Mud (Chromatic Mages #1)

Chapter 6

Rosabel La Rouge

2 years ago

I pretended to be lost in my book as my cousin continued to pick small bugs from the grass and put them in my soda can. She couldn’t tell that I saw her—I was good at pretending. That, and she knew I was reading my favorite book—the best compilation of bedtime stories ever written if you asked me. It had everything in it, from The Sleeping Beauty to Pinocchio to The Valley of the Roc. All stories that I used to talk to my parents about every night when I was little.

We looked very different from one another, my cousin and I. I had light blonde hair that was almost white, and my eyes were a rusty brown, my skin almost too pale. And Penelope Rogan was effortlessly beautiful, with a golden shimmer to her rich brown hair, light amber eyes just like our grandmother’s, a sharp, slightly pointy chin like our mothers—and the inability to tell what too far meant when it came to her jokes and little pranks.

When she put those bugs in my can, she genuinely hoped I’d drink it and get sick. If I did, she’d laugh for days and call it a joke , never mind that she knew that Madeline would refuse to heal me or even send for her team of Whitefire healers at all. I’d have to endure the pain and whatever other symptoms until my body fought them off naturally because we were still seventeen, with no anchors and no ability to use magic properly outside of class without the help of a teacher. Iridian magic became mature enough not to act out, basically, after the age of eighteen, and even then the first few months were dangerous until we got the hang of the magic and our anchors.

But Poppy continued to collect bugs for my drink, and I continued to pretend I was reading because that’s what I did best.

“Won’t you drop your book for once and join me for cake?” Poppy said a moment later, pretending to be bored.

She, on the other hand, was still a shitty pretender, even though our grandmother worked with her most days of the week.

But she never had to hide from her—our grandmother adored Poppy. We were both her daughters’ daughters, but she loved Poppy dearly with just as much intensity as she despised me.

So maybe that’s why Poppy didn’t pretend as well. She simply never had to hide how she felt.

“Come on, Rora!” She pouted. It was awfully fake, and on the inside, I smiled.

On the outside, my face was as expressionless as ever.

“Sure, Poppy. I’m coming.” I put the book away on the table and left the comfort of the rocking chair to go sit with her on her picnic blanket. We were out in back of the Rogan mansion, sitting in the perfectly trimmed grass, having a picnic because it was Saturday, and Saturdays were for bonding, Poppy had decided. We needed to hang out together for at least three hours, because—and I quote: “We should never forget that we are, first and foremost, family.”

She said that last word as if it meant anything—to me, it didn’t.

I never corrected her anyway, simply because it was too hard to explain.

“Don’t you get sick of books in school?” she said when I sat on her pale pink blanket. She put my soda with a black straw in it in front of me, together with a small plate with a red macaroon next to a piece of vanilla cake.

“Not really,” I admitted, grabbing the can in my hand just to make her feel at ease. “Hey, you got any of those chocolate cookies in there?” I nodded my head at her basket that the maids carried for her, which was behind her. “I’d rather eat those than cake.”

No smile required—simple because nobody around here really expected a smile from me.

“Certainly!” Poppy said, excited that I even remembered what she usually brought to her picnics, and when she turned her back to me to search the basket, it was so easy to switch my can with hers, I swear. So easy I almost did it. My hand itched to grab hers—identical, with the straw and all—and put mine in its place, just to see the look on her face. After all, if she got poisoned or sick or something, Grandmother would take care of it within the hour.

I didn’t, of course .

A moment later, she put two cookies on my plate. “There you go. Bon appetit!”

“Thank you, Poppy. You’re a doll,” I said, my voice as dull and as dead as always.

“Go ahead, eat. Drink. So tasty, mmm… ” she said, grabbing her own soda and sucking on the straw.

She’d have bugs in her mouth now if I wasn’t such a coward, I thought—an intrusive thought, one I got often with Poppy. I loved her dearly, but I also hated her sometimes. She could be mean, really mean, and she always got away with it with a smile and laugh, disguising it as a joke or a prank. She never let me be mad at her, either. If I tried, she’d stick to me twenty-four seven, until I wasn’t anymore. So annoying.

