Page 101 of Rising

I angled my head, intrigued. “Covert Province, the hell they have to do anything?”

“You’re working with them?” Alexiares asked, not having heard anything about them during the few days we’d been stuck in St. Cloud.

“What kind of self-respecting woman put herself in the position to work with Covert Province?” Moe’s voice was fierce, her words intended to sting.

The Covert Province had formed under the belief that people needed to be segregated by their innate powers, that some were by natural law, better than others. More valuable. Useful. They’d been known to arrange marriages, ensuring that if magic was in fact passed down genetically, each line would be stronger than the next.

Their society was highly patriarchal, men holding all positions of power, and women falling into more subservient roles. If their gifts were extraordinary, they’d use information provided, sure, but similar to The Before, what they had to bring to the table didn’t matter.

Not when a man could just take credit for it in the end.

So we’d heard. Dissent wasn’t tolerated. Verging from the status quo would likely end up with you dead in the center of town.

There were rules for living there though we didn’t know exactly what. Having a respectable amount of power was one. Rumors of families rushing over the border roaming through Transient Nation hoping for a new start, running from whatever they’d left behind, was a hot dinner topic at the beginning. It was mostly rumors because if you asked them what they’d seen, what they’d lived through, you would never get a direct response. Like they’d been programmed to avoid the question or answer honestly at all costs.

“You do what you have to do to survive.” Sloan’s eyes held a ghostly expression.

“They came here first,” I muttered.

Her red hair fell forward as she nodded, her pointed nose twitching as the man at the door peered out, checking our surroundings for someone eavesdropping.

One detail stuck out in my mind. “Show me your neck.”

“What?” Her voice croaked, not expecting my request.

“Show me your neck, or I’ll swipe you from your feet and see it, regardless.”

“He’ll kill you.” He wouldn’t. She would’ve killed me long ago if she truly wanted me dead.

I smirked at her, challenging an old friend. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

She grabbed her hair, lifting it up to show the tattoo on the nape of her neck. It matched.

Anger boiled in my blood, disgusted at her abuse of power. “Those were your guys, your people. Why would you let—”

“I didn’tletthem do shit. They killed Morgan for resisting, killed half of our army. Women and children too, to prove a point. He left me in his will. I wasn’t even working with the leadership anymore. He wanted me home, off the field, make sure there’d be someone left to raise Violet. Our daughter. I had no choice Amaia.” Her eyes were cold, but also pleading for me to understand.

Amaiacoming out like my friend from the dorms. The girl who stayed up late into the night, trolling corrupt politicians on social media while eating leftover pizza we’d smuggled out the dining hall.

I nodded in understanding. There’s no way for me to feel her pain, know what she was going through. Grief looked different on everyone, but I could understand. Her fear for her people, the responsibility now laying at her feet, robbing another soul from their innocence.

I’d met Morgan once. He was an older man, about the age of Prescott. I hadn’t known they’d been a couple. That’s what happens when the only mail that goes back and forth is important, not wanting to risk lives or waste resources. But what I did know was that Morgan had presented himself as being a fair man. And from what Sloan had disclosed, this fair man had died for standing by his beliefs.

She added, barely audible to anyone but me, “My options were to do this, or have no place for Violet to grow up at all.”

“I don’t get it. What’s the end goal?” Alexiares asked, still trying to put two and two together, make sense of it all.

“They want it all.” She explained, “The same shit they’ve been after since the treaty was signed. They think it’s better to go back to how things were, but perfected this time. They’ve been experimenting with DNA. Seeing if he could influence how children are born, using genetic testing and using people who he deems having ‘undesirable magic’ to run experiments. See if he can change their genes. It’s easy, running a controlled experiment in a lab, changing willing volunteers one by one. But it’s faster to changeeveryonethrough contamination or a bite. His first step is to take one settlement at a time, but he wants them fully functioning so the fallout won’t be too bad. Thinks if he takes out leadership, leaves the future of the settlement at risk—”

A chill went down my spine. Eugenics. I knew how this story could end. “Then everyone will fall in line under his leadership. Who ishe, Sloan?”

She turned to Seth, then Reina. “Their father. He’s not a hostage. He’s in charge of the whole damn thing. It was his idea to reach out to Seth, but you cost him time, time he doesn’t think he has. And now, he wants you dead. All of you.”

Reina

Ibroke.

My father is alive. My brother had betrayed me.My father didn’t die.

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