Marks of the Past - 18

Chapter 18

It took all of my self control not to scream. 

Panic tore through me like a rabid animal and my fingers shook as I pressed a hand over my mouth. 

Something hit the floor - hard. 

I am not James’s girl, I wanted to scream to those people. I didn’t belong to James and I never would. By referring to me as his, he’d only added kindling to the fire. 

My fingers drifted to the cuffs on my wrists and I realized with a start that Nik couldn’t go very far. Unless that thump was him. I sincerely hoped it wasn’t because no one else knew Kyle and I were down here. 

Kyle. 

I put as much distance between him and me as possible. I could feel his hand pressing against mine like a phantom of a touch. 

“I saw the boy bring the girl up here,” a voice grumbled. “But now she’s gone.”

There was another loud sound followed by a groan. “Tell us where you hid the girl and we won’t hit you again.”

“He’s half-conscious. There’s no way he’ll be able to answer you in this condition.”

The voices continued arguing and I tried to drown them out. Think, Leila, think. There’s always a way out. 

It was hard to focus with the darkness creeping towards me from all directions. 

Since the trapdoor had led down and we’d been upstairs, that meant I was probably between two walls of the house downstairs. Worst case scenario, I used Kyle as a battering ram until I escaped. 

Six feet under. Isn’t that how deep the graves go? 

I had to find a way to help Nik or at least break my connection to him through the chains. C’mon, think. 

What I really needed was Mark but he’d told me that he couldn’t appear many more times in my world without risking him to fade faster. Would it be different if I was in an emergency? 

Mark, I called out, trying to picture the island in my head. I focused on the salty scent of the waves, the warmth of the sand beneath my feet, the sound of the water lapping up onto the shore. 

Less than a second later, Mark was hovering in front of me. His ethereal body gave off a dim glow, but he looked haggard. I noted that his hands were missing in patches, invisible. 

He caught be looking and hid his hands. “What’s going on?” Mark didn’t even bother to try to mask the boredom and irritation in his voice. 

It’s an emergency, I told him. James must’ve hired bounty hunters. They have Nik but I’m stuck in this hole with Kyle. Any ideas on how to escape or get these cuffs off? 

“Let me see.” He reached for my arms, his body still having a surprising amount of solidity as he traced his fingers over the golden bracelets. “These can’t be removed by normal means. I might be able to mask the power, loosen the hold a bit.”

“Will you?” 

He shrugged. “For a price.”

For a price? Mark had never asked for a price before, had he? It didn’t matter, though. I couldn’t let Nik and the others get caught because of me and that meant escaping myself. 

“Fine.”

Mark smirked. “I just need a little bit of your energy.”

“It’s the least I can do,” I assured him, wincing a little as he placed his hands on my forearms. “Will it … will it hurt?”

He didn’t have to answer because suddenly a wave of exhaustion rolled over me. My knees buckled and I slid to the floor, my head in my hands as a blinding headache overtook me, pounding and throbbing. 

“I broke the connection between the chains,” Mark whispered in my ear about a minute later. “That’s all I can do.”

Then his presence disappeared like he’d rode off on a breeze. There one minute and gone the next. My headache lessened just a little bit and I forced myself into a standing position, leaning on the wall for support. 

The memory of the docks flashed into my mind. 

Nik had said I’d put him and the other men into a “death coma” without touching them. Was it possible that I could do that again? 

Once again operating on pure instinct, I let an image of the room above form in my mind. I placed a few random men throughout and Nik on the floor. Then I pictured a silvery barrier roll over them, completely passing by Nik but sending small bits of shrapnel into the others. 

The image disappeared from my mind with a snap and suddenly I was back in my own body. The voices had gone silent so I assumed that my trick had worked, if even for a moment. 

With weakness consuming me, there was only one more thing I could do. 

I screamed as loud as my lungs would allow. Honestly, I don’t know what words I shouted or if they were just noises. I screamed until my throat was raw and I heard the creaks of the floorboards above me. 

Thank the ghosts, I thought, though it had probably only been five or so minutes. 

