Shades of Avalon

By Carol Oates

Ben Pryor grew up as an average kid in Camden, Maine, unaware of the supernatural storm brewing in his Celtic blood. However, at nineteen, as the last born in the royal line of beings that once ruled Atlantis, Ben has eagerly embraced his newfound abilities and birthright.

When Caleb, his sister's mate, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, the prime suspect is the last remaining member of the overthrown, corrupt Guardian Council.
With the discovery that an old acquaintance has been keeping secrets, and the future Ben was so sure of shifting before his eyes, the situation becomes more complicated and the ransom for Caleb too high.

In the sequel to Shades of Atlantis, Ben will delve deeper than he ever imagined into the old, magical ways of the Guardians, the secrets of Excalibur, and the truth behind the legend of King Arthur.

What exactly did the Council hide beneath the citadel of Camelot? And can it help get Caleb back without putting the world in danger?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Omnific Publishing
• Release date: Apr 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781623421168

Carol Oates

Carol Oates has never been one to remain still for long. After her parents’ mad dash to the hospital through the empty city streets of Dublin, Ireland, Carol made her debut into the world in the early hours of Christmas morning. Since then her pace has not slowed down in the least.Carol was introduced to the world of supernatural books when, as a child, her family moved to a coastal suburb of Dublin known as Clontarf, famous as the birthplace of Bram Stoker, the prolific author responsible for breathing life into the legendary story Dracula. This stirred in Carol an early passion for reading about all things supernatural. Combine that passion with a deep interest in the history and folklore of Ireland, as well as an active and vivid imagination, and Carol Oates the author was born. Carol’s love of writing about anything not entirely “human” emerged, and the premise for her debut novel, Shades of Atlantis, was born.

Book preview

Prologue

A MURDER OF CROWS scattered to the air like a black cloud floating across the azure sky. Their ghostly squawking echoed over the plains of the battlefield. Fighting had long past, leaving behind a heavy stench of death in the summer heat. Smoking fires set to confuse the enemy intensified the putrid air, and the cries of those still alive—but brutally maimed—blended in a grisly melody. Weary knights, fortunate to escape the worst of the carnage, buried their fallen brothers. Once they paid their respects, the arduous journey home to Camelot would begin.

Nearby, desperate tears slipped from a young woman’s amber eyes, forming rivulets in the blood and dirt caked to her cheeks. Bedraggled clumps of hair framed her face—bronze threads from the long braid hanging down her back. She leaned over once more, soaking the cloth she had ripped from her own battle tunic in the water at the edge of the lake. She used the rag to wipe sticky perspiration and blood from the man’s pallid brow.

His chain mail armor and shield lay discarded in a heap nearby, but his sword remained within reaching distance of the woman’s hand. His head rested on her lap, and she rocked her body back and forth almost indiscernibly, as if he were merely sleeping. His harsh, shallow breathing and a gruesome wound to his belly told a different story.

The young man looked as if he’d been gutted, only the haphazard bandage barely covering the angry slash keeping his intestines in place. Crimson soaked the grungy fabric and leaked in a steady flow, absorbing into the marshy grass and turning it the color of mud. A similar stained bandage wrapped around his head.

A whoosh of water sprang upward from the lake and cascaded several feet about the surface. The funnel moved toward the couple as if it was suddenly sentient. All around it, the water remained still…clear, smooth glass shimmering in the sunlight. Startled, the woman reached for the sword with lightning speed, so fast her hand blurred. The very instant her fingers made purchase, a blinding flash shot from the metal. The dull gray blade radiated a brilliant, pure light so white and luminescent the woman squinted, shielding her eyes from the brightness.

Who goes there? she demanded.

The cascading water sparkled and shivered over the surface. You already know the answer you seek. You summoned us here. The sound was tinkling bells and music, choirs, both male and female, and harps all at once.

Carefully she moved the man’s head, laying him on the ground and drawing her fingertip across his forehead below the edge of the bandage. She inhaled a long breath and placed her hand on her thigh for balance as she stood. The woman turned to the source of the beautiful sound, with the sword held tightly in her hand, its tip directed to the ground. Her head tilted forward respectfully, keeping her eyes averted from the water.

