Sewn & Scarred (The Fated Creations Trilogy #3)

Chapter Sixty-NineSage

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Sage

A week had passed since the last time I spoke with Evaline.

I’d passed the time with Dean, and even at the thought of his name, a flutter went through my chest. We’d spent the time training. He’d been teaching me to fight, to throw punches, but I was still shit at it—I was too slow, too weak.

It came so naturally for Evaline. Of course, I knew it was because of her gifts from the Gods, and because she’d been raised to fight. But still, I compared myself to her. And if she was the bar, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to come close.

But now, we cleaned. I wanted to get Lauden’s shit out of here as soon as I could, and clean up all of Ankin’s things, and it didn’t seem so overwhelming with Dean helping.

He was upstairs, clearing the books that Lauden kept on his side of the bed. Dean had promised Kovarrin he’d stay by my side in case I was found to have been compelled again by Vasier. But deep in my heart, I hoped that the real reason was because he wanted to be near me.

And even questioning that seemed silly, considering that he’d already said as much. But after what happened with Lauden, Dean seemed too good to be true. Lauden had too, for a time, but he had been. And if Dean was doing the same, pulling some kind of awful deceit on my heart, I didn’t know that I’d ever recover.

Which was why it was so hard for me to trust him, hard for me to give myself over to the idea that he could care about me in a way that no one ever had before.

We’d already cleaned most of the office, and now I was just going through the drawers of Ankin’s desk to take out Lauden’s things. I sat in the chair behind the desk, and emptied each drawer out one by one.

When I got to the last drawer, the one on the bottom right, it was deeper than the others. The top two drawers on each side were narrow, they could only hold either papers and writing utensils, or a single book. But the bottom drawer was much bigger. I opened it and started pulling out the contents. There was a note that Lauden had written to himself—to review Ankin’s research on Rominium. I shuffled through some more of the papers and found another note but this scrawl was much neater than Lauden’s and I understood it as Ankin’s. I’d already read some of his work before, especially after I found the small book with the different blood samples within it for the wards.

The note appeared that Ankin was working through some problem because it was scratched to pieces, hardly any words were legible anymore after he’d struck them through. I gave up on reading it and pulled out the thin book that the papers laid on top of and moved to set it on the table, but swore as the edge of it hit the Arch Sorcerer’s wax seal stamper that sat on the desk. I tried to catch it as it fell, but it continued down until it hit the bottom of the drawer, the sound reverberating the air around me.

I bent to pick it up when I realized that the sound was off. I grabbed the stamper and my fingers trailed over the wooden bottom of the drawer. It wasn’t a thud, and it wasn’t the sound of metal hitting solid wood. My hand clenched into a fist and rapped my knuckles against it.

It was hollow.

I pushed the chair back and slid out of it, falling to my knees beside the drawer as I curled my fingers around my ears, tugging my hair back. I pulled the rest of the items from the drawer frantically, worry in my heart that Lauden had kept another secret from me. Worry over what next deceit I’d find, as my fingers trailed the seam of the bottom of the drawer on each side.

If you looked at it now, if you really paid attention, you could see that the bottom of the drawer on the outside did not match the bottom of the drawer on the inside. You’d only really be able to tell if the drawer was empty, and you’d dropped something into it like I had.

In the back of the drawer, the part that couldn’t pull all the way out or it would fall off its track, I could see a small notch, the tiniest little sliver of a hole in the rear seam. You’d only ever find it if you were looking for it, and you had to bend your head into the drawer to see it at all.

“Dean,” I called and heard rustling upstairs before the stomp of his boots down the staircase.

“Yeah?”

I lifted my head over the desk and nodded to the letter opener that sat across the way.

“Can you hand me that letter opener?” I asked and he nodded.

He grabbed it and came to kneel on the other side of the drawer as me.

“What is it?” he asked.

I took the letter opener and ducked my head back into the drawer. When you looked at the letter opener now, you could notice that on the edge of the tip, there was some scuffing.

I wedged the tip of the letter opener into the notch and the scuffs disappeared completely.

“It’s a false bottom,” I said into the drawer, my voice coming out muffled as I pried the letter opener against it.

“Did you know?” Dean asked and I shook my head as I continued to pry.

“No.”

“Do you think it’s Ankin’s or Lauden’s?” he asked.

That thought hadn’t occurred to me. I assumed it was Lauden’s just because I assumed that he had another deception over me. But what if it was Ankin’s?

My eyes widened as I worked faster to pull it out.

If it was Ankin’s, I wondered what he could possibly be hiding in here, that he’d keep secret, even from his own Kova.

