"Hulem is no worse than a good stiff drink. In fact it gives you clarity instead of taking it away."
"It's addictive," says Rak, looking at me. "You feel good, yes? Calm and clear?"
I nod.
"Some people get hooked on it, and they chase that feeling at any cost." He glances at the back of Safi's head.
Safi's room was so bare, as if she had sold everything of any value. Maybe it wasn't just engine parts and tools she was buying with her wages—maybe this hulem stuff was involved.
"I don't have a problem with it," says Alik. "Can I have a swig?"
Safi nods, so I pass him the bottle. He drinks and holds it out to Rak, who shakes his head and looks away.
"You Maraj," says Alik, chuckling. "You miss out on so many things."
"What things?" I ask.
"You haven't told her about the Maraj religion yet?" Alik laughs louder. "Oh, this is going to be interesting." He leans back among the fuel canisters, trying to look comfortable, but after a minute he sits up again, frowning. "This bin is a piss-poor resting place. When do we camp?"
"When it's dark," Safi answers. "Plenty of time for Rak to share his faith."
As curious as I am about Rak's culture, I can't stand the mocking tone they've adopted, or the silent slope of his shoulders. "You don't have to talk about it," I tell him. He doesn't look at me.
"What good is faith if you can't discuss it in friendly company?" says Alik. "Go on, Maraj. Enlighten the Ceannan."
"Shut up, Alik," I say.
"No, he's right. I should tell you." Rak's voice flows under the heat of the afternoon, a cool stream that no blaze can quench. "My people believe in the soul. And the first soul in the universe was Khalaq, the Maker, neither male nor female, but purity and creation. Khalaq began to make worlds, some empty and some filled with living things. The living things had movement and instinct, but no souls.
"But the universe pressed hard against Khalaq, because it was Other and it did not belong. The pressure splintered Khalaq into countless shards, each one a single soul. And some souls reflected light from each other and were good, and others reflected darkness and were evil. The souls found homes in the bodies of the living things on some of Khalaq's worlds, like this one."
Rak pauses, swallows—glances at me before looking at the desert again. "The Maraj religion teaches that we must try to reflect the light we find, instead of absorbing the darkness in the world. So we work for purity of life and conscience, and for justice and peace."
The creed seems so at odds with his status as a Fray rebel; but he probably thinks he's seeking peace and justice in his own way. Like any religion, this one can be twisted to serve the personal agenda of the believers, or the leaders.
"Basically it's a lot of rules, and a lot of emphasis on blood bonds and loyalty and doing good deeds," says Safi. "I lived with a Maraj family for a while. Didn't suit me. I'm not the rule-following type."
"What kind of rules?" I ask.
"No enhancers like hulem, and very limited drinking," Safi answers. "A certain number of good deeds each day, and the deeds are ranked by quality and purity—it gets complicated."
"The Maraj aren't supposed to have sex either, until they're blood-bound to someone for life," says Alik.
Oh. That could be—frustrating. I risk a glance at Rak, but he's looking away. He wasn't joking when he said I had been more socially active than him.
"There are all these rules for family relationships, too," says Safi. "So many rituals and acknowledgements you're supposed to do. And no music, except for songs that celebrate the soul and its light." Her lip curls with disdain.
"It's not all about the rules," Rak says. "Might be for some purists, but for me, it's more like a guiding truth, something I can go back to when I get lost in the mess of this war."
The sincerity in his voice silences Safi and Alik. And though I don't believe his tale of soul-shards, I can see the appeal of the legend. He has given me a deeper look into the core of him, his heart—and it's noble, and beautiful.
Usually, peeling back a person's layers reveals something much less appetizing than what they plaster on the outside. With him, it's the opposite—roughness and darkness encrusting him, but inside, a shining light. His soul, glowing through the broken places.
Rak and Safi don't let us stop for the night until we come to a place where the desert wind has kicked up sand into larger ridges. They're not exactly dunes, but they do break the land into strips of black shadow and moonlit sand.
