Chasing Shadows (Saving Galerance, Book 1) (19 page)

The water pushed once more at the back of her eyes. “It
wasn’t just a few months he needed,” she said, referencing to a conversation
they had had nearly seven years ago, after his parents had died and Mason
refused to see her.

“I’m sorry Norabel,” he offered. “I thought he would have
gotten over it by now.”

She clasped her hands tightly together and blinked her eyes
shut. “Gotten over what?” she squeaked out. “It might not hurt so bad if I at
least knew why…”

She took in a deep gulp of air and pressed her palm into her
eye. She shook her head, as if to say to herself that she shouldn’t get into
this now.

“I wish I could tell you,” he said, placing a hand on her
arm. “But he’s shutting me out as well. If you want the truth, Mason’s shut
everyone out. It’s only him inside, and he needs us both now more than ever.
Because he’s getting lonelier and lonelier in the cave he’s trapped himself in,
and it’s just a matter of time before everything explodes. And, I know it’s a
hard thought, but I’m gonna make sure that I’m there for him when the walls
finally fall.”

He lightly rubbed her arm and gently guided her head to rest
on his shoulder, reminding her of how her father used to comfort her when she
was little. She was about to thank him when a voice stopped her.

“Hey you two,” Archer called out from around the corner of
the house. “Come on. The gang’s all here.”

“Yeah, just give us a minute, alright,” Logan snapped,
blocking Norabel from his view.

Archer eyed them suspiciously, and then smirked. “Does Aleta
know about this?” he joked.

“Shut up Archer,” he countered.

Archer held his hands up in defense and walked backwards
until he was once more out of view.

“We should go in,” Norabel suggested.

He put both hands on her arms, asking, “Are you’re sure
you’re alright?”

She nodded and finally looked up to him. The second she did,
his eyes narrowed in on her lips, and a look of alarm passed over his features.

“Norabel, what happened to your face?”

She quickly turned her head away. “It’s nothing.” She didn’t
know why, but she didn’t feel like she could tell anyone the truth now. A part
of her was broken because Mason refused to see that she was in distress, and
she was going to keep on breaking until he did see.

“No,” Logan said, gently tilting her chin up so he could
examine her face once more. “That’s not nothing.” Shaking his head, he asked
softly, “Who did this to you?”

She broke away from him. “Not now.” She shook her head. “I
can’t. Not now.”

She started towards the front of the house and heard Logan
silently follow behind. Inside, they found Archer sitting on a chair in the
kitchen. He threw them a smirk as they took their places by him. Mason was just
coming down the hallway, and Ashlin was walking over to greet him.

“Hey there,” she said, smiling. She reached her hand up and
tussled his hair, commenting, “You’ve got dust in your hair.”

A smile broke out on his face as he tried to straighten his
appearance. “Yeah, I was just going through some old things.”

“Well, come on,” she said, tapping a hand on his chest.
“Back to the land of the present. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

As the two of them walked back to the kitchen, Norabel made
sure to stare at the wood of the table. Seeing the two of them act so easily
around each other filled her with a sinking feeling of jealousy. It hurt to
know that Mason so obviously wanted to be around Ashlin while he made it clear
that he wanted her to keep her distance.

When their Harbinger meeting started, Norabel found it hard
to pay attention to what was being said, even when Ashlin boldly announced that
their next target was no less than the stronghold itself. As she went on
describing her plan to smoke the entire stronghold in a sleeping powder that
would send every Pax official into a deep slumber for at least an entire day,
the blood throbbed in Norabel’s lip, and she found her mind wandering to
invasive thoughts of Fletcher and the biting smell of soap.

Only when Ashlin began discussing a way to sneak inside the
stronghold did Norabel come out of the prison of thoughts in her mind. Mason
informed the team that a river used to run under the castle when it was first built,
and even though the river had been dammed up now, the tunnel and water grate
were still there. He said that he could take away one segment of the bars on
the bottom, but that the hole it would create would still be rather small, too
small even for Ashlin to slip through.

Norabel curled her hands in on her lap as he explained all
this to them, knowing where this was going.

“So what do you say?” Ashlin asked.