Beams of light shot into the small hole as someone lifted the trapdoor. 

I heard a string of curses before someone was pulling me out of the hole. My head felt light but I held onto consciousness, afraid to plunge back into darkness. 

“Have her drink this,” I heard Chelsea say, though she sounded miles away. 

Someone pressed a cool glass to my lips and I swallowed the contents. I’m pretty sure it was the same thing I’d been given on the boat because a jolt washed through me and I felt revived. 

The wakefulness was immediately followed by a sentence that made my stomach drop. 

“Kyle’s not breathing.” 

After a solid hour of me slamming my fists on the door and demanding to be let out, someone came to get me. 

Nik grabbed my arms with a grip like iron and then half-carried, half-dragged me to the room at the end of the hall before shoving me in and slamming the door. The lock clicked a second later but I was too much of a wreck to do much of anything. 

I pounded my fists on the door for a while until my hands hurt and my head felt like it would explode. 

The room was a bedroom, one of the many in the house. It seemed odd that this house had almost as many rooms as James’s mansion did. Maybe Monty and Simone had expected to have a bigger family. 

I had pressed myself against the door and sobbed until my chest burned and I had exhausted myself to the point where I was nearly falling asleep. 

Yet after what I guessed was an hour, the lock clicked again and the door opened just a crack. “Leila?”

It was Nik, of course. 

“Go away,” I begged him, wiping at my eyes in a futile attempt to brush away the tears. “Please, Nik, I can’t talk right now.”

“You just did.”

I scowled at him as he opened the door further and I moved myself away so he wouldn’t hit me with it. There was a cut on his forehead that was no longer bleeding.

“Kyle is alive,” Nik explained. “The moment you left the room, he started breathing again.”

A sense of dread hovered over me like a storm on the horizon. 

“Are you implying that you think I’m the cause of this?” I asked quietly. 

Nik seemed uncomfortable. “The signs do point to that.” He paused, considering his next words. “The others wanted to kick you out, but I convinced them not to. You’ll keep your distance, right? We can make it work-”

“No,” I interrupted. There was no way I was going to go on like this, a distant threat to the Shadows. 

Mark had been right all along. 

A frown. “What? Don’t you want to stay with us?” 

“By us you mean the Shadows. I’m not one of you, and I never will be. I can’t replace Becky, I can’t save Kyle, and I’m a danger to all of you-”

“That’s not true-”

“Yes, it is.”

“Then explain to me how you pose a threat-”

“I can’t!” The words came out harsher than I’d expected them to, and I inhaled deeply before continuing. My nails dug into my palms. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Leila,” Nik began, but seemed to think better of it. “I’ll help you pack your bags.”

I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or hurt. As much as I was glad that Nik was going to willingly let me leave, I’d almost hoped he’d put up more of a fight. I didn’t want to leave but I couldn’t stay without risking the others. 

“Thanks,” I whispered. 

Nik nodded once, biting his lip. Silently, he left and returned a minute later with a large bag. We filled it with clothes from Simone’s closet - though they were too big to me. Nik filled a canteen with water while I grabbed food from the pantry. I was sure the others were tending to Kyle and wouldn’t want to say goodbye so as soon as my bag was packed, I turned and made for the back door. 

“Wait,” Nik called out behind me. 

I spun around and he grabbed my arm and pressed the hilt of the dagger I’d been training with into my palm. 

“Do you have to go?” he asked, voice soft and lonely. 

I nodded, unsure of why he was being so nice to me after all I’d done to him. “It’s for the best, Nik. Hope to the ghosts you never see me again.” 

“No, I hope to the ghosts that I do,” he said, and then he handed me a slip of paper.

There were a few major holes in my plan. For one, I had no idea where to go because I knew nothing about Miryir in terms of geography. 

The best option seemed to be for me to follow the dirt trail from Nik’s house to what I was pretty sure was north. I vaguely remembered Nik mentioning a temple in that direction.

Night was falling - apparently I’d spent more than an hour locked away - and I needed a place to stay. 

