Suddenly, I stopped falling, and although the landing was brutal, and the entire world around me seemed to be shattering, my body miraculously stayed in one piece.
The smell of sweat and blood hit me, and I wrenched my lids up.
The sight of Remo’s tensed face rid me of breath. “You saved me . . . again.”
Glistening rivulets ran down his brow, and his cheeks puffed with ragged breaths. “Yeah, but not for long if we don’t make it out of here.”
A stair fell and exploded at his feet, bombarding us with sharp projectiles. Flinging his face to the side, he curled himself around me until the glass pellets stopped coming. And then his attention zipped to the exit, and cradling me against his pounding chest, he took off, zigzagging around the collapsing rubble. I tried to hook my hand around his neck, but a bolt of pain shot through my elbow when I lifted my arm.
I swiveled my head, trying to see around us. We were almost outside.
Almost—
A sharp gurgling cry tore out of Remo’s throat, and his body pitched forward, sending me careering toward the road. I rolled and rolled, molars gritting from the knifing pain. The second I stopped, I dug my palms into the ground. The road might’ve been safer, but the tall buildings were bound to come crashing down over us. My left arm gave way, and I almost toppled back onto my face, but I gritted my teeth and heaved myself onto my good arm and then onto my knees. Slowly, I rose and turned toward Remo.
A scream, louder than the one which had escaped when I’d been pitched off the spiral, surged out of me. I sped toward where he lay and dropped onto my knees as the ground gave another violent shudder, obliterating more of the skyscrapers.
A shard of glass was lodged between his shoulder blades, and a pool of blood darkened the concrete beneath him. I didn’t know whether I should pull it out or if that was the exact thing I shouldn’t do. Nima would’ve known. She knew injuries, human and fae alike.
“Remo?” My voice sounded as broken as the world around me. I brought my face closer to his. “Remo, you can’t leave me. Hang on. I’ll get us to the train.”
His lips were open, and yet no breath pulsed against my nose.
“Remo?” I brought my shaky hand to his neck and tried to feel for a pulse, but my fingers were numb and the leather-like material ensconcing them, thick. “Don’t leave me,” I whispered desperately.
Before my stinging eyes, his body turned gray and then exploded into ash.
“NO!” I hunched over the spot where his body had lain, where only his blood remained, running in rivulets through his ashes and into the fabric of my torn suit. I cried until my voice was hoarse and my eyes burned as violently as my elbow. Even though I welcomed my own death, no glass tore through my vital organs. “Why?” I shrieked at the white sky and the hailing shrapnel, which was probably butchering my face and neck.
I was too numb to feel anything.
Too numb to care.
I rested my torso onto my trembling thighs and my head on the bed of glass. “Why?” I cried. “Why?”
Why did you follow me inside the portal?
Why did I go after the damn apple?
Why didn’t you run away when the ground rumbled?
Why did you sacrifice yourself to save me, a girl you hated?
And why does my heart feel as broken as this glass city?
14
The Rubble
The ground stopped shaking at some point. The glass stopped falling. And my tears dried on my chilled cheeks, salting the little wounds.
I’d stopped crying.
I’d also stopped yelling and pounding my fist at the white sky.
I felt empty and crushed, the gashes on my skin as deep as the ones on my heart and mind.
I tried to cradle my smarting arm against me, but my elbow would neither fully bend, nor would it fully extend. It was stuck somewhere in between and throbbing as though my heart had slid into it. I pressed myself up, then stumbled over the grains of glitter like a lupa pup. The dome over the chrome train had crumbled too. Unlike the buildings which were only half-ruined, jagged edges gleaming like brandished swords, nothing remained of the station, except for the train.
The train which had led Remo and me to this nightmare of glass and concrete, now the repository of his ashes.