But I also admired her courage, something I wished I had more of myself.

“No, thanks. I’m not thirsty,” I said and grabbed the cookie instead.

She tried to not let her smile falter. “But it’s so delicious. Just one little sip, come on,” she said, grabbing the can and offering it to me.

“I’m fine,” I insisted, biting into the cookie. Again, I was smiling on the inside because she was panicking. She’d spent the last thirty minutes collecting bugs and putting them in there. That was hard work, and now I was refusing to take the bait.

How very rude of me, I thought, just when she said, “Rora, it’s rude to turn down drinks from your host.”

I almost laughed out loud. On the inside, of course.

But before I could answer, we noticed someone was coming to us from the mansion—Fiona, one of Madeline’s oldest maids who’d served her since before I was born. She was a sweet woman, over sixty, same age as my grandmother, yet she looked at least a decade younger somehow.

Maybe because the pure evil that infused Madeline’s veins came with more wrinkles—who knew?

“Excuse me, young ladies,” Fiona said with that same smile she always had on her small lips—perfectly fake, perfectly polite.

“What is it, Fi? Is Grandma home?” said Poppy, and she, as opposed to me, loved our grandmother dearly. Her father had loved our grandmother dearly, too—it’s why he’d taken her last name. My father had kept his, and I don’t think my grandmother ever forgave me for that.

But anyway—that was one of the reasons why I never allowed myself to open up with Poppy—or anyone. Madeline Rogan was loved and respected across the entire country. It was a privilege to be her granddaughter, share her blood—and her wealth.

At least that’s what people thought.

“She is on her way,” Fiona said. “She’s bringing back Mr. Hill, and you are to expect them in her office when they arrive.”

Hill, she said, and the name sent goose bumps up and down my entire body. David Hill, the current director of the Iridian Department of Defense, the person who was pretty much in charge of everything around here.

The IDD had an actual council that made the rules and ensured they were followed. It was made of mages from each coven—and some claimed one of them was Mud, though made Mud, not born. Whitefire magic could do that. Just like certain colors could do certain things better—Greenfire made the best shields, and Blackfire perfected necromantic magic, and Bluefire was faster than all others—Whitefire’s forte was healing, and draining magic out of anything, including Iridians, too. Scary stuff, but rumors in our private school had it that the councilman who was Mud had been drained—or stained, like most referred to it—by accident.

I, for one, didn’t believe it considering what Iridians thought of the Mud.

But regardless of who the council members were, from what I had been able to gather when Madeline was the IDD director, they didn’t really matter much. The power had always been hers, and I had no doubt that it was the same for David Hill now, too.

He was coming to the mansion, and Grandmother was always in some sort of a mood when he came. I’d never actually seen him, but she tended to act… strange, to say the least, for a week after he left. I sometimes wondered if it was jealousy—Madeline had been in charge of the IDD for twenty-five years before her retirement.

Poppy was already on her feet— I must get ready!— and she ran for the mansion. She left the picnic as it was, the cakes and cookies uneaten, my soda untouched, and she just ran.

Thank Iris, I thought. More time to read before sunset, though I probably only had about half an hour left.

Until…

“You, too, Rora, dear,” said Fiona, and I looked up at her, expecting to find her laughing at her bad joke.

“Excuse me?”

“You need to be ready, too,” she said, soft hands folded in front of her pale peach uniform. Her ears were perfectly pointy at the tips because she was an elf. A pure blood—or at least as much pure elf blood as was left in the world.

“I’m not allowed into the office,” I told her, standing up to go back to my rocking chair near the picnic blanket. Back to my book.

“You are today,” Fiona said, and to my horror, she sounded honest.

I swallowed hard, looking at the chair—so inviting. “Can you tell her I’m not here?”

Except where would I be on a Saturday? Not like we were allowed to go out with friends or anything.

