Page 59 of Dance of the Phoenix
“It is the last night before you head to your possible doom, after all,” Isora said with a shrug, “and many high-profile members are going, like Oberon, Neisha, and Logan.”
Isora was right; many members seemed to cluster around the aforementioned three. I knew Logan was popular in the League, but I hadn’t realized just how much until now.
Zoey sipped from her glass before she said, “Perhaps I should go mingle as well.”
I couldn’t help but smile at her words. “Already preparing the ground for when you return victorious?”
She snickered. “Well, I do plan to become a full-fledged member of the Troop once we win this thing, and if possible, I would like to become a Commander.”
To be fair, Zoey’s ambitions weren’t that far-fetched. I heard the talks among the Hecatomb participants during our last few training days. She had the potential to develop a Gift as she grew older in her vampire years. She was just that strong, for a Common.
My eyes went back to Logan, who was smiling and laughing with a few members as he drank a glass of beer. He seemed so young just then, and it occurred to me that he’d once told us in the newcomer course that he’d been given the Imprint three years ago—or a bit over it now, since it had been about seven months since then. Either way, it meant he’d been eighteen at the time, which meant not long after I had left him, Ragnor had given him the Imprint.
I couldn’t help but wonder how he even got the Imprint in the first place. Was he on the Waiting List, like all other vampires?
“Hey,” Isora said, nudging me with her elbow. I turned to look at her, and her eyes flickered to a point behind my shoulder emphatically. “Someone is coming over.”
I turned around to see Jada heading my way. It’d been a while since I last saw her, and it seemed as if it had been years. Her black skin, which normally shone with health, was now completely ashen. Her brilliant gray eyes had sunk into her face, her lips were cracked and dry, and she seemed to have lost too many pounds for a mere week, causing her to look so small under her now oversize clothes.
“Aileen,” she said when she approached me after dragging her feet as if she had no energy left in her limbs. “Can we talk?”
Seeing her in this state made my heart race in something akin to panic. “Of course.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” Isora said, taking her glass, and left after a look of concern toward Jada. She didn’t even know Jada, but even a stranger could tell the situation was dire.
Jada’s sunken eyes peered at me, lacking their usual mischievous glow—or any other emotion, really. “I would like to ask you something,” she said in a drawn, lifeless voice.
“Yes,” I said, glancing around the room. Where was CJ? Why was he letting his soulmate, or “Alara Morreh” as Jada had told me she was called, off his radar when she looked like the walking dead?
“If CJ dies,” she said, making my eyes snap back to hers in shock. She did not seem remotely startled by her own words as she continued. “Please kill me.”
My mouth fell open. “I ... what?” Had I just heard her right?
She shrugged, as if we were talking about the weather. “If a Malachi dies, their Alara Morreh will continue to live in suffering. I want to avoid that. So please kill me if it comes to that.”
I was at a loss for words. I did not want to kill Jada, no matter her circumstances. She had no idea what she was asking of me—or of anyone, really.
But even though I wanted to refuse, to object, to tell her I wouldn’t do it, the look in her eyes made me come to a searing, unbearable pause. Because I recognized that look. I’d seen that look too many times in my past.
She looked like the girls my father tortured.
Utterly hopeless.
And so the only thing I could say was, “All right.” Because back then, I couldn’t give those girls the peaceful death they deserved. And while Jada’s circumstances were vastly different, her eyes told me she was feeling just as tortured, albeit a different type of torture.
Jada nodded and then walked away; conversation done.
I wished I knew how to reach out to her and make it all okay. I wished I could tell her that CJ wouldn’t die, that he would prevail, that this promise was redundant.
But I knew better than most that words were empty, and actions spoke far louder. And I couldn’t promise CJ, or anyone else but Ragnor, would make it out alive.
Ragnor was packing when I entered the suite later that evening. I had already packed earlier, so I simply sat in the living room and watched as he neatly folded his clothes and put them in the open backpack.
“How was the party?” he asked me with a small smile. Ragnor had made a brief appearance at the beginning of the party just to say a few words but had disappeared to his office right after to tie up a few last things before he left his secretaries in charge until his return.
“It was all right,” I said, thinking about Jada. The truth was, it wasn’t. Nothing about it was all right.
I felt as though I’d neglected my friend, the first person in the Rayne League who’d welcomed me with open arms. I’d been so busy training and sorting shit out with Ragnor, not to mention Logan, that all thoughts about Jada’s and CJ’s circumstances had been put in the back of my mind.
