Deviation: Altera Realm Trilogy Book 2 (25 page)

They both got a tray of food—Cass’s piled very high—and found an empty table toward the back of the room. “I’m guessing this was Syney’s idea,” Cass said, right before she bit into a pollum leg.

“Oh, yeah. I’m sure you can guess how happy Mother was about the whole thing. She’s been eating in our lunchroom upstairs. Says she’s been too busy to come down here.”

“Well, I like it, I think. Keeps things interesting,” Cass said, tossing more food into her mouth.

“Didn’t they feed you out there?”

“Don’t get me started. Where’s Syney? I was hoping to…talk to her,” Cass said, slowing down with the food.

“She’s out of the palace for a few days.”

“What? How did she get away with that? Doesn’t she know how dangerous it is out there?” Cass yelled.

Helen put a hand on her arm. “Calm down. She’s all right. Reed and Gabriel are with her.”

Cass shook her head. She didn’t like the idea of Syney being away from the palace at all, not with Wes being out there. He might have let Cass go, but that didn’t mean he still wasn’t under the stupid perception that he had to kill Syney to win the war. “It’s not safe,” she muttered.

“What’s the matter?” Helen asked.

Cass sighed and looked at Helen’s arm, which rested on the table. There was something new. Helen had a gray tattoo racing like flames over her forearm. She smiled at her sister. “They made you a priestess!”

Helen glanced down at her arm and nodded. “I’m training with Vasclineda. I should be named high priestess soon.”

“That’s great!”

Helen’s smile wavered ever so slightly.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Cass asked.

“Of course. I just…had to give something up I miss dearly. And I’ve been seeing things, thinking about things—” She looked over at Cass, a look of uncertainty crossing over her face. “I’m fine, it’s nothing, really.”

Cass frowned but didn’t push Helen any further. Helen didn’t have many secrets from Cass, but there was generally a good reason for her keeping them. Cass went back to concentrating on her food and let Helen stare off into space for a while.

“Hey!”

Cass looked up from her potatoes and squealed a hello at Ivy, who had crutched her way over. “Hey! Come sit!” Cass said, moving her tray aside. “Helen, this is Ivy. She’s one of the royal guards.”

“I guessed as much,” Helen said smiling at Ivy. “I hear you were the only guard who could stand Cass.”

“Hey!”

“That’s not…entirely true,” Ivy said.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you,” Helen said. “Can I get you some food?”

“Oh, um, no. It’s coming,” Ivy said, as Leaf walked up and placed a tray in front of her. “Thank you.”

Leaf nodded and took the seat next to Helen. Cass watched as both exchanged terse greetings. “Welcome back, Princess,” he said.

Cass smiled at him. “Thank you. It’s good to be back. So when will Hunter’s report be reviewed?”

Leaf was quiet for a moment then said, “At the council meeting at the end of the week. Syney should be back by then, and I’d like her here in case there’s a vote.”

“Good idea,” Cass said, nodding. “Have you looked at it?”

“I have.”

“What would the vote be on?” Helen asked, looking back and forth between them.

“Bringing the guards back. There’s no need for them to be out there,” Cass said sternly.

“I suggest you hold your views until the council meeting,” Leaf said quietly.

Cass looked at him. He hadn’t meant to be mean at all. It was almost like a warning, and he was right. You never knew when someone was listening. She nodded to him.

“Ivy has expressed an interest in being assigned to your duty,” Leaf said.

“Can she?” Cass asked, excited. “I mean, I am down a Protector.”

“I approved it through the Lycin council of elders. There will still be a hearing on her actions at the camp but for now, until or if Ivy is chosen from the fire, she will be one of your Protectors.”

Cass smiled at the blond guard, who smiled back. “This is great!”

“I’m honored, and thank you, Commander,” Ivy said.

“You’re welcome. Have a pleasant day, Princess, Priestess,” Leaf said, bowing to each in turn.

Cass watched him go then looked to her sister, who looked the way she had as a child when Adanna had stolen her favorite toy.
Helen and Leaf? Huh
, Cass thought, as she forked some food into her mouth. First Syney and Hunter and now these two. Add to that Cass and Wes, and the only conclusion she could come to was there must be something in the water. Or maybe it was Syney herself. Everything seemed to be changing since she had come to the Village. Maybe this was all part of what she was meant to do. If that was true, Cass hoped she might actually see Wes again—and not only in her dreams.

Syney stepped into the shower and let the hot water wake her up. It was early, and she’d been up almost the whole night with Adam, reading through the notes Hadrian had written. She had come to one conclusion: She needed to learn how to use her powers, Magic User and Daemon, or else she was screwed. But at least now she had a name for the evil that had been trying to kill her since the day she was born, mostly through other people of course: the Ancient One. No one knew exactly how ancient she was or even if she was a she, but Hadrian had come to one conclusion also: She was one evil bitch.

Everything had started much earlier than the Great War. Hadrian and Amelia had started to investigate the Ancient One soon after they’d started dating. Amelia had noticed some odd behavior from the Crystallianna head of house, Lassandrianna. The two had been close friends growing up, more like sisters than friends. But when Amelia had been crowned queen, Lass became aggressive in council meetings and even persuaded the council to crown her seated queen, something that never happened outside of family lines unless there was an emergency. Most queens were paired before the ruling queen took the full queenship. Amelia was the only exception and only because she didn’t have any other family to take the throne from her ailing mother. There was still a lot of time for Amelia to be joined and have a family, and her firstborn daughter would become seated queen. But somehow Lass had snagged the position. That
was only one of the odd behaviors Lass had displayed. She stopped talking to Amelia and made her an enemy in almost every motion in the council. Amelia had confided this all in Hadrian, who had found the story oddly familiar.