Not that I had friends, just saying.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Rora,” Fiona said, and it was pretty obvious that she felt sorry for me. “Go ahead, put on a dress. They’re expected to arrive in twenty-five minutes.”

With that, she turned around and left me alone in the yard with only the guards keeping watch in the distance, and the monstrous mansion looming over me, its back doors wide open like a mouth coming to swallow me whole.

Twenty-five minutes later, Grandma arrived home with David Hill in tow and found Poppy and me in her office, just as she requested.

The thing about Madeline was that she always got her way.

Well, almost always.

She liked it when people did what she said. She liked it when she spoke and people jumped to their feet and broke their necks to do exactly what she wanted. She liked it when people didn’t talk back, and people never really did. They just simply followed her lead because she did know what she was doing. If it was in her interest, too, she could make people’s lives very, very good.

Her employees always listened. What she called friends always listened. Her family always listened .

The only one who hadn’t listened had been my mother, who’d chosen to marry my father for love rather than the man Madeline had chosen for her, someone handsome and rich and powerful. My mother had married my father without Madeline’s blessing, and to this day I am convinced that she never quite forgave her daughter for daring to do what she wanted with her life. It’s the reason why she hated me and why she adored Poppy because her mother had married the man Madeline had chosen for her, no questions asked.

She liked them big and powerful and really, really rich—something like the man who was entering through the polished doors to her office right now.

David Hill, a Whitefire mage, who’d climbed the ladder from a simple IDD agent and been elected Director the same day that Madeline retired. He still came to her for consults, though, and she still called him for pretty much everything. There was nothing Madeline couldn’t do, really. In some ways, she remained the director of the IDD to this day, and she thanked her power for it. She could throw fourth-degree spells at you with ease, and that was no small thing. Everybody knew it.

Come to think of it, that’s why everybody always tended to do whatever she said…

“Girls, so happy you could join us,” Grandmother said, her crisp, dark-red suit without a wrinkle in sight, even though she’d worn it the whole day. Her hair was a gorgeous silver, her big eyes the same color as Poppy’s, her smile that of a snake—if snakes wore red lipstick. “You remember David, don’t you? Say hello, go on.” And she waved behind her at the man wearing a silver-white suit and a big, faker-than-fake smile all over his handsome face .

Dark hair slightly greyed round his ears. Grey eyes and sharp cheekbones, freshly shaved skin.

He looked like he’d walked in here straight out of a Hollywood movie set.

“Hello, Mr. Hill. So good to see you again,” Poppy said with a curtsy, and then it was my turn.

“Hello, Mr. Hill,” was all I said as I curtsied the same way. I hadn’t seen him before, so I didn’t really have anything else to suffocate the momentary silence with.

“It’s good to see you, too, girls. You’ve grown so much,” Hill said, and he barely glanced at me, his focus on Poppy. Couldn’t blame him.

Grandmother put her purse on her desk and came closer to where we were waiting in front of one of the velvet couches on the left of her office, put her arm around Poppy’s shoulders, and told Hill, “ I think she’s ready.”

Grandmother had been working with Poppy for hours at a time sometimes, and all Poppy told me about it was that Madeline was teaching her the art of gathering information and uncovering secrets—basically what the undercover agents in my books tended to do. At first, I thought it was so cool and I was envious, not going to lie. But one thought of working one-on-one with Madeline and I quickly began to thank the goddess that it was Poppy who had to go through that instead.

“I’m certainly happy to hear it,” said Hill. “Can we sit down together, Penelope?” And he waved at the armchairs that were in front of Grandma’s large desk in the middle of the room.

“Certainly,” she said—Madeline, not Poppy. And together, they made to go sit on the armchair. Madeline worked her magic with a simple whisper and her Redfire came to life to bring them the drinks from the other corner. A floating tray was not something I hadn’t seen before, and it settled on the small table between them—honey-colored liquid for the adults and an orange juice for Poppy (her favorite).

Meanwhile I was left to stand there like a fucking idiot, without a clue of what to do, if I should get the hell out of there or not— please please please let me get out…

Madeline’s eyes met mine for a split second. Sit, she mouthed lightning fast.

