Fatefall - 24

Chapter 24 - Jett 

While Dusan could not be charmed by Zara and I, we discovered that he did, however, have a soft spot for one of the guards that had been assigned to watch him. 

Jett knew that they were out of time and out of options. 

He watched Adrian crumple to the sands, defeated. Watched as Nakoa glared at the sun like she could change the fact that nightfall was swiftly approaching. Worst of all was Sage, who appeared to be on the verge of tears.

Jett knew it wasn’t his fault. The team had made a collective decision to investigate the light. But as someone who regularly dealt with lies and things not being what they seemed, he felt responsible for at least some of the blame. 

“We’ll be fine,” Poppy repeated for probably the fifth time, tossing her pack to the sand. “This isn’t a death sentence, guys.”

“It could be,” Adrian argued.

“It won’t be,” Poppy promised. She turned her attention to Nakoa. “I know the answer is probably no, but is there any way that you could use your Grace to reverse time?” 

Nakoa thought for a moment, then pursed her lips. “I…I don’t think so.”

“All right, so let’s think: what other Graces do we have at our disposal?” Poppy asked. “My Grace isn’t going to do much good…What about you, Jett? Could you hold an illusion for the night?”

“Possibly,” Jett said. It didn’t taste like a lie, but it felt like one. 

“He could barely hold his illusion of me for ten minutes,” countered Adrian. 

“That’s because your father has the Grace of Void,” Jett said, feeling the need to defend himself. “It takes a whole lot more energy when the person you’re tricking---and the person you’re masking---have the ability to nullify your power with a single touch.” 

“Jett’s Grace won’t work on the hunter with the Grace of Deceit,” Sage pointed out. “It probably won’t be super effective on a Graced of Void---or a Graced of Life or Soul, for that matter. They can sense lives and souls so…”

“It’s worth a shot,” Poppy argued. “I think Jett’s Grace is strong enough to protect us.”

Her confidence, however kind, was misplaced. What set Jett’s abilities apart from others with the same Grace was his ability to change his appearance. He excelled at switching faces as easily as trading one jacket for another. But hiding things? Not so much. 

“I can try,” Jett conceded, knowing Poppy wouldn’t let the idea rest. He closed his eyes, preparing his Grace, but Poppy cut him off with a slap. 

“Not yet,” she said. “Right now, you need to rest. You probably won’t be getting much sleep tonight.”

“I can sleep while maintaining an illusion,” Jett protested. I do it every night. Only his parents and Evangeline knew what he truly looked like beneath his false appearance. Evangeline only knew because of the few close calls with death Jett had already had. 

“It’s not going to be restful sleep,” Sage said. His eyes narrowed at Jett. “I’ve read books on Graces, Jett. If you sleep while maintaining an illusion of this scale, it will drain you dry. You might not wake up--”

“Sage, no offense, but I think I’m the expert on my Grace here, all things considered,” Jett said, voice bitter. “So let’s trust my judgment on this one, yeah?”

Sage frowned but didn’t reply. 

He knows I’m not telling the whole truth, Jett realized. Sage knew what kind of danger Jett was putting himself in, which explained the glare he was shooting in Jett’s direction.

Jett ignored this and sat his pack on the ground Poppy’s, reclining against it and closing his eyes. “Look, Goldie, I’m taking a nap. Happy now?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Wake me up when it’s time for the illusion.” 

It seemed like only a minute passed before someone was shaking Jett’s shoulders.

“All right, pretty boy, it’s your time to shine?” Sage’s voice hissed in his ear.

Jett smirked. “Pretty boy?”

The warmth fell from Sage’s expression and Jett’s heart twisted with hurt. “This isn’t the time for jokes,” Sage insisted. Jett sighed and Sage turned away, hiding his face.

They’d been like this since the trip to the bank. Maybe Sage was trying to protect himself from his parents’ wrath, or maybe he was protecting Jett. Whatever the case, Sage had been distant and cold, ignoring Jett’s not-so-subtle attempts at flirting. 

