Descend (Awakened Fate Book 2) (4 page)

“Since you’ve been gone, we’ve had a dozen raids on the Prijoran border, outcasts have been spotted hiding near the capital, and our scouts have received whispers that the Vetorian mercenaries are joining forces, with an eye toward expanding their territory into our own. And now she shows up as a damsel in distress – with an unverifiable story, no less – desperately in need of help from arguably one of the least… disciplined… among us. Help which involves bringing her straight past our defenses. How convenient.”

Zeke’s jaw worked angrily. “She’s not a spy. I’ve seen what they did to–”

“Take her to the northwest border outpost,” Ren interrupted, glancing to the men behind him. “And put her under guard. We’ll send a doctor there.”

Zeke drew in front of them. “No, the Sylphaen are still after her. She won’t be safe there.”

“Oh, of course not. I’m sure she claims she
must
be taken directly here.”

“No,
I’m
the one who’s taking her here. If you’d get out of our way, that is.”

Ren’s condescension deepened. “I’m not endangering the city so you can impress your latest piece of ass with affectations of chivalry, brother.”

My brow climbed.

Zeke’s face flushed red, and I couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or outrage. “Fuck off, Ren,” he growled. “I’m bringing her to see Dad.”

“No, you–”

Niall swam between them quickly as Zeke started forward. “Hey! Hey now. Zeke, calm down.” He held up his hands. “Look, Ren. We’ve got her under guard. You want her blindfolded too? We can do that. But just in
case
this is true, you don’t want the trouble of her dying while we wait for a doctor to get all the way out to the northwest border, right?”

Ren gave him an exasperated look. Niall’s eyebrow rose questioningly.

“Really, Ren,” he pressed. “Spy or not, you think Dad wants to deal with that?”

The man studied him for a moment, and then his cold gaze slid over to me. My skin crawled at the derision in his eyes.

“Blindfolded, then,” Ren agreed. “And tied. Armed guards as well, and you two keep away from her.”

Alarmed, I looked between them all, my heart pounding.

“No!” Zeke snapped. “Ren, you don’t have to–”

“Or I send her to the outpost. Which do you prefer?”

“I’ll stay with her,” Niall interjected before Zeke could answer. “Okay? In case Zeke’s not wrong. We don’t want to cause problems, right? Let’s just bring her to see Dad and let him decide what to do.”

Ren regarded his brother, and then jerked his chin at the guards. They swam forward, four of them taking aim at me with the weapons in their hands while the fifth pulled a black hood and a pair of long, metal manacles from the bag on his shoulder.

Adrenaline surged through me at the sight, bringing back a rush of panic like I’d felt when the Sylphaen had trapped me in an ambulance the day before. Eyes wide, I retreated, my skin stinging as spikes pushed from my arms.

“Ren, she’s not a criminal!” Zeke protested, attempting to get between me and the guards. They grabbed him, keeping him from moving farther, and Zeke shoved at them. “You can’t–”

“Hey!” Niall cut in, kicking briefly and then pulling up near me in the water. “Zeke, Chloe, everybody. Calm down.”

He reached out and touched my arm.

I flinched, the spikes growing longer.

“Hey,” he repeated. “We’ll be right here, okay? No one’s going to shoot. You’re safe. Ren, for pity’s sake, she’s a girl, not a monster. Have them put the weapons down.”

“No.”

Niall made an aggravated noise. “Fine then. Zeke?
One
of you help me here.”

Blocked by three guards between us, Zeke gave a quick look to Niall, and then followed the deliberate twitch of his brother’s gaze toward me.

He caught sight of my arms.

“Chloe, listen to me.” Zeke drew a breath, obviously working to calm down. “Just keep the spikes in. Don’t let them out so the manacles won’t hurt you, okay? And stay with Niall.”

The guards swam closer.

“Breathe,” Niall said, putting a hand to my upper arm. “Both of you. It’s only for a few minutes. It’ll be fine.”

Holding the manacles, the guard pulled up near me. I stared at him.

“Let the spikes retract, Chloe,” Niall urged, his other hand moving to my shoulder. “We’re right here. They won’t shoot you. Ren’s just being a jerk, okay? He’s good at that. But no one’s shooting anyone today. You’re fine.”

