Reckless Cruel Heirs

by Olivia Wildenstein

“What made you think I saw something?”

  My cheeks flared anew. “You squeezed my hand.”

  “That was me trying to keep your dead-fish hand from flopping out.”

  “Dead fish?”

  He opened his hand, and my hand dropped. “You see. Dead fish.”

  “I just didn’t want to cut off your circulation.”

  His teeth flashed as white as the mist. “How about you try cutting it off, so I can focus on our surroundings instead of on you?”

  He wanted me to try? Bastard. I grabbed his hand and strangled it. “Firm enough?”

  “Better.” More teeth appeared.

  I shook my head.

  “By the way, you stopped singing.”

  “I thought I’d give your ears a break since the snakes are gone. I checked, remember.”

  He grinned this time. “At least hum.”

  “I’m starting to run out of songs.”

  “Know any songs by The Intrepids?”

  “A few.”

  “Let’s hear them.”

  So I sang the first all-droid band’s greatest hit. And then their second hit. They pretty much only had hits since they created their music by tapping into the cloud and analyzing the most popular lyrics and melodies before weaving them together. The process was quite fascinating, having little to do with art and everything to do with artificial intelligence.

  If I’d been free to choose my path, I would’ve gone to Earth and studied AI. Although Nima and Iba had allowed me to take some classes, I was never allowed to attend any full-time programs, and those were the ones where all the great things happened.

  “How did you find yourself owing Joshua Locklear a gajoï?”

  It had only been a matter of time until Remo brought it up. “Remember that pouch of Daneelie scales a squadron of lucionaga confiscated a couple months ago?”

  “The ones Joshua sold to the Earthly army to use in biological warfare?”

  I wrinkled my nose. Daneelie scales were an aphrodisiac, and yes, they’d been used in battle before—by my own parents on the Day of Mist—but since then, a law had been passed forbidding their sale on the Neverrian and Earthly black markets.

  Remo pulled me to a stop, his expression wavering between shock and more shock. “You had something to do with that?”

  I bit my lip. “I didn’t know what they were going to be used for when I sold them to—”

  “Wait. You sold them? They were your scales?”

  My teeth sank deeper into my lip. I tried to collect my hand from his, but he tightened his grip, not even allowing any wiggle-room.

  “Why?”

  “Because I needed money.”

  He let out a dull chuckle. “The princess of Neverra needed money? Come on, Amara. At least make up a better lie.”

  “It’s not a lie,” I snapped. “I wanted to get my parents an anniversary gift.”

  “You have billions in Earthly banks, not to mention trunks of gold in Neverra.”

  “But those billions and gold aren’t mine, and I wanted this present to be from me.”

  “So you clipped your scales and sold them to the most power-thirsty human general? How did you even meet him?”

  “I didn’t. I gave Josh my scales, and he arranged the whole thing.”

  “And that’s why you owe him,” he grumbled.

  “No, I promised him a hefty commission on the sale.” I locked my gaze on the mist, because at least the mist wasn’t judging me. “I owe him because, when you guys busted him, he commed me to inform me he’d been compromised, and I begged him to take the blame for the scales.”

  “Damn, Trifecta, you’re a real little villain. Not just my imaginary one.”

  I pursed my lips but still didn’t look up, way too ashamed, but then another sentiment superseded my shame. Horror that I’d just confessed my crime to the wariff’s heir. The minute we were out of here, nothing would stop Remo from ratting me out.

  I didn’t know if the invisible tether that had formed between us the night his little brother had tried to kill me would be present in the Scourge, but I frantically combed for it. And then I felt it! “You will take my confession to the grave, Remo Farrow.”

  The strand between us vibrated like a plucked harp string, and then a knot tightened in my stomach. One must’ve tightened in his too, because his chin dipped into his neck, and his gaze dropped to his navel. “Did you just waste your gajoï on my silence?”

  “I don’t consider it a waste,” I murmured.

  Shadows fell over his expression. “I wouldn’t have snitched, Amara.”

