Appearances are becoming harder to trust.
Chapter 11 brings new questions, uncertain loyalties, and a few moments that may mean more than they first appear.
Keep an eye on the details. The answers are getting closer, but so is the danger.
Welcome to Chapter 11.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The stranger takes another step through Alec's lightning.
This time, his attention drops toward the current twisting around his hand before following its path across the hollow to Alec.
Something shifts behind his eyes.
Alec stiffens beside me as the stranger slowly raises two fingers.
Every current stops.
Blue-white lightning hangs suspended throughout the hollow, frozen between violent pulses while the waterfall continues thundering behind him. Branching veins of electricity stretch between stone, water and air, filling the space with enough light to turn every face pale.
Alec's breath catches.
His fingers close into a fist.
The stranger moves his hand.
Every suspended current snaps backward.
Straight toward Alec.
"Alec!"
His body arches as his own lightning crashes into him.
Power detonates through the hollow.
Eric catches me around the waist and drags me backward as electricity tears through the opening with enough force to fracture stone beyond the waterfall. The remaining pursuers disappear beneath the blast, thrown away from the entrance while Jamey drops behind a ridge of rock and covers his head.
Through all of it, the stranger remains exactly where he stood.
Alec's lightning cannot touch him.
His gaze remains fixed upon Alec until his raised hand finally lowers.
The waterfall crashes closed.
Thousands of liters slam back into place with enough force to shake the hollow, swallowing the stranger and everything beyond him behind a solid wall of water.
I stare at the cascade while my pulse pounds against my throat.
"What did he do?"
Eric releases my waist and moves closer to the water, although his attention remains fixed upon the place where the stranger disappeared.
"I have no idea."
A sharp crackle rises behind us.
We turn together.
Alec stands exactly where the lightning struck him.
Blue-white currents circle his body in restless arcs while his chest drags one breath after another through clenched teeth. Static lifts his hair away from his forehead as darkness begins draining from every strand, black gradually surrendering to stark white.
"Alec?"
His head rises.
Silvery-grey eyes find mine.
Tiny filaments of lightning branch through his irises and travel toward their edges, bright enough to illuminate the unnatural stillness in his face.
My feet stop moving.
I've seen Alec furious enough to make the heavens answer him. I've watched lightning tear through his body and emerge beneath his control.
This feels different.
The electricity surrounding him should be fading after the attack. Instead, each current grows brighter as it circles him, folding back into his body before emerging again with greater force.
I take one careful step toward him.
"Alec, it's me."
His gaze follows the movement.
Nothing familiar answers from behind it.
Eric starts forward beside me, and I lift one hand between us.
"Give me a second."
Alec's fingers twitch.
Lightning gathers around his palm.
The Flame remains strangely quiet beneath my ribs, yet the Living Scripture responds immediately, gold beginning to move beneath my skin.
"Alec, whatever he did to you, fight it."
His head tilts slightly.
For one heartbeat, something moves through his expression.
Then his hand rises toward me.
My stomach tightens.
"Eric, stay back!"
Alec releases the bolt.
Gold erupts across my skin.
The Living Scripture races over my body and rearranges itself faster than thought, glyph locking against glyph until radiant armor forms across my chest and arms.
Lightning crashes into it.
The impact drives me backward across the wet stone while blue-white power explodes over the armor. My boots scrape for purchase as the Scripture blazes brighter, absorbing each violent current before it can tear through me.
Alec raises his hand again.
The Tha-um inscription burns across my chest plate.
My fingers close around the glyph and pull.
Golden-red light stretches between the armor and my hand before the inscription releases into my palm, pulsing once against my fingers as Alec gathers another strike.
I throw it.
The glyph crosses the hollow before his lightning can leave his hand.
Radiant Scripture erupts around him.
Golden chains wind across his arms and chest before sweeping around his legs, each length tightening as another forms. Alec jerks against them while electricity lashes outward, striking stone hard enough to send fragments skittering across the hollow.
I close my hand.
"Bind."
The command answers through the glyph.
Alec's back arches as one final surge of electricity tears through him and races along the chains. Golden Scripture blazes beneath the assault, drawing each current inward until the hollow gradually loses its blue-white glare.
His breathing changes first.
The violent pulls begin slowing as darkness returns through his hair from the roots, swallowing the unnatural white strand by strand. Silver continues burning through his eyes for several seconds before flickering beneath familiar color.