Norabel looked up, and sure enough she was staring at her.

“What does she say?” Logan repeated, growing angry. “She
says no! If they find her inside, she’ll be killed. Or worse; they’ll send her
to Arkadiak! What would
you
say if someone asked you to take that risk
all alone?!”

“I would say yes,” Mason spoke in a low voice. “And you know
I would.”

“Why don’t you let her answer for herself?” Ashlin
challenged. “After all, it’s not up to you.”

Logan’s head spun to find Norabel. “Don’t let them bully you
into this,” he told her, shaking his head. “It isn’t worth it.”

Norabel looked from Logan to Mason, brother to brother,
hardly knowing how to respond. She knew she was afraid. She knew that she
didn’t want to do it, and that everything Logan had said was right. But
somewhere in the pushing and pulling in her head, she could hear her
grandfather’s voice. He was telling her a story, as he so often did. It was
about the brave hero Jotham that once found himself in an enemy stronghold and
needed to escape. And, since he was so small, he was able to slip underneath a
water grate and run out into the forest, giving his company of men vital
information that saved lives.

When she was a kid, listening at her grandfather’s knee, she
used to imagine herself as Jotham. That’s me, she would tell herself. We are
one in the same. She was born with the same disease as he was, and wanted to
save people’s lives as well. Because, the truth was, with her condition, she
didn’t have much time to make an imprint on this world. And if she died young,
trying to help people, it wouldn’t be much of a tragedy since she never had
that much time to begin with.

In the quiet of the table, her voice came out as a mouse as
she announced, “I’ll do it.”

At once Logan’s hand came down on the wood in frustration,
but it was lost amid the friendly cheering of the other three.

“That’s our Norry!” Archer exclaimed, patting her on the
back.

“You’ll be doing the whole kingdom a great favor,” Ashlin
assured her.

The well-wishes of the first two went in and out of her ears
quickly, for it was only Mason’s reaction she cared about. She held her breath
as he caught her gaze across the table and nodded in appreciation. A look and a
nod, and then he was gone, turning back to Ashlin to continue with the rest of
the planning. It seemed nothing she did would ever earn her his attention.

*

When the team had left, leaving only Mason and Logan inside
their house once more, Logan decided that it was time to give his brother a
piece of his mind. Mason had gone back to his room, saying that he needed to
retrieve some tools so that he could start working on cutting the grate, when
Logan appeared in his doorway.

“You know you can’t treat her like this!” he exclaimed, his
voice rising in anger.

Mason looked up from his tools, responding coolly, “It was
her choice to take the job.”

Logan shook his head in disbelief. “You’re a blind idiot,
you know that!” He pointed down the hallway to the front door, saying, “Can’t
you see that something is wrong with her?! She is in trouble, and you’re too
busy to notice!”

“Logan,” he snapped, throwing his tools down. “I would
appreciate it if you didn’t talk to me about her.”

“Oh, that’s the solution!” he said incredulously. “Just
don’t talk about her, don’t mention the past, don’t let any bowls into the
house. Well let me tell you something; I’m sick of eating soup from a plate!
You need to wake up, Mason! This isn’t working! You may put on a brave face for
the team, but it doesn’t fool me. You’re a mess inside!”

“Logan, stop talking,” he warned, gripping his hand into a
fist.

“What? Are you gonna hit me? Just because you’re hurt inside
does not make it okay to start hurting others. And it certainly doesn’t make it
okay to hurt her. Especially her,” he added, weakly pointing to the door once
more. “Not after everything she’s done for you. You know she gave up going back
home to live with her family for you. It wasn’t to stay and fight with the
rebellion, to work as a Shadow because she just loved doing that so much. It
was for you! And only you! Let me tell you, if someone did that for me, I
would…”

“Logan please,” Mason begged, gripping his head in his hands
so tightly his knuckles were turning white. “Please stop talking. Please just
stop…just stop talking.”

He stopped and looked sympathetically at his brother who was
curling into himself on the floor. “Mason,” he spoke, gentler now. “I miss them
too.”

“Yeah, we all miss mom and dad a whole bunch, now can you
please leave me alone now?”

