The Swarm Trilogy (39 page)

I marveled at the poses and positions he’d sketched me in, page after page of portraits.

The final page stood out in contrast to the others. Starkly different, this one was drawn in anger. The short, sharp lines and the hurried features told me this was similar to the pictures from his visions.

Disturbed, I called out for Chase. I figured he hadn’t gone far. He knew I would have questions after seeing this picture of death.

Chapter Twenty-One

My hands shook. I dropped the folio to the floor as Chase sauntered back in the room.

“Glad you stole that from me?” he asked.

I didn’t appreciate the irony of the question.

“What is that a picture of?” I pointed at the folio, sure he’d know exactly which picture I meant.

He shrugged. My first urge was to kick him. How could he act so nonchalant? I’d never seen anything more disturbing.

He grabbed the folio, opening it to the final page. I averted my eyes. I couldn’t even look at it without wanting to eject my breakfast all over him.

I closed my eyes, but still couldn’t erase the image of me, surrounded by ten young girls. They laid on stone slabs in a circle, their eyes closed in a deathly sleep. I stood in the middle, holding a dagger in my hand. It dripped with blood.

I wished I had never seen it.

“I don’t know, exactly.” Chase said carefully. “I recognize only two things in that picture. One, of course, is you. The second is the dagger.”

The dagger? Not one of the girls I’d killed, but the dagger I was holding? How strange. “Where have you seen it?”

“Come with me.” Chase left the cottage and I followed quickly behind him. He ascended the stairs, taking them two at a time. People stared at us. It was strange, I’d spent so much time there but never interacted with anyone other than Chase, Johna, or the little girl who’d brought my first meal here. They obviously tolerated my presence, but I wasn’t sure how much they liked the disruptions I caused.

“It’s a good thing that vertigo potion is still working,” I said. I glanced over the side of the rope railing. My stomach didn’t tumble at all.

“Oh, that? Totally fake. Johna’s an herbalist, yes, but all she gave you was something to calm your anxiety. See, heights don’t bother you at all.”

The wind blew a strand of hair into my face, but I ignored it. My hands were too busy trembling, hanging on to the railing as if was my only lifeline. Anxiety. Me? One moment ago I’d been fine with the heights, then he had to go and tell me something like that. I was more likely to believe he implanted the fear in me just now rather than believe Johna’s herbs had simply calmed me down. I wasn’t anxious.

A little laugh escaped my lips. Who was I kidding? Of course I was anxious. My life spun out of control, I killed someone, I saw a man’s dead, bloodstained head on a table, I escaped one life, found another, learned more about my magic, kicked Bryden’s love down three times, and barely escaped rape at the hands of my ex-boyfriend. Maybe anxiety did have something to do with it.

“I’m assuming Johna has the dagger?” I asked between puffy breaths.

Chase nodded, but didn’t turn around or say anything to me. He only continued to ascend higher into the canopy. The birds’ songs drifted through the trees. I couldn’t see any of them, but I knew they were there, flitting about without a care in the world. For a moment, I wanted to be one of them. Free, unencumbered by the weight I carried.

We arrived at the top platform together. Chase pounded on Johna’s door.

“You don’t need to bang like that,” she snapped as she flung the door open. Her eyes alighted on Chase’s face and her expression changed from irritation to concern. Her ancient eyes gazed at me. “You’ve come for the dagger, haven’t you?”

I shrugged. “Have you seen the picture?”

Johna nodded and stood aside. We shuffled into her tiny cottage. A bright light shone from the corner table where it sat next to the plain wooden box I’d handled the last time I’d been up there.

“I have, child, I have. Now that you’ve seen it in the picture, it is time for you to take the dagger.”

I held my hands up, palms toward her. “I don’t want it. Not after what I saw. I will not be the one to kill all of those girls, or whatever I was doing to them. No way. I’d rather take the dagger and throw it into the underbrush where no one will ever find it.”

