"Nathan!" Sam shouted, Caeli jumped towards the ledge that the younger brother had just fallen over, her hand already dipping into the shadows to go and make sure that Nate was okay.
"Don't." She froze as she heard Rafe's voice, her hand returning back to its normal colour. She didn't move a muscle. "Don't go after him. You have too much to lose." Caeli turned around to look at Rafe, he was pointing his gun at Sam, the mercenaries behind him were pointing theirs at Cassius.
"I dare you," Caeli whispered, staring Rafe directly in the eyes.
"Excuse me?" Rafe stated.
"I said, I dare you," Caeli stated with a new kind of conviction.
"You want to run that risk? Lose the love of your life and your son?" Rafe asked as if she was crazy.
"You're seeing this the wrong way, Rafe." She told him, stepping towards him and letting her eyes turn dark with the shadows. "I may lose them, but... you do too. You lose the security of them because as soon as they are either safe or dead, there will be nothing keeping me from you. I will unleash everything I have onto you, the screams, the darkness, the fear I can push onto you... you will regret ever touching my family." She told him, her hands shaking with anger. Rafe started clapping, a smile on his face.
"Great performance Caeli." He stated, putting his gun into its holster. "Now, we have Avery's treasure to find..."
"My son," Caeli stated, looking and seeing the mercenaries still pointing their guns at Cassius. The boy turned and saw the guns pointing at him, he turned to look at Rafe with an angry look on his face.
"You said you wouldn't hurt me." The boy stated, his anger turning into a look of betrayal. Caeli was shocked to hear his voice.
"Yeah, well, I lied," Rafe responded.
"Cassius-" Caeli went to speak to him.
"Not a word." Rafe cut her off. "Reunions can come later." He added, Caeli tilted her head to the side and kept her mouth shut, watching Rafe with too much intent, intimidating him by simply looking at him. "Now let's get moving, Sam would you be so kind as to tell us where we're going?" Sam kept silent, his eyes flicking back to the cliff his brother had just fallen over. "Tell us, or the boy dies," Rafe stated next, pointing his own gun at Cassius.
"New Devon," Caeli stated, blurting it out with her hands up. "We need to go to New Devon, which is where the captains built all of their mansions. North." She explained further, her eyes flicking between Rafe and Cassius. The kid was actually looking afraid like he was actually being betrayed by Rafe. It didn't seem to be an act.
"You said you wouldn't hurt me," Cassius repeated his same line, this time his voice sounded truly broken.
"And I told you I lied, kid. Now get over it." Rafe responded, waving the gun around.
"Rafe..." Caeli trailed off, drawing the man's attention back to her. She had to play a different angle. "Thank you for taking care of Cassius." She whispered, just loud enough for Rafe to hear. His expression changed, it almost softened. She knew that if she played to his narcissism, thanked him for something he believed he should be thanked for, that he would do something for her in return. It was how he had always worked, especially when it came to Caeli.
"You're welcome, the Order basically handed him over to me." He responded, the information shocked Caeli but she kept that hidden. "Along with your file... I only read it after the auction, but I know everything now, about your powers and about what they did to you." He told her next, her body was frozen as he leaned towards her ear. "Don't underestimate me, Caeli." He whispered before moving away. "Cassius, go and say hello to your parents," Rafe stated next, Cassius didn't budge.
"You told him..." Caeli trailed off.
"Yeah, didn't keep his parentage secret, what would be the point of that?" Rafe asked, turning back to Cassius. "I said you can go to your parents." He repeated, the teen took a few steps forward. The trust was broken, Caeli could tell. After he took a few steps and nothing happened, Cassius continued to walk over to his parents.
Caeli didn't know what to say... what could she say to the son who was taken from her?
"I'm sorry," Caeli said quietly, once Cassius stopped in front of her, Sam came and stood next to her, a pillar of normality in the turbulent storm of chaos around them. "I'm so sorry..." She repeated, not wanting to move towards him in case she scared him.
"It's not your fault... Rafe's been telling me that for years, I believe him. It was the Order that took me from you, you didn't have a choice." The boy responded in the same tone as Caeli spoke. With the close distance between them Caeli could see that he wasn't lying, he truly believed what he was saying. His grey eyes held a clarity, a truth in them... this boy didn't lie, at least not often. Caeli was almost proud.
