Awakened Read online

  Jace and Kale had both told me what I was up against.

  “You think that everyone who follows him is so willing.” Something other than anger slipped into his voice—regret, maybe even sadness. “You have no clue what you are up against, the way he can manipulate hate and love and turn you into someone you no longer recognize.”

  It didn’t seem as though Darke was talking to me anymore. Maybe I could reach him; maybe I could convince him to help me leave. He and Ana could come with me and work with the Council. It would be hard to convince Jace that they could change, but I had convinced Jace and Kale to work together, and that worked out better than I had expected. The Council would be even more powerful if they accepted the help of Laurent’s right-hand man. It was probably ridiculous to hope for such a thing, but all I had at this point was hope.

  I had a choice to make, and quickly. Try to convince Ana and Darke to leave with me, risking my plan to leave, or carry out my plan alone, unaided by the only two people who could make sure that I escaped without incident?

  Darke frowned at me. “I can see in your eyes that your mind is already made up, that no matter what you learn about Ana, you will always blame her.”

  He laughed darkly, the black of his eyes leaching into the white. He stalked toward me, and I backed away, into the bed. Darke closed the space between us in a few steps.

  “This world is not what you think it is, Ella. The safe little cocoon you have built in your head, to shroud the memories of your loss and pain, is a figment of your imagination,” he whispered. He stood not even an inch from me, and I had to crane my neck to look into his black eyes, leaning against the bed to steady myself.

  I tried not to let his words affect me, but how could they not? The ‘cocoon’, as he called, it did work. I hadn’t thought of the night I lost my parents in months. I hated myself for trying to close them off in the vault in my head, but I could only cope with one situation at a time. Darke was not going to make me feel bad because of that.

  “You say that it is Ana’s fault that she is here?” he asked.

  “No, I said that—”

  “That it is her fault that she is still here.” He smiled a vicious humorless smile that had me nervous of what he would say next. Darke reached his arm around me and leaned in closer pushing me further onto the bed with his chest. He placed his mouth to my ear. “Let’s say that you are correct in the assumption that it is Ana’s fault that she has been put here against her will and not allowed to leave. Tell me, Ella, whose fault is it that your parents were killed solely to bring your powers to the surface? It was not this camp, but ones in the camp of people that you trust.”

  Darke moved away to look in my eyes. When he seemed satisfied with the pain and anguish that he’d placed there, he moved away and pet my hair. I closed my eyes, not caring about the tears that fell, or the painful swelling of my heart at the lies that Darke was willing to tell to hurt me. The Council hadn’t known who I was before I moved to Cedar, so they couldn’t have killed my parents in the car crash. Darke was blowing smoke, hoping that it would form some sort of truth to me, but he was wrong.

  “Here, let me help you piece together the truth.” Darke moved away from me.

  I let out a breath and slouched against the bed. I was weary, but I was still ready to run.

  “We did not know where you were until we found your records on file on the court system. Kale did a very good job of destroying your records at the mental facility, but there were more ways to find you than the paper files at that state-run institution.” Darke meandered around the room. I couldn’t tell if he was lying or focusing on the story to make sure that he got the details of the story correct. I straightened my spine the rest of the way. My back popped; I winced. “I was in charge of getting that information, and once I found it, we found you, which was almost a year after your parents’ death.”

  He still hadn’t proved that my parent’s death was anything other than an unfortunate accident. “My parents were killed by a drunk driver who drove them off of the—”

  “Road and into a ditch. Your mother sustained a serious head trauma and died en route to the hospital.”

  I held my breath. He was reciting the exact words from the paramedic’s report of the night my parents were killed. How could Darke know any of this if he wasn’t there?

  “Shut up,” I whispered. I had the report memorized, but I hadn’t thought about them in over a year. I hadn’t allowed myself to grieve or remember good times. I had just shut everything out, and now it was crashing down on me, affecting me in ways I had wanted to avoid. If it were my fault that my parents were dead, I wouldn’t—couldn’t—survive it.

