Devin let out a satisfied hum as he took his place in line behind Cade.
“What?” Cade asked.
Devin was sporting a wide grin. “Look over there.” He indicated to the two servers carting in a wide barrel. “It’s watered down as shit, but after two months in here? I’d drink it out of a dirty sock.”
Cade snorted, shuffling forward as the line moved. “They give you guys alcohol?”
“You’re one of us too,” he said with a head tilt. “And yes, they give us beer, occasionally. But it’s only the winning team from yesterday’s drill. I guess it’s just an incentive to push ourselves, but I’m not complaining.”
With their food and drink in hand, Cade and Devin moved to take their seats at a small table in the corner of the cafeteria.
What Devin had said nudged something inside of him. He was one of them now and he didn’t know if he’d ever be allowed to return home. Surprisingly though, even with the events of the past three days, he didn’t hate the thought of staying here for a while. He missed his best friend dearly, even his brother, but all other thoughts of home had Cade mentally rejecting the idea of returning. Not that he had a choice in the matter, but the appeal of staying might have had something to do with a certain woman who hadn’t left his mind since his first interaction with her.
Cade knew that it was silly and most likely just his curiosity getting the better of him so he pushed all thoughts of her away as he dug into his food.
“You good?” Devin asked after a while.
“Yeah, just thinking.” Cade brushed him off.
But of course, he didn’t take the hint. “About what?”
Cade looked down at his plate and thought that it couldn’t do any harm. “Yesterday in the infirmary, the witch told me that it was the Queen that requested for me to be seen,” he whispered.
Devin spoke with a full mouth. “Oh yeah, I could’ve told you that for free.”
“What do you mean?” Cade asked, brows furrowed.
“I mean, we don’t get medical care until we’ve completed our training. If you’re friends with a witch or a warlock and they’re nice enough to help you out, then good for you. But if not, then you count your losses and heal up.”
“Then why did she do that for me?” Cade began to feel uneasy.
Devin snorted. “I don’t even want to know. All due respect, she is next-level nutty.”
Based on her actions in the past few days, Cade didn’t argue with that but there seemed to be something more.
Once he’d swallowed his food, Devin continued. “For starters, she offed her whole family at thirteen. Mom, dad, sister, the whole gang. That’s how she became Queen. And you probably already know this, but she has a real boner for violence. I mean, the only people she seems to not want to kill are her sentinel, Officer Hewn, and Sir Ivar.”
She killed her own family?
After processing Devin’s words and locking them away in the back of his mind, Cade asked, “Who’s Sir Ivar?”
“Jude Ivar? You haven’t seen him around here?” When Cade shook his head, Devin waved a hand dismissively. “Anyway, he’s her uncle but kinda like her dad now. He helped her run the Dome until she was old enough. But that’s just what I’ve heard, I wasn’t even around back then.”
Cade knew he was young, but not that young. “Gods, how old are you?”
“Eighteen.” Devin sighed like it was a question he’d been asked many times before.
That didn’t add up. “Then, how old is she?”
Devin chewed on the end of his fork, thinking for a second. “One hundred and thirty-two.” After looking up and seeing Cade’s confused expression, he added, “Oh, outsider. Gifted people age a lot slower.”
Cade knew this. He’d read up on gifted people when he was younger but it was now dawning on him that he might live that long too.
Devin smiled proudly. “You can live even longer than that with a trusty warlock and an anti-aging spell. So basically, you stick with me and you’re all set.”
Cade stifled a laugh. “I thought you said you weren’t good at spells.”
The smile slipped off Devin’s face. “Okay, wow. No need to shame me, I can still learn.”
He sputtered, suddenly aware of the fact that he just insulted a potential pyromaniac. “No, that…sorry, I didn’t mean…”
Devin burst out laughing. “Don’t worry, I was just playing with you.”
Cade let out a discreet sigh of relief. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the Queen and her sentinel walking past the entrance of the cafeteria. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to leave the room unattended but none of the enforcers were looking his way. Thankful for the out, he told Devin to hang on and got up from his seat to catch her.
“Wait, Cade!” Devin called out from behind him.
He turned back expecting him to ask where he was going.
“You gonna drink that?” he asked with a lazy smile, pointing to Cade’s beer.
“Go ahead.” Cade waved, resuming his brisk walk towards the entrance. As he exited the cafeteria and saw her walking a few feet ahead, he realized that he didn’t know much about the customs in the Dome. His past interactions with the Queen had been far from formal but he still didn’t want to accidentally offend her, so he went with what he remembered Octavia saying the night before.