"The whole time you knew..." Sam trailed off, Cassius looked to his father, his hands in his pockets.
"Yeah, Rafe said not to say anything... so I didn't." Cassius responded, seeming unable to hold eye contact with either of his parents.
"That was stupid on Rafe's part, breaking that bond..." Sam whispered, turning towards Caeli.
"Well, Rafe was always intelligent but he was never really smart," Caeli whispered back, smiling a little at her joke while Sam did the same.
"You can catch up on the way, now let's move," Rafe stated, and Caeli held onto Sam's hand, the first time she had done so in a while.
"We're going to be okay-"
"But Nate..."
Nathan is okay.
The voice returned, she looked at the ground and saw the shadow that had led her to the brother earlier that day. She nodded her thanks.
"He's okay," Caeli whispered, making sure she had Sam's eyes on her own. He furrowed his brow in confusion, but accepted her statement none-the-less, following Caeli's lead as she headed to the front of the small group and began the trek to New Devon.
***
Cassius barely spoke the entire way to New Devon, then again, neither did Caeli or Sam. They only spoke when spoken to, when asked questions, when figuring out which would be the best path to take, which destroyed mansions were worth looking in. Something was pulling her towards the mansion closest to Avery's, she walked towards it, feeling...
"Caeli!" Rafe shouted as she didn't even notice that she was at the door. It was Tew's mansion, she was sure of it.
"I need to go in here. I'm asking for five minutes to have a look-"
"Caeli, we don't have time for your bullshit right now," Rafe responded.
"If she feels that she has to go in there, Rafe, there's probably some very important information in there that could help us. Caeli's instincts are never wrong, you would know that." Sam argued, Rafe rolled his eyes and sighed, gesturing towards the door and nodding.
"Fine. Five minutes and then we move, if you're not back I'm sure you could guess as to what will happen." The mercenaries pointed their guns at Sam and Cassius as Rafe finished speaking, she nodded before breaking through the doors and beginning to run around, following where her gut was telling her to go.
"Holy shit..." She trailed off when she found the room that had been calling to her. It was the dining room, a long table inside... with skeletons sitting in all but two of the seats. "What the hell happened..." She whispered, looking closer at the table and finding sigils on placement cards. That was when she realised the corpses were the founding captains of Libertalia.
She went to the two empty seats, realising she didn't have much time left and saw that the placement cards had Tew and Avery's sigils on them. She looked at the goblets that were held in a few of the corpse's hands... poisoning.
Avery. Avery killed us.
The voices returned, and she could see shadows moving around the room. It was the captains that were talking to her. It was them who had been whispering to her at the treasury...
"Avery betrayed you all." She whispered as the shadows sat on the skeletons. "This is worse than I thought..." She trailed off. "Thank you." She whispered to the spirits, as soon as she did they all disappeared. They were finally at peace. But she wasn't. She ran back to the front door, out of breath as Rafe looked back at his watch.
"You had ten seconds left, cutting it a bit fine don't you think?" Rafe asked.
"No. I found something. The bodies of most of the founding captains of Libertalia, there were two missing, Tew and Avery. The rest were poisoned, Avery and Tew took all of the treasure for themselves." She explained, Rafe turned to the mercenaries and signalled for them to put their guns down.
"Great, anything of actual use?" Rafe asked next.
"Well, I just found out why this whole section of Libertalia is flooded. It would have all been planned by Avery when it was built, his mansion would be up there-" she pointed to the higher ground where they would be headed next "-so that if the other captains betrayed him then he could blow the dam and take out all of their homes, kill them if he had to, which he did. The damn blew and he had all of them poisoned aside his right-hand man." She explained.
"Tew," Sam stated, walking towards Caeli. "Did they talk to you?" He asked next, Rafe cut in at that question.
"Did who talk to you?"
"The captains, Rafe. If you've read my file you would it's not shadows I control, the Order always knew that. It's spirits, they can talk to me." She stated, and she then turned to Sam. "And yes they did, they didn't say much, just confirmed that it was Avery. I found it strange that they didn't mention Tew, especially if he was the right-hand man in all of this." She stated.
"Maybe we don't have the whole story yet, Tew might have betrayed Avery in the end." Sam theorised and Caeli nodded.
"That is true." She agreed, and with one look from Rafe, they were back on the path to reaching Avery's front door. Cassius watched everything carefully, observing every interaction around him, Caeli noticed.
