that he had helped her escape.
It was Devin.
Someone get the doctor!
She screamed.
Lena crouched down next to the body, afraid to move him. He was still breathing, just ever so slightly. His chest expanded and contracted every few seconds as blood oozed out of two wounds on his back, soaking his clothing and running into the grass. Rollin had done it deliberately; he wanted him to suffer before he died.
Oh God, oh God, Devin…Devin, I’m here, just hold on, you’re going to be okay.
He didn’t respond, and Lena reached down and pulled the hood off of his head and turned his face to the side so that he could breathe. He was pale and clammy, and his eyes were only slightly open, staring off into space—but there was nothing else in them. There was no shallow, stagnant sign of death. Lena tried to breathe a sigh of relief as her pulse continued to race. He was losing a lot of blood.
Breathe, Devin, just keep breathing…
She looked over her shoulder. The Council Representative had continued on past her, still in search of Rollin; she watched as Lyle Evans and a handful of others rushed across the lawn toward her. She turned back to Devin. His eyes were closed.
Devin! Devin, open your eyes!
But he didn’t respond. He didn’t give so much as a twitch to say that he’d heard her. She looked back in Doctor Evans’ direction. He was only fifteen feet away, but he wasn’t running anymore. He had slowed to a walk, and his assistants were slowing behind him. Lena looked up at him, confused, but he was staring at Devin. When he regarded her, there was a pained look in his eyes.