  I took deep breaths to control my pain and anger. I wanted to pick something up and throw it at Darke. I wanted to find a stake and ram it through his heart, even though I wasn’t even sure that would harm him. I wanted him to hurt the way he was hurting me.

  “Your father held on for a few hours, but his internal bleeding was—”

  I couldn’t let him finish. I stumbled forward, perhaps on my own accord or through the shaking of my world as it crumbled around me. My vision blurred; tears fell hot and thick down my face. My stomach lurched and did all I could to keep what little bit of dinner I had eaten down.

  “Shut up—shut up—shut up—shut up—shut up!” I screamed, getting louder with each repeat. I clamped my hands over my ears, blocking out Darke’s words as I slowly slid to the ground.

  The world around me was quaking ready to open up and swallow me whole, and I begged for it—pleaded for it to take me and end this, once and for all.

  He and Ana had both tried to prove that they weren’t as evil as Laurent and failed miserably, proving only what I had thought from the beginning: that they were untrustworthy and that my plan to escape was the right thing to do. I don’t know what I was thinking when I believed being here would protect anyone. It was a stupid mistake. That night, I should have screamed for Jace and Kale, not caring if it woke up Alex’s family. No threat should have been enough to keep me quiet, but I was too afraid to draw attention to them, afraid of what would happen to them if they tried to intervene.

  I would be leaving this place if it was the last thing I ever did.

  I felt rather than saw Darke move closer to me. He kneeled down before me and placed his hand on my back, a gentle gesture I never would’ve expected from him. I jumped.

  “Shh…” Darke wiped away the tears that still fell. I kept my eyes closed, unwilling to face him. “We are all pawns in this world, those with power deciding how we live and die. It has always been that way, and I fear that it will never change,” he whispered, and the sadness in his voice called to me in a way that I recognized. “Your life has been stolen from you, as was Ana’s. Laurent had beaten and broken her before he’d discovered that she was not Hélène, the next Arc, but by then it was too late for her. He would never let her go.

  “He changed her into a monster and enslaved her to be the caretaker of each Arc that he captured from there on out. If Ana ever did anything to displease an Arc, Laurent will find her descendants and kills them in front of her,” Darke explained so quietly that I found myself staring into his dark eyes believing every word from his mouth.

  If I left, I couldn’t take Ana with me—Laurent would find her family and slaughter them as punishment—but I still had to go. Being here wasn’t solving the problem. It wasn’t keeping anyone safe, only placing more people in danger. If I wanted to protect anyone, I would have to do it away from Laurent and with the Council, as I had originally planned.

  But if Darke’s story was true about my parents’ death, it seemed like the only other people capable of doing that was the Council itself. The very people I had hoped to protect me might have been responsible for the death of my parents.

  Chapter 11

  Mia

  I thought that I was taking everything really well until Jace started his story about eternal life. I mean seriously, did he thin
k we were stupid? A group of immortals set to keep guard over Ella was asking way too much for me to believe. Funny thing was, Alex was eating that crap up. I mean he was really into it, asking questions and stuff like he truly believed what he was being fed.

  The way he was eating up this so-called information, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he asked to join the Council. Kale was still brooding over his argument with Jace, while Jace stood in front of the fireplace explaining his life story. I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “When the men realized the mistake they had made in handing Laurent’s daughter over to him after the ritual, they created the Council. At that time, they were creating many immortals, and we stood a chance against Laurent—but over time, Aleixandre realized what he was asking these men.”

  I could see that the story was personal to Jace, but I was still not buying that there were immortals. I was going to need some proof, but how would they do that? Jump off of a building or something?

  “He was asking that they spend an eternity working for their cause, taking no personal time, no family, nothing,” Jace said. “Eternal life isn’t all that it seems, but many still wanted it enough to be a slave to the Council, but over time, many defected or just gave up.” Jace sounded sad, as if remembering a particular event.