I sat on the velvet couch behind me without a word.

Goddess, I wanted to get out of my own skin so badly.

On the outside, I looked perfectly okay, of course. There was nothing in the world Madeline hated more than drama—and she considered a flinch drama and disrespectful, so I kept it in. Besides, people never asked me if I was sad or if I missed my parents or if I was lonely since I’d learned to control my face. It had gotten so much easier so quickly.

But if I could, I’d scream at the top of my lungs right now— just let me out of here. Let me go back to my room, to my books. I don’t want to be in your presence, damn it! Let me go!

Those words remained on the inside, and the grownups—and Poppy—began to talk.

I had no idea what the hell was happening here, and I didn’t even want to know. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me, but I was stuck in there listening anyway.

First, Hill only asked Poppy about school, her favorite subjects, her hobbies, her friends.

Then he began to tell her stories about the IDD, about the Headquarters that was right here in Baltimore, about the fearless agents who made themselves heroes every day by fighting bad guys and ensuring the rest of us were safe.

I’ll admit I was a bit drawn to the whole thing—it sounded so… nice. To have a purpose. To wake up for something. To go to bed knowing that you made a difference in someone’s life.

Just like my book characters did.

In my head, I was already fantasizing about what it would be like to fight bad guys, and it actually did speed up the beating of my heart. Those images in my head were so authentic, like I really was that person—holding a gun, shooting an evil villain, someone who looked a lot like my grandmother.

I hit her straight in the middle of the forehead and she collapsed.

Sometimes my own thoughts disturbed me. So intrusive. So…potent. Like they were just waiting for me to believe them, and they would take over my personality completely.

“Pay attention for me, will you?”

My eyes blinked at the sound of Hill’s voice, and for a moment I thought he might be talking to me. Of course, he wasn’t. He was talking to Poppy, who was sitting across from the both of them, her back turned to me. I could imagine her face just fine though.

“Please try to relax. Don’t think of it as a test or anything—just a conversation,” said Hill. “Ready?’

His focus shifted for only a split second, and his eyes locked on mine.

I froze. His grey eyes looked almost colorless. White. His smile was just like the absence of mine—meant to hide all that he thought and felt, shield his reactions. Mr. Hill was a dangerous man, I gathered from that small look, but then again, what the hell did I know about anything?

Then he raised his hand, and he had three rings on his fingers. Rings made of bones—his anchors.

Whitefire sprung to life, creating a big square of white flames at first, like a screen right in front of the doors at their side.

“I just want you to look at what I show you—can you do that for me? Just look, that’s all,” said Hill.

“All right,” said Poppy, her voice pitched higher than usual, which told me she was nervous.

But she didn’t have to be—she was Madeline’s granddaughter. The one that mattered, anyway. Whatever the reason David Hill was here tonight, she didn’t need to worry about it at all.

Then the color on the screen made of Whitefire magic began to change, to create shapes, and to bring those shapes to life.

Suddenly I couldn’t tear my eyes off them if I tried—but I didn’t try. I didn’t want to look away. I wanted to see.

A deer eating grass in a bright woods where golden sunlight streamed through the canopy like magic—if gold-colored magic existed. So peaceful, the way the deer ate. Slowly, like he had all the time in the world.

It went on for maybe a whole minute, long enough that my entire body began to relax, too, like I thought I might be in that forest with that deer.

Then the deer raised his head and looked right at me, as if he could suddenly see me, too.

My heart stopped, my breathing cut off, but Madeline was in the room and my instincts were in control, so my face, at least, remained as neutral as ever. Muscles passive. Eyes dull.

The deer disappeared.

In its place came a fish, a strange fish with silver scales and round black eyes, and he was swimming in peace, bubbles coming out of him every time he moved those tiny lips .

Then he stopped. He turned.

He saw us , I was sure of it. He saw us and my heart stopped all over again until he swam away with twice the speed into the deep blue of the sea, like the sight of us staring at him like that terrified him.