His knees buckle.
I reach him before the Scripture releases.
Alec collapses against me with enough weight to drive me back a step, and I wrap both arms around him while the final golden chains dissolve into the air.
"Alec, talk to me."
His head falls against my shoulder.
"Alec?"
His body remains heavy in my arms as the last traces of electricity disappear beneath his skin. Darkness slowly returns through his hair from the roots, swallowing the unnatural white strand by strand, while silver fades from his closed eyes.
I lower us both onto the wet stone and press two fingers against his neck.
His pulse beats steadily beneath them.
Relief reaches me carefully as I slide one arm beneath his shoulders and draw him closer.
"I've got you."
Eric crouches beside us, his attention moving from Alec toward the waterfall. "What did that man do to him?"
I look toward the cascade.
Water pounds against the stone as though nothing impossible happened here, sealing the hollow once again while the last remnants of blue-white electricity fade from the air.
The stranger who walked through Alec's lightning is gone.
The Flame remains deep beneath my ribs, present and powerful, yet holding that same strange stillness it found the moment he entered the hollow.
He commanded the waterfall.
Alec's lightning refused to touch him.
Then he somehow turned that same power back against Alec.
Questions crowd behind my teeth, each one demanding an answer I cannot give.
A movement beyond Eric's shoulder catches my attention.
Someone else is still here.
Half-hidden behind a boulder, one of the men who pursued Alec and Jamey watches us with eyes stretched wide and his body pressed rigidly against the stone.
I remember him.
He was at my house.
My relief burns away.
Moments ago, he stood safely beyond Alec's reach and soaked in the chaos as though somebody had handed him a front-row seat. Now his confidence has vanished, leaving his face pale beneath the mist.
Apparently, the show loses some of its appeal when the entertainment starts walking toward you.
I lower Alec carefully onto the moss beside Jamey.
"Watch him."
Jamey immediately moves closer, one hand reaching for Alec's shoulder while I rise.
Eric sees where I'm looking.
"Max."
I keep walking.
The survivor stays behind the boulder.
He should probably reconsider that decision.
Heat rolls beneath my ribs as I cross the wet stone, and the Living Scripture begins glowing faintly along my arms.
His hands rise before I reach him.
"You knew."
His mouth opens.
I give him exactly enough time to regret it.
My palm catches his cheek.
Golden light bursts from the impact and throws his shadow across the canyon wall as his head snaps sideways. He staggers against the rock, more shaken by the divine force carried through the strike than the strength behind my hand.
I catch his collar before he can recover and pull him toward me.
"I remember you."
His eyes widen.
"You were at my house. You saw Alec's lightning firsthand. You knew exactly what he could do when pushed, and you still chased him and Jamey through the mountain like fugitives."
His hands remain raised between us. "I didn't think he'd go that far."
"You're lying."
I move closer until the rock leaves him nowhere else to retreat.
"You followed a man who spent last night terrified the Judicars were coming to drag him away again. You cornered him after watching what happened at my house, and somehow I'm supposed to believe nobody considered what that might do to him?"
His gaze slips away from mine.
There it is.
"This was a setup."
His attention snaps back.
"You knew what happens when Alec feels cornered."
"We were told to follow them."
My grip tightens around his collar.
"Then whoever gave that order had a phone."
He says nothing.
"One warning would have been enough. Instead, you hunted them through the mountain as though you were tracking rabid wolves."
I release him with enough force to send his shoulder against the boulder.
"If one of your people dies because of this, you don't get to place that blood at Alec's feet."
His silence gives me everything I'm going to get from him for now.
I turn away.
The others remain scattered beyond the waterfall, and anger has to make room for something more urgent.
They need to survive.
My fingers rise toward the glowing inscription along my lower lip.
Sha-Viel answers my touch.
The Severance and Restoration glyph lifts from my skin in radiant gold, hovering before me as its light spills across the wet stone.
I whisper the command.
Sha-Viel launches through the mist and divides mid-flight, seven smaller inscriptions breaking from the original before descending toward the bodies scattered beyond us.
Gold sinks into them.
One man drags in a sudden breath.
Another coughs hard enough to curl onto his side while color gradually returns beneath his skin. Limbs twitch as the remaining electrical spasms begin to ease, each violent movement weakening until Alec's storm finally releases them.
I watch every chest.