"The shadows will hide the COB better from anyone viewing the landscape at a distance," Rak says.
Safi listens, because Rak is the only one of us with military experience, and he's our best chance of staying clear of the Vilor. Once she parks the COB and shuts down the engine, we all clamber down stiffly. I stretch my legs and arms, then pull the bundle of food and cooking supplies out of the machine and spread the items on the ground.
Safi views the meager stash. "Too bad we didn't have time to get more supplies."
I'm no expert at rationing or estimating portions, but with four adults in these circumstances, this food won't last more than a couple of days at most. And I have no idea how long a journey we're taking.
I open my mouth to start the conversation about where we're going and what we'll do when we get there. But Safi's hands shake as she sorts the cans of food, and Alik sprawls limp, head propped on his pack, and Rak's eyes are tired, so tired. The discussion can wait, at least until after we've eaten.
Safi divides the contents of two food cans into four portions. "Anyone object to eating it cold?"
None of them protest, and although I could heat everyone's portion, I'm too famished to take the time—and I'm not sure if Rak wants to reveal our powers yet. My stomach gnaws at itself, my insides screaming for food. My portion vanishes in seconds, cold lumps of stewed meat and globs of beans sliding down my throat. Back at home, at my university, there was an entire building devoted to food. Two floors—the lower one a cafeteria where I could walk along gleaming silver counters and choose anything I wanted from the warmers behind the glass shields—and the second floor an array of hawker stalls, offering steamed noodles and meat pies and vegetable dumplings and soups and dessert puffs oozing cream.
Rak finishes his meal in even less time than me. He eats standing, a black silhouette against the deep blue of the sky. When he turns his head, watching the horizon, the moonlight glimmers on his forehead, his cheekbones.
I've been staring at him too long. I tear my gaze away and meet Alik's twinkling eyes across the pile of supplies. He grins, and I glare at him.
Already, he and Safi feel like old friends, and I don't understand why. I just met them today. They're here because we have a business arrangement, and because immediate peril forced us to leave together. I don't know them. They can't be trusted. I can't let them in.
Safi throws a blanket at me, and I barely catch it in time. "Get some sleep, Princess."
"We'll need to take turns watching," Rak says. "They could send seekers, like they did when Zilara and I escaped them before."
"They sent a seeker after you? How'd you fool it?" Safi asks.
"I shot it," says Rak, too quickly.
Safi's eyes narrow with suspicion. "Those drones are shielded against boltfire. What did you shoot it with?"
Rak hesitates. He knows she's onto him, and anything less than the truth isn't going to work. "Zilara and I blew it up."
"How?"
"With magic." His mouth twists in a half-smile.
"We're both Evolved," I say.
Safi stands, feet apart, hands clenched. "You didn't think this was useful information?"
"Is that why you two were babbling about abilities and explosions?" Alik swallows the last of his food and washes it down with a swig from his flask.
"Yes. I can manipulate water and its component molecules, and Zilara can heat things—anything, as long as she's in physical contact with it."
"Heat things? Like ho
w hot?" Safi's eyes swivel to me.
"I can burn people," I tell her. "Or super-heat hydrogen so it explodes."
"A princess with power," says Alik. "That's hot—pun completely intended."
Safi frowns. "You couldn't have used any of this power to help us out back there, when the Vilor were after us?"
"When we work together, we can make an explosion," I say. "He pools the hydrogen, and I set it off. I don't normally burn myself when I heat things, but with this, since it's an explosion, I can't shield my skin from it the same way. I burned my hand badly last time."
"And I need time and focus to do my part," says Rak. "We were moving too fast; I couldn't have controlled it."
"I've never met a Maraj with a talent before." Safi tilts her head, her hands on her hips.
Rak nods. "Among the Maraj, anyone with powers is considered tainted. Power leads to corruption and darkness, so people like me are usually quietly ended or expelled from the tribe. I've hidden my talent since I was a child."
"Show us something," says Alik, sweeping back his blond waves and leaning forward. His blue eyes catch the moonlight, shining with eagerness and an edge of something else—desire? Envy? I can't tell.