  My heart ratcheted up as I searched his face. Wouldn’t he have? I’d gifted him ammunition to get me into a world of trouble. My parents loved me, that I had zero doubt about, but I’d infringed a law, so they would have to punish me.

  He turned, and since he was still holding my hand, he jerked me back into movement. And then he walked so fast that for every stride he took, I had to take two. Oh, he wasn’t hurt; he was furious. “I guess now you’ll be stuck with me as a husband. Won’t that be fun?” He popped the word out.

  Dread rained goosebumps over my skin. “You said you weren’t interested in my crown.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  I stopped walking and yanked my hand back. Or at least, tried to. The only thing I managed was to make him stop his crazy speed-walking. “You’re not serious?”

  “Till death do us part, sweetheart.”

  “Remo, that’s not funny.”

  “Am I laughing?”

  “No, you’re not. You’re acting strange and scary.” Not to mention his fingers were crushing mine. “And you’re hurting me.”

  He tossed my hand away as though it were a mikos and then he pivoted and stalked away, vanishing inside the mist.

  23

  The Cage

  I didn’t go after him, allowing him time to cool off, but I kept walking toward the cliff, hoping he hadn’t decided to return to the train without me. The thick mist made it impossible to see more than a yard away, impossible to tell where he was. My trajectory was the cliff cresting over the white smog. Although I stepped carefully over the veiled terrain, I almost stumbled twice. By some miracle, that miracle probably being my snail’s pace, I didn’t come nose-to-moss with the ground.

  As the steep wall of gray rock loomed closer, metal clanked and then a thunderous, human growl rent the air.

  “Remo?” I yelled, hoping the sound had emanated from him and not some beast come to slurp me down.

  My name was snarled, which all at once reassured me—not a wild creature since animals neither knew my name nor spoke—and spurred my legs to travel quicker—proud Remo was obviously in a heap of trouble if he was begging me for assistance.

  As though some god had blown out a deep breath, the mist cloaking the prison cell dissipated. And not just a little but completely, giving me an unhindered view of Remo’s predicament. His hands were wrapped around the golden bars of what looked like an oversized birdcage, his knuckles white from the strain. Please let this not be a cupola.

  “Amara, behind you!”

  My heart detonated as I twisted around. Since I was running, the momentum disrupted my precarious equilibrium. I tumbled, but at least I smacked down on my ass.

  “It’s coming for you! Get up!”

  I jolted to my feet even though I hadn’t seen anything coming for me, then backed up hesitantly, scanning the ground and air faster. When nothing moved, I called out, “What did you see, Remo?”

  Metal clanked again. “The lupa. They’re right in front of you! Skies dammit, run!”

  I pivoted slowly toward him.

  “Amara!” His face was as colorless as my sling. “NO!” he wailed.

  Had the lupa torn me limb to limb in his mind’s eye?

  My doubt that the cage was infused with dark magic puffed away.

  “It’s not real,” I said, keeping my voice calm because screaming at someone in the midst of a panic att
ack was surely not wise. “You’re inside a cupola. Just open the door and get out.” When it jounced off the ground, I sped up.

  He blinked, but then he screamed again, at the wolves this time, his eyes glittering with fury, and I realized he hadn’t heard me, or if he had, his mind was telling him I was dead or dying or had become a wolf myself.

  The cage rose higher thanks to a pulley system tied to the top of the cliff. Had Remo thought this was an elevator? Didn’t he know about cupolas? Maybe he hadn’t understood what he was stepping into because the mist had hidden it.

  Soon the cage would be too high to reach, so I ran, yelling at him to get the door open, hoping my words registered in his tormented mind. His gaze flicked to the sky. Whatever he saw made him jerk away from the bars and cower. I accelerated, reaching the cupola just as its floor leveled with my chin. I extended my arm and latched on to the door, giving it a firm yank.

  It didn’t open.

  I yanked again.

  The hinges didn’t even creak.

  Crap. Crap. Crap.

  “Remo!”

  He startled, his gaze whipping to mine.

  “The door!”

  He didn’t move. Just stared.

