Doomed

chapter 13

Portum was just as beautiful as the others had alluded to it being. I had figured it would be gorgeous and picturesque from knowing the fact that it was near the Caribbean, but I hadn't exactly been prepared for just how breathtaking it actually was. I could have been in a dream from how unreal it looked and felt.

For some reason, after learning about Morgan being a witch and Paisley being part witch-part Fae (yet another species they had to explain to me), I had expected that their would be some magical way of getting to Portum, but I'd been wrong. Jessica and Liliana had booked the first flight from New Mexico to the Caribbean, and from there, we took a boat that was guided by a sweet water nymph. I'd also learnt that nymph was a type of faerie, and because of it, Paisley had been chatty with him the entire time, Morgan standing resolutely by her girlfriend's side.

The dock we ported at wasn't grubby or dirty like I had been accustomed to when living on the East coast; it was located at a beach with sparkling white sand and a cobblestone street, market stands scattered down the length of the street. The only thing ruining the tranquility of the scene before me were the several large black SUVs parked right at the entrance of the market place.

My brows furrowed together as I accepted Mik's handing as he helped me off the boat and onto the wood dock. "What are those SUVs here for?"

Mik glanced over, as if just now noticing that the cars were there. He frowned for a moment but then his expression smoothed out again into something more familiar: a smile. "Probably Guardians to escort us," he said, wrapping an arm around me. A smile formed, aware that he wasn't doing it because he thought I needed support. After passing out on his shoulder and drooling on it during the plane ride, he had seemingly gotten comfortable with me again, although I couldn't tell you the reason he had gotten distant in the first place. "You know, you're kind of a big deal."

I wanted to argue that fact, but was too busy pondering about the Guardians and the Guard. During the plane ride and boat ride, my friends had taken the time to fill me on some important facts I would need to be made aware of, the first of which being that the city we were going to be taken to was Solis, the capital of Portum where the government was located.

When they mentioned the government, that had resulted in me questioning what exactly the government. The conversation from that point on had gotten a little complex, but somehow, I was still able to follow along, which I was grateful for. There were four main groups of paranormal, at least that was what they had told me, the main groups being the faeries, the vampires, the werewolves, and the witches. The kind of paranormals we most commonly heard about as humans, according to them. The faeries government with was the Court, the vampires were the Cult, the werewolves made up the Council, and the witches were the Coven, which I had already gathered from what I had found out about Morgan.

There was a government for all the species, called the Covenant. They didn't exactly elaborate on them, informing me it wasn't necessarily important in the moment. The last pieces of the government they had filled me in on was Chancellor Mattias and the Guard. Chancellor Mattias was the head of the entire Other Side (that's what they referred to their world and I went with it), and not a single one of them seemed to favor him all that much by the way they warned that I would never be left alone with him. The Guard, on the other hand, had been the one they talked about the most.

The Guard was a group of paranormals that trained and devoted their entire life, immortal or mortal, to protecting the rest of their race. They were called Guardians and were treated with the utmost respect, even more so than their governments, mainly because they were putting their lives on the line daily. After they explained what the Guard was, they shot into their favorite stories about their favorite Guardians and I nodded along until I had passed out on Mik.