Sovereign Hope (39 page)

A guard helped
Jacob up. He pushed the Immundus away once he had gotten to his
feet and staggered forwards, staring accusingly at Daniel.

“
Boy…” he seethed, “you should know better.
Nothing
can kill us. Not
you, not your stupid disgruntled spirits, not even
her
royal
highness
over there. Now
hand yourself over. I’m going to make sure I have my retribution
before Tobin strips you bare.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

A Burning Sword, A Burning Soul

“
Hey, you.”

The quiet
voice behind me made me jump but Daniel didn’t notice. He was still
locked in argument with Jacob. I spun around and found Kayden
standing right behind me, so close I could smell the distinctive
chemical bite of the five different colors of paint sprayed across
his t-shirt. It was even dried in his pale hair.

“
What are you doing here?” I hissed.

Kayden gave me
a beatific grin and held out his hand. “Here to whisk you away,
Madame. This situation looks decidedly dangerous, and we wouldn’t
want any harm coming to you, now, would we?”

“
I’m not going anywhere. They’re going to kill Daniel. I have
to stay and help him. Why can’t they see you?”

The blond boy
laughed and withdrew his outstretched hand. “Because I’m glamored.
They can’t see me talking to you. They can’t see you talking to me.
To them, you look like you’re staring with your mouth open, which I
thought was an appropriately human reaction to what’s happening
right now. They won’t notice for a few more moments. Plenty of time
to make our getaway.”

“
I
told
you.
I’m not going anywhere. Not without Daniel, anyway.”

Kayden sucked
his teeth. “That’s going to be tricky. The Quorum aren’t very happy
with your boyfriend. He was supposed to end his life and give back
all of his power to Aldan so that the prophecy could be fulfilled.
You can imagine how it looks now that Aldan’s dead and Daniel’s
wandering around toting a fully loaded talisman. They think he
broke his oath. That’s a pretty serious infraction in their eyes,
especially when there was blood involved. Daniel’s a marked man.
Might be better to let him fight his way out of here. With you
gone, he could do it.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Daniel
did
give back all of his
power. Aldan tricked him. It wasn’t his fault, Kayden.”

The boy
shrugged.

“
You’re loving this, aren’t you?” I hissed. “You’ve hated
Daniel for the last fifty years. You couldn’t care less that he’s
going to die. You make me sick.”

Kayden,
through his tan, paled. “I don’t hate Daniel.”

“
Then why have you been fighting with him all this
time?”

A torn look
battled its way across his face. He shoved his hands into his
pockets. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Daniel turn to look at
me, and a strange expression passed over his face.

“
Daniel and I are friends,” Kayden said. “We had a falling out
a while back. This is just a flash in the pan. If you had eternity
to work through your disagreements with other people, fifty years
might not seem like such a long time to you, either.”

I fixed Kayden
with an accusing glare. “Daniel doesn’t have eternity. He has about
five seconds before the Reavers start dismantling him piece by
piece. And you refuse to help him. Just tell me one thing, Kayden,
before you go. Did he really make that deal with the Quorum? Did
they really promise to try and find another way to end this?”

He didn’t reply immediately. The crowd around us was reacting
to something happening on the dais, and my attention flickered to
the three men on the judgment seats. Tobin was on his feet,
descending the steps towards us, and Daniel was looking at
me.
Really
looking at me.

“
What’s going on?” I asked.

“
Daniel knows you’re glamored. I’m not sure about your
grandfather.”

“
Don’t! Don’t call him that. Just answer the question and
leave.”

It was as
though Kayden didn’t know how to keep emotions from his face. The
hurt that appeared in his eyes was shocking. “Yes,” he said. “The
Quorum did make that deal with Daniel. But—”

“
But
what?”

“
You have to be very specific when you agree to something with
the Quorum. Emissary Nevoi did swear to try and find another way
to
fulfill
the prophecy, but she
didn’t promise to
use
the alternative solution. Having Daniel give himself over to
Aldan, and then having Aldan drain the life from you offered a
rather convenient solution to two imbalances in the natural order
of things. Daniel was never supposed to exist, and you…you aren’t
normal. If they used you to kill the Reavers, what would they have
done with you then?”

I couldn’t
think. I couldn’t react. Tobin had almost reached Daniel, who was
moving to put himself between me and the other man.

“
Kayden,” I growled, “Tell me. If there’s another way to stop
them, tell me now. If you truly believe you’re Daniel’s friend,
then you have to help him. You have to help
me
.”

Tobin was
approaching Daniel with a satisfied smirk, while Daniel met his
gaze. There was no fear in his eyes but I felt differently. I cried
out as the slight man reached, his hands swathed in that cold, cold
flame, and grabbed hold of Daniel’s head. Daniel crumpled to his
knees in an instant.

“
Kayden!”
I screamed. The crowd leapt
into a
furor
, the people surrounding us
struggling to get away from what was about to happen. I pushed down
the hysterical urge to throw myself at Tobin and turned back to the
paint-splattered boy. I was about to scream at him again, but I
didn’t have time. He reached out and touched me on my forehead. The
slight pressure of his fingertip was less than a gentle kiss, but
it felt like being smashed in the head with a bowling
ball.

There were
images, voices, all kinds of languages charging through my mind,
and yet I understood them all, saw them all at once. I knew
everything Kayden knew, knew everything there was to know about the
prophecy. I knew what I had to do.

“
STOP!”
My shout cut over the crowd’s
panicked cries.

Daniel was
still on his knees, his body bowed exactly like back in the hangar
with Aldan, but now the light was pulsing out of him and up through
Tobin’s arm. Tobin’s head was thrown back like a sickening
declaration of victory. Only Elliot and Jacob heard me cry.