“You can’t do that. The dagger has chosen you. It’s yours.” Johna grabbed the box, thrusting it at my hands.

“No. Let’s just destroy it.”

Chase took the box and opened it. The dagger’s jewels glinted in the light. “Go ahead and try to get rid of it.”

Soft music drifted past my ears, sending tingles down my spine. I hadn’t expected to hear music of any kind up here, considering their general adherence to quiet in the effort to avoid detection. Its soft melody tinkled across my skin and down my fingertips. Without even thinking, I reached into the box and grabbed the dagger.

The jeweled hilt pressed firmly into my palm, as if it were feeling me out instead of the other way around. Warmth spread through my hand, traveling up my arm. The music played louder and more frantic. My already pounding heart beat out a rhythm that kept pace with the ethereal music.

I cocked my arm back and threw it out the doorway. “See,” I said, wiping my hands together, “all gone.”

Chase shoved the box under my nose. The dagger was lying in the box, just as it had a moment ago.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I just…” I pointed at the open door. Chase and Johna both sported grim faces, mouths pulled taut. “How did that happen?”

“The dagger chose you, child. Now you must claim it. Properly.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then it will claim you,” Chase said. “You don’t want that to happen.”

I rolled my eyes. “That doesn’t make any sense. How can a dagger claim me?”

“You could go to sleep one night and never wake up because it embedded itself in your chest,” Johna said. My hands flew to my breast. “Or you can claim the dagger and become its master. Your choice.”

“Do either of you want to explain this to me? In words that make actual sense?”

“We don’t really know a lot about it. The dagger is an ancient artifact. Some say it belonged to Eloh.”

“The goddess you worship?” I asked, needing a reminder.

Johna nodded. “Who do you worship?”

“Um, well, no one,” I said. “I wasn’t raised with any kind of cult or religion.”

“Interesting,” she went on. “You have a lot to learn, then. By the end of all of this, you will worship and you will believe. But that’s not important at the moment.”

She was right. I didn’t care much for mystical beings. I’d never thought much about their existence. What impact could something like that have on my life anyway?

“What you need to understand is that this dagger is more magical than the three of us put together. It wants you, Lianne, or it wouldn’t have come into Chase’s visions. We don’t know if the dagger sent Chase the visions or if they came directly from Eloh. What we do know is that you and the dagger are connected. You can’t resist it, but if you try it might sacrifice you.”

As if I didn’t have enough problems already, now a mystical dagger wanted to kill me.

Chase reached behind me. He wrapped a belt for the dagger around my waist, buckling it on the side. A small piece of hide wrapped around the hilt, securing it in the holster.

“I don’t use weapons to fight,” I insisted. “I’ve never been taught that. Just hand-to-hand combat. I don’t know what you expect me to do with this thing.”

Johna’s laugh brightened up my dour mood. “Oh, child, this dagger isn’t for fighting. Not at all. It’s for peace and sacrifice.”

“How can you even mutter those in the same sentence?” I asked.

“Didn’t you just sacrifice your relationship with Bryden for the sake of peace?” Chase asked pointedly. I wondered if the dagger would embed itself in Chase’s chest if I willed it to.

“That’s different.”

“It’s not,” Johna said. “The dagger has chosen you. You’ll know when to use it.”

“I don’t want to use it,” I said. The picture haunted my vision every time I blinked. I would never, ever kill ten young girls in a ritual sacrifice.

Johna patted me on the cheek while she slid the dagger into the holster. “Then the dagger has chosen wisely. No one should ever want to use it. You’ll be a good caretaker.”

I sighed. “Will this help with the coming war?”

“The war is the least of your concerns now, Lianne. You’ve taken the first step into initiating yourself into our mysteries. So few are chosen. Chase’s mother is the only living person who’s ever communed with Eloh.”

I raised an eyebrow at Chase. That was a tidbit of information he’d never shared about his mother.