I beg of you to save him.

It is his time, the voices replied. There was no trace of malice in the resonance.

I was tricked. The battle was a trap. Regardless, he fought bravely for his people. He is worthy of a second chance…please. Her voice cracked, and another tear slipped from her eye.

And the others, young warrior, would you have us save them too?

The woman frowned and shook her head as if ashamed and unable to speak the words out loud.

It is his time.

He has been touched by magic…transformed by magic. If you will not save him, you can take him in my stead. It was a statement, but the pleading in the woman’s voice was unmistakable. Her chest heaved beneath her armor, and each word passed trembling lips. I entreat you. I cast myself before the graciousness of your mercy. I cannot live if I know he does not.

The water remained silent for a moment, although the shimmering intensified. The woman’s gaze continued to flicker to the man’s chest, measuring his breathing as it slowed further.

Do you understand the consequence of what you petition for this day?

She raised her chin and rolled her shoulders back. I do…and I accept it gladly.

As you wish.

Dribbles of water fought gravity to climb the shallow bank. As if supported by invisible hands, the man’s body lifted and hovered inches above the ground, resting on the streams. After a moment, the water began to move back toward the lake. The woman looked on the scene before her—her eyebrows pulled down and her teeth bit firmly into her lower lip. His body crept over the shimmering liquid, floating on the cushion of air between. He briefly dangled in empty space, upright and unconscious. The cascade widened, becoming a sheer wall, distorting the vista of hills and forest on the other shore. When it closed once more, the ripples of water enveloped the unconscious man like so many arms pulling him into an embrace.

As soon as he was no longer visible, the woman let out a small gasp somewhere between agony and relief. She shielded her eyes in the explosion of light that followed. The cascade crashed into the lake, showering her in droplets of crystal blue water and taking the man with it.

Left alone, the woman collapsed to the ground and wailed.

Chapter 1

My Beautiful Bride

I ROLLED ONTO MY BACK, blinking against the winter sun streaming in the window and casting long shadows across the bedroom. My empty stomach gurgled. The bed shifted, followed swiftly by the back of Amanda’s limp hand landing square on my face.

Too early, she groaned, turning over to bury her face in the pillows.

Ah, my beautiful bride—the morning person.

She’d recently had her blond hair cut shorter than ever. It suited her fine bone structure and made her brown eyes huge. It also stuck up at odd angles from the back of her head first thing in the morning.

She turned again, snuggling into my side. She wrapped her arm around my chest and threw her leg over mine to get warm. Amanda still hadn’t figured out I turned the thermostat down every night.

A week after our wedding, I knew for sure I’d never get used to waking up with this gorgeous girl. Lucky for me we had about four hundred years of these mornings ahead of us.

I pulled her even closer and wrapped her in my arms, breathing in the bouquet that attracted me to her in the first place. Ours was an unexpected relationship for a couple of reasons. Amanda being one of my older sister’s best friends was one, and the other was my ancestry.

My recently discovered family tree carried the blood of Celtic gods known as Guardians. The family history was fundamental in the legends surrounding the fall of Atlantis. Up until a short time ago, mating with humans was strictly forbidden and punishable by death on orders of the Guardian Council. Considering everything, I didn’t qualify as traditional boy-next-door material.

Since my transition, I had discovered all Guardians recognized their soul mate by scent. Amanda smelled of vanilla and sunflowers. It didn’t even matter what perfume she sprayed on her skin or what shampoo she used. Nothing would ever mask it from me.

My stomach growled again, vibrating my abdomen with the intensity of it. Amanda moaned in protest before she did a one-eighty roll away from me to the opposite side of our king-sized bed. She pulled the pillow out from below her head and squashed it over her face. Her two small hands clenched up, holding it flat over her ears. I couldn’t help chuckling.

God, you’re worse than a newborn, she complained, her words muffled through feathers. It’s like you have to be fed every two hours or your body starts consuming itself.

