Sewn & Scarred (The Fated Creations Trilogy #3)

Chapter Eighty-NineSage

Chapter Eighty-Nine

Sage

M y eyes were locked on Broderick as he stood in front of me, in front of all my fallen friends.

And now, every moment of kindness from him ran through my mind. Questioning, wondering, if that was all a ploy. The reason he’d been kind, if it was another manipulation born from an order from Vasier. Just like Lauden.

Vasier knew he couldn’t convince me, knew Lauden couldn’t, so he wagered that Broderick could. Thought I’d be manipulated as easily now, as I had in the past.

And when that hadn’t worked, there had been a backup plan. A contingency.

“The time is now, Little Sorceress,” Broderick spoke the words casually. Capped them with the nickname Vasier had always used for me. As if it was any other sentence being uttered in any normal conversation.

But the sound of those words—of those words strung together in that order—was different from any other. They slammed into me, into my mind, and something deep down inside of it woke up.

I went silent, the world was still, as I remembered the look on Vasier’s face when he’d said those words to me. When he’d sat me down in his office when I was only fifteen. I’d just disobeyed him, and had run out of the throne room in the middle of a spell, my hand still bleeding even then as I sat with him in his war room.

As I’d become a teenager, I’d become rebellious. More and more hesitant to listen and follow his orders blindly. And that day, well that had been a tipping point.

Vasier hadn’t dispatched Lauden to seduce me yet, I was too young. He had no other tool in his arsenal, but this.

My breath was ragged as I was pulled from the memory, torn from it by a sound behind me. I turned, standing in the late morning sun of Vestaria, to see Maddox on his hands and knees, crawling for me. The scene was nearly identical to that time in Mortithev, just before he turned. When he pledged to die for me. When my father called me nothing. It was so surreal, that for a moment I wondered if my mind was flashing back to that memory as well.

But Maddox didn’t stop, he crawled toward me, hand outstretched.

“Sage, don’t fall into it,” he rasped, moving against the weakness that the Rominium must’ve caused in his veins. “You’ve been compelled, but you can fight it.”

Compelled.

Broderick moved behind me and I turned to face him. His eyes were on mine, steady. “The time is now, Little Sorceress.”

I wasn’t close enough to Broderick for him to compel me, knew I wasn’t, based on all the times I’d watched Vasi and Vasier compel people.

And I was a Kova now. The only people who could compel me were the Firsts. Not Broderick.

But that didn’t stop his words from slamming into my head again. As if they’d been buried there, long ago, and were only called forward now.

And again, my mind was thrown back into that study with Vasier. The rough edge of his table at my side as he sat before me, eyes on mine.

“You’ve become insolent and disobedient. I’m sick of repeating myself, I don’t have time for this, Sage. From now on, when you hear the phrase ‘the time is now, Little Sorceress,’ you will obey whatever command is given to you. No matter who asks it, or what they ask. You will obey and then you will forget why you obeyed.”

And it was as if I still sat there with him now. I could picture the way his irises had shuddered, the way they were the only thing I could focus on.

Compelled.

I’d been compelled again .

He promised he would never. And when I’d discovered he had compelled me not to portal Evaline out of Mortithev, stupidly I’d still thought that it had been the only time.

But now, I remembered each time I’d heard the phrase, as if Broderick speaking it had lit off some kind of fuse that blew up each one in my mind until they flashed one after the other.

Once, when Vasier wanted me to cut my hand and perform blood magic for the twentieth time in one day. In one session. Despite the healing magic of their blood, the scar on my hand buzzed with an eerie feeling, an odd pain.

He’d uttered the words, and I sat as I did now, remembered that same conversation, and cut my hand. But after I did what he ordered, I forgot about all of it. The compulsion, the phrase, the memory.

Again and again, each instance played over in my head.

When a human, a young woman, had convinced me to portal her out, but I’d been caught by Broderick. I’d been mid-step toward the portal, and he’d said the words. I’d never seen her again.