  The cage rose another inch. I fashioned a pair of heavy-duty snips from my dust and snagged the sharp blades around a bar. And then I heaved the handles together, sweat beading along my hairline. My sharp tool didn’t even nick the metal. If only I had use of both my hands.

  The cage drifted farther up. I tried again, failed again. What other tool could I make? An axe. As my dust morphed into one, the cage grazed the top of my head. I swung the axe, but it just pinged off the metal the same way it had pinged off the alarm box back in the last world.

  Remo growled, upsetting my concentration. He punched the air, eyes slitted, muscles twisting underneath his tunic. “I will end you.”

  I wasn’t sure whom he was going to end. I sort of hoped it wasn’t fake-me, but then I remembered fake-me was dead, so it must’ve been someone else. I hoped it wasn’t my mother.

  He rammed one side of the cage like a bull, and it swung, its base clocking me square in the forehead. Stars brightened the edges of my vision, and I dropped my axe on my foot. The blade didn’t go through my boot, but the weight made my breath catch and my toes curl in pain.

  Remo rammed his cage again.

  “It isn’t real!” I screamed, trying to get through to him.

  His eyes stayed glazed and unseeing. I grabbed my fallen weapon and limped to the thick cord pulleying the cage up the steep wall, then batted it over and over. The heavy blade bounced like an arrow against taut string.

  Ugh. Growling in frustration, I sponged my forehead on my arm and hobbled back toward the cage, my axe ribboning back underneath my skin.

  What had my mother told me again about these cages? How had she defeated their magic?

  The memory clicked. “Find the discrepancy, Remo! There’s always a discrepancy. Hair color. Eye color. Size.”

  His nostrils pulsed. Were any of my words registering?

  His gaze blasted back into mine.

  Please see me. “Find. The. Discrepancy.” Please please please hear me.

  He blinked at me, then over his shoulder. His stance, which had slackened, cramped right back, and he ducked as though to avoid a hit. And then his leg streaked through the air as though he were sweeping someone off their feet.

  I gripped a bottom rung and tugged, trying to drag the oversized birdcage down. “Remo!”

  His concentration broke.

  “His eyes! Or her eyes. Are they the right color?”

  Again he blinked. “I . . . What—” His hushed voice told me his attacker must’ve vanished. “Amara, you’re not dead.” He gawped at me through the bars beneath his feet, the color, which had risen into his cheeks from his imaginary battle, draining. “Amara,” he spoke my name again, incredibly gently this time, as though worried that if he spoke it any louder, I’d vanish back into the jaws of the lupa.

  “The door, Remo. Open the door.”

  He raced across the cage, which lifted another inch, pulling me off the ground. “There’s no handle!”

  “Try kicking it open.” Hopefully, my weight would keep the cupola from rising.

  He raised his foot and snapped his leg, the sole of his boot hitting the door so hard my grip faltered and my fingers slid off the bar. I hopped but the cage was too high for me to reach now.

  As he kicked again, I fashioned a hook with my dust and swung it, clipping it around a bar. The cage jerked up, and again my feet left the moss.

  “Come on, Remo,” I urged. I didn’t want to stress him out, but I also didn’t want to dangle from a spelled cage.

  He froze midkick. Like literally, his boot was raised in the air but never made contact with the wall or with the floor. And then he fell, so hard his entire body thwacked the metal, making the cage dip then rise.

  “Are you okay?”

  He didn’t move, and I noticed the back of his head had landed on the back of my hook.

  Shit. “Remo!” I tried to slide it out from underneath him, but he was too heavy, and it wasn’t like I had much leverage what with being suspended in midair from only one functioning arm. When blood spiraled down the metal and dripped onto my knuckles, I yelled his name again, then, “Wake up.”

  His lids reeled up.

  Yes! “Remo. The door.”

  His head turned first, his cheek pressing into the hook, and then the rest of his body. He rose to his knees, muscles trembling. A bead of blood curved over his cheek before dripping off the tip of his nose. He palmed it away, smearing the blood.

  I craned my neck back as far as it could go so I could keep my gaze affixed to his. “You need to get out of the cage. Open the door.”

