Free sorcery and science 04.5 - masquerade by Ella Summers Page B

them, Danielle.”
    She took his hand. “If you stay, I stay.”
    Jason glared at them. “You’re both so stupid. The Selpes are coming. Terra’s foresight—”
    “Jason, you know better than to put blind faith in a Prophet’s foresight. Particularly when that Prophet happens to be a seven-year-old little girl. The future is malleable. It is what we make out of it.”
    “And you are making your graves out of it,” Jason told his father, anger burning his eyes.
    “You don’t know that.”
    “I do,” he said to the distant sound of a few dozen pairs of marching feet. “They’re here.”
    Father peered out the window, then turned back to Jason. “It seems you were right.” He looked at Mother. “They’re close, on just the other side of the lawn. We have only a few minutes.”
    She took her own peek through the window. “There certainly are a lot of them. Perhaps we should run after all.”
    “Perhaps we should,” he replied, his eyes shifting briefly to Jason and Lana. “But we aren’t going to.”
    Then Mother pushed them toward Silver. “Take them through the portal at the pond,” she told him. “We’ll hold off the Selpes.”
    “No, I can fight.” Jason cut around Silver. “With me here, you’ll stand a better chance.”
    “Perhaps,” Mother allowed. “But then your sister and Silver would stand no chance.”
    She tapped her finger on the window pane, pointing at a second, smaller cluster of soldiers in the woods. There were only a dozen of them, but they were blocking the path to the portal. Mother was right. Neither Lana nor Silver was a fighter. Without him, they wouldn’t make it to the portal. And they couldn’t stay here. Jason could hear additional groups of soldiers moving through the woods, closing in on the house. This was nothing less than a perfectly orchestrated slaughter.
    And Jason wasn’t strong enough to stop it.
    “Jason, before you go, I need you to promise me something,” Father said. “I need you to promise that you will always protect Terra.”
    Of course he would. She was his friend. And he might never see her again.
    “I also need you to promise to find and protect Sorin.”
    Terra’s twin had been kidnapped when he was just a baby. No one had seen or heard anything of him since. That promise would be a whole lot harder to keep.
    Father cupped his hands against Jason’s cheeks. “Promise me. No matter what, you will protect them.”
    “I promise.”
    “Good, now run. Get Lana and Silver to the portal. We’ll try to keep the Selpes off your backs for as long as we can.”
    Jason stood before his father, completely frozen for the first time in his life. Father pushed them toward the back door as he and Mother went out the front to meet the Selpe death squad. Jason ran behind Lana and Silver, throwing knives at soldier after soldier. But still they kept coming, swarming the grounds of Chrysalis until there was nowhere left to run.
    Jason saw the portal. Lana and Silver were nearly there, nearly safe. He just had to buy them a little more time. Spinning around, Jason launched every last knife still on him in quick succession. The Leaves shot out like a ring of metal teeth, chomping down the soldiers in their path.
    Jason saw Lana and Silver disappeared through the portal, where no Selpe could follow, then he sprinted forward. As he passed through, an anguished scream pierced his ears, cutting straight to his heart. This wasn’t goodbye. It couldn’t be. They had to survive. They just had to.
    And yet they didn’t.

 
     
     
     
    STORY FOUR
    The Enchanter

 
     
     
     
    ~ 1 ~
    524AX December 21, Rosewater
     
     
    DAVIN STORM WALKED down the main path of Rosewater. After spending two weeks in Orion, it seemed unfinished, just a dirt trail pounded into the earth by thousands of feet over hundreds of years. The streets and sidewalks of the Selpe capital city were paved in concrete and stone. They were designed, measured, and then finished with