Deviation: Altera Realm Trilogy Book 2 (17 page)

Syney stared at her, numb. For months she hated Hunter for leaving her, for being selfish. And now…he had left to save her from whatever sadistic plan Mellisandrianna had up her sleeve. She wiped the tears that fell from her eyes. “How could you not tell me that?”

“Hunter made Leaf swear not to say anything, so of course I couldn’t either. I wanted to so much.”

Syney shook her head. “Cass? Really? I don’t understand.”

Helen sighed and pulled Syney over to a bench. “She overheard you talking about leaving. Ever since Raine died, she’s been your biggest supporter for the throne. I think she went to my mother because it was the only thing she could think to do to keep you here. I can’t blame her there. Although I would have done it differently, I would have found a way to get you to stay.”

Syney looked away. “It was the only way for us to be together.”

“I know.”

“Figures he would do the honorable thing,” she whispered.

Helen put a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry again. This should have come sooner.”

“Yeah it should have,” Syney said, standing up and walking away. She couldn’t deal with this now. She didn’t want to ever deal with it. Right now she could do only one thing at a time, and she needed to find Adam.

He still loved you. He left to protect you
. Syney grabbed the nearest wall as tears flooded her eyes. She sobbed and tried to catch her breath. None of this mattered. Hunter still had joined with Fern, and he still had left. She inhaled deeply and wiped away her tears. She continued to Gabe’s room with more passion inside her than she’d had in a long time. Hunter did that to her, whether he was here or not.

Noelle and Gabe were sitting on the bed when Adam burst in. He was soaking wet and paced the room the second he entered. Noelle jumped up and tried to get him to sit down, but he shook his head, tears in his eyes.

“I messed up. I messed up bad,” he said with a hitch in his breath.

Gabe’s amused face fell, and he jumped to his feet. “What happened?”

Adam continued to shake his head and kept pacing.

Gabe leapt in front of him and grabbed his arms. “You need to talk now.”

“I bit her.”

“You what?” Noelle asked, her eyes widening.

“Crap.” Gabe let go of Adam and put a hand to his head. This was the first time Noelle had ever seen him worry…about anything. “How could you let this happen? You normally don’t drink blood.”

Adam nodded, his usually put-together self almost crumbling. “We were…getting intimate, and I couldn’t help it.”

Noelle shook her head and put herself between the two men. “What the hell is going on?”

Gabe looked at her. “Adam’s half Vampire. His parents worked for Faye and me.”

Noelle looked at Adam. “Oh.”

Adam nodded. “That’s me. The freak of nature.”

“Careful,” Gabe said with a laugh. “You’re talking to a Shifter, or at least part Shifter.”

Noelle sighed. She wasn’t comfortable with Gabe giving away her secret so cavalierly, but she was thankful for the connection to Adam at that moment. He looked like he needed something, and that seemed to work.

“Really?” he asked, his breathing becoming a little more even.

She nodded and offered him a small smile. “Really.”

“Aw, touching. Now we have work to do. We need an excuse or something,” Gabe said, pulling all the energy in the room towards him. Noelle had noticed that he did that when he talked about the plan. When he talked about it, everyone had no choice but to sit up and pay attention. God knows he’d been working on it long enough.

“No more excuses. We’ll tell her everything,” Adam said, his calm exterior returning.

Gabe stared hard at him. “Tell me you didn’t do this on purpose.”

“Seriously? You do know I’m the one she’s going to hate the most when she learns about our plan, right? The only safety net I had with her would be our joining, which will never happen now,” Adam spat out.

“Relax. We’ll figure something out.”

Adam opened his mouth to say something as the door swung open. All eyes went to Syney, whose gaze swept the three of them. They’d been caught, and she wasn’t happy. Tears were already in her eyes, and she looked like hell—bedraggled and wet from head to toe. She slammed the door behind her and gave an ugly smile. “Look! The gang’s all here.”

“Syney—”Noelle started, but Syney raised her hand and shook her head.