Once more, before I could even question what the hell was happening, the image changed, this time to the face of a man with his eyes closed and a half smile on his face. So…simple. It calmed me instantly like a charm, just like the deer had.

The image then slowly zoomed out to show where he was standing with his arms spread to the sides—at the very corner of the ledge of a very tall building. The sun was getting ready to set in the grayish sky behind him, and a big city stretched below.

Far, far below.

Fear tightened a hand around my insides, keeping my heart suspended for a beat.

It all looked so, so real, I felt like I was on that rooftop with him, like I could hear the sound of cars and people from below, even though the images were perfect silent.

It looked so real that I believed it.

Then the man jumped.

On the inside, I screamed, just as Poppy did. On the inside, I closed my eyes and brought my hands in front of my face and stood up— what the hell do you think you’re doing, showing us a man jumping off a building?!

On the outside, I remained as still as ever.

And the images continued to change.

A bull was all alone in a dry field, walking slowly, about to lose balance and collapse any second now. When he heard us—I was sure he did—he turned, and we saw that half of his head was missing like someone had cut it clean off.

Blood. Bone. His wide dark eye…

This time, Poppy didn’t scream, either.

From there, the images got more and more disturbing.

What was this sick, twisted game they were playing, and why was Madeline allowing Poppy to be exposed to this? I got me, but Poppy? She would never.

Except here we were, and I still couldn’t make myself look away. I wanted to. My instincts demanded it— just look away at the wall! But my eyes were glued to that magical screen as it changed images, and I couldn’t even tell you why.

A lion, tired, being devoured by hyenas. A snake eating the body of a dead woman in the woods. A man with an axe in his hands, chopping wood in front of a house in the middle of nowhere—except the view zoomed out again and we saw that it wasn’t wood he was chopping; it was bones. He was breaking skull after skull after skull…

All of it was scary, no doubt. All of it terrified me, and it was going to probably repeat itself in my nightmares for weeks to come—but that wasn’t the end of it.

Because then the image showed a picture of Madeline and her husband, my grandfather who’d died two years before I was born.

They were young in that picture—my grandmother had brown hair, but her face hadn’t changed one bit. Her eyes looked just as cold then as they did now, and her lips were painted the same red, and she looked like she believed her time was being wasted as she stood next to her husband for that photograph.

Then the image changed to them standing in front of a crib with a baby bundled up inside, sleeping, and Madeline was pregnant. Her face was swollen, no rings on her chubby fingers—she could have been only weeks away from giving birth—and she still had it in her to look like all of the world was a waste of her time and she wished to burn everything to the ground.

But then the image changed once more, and I forgot what it was like to breathe.

It was them, my grandparents, and their daughters, mine and Poppy’s moms, when they were teenagers, possibly our age.

I’d seen these pictures before, of course, and I looked a lot more like my dad than I did my mom, whereas Poppy was the spitting image of her mother, who also looked a lot like Madeline. You could tell the three of them were family if you saw them side by side, but my mom and I didn’t quite fit. She looked like her dad, and I looked like mine—except for the freckles on my face and the beauty marks that were almost identical to hers.

The image changed once more, and this time I screamed again—on the inside. I screamed and thrashed and sobbed like a baby where nobody else could see but me.

The picture on the magical screen was that of our mothers and their husbands on their wedding day. They’d gotten married at the same time, and now they sat in a carriage opposite one another, the beautiful couples, smiling, eyes sparkling, happy.

My dad was there, his face so soft but sharp at the same time, his eyes boring right into me. I was daddy’s girl through and through, so much so that Mom complained sometimes—or maybe I’d just made that up to give more life to our relationship that hadn’t lasted at all? After all, I’d been only six when they died, and my memories of them were so hazy. Barely a handful .

But my dad had been my best friend, and I’d never quite found another. He did my hair and played unicorn fairies with me and read me my favorite tales and used me to scare Mom shitless every chance he got.

Now he was there. I’d been avoiding looking at his pictures for the past year now—no idea why. Maybe I just hated having to think about the fact that I didn’t know him, not really. I didn’t know either of them. I didn’t know my own parents, and it hurt.