The false bottom snapped free and I pulled my head out of the drawer with a smile on my face, looking to Dean as I set the letter opener on the desk above me.

His eyes were alight, too, and I could tell that he was just as excited as I was to look within it. I pulled the bottom out, and we both looked down as I revealed a leather-bound book. Dust had collected on top of it.

“It’s Ankin’s,” Dean said as we looked down at it. I didn’t know whether he thought it because the amount of dust on top had been more than could’ve collected while Lauden and I were here, or the handwriting on the front titling the book Ledger of the Tides of Rominia .

My brows furrowed.

“Why would he keep a ledger of tide heights hidden away in the false bottom of a drawer?” I asked.

Dean shook his head. “That’s not a ledger of tides,” he breathed.

I looked up at him, brows furrowed. “How do you know?”

He met my gaze. “Because anyone who knows Cora, knows that she has devised a way to track the tides, and that all the ledgers tracking it are locked up in her office.”

I cocked my head down at the book. It made sense that Cora would be the one to keep track of something like that.

“Ankin didn’t want this found, and the fake title is just a backup plan in case someone found the false bottom. Who would read a book about tides, except for someone like Cora?”

I looked up at him.

“An Arch Sorcerer wouldn’t,” he continued. “An Arch Sorcerer would hand it to Cora without a second thought.”

I looked back down at it. “And Cora is a member of the ruling family,” I said softly. My eyes moved over Ankin’s precise and neat handwriting. “He didn’t trust whoever succeeded him with this information.” I swept my hand over the dust. “Only the ruling family.”

Dean handed me a rag to wipe off the dust. I sat back on my heels and opened the book on my lap. The first twenty or so pages were truly tidal heights. My fingers ran over the ink and felt the indents of them on the page.

They could’ve been real, or he could’ve made them up. But once I turned past the twentieth page, the entries of dates and heights ended, and a journal began.

“If you are reading this, then I have passed,” I read aloud to Dean. “This office held my life’s work, to seek better ways to help the people of Rominia. Throughout it, you can find information on how to protect ourselves from Vasier, and how to protect the Madierian Kingdoms, too. But in this journal, you will find the most important of my experiments. A ledger where I journal my attempts to free the humans, Sorcerers, or Kova, from compulsion. To empower us to investigate within our own minds, if we’ve been compelled, even if we don’t know outright, and further,” a new line began on the page and my eyes drifted down to it as I heard Dean’s breathing still. “To learn how to create defenses within our own minds to stop compulsions in the first place.”

Dean and I both jumped as a knock sounded on the door. He ran to open it, and I moved to shove the book back into the drawer, but when Evaline walked in I breathed a sigh of relief and pulled it back out. If it was anyone but the ruling family I would’ve hidden it, but clearly Ankin had trusted them.

Pain beat through my chest when I saw her and her downcast eyes, her straightened spine. She was still acting polite toward me, but nothing more than that.

“Are you ready to go train with the Sorcerers?” she asked.

Dean shut the door behind her.

“I think you’ll want to see what she found first,” he said, nodding toward me.

Evaline’s brows furrowed as she turned toward me and walked over. I straightened to stand behind the desk and set the book atop it.

“I found this hidden in one of the drawers, under a false bottom.”

I scooted the text over so she could see the cover, and then flicked the first several pages.

“It’s just tidal tracking?” she asked, looking between Dean and me. “Do you want to give it to Cora?”

I shook my head and flipped to the first page of the real content.

Her eyes scanned over it quickly and her skin flushed as she got to the end of it. The pads of her fingers scrolled over the last line.

“He worked on battling compulsion?” she said quietly.

I nodded beside her. “He mentions protecting Kova from compulsion,” I said, pointing to that section. “He clearly knew the Firsts could compel them.”

We both looked to Dean and he shrugged.

Her lips twisted and I could tell she was lost in thought, but my heart sank when she turned to Dean and spoke.

“If Kovarrin wanted you to guard Sage in case she was compelled,” her hands fidgeted at her side. “He probably wouldn’t want her left alone with that book,” she finished softly.

Dean’s eyes snapped to mine as I swallowed.

I understood why she said it, and I agreed that they should protect themselves from me given the important content of the book. And it wasn’t because I thought that she figured I’d betray them, but just that everyone worried that I was still compelled by Vasier.

I still couldn’t believe he’d compelled me the first time, and part of me was convinced that it was only that one time, but I wasn’t sure why I was still having any level of faith in him, after everything he’d done.

Despite all that, Evaline’s words still hurt.

I pulled my hands from the book and nodded.

“I understand,” I said, and looked to Dean. Saw the look of pain that fluttered across his face.

