Page 12 of Iridian

The guilt ate at me, gnawed at my insides like a living beast. I had been too weak to make sure she was okay. Too weak to stay conscious.

“Of course, you don’t,” I said after a second of loaded silence. “You know they won’t. They’ll kill her—and you don’t care. Maybe you even prefer it.”

“I don’t. She saved you, despite everything. But if her own grandmother will allow the Council to kill her, who am I to try to intervene?” Radock said, having composed himself as fast as always.

“Mybrother,” I said, and it was hard to keep the bite out of my voice—so hard.

“Is that so? And was I your brother when you betrayed me and yours for her? When you called Madeline Rogan herself to come for her granddaughter?”

Words died on my tongue. I had no idea he’d found out—not that it mattered. I would have told him myself when the time was right.

The problem was that the time never seemed to be right. For those short hours when Rosabel and I were together in that safe house, everything had made such perfect sense, had aligned as it should. But then I had a fucking debt to pay, and so here we were again in this old dance.

“I need a car.” Because I was realizing it was useless to stand here and talk to him. His opinion wouldn’t change no matter what I said.

“You’re not going anywhere,” said Radock, and I would have laughed any other day.

“What you need to do is sit down and call to your mind and forget about Rosabel for a second—she can take care of herself, okay? I met her. She will be just fine.” Aurelia again, and she pushed both me and Radock to the sides—we’d come much closer to one another than I’d realized. “Whatweall need to do is figure out how to find David Hill before everything goes to shit because if he wins, Taland—you know what happens?” Again, she looked up at me with that conviction. “Thenwe alldie. Notjust Rosabel, butallof us.” She gave her words a moment to sink in.

Fuck, she was right.

How I hated that she was right.

“So now that you got your head out of your ass, help us figure out how to track Hill, and once we stop him, the Council will have no reason to want to get rid of anyone, will they?”

“You’ll have your girl back and everybody lives happily ever after,” Kaid said.

“Nobody’s going to behappyanytime soon, I assure you,” Violet muttered.

“Just help us,” Aurelia insisted. “Help us find the Devil, at least—they are surely together. You spoke to him. You worked with him when he helped you escape the Tomb—you must know something about him.”

“David Hill,” Radock said. “He’s the most important thing now. We need to find him.”

Violet came closer. “And the best part?” She smiled as if to show me that two of her upper teeth were missing. “The best part is that we’ll still need to contact the Council if we do.”

“Wedon’t,” Zach insisted, but his eyes were closed and he had sweat on his forehead—hiscleanforehead. Just now I was realizing that everyone in this room was clean and dressed in fresh clothes, healed and rested, probably fed. Meanwhile my stomach was growling with hunger, and as much as I hated to feel the weakness of my muscles, I still did. Healing spells were miracles, indeed, but they still needed the body’s own energy.

“We don’t need anybody’s help,” Kaid agreed, but Radock didn’t.

“We do,” he said. “Unfortunately, Violet is right—we do need the help of the Council. Alone, we cannot defeat Hill.”

“Or maybe we can.” Zachary came closer, too, and even Seth was finally interested enough to get up and come closer. Theywere all around me now. “Maybe we can with the help ofthatthing.” He pointed at the bracelet in my hand. “You can use it. The Drainage in the Roe turned you Mud—that’s what Rosabel told Radock. You can use it.”

Suddenly, all the pieces clicked in place in my noisy brain. I might have been tired and hungry and still not fully recovered from the torture that Yuri and the Devil’s people put me through for those few days, but I still had the upper hand here.

I could still win. I wasgoingto.

“That is true—I could,” I said, raising the bracelet again, inspecting the details, the mud-like surface, the thickness of it, how cold it was to the touch.

Then how it fit my wrist, just slightly tighter than I’d have preferred.

I released a bit of my magic just for show, just to allow small flames in all colors to dance on the tips of my fingers so they could see. So that each and every person in this room could see that I was not fucking around.

They did.

The way they watched those tiny flames could have been funny.

“Here’s the thing, though. Not only will I use this to help you against Hill, but I can do something far better—recite the Script of Perria the Devil sent me to steal. I can recite it to you as many times as you’d like.”

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