“No, I get to talk first.” When she walked over to Gabe, Noelle feared she might deck him. “I’m done with whatever game you’re playing.”

“What do you mean?” Gabe asked innocently. It was scary how well he could do that.

“You brought him here for me. Why? So I’d get over Hunter?”

He smiled. “He was coming whether the wolf was here or not.”

Syney slapped him. “I’m sick and tired of this crap! You want me to do something, just ask!”

Gabe put a hand to his cheek. “And have the chance that you’ll say no? You’re too important!”

Syney stomped her feet. “I’m not! There’s nothing special about me at all!”

“Yes, there is.”

“Because I’m the Chosen One?”

“Because you’re half Daemon!”

Noelle was pretty sure Syney stopped breathing as she stared at Gabe. Finally Syney shook her head. “You’re lying.”

“You know I’m not,” Gabe said, stepping closer to her. “There’s always been something inside that told you you were different, and it had nothing to do with your not having been raised here. You have power. You can do spells without any help and always on the first shot.”

Syney cast a look at Adam. “Good to have spies, huh?”

“Syney,” Adam started.

“I’m a Vilori. The whole line was powerful,” Syney said, looking back at Gabe, her eyes hard.

“Not as powerful as you,” Gabe said softly.

“Daemons and Magic Users are the closest of the great races,” Adam said quietly. “They both use magic, just different types. And they’re both born with magic inside them. You have a combination of the two magics.”

“I still don’t believe you. How would you even know?” Syney spat at Gabe.

Gabe laughed. “I know everything.”

Noelle rolled her eyes. “Oh, just stop being an ass, and tell her!”

Syney looked at Noelle with hurt and betrayal in her eyes. “Did you know about this? All of this?”

Noelle shook her head. “Not this, I swear.” She looked at Gabe. “How do you know for sure?”

Gabe glanced at her for a moment before looking back at Syney. He took Syney’s hands, holding them still as she tried to pull away, and whispered something under his breath. Syney finally pulled her hands away and backed up.

“What are you doing?” she yelled.

Gabe held his hand up. “Nothing.” He walked a few feet away from her before turning around and hurling a knife at Syney.

Noelle screamed then stared wide-eyed at what happened.

Seconds before the knife hit Syney, she lifted her hands, and purple energy shot out of them, sending the knife back at Gabe, who caught it.

“Are you crazy?” Syney screamed. “You just threw a knife at me!”

With a stupid smile on his face, Gabe stared at the knife. “Yes, I did.”

“And that was to prove what? That I have a lost Vilori power?”

“That wasn’t a Vilori power,” Adam said.

“Hunter told me that it was and that I shouldn’t tell anyone.”

Adam flinched, as he did whenever Syney said Hunter’s name. “It’s a Daemon power. They can manipulate energy like Magic Users conjure the elements.”

“I bound that ability in you once you told me about it last year. It would have been bad if that had gotten out,” Gabe said.

Syney took a jagged breath and glanced at her hands. She shook them and looked at Gabe. “What else you got? ‘Cause I need more than that.”

Noelle saw Gabe’s face soften. She knew what other proof he had. It was obvious. She walked over to him and took his hand. “Now’s the time to let it all go.”

He squeezed her hand as he nodded. Then he looked at Syney. “I know what you are because I was there when you were born.”

Syney’s anger fell from her face. Noelle had only seen her like this once before, when Hunter had left. “What?”

“You weren’t born here. No one even knew Amelia was pregnant. She spent the whole pregnancy in my castle in the Vampire kingdom with Faye, me, and your father.”

Syney wandered to one of the couches in the room. She plopped onto it and wiped some tears from her eyes. “Who was he?”

Noelle pushed Gabe forward and motioned for him to sit down with her. He took the seat across from her, and Noelle sat next to her. Adam remained standing by the bed. He looked tired and miserable. Noelle couldn’t blame him; this had been a tough night.

“Who
is
he,” Gabe corrected. “His name is Hadrian. He’s the Daemon king. Which is why you’re so important. You’re the daughter of two royal houses of two of the great races.”

