Page 96 of Iridian

Well, damn… “I can try.”

A siren sounded somewhere ahead near the beginning of the road, and most of the engines came to life. It was already time to go.

“I’ll take it,” Taland said and kissed me. “You realize that you will be safe no matter what.”

“It’s notmeI’m worried about.”Himfirst, and then everyone else later.MeI could handle.

“Remember what you promised me, baby.”

“Promise me something, too, then,” I said when he opened the passenger door of the old bus for me to get in—and it was already awfully familiar, this feeling, this situation. Exactly like before we went to that valley looking for Hill.

“Anything,” he said with a grin.

“Don’t die.” That was still the most important thing of all.

“Deal.”

So many cars on the road, trucks and busses and SUVs. We didn’t move as fast as I’d have liked, but we were moving. Taland drove in silence, and he seemed perfectly at ease any time I looked at him. It would be a while until Baltimore, but nothing was going to stand in our way, at least. No—the people we would be fighting were waiting for us at the end of this journey that could very well be our last.

The human police and military were not getting involved in this—a deal they made with the Council, apparently, though I was pretty sure they didn’t have a choice. Still, I was thankful for it. The last thing we needed was their blood on our hands, too.

Eventually, I slipped between the front seats and moved to the back. I leaned against the window right behind the passenger seats, and I stayed there for a while, watching the soldiers. They didn’t exactly look uncomfortable, though they barely fit the seats with those armors and those huge swords I had yet to see drawn. I tried to figure out who was who, if theirs was a story Taland had told me, if I knew how they’d come to be here—always trying. The idea of being trapped like this had never even occurred to me, and I couldn’t begin to imagine what it was like to be them. Just like with a lot of things lately, this, too, made me wonder what more happened in the world that was so absurd I could never even imagine it before I saw it happening.

Shivers washed down my back and my eyes were full of tears, which I only realized when I blinked and they moved down my cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the soldiers, but they probably didn’t hear me because of the old bus’s noise, and I barely let out any voice. I knew it meant nothing to them, that they were being forced to be here once more, just when they thought they were going to be set free. Asorrywasn’t going to make a difference.

“Are they…angry?” I asked Taland when I went back to the passenger seat.

“No. They are calm. Preparing. They enjoy fighting, I think,” Taland said.

I was glad for it. It was better than forcing them to fight, I figured, but what the hell did I know?

I didn’t dare look back at them again all the way to Baltimore.

I’d forgotten.

The sight of soldiers and guards dressed in the IDD uniforms, carrying guns and anchors. The smell of the magic of the wards about them in the air. The sound of shouts and orders, of footfalls while men and women rushed to stand in formation, preparing for a fight. The weight of weapons on me—how I’d forgotten. The tightness of a holster around my torso, the weight of guns and knives strapped all over my body. The rush of my blood, the echo in my ears, the pounding of my heart—I’d forgotten in such a short time.

It wouldn’t be long, though. I’d been taught by the best IDD trainers for six months and regardless of how I felt when I first got to any mission site, when the fighting began, I would be calm. My instincts would take over and they would be in charge of my body. That’s how I’d always survived.

Even so, right now, I felt like I might suffocate on thin air.

Everything had become sorealin the past minute. We’d arrived at the Council’s chambers, a building I had seen before, I thought, but I was sure it had looked different then, and I’d heard it was the private property of a very rich guy, or something like that. It was a house as big as Madeline’s mansion, with a grey facade, lighter in some places, darker in others. It had a much more gothic feel, though, with gargoyle statues on every corner, snakes carved around the window frames, and a dark red rooftop that looked like the whole building had been just slightly dipped in blood. Looking at it now, I realized they must have spelled the place because there was no way that I’d have seen this house and not stopped to analyze it before. No way wouldn’tI have known it in detail—it was absolutely breathtaking in a verydarkkind of way.

Or at least it used to be—before there were lines and lines of soldiers standing in front of its wide, glossy doors. Doors that were open.

“They’re here,” Taland said, and every inch of my body was covered in goose bumps as I rose on my tiptoes to see better. I still couldn’t see them, though, but when I tried to move forward, toward the lines of people coming together at the front of the road, Taland stopped me.

We, the truck behind us and only a few other cars had come so close to the building, had stopped right on the sidewalk, while the rest of the people who’d come to fight here had left their vehicles a little farther away, basically in the middle of the city. By now, I had no doubt that any civilian who lived nearby had been evacuated, or at least they’d have run away themselves when they saw what was about to happen here.

“I can’t see them,” I whispered because the crowd of people that had gathered around us, and the IDD soldiers that were standing in the front yard of that house that was the Council’s chambers made it impossible to see the doors.

“It’s going to start raining soon,” someone said from behind us—Aurelia, walking toward us with Zach. They’d left their truck right behind our bus, and the crowd waspouringall around us to get closer to the house.

She was right—the sky was grey, the clouds angry, and I still couldn’t shake the feeling that they were angryat us.All of us for ending up here because of our greed for power.

But before Taland could say anything, the crowd in front of us parted. A moment later, Radock came through with Kaid behind him. Seth was nowhere to be seen.

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