Page 2 of Iridian (Chromatic Mages #3)

Rosabel La Rouge

“You were in Alejandro Ammiz’s neighborhood, in his Regah chamber,” Madeline said, her glass almost empty.

“I was.” I’d gone to get Taland, and I’d offered them my bracelet in exchange. I’d gone into the Regah chamber without any idea what the hell it even was.

“Why?”

I met Madeline’s eyes.

Goddess, she seemed…confused. Not just pissed, but confused, more confused by the second, like she was trying to read the answer on my face, and when she couldn’t, she only grew more curious.

“If I tell you, will you let me go?” Because I could pick my battles just fine, and this wasn’t one I could win no matter how hard I tried. I had no magic, and this was Madeline Rogan, one of the most powerful Iridians in the world. She wasn’t going to get tired, not if she kept me under her spells all day and all night.

Not to mention she had at least two dozen powerful guards working for her all about her estate at any given time.

Making a deal with her was my best bet, even if my life wasn’t guaranteed. I mean, this was my grandmother. She openly threatened to kill me even in front of a room full of people. She could—and she would if she wanted. Without hesitation.

Silence for a long beat.

“Hmm,” Madeline finally said, and then whispered another spell, this one to levitate and bring her the bottle of whiskey from the liquor cabinet a bit farther away. The bottle landed in her waiting hand and she didn’t once look away from me as she filled her glass again. Slowly.

The sound of that liquid pouring into the glass would forever remain in my memories.

“I can tell you this much, Rosabel—I will not let you go if you don’t tell me. How’s that sound?”

It sounded like one of my nightmares, to be honest. I’d literally had dreams about her hunting me down and killing me.

“Grandmother, I need to know what happened to Taland.” And so what if it only pissed her off more? If she was going to kill me right now, I might as well die after I found out about Taland.

“How would I know what happened to that boy, Rosabel? How?”

I shook my head. “How did you get me here?” That’s how she’d know because if she got to me, if she brought me to her mansion, she surely knew how I came to be found, didn’t she? “Did the IDD find me in Silver Spring? Or did you?”

The corners of her lips turned up just slightly—what a bitter smile. “Same difference, isn’t it?”

I wanted to say no, but the fact that the Council had literally let me live because I was her granddaughter…

“Everything, Rosabel,” said Madeline, moving her glass in circles in front of her—a nervous tic. “You’ve been keeping a lot of secrets from me, and I want to know everything now.”

Laughter burst out of me—how could I help it? “Oh, but I think you’ve kept far more secrets from me, Grandmother,” I said, and I was panicking a little bit, but so what? I might die in the next hour but that wasn’t anything new. Since the night I received that text from the prison guard, I’d walked hand in hand with death, and today was, apparently, no different. “Imagine my surprise when I find myself in a Regah chamber and I have no fucking clue what it even is.” No expression on her face. “Imagine my surprise when I find myself in something called the Blackrealm, and guess what?” I waited a heartbeat. “Nope! Never even heard the name.”

“Is that tone of voice supposed to tell me something?” she wondered.

“Yes—it’s supposed to tell you exactly how frustrating it is to be in my skin!”

She paused. “Forgive me, Rosabel, if I’ve given you the impression that I care.” My mouth opened but no word came out. “Speak.”

The bitch. “You first.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, Madame Rogan. You first— speak and tell me exactly why I had no idea what the hell any of those things were, and more importantly, what more is there that I have no clue about?”

“Standard procedure, I’m afraid. IDD agents are on probation their whole careers, so to speak—a rule I created and implemented to great success. The first five years of their service, agents are given very little information about more complicated matters of magic, and after year six, new things are added to their continuous training programs. It’s how we weed out the weak, those who aren’t reliable, who aren’t loyal. It’s how we make sure that, if we choose to share sensitive information with someone, it will be when they prove themselves worthy, and not a day before.”

I shook my head, wondering if she was telling me the truth or if she was simply making all of this up. But then I remembered how Taland had told me about Iridians nowadays keeping the younger generations blinded, far away from what really went on in the world. Completely ignorant to the dangers we all faced.

“That’s… insane ,” I whispered because he had been right—they were taking power away from us by not telling us what we could be up against. They were keeping us weak. Making us weak.