  He stared at me, his pupils dilating then retracting as though his pulse were beating in his very eyes. His brow dipped, darkening his irises, and then his lips coiled into a sneer.

  “Remo. I’m real. Whatever you’re seeing isn’t.”

  “What did you do with her, you sonofabitch?” he growled.

  He was staring straight at me, but he was no longer seeing me. His fingers dug around my hook, unclipped it. Teeth gritted, he pried it up.

  “Remo, stop! It’s me.”

  “Because of you, she’s dead!” More blood dribbled off the tip of his nose, landing on my forehead.

  “Remo, it’s Amara, please.”

  His muscles strained his tunic, and his birthmark popped in fury. He growled, sending a look of such undiluted hatred my way that my heart shrank and slid into my clenched stomach. He agitated the hook as though trying to shake me off.

  “Remo, stop! It’s me! Trifecta! Your villain!”

  He froze. Had one of my words registered?

  “I’m trying to help you,” I added, glancing downward. My heart crawled up, filling my throat and then my mouth. The ground was now so far below that slipping meant going splat. Swallowing, I tipped my head back and looked at him again. “Please, Remo. The door. You need to get the door open.”

  Unsealing the cage would stop the flux of magic. Once he was no longer possessed by his visions, he could give me a hand up and inside. Or at the very least, he could grab my arm through the bars and hold on to me until we reached the top of the cliff, because my arm was about to give out. I moved my bad arm to test if it had miraculously healed, but raising it an inch spilled acid inside my bones.

  His eyes teemed with so much loathing that it iced my skin.

  “Remo,” I whispered. “I don’t know who you’re seeing, but that person’s not real.”

  “Shut up,” he snapped.

  “Look for the—”

  “I said, shut up!”

  “Re—”

  Before I could get the last syllable of his name out, he twisted the hook and let it slip through the bars of the cage, sending me hurtling into the ground. My tool shot out from my hand before I could turn it into anything that could sav
e my life.

  Falling couldn’t kill faeries.

  As my hair whipped around, I prayed these rules applied in the Scourge.

  24

  Second Chance

  My fingers dragged through something sticky and cold that smelled of frost and earth. Had I survived my fall? I brushed my palms across the soil, expecting to feel clumps of moss, but no delicate plant tickled my skin. If I hadn’t landed in Fake Neverra, where had I landed?

  Slowly, I opened my eyes. Found myself staring up at the white sky and the portal that hung like a mirror fifty feet above me, reflecting a field of ochre mud and my sprawled body. We’d been right: there was no dying in this prison.

  Relief warmed my body as I pressed both my palms into the ground and heaved myself into a sitting position. I realized two things at once: my sling was gone and my arm didn’t hurt. I lifted my mud-soaked hands and marveled at the absence of pain. But then the memory of dropping my hook pinged into my mind, and I stopped marveling and started wiping my palms on my thighs, streaking my black suit russet-yellow. The filigree tattoo was still there, but was Karsyn’s dust back inside its tracks? I brushed a shaky finger over the dark swirls. When a ribbon of dust sparkled out, I expelled a very deep breath.

  I patted my face down for cuts and felt only smooth skin. How incredible. Still completely screwed up, but nevertheless incredible. As I stood, I inspected my suit, which unfortunately, hadn’t mended like the rest of me.

  A twig snapped behind me, and I spun, the mud impairing my speed. At the edge of the dense forest encircling the field stood a man with moon-pale skin and wild hair. Rigid as the trunks steeped in the leafy gloom, Remo took a step forward. The white light spread from his jagged contours, filling in his broad frame, painting his fiery locks redder and his wary eyes greener.

  Chin to chest, he stared. Stared as though I were a stranger. No . . . not a stranger. A ghost. He’d died and come back to life, and yet shock and horror scored his features.

  “I killed you.” His voice was raspy and low, scraping through the cool air toward me.

  Strangely enough, I was glad to see him, relieved he hadn’t returned into the valley and boarded the train without me. “You made it out of the cupola alive. Most people don’t.” My hair swung like a leaden curtain as I approached him. “Congratulations are in order.”