I glared down at the spot still stained by his blood. The viscous puddle blurred, then sharpened like the shard that had snuffed out his life. I bent over and grabbed the murder weapon, and then I hurled it at the wrecked skyscraper, yelling my anger and pain at the top of my lungs. Breathing hard, I surveyed the destruction and then lifted my gaze to the ice garden, my black hair whipping in the relentless breeze. I pushed the strands that weren’t clumped together by mud and blood off my face and evaluated the steepness of the mountain. There was no way I could climb it with only one arm. I wasn’t even sure there was a way to climb it with two.
I needed to get out of here, back to Frontier Land, because there was nothing in this world except debris and memories that would forever haunt me. I’d never held my breath that our families would make peace, but now that Remo had died because of me—
I shuddered, my lids crimping over my swollen eyes. And then I tilted my face toward the bright sky, wishing sunshine would breach the clouds and sear away my grief.
“Oh, Great Gejaiwe, why?” I croaked. “Why?”
My tribe’s Great Spirit didn’t send any answer. Not that She’d ever talked to me before, but at that moment, I would’ve given anything to hear Her voice. Or anyone’s voice. But who could survive these machiavellian cells? I didn’t see how I would. Maybe I’d make it back to Frontier Land and die there. Unless Josh told someone where I was, but that would imply he cared about my welfare, and the Daneelie wasn’t known for his selflessness.
I turned and trudged through the wreckage, crunching over the translucent crust, the glare of light hurting my eyes. When I reached the mirrored train platform, I froze. Was that—Was that me? I twisted my face from side to side, and the girl with the clumped and snarled black hair, and pallid skin speckled in blood and trails of mascara also turned her face.
I wasn’t a vain person, but never had I looked so . . . so . . . I couldn’t even find words to describe my appearance. Sickly and unkempt were too weak.
Frightening.
Frightened.
I kneeled to sweep away the shards strewed over the polished metal platform. I’d sensed my face had been hit but hadn’t realized how hard. It looked as though I’d rubbed myself against a cheese grater. I removed my right glove with my teeth, then spit it out and patted my chin and the underside of my jaw, picking out pieces of glass. A streak of blood on my neck made my fingers spiral down. I dug out a nail-sized shard and flicked it away.
Again, I thanked the Skies I’d changed out of my dress. Not that this suit would keep me safe in the long run. The seam above my left shoulder had ripped. Lightly I touched the exposed flesh, finding nothing sharp or sticky.
I remained stooped on the mirrored platform, gaping at my slasher-flick doppelganger for a long time. At some point, I spit on my fingers and used the saliva to scrub away the bloody tracks. I wondered if some had belonged to Remo. The thought made my stomach seize, and my temperature drop down to Arctic-levels. I shivered, and the tiny shake sent a bolt of pain into my sore elbow.
Wincing, I sat back on my heels and glanced down at my arm. Was it broken or dislocated? And if I’d dislocated it, how could I set it? How I wished I’d listened to Nima when she’d encouraged me to take the medical course she taught over the summer in NU—Neverra’s one and only university. To think I hadn’t taken it because she’d taught it, because I’d cared what my peers would say if I earned poor grades, or worse, good ones.
If I got out of the Scourge, I swore to the Skies and Great Spirit that I’d stop caring about what anyone thought of me. My last name might destine me for the throne but that wouldn’t be the reason I’d sit on it. I’d sit on it because I’d earn it.
Since moping wouldn’t get me anywhere, I squirmed my fingers back into the glove, using my teeth to hold it in place, then rose to my feet and trudged toward the train, cocooning my arm. I tried to flex my elbow again, but the pain almost made my knees buckle. I let out a slew of shocking Gottwa words that I’d picked up from Sook over the years. I wasn’t even sure what most of them meant, but they sounded as violent and awful as I felt.
I climbed onto the train and stood in front of the controls. Instead of levers, there were two buttons. One that read—CLOSE. The other that read—START. That was useful. If I started the train without closing the door, I would probably be ejected in some sort of limbo Scourge. I lowered my finger toward the shiny, domed CLOSE button just as a gust of wind whooshed around the metallic doorframe. It sounded like it was whispering wait, but the elements didn’t talk. Besides, what I would wait for? Another earthquake?
