Shade of Exposure (Three)

Two

Two:

“You know we’re in deep s**t when my bosses are standing on our porch waiting to escort us to see King Siegfried.”

Kerry spoke in a somber, almost ardent sounding tone. Sky seemed as implacable as ever since she didn’t really answer to Siegfried, so much as tolerate him as an equal. He gave Sky an exceptionally wide berth, considering he knew a lot about dragon tempers and territorial nature.

The boss she was referring to was wearing full-body chain mail, and visible twin swords on his hips. He appeared almost as he walked out of a scene in Braveheart or some other medieval era film.

“You do realize this is the middle of the damn morning?!”

I blurted angrily as I opened the door and the icy air collided with my half-dressed skin. The cold didn’t bother me, but it was an extreme change in sensation in a few moments, so I shivered as if on impulse. Some of the lingering mortal body reactions still happened occasionally.

The tall burly brunette man looked at me with surprise and even some annoyance.

“I beg your pardon?!”

He exclaimed, and I waved my hand over his appearance and said, “You’re coming to my door like you’re William Wallace!”

He gave me a scathing look and Sky taped on my shoulder and gave me a flick of her eyes as if to tell me to move aside.

“Your true sight is too focused again. Pull it back some and look at him from an angle.”

She instructed, and I did, instead of William Wallace, he was dressed up in a tuxedo. I realized quickly he could spin illusion expressions over his clothing.

“Oh, well, Mister Belvedere, so much better!”

I murmured sarcastically, implying how much a monkey suit stood out in Brooklyn. The royal guard commander eyed me balefully but said nothing. I had seen him from afar several times during the recent incursions. Isaac Volian was a magus of extreme powers, and he served under the King, despite Grendel being his de facto leader. There was some unspoken history between the pair.

Isaac was an auburn-headed man of some height at six-five. He was also rolling with eh vibrations of expression that bespoke the tempests and the fires his whims could manifest. He was an elemental expressionist of great renown. His light-brown eyes were piercing in his assessment of the shade before him. Despite the power difference between him and Grendel, I always felt entirely more unsettled around Isaac. He made me feel more hostility than the entire rest of the court combined.

So, why did I antagonize him? Hell, if I know? I simply don’t like having strangely dressed men advertising that we are not normal college girls! But, then again, if I was bound and determined to remain a normal college girl, why then did I throw my physical body between a mortal girl and danger? Simple, because I saw my mother in every person who could fall victim around me. In every young woman, I saw my girlfriend dying. I saw the darkness consuming them, devouring them in their final moments of fear and agony.

After a prolonged awkward and increasingly uncomfortable moment of silence, Isaac spoke in a gruff but cultured tone.

“You are to come with me, the King has summoned you both.”

Sky bristled and crossed her arms over her chest, and said, “No one, not even Siegfried, summons me like a commoner!”

Her tone was ashy and dangerous, but somehow Isaac seemed unmoved by the rolling fires and bellowing turbulence of her latent expressions dancing around her, advertising her status as the dragon queen. Not that the Nix called her this, per-say, they simply called her Apex. A word in our vernacular that did not seem to properly convey the level of reverence it held for her species. Several leaders of the combined alliance of Hidden. Sky was the youngest by over ten-thousand-years, so they had a distinct lack of respect for her. Though everyone kept her at arm’s length when they were in her presence. Sky was simply far better at controlling her temper than her mother because Senna would have burnt them to cinders by now for treating her with such disrespect.

“You are a member of the Hidden, and Siegfried is the figure-head of the Hidden City. He is the liege lord and can summon whomever he wishes. You are free to refuse his request, of course.”

Sky gave Isaac a toothy smile, one that looked deadly. One did not want to make a dragon smile like this at them, ever! She might be the image of restraint, but she was still an apex alpha female, and I was about to have to remind her to move the blast wave the hell away from my meager wardrobe selection!

“Ok, let’s just get this over with and go with sir Belvedere here, and go see King musty pants. If you don’t like what he has to say, then I am ok with you singing off his eyebrows.”

I told Sky, and she seemed to stop and consider my words for a long moment before she looked back into Isaac’s eyes.

“I shall find a moment to remind you who and what I am, you insignificant magus.”

Her tone was smokey and promised only ashes and death. Sky truly was a natural force all her own. I was about ready to name a category five hurricane after her.

“Apex, I can handle such a merger task for you, should Isaac over-step his place once more.”

Kerry promised, and her boss looked at her with a widened look of disbelief.

“I thought you held no loyalty to the apex family?”

He inquired, and Kerry clenched her jaw and her fists.

“I held no particular loyalty or love for Senna, but Skylark is entirely different. She saw beyond the perception of treasonous blood, and she gave me a place of trust at her flank. To show her back to me, and trust that I was not what you all told me my mother had been. For that and so many innumerable reasons, I am eternally loyal to her.”