The temple was impossible to miss from the road. 

White marble rose from the ground and I could almost believe that it had been there since the beginning of time. The walls were clean from ivy or other weeds and the floors were shiny like they were polished every day. Tapestries depicting scenes I couldn’t decipher coated the walls like spiderwebs and in the back of the temple was a statue of a man holding an hourglass. Flowers and tiny slips of paper were scattered through the small pool of water around the statue’s feet. 

I let myself breathe a sigh of relief when I finally finished inspecting the temple to find it wasn’t the same one I had dreamt about. 

Still, I felt out of place here. The statue seemed to glare at me, its eyes glowing as though there was a lantern lit inside of its head. I could feel its gaze piercing my chest, the weight of its anger. 

But it was either sleeping in here or on the road. 

Finally I decided that I couldn’t ignore the piece of paper Nik had handed me before I’d left and pulled it out of my pocket.

It was a letter - one from Nik. I read quickly and discovered that it detailed the rest of his plan in depth. I memorized as much as possible before taking the paper to one of the torches and tossing it into the flames. 

“What are you doing?”

I jumped at the sound of the voice, spinning around wildly to find a sword pointed at my throat. 

“Aron?”

“So you do remember me,” Aron said, relaxing his grip on his sword so it came to rest at his side. I noticed that he was alone, no guards at his side. That seemed like a risky move on his part. 

“Of course,” I retorted, backing away towards my bag where I’d foolishly stored my knife. 

Aron’s free hand was on my arm a moment later. “Nice try, but I know what you’re capable of.” He turned his arm so I could see the white fingerprint still vivid on his wrist. “I’ll let you go though … for a price.”

I froze, not expecting the possibility of him letting me go. 

His grin widened. “Ah, yes, you are surprised by my offer. All you have to do in exchange for you freedom is tell me why Nik and the others are here in Miryir.”

“You think that I would betray my friends,” I said, not as a question but a statement. 

“I saw you run from the house in tears,” Aron answered, seemingly pleased. “They were never your true friends, and they never will be.”

He sounded so much like Mark that I wanted to slap the grin off of his face. 

So I did. 

I wasn’t thinking and it happened so quickly that for a second I thought I’d imagined it. Then I was on the ground with a sword pointed at my throat. My cheek throbbed where Aron had backhanded me. 

“Y’know, I thought about sparing you,” Aron began, wiping the blood from his nose with his free standing, sword never wavering from my throat. “You could’ve been free.”

I stayed silent, wincing as the blade dug into my skin. 

Finally, Aron gave up, sheathing his sword as he helped me to my feet. His eyes lingered on the cuffs on my wrists and I wondered if he knew what they were supposed to do. They didn’t work anyway, it was just that I had no idea how to get them off. 

He sent me a pitying look before giving a sharp whistle. 

About a dozen soldiers came pouring into the room and panic seized me as I realized I’d been foolish to assume Aron came here alone.  

“Remove the old chains and attach new ones,” Aron ordered. “Then she’s to be taken to the dungeons for association in murder.” 

“No!” I cried out, trying to make a grab for my bag as fear rushed through me. 

One of the soldiers kicked me in the side and I fell back to the floor where I continued my desperate crawl for my stuff. 

“She’s armed,” I heard someone say just as I reached for my dagger. 

Then something came crashing down on my head and I plunged into darkness. 

It was my second time in a jail in a little under a month, and I had to admit that Miryir took better care of their prisoners. 

I’d woken in a cell that was surprisingly bright, though the rest of the appearance was similar to what I would’ve expected. The stone walls were smooth and there was a bed in one corner and a private bathroom with a toilet and shower in the other. Electrical lights were embedded in the ceiling and on the far side of the room were thick bars with a dark curtain separating me from the rest of the world. Next to the bars was a chair and a small table that seemed built into the bars. 

At first I was confused as to why I wasn’t chained down or anything but then I noticed that my original chains from Monty had been replaced with two golden bracelets. The metal was intricately wrapped around two identical blood red gems, eached one engraved with the Miryir crest. 