“Amara!”
My hand shook, and the fine hairs on the back of my neck rose. Was my brain so starved for companionship that it had conjured up Remo’s voice?
“Wait!”
The word was clearer.
“Amara!”
My fingertip slid off the smooth dome. It wasn’t in my head.
Was it like the furniture in the buildings . . . another illusion? Or was his spirit back to haunt me. Gottwas believed in ghosts. I didn’t, but I wouldn’t put it past Gregor to add some inside his prison. What better way to obliterate his convicts’ minds?
“Amara!”
I took a breath before turning around and peeking out the still-open train door. There, amidst the glittery rubble, walked a man who carried himself with the same straight spine as Remo. Who possessed the same proud gait and broad shoulders. When our gazes collided, he stopped walking. His chest heaved. His fingers twitched against his thighs.
He looked so real. “You’re not gone.” He sounded so real. But he couldn’t be real. He’d died. “You didn’t leave,” he repeated, this time louder, clearer, stronger. He started up again, his boots crunching through the glass as though they, too, were real.
“Did you come to haunt me?” Great. Now I was conversing with dead faerie spirits.
Remo’s ghost paused again. “Haunt you?”
“You. Died.”
His mouth pressed into a grim line. “You sound angry about it.”
“I am angry.”
“At me?”
“No.” I shook my head. “At Gregor. At myself. Not at you.”
He advanced toward me again. “Phew.”
“You’re definitely an illusion, because Real Remo would never say phew.”
He let out a soft, amused-sounding snort. “And yet I’m real.”
“That’s impossible. You bled and then exploded into dust!” Not only was I conversing with a ghost, but I was arguing with one. Oh, Gregor, you’re a sick, sick man.
Remo stood a few feet away from me now, no longer smirking. “I’m guessing what you saw was another illusion.”
“It looked exceedingly real.”
He took a step closer. “Touch me, Amara. Touch me.”
“Turn around.” Crack. There went the last piece of my mind.
“Why?”
“If you’re real, then you’ll have a gash between your shoulder blades, the same way I have cuts everywhere.”
Remo’s gaze stroked up my face as though just noticing the assortment of wounds I sported. A groove appeared between his brows. Skies, even his frown looked real. Slowly, he pivoted around. So much mud cloaked his back that I couldn’t see the cut, but his tunic bore a rip.
Why was I checking for a wound anyway? Like bodiless Unseelies, ghosts were phantoms, the molecules of their flesh and bones as slack as air.
I huffed an annoyed breath and shook my head, trying to clear it of what was evidently a vision.
“What?” asked Remo’s ghost.
“I’m chatting with spirits, that’s what.”
The specter glanced over his shoulder, eyes the same mossy green as his real ones had been. “Why are you chatting with spirits?”
I cocked an eyebrow, then poked the air, expecting my finger to slide right through Remo’s ghost, but it bumped against something solid. I reeled my hand back, the blood draining from my cheeks. “You’re not . . . you’re not . . . but—”
Remo pivoted to face me.
“How?” I whispered. “How are you not dead? You exploded into ashes. I saw you explode.”
“Either you can’t die in this place, or like I said, my death was an illusion.”
“The mud on your tunic. It was on your front. Now it’s . . . now it’s only on your back. Why? How?”
Remo glanced sideways at the cliff topped with the ice garden. “When I came to, I was lying in the field of mud again.”
My forehead grooved, which made the gazillion cuts on it sting. “The one under the portal?”
“Yes.”
“Was the portal there?”
He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed sharply. “It was.”
“And was it still . . . far?” I wasn’t sure why I asked. He’d made it clear earlier that if the portal was within reach, he wouldn’t hang around. I was such a glutton for punishment. “You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”
His silence heightened the intensity of his scrutiny.
“We’re never getting out of here, are we? At least not without some divine or royal intervention.” I sighed, and then I did something so uncharacteristic that Gregor’s grandson grew stiff as a calimbor . . . I gave the faerie a one-armed hug. “You might not believe this”—I inhaled the musky, mineral scent at the hollow of his collarbone—“but I’m glad you’re alive.”