“I’m sure you think so,” Madeline said. “And now, tell me about the Regah chamber and the Blackrealm. I’m only as patient as this glass allows me.” She waved her glass at my face.

I tried to move on instinct, to fucking slap it out of her hand because I had no more patience left in me, either. And since the Iris Roe, I couldn’t care less about what people thought of me or what they could do to me—the world had been out to get me for a while now.

And, yes, this was Madeline Rogan, but I was as good as dead already, and even though the fear of her, the sheer panic of having her eyes on me was there, so was my anger, rivaling it. So was my anger making me want to fucking burst into flames right now, if only I could.

If only her magic wasn’t so strong as it pressed against my skin, keeping me immobile. If only I’d had my own, my bracelet, my power.

As it was, she had already defeated me, and again, I came to the same conclusion—I was at her mercy.

“I’ll tell you, and then you’ll let me go.”

Slowly, she leaned a bit closer. “You’re in no position to negotiate, Rosabel. Either you tell me what happened, or you will die.”

Her words rang so true that every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps.

There went what little resolve I’d gathered, out the window for a moment.

“Why?” I whispered before I’d even realized I was going to. “Why, Grandmother? Why…why don’t you care? Why didn’t you ever care?! Why don’t you…” love me?!

Pathetic, Rora. So fucking pathetic.

I closed my eyes to get rid of the stupid tears that had pooled in them. I reminded myself who I was speaking to, and that I’d already decided to rely on my anger rather than my fear right now, and then I got my shit together.

The look on Madeline’s face remained the same. She wasn’t the least bit concerned about my questions or my tears—the two that slipped from my eyes without my fucking say-so, and I couldn’t even raise my hands to wipe them off.

“I’m in love with Taland,” I started, and again, she didn’t react. “He promised the Devil something from the IDD Vault in exchange for his freedom from the Tomb. He came in and stole it. I was there, too. We got caught and I helped him escape—I’m sure you know this. But he lost what he stole from the Vault in the fight with the guards, and then the Devil imprisoned him.” Never mind that the asshole had gone and turned himself in without telling me. He’d gone and turned himself in to the Devil, knowing he wouldn’t make it out of there alive, and I knew why he’d done it.

Because of me. Because he figured that, if the Devil’s people came looking for him, they might find him while he was with me, and they might hurt me, too. That’s why he did it. I didn’t have to even ask him to know it—that was his reason.

And I was going to fucking smack him in the head if I ever saw him again.

“So, I went to the Devil’s lair to get him out.” I swallowed hard, gave my words a moment to sink in as I watched her. No expression. Not a single hint of what she was thinking.

“I offered him a bracelet in exchange. A bracelet I stole from the Vault a few days prior.”

Not a flinch. Goddess, she was good.

“I came in here that night you went to that charity event, Grandmother. I went through your library”—I nodded my head at the shelves against the wall behind her —“and I found the one called The Delaetus Army. It had pictures in it. Illustrations. I saw the army and I saw their bracelets, the same as one I saw in the Vault earlier that day.”

Now she finally gave me a hint when her left eye twitched, and when she began to play with her ruby ring, to spin it around her finger like she did when she was extra pissed off. Or maybe just frustrated. Possibly both.

“You came into my office,” she said, her voice low, and it wasn’t a question or anything. Like she was simply trying to understand the meaning of those words better.

“I did,” I answered anyway. “And the next day, I went back to the Vault and I stole that bracelet.” I shook my head, my own magic raging still, but she had such a good grip on my body that no matter how hard I was trying to just move my hands, I couldn’t. “Remember that time you knocked me out and took me to the Council’s chambers, and on the way back you said that my magic was not the different they were looking for?”

She stopped a heartbeat, froze completely. Didn’t spin her ring around her finger or the whiskey in her glass.

I smiled just to spite her. “You were wrong. It is. It’s exactly the different they were looking for.”

Magic leaked out of her. I felt it in the air, coating my tongue, going down my throat. Hers had a special flavor, spicy and overly sweet at the same time. It made me so nauseous, but I bit my tongue and kept going.

“I am, after all, a Laetus, even if I drained the Rainbow. And with that bracelet, I could do colorful magic. The different kind of magic you were so sure I didn’t need to know about.”