“
Stay back!” Jacob yelled. He remained seated, as though I
didn’t pose enough of a threat for him to rise. Elliot wasn’t even
looking at me. He was watching with a look of resentment as Tobin
pulled all the power out of Daniel.

“
Are you just going to let him take it all?” I shouted at my
father. “Why does he get all the power? Shouldn’t you get a share
of it, too?”

Elliot cast me
a bitter look but quickly turned back to watch Tobin. Trying to
rile him had been worth a shot, but I was clearly going to have to
take matters into my own hands. I raced forward, pushing past
bodies as they tried to move the other way. I was about to reach
Tobin when I found myself lying out flat on my back, wheezing, as
though I’d run straight into a brick wall.

Kayden stood
in front of me. If he had seemed torn about helping before, he’d
definitely made up his mind now. A grim determination was set on
his face, and his hands were bathed in a golden light. It was the
same color as his pale hair, and it flared into an unbelievable
brightness as he struck out at Tobin. The light formed into the
shape of a long, brilliant sword that hurtled through the air and
slammed into Tobin’s body. As it made contact, Kayden’s t-shirt
ignited, and black marks began to appear around his neck and
shoulder blades. Smoke curled away from the thin material to reveal
his tattoo—the one that I had seen chaining his collar bone—burning
brightly through the glyph-shaped holes in his scorched
t-shirt.

Tobin flew
back with the force of the strike and suddenly Kayden was nowhere
to be seen.

“
Daniel!” I ran to his side. His eyes were rolled back in his
head and sweat was pouring off him. His hands were shaking, but he
was slowly coming around.

“
What happened? He was here, wasn’t he?”

“
Who? Kayden? Yeah, he was here.”

Daniel
blinked, getting to his feet. “He shouldn’t have done that. He
shouldn’t have helped.”

I fought the urge to slap him. “He said he was your
friend
, Daniel.
He
wanted
to help
you.”

Daniel was
deathly pale and there was a horrified look in his eyes. “You don’t
understand. You don’t understand what he’s done.”

“
Never mind that now,” I said. Tobin was stirring, and Elliot
and Jacob had roused themselves from their surprise at Kayden’s
attack. “He told me what I have to do. I know how we can both
survive.” I whispered just enough of what I had seen to fill him in
on the plan, and he fixed me with a guarded look.

“
Are you sure? Are you sure you can do this?”

“
Am I sure I can go through some minor pain in order to save
the life of the person I care most about in the world, as well as
my own? Yes, I’m sure.” I saw the flash pass over Daniel’s face: a
startled, burning look, and I realized what I had said. At least I
hadn’t told him I was in love with him. I shrank back from the
nightmare that would have been dealing with
that
revelation, and pulled on his
arm. “Come on. We have to do this. Are you strong
enough?”

“
Yes.”

“
Then let’s roll.”

“
That was remarkably stupid.” It was Tobin, right behind me.
“What do you intend—” His sentence fell short.

There was no
buildup this time. Daniel exploded.

His body bowed
back, and the full force of his power erupted from his hands and
chest. The arcs of lightning struck out, reaching Tobin first. He
hurtled back through the air until he crashed into the wall at the
other end of the room. The other forks of energy took their time in
finding Elliot and Jacob, and the two men had scrambled to their
feet and were making for the door by the time they found their
mark. In an instant, they were pinned beside Tobin.

This is it
, I told myself, feeling
my heart race away. I stepped towards Daniel.

“
Farley!” Oliver screamed, running towards me with the knife
in his hand. “What are you doing? Come on, we should go now while
we can!”

I squeezed his
arm as he looked at me, confused, and gave him a small, regretful
smile. “I think it would have been nice to have a brother,
Oliver.”

He reached to grab hold of me but I jumped out of the way and
rushed towards Daniel before Oliver could stop me. I had to do it
now. I felt horrible for having lied to Daniel, but if I told him
what Kayden had shown me, that this option gave me a
chance
of surviving, an
imperceptibly small
chance
, then he would never have
agreed. And it was the only way.

The Quorum, Aldan, my father—they were all right. To
fulfill
the prophecy, I would likely have to die. It just
wasn’t going to be the way any of them had imagined.

Daniel’s head
was thrown back and his eyes were closed tight, his whole body
being torn under the strain of the power surging from him. He was
in pain, and I wished in my heart that I knew he was coming out of
this alive, even if I probably wasn’t.

There was no
time to linger, though. Oliver rushed forward again, and I pushed
all other thoughts out of my mind as I ran forward. At the last
possible second I leapt. Oliver’s fingertips brushed the back of my
shirt but it was too late—I was snatched into the stream of burning
blue and white.

The impact was like when I had touched Aldan, but much, much
worse. I’d never known there were so many different dimensions to
pain. How it could fill you from head to toe and rip you apart
until there was nothing left. How you could wish that you didn’t
exist if only to escape from being
you
, the person whose soul was being
torched. My body was ripped from the ground, and the lances of
energy were striking
me
now, over and over again.

What Daniel
had said was true. This energy really was made up of people. With
each passing second, some new hurt rushed to consume me. Bitterness
at a life ended too soon. Fear for loved ones long dead. Anger.
Anger. Anger. But worse than that—loss. The light was filled with
such an abundance of loss that I wondered how I would ever be able
to breathe again under the crushing weight of it all. And I
couldn’t. My chest remained paralyzed as all the horror and the
pain poured through me. It ignited and burst out from my back in
three fierce streams to strike out at the Reavers anew.

Daniel and
Oliver were down there somewhere below me, but I couldn’t see them.
I couldn’t see anything but the brilliant, terrible light.