  “I don’t understand why would they sign up and then defect.” Confusion shadowed Alex’s face. “To be a part something like that would be amazing!”

  I stared at him like he was insane. Even if Jace’s story was true, who would want to live forever trapped in the same job, without any kind of break? Alex obviously was one of those people who would jump into a life decision without the proper amount of planning and thought.

  “Are you insane, Alex?” I asked harshly, not caring that my anger bled through my words. He had to stop, use his head before he did something stupid that made us have to save him or explain to his parents why he wouldn’t be coming home. “You would take a prison sentence like that?”

  The gleam in his eyes didn’t waver.

  “You would leave your friends and family behind, again?” I knew how Alex had struggled with leaving for college and his feelings about returning home. I probably shouldn’t have used leaving his family like that—it was college, not war—but what choice did I have?

  Jace and Kale seemed to agree with me, but I couldn’t really tell what they were thinking. They had done that exact thing that Alex was eager about.

  Alex sat back and eyed me. “Yeah, I could,” he said forcefully. “People do it every day, Mia. It’s called the US military. The US government asks the same of people, and I don’t see you out their telling our troops that their choices were wrong.” Alex shook his head in disappointment.

  He was nuts. Comparing the US military to this group of people that he barely knew was ridiculous. At least we knew what the military did, and in some cases, why. How did he not see that? Okay so the Council had expensive equipment—Trackers, Retrievers, techs, and all that crap—but it didn’t mean that they were immortal.

  “There is a difference, Alex. The US military doesn’t ask—”

  “Doesn’t ask for what, Mia?” He stared at me with hard eyes, getting pretty mad at me for caring about him.

  Jace and Kale stood away from us, watching silently. I wished that they would help me or at least say something. They had started this nonsense.

  “They don’t ask you to leave the ones you love; they don’t ask you to kill the enemy; and they don’t ask for your life?” he demanded. “They ask for all of those things and more. By law, once you join the military, you are their property. There is no turning back. They own you, and you will serve for as long as you’re enlisted. The Council asks the same of you, and I don’t see the difference.” His anger reached a crescendo before he turned to Jace. “Where do I sign up?”

  I screamed, solely because I didn’t know what else to do. “Do not be so stupid, Alex!” I rushed to my feet. “Okay, I get that the military asks you to do all that, but they are on a whole different level. The Council is not the military—you can’t even compare the two. The fact that you seem to want to ignore that proves you aren’t thinking straight.”

  Kale was silent in the corner, and Jace looked a bit disappointed; he’d just explained that they no longer made immortals, and Alex was still ready to sign on the dotted line.

  “You don’t even know if what he is saying is true!”

  Alex waved away my concern. “I made the mistake of not trusting Ella once, and I will not do it again. As a human, what can I do? But as one of them,”—Alex pointed to Jace—“It’d be different. When we get Ella back, I could protect her a hell of a lot better than I can now.”

  Alex had obviously forgotten what happened when Ella put her faith in Kale and Jace.

  “You’re forgetting what Jace told us, what Kale’s told us, and what’s actually happened so far! Ella placed her faith in the Council, and she was taken that same night! Jace even said the Council wants to use her, and you still want to join?” I was amazed that Alex couldn‘t see these things for himself, that he’d let his guilt and fear over Ella blind him. He didn‘t answer me. He just shook his head as if there was something that I was missing.

  Was I missing something? I glanced at Kale and Jace, hoping they might cue me in, but no such luck.

  “She trusted them, and I’m going to do the same thing. Where do I sign up?” he repeated through clenched teeth.

  I shook my head, threw my hands in the air, and then turned to Jace for help. He shook his head and turned to Kale. I could tell that the explanation was not going how he wanted it to go.

  When he said nothing, I turned back to Alex, determined to detour him from joining the Council, the one that Jace had just explained was going to use Ella for their gain. “So, she trusted them, and look at what it got her!”

