Free Sovereign Hope by Frankie Rose Page A

a wave of warmth that surged from my toes
to the tips of my hair. The irritation vanished, to be replaced by
a blissfully deep sense of peace.
    “ That’s just it, bro,” Kayden said. “Me and virtue, we’re one
and the same.” But I was beyond hearing. My body had slipped away.
I felt myself tumbling, floating, falling; a slow, powerful breeze
blew through me, down to my very soul. As it pulled through me, it
carried particles of me away with it, carrying me to a better
place.
     
    ******
     
    The trees’
bare branches were like witches’ claws choking the sky overhead,
blocking out the stars. A rich black velvet, spangled with the
brilliant pinpricks of a thousand other times and a thousand other
places, lay spread out above me like a graceful map. My mind
snapped back into place like a jigsaw puzzle, and my surroundings
came bearing down on me all at once: freezing cold, dark and
ethereal. I still wore the thin t-shirt and jeans I had been
wearing back in the hangar. Kayden, on the other hand, was leaning
against a tree, wearing a thick parka. Bastard.
    “ Why am I on the ground?”
    Kayden’s
silent laughter slipped free from his lips in a visible spiral of
fog. “Wanted to give you a soft landing. Sorry.”
    “ No, you’re not,” I growled. I pulled myself up on my elbows
to see that snow lay in a thick blanket over the ground. It coated
everything in a ghostly shroud, giving off an eerie silver glow. I
got to my feet, glaring at Kayden, who was definitely trying to
give me hypothermia. Sure enough, my t-shirt was soaked through and
my jeans were already freezing against my skin. “Where are
we?”
    Kayden drew a
deep breath into his lungs. “Alaska. Can’t you smell it on the air?
The untarnished, untameable aroma of the wilderness.”
    “ Can’t smell anything.” The cold had a way of robbing the
senses like that. I had been to Alaska before; it had been a cold
and lonely place then, too. “Where are they?” Kayden wouldn’t have
dragged me all the way out into the wilds to socialize. Despite the
banter, Kayden loathed our meetings just as much as I did. That
meant the Quorum had to be close by.
    “ This way.” He turned and started crunching through the crisp
mantle of snow, creating slight indentations where he walked. When
I followed, my feet sank up to my mid-calf, and by my fifth step my
shoes were soaking and my toes were numb. There was no way I was
going to say anything, though. I wouldn’t give Kayden the
satisfaction.
    The thicket of
naked silver birch we were in soon petered out to overlook a
sweeping downward slope, where a group of figures stood in a broad
circle at the center of a clearing. They wore long cowled robes,
inky black in the bleached moonlight, drawing their faces into
shadow. They turned in unison to look up at us as we emerged from
the tree line.
    I was about to
make a smart comment about the Quorum members being seriously
freaky but Kayden, there a second ago, had vanished. When I turned
back to look down at the clearing, I saw him standing like a stiff
pillar behind one of the figures, watching me, his blond hair
shining like a halo of beaten silver.
    “ Creep. ”
    “ Daniel Montisauri,” a booming voice—male or female, I
couldn’t tell—echoed through the thick silence. It rattled off the
narrow spindles of the tree trunks. A flock of birds, startled from
their sleep, took to the sky as one, shrieking and flapping their
dark wings overhead. The sound of my full name was like breaking
glass in my ears. I recoiled, slipping in the snow.
    “ You have been summoned, Daniel,” the voice declared, louder
than before. “Come before the Quorum.”
    “ All right, all right,” I hissed under my breath. “We can’t
all just click our fingers…” But I obeyed all the same and started
down the slope. The snow on top here was loose, and underneath a
slick layer of ice had formed, making the steep way down
treacherous. It was a full five minutes before I reached