I looked to Niall. He nodded reassuringly, letting me go. I took a breath and slowly, the spikes crept into my skin.

The guard snapped the manacles on my forearms the moment they disappeared. I gasped, tensing all over again. The spikes tried to return, and ran into the metal instead.

A jolt of electricity shot through me at the contact and I cried out in pain.

Zeke darted toward me, only to be stopped by the guards.

“No, no, no,” Niall interjected, his grip returning to my shoulder. “Spikes back, okay? It’s just going to hurt more if you don’t stop them. Right, Zeke?”

Seeming as if he was fighting not to explode, Zeke tugged away from the guards. Gasping, I met his eyes.

He nodded tensely. “It’s just for a minute. We’ll be right here.”

The guard yanked the hood over my head, and then clipped something to its side.

Numbness rushed through me, deadening everything but the feeling of Niall’s hands on the skin of my back and arms. I choked, and then shrieked again as a stronger burst of electricity jolted me from my spikes contacting the shackles.

Niall’s grip vanished sharply and then returned. “Breathe,” he urged, his voice duller from the force of whatever the thing on the hood had done. “You can breathe. Just stay calm.”

Trembling, I tried to do as he said.

He swam forward, bringing me with him.

I couldn’t feel the water. Not like I had. Gel moved over my face, my arms and tail, its touch neither hot nor cold. The viscous muck slid in through my nose and mouth with each breath, and it took everything I had to believe that I wouldn’t suffocate. Niall’s warm hands gripped me, his touch the only thing still keeping me grounded when all my senses screamed that something was horribly wrong.

“Almost there,” Niall said, his words warped and muffled.

Eternity crept by. The pressure of his hand on my shoulder shifted, guiding me downward.

“Floor below you. Just fold your tail. That’s right.”

Something thudded against my scales.

The hood vanished.

I gasped, the world returning in a rush. Light glared in my eyes, white and gold by turns, while every nook and cranny for a hundred yards around suddenly made themselves known in my head.

Niall let me go. I blinked hard, the blur resolving into a room.

An
enormous
room, filled with dehaians.

Polished white floors stretched away from me on all sides, reflecting blue-white light from chandeliers over a hundred feet above. Levels upon levels of galleries and archways formed the walls to either side of me, all of them shaped from marble and sparkling gold. Ahead, a broad stone dais stood, an ornate set of seven thrones at its top and an intricate mosaic of a blue stone mountain taking up the entire wall behind it. Dehaians with every color of scales imaginable floated in the arches and lined the floor, leaving me in an open aisle that led to the dais and the thrones.

I looked up, and my confusion melted into shock. Another dehaian sat on the largest and centermost throne.

And give or take a few decades, he looked just like an older version of Ren.

My gaze slid to the brothers, all of whom were watching the floor. From the corner of his eye, Zeke cast quick glances to me, concern and discomfort on his face.

The man rose and immediately, the others dropped into a bow.

At a loss, I dipped my head, still watching the man.

“Renekialen,” he said, his voice deep and neutral as it carried through the room. “What is the meaning of this?”

“A spy, Father,” Ren replied, his gaze on the floor.

Zeke’s jaw muscles jumped. “She’s not,” he growled at Ren.

The man’s eyebrow twitched up. “Zekerian?”

“She’s not a spy,” Zeke elaborated, his tone only barely civil.

A moment passed.

“Very well,” the man acquiesced. “Then perhaps we should hear your case for why your brother is mistaken.” He looked to a gray-haired dehaian with faded emerald scales who floated at the base of the dais. “In private.”

The old dehaian moved immediately to the center of the aisle. Drawing himself up to the most of his relatively short height, he intoned something in a language I couldn’t understand, and then paused. “This concludes the royal audience for the day,” he continued in English. “His Highness, King Torvias Ociras of Yvaria, wishes you well.”

The crowd swam from the room. With a controlled gesture, the gray-haired dehaian motioned us all toward a doorway near the base of the dais.

I followed the others, swimming awkwardly with my forearms still bound.

Slender-leafed plants stretched the length of the doorframe, and past them, a room waited. The space was much smaller than the one we had just left, with dark stone for the walls, another door on the opposite side, and a fireplace lit by blue-white flames in the corner. Guards took up positions around the room, while the gray-haired man waited till we all were inside and then pressed his hand to a lighter patch of stone beside the doorframe.