Once they were through Avery's door and Shoreline were beginning to barricade it behind them they had a short wait, so Caeli turned to her son.
"You're very observant... I can tell you're listening to everything going on around you, watching everyone and everything." She whispered, he looked at her, finally meeting her eyes.
"You think the Order put me in an orphanage, don't you?" He asked and she was unsure of how to respond.
"I hoped they had, I guess deep down I knew they wouldn't have. I thought they would kill you, in all honesty, I hoped they didn't try and do to you what they had done with me. Raise you as a killer... but I guess I gave them the opportunity for a take two. No one outside of the Order knew of your existence, knew that you were even a possibility except for Rafe. I never told Sam I was pregnant, I only told Rafe because he was trying to get me to be with him... I guess that's probably why the Order gave you to him. I assume that only happened after I broke free of them." She stated, the trek to New Devon had been a long one, it had given her plenty of time to think about Cassius, about why the Order would have handed him to Rafe.
"Yeah..." He trailed off, looking to the ground. "I was in the same compound as you, kept there. We walked past each other once, you weren't even aware of your surroundings, you were catatonic... they thought I wouldn't realise who you were but I've never met anyone else with grey eyes like mine except for the woman I walked past in the hallway one time. They never showed me pictures of you, of Sam... I had no idea what you looked like until you broke out. They were scared you would come back, destroy them, so they took me out of the compound and gave me to Rafe, told him who I was, said I could be used against you. So he took me in, I trusted him, I really did... at least until today." He explained, Caeli didn't know how to respond.
"All I wanted for you was a normal life... I hoped to God that you were in an orphanage, that's why I didn't look for you. I should have, I should have looked. I would have found Rafe, I would have found Sam and I would have found you all at once. I don't know why I didn't." She said after a moment of thought.
"Sam... when he found out you were alive, he was... devastated, it meant that you hadn't looked for him. But then he found out about the Order, and then when we took him to see you... he was going to go to you, but he said that as soon as he saw you pull the necklace out of your shirt that he couldn't. He didn't want you feeling guilty about it all. He knew that you genuinely thought he was dead. I was also angry because you hadn't looked for me, but as soon as he told me that, told me about the ring and what it meant... I realised there would be a reason as to why you hadn't looked for me. So I forgave you because of... because of Dad." Cassius stated, he seemed to be testing out the last word on his tongue, seeing if it felt right. There were two whole years of calling Sam by his name, it must have been strange to be allowed to call him by something else.
"Mm..." Was all Caeli could reply with, pulling on the chain that hung around her neck, the ring still with her as it always was. It was either around her neck or in a safe place, she almost wished she had left it back at the hotel room. "Your father and I... we..." Caeli didn't know what she was trying to say, she looked to Sam who was across the room and quickly tucked the necklace back into her shirt.
"You never stopped loving each other." The teenaged boy said next, stating a clear observation.
"I never stopped loving you either." She added. "If you were raised like me... emotions are hard for you to understand and feel. It's better to numb it all." She stated, the boy nodded. "I was shocked when I realised what I felt for Sam because of that, I didn't know what it was for a while. When we first met I almost killed him, I was close to, and then we started working together... three years into the partnership he admitted his feelings for me and I didn't know how to handle them. He made me realise that caring for other people isn't a weakness, it's a strength. You have a bond and a trust that cannot be broken by anything. Family is the most important thing in this world, whether it is blood or one that you choose for yourself. That is why, even after fifteen years of separation, I still care for him even though I thought he was dead, why I care for you even though I thought I would never see you again. You are my family, and anyone who has gone up against me knows that my family is what drives me." She explained to him, he nodded slowly, not seeming to understand entirely but trying to.
"The Order experimented on me too, I don't have powers as you do, but I have strength, and superior speed and agility. Rafe can use you against me as much as he can use me against you. If we get a chance, we should try and break free. You and me and Sam have a chance at taking them out-"
"No. We don't." Caeli cut him off, looking around the room to make sure no one heard what had been said. "We aren't risking our lives to break free, Nathan is on his way, your uncle. Only after we are sure that he is close and he can help us and he has an escape plan will we try. I'm not losing you or your father, not again."
"Let's move." Rafe's voice echoed throughout the entrance hall of the mansion, and Caeli and Sam began leading the way again, trying to find any clues as to where Avery would have gone next.