Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles 3)

Things couldn’t stay like this, not for long.

Liv pulled her chair next to Marian’s and put her arms around her. Lena twitched a finger in the direction of Macon’s fireplace grating. Flames lurched up from the logs, shooting ten feet up to the ceiling. At least it wasn’t rain.

“Maybe it’s not just him. Maybe it’s Abraham.” John sighed. “He doesn’t give up easily.”

Macon’s brow furrowed. “That’s interesting. Angelus and Abraham. A common goal, perhaps?”

Liv spoke up. “Are you suggesting that the Keepers are in collusion with Abraham? Because that is so wrong, on so many levels. It can’t possibly be true.”

John warmed his hands in front of the fire. “Did anyone notice how many Dark Casters were in that room?”

“I noticed the one you kicked in the head.” I smiled.

“That was an accident.” John shrugged.

Macon shook his head. “Either way, the sentencing occurred. We have a week to figure something out before…” We all looked at Marian. She was in shock, it was pretty clear. Her eyes were closed, and she pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders, rocking herself. I think she was reliving the whole night.

Macon shook his head. “Hypocrites.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I have my own suspicions about what the Far Keep is up to, and I can’t say it has anything to do with keeping the peace. Power changes people. I’m afraid they are no longer the principled leaders they once were.” Macon had trouble hiding the disappointment in his face.

And the exhaustion. He was making a good show of it, but he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. And now that he did sleep, I was always surprised to find he needed it as much as the rest of us. “But Marian is back home with us, safe and sound.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t look up.

“For now.” I wanted to go back, bash down the Temporis Porta, and beat the crap out of everyone in that room. I couldn’t stand to see Marian like this.

Macon sank into the chair next to her. “For now. Which is all I can say for any of us, these days. We have a week until the sentence—since she was found guilty of treason. It should take that long for a Perfidia Proclamation to take effect. I won’t let anything else happen to her, Ethan. That is more than a promise.”

Liv slumped at the study table, an inconsolable mess. “If someone is going to make sure nothing else happens to Marian, it’s me. If I hadn’t gone with you—if I had stayed in the library, like I was supposed to…”

“Now who’s the emo Caster girl?” Lena poked Liv in the arm. “That’s my thing. You’re supposed to be the chipper blond brainiac, remember?”

“How rude of me. I do apologize.” Liv smiled and Lena smiled back, drawing her arm around Liv, as if they were friends. I guess, in a way, they were. These days, we were bound by the common threat of our fate. Because the Eighteenth Moon was almost here, and none of us had any answers.

John sat down next to Liv, protectively. “It’s not your fault.” He shot me a dirty look. “It’s his.” So much for friendship.

I stood up. “We’ve got to get Aunt Marian home.”

For the first time, she looked up at me. “I… can’t.”

I understood. She wouldn’t be sleeping alone, not anytime soon. That was the first night Liv and Marian were under one roof again, only this time it was in Liv’s room, and their roof was the ceiling of the Tunnels. I wondered if Concealment Casts worked against Keepers, too. Mostly, I just hoped they worked.

There was one place we could go, no matter how badly our worlds were spiraling out of control. The place where it had all started for Lena and me. The place that was ours.

The morning after Marian’s trial, we went to find it again.

The crumbling garden at Greenbrier was still black and charred, but you could see where the grass had started to grow. The tiny stems weren’t green, though. They were brown, like everything else in Gatlin County. The invisible walls that protected Ravenwood from being ravaged didn’t extend here.

Still, it was our place. I led Lena through the garden to the hearthstone where we first discovered Genevieve’s locket. It seemed like it had all happened years ago, instead of the year before.

Lena sat on the stone, pulling me down after her. “Do you remember how beautiful it was here?”

I looked at her, the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. “It still is.”

“Do you think about what it would be like if this was all gone? If we can’t fix this, and there’s no New Order?”

I barely thought about anything else, beyond heat and bugs and dried-up lakes. What would be next? A flood? “I don’t know if it would matter. Maybe we’d be gone, too, and we wouldn’t even know the difference.”