I scooted over behind her, doing my very best to ignore the tip of the pale, jagged scar poking over her tank top on the otherwise flawless skin of her back. It wasn’t really a scar, more of an imprint left behind by magic, a small whitish mar on her flesh. Anyone else might think it was pigmentation. I knew different. I knew every millimeter of that mark and its slightly larger twin placed low on her chest—right where her heart beat.

Zeal, the last member of the Guardian Council who was determined to destroy my sister and me and end the royal line, had driven a sword right through Amanda’s chest when she stepped in front of me. He and his followers had been fighting to keep my sister from the Stone of Destiny, which would scream out and announce the return of the rightful royal heir to Tara. Hubris prevented Zeal from seeing the flaw in his plan to retain power—that we might have been more than a match for them.

In the end, Triona allowed Zeal to live even as Amanda lay dead in my arms. It was only through magic that she was alive today. Running my fingers lightly up Amanda’s side under the comforter, I kissed her shoulder. Feed me then, woman.

Her body jerked in reflex, trying to get away from my fingers. Amanda was ticklish.

Feed yourself, caveman, she snapped back.

Cavemen cannot live by burnt Pop-Tarts alone. Cooking wasn’t among my superhuman abilities or my human ones. I leaned in, trailing my lips across the back of Amanda’s shoulders and lingered at the base of her neck. I smoothed my hand across her stomach to pull her closer to me.

This time her body didn’t jerk—it was more of a flutter accompanied by a soft sigh as she released her death grip on the pillow.

She allowed me to roll her back so my body half covered hers. Her eyes narrowed. I saw the smile she was fighting in the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth. Fingernails scraped up the back of my neck, into my hair, and I could tell food wasn’t far away. All of a sudden, food was the last thing on my mind.

This is coercion, husband, she accused, her voice still husky from sleep.

I leaned in again, satisfied with the improvement of her mood when she tilted her head back to give me more access to her slender neck. My tongue peeked out from my lips, swirling a small circle over the artery below her ear where I felt her heart begin to pick up pace. Amanda tasted of vanilla too. Her fingers curled, gripping my hair tighter.

It certainly is, wife, I breathed against her warm skin and kissed my way up her throat and across her jaw. I barely kept myself from groaning.

I’d also discovered something almost primal and animalistic in the basic genetic nature of beings like me. Fighting brought out my claws…literally, and I was still adjusting to the whirlwind of my heightened emotions. My love for Amanda occasionally bordered on obsession with her safety, and my desire for her often burned hot enough to melt the polar icecaps. I worked hard to keep myself in check but found it difficult considering my nineteen-year-old human side only added fuel to the hormone fires.

I thought you were hungry? Her voice was soft and teasing. One index finger skimmed a line down my back, creating a warming shiver over my skin, and toyed with the elastic of my boxer shorts.

I was about to ask her if she wanted to stop when her body tensed and both hands went to my shoulders to push me away. Crap, Ben, what time is it?

I clung to her, using my weight to keep her pressed into the mattress. It didn’t take much effort despite her protests.

It’s early, I replied, nuzzling into the soft, fragrant curves of her body.

What time, Ben? She pushed harder, sounding frustrated and wiggling from under me. She reached out one arm and snatched her phone from the bedside table, looking at it with wide eyes.

Crap, crap, crap, crap! Amanda bounced from the bed when I finally relented and flopped onto my back.

She thundered around the room like a mini tornado, grabbing clothes for both of us. Most of our things were still in unpacked boxes, just the same as the ones littered though every room in our new home. We’d been too busy to unpack.

Without even looking, and muttering crap to herself repeatedly, she managed to toss a pair of jeans directly at my face. I chuckled quietly because that was the extent of Amanda’s profanities.

Move, Ben, she demanded, turning to me a little crazed and wild-eyed, clinging to the balled-up gray sweater in her arms like a drowning woman to a life preserver. Our recent activities had left her cheeks flushed, and a pair of my boxer shorts hung low on her hips instead of pajamas.