“I’ll tell Kovarrin while you both are at training,” he said, then turned to Evaline. “But I do think that Sage should at least learn how to dissolve her own compulsions, or at least try to learn anyway. It could only help to discover what else Vasier has pulled from her memory, or made her unable to do.”

Evaline nodded, then turned back to me. “Are you ready for training?”

I nodded and ran to change, my clothes were covered in dust from where I’d been cleaning all morning. By the time I came back, she was waiting with Dean by the door, and we left.

Evaline and I went to the training center, which was where we instructed all the Sorcerers who volunteered, to meet us. There was an immediate crowd at the opening of the training center. We’d wanted to meet here, even though we knew we wouldn’t be staying inside the center to train. With different elements being used as weapons for the first time, we’d easily destroy at least some aspect of the training center.

Dean veered off toward the manor after casting me a long look and saying goodbye, and Evaline and I turned to the crowd.

They quieted down and turned to face her.

“I know that you don’t truly know who I am, and have no real reason to trust me,” she started. “I don’t know anything about the Sorcerer culture. I grew up with the knowledge that Sorcerers existed, but that was where my knowledge ended. I didn’t even know I had magic, until a few months ago.” She paused. “I’m sorry for the difficult conversations you’ve had, or may have once your families and communities discover what you’re doing here and that you’re willing to fight. But it’s important to know that making this stance and fighting for this kingdom, and your people, will only help to protect them. If Vasier conquers us,” she said, shaking her head. “Gods know what he will do to the Sorcerers here.” Her jaw was tight. “And based on what he’s already done to me, which was tame, considering he needed me alive, I don’t want to think about what his plans for Sorcerers entail.” She took a breath. “So I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you for being here. Thank you for taking a stand. And thank you for volunteering to fight. I’m Evaline,” she said, then cast her hand toward me. “And this is Sage. And I’m going to do my best to teach you how to fight using your magic.”

We moved everyone to the beach on the opposite side of the loft. Since no one else on the island had Fire like Evaline, the only three elements she had to worry about were Air, Water, and Terra.

We spent hours there. She split us up into each of our elements and worked her way through the three groups. There weren’t many of us, maybe twenty total, so once she broke us down into smaller groups it made it easier to work with her.

She started with Air and taught them how to shield. The Water Casters were already practicing waves in the water, and I turned to the Terra Casters.

“I don’t know how to fight,” I said, and for a moment considered telling them about my portals, but just as I started to, the memory of all the Sorcerers before me who had been killed for it, flashed before my eyes, and I decided against it. “But I can explain what I’ve seen Evaline do, while we wait.” I shrugged.

I told them how she could make the land still, to hide movement and sound, and how she and I both stopped the Mt. Rominia eruption.

A few of them shifted their weight. “We knew about that already,” a woman with red hair said. She looked to be a little younger than me, maybe a couple of years or so. “The Council didn’t like it,” she continued.

I nodded. “I’m like Evaline, I didn’t grow up around other Sorcerers who followed the culture. I grew up learning how to use my own magic, how to make wards, and how to use spells.” I shrugged. “I knew that Sorcerers didn’t like to stop natural occurrences, but people were in danger, and Evaline and I decided to fight it.”

They all nodded, and the woman straightened. “We understand, we agree with you. It’s why we’re here in the first place.”

Before I could respond, Evaline walked up to us and taught us how to still the land. I could already do that, shamefully it was how I’d hidden the sound of the Vasi running on the beaches of Merwinan just before we abducted Maddox, Dean, Grant, Fredrik, and Nash. What I hadn’t tried, and wanted to practice in private, was how to still the land when I used my portals, so I could hide the shake myself.

Evaline continued, discussing how to utilize the magic to kill.

“The Vasi are so fast, just like the Kova. And when you’re fighting, they’re going to be faster than you, so you need to try to keep distance between yourselves. Based on what everyone is saying, the war will likely happen in Widow Maker Plains. There probably aren’t many trees there, given the name, so I would focus on practicing opening the land to swallow someone whole, or using a vine to twist around someone’s neck until they’re decapitated,” she said as she sprouted vines from the sand beneath her feet. “You can also make many vines and clump them all together until it’s one beam, and shoot it through their hearts. There are only two ways to kill a Vasi, remove their head or their heart.”

She continued to go around the different groups while we all practiced. When she was with us, we showed her what we worked on, and when she was with other groups, we’d work with each other to get better. When one person figured out how to make the beam, they taught the others. When another figured out how to cinch a vine around a neck, they explained it to us. And I taught them how to still the land beneath their feet.