Rak glances at me, and I smile encouragingly at him. He plants his feet further apart and squares his shoulders, and his hands move, drawing patterns in the air as he brings together the pieces he needs. Beads of glittering water appear, suspended between his palms, merging into a sparkling stream that twists and loops like a living thing.
Alik claps. "Well done! Can you make any shape you want?"
Rak focuses on the water and flicks his fingers, and the stream reforms into an orb, then a tall column, then a slithering serpent that undulates toward Safi. She reaches out and puts her finger through the snake's liquid head.
"Amazing," she breathes, licking the water drops from her finger.
Watching them standing there, with the glittering water snake between them and the lush spray of white stars behind them, my heart flickers with something dark red and dangerous.
They belong together. Gorgeous Safi and brave Rak, children of the same land. I'm the one who doesn't fit in here.
I turn away and stack the supplies together, including the empty cans. I live in Caliston, the capital city of Ceanna, where littering is a harshly penalized offence, and I can't stand the thought of leaving those cans out here in the desert, even if they wouldn't hurt anything or be seen by anyone.
"We should sleep," I say. "Plenty of time for power demonstrations tomorrow."
"Your command is my law, Princess." Alik pulls a thick bio-blanket from his pack and drapes it over himself. With a press of a button, the material conforms to his shape, humming faintly as it maintains his optimal body temperature.
"Nice blanket," says Safi. "Cost you a lot, I expect."
"Not as much as you might think," Alik says, winking.
"You stole it. Impressive."
"It's easy. I can teach you some tricks of the trade, for a price."
"And that is?"
"Share the warmth with me." He lifts a corner of the blanket and smiles suggestively.
"Maybe later," Safi says, the corner of her mouth curving. "I'm taking first watch. You three go ahead and rest—I'll be able to tell if anyone's coming long before they get here."
She wraps a thin blanket around her shoulders and sits down close to Alik. Rak lies down on Alik's other side without a glance at me.
Now I have to choose—sleep by myself on the other side of Safi, or lie down next to Rak.
It's so dark out here, freezing cold and lonely, and Rak is the closest thing I have to a real friend in this vast place. But I need to keep my distance. Physical contact is only going to feed the affection I'm starting to feel for him.
I walk over to him and lie on my back, within arm's reach, but no nearer. The blanket I have doesn't offer much protection against the icy air.
"Zilara." Rak's voice reverberates through my bones.
I ignore him, staring up at the sky.
"You're going to freeze."
"Shut up." The others are listening. Why can't he leave me alone?
How can he think I would want to be pressed against him for warmth, after what happened between us today? The fight, and the kiss, and the way I ended it? Before, when we were traveling to Ankerja, we huddled together to survive, and there was no one to see. Now—it's different. Being close to him like that, with Alik and Safi here, it feels too naked, too vulnerable. I can't do it.
Pushing Rak out of my head, I splay my hands against the sand on either side of my body. Slowly I spread energy through the ground, waves of it flooding toward the blankets, the bodies—Rak first, then Alik, then Safi. I push the warmth out, further and further, deeper, richer, until it's a pool of heat for us all.
Safi's soft gasp tells me the heat has reached her. "Zil, are you doing that?"
"Yes. It won't last though. When I fall asleep it will fade." If I ever do sleep. There's a coldness in my core that I can't warm, a deep sense of being bitterly alone and incredibly small. I'm a speck of life, gravity-stuck to the side of an immense ball spinning through endless space. If gravity fails me, I will float off and fall away and be lost, and no one will know or care.
My father doesn't care. If he cared he would have found a way to get to me. My mother has money—why hasn't she figured out a way to reach me? Maybe I should have called her instead of my father.
I could have called my uncle. He and my aunt are more like parents to me than my own parents. But they live in the countryside, far outside the capital, and they have little money or power to help me.