I grinned like an idiot, madly in love with this magnificent, disorganized, disaster of a girl.

She stamped her foot when I didn’t move. Triona is leaving in two hours.

Amanda, my sister has known you since you were six years old, I started as I flung back the covers, immediately hit by the low temperature of the room against my bare chest. She knows you have never shown up on time for anything.

I approached her slowly, thinking about the double shower in our bathroom and watching her eyes soften and relax. I reached out with my mind and used my most reassuring and calming voice. Besides, I know a way we can save time.

It was a neat little trick—many Guardians possessed the ability to influence the minds of others—although it didn’t work on everyone. At first I did it without realizing. However, I had been practicing and over time learned to control my powers more efficiently. Now it was as easy as stretching. I felt my thoughts ribbon out from my consciousness like tendrils of almost translucent smoke. The wisps curled through the air and wrapped around the minds of others, soaking through them until my desire seemed like their own.

Amanda’s arms loosened, and one eyebrow arched perfectly. She knew me too well. I smiled sheepishly. If all else fails, turn on the charm.

It’s our honeymoon.

There I was thinking our trip to Italy next week will be our honeymoon. She smirked, walking us toward the door of the master bath with small steps.

I could hear as Amanda’s blood pulsed faster, matching my own. Her scent intensified, taking on a darker note, a heady fragrance of excitement. Her pupils dilated infinitesimally.

That can be too. I shrugged. But maybe we should practice some more.

Amanda’s hand fell by her side, and the sweater dropped to the polished floor as her smile widened. She continued to back up, passing the doorframe into the other room and shaking her head. There she stopped, lifting her hands to press against my abdomen as soon as I was within touching distance. In bare feet, the top of Amanda’s head just about reached my chest.

Tempting. Her soft sigh was mesmerizing, hanging in the air between us and making the air thicken with anticipation.

My stomach curled with excitement. I lifted one hand and gently smoothed down her erratic hair, laughing lightly when it refused to cooperate.

Moments like this one brought back the memory of the battle at Tara with vivid clarity. In one bloodcurdling moment, when my brave, human girl took a sword for me, my world stopped spinning. Everything seemed to slip sideways and out of focus. I heard the metal turning inside of her, twisting in her chest, and slicing through muscle, scraping and shattering bone.

I remembered every day how I failed to protect her, unable to do anything but stare as her complexion paled and life faded from her eyes.

Amanda went to Tír na nÓg that day, the Otherworld.

When I brought her back from there, she was different…touched by magic. Amanda wasn’t exactly human any longer, nor was she Guardian.

I love you, Amanda. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love you, I said, hoping she understood the sincerity of my words. The solace I found in being with my true soul mate was something I still struggled to put into words—the feeling of loving someone and feeling so completely loved and accepted by that person.

No matter how hard I tried, I still couldn’t fully empathize with Caleb, my sister’s soul mate. I could never stay away from Amanda while she grieved my supposed death like Caleb had with my sister…not even for her own good.

I love you too.

I pushed thoughts of anyone else from my mind and cupped her cheek, leaning down to kiss her softly.

Her hand slid up my chest and wrapped around my neck. Mine slipped down, gently nudging her sharp hipbones backward.

What are you doing? She smiled against my mouth, her warm breath making my lips tingle.

Conserving water, I replied, reaching my foot behind me to kick the door closed.

Ba…da…ba…ba. I slapped the steering wheel in beat to the music and ignored the glares Amanda shot me because we were a little later than we’d intended. The music pumped through the truck while I indulged in a serious display of seated dancing.

As soon as we returned from Tara to Camden, Maine, Uncle Lewis had put me right back to work alongside him as a carpenter. Uncle Lewis was my dad’s brother—the human side of my bloodline. He and my Aunt Carmel raised Triona and me after the Council murdered our parents in a faked car crash. It didn’t matter to either of them I had just come into the massive fortune my ancestors had amassed. Pride comes from a salary, not an inheritance, Lewis always said.

