The Phoenix Stone

Chapter Six

Knock knock!

I sat up straight in bed, my heart pounding. Scrambling around my room I threw on some clothes. My dark curls were extremely frizzy and messy and my eyes were still blurry but I managed to stumble downstairs in a sleepy haze.

Knock knock!

Whoever was knocking must've been in a hurry.

"I'm coming!" I yelled, yanking open the door. On second thought, maybe I should've thought about who the person knocking on my door could be because I had a lot of people after me and I knew it.

Standing on the porch were three people, an older man maybe in his early fifties with graying hair, a younger female in her twenties with white-blonde hair, and a boy around my own age with blonde hair.

"You must be Nyx," the older man said, assessing me with a single sweep of his dark eyes. They rested on my cheek for longer than any other part of me.

By then I had gathered my wits enough to know that I shouldn't say yes right away. "Who are you and why are you on my porch?"

The man chuckled coldly. "You've got a lot of spunk, that's for certain. I'm Kael and I'm here to see Alva Shadowstride. Is she home?"

It startled me to hear my grandmother called by her real name. I crossed my arms. "No. But I can take a message for her."

The blonde girl stepped forward angrily. "We're here to see her and only her so I suggest you step aside, child."

The man—or should I say, Kael—put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her back. "Not now, Izel. There is a time and a place for violence and this is not it."

He turned to me and said, "When will Alva be back?"

I shrugged. My eyes burned just thinking about my grandmother so I tried not to think about if she'd ever come back. "Who knows. Maybe now, maybe never. I certainly don't know."

He looked shocked. "You don't know where she is?"

I shook my head, still blocking the doorway. "Nope. No clue." I was trying to seem tough and unmovable but my eyes were starting to tear up.

"When did you last see her?" He said, running a hand through his hair in an exasperated way.

"About five days ago."

"Do you know where she went?"

"Why should I tell you? I don't even know who you are!" All my frustration with the situation bubbled over. "Why should I tell someone I don't know where my grandmother could be and what happened to her? Give me one good reason!" I could see that he was getting annoyed at my refusal to say anything.

He took a deep breath and muttered something under his breath. "Evander, please inform this young lady about what we have been tasked to do."

The blonde boy nodded. "My please, sir." Turning to me he said, "We have been sent by Mari Shadowstride to talk to Alva about taking her granddaughter, Nyx, back to Magewell with us for training."

My mind was whirling with the information dump. "Mari Shadowstride?"

He nodded.

"Shadowstride?? Are you sure?" Shadowstride was my grandmother's last name and if Mari had the same last name as my grandmother it would mean that they were—

"Mari and Alva are sisters," he said, confirming my thought process.

At that point my mind was working overtime so I closed the door and plopped down on my grandmother's armchair. For some reason I just couldn't process what was happening to me. My grandmother had a sister that she'd never told me about and that sister was now trying to train me for some unknown cause?