Julian
I didn’t knowhow long I stood there in the cold on Fallon’s balcony, staring at the doors separating me from her. The late-night wind moaned and whistled through the cracks of the cliffs behind me. My eyes traced the black outline of my silhouette reflecting off her balcony door because it couldn’t trace hers.
She’d denied me. Yet, I deserved it after the way I treated her outside of Voodoos. My back had been against the wall. What else was I supposed to do?
I didn’t want to leave her balcony and return to the woods. Fallon Grimaldi shut the door in my face, and because of it, my feelings for her only intensified. She was much stronger than I’d given her credit for, and I was a stupid and sick man who’d risk everything to be around her, even if it were for five more minutes. Because, somehow, she calmed the dark half of me. And if I wanted a chance to be with her, to make this right, I had no choice but to use this pent-up frustration on breaking the curse so the Order wouldn’t see me as a threat any longer.
“We’re talking about the same Fallon Morgan, right? Kane’s girl, the one who couldn’t order a beer?” Phoenix asked, humor spiking his tone as we walked through the woods bordering the town, near the breaking of dawn.
He’d saidKane’s girl, and I wanted to tear out my own ears as the rest of them laughed a handful of laughs, as if they’d held them in fists and thrown them up into the trees’ canopies to only duplicate and bounce off and fill my cursed ears all over again. A constant reminder that she wasKane’s girl, not mine. That she belonged to Kane Pruitt, not me.
I should’ve never confessed to them the reason I’d bolted from them after overhearing Crazy Abbott. Or the fact she’d slammed the door in my face.
“Alright, she’s not so bad after all,” Phoenix went on, “Has a bite back? I like it. Maybe she does have a little Grimaldi in her after all.”
“Or Pruitt,” Zeph added, another callous laugh to follow. Another blow to my already rejected soul. I stayed quiet, and Zeph fell back and elbowed me in the arm. “It was idiotic to go to her at all. The Morgan girl isn’t a part of the plan, and she isn’t our responsibility,” he said low to me, his tone grim. I may have been shadow-blooded who cast no shadow, but Zephyr Goodywasthe shadow. Our ancestors had given him all the features to persuade one otherwise—light blond hair, airy green eyes, skin paler than mine. However, Zephyr, the air element, was a darkened whisper more dangerous than an omen, devoid of all emotion, a mysterious force more dreadful than all other beings that went bump in the night. “If the freak ends up deceased in the middle of Town Square, so be it. One less member for them, only a favor to us.”
The dark woods thundered beneath my boots as I snapped, yanking him backward through trees before slamming him into one. “Don’t talk about her like that!” The words exploded out of me before I could take them back, and his two green orbs glowed back with a smirk in them. I fisted his jacket. “Remember the code we live by,” I added, taking the heat off my reactions toward Fallon.
Zephyr Goody may be the shadow, but I could see in the dark.
His chest puffed. The woods silenced. The Heathens silenced. My icy shadow rushed through my blood.
“He’s only joking,” I heard Phoenix say behind me, laying a palm over my shoulder. “Right, Zeph? It was a joke.”
“Don’t test my patience,” Zeph warned, pushing me off him.
I let off and straightened my coat, darting my gaze around the Heathens until it landed on Phoenix, who squinted his questionable eyes. “Let’s just get this over and done with.”
The plan was simple yet bold: steal the books of the first families from the Chambers to break our curse.
As we stood over the trap door about a mile behind Town Hall, which led to an underground passageway to the Chambers, the woods groaned, already punishing us for our future betrayal to the Order, to the town. The leaves rustled in the wind, warning us, but this was the only way. I tried to block out the sounds, but the raven in the distance squawked, reminding me that death was all around, and Fallon could be next.
The underground tunnels spread out below Weeping Hollow like a spider web in the shape of the Norse Woods pentagram. There were five points of entry. This was one, directly north of Town Hall. The second one was at the Pruitt Mansion. The third at the South-East cave under the Morgan property from the sea cliff. The fourth at the cemetery. And the last point of entry was at Goody Plantation. A full circle, all leading to the middle under the gazebo where the original Chambers were located.
“You sure you want to do this?” Beck asked as Phoenix tied his hair back. “Because once we do this, there is no going back.” I expected this of him, to convince me to back out now because what we were doing was wrong and something I’d typically never agree to. Beck could feel my hesitation diffusing from my skin. And if I said no, he’d stand beside me because that was who Beck was.
Phoenix crouched and swiped the leaves from the wooden trapdoor before looking back up at us. “I’m going in and walking the green mile with or without you all.” We called it that because prisoners had to walk the mile-long trek through the tunnel before they were sacrificed, as my father did.
“Julian, you’re up.” Zeph nudged his eyes toward the lock on the trap door.
Phoenix’s gaze flared up to me, none of them able to unlock the deadbolt on the trapdoor without causing a raucous.
I inhaled the woods, summoning the little power I needed. Then cocked my head. The deadbolt clicked open.
We were in, and Zeph raked his disdainful gaze over me. It was never a contest between us. I was more powerful than Zephyr Goody. Since his father was the only one left standing from that generation, aside from Drunk Earl, Zephyr was next in line for the Order. It was supposed to be me before Dad died, but I never wanted the weight of the Order on my shoulders. Zephyr could execute with quick intellectual agility, and without his emotions getting in the way, whereas I couldn’t. I only wanted to see that it stayed fair, balanced. But breaking this curse would never cure Zeph’s ghoulish heart. The only way to fix Zephyr Goody was if he found someone he loved more than himself.
Leaves and dirt slid down the wooden door as it creaked open. Once the door collapsed against the earth, a cyclone of bats blasted through the opening, throwing Phoenix backward with a high-pitched scream. I pressed my lips together, holding in my amusement.
All our eyes fixed on Phoenix as he calmed himself down with a chuckle. “Come on, none of us were expecting that.”
“Whatever you say.” I stepped down first.
“You know who screams like that? Girls,” Beck stated, following behind me. “Girls scream like that, Nix.”
“And those douchebags from the Eastside,” I pointed out.
“Which are the same,” Zeph added.