My only extravagant purchases had been a nice house—clear on the other side of town from my family and Amanda’s—and this serious piece of driving machinery. I justified it by saying we needed a decent truck. Winters in Maine were harsh—thick blankets of melting snow still covered almost everything from the mountain trails to Main Street.

Many of the businesses in Camden shut down for the winter. They were just beginning to open up again, preparing for the deluge of tourists who would hike up Mount Battie or head out in windjammers from the bay. We had already said goodbye to the sports enthusiasts that frequented Camden over the cold winter months, all headed off to fresh powder some other place. Maybe I didn’t need to be quite so ostentatious in my choice of vehicle, but she sure was pretty. I carefully swiped some dust from the dash and smiled.

I’m going to think you’re having an affair with this truck. Amanda smirked, giving me a side eye.

She’s a beauty, I sighed. But not nearly as beautiful as you. I reached over and ran the back of my index finger over her cheek. I loved that I could still make her blush.

Amanda slapped my hand away playfully. My husband, the smoothie.

Mmm, smoothie. My stomach grumbled again because I still hadn’t eaten.

Amanda switched her attention back to the pamphlets about potential colleges in her lap, making my thoughts run in a different direction. She still hadn’t managed to complete a full course thanks to traipsing off to London with Triona less than a year into her two-year design program. Then the whole dying thing kind of wiped the gloss off foreign study for her. She wanted to come straight home from Ireland, and I wanted to make her feel safe.

Tell me again why you need to go to college when the business is already doing so well.

Amanda’s smile faded, and she forced out a heavy breath through her teeth. There’s always going to be some idiot who thinks I can’t put colors together or choose furniture because I don’t have a diploma that says I can. I want to do this right. Besides, I want to do more than make rooms look pretty. I want to create the entire space from the core of the building. I want to put flesh on its bones.

Amanda was as determined as the rest of us that her whole life wouldn’t change because of what happened over the last few years. Sometimes I wondered how realistic it was.

What made an average human life so special? We weren’t the people we thought we were. The world we thought we lived in never existed. We were so much more than human now. Guardians lived for centuries. We were beautiful, faster, and stronger. We weren’t susceptible to human illnesses or disease, and injuries healed with supernatural speed. As long as I lived, magic protected Amanda and she would never succumb to her human mortality. I couldn’t deny the part of me wanting to embrace it.

However, for Amanda, her close brush with death had made her even more determined to succeed within the human world. Amanda had always been considered a little flighty, even by her own family—a little spoiled, nosy, disorganized, indulged, and a gossip. She had so much more going for her if someone took the time to see.

Amanda loved without limits, and she was as fierce as an angry lioness when it came to protecting those around her. She was brave, thoughtful, and loyal.

I glanced sideways and glimpsed her reaching into her bag to pull out a big Ziploc bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies. She held the open bag out to me. Amanda was also a fantastic cook.

I knew there was a reason I married you, woman, I told her, smiling and stuffing one whole cookie into my mouth.

I knew there was a reason I would divorce you eventually, caveman. She giggled, brushing away crumbs from the front of my jacket.

My cell phone rang, and her smile suddenly disappeared. We both knew it was someone calling to see why we weren’t there yet. Surely they could have used their imagination.

Amanda picked my cell up from the compartment between us. Hello.

Hi, Amanda. Can you put Ben on the phone please? I heard Lewis’s voice on the other end.

Judging by her frown, I guessed Amanda could hear the restrained…something in Lewis’s voice just as I could. She immediately handed the phone over to me.

We’ll be there in five minutes, I said before he had a chance to speak, glancing over to see Amanda tilting her head to the side and watching me. It was something she always did when she contemplated.

No, don’t go to the house, he said quickly, too quickly.

I listened to the background noise behind his voice and could clearly hear the rumbling of an engine and Carmel sniffling.

You need to get to the medical center as quickly as you can, Lewis instructed gravely. We’re already on our way. It’s Triona and Caleb.