“Are you sure you can do this?” Adrian asked, his dark eyes boring a hole into Jett’s chest. 

Jett nodded, trying to ignore Sage as he angled his body away from Jett and rested his head on his arms. 

Focus, he told himself. 

“One of us will be keeping watch at all times,” Adrian explained. “If we see a hunter approaching, we’ll let you know so you can strengthen the illusion. For now, just make us invisible. Don’t bother masking the sounds or anything--”

“Believe it or not, I know what I’m doing,” Jett grumbled.

Adrian’s gaze shot to Sage and back to Jett again, his brow furrowing as though he was trying to figure out what was going on between them. 

Jett pushed the distraction from his mind. He could worry about Sage’s sudden change in character later, when he didn’t have more pressing matters to attend to. 

He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply to calm his nerves before beginning.

His Grace always had some vague awareness of his surroundings, and this was no different. To create an illusion was simply a matter of masking the truth. He imagined his Grace like a gentle fog and willed it to drift across the camp. Whenever it brushed up against an object or one of Sage’s teammates, he let his Grace surround them. Once he was pleased with the spread of his Grace, he breathed his lie into the fog and let it take shape.

We aren’t here. There’s nothing to see except sand.

When he opened his eyes again, it was like peering through blurry glass. He could see the vague forms of Poppy and Nakoa resting a few yards away. 

A headache throbbed to life in his head and pressed a finger to his temple. 

“You feeling okay?” Adrian asked. Jett didn’t have enough energy to wonder if that was concern he sensed in the prince’s voice. “Fates, Jett, you look terrible.”

Jett tried to glare at Adrian, but his eyes couldn’t quite focus. “I’ll be fine,” he lied. “It’s that this is a larger scale illusion than I’m used to. I’ll be able to maintain it for the night, but someone might have to carry me around tomorrow.”

Adrian laughed, but Jett hadn’t meant it as a joke.

Nausea rippled through his stomach. At this point, he wasn’t sure if he’d be walking for the rest of the week. 

He exhaled sharply as his headache worsened, leaning back against his pack. 

“Hey, are you sure you should be closing your eyes?” Adrian asked. “You said you can sleep and sustain the illusion at the same time, but…” He trailed off, clearing his throat. “Uh, maybe you should remove whatever illusion you have on yourself like you did last time.”

“My good looks would blind you.” Jett tried to add a bit of humor to his voice, but instead his words slurred and his head pounded in time with his heart. “Not a chance. I’ll be fine, Your Highness. Now let me sleep.”

He rolled over, hoping Adrian would get the hint that he didn’t want to be bothered. 

Luckily, Adrian seemed like he was more interested in keeping watch than pestering Jett about his Grace. Good. 

Exhaustion tugged Jett into a downward spiral and then he was falling, falling falling…

One of the odd perks of the Grace of Deceit happened to be that it normally prevented dreams. Well, sort of. It didn’t prevent them, but usually Jett could tell when he was dreaming, which allowed him to control the images and essentially turn them off. It was built-in nightmare protection. 

Unless, of course, he exhausted his Grace on other matters, like maintaining the illusion of invisibility on a group of five for ten hours.

Nightmares poured through his mind, a torrential stream with seemingly no end. Each one shoved him further into the recesses of his brain, burying him alive with a series of images. His parents with nooses fixed around their necks, faces bloated. The patrols in Aecheral, searching for Graced children. Fever turning his blood to lava. His teammates lined up on the stage with Koda pressing oil-coated fingers to their wrists. Sage, eyes wide and the bleeding hole in his chest even wider. A cold blade digging into his throat. Stop it. Please. Help. Make it stop. Screams. Echoes. 

He tried to claw his way to the surface, but each time he grabbed a handhold, a dozen more memories and scenes and sensations bombarded him, slipping down his throat and choking him. Each breath came harder than the last.