This I said to make her feel stupid, but I don’t know why I bothered. Of course, she wouldn’t—this was Madeline. Instead, she just looked down at her drink for a moment, then threw it all back before filling it once more.

“Continue,” she said.

So, I did.

“I went to exchange the bracelet, which is a Laetus anchor, we believe,” I said and gave her another pause to see if she’d say something. Twice now I’d used the term Laetus, not Mud, and she hadn’t corrected me. “The Devil agreed. He was going to take the bracelet and let us go, consider Taland’s debt paid.”

An arched brow. “And your magic, it was?—”

“Powerful,” I finished for her. “Colorful.”

“And you were going to give that away for… a man ?”

Hold up, wait a minute… she was not reacting the way I thought she would.

Now I was the confused one because I’d thought for sure she’d have a big problem with me stealing and discovering the Laetus and doing colorful magic, but she was more concerned that I’d wanted to give it away?

“A man I love, yes.”

Her laughter was awful, always had been. So… untrained. Unpleasant. Very unlike Madeline.

“Love—oh dear,” she said. “You were going to give away all that power for love .” Again, she laughed.

But her spell must have been getting weaker because when my instincts took over and I tried to get up, to move, I could, only a little bit.

Here’s hoping she doesn’t notice, I thought, but then again, what the hell could I do if she didn’t? Even if I wasn’t being forced to sit on that couch, I had no weapon on me, no anchor.

But if I did…would I actually use it against her?

The question scared me because the answer was so readily available to me.

“I guess I could laugh at you, too,” I said, while she pulled herself together again. “I mean, David Hill. ” She stopped moving. “He was in your house. You taught him everything he knows—wasn’t that what you said?”

“What do you know about David Hill?”

“I know who he is now,” I said, and finally, I’d caught her by surprise. Finally, she was showing me emotion, frustration, rage. “We met, only briefly. Only until Alejandro Ammiz told us all about how they were friends, and how he, since forever, has been gathering everything he needs to bring back the Delaetus Army.”

Her glass of whiskey ended up on the wall behind me.

A scream slipped out of me because it was so sudden. The sound of broken glass got to me, even though she moved so fast I hardly saw her throwing it. So fucking fast her arm turned to a blur.

“Don’t lie to me, Rosabel,” said Madeline, her now empty hand raised to her right as she whispered another spell to bring herself a new glass. A clean glass where she could pour her whiskey. Her eyes were slightly bloodshot now—that’s the only thing that had changed about her. And her magic—it vibrated in the air around her, too.

“I’m not lying,” I said, and I hated that my voice shook. I hated that even now, even after everything I’d had to go through the past year alone, my body still behaved like I was afraid of her.

Not anymore, I thought, and I forced myself to raise my chin. She could throw her glass at my fucking face next, and I didn’t care. I would not cower back in front of her.

“I am not lying, Grandmother. He admitted it himself. He’s been collecting everything in the Vault—the veler, the Script of Perria, the bracelet…” My eyes closed and I tried to recall what else the Devil had mentioned. “He has soul vessels, too, though I don’t know what those are.”

“Why?” she whispered, and her own voice seemed to surprise her, like she hadn’t meant to ask that question at all.

“I don’t know, but I would imagine for the same reason Titus created that spell when he did.” To rule over the world. To be god.

It was almost funny. The first time I heard about it, I was shocked at the idea alone— who even had such ambitions?!

Men did. Iridians did.

Putting the glass down on the table, Madeline stood up. If it wasn’t for her spell holding me—now weaker still—I’d have probably moved away just in case. As it was, I just watched her as she slowly made her way around the coffee table and to the shelf, ran her fingertips over the spines as she searched for what she wanted.

A moment later, she found it. Took it off the shelf. Turned to me and sipped her whiskey.

“Did you know that this was your mother’s favorite book?” she whispered, and it was like she’d slapped the shit out of me. Like she’d thrown that glass at my face.

She looked down at her book. “Yes—Titus always intrigued her. How much do you know about him, though? Do you know the whole story?”

She asked me that. She really asked me that.

But I couldn’t speak. Something about her mentioning my mother. Something about thinking about my mother when it felt like I hadn’t in such a long time. The best I could do was shake my head.

“Very well. I shall tell you.”