When The Stars Align

chapter twenty nine | green means go

I SLAMMED THE door of my room behind me, a loud bang filling the room. I locked it behind me before the king could follow me in.

"VERA CARMICHEAL, LET ME TALK TO MY SON!" the king roared. I knew the second the words left Leo's mouth that the king would not take the words lightly. Fury filled the man's eyes, and he demanded to get the information out of the boy that suddenly feared his father.

Leo sat in the corner of my room, grabbing a pillow from my bed and holding it tightly around his chest. He rocked back and forth, breathing heavily. I knew I had to take him out of there before Pheon got his hands on the boy.

"I'M GOING TO BE THE ONE TALKING TO HIM," I yelled back through the door separating us. I felt the king try to knock in down, and behind him, I could hear Lysander try to calm the king down. I made sure the two were gone, at least a couple feet away, before I moved away from the door and approached the boy.

"Leo." I walked towards him slowly. "Leo, you know I won't hurt you, right. You're going to tell me what happened and based on what you say, I'll let your father know."

"You can't tell him," the boy stuttered. "You... you won't even believe me."

I shook my head. "I can believe a lot of things, kid. I need you to tell me what happened and I need you to tell me what Ansen did to you." It didn't make sense for him to let Leo go. "Tell me what happened, Leo."

I took a couple steps back and sat on the bed. Leo stood up and walked over and took a seat beside me. He still clutched the pillow. That was fine for me.

"So... so after the first meeting you let me listen to, when you were talking about the amulets, I thought they were really cool. I wanted to learn more about them, but I didn't want to come to you," the boy started, then paused.

"Why not? I know it hasn't been very long since I've met you, and our first impression wasn't that great-" This boy, I could tell, trusted me. If I was his age, I'd find it hard still to trust someone that was a murderer. I mean, technically I did trust one, but I didn't know the murderer part. "-but you were always able to talk to me."

"You were always either out or in the hospital or something, there was never a good time," I explained. "But anyway, I decided to do some research on my own. I know you said that the green one was never found, so I wanted to help you out.

"I looked into the Hawthorne line, I wanted to see if there were any traces of it," Leo continued. "I didn't really have much to go on, because all of the old history books, anything that mentioned the six kingdom, they were all burned, right? So I went to Uncle Lysander's home - I guess that would be your home too, and I was looking for clues."

"And your parents didn't know this?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "I said I just wanted to visit. I didn't really like being in the palace normally, so I usually went to Uncle Lysander's house anyway. I was just looking around and... there was this book. It was really old and kind of hidden in... I think it was a loose stone in Grandma and Grandpa's room..." His voice trailed off. He made a mistake.

Is that where it was all this time?

I bit my lip. "You're not allowed in that room, Leo. Your mother would kill you if she found out." Our parents' room was off limits since their death from what I heard. Neither Tori or Lys had the courage to clean up the things in there. "But it's fine for now, continue."

"So there was this book, and it had every heir from each linage. Your name was there and dad's name and Uncle Atticus' name and... I looked at the Sylvaine line and, well, I heard Aunt Sophia come back from work. I only managed to get the last name of the person before freaking out and putting it back and rushing out of that room."