I made a few loud noises, showing the guards I assumed were probably on the  other side of the curtain that I was awake. 

My strategy worked and a few seconds later, the curtain was peeled back just a bit to reveal an angry looking woman. “Do you need something?”

“Yes, actually,” I said, feigning an air of confidence. 

The woman gave a small smirk. “Oh yeah? 

I nodded, crossing my arms in the imitation of what I thought looked tough. “I want to speak to Prince Aron.” 

The woman actually laughed. “Sure, sure. I’ll let him know.”

“I want him down here right now,” I argued. “Like, in the next five minutes. Please and thank you.”

“Honey, he’s with a visitor right now. And you’re a prisoner. You won’t be seeing him anytime soon.” She reached out an arm to close the curtain but I lunged forward, grabbing her arm and holding it tight. 

I didn’t know much about the Hidden Arts, but I let my growing panic guide me and a picture of a girl who looked vaguely like the woman popped into my mind. I forced it forward, causing the woman to stumble backwards with a jerk. I regained my composure as quickly as possible, trying to appear as though whatever had happened was entirely intended. 

“I think I’ll get Prince Aron,” the woman muttered, rubbing her temples and looking extremely pale. The curtain slid back closed a moment later and I heard the sound of retreating footsteps. 

A few minutes passed and then the entire curtain was pushed aside to reveal a small alcove where the guard stood in front of Aron. 

The prince looked bored as he took a seat at the extension of the table on the other side of the bars. He made a show of twirling his dark curls around his finger, never quite meeting my eyes. I took a seat across from him, clasping my hands in front of me. 

“Good morning,” Aron said at last. “How are you?”

“Wonderful,” I replied in mock cheeriness. “Compared to the Republic, Miryir has very nice prisons.”

Confusion slid onto his face but was gone a moment later. “You’ve been to prison before?” 

I shrugged. “Admittedly, only once unless you count right now. But that’s more than normal, right?” 

Aron sighed, giving a small shake of his head as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, I don't know who you are besides an accomplice of Nik’s - but you’re also a highly wanted fugitive of the Republic. Who are you and what do you want? And make your answer quick, because I have places to be.”

“My identity doesn’t matter,” I protested. 

“You do know we have ways of making you talk, right?” Actually, I hadn’t been aware of that before. 

When I didn’t give an answer, Aron gave another small sigh before pressing something on the underside of the table. Immediately, the door opened to the cell and he strolled inside, hands at his sides. 

He rubbed his knuckles once and then the pain was blinding. I hadn’t even seen him move, but I could feel the dull throb of where he’d punched me right under the eye. 

I moved to retaliate but fiery pain shot up my arms and I let out a yelp as it felt like my skin was being boiled. The bracelets. Not only did they function as cuffs meant to brand me as property of Miryir, but they could be used to restrict me. 

Aron moved again and I raised my hands to protect my face. Instead, he whipped his foot around my ankles and sent me crashing to the ground where I was given a few kicks in the ribs. Just when I felt like one of my ribs cracked, Aron finally eased up and grabbed my arms, yanking me to my feet. 

“Care to answer now?”

I didn’t even bother to try to stop the tears. I’d never been strong, never been one to hide my emotions. I wanted Aron to see what he’d done, to look at my bruises and see the monster inside of him even though I knew it would never compare to the monster inside me. 

“My name is Leila,” I whispered. “As for why I’m here, it’s all part of Nik’s plan.” 

“Why betray him?” Aron asked me, hands at his hips and a scowl across his perfect face. “Why give away your secrets?”

I smiled, letting the blood from my nose drip down onto my lips. 

“He thinks I’m on his side, he thinks he can get away with the assassination …” I pressed my hands over my mouth, cutting off my words abruptly. 

And with that, the seed was planted.

Author's Note

Sorry this chapter took a little longer than normal. I really struggled with the last scene (and all of them kind of) but you'll see why the last one in specific was so important. Lots of fun coming up!