When Lauden and I had been on our way to Rominia, and we’d stopped in Neomaeros and Merwinan. He was putting weaknesses in the armor of the wards, blind spots to allow Vasi through when the time came. I was angry, it was a secret he and Vasier had kept from me.

He’d uttered the words, told me to quiet and to forget, and I had remembered all the compulsions from before until I forgot them all.

But they weren’t compulsions. Not really.

Lauden couldn’t compel, and Broderick didn’t compel when he’d said them. They were all orders, pulling from the same original compulsion.

And each time, after I obeyed, I forgot. All of it. Until the time came for the next, and then I’d remember, for only a moment, before forgetting.

Broderick smiled from across the expanse and opened his mouth.

“Portal yourself, me, Maeve, and Evaline to Mortithev.”

“Sage, don’t,” Evaline whispered beside me at the same time that Maddox shouted behind us.

“Sage, you can fight it!”

The other Kova writhed in pain, gasped on the dirt below.

But my mind wasn’t in my control. Not now that the phrase had been uttered. Not now that the command had been given.

I felt the tears down my face, knew I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to betray them, whether on purpose or not, ever again.

My hand shook as it moved to extend out in front of me, but I kept my fist clenched.

“Sage,” Evaline whispered beside me, and I turned my head and through the wavy lens of my tears, saw her back away from me slowly, raise her hands toward me in a protective stance.

I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t.

“You will not disagree. You will not argue. You will not fight it,” Vasier’s voice filled my mind, his added clauses to the compulsion.

Sage, Dean’s voice was down the bond, and my eyes widened, turning my head as far as I could until I saw him. He crawled toward me. Crawled beside Maddox.

You don’t have to do this.

But my arm continued to straighten in front of me, extending to its full length.

Maddox’s eyes were on the movement as he and Dean grasped onto each other, used each other as leverage until they were standing.

They gasped, they growled, their eyes bulged from their sockets as they fought the pain, as they fought the fatigue.

“You can resist it, Sage,” Maddox gasped out as they moved toward me.

My hand opened.

You can fight it, remember Ankin’s research, the secret journal. He’d found a way to resist compulsion. It’s possible. You know it is. You’ve done it. Dean’s voice persisted down the bond.

The ground shook below us as my portal opened. I didn’t waste my magic silencing the land below us.

It wasn’t part of the compulsion.

It’s impossible, I said back down the bond to Dean. I couldn’t speak out loud, my voice simply didn’t work, but Vasier hadn’t said anything about using a bond.

“It’s not impossible,” Dean promised aloud, he and Maddox holding onto each other as they took slow, small, laborious steps toward me.

Maddox looked to Dean, seemed to understand the conversation we were having through the bond, and turned to me.

“It’s not. Just like it wasn’t impossible for me to come back.”

Evaline took a step forward. Not close enough for me to grab for the portal, but enough to pull my attention.

“Nothing is impossible, remember?” she asked, and the memory flashed in my mind. “You taught me that. Only possibilities are left, right?” she whispered, and my tears fell harder.

The portal was open below me. I didn’t need to look to know. But it was still black, still silent. I hadn’t targeted it yet.

“It’s possible, but you have to fight,” Maddox said.

My hand trembled over the portal as I tried, as I tried to push back on the force in my mind. The part that reached forward from deep within, the part of my mind where that memory originated, and tightened its grasp over me. But it was so, so much harder than the last time I’d broken compulsion.

“The time is now, Little Sorceress,” Broderick hissed again, seeming to notice my resistance.

I gasped as the compulsion held me tighter, and the portal below started to shift.

“Sage!” Maddox screamed, only a few feet away now. “You will fight this. You can. You just have to remember who you are. Remember all the reasons you don’t want to do it,” he gasped out, then took a deep breath and continued. “Think of Evaline and your love for her. Think of Dean and your love for him. Think of every reason you don’t want to portal yourself and Evaline to Mortithev. Think of all the reasons you don’t want to part from Dean, why you don’t want to betray Evaline again.”

I shut my eyes, felt more tears squeeze out at the force, and focused on his words.

