Angela Knight - Unbound

Straightening, the guard nodded awkwardly, and Griffin gave the red-haired man a tight-lipped smile and a clap to the shoulder.

Once inside the vault and away from the guard’s ears, David said to Griffin, “We need a leader. Don’t diminish that role.”

Griffin was already a dark man, with Greek-like skin, black hair, and thick, straight eyebrows, but the weight of his new leadership made him seem like he’d been cast in shadow. He didn’t respond, but instead went to the pedestal in the center of the vault that cradled the shimmering Fragment. The rock—a delicate silver color streaked with sparkling blue—was about the size of a bag of sugar.

“Such a small thing,” Griffin murmured, “to hold such power.”

The Fragment had no magic in and of itself, but David understood.

“The Ofarians are broken.” Griffin’s obsidian eyes fixed on the rock’s gleam. “The only things holding us together are our traditions. If the Rites don’t go off without a hitch, my new order will die. It’s already crumbling. Do you know how hard it is to keep something together when the pieces keep flying apart?”

Of course he did. Hadn’t he managed to pull Kelsey close, then shatter their connection into tiny bits, all in one night? But Griffin wasn’t talking about David’s pathetic love life.

A new wave of guilt over having let Wes slip away again rolled through him. “Gwen destroyed the old ways and the people still chose her to lead the Ice Rites. That should tell you Ofarians want change. They support what she did and they support you.”

“Not everyone.”

David swallowed, remembering with a pang how Kelsey had refused to help him. “I’ll get Pritchart. I promise you.”

Griffin lifted the Fragment off its cushion and pillowed it in the crook of his arm. He gazed down at it like it was a newborn with all the reverence it was afforded as evidence of another world. Then he pinned David with an austere look. “Good.”

David thrust back his shoulders, a soldier facing his commander in chief. “Just wait until tonight when the people see Gwen walk in with that thing. And tomorrow during the rite when she calls down the starlight? It’ll be impossible not to be moved. The two of you will rally everyone behind you.”

Griffin’s lips flattened. “I hope you’re right.”

After they exited the vault and came out of the manor’s maze of inner hallways, David’s cell phone signal kicked back on. The voice mail alarm chimed. It was from Kelsey. The beat of his heart tripped out of rhythm.

Truthfully, he hadn’t expected to hear from her again. With shaking fingers, he pressed PLAY.

“David, it’s me.” She sounded out of breath, the border of her voice tinged with panic. “Wes just sent Emily a letter. You need to see it.”

It wasn’t a letter. It was a fucking manifesto.

David hunched over the lone table in the clinic’s break room, reading aloud to Griffin, who leaned against the counter near the soda vending machine. The Ofarian leader rubbed fingers over his bottom lip, his eyes gone black and focused far away.

Twenty pages long, the letter was the repetitious, circuitous ramblings of a madman, written longhand in one never-ending paragraph.

Water is ever powerful. It is the singular element, raised above all. We once commanded the universe, ruled from an invisible peak among the stars . . . yada yada yada.

David rolled his head on his neck. He’d been reading for ten minutes. “When is this going to get good?”

“Keep going.”

We are privileged. Special. The Ofarians of the First Immigration fought for their lives, and everyone who seeks to erase the power and legacy they built is an enemy of the race. We do not belong among Primaries. We are superior. Anyone who wants to partner with them is my enemy.

“This isn’t anything we haven’t heard before,” David commented. “He isn’t even original in his hate speech.”

Griffin motioned him to go on. “There has to be a purpose to this. Three months on the run and he picks now to contact his sister?”

David skimmed ahead. “Speaking of his sister . . .”

You, too, Emily, are my enemy. I should’ve known you’d turn your back. You always did like to squeal. Like the time you told Mom and Dad I scratched the car fender. Or when I hid in the hollow of the great redwood tree during the Ice Rites of 1977. I’m sure you will tell our false leader about this letter as well.

“Is he twelve or fifty-seven?” David grumbled.

Then:

Gwen Carroway started the problem. But Griffin Aames is the wind on the brushfire. He wants to extend a hand to other Secondary races. This is wrong. We are singular and we are meant to rule. When Griffin tries to meet with these “others,” he will die.

Griffin pushed away from the counter.

“Is he fucking stupid?” David slapped the pages to the plastic table.

“He’s outrun us for three months. He has strong, vocal supporters. No, I don’t think he’s stupid.”

“He’s talking assassination.”

Griffin ground his teeth. “And now we have his target. Me.”

David thought fast. “He won’t go for it here. Too many people. Too many Primaries.”

Griffin snapped his fingers. “In two weeks I head to Canada to try to find the air elementals. I bet that’s when he’ll attempt it.”

David jumped from his chair. “So we cancel the trip.”

“No.” Griffin shook his head. “That’ll tip him off. We want him. So we set a trap.”

“And risk your life? No. Absolutely not. You’re the glue, Griffin. All those pieces you were talking about a little while ago? You’re what’s holding everybody together. If anything happens to you, you can kiss it all good-bye. Everything Gwen sacrificed, everything you’ve built so far, everything you want to create in the future—it will all disappear.”

Griffin stared at him for a long time, then his head dropped on his neck. “I don’t want you to be right.”

“And yet I am. So we’ll set the trap. Only I’ll be your decoy.”

“You look nothing like me.”

David snorted. “You’re not that much bigger. I can stuff some styrofoam pads in my shoulders, pull on a black wig and gel it all up like a pretty boy. Maybe slap some fuzzy black caterpillars over my eyebrows—”

“Fuck you.” But Griffin was grinning. He reached out to clamp a hand on David’s shoulder and gave it a good squeeze. The grin faded. “Thank you.”

“I’m not doing it because you’re my friend. I’m doing it because I believe in you and what you stand for. You’ve done away with the classes, but I’ll always be a soldier. I’ll always protect you.”

A muscle in Griffin’s jaw jumped. “I know.”

David pulled Griffin in for a shoulder bump and a hearty clap on the back. “Shit, I’ll have to increase your guards tonight at the gala. My people’ll be pissed they won’t be able to drink.”

“Tell you what,” Griffin said, pulling away, “you keep me alive and bring in Wes Pritchart, and I’ll buy them their own fucking vineyard.”

“Will do.”

David left Griffin with the manifesto.

Out in the hall, Emily broke away from the two soldiers flanking her and came up to him, her eyes red but expectant. “I have to keep the letter,” he told her, and she nodded with a grimace. “Thank you for telling us about it.”

“It was Kelsey. She said you deserved to know.”

That was surprising.

“Just get him.” Emily looked beyond fatigued, beyond heartbroken.

On the other side of the clinic, opposite the computers, Kelsey emerged from one of the exam rooms, her brow furrowed in concentration, a tablet computer tucked under her arm. Though she was busy and distracted, she stopped as though his stare owned a physical force. Maybe it did, because he felt something reciprocal and awful stab into his heart.