Legends of Astræa: Cupid's Arrow Book 1 (Legends of Astræa Series) Read online

  The man is a dangerous loon, Gavril said. That could be, too, but I was not planning to stay too long once we reached French soil.

  “Well, I feel honored, but if you think that I need to learn the art of warfare, then I am not the right Street-silly-gal,” I said. Sarcasm exuded from deep within my pores, but his intimidating seriousness made me explain. “I want to go to college, have friends, learn to paint or do sculptures, play music, go to parties, meet cute boys… you know, be a normal girl.” I told him my dreams. And use those papers for God’s sake. That was, if I survived Ash and his evil antics. Ugh. I had to fight him first. Wouldn’t Francis’s training be of help?

  “Ailie, you are not normal,” Francis reminded me. Reality check. Ugh. “Painting or any of the ancient arts will not save your life. It may help making time more pleasurable, but at the risk of losing your life.”

  He was somewhat making sense, especially if I had to battle someone as vicious as Ash. I couldn’t vanquish evil with my painting brush.

  “And lastly, you are not only a girl. You are the last pureblood female Strzyga, you carry the silver signum on your left arm,”—he pointed at my left arm twice—“and you are very important to the kingdom. So important that the brotherhood has taken special consideration of your situation very seriously,” Francis said. So that was the name for my swirly arm tattoo.

  Crap. I felt every leaded ounce of weight on my shoulders. Demyan had warned me about coming to France. Now I was beginning to understand why. “Why did Mr. Greco call you Master?”

  “My students call me Master Francis, my enemies call me Tarbelli, and my friends call me Francis,” he told me, as he served himself another glass of water from the blue bottle left on the table. Something told me I should never be his enemy—ever. But was he mine? Wait—Demyan had been his student.

  “So you were Mr. Greco’s teacher… is he part of this brotherhood?”

  “Yes.” He grinned tenderly. One word? That’s it? God, the man was impossible.

  “Is that why you call him Master Demyan?”

  “I called him Master Demyan because he earned the term,” Mr. Tarbelli said.

  Great, another loon, Gavril growled.

  “Why was he there… at Our Lady of The Stars?” I could almost swear he was on the verge of breaking into laughter at my relentless curiosity.

  “He has strategically created one of the most powerful positions in the world, which grants him the control of many things, including the secrecy of our kind and that of the existence of the kingdom. His agency has operated invisible to humans for the last two centuries.” He sighed, pausing to massage his chin. “However, I am not exactly sure if he has a different agenda with you.”

  Agenda? He was the type of person that broke rules or had no rules, as in… he killed my father. And no one is saying peep because he was part of the brotherhood. Crap.

  Chapter 20

  So can you explain what exactly a Strzyga is?”

  “I am not sure whether you can handle more information at this point.” He examined his watch. I wondered why? We were stuck inside the jet for at least five more hours. This day had been the longest yet, and we weren’t close to done. It reminded me of how exhausted I was. But curiosity killed the cat.

  “At least tell me who Enit is and what a blue creature is doing inside this jet.” I stared at him as he choked on his water. He coughed four times. “I know you saw it too, so don’t lie to me,” I warned him.

  He cleared his throat. Clearly, I had caught him off guard

  “You better tell me. I need to know I am not going crazy, gaga, loony, or insane, deranged, and put in simple terms, well, going totally nuts.” I didn’t leave room for speculation. He nodded. Gavril came back to my side.

  “Very well, on that note.” He paused to drink the last sip of water from his short glass. A moment later, he frowned at the empty glass as if there was something wrong with it. “First… all Strzyga are born with two hearts.” He looked at my chest directly, so I could understand the implication.

  Well, that meant I wasn’t the only freaky one. There was an entire race of immortals I hadn’t known existed out there that had been born with two hearts. I wondered what Sister Magdalene or Sister Agatha would think about that. Not human. Sigh.