I remembered the sight of Evaline’s rage, her sorrow when she saw that Maddox had turned, a result of my actions. The shake of the land below us and the waves that rose from the sea, of all the signs of her magic and the way it raged. Her devastation.

I thought of the look on her face later, when she understood what I’d done to her. When she realized that Vasier was my father.

I pictured Dean’s kind face when he’d found me crying in the loft, when I thought he’d kill me, but he only listened. When he told me to forgive myself.

I remembered how safe I felt in his presence, how whole I was when he was near.

“Sage! Do as I command!” Broderick shouted, and my eyes slammed open. “Portal yourself, Maeve, Evaline, and I to Mortithev!”

My hand shook over the portal and I loosed a growl at the effort of fighting it. But it shifted crimson and slowly, the sound of waves slamming against the castle came through.

Fight it, my fate, Dean urged down the bond. You came back to me, remember? Don’t leave again.

“Sage,” Evaline whispered, and I looked to see her eyes filled with tears, too, eyes on my portal. Her hands were raised, fire emanating from them. “I don’t want to hurt you. Please, don’t.”

I felt hands land on my back and jumped, looking back to see Maddox and Dean had finally made their way to me, hands closing over me.

“Fight it, Sage. It doesn’t have any control over you unless you allow it to,” Maddox said, eyes wide and face red, beside me.

“Only possibilities exist,” Evaline whispered, and I looked to her.

“Obey, Sage! The time is now, Little Sorceress!” Broderick shouted, and I took an involuntary step toward Evaline.

Maddox and Dean were too weak to stop me, but still, I tried to fight it, and Evaline raised her hands toward me, eyes widening.

In her distraction, Broderick moved, and Maeve too. They sprinted for us, and grasped hands on Evaline and I.

Evaline screamed and kicked at them, fought against their hold, and all at once I remembered the way she’d done so when we were in Mortithev. When she fought against the Vasi, against Vasier, in the same way, the moment I’d taken her to Mortithev.

But then I remembered what he’d called her when she asked what he wanted with her.

Little Sorceress.

She was the one he wanted, she and her mother. Always the Sorceresses he wanted more than the one he had. The one with portals.

He had used me, abused me, and manipulated me. He’d compelled me for Gods’ sake, even after he promised he’d never cross that boundary. And what was worse, he’d let Lauden cross it. He’d given others, even those who didn’t possess compulsion powers, the ability to warp my mind, even more than he already had, with only the use of a silly little phrase.

And that breach of trust, that level of betrayal, reminded me that I’d done the same to him. I’d left them all behind when I’d portaled everyone out.

I remembered the look on his face when he realized that I betrayed him, when he realized he’d underestimated me. It was a mix of pain, and surprise. Of shock, and horror.

I defied him once. I shocked him once.

I screamed against the compulsion, I screamed against the hold in my mind. I screamed against Maeve and Broderick’s hold on me—against Vasier’s hold on me—and shook my head.

Maddox yelled for me to fight it, Evaline pleaded, and Dean begged quietly in my mind.

I tried to remember when my life wasn’t such a mess but knew that it had been since the moment Vasier took me from these woods.

There had been quieter times, times Vasier wasn’t so bad, throughout the years, but Gods the last several months had been only chaos, only deception.

I just wanted peace. I just wanted happiness.

And instantly, almost as if the thoughts themselves reminded me of it, I thought of the first time I’d felt true peace. The first place I’d been, when I felt absolutely and completely peaceful and whole.

“The time is now, Little Sorceress!” Broderick shouted in my ear. “Portal, now!”

I fought the compulsion and felt it slip slowly away and out of my mind.

But the fight, the energy, that it had required took a toll. A toll on my magic, on my ability to control it.

Above the screams, above the shouts, above the steady crackle of Evaline’s Fire as she tried to burn Broderick’s grip off of her, the world became too much, and my control snapped.

The portal brightened, widened, outside of my grasp, and the world around us lit before a piercing sound brought myself, the Kova, and Vasi all around me, to our knees, screaming.

And for a moment, there was nothing.