It hurt now, too, to see them there, hand in hand, smiling. It hurt but it also felt good because I realized I’d missed them. I’d missed their eyes on paper. I’d missed their smiles, the way they made me feel. So safe. So loved.

Then the image was gone, the magic disappearing from the air completely.

Tears pricked the back of my eyes, but I fought them back by simply continuing to stare at nothing—or maybe at the polished doors that had hidden behind that magical screen. I kept my eyes open and took my mind elsewhere and kept my muscles relaxed because Madeline was still here. When we were done, I planned to go straight to my room, to the picture album I kept in my closet, and I planned to look at all those pictures I’d been ignoring for so long. Then I could cry for as long as I needed.

It was okay. I had the pictures. I could look at them all night, and then tomorrow, too. It was Sunday, anyway.

David Hill stood up.

“Thank you so much for that, Penelope. Would you mind giving us a moment now? I’m sure you could use the rest—I’ve drained you with my questions.”

I looked at him. Poppy looked at him. Madeline looked at him.

A second ticked by in awkward silence. This was it—it was over. Whatever the meaning of this little meeting was, it was over now, and we were free to go.

“Certainly. Poppy could use the rest,” Grandma finally repeated, and Poppy stood up. So did I, thanking Iris that I didn’t have to endure another second of this madness.

Until…

“Not you, Rosabel. Please, give me another moment.”

Hill was looking right at me as he said this. Rosabel was my name, too, so there was no way I was mistaken. And the way Madeline was looking at me, then at him…

Poppy curtsied, head down to hide her face. “Excuse me,” she muttered, and she made for the double doors, so fast it could be considered running.

Wait! Don’t leave me! Come back, come back, come back!

The words remained inside me.

“What is the meaning of this, David?” said Madeline, drink in hand as she stood up, too, looking at the IDD director like she couldn’t quite figure out what to make of him just now.

“May I?” he said, waving his hand at me, but he didn’t wait for her reply. He simply walked around the armchair where Poppy had sat, and he came all the way to me.

Damn it, he was taller than I realized, definitely over six feet, and he was towering over me. Smiling at me. Eyes sparkling, so white .

“David, that is Rosabel. I didn’t train her. She is not?—”

“But I just want to ask her a couple questions,” Hill cut my grandmother off.

He cut Madeline off and she clamped her mouth shut, which was how I knew that he was the bigger monster here. A monster another feared.

I swallowed hard .

Then he turned to her, “With your permission, of course.”

He didn’t want her permission at all, didn’t care for it, but he was asking for show. To put her at ease. To give her a false sense of control.

And Madeline knew it.

“Go ahead,” she said anyway because he had the power now. He was the director of the IDD, not her.

“Tell me something, Rosabel, and please be honest with me. A yes or no will suffice,” the man said, putting his hand on my shoulder.

I wanted to push it off me with all my being. I stayed perfectly still instead.

“Of course,” I said, my voice soft and easy, just like Madeline liked.

“Were you afraid when you looked at those images?”

My stomach twisted something awful. I risked a glance at Madeline—was there a proper answer to this, something she wanted me to say?

Her eyes were bloodshot as she sipped her drink and watched me. Murdered me in her mind.

She gave me no signal, no hint, but knowing her…

“No,” I said to Hill because if Madeline hated something just as much as drama , it was weakness.

Hill’s smile spread and his small teeth became perfectly visible. “Were you sad?”

Yes. “No.”

“Were you happy?”

Yes . “No.”

“Splendid,” he told me. “You’re a natural.”

A natural what?

I bit my tongue .

“David,” said Madeline, and anybody who knew her could hear the threat in her voice.

Hill was done analyzing my face with that strange smile on his, so he turned to her and put his hands in the pockets of his pants.

“She’s the one, Madeline.”

The one for what?!