A sharp pain bloomed on the side of his face. Jagged shards of images sliced at his skin, leaving him bleeding and broken. 

“Jett!” 

“Wake up!”

“Quick, they’re here! Hide him!”

“You’ll be okay, sweetheart.”

“What’s the weather today? And the streets?”

“Jett! Stop! You’re hurting me!” 

He pressed his raw and bloody fingers to his ears, gritting his teeth as he tried to shut out the sounds. A feral scream burst from his throat. 

Cold claws dug into his chest and tore out his heart. Agony, hotter than white flames. 

The screams cut off abruptly and the flood of nightmares trickled to a stop. Someone was calling him. Jett. Jett. Jett. His digging became frantic as he clawed himself forward, following the sound of a gentle voice. Calling, coaxing, pleading.

He burst to the surface, air filling his lungs once more. His chest burned as he convulsed, trying to suck in as much sweet breath as possible. 

“You’re okay, Jett. You’re safe.” Soft fingers brushed a strand of hair from his forehead. Gentle hands cupped the sides of his face, thumbs resting over his cheekbones. “You need to stop thrashing or you’re going to hurt yourself. You can do that for me, right?”

He forced his shaking limbs to still, half-tempted to sink back into the darkness. 

The brush of a finger across his cheek. It’s soft touch anchored him to reality, kept him afloat. He let it drag him back to reality. 

His eyelids fluttered open and he found his face mere inches away from Sage’s. 

A dozen voices erupted at once and Jett lifted his hands to his ears weakly. Sage shushed them and sweet silence fell over the camp. 

The camp.

Jett bolted upright and winced as the taste of blood filled his mouth. 

“Yeah, you’re not ready for the whole ‘sitting’ thing yet,” Sage chastised, gently pushing Jett back to ground. 

“I’m not sure I’m ready for the whole ‘being awake’ thing,” Jett said, voice cracking. 

Although a cloud cover blocked the worst of the sun’s wrath, inescapable heat had already settled over the sands. Which probably meant that the shivers that racked Jett’s body were a bad sign, but he was trying to look on the bright side. But sunlight also meant it was morning and his team should’ve been on the move by now--

Jett tried to prop himself up on his elbows, but Sage simply shook his head. 

“Considering I just spent the last hour trying to coax life into your body, you’re going to stay on the ground for a while,” Poppy said. It took Jett a moment to realize that she was kneeling beside Sage, her fingers trembling in her lap. 

Jett didn’t know what to say to that, so he offered a meek, “sorry.” 

“I told you that you were taking too big a risk,” Sage mumbled. “Fates, Jett, you almost died. You’re lucky Poppy had the last watch and her Grace told her that you stopped breathing, otherwise you…” His words were high and reedy. Jett wanted to make a joke about it, but figured it wasn’t a good time. 

“But we didn’t get caught,” Jett offered, trying to sound cheery. 

“We didn’t get caught,” Adrian agreed. “There was a close call during Nakoa’s shift---she saw a figure in the distance but they didn’t come close to us. Nice work, Jett.”

“Don’t compliment him on being an idiot,” Sage grumbled, crossing his arms. 

“Hey, I’m still here, aren’t I?” Jett shot back. “My throat may be on fire and I feel like I’ve been to the afterlife and back, but you’re all lucky because I survived!” 

“Only because Poppy and Adrian understood their Graces,” Sage said. 

“Wait…Adrian? Adrian used his Grace on me?”

Adrian took a seat on the other side of Jett. Dark circles rimmed his eyes and Jett wondered if it was because of him or because of Adrian’s guilt about the previous night. “I had to, Jett. Sage thought that maybe your Grace was dragging you down and asked if I could nullify it in hopes that you might be saved…and it worked. Your Grace is still there---don’t worry. I just disabled it for a little while.”

Jett knew it was futile, but he reached for his Grace anyway. Nothing but a sharp pain in his head. He sucked in a breath, grimacing. 

Sage murmured some unflattering names under his breath and Jett glared at him. 