Staring down at his younger brother, Logan knew he was
hiding something from him. He knew that he was trying to battle a monster of a
problem all by himself, but he didn’t have the heart to press the secret from
him.

Going to the door, he closed it behind him, hearing the
muffled sobs of his baby brother behind the wood.

The next morning, Mason and Ashlin found Norabel and
informed her that they had cut a hole in the grate last night, and that she could
begin her reconnaissance mission whenever she was ready. So, that evening,
Norabel found her stomach twisting into knots as she wondered how in the world
she was going to do this. If she managed to make it through the water grate,
then what? Maybe pose inside the castle as a maid. But what if someone
recognized her? Or worse, what if they realized she didn’t belong? Logan was
right; they would send her off to Arkadiak in an instant. Still, she had
promised to do this, and she couldn’t back down on her word.

When the sun began to set, she started to head over to the
stronghold, figuring that she should get back home before it got too late in
case Fletcher decided to show up at her house. She was still a good block away
from the stronghold, letting thoughts of imprisonment and death by hanging fill
her mind, when suddenly a face in the crowd gave her hope. Standing off to the
side of the road, laughing with a few other officers around him, was the young
man Kade.

Norabel hurried ahead on the road, planning to catch his
attention. Before she could raise her voice to call out to him, he spotted her,
and his face alighted with recognition.

“Norabel!” he called out cheerfully, waving her over.

“Hello Kade! How are you?” she said, genuinely happy to see
him.

Coming up to their group, Kade turned to the other officers,
saying, “Boys, this is Norabel, the girl that taught us the wonders of Shadow
Snapper.”

“Oh, this is Norabel!” one of them commented.

“I see why you played so many games now,” another remarked
playfully.

Norabel smiled innocently at them and waited for Kade to
give her the introductions. One of the officers, however, needed no
introduction, for she instantly recognized him as Creason, Delia’s boyfriend.
She had seen him on a number of occasions, standing outside the Potter’s
Workhouse, waiting for Delia, though she doubted if he had ever seen her.

“So what are you boys doing outside of a dress shop?”
Norabel inquired once the introductions had been made. She pointed a slender
hand up to the sign behind them, and they seemed to grow embarrassed at that.

Kade punched Creason’s shoulder, answering, “Our buddy
Creason here forgot to buy his girl a present for her birthday.
And
it’s
tomorrow! So he’s enlisted our sorry backsides to go running all over the
village to try and pick something!”

“Your girlfriend’s Delia, right?” she asked Creason.

“Yeah,” he replied, a look of hope growing on his face. “How
did you know?”

“Oh, she works in the same building as me.”

“So you know her?” he asked eagerly. “I mean, you know what
she likes and what she doesn’t.”

She smiled and tilted her head to look at the dress shop
behind them. “Well, I know that she doesn’t like clothes that she hasn’t picked
out herself.”

“I told you!” Kade exclaimed, bumping him in the arm again.

Before Creason’s spirits could sink any further, she quickly
added, “And I know she has a bit of a sweet-tooth.”

“That’s brilliant!” Creason exclaimed. “I’ll just go to the bakery
and get her…”

“The bakery’s closed, genius,” an officer named Sander
pointed out.

“Well there goes that brilliant idea,” Kade said, kicking
the dirt under his foot.

“Don’t you have access to a kitchen in the stronghold?”
Norabel asked.

“Yeah,” Kade answered. “But us making something…we’re liable
to set the whole place on fire!”

“Well I could help out…a little,” she said, knowing that it
wasn’t strange for officers to take girls up to the stronghold.

“When you say a little,” Kade started to ask, “do you mean
really doing the whole thing yourself, you’re just saying it like that so we
don’t get our feelings hurt?”

She laughed at his question and nodded in response.

“Oh! You are truly the best, girl I met two minutes ago!”
Creason said, grabbing ahold of her.

Norabel laughed cheerfully again, and Kade put a hand on
Creason’s shoulder, forcing him back. “Yeah, alright, she’s the best. Now give
her some space.”