My grandmother paused. Just…paused. No muscle on her face moved. Her eyes didn’t blink, didn’t show anything. That was the example I’d had when I first started to teach myself to keep it in —her. Nobody hid better than Madeline, and she was doing it right now.

“She’s untrained,” she finally said, her voice calm, but I knew she was losing it because she was playing with her ring.

When she was really pissed off, she always played with the ring on her middle finger, a gorgeous blood-red ruby that was her anchor, and she spun it around with her thumb. Slowly. In controlled movements.

“She doesn’t need training. She’s better than most of my agents already,” Hill said.

“She has no clue what goes on in the IDD, David,” Madeline said, but her voice didn’t rise. She didn’t sound pissed off at all—just the same as always.

“All the better—she’s not going to the IDD. She’s simply going to a new school in Columbia, not even that far away from home.”

What-what-why?!

The words were at the tip of my tongue.

“And you think she’s trustworthy?” said Madeline, bringing her glass to her lips again. The stain of her lipstick all over the rim looked like blood.

David Hill began to laugh, and the two of us waited. My cheeks were heated, but I stayed put, hands folded behind me, eyes ahead. Please, please, please, I was praying, though I couldn’t really tell you what for.

“I don’t know!” said Hill at last. “That’s the thing, Madeline—I don’t know. I can tell what you’re thinking. I could tell what Penelope was thinking with perfect accuracy—but her ?” The guy beamed. “She didn’t bat an eye, Madeline. I watched her. She didn’t bat an eye.”

Because she’s here! I shouted in my head. Because Madeline is here and she doesn’t like me to remind her that I have feelings, too, that she has a responsibility to me just as she has a responsibility to Poppy.

She doesn’t like to be reminded, damn it!

“And you’re saying that’s enough,” said my grandmother, and she was no longer playing with her ring. Like she’d suddenly calmed down.

When her eyes fell on my face, I could have sworn she was looking at me with a new light.

“It is, for now. The rest we’ll figure out in the next week—together,” said David, and again, he put both hands on my shoulders. “Tell me, Rosabel, how would you like to be an undercover agent for the IDD? I won’t ask for much, only that you live away from your home and go to a different school until you graduate, that’s all. It’s a simple job, I promise.”

With those words, everything changed.

Six months.

I still had six months left until graduation.

Six months away from this place that was most definitely not my home.

Six months away from Madeline.

By Iris, the fear I’d gathered since I stepped into this office was fading away. Suddenly it all sounded like a dream.

“But most importantly, of course, I promise you this: you will be perfectly safe. You will not get hurt in any way, Rosabel. Do you understand? You will be safe. ”

From Madeline. From her wrath. From her judgment. From my life .

“What we need, really, is information about a boy that you will be going to school with. Just a boy your age, whom we think might be working for some bad people. All we need is information about him, that’s all. Only information—and it is absolutely vital that he remains clueless as to who you are and what you’re doing in that school.”

That sounded… easy, didn’t it?

I dreamed about not being who I was all the time. I dreamed about it, and if I had the chance to make that dream come true, I’d give it my very best.

Iris, is this really happening?

“So, what do you say, huh? Are you in? Are you ready to be a hero yet?”

A hero.

Such a pretty word.

“Or do you need some time to think about it?” said Hill, eyes open and honest. Smile wide. Hands on my shoulders still as he waited.

He was really asking me that. He was really asking me to go away from Madeline for six whole months, something I never actually considered because where the hell would I go that she couldn’t find me?

I looked at Madeline because, despite everything, she owned my soul. I was convinced she’d done some kind of magic to me, even if that kind of magic didn’t exist at all. She’d found a way to infiltrate my thoughts and make me completely dependent on her, make me crave her approval, make me so damn scared of her that my skin crawled when she was around.

Then again, maybe that’s just the consequences of psychological abuse?

Maybe.

But I looked at her, and she didn’t tell me to say no.

She didn’t let me answer, either.

“She says yes, David. She’ll do it,” she said, throwing back the last of her whiskey. “If you so insist…”

David Hill laughed again. Madeline poured herself another glass.

That night, my life changed forever, indeed.