Jett briefly debated telling his teammates about his visions but decided against it. An explanation would only serve to worry them more, or maybe make them think he was incapable of even the smallest of feats with his Grace.

“Are you able to walk?” asked Nakoa, her face drawn in worry. Jett had a feeling that her concern wasn’t for him, however. 

Jett glanced at Adrian. “When I said you might have to carry me around today, I wasn’t joking.”

“So that’s a no?” 

“I can walk, but it’s not going to be fast and it’s not going to be pretty,” Jett said, already regretting it. He forced himself into a sitting position, wincing as his temple gave another throb. 

Sage looked like he wanted to say something, but kept his mouth shut. 

“Let’s give him a few more minutes to rest,” Poppy decided. “I’ll lend him some of my energy and the rest of you can pack up.” Or, in other words, I’m going to make sure he’s really okay while simultaneously trying to knock some sense into him.

A moment later, Jett and Poppy were relatively alone, though Jett knew his other teammates were most definitely eavesdropping. 

“Are you sure you’re not going to pass out again?” Poppy asked, laying a hand on Jett’s wrist. He imagined she was using her Grace to check him for other signs of damage. Her brow wrinkled. “Do you want to talk about…what happened?”

“No to both of those,” Jett said curtly, having no desire to discuss such things with Poppy. 

She raised a fiery brow. “I can sense your pain.”

“Really?” 

“No.” A ghost of a smile. “But the offer still stands. I know you’d probably rather discuss things with Sage, but I figured I’d just let you know that I’m here too. For anything you might need.” She shot a playful glance at Sage, and Jett wished his mask could hide his blush. 

“Thanks,” Jett said. “I’m not really in a hurry to relive everything I just went through right now, though. Sorry.”

Poppy gave his wrist a gentle squeeze. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Jett.”

He tried to smile---he really did. Still, the voices from the visions persisted. Jett! Stop! You’re hurting me! He recognized the voice, but not the scene. It was Sage’s frantic cries, and yet it had yet to occur. Was it destined for Jett’s future? Or had it been a nightmare weeded in with his other memories? Jett couldn’t be sure. 

You have nothing to be sorry for, he told himself. Yet.

“I didn’t think you were serious about needing to be carried,” Adrian complained as Jett dropped to the sand for probably the fourth time. 

“I don’t need to be carried, I just need a break,” Jett said, taking a long swig of water. 

“Doesn’t look that way,” Adrian said. “Honestly, it would probably be faster if one of us did carry you. At this pace, we’ll make it another fifteen steps before nightfall.”

To be fair, the sun was beginning to set but Jett wanted to argue that he was injured and exhausted. His Grace was only just returning, and it wouldn’t nearly be strong enough to maintain another illusion for the whole night. Not that his team would allow him to use his Grace anyway. 

While Adrian liked to pretend that nothing had happened, Poppy fussed over Jett like a mother bird and Nakoa---always practical---made sure that he survived the day. As for Sage? 

Jett knew it had been Sage’s hands cupped around his face, Sage’s hands cradling his head, Sage’s fingers brushing across his cheeks. He knew Sage had cared enough to be worried, but once Jett had been up and walking, Sage had returned to his cold indifference. 

“Too bad Jett’s Grace doesn’t apply to actual shapeshifting,” Nakoa said. “Then he could make himself small enough to be carried around in my pocket.”

“Imagine the chaos we could cause if Jett really could grow and shrink at will,” Poppy agreed, her face lighting up. “You could slip under doors and break into all kinds of places. Oh, and just think of all the ways you could eavesdrop…”

Jett tried to pay attention to Poppy’s ramblings about the things she wished she could do with the Grace of Deceit. His mind wandered, though, and he found himself thinking about Sage’s parents. The nightmares he’d faced had been horrible, yes, but he still preferred them to someone controlling his soul. Despite the panic that had lodged itself in his throat and made it hard to breathe, he’d been unable to stop himself from picking up the knife and pressing it against his own throat. The fear that had overwhelmed him in that moment had been unbearable, and it had felt more like dying than actually almost dying, at least in Jett’s opinion. 