Chapter 2

A Broken Pretense

I FLINCHED AGAIN, wondering if my own bones might splinter from the nervous tension inside my body. The sound of Triona’s arm breaking in a room forty feet away was almost too much to take. If I wasn’t concentrating so intently, it might be too quiet to discern.

I forced myself to remain motionless by focusing on a tiny hair embedded in the paintwork of the doorframe to the waiting room. My toes curled inside my boots at the next bloodcurdling crack. Amanda placed one hand on my shoulder from behind and stroked my other arm reassuringly. Her touch was the only thing stopping me from going in there and tearing Samuel apart.

So what if Samuel had more experience dealing with this stuff than I did? So what if he knew more about covering tracks than I did? It didn’t make it anywhere near acceptable to break her arm a third time—even if the doctors would find it strange Triona healed so fast.

He’d also been administering extra doses of sedative and pain relief to Triona. It made sense our bodies burned off medication at the same rate they replenished blood, remodeled bone, and regenerated tissue.

I couldn’t escape an idea scratching at the back of my mind. Why should we have to hide in plain sight, pretending to be human—vulnerable and weak—all so humans wouldn’t have to feel threatened by us?

It’s done. Samuel, Caleb’s father, entered the room after the pretense of checking on Triona for the entire stressed out family.

Carmel, Lewis, Caleb’s mother, Annice, as well as Amanda and I moved closer to him automatically.

Well? The word cut like glass in my throat. Or was it all the other words I held back?

There is an orthopedic surgeon in with her now. She should have a cast on soon, and then we can arrange to get her out of here. Samuel spoke barely above a whisper so as not to alert the passing medical staff. He paused before continuing. She never woke up.

Samuel looked worn out—older. He was older of course, about two hundred and fifty years older than his mid-thirties appearance. He had been part of the Guardian Council before he gave up his position as part of a brokered deal so Caleb and Triona could be together. He bared an uncanny physical resemblance to Caleb. Both men were tall with short, almost black hair, cut glass cheekbones, and piercing blue eyes the color of sapphires. At least, that was Amanda’s description of them. I didn’t see the attraction, but I had to concede the last few hours had been hard on Samuel too.

Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to thank him. I left the verbal gratitude to Lewis, and I nodded my head in acknowledgment. Samuel slipped his arm around Annice’s shoulder and led her away to the corner of the room. In contrast to Samuel’s sun-kissed complexion, she appeared unusually drawn. She hadn’t attempted to talk to me in his absence. Her pale blond hair was pulled away from her face to a knot at the back of her head, and her silver eyes were red-rimmed from crying. Normally Annice remained the calm one, the one always in control. Helping people make sense of difficult situations was a special gift of hers. It worried me when even Annice couldn’t see a silver lining here.

Lewis and Carmel retook their seats, Lewis in his working attire of checked shirt and steel-toed boots as always. Carmel substituted her immaculate, groomed appearance in favor of jeans and a shabby sweatshirt. Lewis mussed her short, blond hair, running his fingers through it as she leaned against his chest. Lewis was a huge man with tree trunk arms and a chest the size of a bear. Carmel’s tiny frame looked lost in his arms. They cared for Triona and me, loved us and protected us as much as any parent would. They kept our secret, hoping we’d grow up more like our father than our mother. In other words—human.

Amanda continued to hold on to my arm with one hand and with the other rubbed circles on my lower back. It did nothing to still the rage inside me. I felt selfishly unable to offer any comfort in return. Instead, I continued to glare at Samuel and Annice with equal amounts of anger and guilt. They, too, cared for all of us.

Samuel held Annice close, his knuckles bleached white and straining. She looked up to his eyes, gazing into them as though conducting a private conversation without words.

Their son was gone—again.

Still, Caleb wasn’t my greatest concern. Our relationship remained awkward because of the choices he’d made in the past. He’d lied repeatedly. He’d selfishly started a relationship with Triona before she left high school, knowing they had a finite amount of time together, and bailed when the going got tough. Despite returning, somehow, nothing he had done for her since then tipped the scales back in his favor.