The long leaves of the plants stilled, taking on a solidity like wood. Turning from the door, the old dehaian floated to the corner, stoically awaiting further commands.

Ignoring him, the king looked to his sons. “Ren?”

“The girl tried to get inside the city with claims the ‘Sylphaen’ are chasing her, and that they gave her a drug that requires the attention of our doctors.”

“
She’s
not claiming that,” Zeke snapped. “
I
am! Damn you, Ren, why can’t you listen–”

“Zeke,” his father interrupted. He turned back to Ren. “And where did you find her attempting to enter the city?”

Ren paused. “When I found her, she was with Zeke and Niall. She’d already convinced them of her story by the time I arrived.”

Scowling, Zeke eyed his brother. “Oh, for the love of–”

“Zeke,” the king said. “Where did you find her?”

“In Santa Lucina,” Zeke replied. “Not trying to convince me of anything. She didn’t even know what dehaians
were
till I told her.”

Ren scoffed.

Gritting his teeth, Zeke didn’t look at him. “Ask Ina. She knows all about how this started.”

His dad paused. “I will check with Ina later. Now, you tell me your side and why you think a dead cult is involved.”

Zeke drew a breath. “They’re involved because they attacked me. And because they chained me to a wall in a cave and told me how they wanted to sacrifice her. They also said they’d had trouble finding her, and so they’d drowned a bunch of humans just trying to figure out which one was the girl they were searching for.”

I looked to Zeke. I hadn’t heard that the Sylphaen had grabbed him. Or that those girls…

My stomach turned. I pushed the thought away.

“They told me they planned to give her a drug,” Zeke continued. “Some messed-up form of neiphiandine that they needed her to have for their ‘ritual’. And when I saw her next, they had.”

Ren grimaced. “There is still no proof that she was a victim of any–”

“How about the fact that the first time they tried to catch her, they put her in the hospital with so much head trauma, her human friends thought she would die? Or the fact that drug nearly killed her before she could change fully? Though I’m sure that was all just part of her master plan.”

I swallowed. I knew the hospital had been bad. And I knew it’d hurt when I changed – a
lot
. I hadn’t known what any of it looked like from the outside, though.

“She does strange things to the water when she touches it, Father.”

My brow furrowed.

“And she’s lived on land her whole life,” Zeke continued. “Hundreds of miles from the ocean, and she’s never
once
changed until this week.” He paused. “I’m just trying to do the right thing here. Something insane is going on and I don’t want more people getting hurt from it.”

The king regarded him for a moment, and then his gaze turned to me. I tried not to fidget uncomfortably.

His dark blue eyes seemed to look right through me, and I had no idea what he saw.

“What is your name, child?” he asked.

“Chloe.”

“And what is it you want here, Chloe?”

My brow twitched down. “I want this drug gone so I can go home.”

“Where is home?”

I paused. The answer wasn’t Reidsburg. Not really. I didn’t even know what the truth was anymore.

But anything else would make Zeke look bad.

“I live in Kansas,” I said.

Ren looked away, clearly exasperated. “She’s lying.”

“I grew up there.”

“No one could live that far–”

“That is enough,” the king interrupted. He studied me briefly, and then glanced to his other son. “Niall? What of your opinion?”

Niall hesitated. “I didn’t see any Sylphaen,” he allowed, “but I saw what happened when she changed. Zeke’s right. That wasn’t normal. It almost killed her.”

I shivered.

“This could still be–” Ren started.

His father turned to him, and he fell silent.

“Where did these Sylphaen take you?” the king asked Zeke.

“A cave, north of Anelia by a few hundred miles, and about an hour west of the Lirian relay station.”

The king nodded. He glanced to the gray-haired dehaian still waiting in the corner. “Keep her under guard.”

Zeke made an angry sound.

“And put her in a room within the palace,” his dad continued over the noise. “Have the royal physicians examine her.”

He looked back at Zeke while the older dehaian motioned to a guard, who swam from the room.

“Thank you, Father,” Zeke managed.

“You send soldiers to each border,” the king told Ren, “with orders to search out any evidence that the Sylphaen have returned. Send others to locate this cave.”