Kerry’s mom had been mentally controlled by the same Veron creature which had possessed Sorrak, Skylar’s aunt. With a bit of Clarke’s alchemical talent, and me holding a literal raging dragon in a make-shift crucible, we managed to bring Sorrak back to her senses and allow her a final fleeting day with her apex family, and to meet her new generation of alpha and apex nephews and nieces. Before the discovery of the lost Sorrak, everyone had been led to believe that Kerry’s alpha mother had challenged and killed Sorrak while she held back the endless assault on the breach to earth as the Nix escaped in their exodus night.

Sky had been open-minded enough to accept Kerry on her own merits and accepted her aid in our investigation when Sky’s oldest brother went missing underneath Hidden City. So, despite Kerry’s extreme distrust of me, mainly because I am a Shade, and apparently the only sane one ever to be born, I still held out enough room in my heart to accept her. She seemed to complete our little girl gang, and I never really thought everyone in your orbit had to worship you, just to have a place in your life. Kerry might be leery of me, but she and I worked avidly at the self-same cause. We both bleed and fight, and we sacrifice pieces of ourselves for the safety of the others on this planet. So that they never know the pure insanity staring back at them in the darkest nights.

“I see,” Isaac said as if almost jotting down a physical note about this discovery. He apparently had been holding out some hope that Kerry could be his alpha check to Skylar’s balances, should she become a problem down the line. One could not allow themselves to believe that Hidden gave Kerry a place and a purpose, simply out of kindness. She was the most powerful aside from Sky. I honestly have no idea how anyone could surpass Sky’s blood sister, but Kerry did, just as Sky shocked the world by eclipsing her mother at thirteen.

“Apex, I can go in your stead.”

Kerry offered, and I clapped Sky on the shoulder and winked at her.

“It’s your call, I am going, since it seems I have to discuss something with Lord Musty.”

Isaac seemed almost to physically cringe at my casual disregard for his liege lord. If we are being honest, I barely manage to not want to murder Siegfried regularly, mainly because he is so focused on all the wrong issues half the time. His blindness to the problems of earth had allowed the opening for the human necromancer expressionists led by a rogue Architect now in a Hidden Prison. An undying bonified Litch. Spencer managed to over-power this Litch in a blind lucky blast of expression she could scarcely control, much less harness.

“No, I will accompany you. Better that I am around, in case he does something to provoke you. You’re not above beating the s**t out of a King, Hannah.”

I grinned sheepishly, and I shrugged.

“Like you can honestly claim not to want to do the same thing?!”

I exclaimed, and Sky smirked, but help her tongue. Kerry seemed to study us intently but held back her thoughts on the matter. She was still unaccustomed to how casually we floated chaotic thoughts of anarchy.

“Great, since we have all managed to decide we are going, how about you please accompany me to the town car.”

Isaac said in a dry and rough tone. He seemed to be either angry or simply annoyed with this errand. I could imagine he was dispatched because there are scant few guards powerful enough to dig in their heels around Sky and me. We are unusually powerful and also complete wild cards as far as Hidden is concerned since we operate outside their usual chain of command and regulations.

“A monkey suit and a town car, boy, you are O-for-Two, Mister Belvedere.”

I told Isaac, and he gave me a look that could have stripped flesh from a mortal, with the power of her hot expression raging around him like an aura of pure flame. He seemed to be oblivious that I was accustomed to far hotter because my housemate was the queen of the Nix. Sky could produce blue dragon flames with her fingers, not her mouth as most people seemed to believe.

(I know, that was a stereotypical dragon concept that I was slightly disappointed to discover to be false!)

Like most expressions, even dragons used their hands to channel the bulk of their powers.

“Let us make haste, lest I lose my tolerance for your impudence. You, young lady, have a disturbingly nasty mouth. Your mortal squalor shows itself in your articulation.”

Mister Belvedere said to me, and I met his eyes for longer than was necessary.

“That’s it, I am taking you off my Christmas card list.”

I told him in a sweet tone, and Sky snorted in amusement. He did not seem to understand my meaning, but she did. Even Kerry rolled her eyes slightly and we turned to follow the monkey suit out the door, lest we opt to send him back in smoldering pieces soon. I was trying to cut back on needless mayhem, so I simply opted to choke back any further argument and just climb into the leather-clad town car.

“So, where’s the champaign and caviar?”

I joked as Isaac slid into the back seat as if to guard the door against us deciding to bolt at the last moment. Like he could restrain any of us.

“What, no refreshments? What kind of proper snob are you, Belvedere?”

I asked mockingly, and the town car rolled off, like the magus up front driving could sense the turbulence—possible considering all the expression crammed in this cab.