Each one rises.
Good.
Relief reaches me without touching the anger still burning beneath it.
They're alive.
Which means they can answer questions.
I crouch beside Eric and rest one hand against his shoulder, applying just enough pressure to make him look at me.
"Stand back," I murmur, keeping my attention on the men beginning to move.
Eric rises without argument, although he retreats only far enough to give me room. His position beside my shoulder tells me exactly how quickly that distance will disappear if anything goes wrong.
The two worst injured stir first, one dragging in a deeper breath while the other presses trembling fingers into the moss. Where scorched skin covered their arms moments ago, smooth flesh catches the weak light filtering through the waterfall.
Their eyes open gradually.
Awareness returns as their attention travels across Eric, Jamey and Alec before reaching me. Something changes the instant they see my face, and every trace of confusion disappears from their expressions.
I straighten as the others begin waking around them, expecting questions or perhaps another spectacularly poor decision involving violence.
The first man lowers himself onto one knee.
Another follows before a third joins him, and within seconds, every conscious man has one knee against the earth with a hand braced across the raised leg and his head bowed toward me.
My stomach performs a slow, uncomfortable turn.
"Okay, why is everyone kneeling?"
Their heads remain lowered as every voice joins the same greeting.
"We greet the Living Scripture."
Eric's attention snaps toward me, and mine finds his just as quickly.
Apparently, my afternoon now includes ceremonial greetings from people who chased my friends through a mountain. Somehow, that feels like an improvement.
One of the men raises his head enough to meet my gaze. Age sits lightly around his eyes, while the stillness in his posture belongs to someone accustomed to carrying authority.
I point between him and the others. "The Living Scripture part I've heard before. The synchronized kneeling is new. Care to explain?"
His expression shifts so slightly that I might have missed it if I weren't already studying him.
Unfortunately for him, I catch it.
My eyebrow rises. "Before we get to whatever that look means, can everyone please stand? You're making this extremely uncomfortable."
The men rise immediately and with such perfect obedience that my discomfort increases rather than improves.
The leader places one hand over his chest. "My name is Daniel. We are Oathbearers, a faction serving within the Divine Tribunal."
Eric shifts closer while I study Daniel.
"Oathbearers?" I gesture toward him. "So you're from the same cheerful family as the Judicars?"
Daniel considers the question before answering. "We serve the same Tribunal."
"That wasn't quite what I asked."
"Your question requires a more complicated answer."
I sigh. "Of course it does. Heaven forbid anyone around here answers something normally."
Daniel takes a step toward me, and my hand rises before he completes it.
He stops.
"We are bound by sacred oath to uphold divine law," he continues. "Our duties differ considerably from those carried by the Judicars."
Eric's fingers close lightly around my wrist.
"I think we can safely assume they're finished trying to kill us, O' Living Scripture."
My head turns slowly toward him while the corner of his mouth threatens to move.
I jab two fingers into his ribs.
"O' Living Scripture, my foot up your ass."
A strangled sound escapes Jamey behind us while Eric rubs his side.
"Divine compassion remains one of your strongest qualities."
"Keep testing it and you'll discover another."
Daniel watches the exchange with the severe patience of a man whose Tribunal training clearly failed to prepare him for us.
I gesture toward Alec, who remains unconscious beside Jamey. "We've had enough revelations beside waterfalls for one day, and Alec needs somewhere better than wet moss to recover."
My attention returns to Daniel.
"Both teams are going home. If you want to explain why you chased us through a mountain and then started kneeling, you can do it there."
---------------------------------------------------
By the time everyone gathers inside the house, tension has found a comfortable seat among us.
Samuel and Samantha occupy one end of the room with the particular expressions of two people whose holiday has been murdered twice in less than twenty-four hours. Jamey sits nearby peeling an apple with enough concentration to make the fruit appear personally responsible.
The newcomers remain together near the center of the room.
Daniel clears his throat.
"I understand you were taking time away when we interrupted you. For that, you have our sincere apology."
Samantha stares at him.
Samuel folds his arms.
Jamey's knife removes another strip of apple skin.
Daniel waits several seconds.
"I'll assume the apology requires time."
"Excellent instincts," Samantha replies.
Alec shifts deeper into the cushions beside me, still pale after what happened at the waterfall, while Eric remains close enough for his knee to touch mine.
Daniel's expression hardens.