Something tugged on his Grace. At first, he assumed it was similar to the prickling his limbs felt after they fell asleep and woke back up again. The sensation didn’t fade. 

Jett glanced up, wondering if maybe Adrian was playing a trick on him, but the prince seemed oblivious and he wasn’t that good of a liar. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that something was being illusioned… 

These Trials were designed to be difficult, so why would the checkpoints be easy to find? They wouldn’t be---they’d be well hidden as to pose a challenge. And the easiest way to hide things? In plain sight. 

Ignoring his teammates’ orders, Jett allowed his Grace to brush up against the weird tingling sensation. A flash of light in the distance, and then a handful of dark tents glittered to life in the distance. 

“What in the Fates is that?” Nakoa whispered. 

Jett chose to ignore his other teammates’ responses, as they contained a good deal of cursing. 

“I guess this is your doing?” Adrian turned to Jett. “What happened to not using your Grace?”

“To be fair, it just…I could feel the checkpoint. It was messing with my Grace because someone put an illusion over it. So I think a thanks-for-saving-my-sorry-butt-again should be in order,” Jett said. 

Adrian did say thanks, albeit with a number of creative expletives.

“We’d better hurry up,” Nakoa warned. “Jett took down the illusion for everyone, meaning that if there are any other teams around, they’ll be bolting for the checkpoint---and it’s almost nightfall.” 

“We’re probably the only team who went to the desert,” Sage said. 

They heeded Nakoa’s warning anyway. It was a relatively easy path to the checkpoint, and it was motivation enough that Jett didn’t need to stop and rest anymore---even though his legs burned and his head pounded with every step. 

The checkpoint was facing the opposite direction so they had to walk around the tents to get to the front entrance. They rounded the final corner…only to come face to face with another team.

Poppy shouted another curse, this one Aecherian as though she’d run out of other options. Nakoa bolted for the entrance to the checkpoint, but a masked member of the opposing team shoved her to the ground. 

Jett’s hands flew to the twin daggers at his waist, determined to get his team into that checkpoint. 

He leapt towards the entrance, stabbing one of his opponents in the arm. Someone punched him in the back of the head and he stumbled but didn’t fall. His panic melted away. This was where he belonged---in the midst of action, always moving and never thinking. 

Jett tripped one opponent and slammed his knife into the leg of another one. He lunged for the tents again, though someone caught his ankle and he hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind from his chest. He reached back, prepared to stab again when a soft yelp left his limbs frozen. 

Sage.

“Put down your weapons,” ordered one of the other competitors, holding his dagger to Sage’s throat. “I said drop your weapons!” The threat was unsung, but Jett understood perfectly. 

Disobey and Sage will die.

Jett tossed his daggers to the sand with a grunt of disgust, holding up his hands in surrender as he rose to his feet. Maybe he could create some sort of illusion or distraction--

A blade jabbed into his back. Another threat. He could feel the labored breathing of one of his opponent’s against his neck. It had to be one of the people he’d stabbed, but they didn’t seem weak enough to be taken lightly. 

A quick glance his teammates told Jett that they would be at the mercy of this other team. The largest member had Nakoa’s arms pinned behind her back, and she wasn’t struggling. Two of the others had Adrian kneeling at their feet, though they both appeared injured as they struggled to hold on to the prince’s wiggling form. Only Poppy was left, her chest heaving as she seemed to evaluate her options. 

Please let her have some sort of plan in mind, Jett begged. 

Poppy threw her daggers to sand and Jett’s shoulders sagged. They’d found a checkpoint only for it to be stolen away, and now they were at the mercy of opponents who would have no reprecussions for murdering them. Real reassuring. 

He’d all but given up hope, but it was then that Poppy chose to attack.

Author's Note

All right I promise this is the end to Jett's suffering (just kidding).