“Since then, his mother, Reychel, has learned more and passed it on to me. She cannot leave their land. She has…issues…but she entrusted me to care for Chase as best as I could and pass on the dagger when the time was right. It never occurred to me those two paths were actually the same.”

Johna grabbed Chase’s hand and mine. She put them together. My instincts screamed at me to pull back, but I didn’t want to hurt the old woman’s feelings. She was clearly losing it with all of this mystical talk. Humoring her probably wouldn’t hurt.

“I’m so happy the two of you found each other. Maybe now everything can be set right with our people and the gods. Your children will be the salvation of us all.”

Chase’s eyes were closed. He was probably too afraid to look at me. I tried to hold the anger in, but the flames licked at my stomach. If I wouldn’t be having children with Bryden, I had no interest in ever having them with anyone else.

“Johna —” I started, but the look on her face silenced me. Pure joy radiated from her eyes and her smile. She believed everything she was spouting. I couldn’t break her heart like this. She was old and probably wouldn’t live long enough to see whether or not Chase and I ever had any children together.

“Thank you,” I whispered, not sure what else to say. “I will care for the dagger, I promise.” It was more likely to end up in my chest because I was carrying a weapon I didn’t know how to use. That was how Kellan had nearly killed Sebrina. They were too deadly.

Chase’s eyes popped open. They clouded over and he stumbled backward. I grabbed his arm, steadying him with my weight. “Are you okay?” I asked him. He suddenly looked ill. His face turned grey, his eyes bloodshot.

“They’re coming,” he said. It was barely a squeak.

“Who?”

“The Malborn. They’re coming. Now. They’re opening up portals to the castle. They want us. They don’t know we’re here.”

His color came back to his face as quickly as it had drained out. He regained his balance, standing up straighter. I didn’t let go of his arm. If that was a vision, it was enough to scare me. Maybe he didn’t need reassurance now, but I did.

“We have to go back. Now!” The calm after the vision turned into a frantic rush around Johna’s cottage. She packed up herbs, Chase grabbed various weapons I hadn’t noticed before. They acted as if they needed to leave fast or everything would disappear.

“What’s going on? I mean, I get the rush to help everyone, but why are you acting like the tree house community is about to collapse?”

Chase dropped the weapons on the bed. His fingers grabbed my shoulders. “Because it is about to collapse.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What does the Malborn’s coming have to do with the community collapsing?”

“It isn’t real,” Chase said. “The whole illusion will fall because I won’t be able to keep it up any longer.”

“Illusion?” My voice, normally steady, echoed shrilly throughout the small cottage. I flung the door open and ran down the stairs. What had previously been a huge community dotted with many small cottages was now just one tiny cottage, Chase’s, and Johna’s, still above me. All the people I’d seen, but never really interacted with, had disappeared along with their dwellings. The only sound was the breeze, dancing from leaf to leaf, playing it’s own simple symphony.

“I’m so sick of lies!” I screamed up at Chase and Johna. I opened the door to his cottage and flung open the lid of his trunk. It was still filled with drawings – those weren’t an illusion. I riffled through them, finding the folio with the X on the cover. The bag I’d brought with me used to be filled with baby supplies for Trevin. I jammed as many of Chase’s folios as I could into the bag, so tight I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get them out without cutting the bag open.

I bumped into Chase’s chest as I tried to run out of the cottage. “Get out of my way. I need to help my friends.” I emphasized the word friends, hoping he’d get the clue he wasn’t one of them. He’d kept me here, against my will, telling me that I’d expose everyone who lived here in secret if I tried to escape. I’d stayed fearing my bold actions would hurt innocent people. Turns out there never was anyone to protect.

“Lianne, don’t run off. If you do, the Malborn might find you.”

“Me? Really? I’m beginning to think they’re after you, not me. You just want me around because of this creepy obsession you have with me. No one is after me. They probably only kidnapped me because they wanted to bait you. It’s disgusting. I refuse to continue being a pawn in everyone else’s dramas.”