The Seventh Guild

CHAPTER FOUR

I open my front door slowly, silently praying my parents aren't still awake.

When I left the restaurant, I didn't know what to say. Despite how angry I felt at the Deep and everything they had done to me, I couldn't help but feel bad when I told Alex that I had nothing. No new clues in the mystery, no secret information that could free the guild from the dictatorship they were apparently currently under.

Maybe it isn't all bad. They're a dangerous cult anyway- maybe having a dangerous leader will inspire a few more people to leave.

But even thinking about that reminds me of Charlotte and how she abandoned me for years and how she was probably murdered by an evil magical dictator named Vincent, and how there's nothing I can do about it. And then, there's nothing I want to do but go directly to bed and figure all of this out in the morning, when I can think.

The door creaks slowly open, and I step silently inside.

Only to find myself face to face with my mother.

"Kenna, where have you been?" She says, immediately launching out of the armchair she was watching TV on. "It's ten-thirty!"

I turn eighteen in two months, which means I am far too old to have a curfew. I tried explaining as much to my adoptive parents a couple of times, but the fact that one of their two daughters ran away from home at thirteen and never came back left them with a paranoia about my whereabouts for life. It's understandable, if extremely annoying.

I'm not in the headspace for an argument, so I have to reach for an excuse even I know is far-fetched.

"I was on a date."

Mom narrows her eyes. "Kenna, you haven't been on a date since you were ten years old and you pretended to get married at recess. You have said multiple times, and I quote, that the very idea of having a boyfriend or a girlfriend makes you want to vomit your eyeballs out of your skull."

She's not wrong. 

"Yeah, well... the guy was a friend of mine, and it was more of like a... friend date."

"What does that even mean?"

"Look, I don't know, can I please just go to bed? It's been a long day."

She crosses her arms and glares at me, and I know I have her. If there's one thing Mom values more than curfews, it's getting a proper amount of sleep.

"Alright, fine. But you have a lot of explaining to do in the morning."

I want to mutter that I'm almost eighteen years old, and therefore I shouldn't really have to explain anything since I'm basically already an adult, but I bite my tongue as I walk past her up into my bedroom, and close the door. 

As soon as the door is shut, I flop down onto my bed, exhausted. 

What an absurd day this has been.

For an entire year all I wanted was to know who had murdered Charlotte, and now, I finally have a name. I'd always known it was someone from one of the guilds, of course, that's part of why I hate them so much. But I thought it was just stupid magical violence, the result of her own carelessness, and now having a face and a reason for it is making me feel a lot worse. 

Worst of all is that I can't do anything about it.

I swear to god, when Alex said that I was part of the Deep's founding family, I half considered storming directly into the place myself and claiming my birthright, just to spite him. 

Vincent.

My sister was murdered by a man I've never heard of, and now he's running around as the dictator of a secret magical guild, like some sort of stupid movie supervillain.

I just wish there was something I could do. I can't strip his title from him, because apparently I'm too old to inherit it. If I'd even be willing to spend the rest of my life as the leader of an organization I hate just to punish the man who'd killed a sister that had chosen not to speak to me for five years.

Thinking about that again makes me feel worse than anything, but it also fills me with a strange resolve.

There has to be more to the story. Charlotte didn't just refuse to talk to me because she didn't care. She did care. We were inseparable before she disappeared. And she certainly didn't refuse to talk to me because of some tradition in the guild she ran- even if she was beholden to its rules as the leader, she wouldn't have listened to them.

No. Something else was going on. Something that made her want to disappear from my life completely.

It was probably for my own good.

But I need to know why.

That Vincent man probably has all the answers, and he killed my sister. He murdered her. 

I want to hurt him. I want to make him bleed.

But I have nothing. I have no idea how to do that. There is absolutely nothing I can do.

I squeeze my eyes shut, and try to fall asleep.

And when I wake up, I have an idea.