With Kade linking her arm through his, he led the way down
the street, and their merry little party made its way towards the stronghold. As
they were walking, relief flooded through her like a river, and she silently
thanked her guardian Albatross for sending her a friend in Kade. Now if someone
saw her inside the castle, she would be greeted as a friend instead of
imprisoned as a treasonous spy.

When they went through the main stronghold doors, she was
prepared to keep her eyes alert, ready to make note of every hallway and room
they passed. However, as they strolled down the main hall, she soon found that
it wasn’t necessary. Kade began to point out everything there was to see, and
anything he missed, one of the other guys chimed in. It seemed as if the group
of guys was proud to show off their home, and it became a sort of game to tell
Norabel the next bit of information.

As they walked, Norabel learned that the main hall branched
off into four sections. To the west was the mess hall, north of that was the
stock rooms and kitchens. To the east was the stairwell that led directly up to
one of the spires, which was where a lot of the senior officers lived. However,
many of the officers lived at ground level or below, at least when they were
starting out. Kade motioned to that door with a disgusted look, and then
promptly whisked her away to the northern portion of the castle.

They passed through several corridors, meeting a handful of
other officers on the way. Some of them even chose to join them, deciding that it
might be interesting to watch a baker and candy-maker at work. With each new person
that they passed, Norabel found herself holding her breath, wondering if Hunter
might be one of them. Surely he had to be in the castle somewhere. But, if she
came across him, what would she say? She could already picture it in her head.
Kade would call him over, happily introducing her, and she would stand there
mutely, not being able to speak. On second thought, maybe it was best if she
didn’t see him.

When they finally made their way into the kitchens, Creason
shooed away two of the workers that were idly chatting inside, and set Norabel
in front of a bowl and a wooden spoon.

“Okay,” Norabel said, looking out to the guys that had
gathered around her. “Well, I’m gonna need sugar and a fire.”

“Oh, I’ll get it!” several guys called out at once.

She stifled a smile, thinking how oddly pleasant it was to
see them all so excited. A thought occurred to her that, although being given
the job of a Pax official was considered an honor, it was also something that
was forced on them, usually through familial ties. But what if they didn’t want
it in the first place? They were never given the choice to be anything else.
She was sure there must have been a few out there that thought about doing
something else.

A moment later, a sack of sugar was placed in front of her,
and two officers were over at the hearth, building up a strong fire.

She was about to open up the sack of sugar when Kade called
out, “Ooh! I’ll be right back. I’m gonna go get Emmett and the others! They’ll
want to watch as well.”

Before he could run out of there, she called out, “Ask Finn
if he has any colored Snapper!”

The faces around her lit up at its mention.

“Colored Snapper!” Kade repeated, a grin spreading on his
face.

She nodded. “We’ll need it before the night’s over.”

“Go!” several of the guys urged Kade.

“Raid Finn’s rooms if you have to!”

When he had gone, she turned to Creason, saying, “One of the
neatest desserts my mom taught me to make was called Spinning Sugar. It’s an
ordinary sweet bread, but with a pretty amazing surprise on top.”

“Sounds great,” Creason said, clapping his hands. “Let’s do
this!”

With that, she got to work starting the sweet bread. Though
she did most of the mixing and measuring, whenever she asked for something, a
young man was always right there to see that she got it. Sometimes they tried
to get it to her a little too fast, and ended up spilling some of the
ingredients on the floor. The whole thing was done so quickly that, by the time
Kade came back with the rest of the guys she had met by the stables, she had
already placed the bread into the oven.

“We didn’t miss it, did we?” Emmett called out when he saw
her placing something into the stone oven above the fire.

“Finn took forever trying to find every last ounce of
colored Snapper he had,” Kade complained.

“I think I got it all,” Finn said, holding a lumpy bag up to
his chest.

Norabel thanked him and then asked the guys to find several
small, shallow cups. She got to work melting down sugar with a little water,
and when it was ready, she brought the pot over to the cups. Holding the
sugar-coated spoon over the cups, she drizzled the syrup on the inside, making
an intricate crisscrossing design.

Handing the sugar to Creason, she asked, “Do you want to
try?”

“What…I just,” he stuttered, clumsily taking the cup.

“Just like this,” she said, guiding his hand to drizzle the
sugar in properly.