After a little investigation, Hadrian had found two different rebellions in the Realm that had started the same way, with two powers holding opposite opinions. That in itself wasn’t too strange, but add to it the fact that everyone said the rebel leader had undergone a dramatic personality change right before the leader started to fight the regime, and you had a conspiracy. The Shifter Rebellion was the oldest, going back a few hundred years before the war. There was only one royal family in the Shifters’ society, but there were always multiple sons in that ruling family. The second son had decided, rather suddenly, that his brother was making terrible choices and needed to be replaced. He gathered some support among the people, but after a few months of fighting, the older brother won out, killing his younger brother in the process.

The other rebellion had occurred within Daemon society. Hadrian said it happened much the same way, with two brothers fighting over control of the lands. The rightful king won in both instances. The interesting thing was that at the time of each rebellion, that race was the major power in the Realm. There was always one race that was a step ahead in regard to commerce, agriculture, and culture, and that race constantly switched as lifetimes passed by. The Shifters had been very powerful for a few hundred years, but after they had fought among themselves for months, the power had shifted to the Daemons. Right before the war started, the Magic Users held the most weight in the Realm.

Although Hadrian and Amelia had talked for hours about the two rebellions and what was happening at that time in the Village, they couldn’t put everything together. As much as it was all so similar, there wasn’t much of a connection beyond that. It wasn’t until they were on a trip to Colchin that they made a breakthrough. They were attacked. Well, Amelia was attacked. The man was a Magic User who was under a curse, which was oddly familiar to Syney. Hadrian personally had interrogated this man. Daemons could not only give memories but also forcibly take them, which Hadrian did. He saw Lass curse him, which made him do anything she asked of him. They would have just blamed Lass and left it at that, but the man had called her the Ancient One, and that was something different. Hadrian and Amelia searched books and talked to hundreds of people but couldn’t find out whom the Ancient One was, only that she was a myth in the lands of all of the races—a being so powerful that she was able to move from generation to generation by stealing bodies and life forces.

That was as far as they got before the killing started. First it was Faye’s family in a supposed Shifter attack. But Hadrian had friends in the Shifter
Kingdom, and they denied being behind it. Amelia couldn’t figure out why they would attack the Blocadrians until Faye was killed. Adam had been right about that. Gabe had been out of the palace, escorting Amelia, Hadrian, and baby Syney back into Magic User land when an invisible force came into the Vampire palace and killed everyone, except little Adam. From what Hadrian was able to put together, which was impressive considering everyone had died, a Daemon squadron had been sent to the Vampire palace and found everyone dead. Hadrian swore he didn’t send them there, but the second word came that they’d been there, they—and Hadrian—were immediately blamed. Amelia realized what was happening immediately. The Blocadrian line were the first rulers for the Magic Users. Even if Lass held the title of seated queen, if Amelia were to die, Faye could have motioned to make herself queen on the basic principle that the position was rightfully hers. Eliminate the Blocadrians and the Viloris while starting a war among the races—the plan was foolproof. The only thing Lass wasn’t prepared for was Syney.

Syney turned off the water and grabbed a towel. If the Ancient One had been in Lass’s body then traveled down the Crystallianna line, it meant she was now Mellisandrianna. And Syney was really pissing her off. Not only had Syney become seated queen, but she also had survived every attempt on her life as well as a curse intended to make her lose her mind. The thing that scared Syney the most wasn’t another attempt on her life but the stealing of it. Her last conversation with Mellisandrianna crept into her mind. The queen had tried to play nice and make friends. At the time, Syney had thought Mellisandrianna was trying to keep Syney from taking the throne, but now she knew better. She was buttering her up to take over her body. She finally realized Syney wasn’t going anywhere. She wasn’t an obstacle to go around anymore; she was a land to be conquered. Either that or Mellisandrianna couldn’t wait around anymore. Syney thought of the missing girl posters in the Village. If the Ancient One had been stealing life forces for a while and not leaving an obvious trail, the fact that she was now leavning signs, big signs in the form of many missing girls, seemed to point to the fact that she was taking more and more life forces. She needed more energy to keep herself who she was, as Mellisandrianna.

“She’s going to have a hell of a fight,” Syney said to the empty room as she pulled on some jeans.

“I wouldn’t want to fight you.”

She turned and smiled at Adam, who leaned against the doorframe. “Hey, you,” she said. “I got worried because you left during the night.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

She nodded and pulled on a black shirt. “I barely did.” She left the bathroom and picked up the papers from her nightstand. “This is crazy, isn’t it?”

Adam shook his head. “Not when you’ve lived it.”

She sighed and walked over to him, sliding her hands around his neck before kissing him. “I’m going to make Mellisandrianna pay for this, I promise.”

He smiled at her and kissed her again. “I have no doubt. Come on. Everyone’s outside.”

Syney stretched. “I’m so ready to kick some magic ass!”

A half hour later, Gabe sat in a plastic lawn chair, wearing sunglasses and looking bored. Noelle sat next to him, reading the notes Hadrian had written and yelling, “Oh, my God!” every five minutes. Becca sat on the porch, drinking tea and remaining calm, as usual. All the while Syney tried to throw purple lightning out of her hands, unsuccessfully, while Adam encouraged her, Hadrian rolled his eyes, and Reed eyed the Daemon suspiciously.

“This is useless!” Syney hollered. “I’m never going to get this! I might as well just let her kill me!”

“Oh, my God!” Noelle yelled.

“You can do this,” Hadrian said calmly. “Gabriel said you’ve already done it before—twice in fact.”

“Yeah, but that was different.”

“How so?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t want to do it—I just did.”

“Tell me about the first time.”

Syney shot a look at Adam before looking back at Hadrian. “I killed a Shifter. A big cat that was attacking.”

“Attacking
you
?”