  “As Strzyga become immortal, our hearts and souls divide and become two beings, a Draugr and a Strzyga. Draugr etymology comes from an old Norse name for ghost, a hel-blár or ‘death-blue.’ Blue-phantom to be more precise.” He paused.

  Death-blue was right. Those dreams of fanged blue creatures with wings, pointy tails, and swords that looked like battle-lust furies were very scary. They were not harmless fairies from a storybook. No, I had seen them in a bloodbath of a battle.

  “Ailie, would you like to meet my Draugr, Enit?” Francis asked.

  Uh—nope. “Are you saying the blue creature inside this jet has a name?” I was horrified.

  He nodded back at me. Unexpectedly, the large blue bottle of water floated between Francis and me. Gavril and I jumped out of our skins.

  “Whoa…” All right, things don’t move on their own, unless I was the one doing it. Why wasn’t I just plain normal?

  Time stretched. My heartbeat slowed. Francis’s watch, a collector’s Piaget according to one of the girls at the academy, ticktocked about five or six times before I came back to the present time. I exchanged gazes with Gavril. Francis watched me speculatively as the bottle poured water into my glass. On its own. As much practice as I had moving books in the library, and more recently at Mother Superior’s office, there was no way I could have such control of the bottle not spilling water all over.

  I knew it. Gavril took a whiff in the air with his nozzle, snarling at the same time. That thing reeked loathsome ever since we came inside this jet. Gavril sneezed, complaining at whatever was holding the bottle. I should have chosen to faint or turn to hysterics like any of Tiffany’s sidekicks would.

  “Our Draugr protect us from our enemies and are invisible to everyone except the Strzyga it belongs to,” Francis explained.

  “So Enit belongs to you?”

  Francis nodded impassively as I fixed my sight into the empty space in front of me. So why I was able to see her sometimes? Demyan had seen her too.

  “Mr. Greco was able to see Enit. How is that possible then?

  “His mother was human. He is a half-blood Strzyga, the last of his kind alive and capable of seeing Draugr…” He paused to speak closer to me.

  Holy crap. So Demyan was half human. Was that why he had no wings or fangs in my dreams? He was the only one who had not been annihilated. Why? Crap. So many questions, but I refrained from interrupting him again—for now.

  “The main reason half-bloods became dangerous to our kind. However, you my dear, you defy all rules.” He looked at me as if I had grown a third head.

  I tried to adjust myself in my seat. This conversation was, if ever, uncomfortable.

  “Apparently, you can see her too. But what is impressive is that you can hear our connecting minds—telepathically. Is that right?”

  His question shouldn’t have caught me by surprise, but it did. Too late. I realized I had revealed something I hadn’t told anyone. I had openly let Francis know I was capable of listening to his private thoughts by acknowledging the name of his Draugr, and frankly, it was embarrassing to admit that. Without my consent, I may add. I sighed.

  I had been able to hear Demyan’s and Francis’s minds, and I didn’t know why. And I was not exactly able to see the blue creatures, only in nightmares or their reflection in real life. I turned to Gavril.

  Don’t look at me. I have nothing to do with that—

  “Ice or lemon wedge?” Enit’s gentle voice asked, interrupting my scattered insane thoughts.

  I shook my head. I wished I was unable to hear Enit’s voice. It was unlike Gavril’s voice inside my head when he spoke to me. Gratefully, I couldn’t hear her thoughts like I had with Demyan or Francis. The w
hole thing was too complicated. I wondered why.

  Not human. Yup, effin weird. I cleared my voice.

  “Lemon wedge is good.” I bit my lip, waiting for their reaction. Francis enthusiastically clapped his hands once and grinned with uncontained mirth. It must be a foreign thing or just him.

  “Yes, I can hear you,” I admitted to her—him. I was not sure.

  Francis shook his head in bewilderment.

  “But can you see me too?” Enit asked.

  “That depends, are you the invisible blue creature inside the jet?” I asked, crossing my fingers she wouldn’t be offended by the terminology or the confused oxymoron description.

  “One of two,” she-he said. Francis’s gaze turned to the pilot cabin where Andrei was.