"Our presence concerns recent events surrounding the Divine Tribunal."
Jamey's knife stops.
"So you're replacing the Judicars?"
"No."
Daniel's answer arrives immediately.
His gaze travels around the room before returning to me.
"The Judicars have taken an interest in your group that extends beyond their usual function."
My shoulders tighten.
"What kind of interest?"
"The kind that made you a target."
The apple slips from Jamey's hand and lands in his lap.
He looks down at it.
"Well, that's reassuring."
Daniel continues before anyone can interrupt. "The Divine Tribunal does not operate through a single authority. Its factions exist to prevent any one arm from controlling judgment from beginning to end."
That gets my attention.
"The Judicars investigate transgressions and pass judgment," he says. "Their decisions are then subject to the Verdictors, whose duty is to determine whether that judgment remains just beneath divine law."
A blonde woman beside him rises.
She carries herself with an elegance sharp enough to become threatening without any effort.
"When a judgment survives that scrutiny, another faction may be called upon to deliver it." Her gaze moves through the room before reaching mine. "We are the Cindervows. Judgment's fire belongs to our charge."
My attention moves between her and Daniel.
"And I thought all of you were Oathbearers."
"You assumed incorrectly."
The correction comes from a petite woman standing several places away, enormous glasses dominating a face that offers very little warmth.
She rises and joins the blonde woman.
"Elizabeth serves the Cindervows. My name is Thania, and I belong to the Sentinels of the Divine."
Jamey looks between them. "Do you people receive name badges? Because I'm going to need diagrams soon."
Thania ignores him with impressive discipline.
"The Gravemarks carry condemnation when final judgment requires it," she continues. "The Sentinels ensure the Tribunal's will is enforced and its balance preserved."
My gaze returns to Daniel.
"So let me make sure I've got this right. Judicars judge, Verdictors check the judgment, Cindervows deliver it, Gravemarks finish it, Sentinels enforce everything, and the Oathbearers do... what?"
Daniel holds my gaze.
"We protect divine law from those who would corrupt it."
Something in the answer changes the room.
Eric feels it too. His posture shifts beside me while Samuel's folded arms loosen and Jamey's knife finally stops tormenting the apple.
I study Daniel.
"Then why were you following Alec and Jamey?"
Silence answers first.
Daniel's jaw tightens.
"We had orders."
"From whom?"
"That is considerably more complicated."
"I'm developing an allergy to that sentence."
Elizabeth glances toward Daniel.
Thania remains perfectly still.
Nobody answers me.
Unease begins curling beneath my ribs.
These people knelt when they saw me.
They called me the Living Scripture before I knew what the title meant. They claim the Judicars have made us targets, yet hours ago Gabriel admitted he crossed the boundaries of my mind because something inside me caught his curiosity.
Then there was the waterfall.
The man Alec's lightning refused to touch.
The way the Flame withdrew into that impossible stillness when his eyes found mine.
Too many pieces are moving around us, and everyone except me seems to know what picture they belong to.
I lean forward.
"You said you're here to protect us."
Daniel nods once.
"Then start protecting us with the truth."
A tiny movement catches my attention.
Thania's gaze shifts toward someone behind her.
Her expression changes.
"Don't."
The word arrives too late.
A voice slips through the room, quiet enough that I almost miss it.
"The Living Scripture doesn't know yet."
Every muscle in my body tightens.
Nobody speaks.
My gaze moves from Daniel to Elizabeth, then Thania.
Three different factions.
Three equally guarded faces.
Three people who suddenly refuse to look at me.
Gold warms beneath my skin.
Eric's hand closes around mine.
I hear the waterfall again inside my memory.
I see lightning bending around a man it should have destroyed.
I feel the Flame becoming impossibly still.
Daniel slowly turns toward whoever whispered the words.
His expression tells me enough.
Whatever they think I don't know, he wanted it kept that way.
I rise.
"Doesn't know what?"
Nobody answers.
The Living Scripture begins moving beneath my skin.
And this time, every person sent here to protect me takes one step back.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, the Oathbearers certainly know how to make an entrance.
Alec has questions about his power, Max has a few of her own, and those answers from the Oathbearers somehow managed to create an even bigger mystery.
Who do the Oathbearers truly serve?
Tell me in the comments which moment caught you off guard, or what you think is really happening beneath all of this.
Chapter 11 is waiting.