“Your Majesty,” he called awkwardly. He hadn’t spoken very loudly and was about to call out again when she turned around and met his eyes.
By the way she was looking at him, Cade assumed that he must have said the wrong thing, or that maybe it wasn’t customary to speak to the Queen directly.
Instantly, her sentinel stepped out in front of her and advanced on Cade as if he could be a threat to the Queen. Hands coming up, he backed up several steps. “Woah, easy. I just wanted to talk.”
In the same second that the words left his mouth, the sentinel stopped and returned her hands to her sides, her face a show of calmness and tranquility. Cade blinked. That went a lot smoother than he thought it would. He looked behind her to see the Queen, her eyes flicking between him and her sentinel, the same look of surprise on her face. Shaking her head, she met his eyes and nodded her head to her sentinel, silently telling her to leave them. Once they were alone, she stared at him, waiting for him to speak.
Suddenly uncomfortable, Cade wiped his sweaty hands on his pants and sought out her eyes again. “I uh, I just wanted to say thank you. For the healer. Last night. I appreciate it.” He cringed at his obvious lack of composure. He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. Just stared at him. Understanding that he had been dismissed, Cade jerkily nodded and started to turn to make his way back into the cafeteria when she spoke from behind him.
“Don’t thank me,” she said evenly. “After all, it’s no fun torturing a dead man.” As he heard her slow steps towards him, he turned to find her much, much closer. “A little word of advice,” Each cold word was laced with simmering rage. “You will find that it is in your best interest not to flirt with my staff. It’ll do you no favors and I promise, you will not like the result.”
Cade cocked his head back, both shocked at her insinuation and curious as to why the possibility agitated her so much. “I wasn’t…”
She cut him off with a hand in the air and Cade was grateful for it. He didn’t know what he would’ve said, didn’t know why he felt the need to explain himself.
“That was a warning, and make no mistake, you won’t get another one.”
Addled and unable to speak, Cade simply nodded. Apparently satisfied, the Queen turned and left in the direction of her sentinel, leaving Cade beyond puzzled.
Deianira
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Deianira flipped to the next page in the file that she had spent hours looking at. Salem had left ages ago but she still couldn’t take her eyes off it. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she knew that she hadn’t found it yet.
You will find that it is in your best interest not to flirt with my staff.
Why did she say that? She knew exactly why she said it. As much as Deianira hated it, she didn’t like to lie to herself. She knew that it was jealousy brewing in her stomach. But why?
What she also couldn’t figure out was why Octavia had been in that room with him. When she put in the request, it was for Octavia’s father, Mikhael, a warlock who specialized in healing. She had only spoken to Octavia on a few occasions and as far as she could tell, she was a nice girl. Pretty, intelligent, and she had a passion for helping others. But when Deianira reviewed the footage from the infirmary to study Cade’s behavior and see what she could learn, definitely for no other reason, she found herself fantasizing about all the ways she could inflict pain on Octavia. Wondering what her eyes would look like as the life in them fled.
Watching her hands move all over him, the way she giggled and perused him, left Deianira with a bad taste in her mouth. Then, he went and smiled at her. A real smile. She had thought that he was beautiful before, but when she zoomed into his face and saw the way that his lips stretched, the way his eyes crinkled in the corners, she was taken aback. Then she remembered that he wasn’t smiling at her and her mood soured.
Did she want him to smile at her? No, definitely not. He was a murderer, a thief. Maybe, it was that she just didn’t want him to be happy in general. Yes, that was it.
When he approached her outside of the cafeteria, all that cold rage came back in full force and was redirected at him. He was only trying to show his appreciation but she wanted to punish him for some reason.
She needed to get a hold of herself before she did something she would regret.
As her eyes roamed over the pages in front of her, she thought of something that she hadn’t paid much attention to before. Alden. His last name was Alden. Why did that name ring a bell? Standing, she walked over to her library and pulled out a few of her old journal entries. She knew she was onto something but just couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
It was those eyes.
Finding the right year, she quickly opened the journal and spread the loose papers on the floor, desperate to make a connection. On the edge of abandoning the task out of frustration, her eyes snagged an entry, almost four decades old. Her heart dropped to her stomach as the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
Hadrick. It couldn’t be. Could it?
Abruptly, she closed the book and left her room to find Jude and tell him what she had discovered.