  “So is Andrei a Strzyga?”

  Francis nodded, confirming my suspicions. Andrei was another Strzyga and his Draugr was the one driving the jet in his absence. No wonder Andrei thought my questions were kind of haa-haa funny.

  I exhaled, somewhat relieved but equally disturbed by the knowledge. Finally, I had an answer to one of my nightmares. But how was it that I could see Draugr in my dreams and not with my own eyes? Yup, I should start collecting all these mysteries and sell them.

  “Seeing other Draugr will give you a great advantage in a battle,” Francis said more to himself than to me. Battle? Oh, right. If only I could see them.

  “I could only see Enit’s reflection in the mirror,” I confessed. “So are you a female or a male?” I asked Enit, hoping not to offend Enit with this question.

  “Good question,” Enit said. “Neither.”

  I turned to Francis for more explanations.

  “It is tradition for male Strzyga to name his Draugr as a female and for a female Strzyga to name hers as a male. Without our Draugr, we would become what humans fear most,” Francis explained. He was wearing his teacher hat again.

  Monsters?

  I was not going to be freed of that concept, was I?

  Apparently, as an immortal, I was stuck for eternity with the stigma. Francis had been right after all, no one. I mean not one person in their right mind would be ready for all this crap, especially not me.

  Monster, monster, monster… the word echoed inside my head.

  “So, does the wolf have a name?” He was pointing his finger at Gavril. We were back at the wolf thing, Crap. He wasn’t going to corner me. I had to change the direction of our conversation—again.

  “Just tell me one thing I need to know before we pet talk,” I asked, avoiding this conversation. He rolled his eyes but nodded reluctantly. “How do you know about Father Dominique?”

  He grinned widely. I felt as if I had hit jackpot for some reason. Crap. With a flourished hand gesture, Francis pulled a folded paper from the front pocket of his jacket. I swallowed and straightened in my seat at the recognition. My letter. Mother Clarisse’s letter. How?

  “Please tell me you didn’t steal that from me.”

  His eyes confirmed my suspicions. I was so focused on his reactions that I missed what his hand was doing until it was too late. A blue flame inside his hand brought my attention back to the letter. I felt as if I was witnessing an act of magic; the paper burned in his hand without burning his hand. How? I gasped. Gavril snarled.

  “No-oh,” I cried at him, failing at fetching the burning letter from his hand. His hand was quicker than mine. He enclosed his fist and ground what was inside. I was too late. I watched him with horror, placing the pulverized ashes inside the bar sink.

  “Ailie, it was lucky for you that Enit was the one who found your letter. A most regretful accident if someone else, let’s say, Mother Superior or the benevolent Sisters had found it abandoned and not us.”

  “But that doesn’t give you the right to—to burn it.” I felt my old volatile and electric temper building inside. A thousand dragons threatened to come out and breathe fire on him. But common sense and the fear of meeting Ash again said hat I couldn’t do that inside the jet. We would all perish.

  Not without a lot of effort, I held my anger on the back burner. I ground my teeth and sulked angrily at him. I had been right about him. He and Enit had been somehow spying on me too closely.

  “If the world was perfect, I would have given you the letter without question.” He paused, resting his chin over his left-hand knuckles, and examined my face. “But here is the thing…”

  My gaze wandered over to a ring on his left hand. I had never noticed it had a cross edged into the stone before. My attention pulled back toward his face.

  “The world isn’t perfect, and now there are only two people left in this world that know the contents of that letter,” he said, referring to him and me, I hoped.

  “I still cannot find your logic any more kind or right,” I said, with rage in my voice. I stood and watched the ashes that were left from an entirely destroyed letter. It wasn’t the paper but Mother Clarisse’s last words left to me.

  “Ailie, may this be your first lesson. Next time you wish to keep a secret a secret, this is what you should have done,” he said, washing the ashes away with water. Lesson? “Never leave clues or loose ends to your enemies.”