After that, nearly every guy wanted to try his hand at it,
the mystery of what they were doing wide in their eyes. Soon more cups were
brought over, and they had nearly a whole table full of them.

When there were no more cups to be had, Norabel announced,
“Now here’s the really fun part.”

She took one of the cups and gently turned it upside-down.
Then, lifting it back up, a small domed molding of spun sugar was left standing
up. This elicited several exclamations from the boys, most unaware that sugar
could even do that. Norabel instructed them on how to turn the cups over, and
the guys took their turns trying it out. Some of them cracked, and some came
out in strange shapes, but she assured those with looks of devastation on their
faces that it was only natural for them to do that, and they would have more
than enough good ones for Delia’s present.

Setting five of the best sugar domes aside for the sweet
bread, she went back to the main table and picked five more domes to work with,
placing them on a stone slab that had been normally set aside for grinding up
wheat. She then asked Finn to pick five colors from his Snapper pile, and
waited for him to line them up.

“This is what makes Spinning Sugar so cool,” she told them.

Taking each sugar dome, she lifted it up and dipped it into
a pile of colored Snapper, making sure to sprinkle some at the very top. When
each had been coated in a separate color, she asked four guys to volunteer to
light them at the same time.

“It’s very important that you light them from the bottom,”
she said, readying some Snapper in her fingers as well. “Otherwise they won’t
spin.”

The guys nodded, pinching the Snapper in their hands as the
rest of the officers around them craned their necks to see.

“On three,” she said. “Ready? One…two…three!”

At once they snapped their fingers, sending the bottoms of
all five sugar domes alight with color. But the Snapper didn’t just make them
shine with color, it made them pop and vibrate and spin, moving faster and
faster as the sugar burned up. Colorful embers sizzled up the domes until they
all burned up, leaving a rainbow design on the stone underneath.

The crowd of young men was astounded. The second that the
show was over, they called for more sugar domes to be brought so they could do
it again. As the sugars lit up a second, third, and fourth time, the guys
cheered and picked a color to burn up the slowest, making fun of a color that
might have burned up particularly fast.

Much like the time when she had been playing Shadow Snapper
with them, Norabel found herself enjoying the whole situation immensely. It
made her happy to fill others with such joy, and it gave her hope to realize
that not all Pax officials were the evil, unfeeling creatures Mason made them
out to be.

The guys were in the middle of lighting their six round of
Spinning Sugar when suddenly the door to the kitchens opened, and a tall man
stepped in.

“What is going on in here?” he boomed out.

Norabel’s eyes flew to the kitchen entrance, and she
recognized the man as the tall officer that had confiscated the Albatross Seed
during the house raid on Iris’s home. Not only that, he was Fletcher’s boss, a
man severe enough to even have a hard-hearted leacher afraid of him. Though she
was hidden by the guys around her, she felt the urge to duck her head, hoping
that he would not spot her in the crowd.

“Well?” he demanded. “Speak!”

A few of the officers in the group flinched as he yelled. It
was clear that most of them were afraid of him. A heavy hand of guilt came down
on Norabel’s shoulders, for it was her fault they were in this situation.

“We were just baking sir,” Kade announced bravely, taking a
step away from the group.

“And does it require you to make such a ruckus, this
baking?”

“Well, no sir,” Kade responded, glancing back to the group.
“We were only…”

“Who is that you have with you?” the man asked abruptly,
craning his neck to better see into their crowd.

Norabel instantly felt a hot wave of fear come over her. The
man had seen her! What if he recognized her from before? What if he decided to
red-flag her?

“She’s just a friend,” Kade said, turning back to the man to
try and appease him. “She was helping us bake.”

“It’s my girl’s birthday to…” Creason started to volunteer,
but trailed off when he saw the scathing look on the older man’s face.

“I don’t care if it’s wretching Guardian Amias’s birthday!
You will have a sense of dignity and stop chittering about like a flock of gaggling
chickens! Or I will have each one of you horse-whipped until you can no longer
stand!” He angrily turned to the door, but then spun back around and pointed to
the stone slab they were gathered around, yelling, “And clean that up!”