Everything bad Triona had been through in the last few years had started with him moving to Camden. I vividly remembered my sister in the hospital after he’d pulled her from a fire at his house, started when his adopted brother had tried to kill her. I closed my eyes and pictured the look on her face when she thought he was dead. It had been as if she had died too in that instant—a light had gone out behind her eyes. He’d made the choice to leave then, and despite Samuel’s reassurance, I couldn’t be sure Caleb hadn’t left her now. Apprehension caused my pulse to race at the idea I’d have to see that look in my sister’s eyes again.

None of that was fair to Caleb. I knew it.

There was no denying he’d made Triona insanely happy since their reconciliation, but it was easier to paint him as the bad guy and expect the worst, than not see it coming again.

Silence consumed the small room, so thick it was like wading through sludge. The underlying scent of antiseptic, blood, and death permeated the air and burned in my nostrils.

Smells and sounds had the ability to take a person back in time, just as sure as turning the hands of a clock or tipping an hourglass. My fingers curled into fists by my side, and my nails lengthened, cutting crescent shaped wounds into my palms. I closed my eyes, and I was seventeen again, standing with my hand pressed to glass, trying to reach her and failing. Back then, I had been unable to take her pain, just as I would be powerless to take her pain this time too.

Despite it still being day, dark, heavy rain clouds muted the light from the window in Triona’s hospital room. Strip lighting hummed overhead, a sound human ears would miss but left me with the sensation of a bee loose inside my head.

Triona blinked a few times before attempting to focus on her surroundings. Her fingers twitched as if testing them, and the fine metal of the needle piercing her skin on the inside of her elbow strained. She winced and scrunched her nose. She appeared groggy and disoriented but not badly hurt.

Someone had taken the time to braid her long hair, and the thick copper rope curled like a snake over her shoulder. We had both inherited dark red hair and the same shade of green eyes from our mother. Because Triona was only ten months older, people often mistook us for twins until we got to high school. Junior year wasn’t the greatest time of my life. Back then I was her dorky little brother, a lanky kid with red hair, a secret crush, and no idea of the storm brewing in my genes.

Now it seemed as if we were witnesses standing around her room, waiting to observe a barbaric sentencing. The clock on the wall outside the room threw out a steady beat, measuring each passing second while we waited. I had the strangest sensation of tightness in my chest and imagined the ticktock becoming a perpetual clicking, time stretching without end. If I could, I would have willed Triona unconscious so she would never have to face what she was about to. I doubted Triona would make it through his death a second time.

Suddenly panic rolled over her, and she lifted her hand to rip the oxygen tube from her nose. I moved fast, locking her arms in place by keeping a hand on her uninjured wrist and one on her shoulder. She resisted instinctually, and a low hiss left her lips.

Calm down, Triona, I whispered close to her ear.

She struggled again to free herself.

You’re in the hospital. You need to calm down.

Her body stiffened below my hands in an obvious attempt not to react, and she took a deep breath.

I’m calm. I’m calm, she said flatly, matching the volume of my voice and looking in my direction, although clearly struggling to focus.

I forced my lips to curve into a stilted smile and loosened my grip but didn’t relax completely. A foreboding settled on my shoulders like a dark cloak, and her eyes flashed to the other side of the bed in the small blue room. Among other gifts, Triona possessed a unique ability to see a spectrum of invisible colors. She perceived a person’s emotions as an aura surrounding their body.

Annice, she mumbled.

Panic stepped up a notch in the room. Lewis held Carmel back from approaching, and Amanda stood on her other side. If Triona decided to fight, Annice and I were better suited to hold her still given the increased strength of our kind. Annice glanced up at me, waiting for direction—three fine lines creased her normally smooth forehead. Samuel kept watch by the door to warn when a doctor or nurse approached.

You are in the hospital under observation, Annice started in a calming voice, perhaps in an effort not to frighten Triona. You healed after they found you, but…

Her eyes lowered.

But? Triona pressed.

Annice met her eyes again and sighed. But there was so much blood and nothing to show where it came from. She paused catching herself and the panic that had begun to creep into her voice. "Don’t worry