  Kale visibly stiffened, and Jace took a step forward, crossing his arms over his chest, his mouth set in a grim line. I didn’t care.

  “Alex, jeez. Let’s look at reason here. Jace is telling you that he will live forever. Forever!” I stopped. There had to be a way for them to prove their immortality to us, and if they couldn’t, Alex would stop his nonsense of wanting to sign at the dotted line. I slowly turned to Jace.

  He gave me an ice blue stare, then gave a slight slant of his head, acquiescing to my demand for proof. I was sure that was the first time that he’d acquiesced to anyone in a while—if ever. He had actually been nothing but nice to me.

  Of course, it was probably to butter me up for what he told Alex and me.

  Confusion dimmed Alex’s anger and lined Kale’s face.

  “What would you have me do?” Jace asked.

  Kale’s expression cleared. “Yes, Vesco, what will you do?”

  There was more to the question than Kale had let on, I could see from the silent conversation they held with their gazes. Was Kale uncomfortable with Jace proving that what he was saying was true, or was it something else completely? Jace turned back to me and smiled.

  “Do it,” Alex insisted, reminding me he was in the room—a demand I was sure that Jace was going to meet.

  Chapter 12

  Darke

  Compassion was a sentiment I thought I’d forgotten long ago, that was until I heard Ana’s pleas to Ella. She understood nothing of Ana’s life here in this prison. Ella and Hélène were so different, but that was a long time ago.

  Hélène had understood more about Laurent and the dire situation that Fate had placed her in. Ella was naïve, annoying; and I doubted her ignorance was real. Surely the Council had told her the kind of man Laurent was—the kind that took loved ones’ prisoner to guarantee fealty. His kingdom was one that few ever entered of free will, and even fewer—if any—had left him and lived.

  Ana was one of the few innocents; my own hands were tainted by so much blood, my sight was red with it. She was here because of her parents—their greed for power only awarded them with death and their only child wit
h slavery, losing even her name. Calling her Sophie was forbidden, and no other Chorý here but me had ever risked using it.

  She stood in the corner, shaking with fear. So beautiful and petite. With the strength of ten men and a thirst for blood, she could easily be considered a monster, but it didn’t lessen her beauty in my eyes. “Calm yourself, Ana. She will not tell him anything.”

  She had felt the wrath of Laurent too many times to be calmed so readily. As soon as I uttered the words to Ana, I knew that they meant nothing.

  “Let’s go.” I gently pulled her down the hall toward the double doors that led to the courtyard, to take her to the one place she often visited after a hard day. The patio was filled with foliage strong enough to face winter’s wrath. It was dark out, but the moon was high in the sky and shone brightly through the double doors.

  Her eyes widened, and she pulled from my grasp.

  Ana shook her head. “I can’t leave her in there, upset. I heard what you said to her. How could you?” Fear and concern filled her small face. Ana knew what it was, to be held against her will, to be hopeless and afraid. Even when she should have been angry with Ella and her assumptions, she wasn’t. She understood Ella. In a way, she and Ella were similar—only Ella’s life had an expiration date darkening it, set by Laurent.

  “I had to make her understand, Anastaise.” I placed my hand on her shaking shoulder. “She must be made to understand what has truly happened.”

  Anastaise would hear nothing of it. I looked at her big golden eyes and had to make myself remember that she was no longer a child. She had been brought here at only fourteen, and in the four years that Laurent held her believing that she was the Arc, she’d been forced to become something she wasn’t.

  Though in that time, girls her age were married and with child, she was still so innocent; and in my eyes, she’d remained that way. I did the dirty deeds that Laurent insisted she do. Anything a child like her shouldn’t have had to see or do, I shielded it from her. Maybe my shelter had weakened her in the world where she would have been forced to maim or kill. I took her sins as my own to keep her own hands clean.