He didn’t hug me back. Didn’t even pat my shoulder. “That is . . . hard to believe.”
I absorbed his body’s heat a moment longer before paring myself away. “Just as hard to believe as you saving my life.”
“How is that difficult to comprehend?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I obviously would rather be in bad company than alone.”
Ouch. Supporting my aching arm with my gloved hand, I turned away from him and stepped back into the train. “We should get going,” I said coolly.
He didn’t move off the platform, and although I kept my gaze affixed to the CLOSE button, I sensed his eyes scraping across my profile.
Bad company. Because his company was oh-so-awesome. “In one second, your bad company will be on her way someplace else.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw his brow twitch.
“Now or never.” I rested the tip of my index finger atop the button.
Eyes still duct-taped to my face, he climbed aboard. “Amara . . .”
I pressed the button, and the doors snapped shut. His mouth, too. And then I pressed the second button and sat on the bench before the rattling carriage could break or dislocate another part of my beat-up body.
15
The Inn
During the entire magical train ride, I kept my lids cinched tight in exhaustion, in pain, and in annoyance. My bones rattled, awakening bruises I didn’t even know I had—in my ankles, thighs, and abdomen. As for my elbow . . . the pain there was so raw it made sweat bead along my hairline and drip down the column of my neck.
“What’s wrong with your arm?” Remo asked once the train stilled. “Is it broken?”
I tried to see if we were back in Frontier Land, but the windows were still obscured. “It feels like it might be.”
He held out of his palm. “Let me see it.”
When I made no move to show him my arm, he sighed and hoisted it up. I winced and tried to pull it away, but that simply angered the throbbing.
“Your elbow’s swollen.” His fingers trekked down to my wrist just as the train door let out a short squeal and slid open.
There was no brick station and no lupa, which meant we’d landed in another cell. Awesome. Just awesome. I couldn’t wait to see what this one had i
n store for us.
“So, do we have a welcoming committee? Rabid wolves? Mutant mice?” Remo asked.
The only thing in my line of sight was a red bench and the white corner of a big sign painted with block letters. I made out an A and N.
“Is the sky still white?”
Pain radiated up my forearm. I shot my gaze back to my hand, which Remo had twisted so that my palm faced up.
“So? Is it?”
My breaths came out in ragged spurts. “What?”
“The sky? Is it white?”
I glanced outside. “Yes, it’s—”
Remo thrust my hand toward my shoulder, and something popped. I screeched, snatching my arm out of his grasp. Breathing hard, I cradled my elbow against me. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“You should be able to move it now.” He dusted his hands together as though he’d just accomplished some filthy task and stepped off the train.
I sat there, stunned, and then I licked the sweat off my lips and eased my sore arm away from my chest. My range of movement had indeed returned, but Skies damn it, the pain was excruciating.
“You’re going to have to lay off it for a while. We don’t seem to heal as fast here.”
I finally got up and, on legs that felt devoid of bones, walked off the train that was bulbous, with a silver body and red stripes, sleek but not quite as modern as the last one we’d been on. “You healed awfully quickly for a dead person.”
Remo bobbed his head. “I suppose you could try to die and come back.”
“Wouldn’t you just love that? Especially if I didn’t come back.”
A sigh broadened his torso.
Before he could tell me again how he’d prefer bad company to no company, I read the word on the white sign out loud: “Rowan.”
My eyes snapped so wide so fast my lashes knocked into my eyebrows. I sidestepped Remo and then trundled down a few metal stairs, boots clanking. I speed-walked down the sidewalk lining the station and came to an abrupt halt at the apex of a street lined with squat trees budding with new leaves, white-picket fences, and wooden boxes on poles. Metal numbers adorned their sides as well as an articulated red arm. Were those mailboxes? Clearly we’d gone back a century, since, nowadays, mail was beamed.
Reckless Cruel Heirs Page 12
