Extraordinary (The Extraordinary Saga #4)

Chapter 17

"You're sure?" Rowan asked. "This isn't just a big coincidence?"

The cave had gone silent, until Rowan finally thought of something to say. Even then, she wished it didn't sound like she was denying him. If this "Mark" was his dad after all, he would know.

Caeden nodded, a glazed look in his amber eyes. He knelt down, the realization weighing heavy on him. It seemed at least a little easier to manage when he wasn't standing. "My last name is Caldwell. Maybe that doesn't mean anything to you, but that makes my dad's initials MC. And my mom - DR. Her maiden name was Rodrigues."

"Okay?" Rowan said, trying to gather all the facts. She sat beside him, and the others did too, forming a large circle. "That could just be one big irony. You don't actually know that."

"Yes, I do." Caeden shook his head. "I lived here, in this valley, till I was seven. Both my parents grew up here. When..." he faltered for words. "I don't have to prove this to you. I know I'm right."

Rowan put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Okay."

Hope looked at Caeden, intrigue clear on her face, but also something else. Guilt? "My dad never told me that my uncle had a kid, even after I wiped the slate clean and confessed everything I knew. Does... does that make us cousins?"

Caeden just nodded, bleakly. "My parents told me I had an uncle, maybe once. But I never met him." He closed his eyes, taking in the weight of the realization. His mom and dad had lied about everything. Not just magic, but his family, too. And now he was buried six feet underground with his friend, five random kids, his cousin, and a handful of golden spirits. It was too much.

Caeden half expected tears to come with the gravity of it, but though his eyes stung, he didn't cry. He couldn't cry. Not with the fire coursing through his veins.

He stood. "I need to go."

"Caeden, go where?" It was Onyx, and she had a point. There was nothing around them on all sides except rocks and rubble.

Hope buried her hands in her hair, her fair waves tinged with green falling all over her face. "This is my fault."

Maybe she was waiting for someone to tell her it wasn't, or maybe she was waiting for someone to agree with her. Either way, no one said a word.

"My-" her voice cracked, and she took a deep breath to begin again. "My dad's known about magic for a very long time. He used to work for this company with Caeden's parents-" That sounded weird to think, let alone say out loud. "That ran experiments on Aether. He knows the logistics of it, things I don't even know. But there's something that he told me, something he believed ever since I was little. You know how Aether runs in systems?"

"Systems?" Someone asked.

"Company?" Another said.

Hope couldn't see whose voices the words belonged to, but she thought it might've been Luna and Rowan. She nodded.

"I don't know much more than that about the company," she admitted. "But I do know this. Peter was right when he said Aether spikes at the solstices and equinoxes of the year. The first day of a season is always unusually strong - like today." She glanced around, her fingers picking at the rips of her jeans. "I'm guessing none of this would've happened if today wasn't the first day of summer, but I digress. That's just a guess, anyway. The real system Aether relies on is the year. It grows for seven years, peaks for one, and wanes another seven. I know it sounds crazy - believe me, I do - but my dad raised me to believe I was the one who could end all this, that I would be the one to stop Aether forever. Just because I was born fifteen years ago, during the last 'big year' - at the peak - of Aether."

"Fifteen years ago?" Rowan asked. "Then, I was too."

A chorus of agreement went around, until it was clear everyone was fresh out of ninth grade.

"Don't you find that a bit weird?" Onyx said. "We're all basically the same age."

"Not any weirder than this magic itself," Hope said. "And you never know - maybe that's the reason why it chose us."

Hope felt the presence of a little seed - an ivy seed - buried underneath the ground. Even more surprising, it still had some life in it. She coaxed it out of the dirt, twirling it around her finger for support as she did so. It never hurt her to grow something so small, but she could feel it borrowing some of her energy. It made her smile.

"But anyway," she added, still playing with the budding vine in front of her. "A few years ago, this whole thing happened. I was all ready to change the world, but all of a sudden everything my family had ever, well, hoped went down the drain. And I was desperate to prove that I still could do it. In my haste I accidentally released this golden cloud... it broke apart and formed those glowing creatures. I'm so sorry. For everything."

The cavern was silent, until Jordyn took a deep breath. It echoed all around, making it sound like Jordyn was preparing for a long speech. "Hope, it's not your fault. Based on what I heard, this would have happened anyway."

"Yeah," Rowan added. "This thing is so unpredictable, if you didn't set them free, someone else would have. Us fighting Aether is written in the stars, as inescapable as fate." For a moment her own experiences with magic flickered back into her mind, along with the thing she felt most guilty about. Hurting Alex. If she felt bad about that, she couldn't even imagine how awful Hope felt about releasing a malevolent force into the wild. "That is an insane amount of pressure to put on someone, especially as a child. But hey, maybe they weren't all wrong. Maybe this happened for a reason; maybe prophecies never happen the way they're intended. If one thing is for sure, you're not alone. We are not leaving this cavern before Aether is gone. Not just you."

If Jordyn's breath had echoed through the massive tunnel, then Rowan's last two sentences were a war cry. They sat, heavy, silent, waiting for what would happen next.

And Hope's reply was its answer.

"Thank you."