And what of my friends, my teachers—have they given me up for lost? Have I become a story told in the hallways? "Remember that girl who used to sit at the back in Exemplary Society class? She was the Magnate's daughter, and some Emsali rebels caught her and killed her. Cut off her head—or shot her—anyway she's gone. Crazy, right? Who are you sitting with at lunch?"
The only person helping me is me. And the young Fray rebel, the Maraj boy lying on the sand beside me, his body drinking my energy and warmth. If I turn my head, he'll be looking at me, concern in his dark eyes—and if I see that look, I'm going to melt into tears. The prickling of those tears is already starting in my nose, behind my eyes.
Stop it. Stop being a silly little city girl.
I'm brave.
Rak thinks I'm brave.
But inside I'm a quivering, quaking mess, and I have to clench my jaw and stop my breath to hold the sobs in. I'm supposed to be waiting safely in Ankerja, waiting for my father's men to take me away from this land of rebels and sand and scars. Instead I'm out here again, in the trackless desert, with strangers. And with Rak. And he's somehow more scary because he isn't a stranger, he's Rak, and that means—something I can't assign a word to, yet.
The warmth keeps flowing out of me—too much now, and I rein it in. Don't want to scorch my companions.
A touch on my hand. Rough fingers, scooping mine from the sand.
I won't look at him.
I'm already starting to cry, just from the touch. Hot tears slide out of the corners of my eyes, tracing across my temples as I stare up at the sky. My chest rises and falls faster than usual.
Stop it, Rak, I want to scream at him. You're making me weak.
His fingertips trace my palm, igniting tiny fires where they touch.
Even strong people need comfort sometimes. I am strong, but I need him. Every inch of my skin is begging me to move closer to him.
I turn my head.
And meet his eyes in the dark.
I catch a breath, and skip another, and the tears overflow. He pulls me closer, my body scraping across the sand, and I bury my face in his chest to smother the sobs. He draws the blanket over my shoulders and drapes his warm, heavy arm over me, and I'm safe in that circle of him. If gravity fails and I fall into space, he'll be with me.
16
Safi wakes me af
ter what seems like a few minutes of sleep. "All is quiet," she whispers, teeth clicking together. She is shivering so hard I can see it, even in the starlit gloom.
Disentangling myself from Rak's arms, I sit up straight. "Get under Alik's blanket before you freeze to death. This is no time to be proper, or shy."
"I'm neither, at the best of times," she says, trying a quivery smile. Then she slips to Alik's side and worms her way in beside him. He doesn't wake—a deep sleeper, that one.
Rak shifts and opens his eyes. "What is it?"
"My watch," I say.
"I'll take it for you."
"No." I put my hand on his chest to hold him down. "Everyone could use the warmth anyway. I'll wake you in a few hours."
"All right." He hands me the timepiece from his wrist. "Two hours, no more."
Sitting in the dark, alone, I press my hands to the earth, warmth flowing through it and into the three sleeping bodies.
Where will we go tomorrow? Safi talked about the mountains at the other side of the desert. There are apparently Maraj there, maybe Fray—anything but the Vilor sounds good to me. Maybe there are even peace-keeping stations in the mountains.
And Safi still has the communication device I used to speak to my father. There's no point using it now, when we'll be on the move again in a few hours—but once we reach somewhere with a semblance of safety, I'll have to call the Magnate and let him know where we are. He'll send someone for me, and then everything will be all right, and I'll reward everyone and go home.
I'll go home to Ceanna, and Rak will stay here.
He's not important. He shouldn't be important. I've known him for barely more than a week. Not long enough to get attached.
So why does a deep, black chasm open up in my heart when I think about him being here, in Emsalis, while I'm at university with Vissa and Reya? Why does my life at home suddenly look so colorless, like a world in sepia and gray?
I turn my head to look at Rak's sleeping face in the starlight. No one would look at him for the first time and call him beautiful—but to me, he is.
I've heard stories of hostages developing feelings for their captors. It's a survival mechanism. Maybe that's why I feel this way about him—I instinctually latched onto someone who can help me make it through this.
Rebel of Scars and Ruin (The Evolved Book 1) Page 15