  I was on the border of breaking the blue bottle of water on his head. But his words made sense deep down. What if Ash or his minions had found the letter. I would have put Father Dominique in danger. He had mentioned the kingdom had enemies. I wondered If they were mine too?

  “Enemies?”

  “Main reason we need to hide your identity.” He cleaned his hand on a hand towel by the bar counter.

  More disappointment washed over me. More secrets, more hiding? I wasn’t quite sure I even wanted to hear any more. “Another unknown island? Another convent? Or perhaps my mother hired you to terminate me?”

  He shook his head and scratched the back of his neck. God, she is only a teenager testing my patience beyond, Francis thought. Great, lucky me. I got to hear his thoughts again. Aspirin might help me with the headache but not with the hearing problem.

  “Ailie, neither your mother or I will cause you any harm. But we have other dangerous enemies. The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable. Sun Tzu,” he stated.

  Ugh… I guess a simple explanation was too much to ask for. More cryptic babble… I rolled my eyes at him. “In other words, you want me to trust you, but you are not trusting me with information on the basis that according to you, I am not smart enough to handle things. Plus, you want me to disguise or hide?” I wasn’t quite sure which or if it was both. I shook my head. Jerk.

  “You are very perceptive, Ailie. But you aren’t ready to understand who you are and your position in the world.”

  “I can’t… I can’t hear this,” I shook my head in denial. “Hiding me? How can she—you do this to me?” I accused him more. He rubbed his eyes with exasperation.

  “I am deeply sorry you feel that way, but you have to understand—” He tried to reach for me.

  Don’t touch me, I threatened with my angry glare. I guessed it worked. He stepped back.

  “Look, you have every right to be mad at us.” At me. It isn’t her mother’s fault—any of this, his mind said.

  Then whose fault, was it? God, I hated listening to his thoughts. I would give anything not to. Could I trust the truth inside his thoughts? This was so-o confusing.

  “However, I will make an oath here and now to you. I will help you find this Father Dominique even when I cannot find a good reason to look for him. I will teach you how to survive, I will protect you, and I will train you to defend yourself. I assure you, you will never feel helpless again.” He paused, his gaze lost in the nearby distance, looking for the next thought. There was a “but” coming, I could tell.

  “But you have to give me the time, so I can help you understand who you are, because things are c
omplicated.” I did make the call; Francis “but” me.

  “How complicated?” I asked.

  “Very complicated.”

  Of course, nothing was simple in my life. I held my head in my hands and blew air from somewhere deep in my lungs.

  “We have plenty to tackle before our arrival.” Francis pulled out styling scissors, a box with hair color, and surgeon’s gloves from a small leather bag.

  I looked at him apprehensively, instinctively gaping at the tool in his hand.

  What? No freaking way. The prince isn’t going to like this. Son of a mother trucker, this is going to make my job frikkin difficult, Gavril huffed and puffed unhappily. I was back to being his job. I was so screwed. I didn’t have the will to correct his colorful vernacular again or ask any more questions. I barely had enough focus to hold my own.

  Francis watched me carefully and then put his hands over my shoulders. My glare must have been hateful. He took his hands off my shoulders.

  “As I’ve told you, this is for your protection. The need to keep you concealed is imperative,” he said, waiting for my understanding.

  My glare sat on the tools next to him. Demyan had warned me about coming to France, but I never imagined Francis would drastically change my appearance to keep me safe.

  Electricity threatened to re-ignite in my fingers, but I turned it off.

  ”From now on, you must never speak of your gifts, St. Mary’s, or my association with your mother to anyone. Is that clear?” Francis was very serious, shaking me from my alarming uneasiness and into another type of uneasiness. What was it with Mother Clarisse and Francis and their secrets?

  My reaction, well, it was somewhat polarizing between resigned, pretending that this wasn’t happening, and risking destroying the jet we were traveling on with my out-of-control emotions.

  “Why not?”

  “Why indeed…” Francis left his unfinished phrase inconclusive, visibly looking to gather the right words.