Page 97 of Iridian

“They’ve been waiting,” Radock said, his black leathers melting on his frame, and he looked so different without a suit.So much younger with a clean-shaven face and chopped hair. His eyes were brighter, too. More alert.

He was ready to fight, I realized. All of them were.

“Good,” Taland said. “It won’t make a difference.”

“What about Cassie? Can we see her?” I asked.

“Already tried to do a foresight and a search spell. I got nothing—the place is too well guarded,” Aurelia said. “She’s in there, though. We’ll find her as soon as we kill these people.”

“Taland, we will need you safe at all times,” Radock said. “You will not engage in the fight personally.”

“Noted,” Taland said. “There aremorepeople.”

More?

“The word has spread,” said Radock, looking around the crowd. “I think we’re close to five hundred right now, but more could be on their way.”

“People have grown tired of cowering back,” Zachary said with a proud grin. “More will definitely join when they see us here.”

“We won’t wait, though,” Kaid said. “I don’t think we could if we wanted to. They will attack. They’re ready.”

“So are we,” said Aurelia, and she, too, sounded confident.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking. Maybe because I’d already fought with these people— ontheirside? Maybe because I could guess how many lives would be lost here today?

“They want a word with us. We will go to them. Me and Zach and Aurelia,” Radock said to Taland. “And your soldiers.”

As soon as he said the words, all the soldiers who’d been sitting in the bus, and the ones in the truck Zach parked behind us suddenly moved in unison and came outside, stopping all around us, pushing the crowd farther back.

The people looked. The people whispered. The people pulled out their phones and started recording.

“Lead the way,” Taland said to Radock, completely unbothered.

I thought we were going to go with. I thought that, when Radock, grinning like all his dreams had suddenly come true, turned around and went through the crowd again, we were going to follow.

Kaid did. Aurelia and Zachary did. Fifteen Laetus soldiers who forced the crowd back as they moved did.

But we didn’t.

“Taland?” I said in question, and I even took a step forward to tell him to keep moving, but with my hand in his, he stopped me.

“No, sweetness. We only watch.”

He must have lost his damned mind. “I want to hear what they are saying!” If the Council wanted to speak to Radock and the others, fucking hell, I wanted to hear it!

But Taland said, “Then you will.”

“What are you?—”

I stopped speaking when Taland pulled me toward the front of the bus, then began toclimbto the roof of it, urging me to follow. I could hardly believe it, but the need to see, to know where the Council was, where everybody was stationed, didn’t let me argue. If I tried to run to them now, I wouldn’t make it—and I also didn’t want to be away from Taland. So, I followed, climbed on the hood of the bus, grabbed Taland’s waiting hand and he pulled me to stand with him on the rooftop.

Then, I saw.

My breath caught in my throat.

At first, I thought maybe I was imagining things, or I was seeing wrong, but I wasn’t.All these people…and not just the soldiers in front of the chambers, and others standing by behind the monstrous house we could barely see the sides of. Not just them—butourside as well.

Radock hadn’t been kidding. More had joined us, and even more were coming—I could just see the endless lines of cars parked in the streets and sidewalks behind us as more and more civilians came toward the crowd, some with weapons in their hands, some with only their anchors. All of them ready to fight.

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