“But you married Faye. Nothing big came from that.”

“Faye only became head of the house after we were joined. Even then, we were barely here. She gave up her seat on the council. That wasn’t the best thing to do, but twenty-twenty hindsight…”Gabe said bitterly.

Syney sat forward and stared at Gabe, straight in the eyes. “I need everything. Stop the manipulation and just tell me.”

“I need something from you first.”

“What?”

“Assurances. I lost everything in this war. I need to make things right, and you’re the only way to do that.” Gabe’s voice cracked, shocking Noelle.

After a moment Syney nodded. “I’ll help you, but only if you’re honest with me from now on.”

“The war is one-sided. The queen is fighting with a loaded deck.”

“OK, uncryptify that for me, please.”

“You’ve been trying to find out why the war started,” he said. “Mellisandrianna started it.”

“That’s impossible. She’s not that old.”

“I don’t know everything. Amelia and Hadrian were the ones who knew it all. But I do know the Village has been under the same rule for years. I don’t know how she does it, but she switches bodies somehow. She’s been going down the line of succession.”

“That’s crazy talk! No one can do that.”

Gabe rolled his eyes. “You need to talk to Hadrian. He’ll explain it.”

“Fine. How do we meet him?”

“I can arrange it, but it’ll be a little more difficult without Hunter. You’ll have to work on Leaf and Reed. There’s no way he can come here.”

Syney nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. What else is there? What was your plan?”

“The plan was to get you to the throne then call a summit.”

“What kind of summit?”

“A meeting of the great races,” Gabe said. “There’s an old meeting house in neutral territory. If everyone came together, we could broker a peace treaty. In the meantime I had to keep you alive, safe, and on track.”

Syney looked at Adam.

Gabe glanced behind him. “Adam was supposed to be a buffer.”

“Why? How?”

“Part of the summit is to unify the races. You and Adam are products of that. You’re half Daemon, and he’s half Vampire. The races need to see there’s nothing to fear from joining together. You’re both living proof of that. Plus, he’s someone who is, for lack of a better phrase, the same as you,” Gabe said.

“So we’re, like, unique?”

Gabe glanced at Noelle before looking down. Noelle nodded. This was her secret to tell. “No and yes,” Noelle said.

Syney looked at her.

“There are some mixed races in the neutral territories,” Noelle said. “Most are holdovers from before the war. They can’t be in their lands, so they hide out there. Some are able to rejoin their societies after a generation or two.” She paused. “Like me. I’m part Shifter, on my mother’s side.”

A feeling of betrayal was clearly written across Syney’s face. “No more secrets, huh?”

“Syney—”

She shook her head and turned away from Noelle. “I’ll talk to Reed and Leaf. Where do you want to meet Hadrian?”

“Becca’s? It’ll be neutral enough, and we’ll be safe there,” Gabe said glancing at Noelle.

Syney nodded and stood up but sat down again. She stared at Gabe for a moment before speaking. “You’d do anything to keep me alive, safe, and most importantly, on track, wouldn’t you?”

Noelle sat forward.
What’s she getting at?
she wondered.

“Anything,” Gabe replied.

“Did you know I was leaving?” Noelle heard the tears in Syney’s words.

No, please, no
, Noelle thought.

Gabe didn’t say anything at first.

“More lies, and you can forget about your half-breed queen,” Syney said, barely moving an inch.

“Yes.”

“You got it from Cass.”

“Yes.”

“And then you told her to go tell her mother.”

“Yes,” Gabe said.

“You almost got him killed!” Syney jumped up and jabbed a finger at him. “You could have gotten
me
killed!”

“Mellisandrianna wouldn’t have touched you, and he didn’t die, now did he?”

“That doesn’t matter. She gave him a choice of being executed or leaving. You can’t play with people’s lives like that.”

“She does.”

“And that makes her the bad guy! So what are you?”

Gabe stood. “Someone who wants to make things right! And doesn’t care much about ruining some stupid little relationship if it has to be done!”