“One is Kingston. Six is me. Quinn’s in seven. And Cruz sleeps all the way at the back.”
That settled it then. To the back we’d go. “Ten?” I asked Remo softly.
He nodded, and we walked past the little circle of mismatched criminals.
Avoiding my uncle’s glare, I said, “We’ll just go set our stuff down. Be back in a minute.”
The dark passageway beyond the arch curled in on itself like the inside of a conch. At its heart lay a circular room illuminated by pinpricks of light that streamed through tiny holes in the domed ceiling. The walls were rough, and the sandy floor cold beneath my bare feet. Save for a stack of purple pelts and a basket woven from cyan fronds filled with tiny shells, the space was entirely bare. I hadn’t expected a bathroom or a feather bed, but both would’ve been welcomed. I gazed around me one last time, hoping I’d missed something during my first sweep of the room. To my great regret, I’d missed nothing.
I hung the damp pelt on a rock jutting from the wall. “This is taking minimalism to a whole new level.”
Remo dropped the machete and two pairs of boots next to the hamper of shells. Did that mean he would stay with me? I raised my gaze toward him, found the beginnings of a blush staining the edge of his face, slowly coloring the whole of it.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to assume. I can head into—”
When he bent to pick up his boots, I stepped on the dusty toecap. “Stay. Please.”
He straightened. Such a paradox this man—timid at times and yet so darn self-assured at others. He scraped his hand through his dark auburn locks, which unlike mine, had dried. How I missed my kalini . . . Since I’d landed in the Scourge, I was always either damp, cold, or soaked in mud.
His confidence ended up beating back his blush, and he cupped my head, lined up our mouths, then slowly backed me up against the curved wall. My heart pinballed around my ribs as I reached around his waist and hugged him. He nudged my mouth open, then swept his tongue against mine, all at once playful and not.
When a low rumble sounded between us, one that hadn’t come from his throat, I tore my lips off his, adrenaline pushing through my lust-addled senses.
“That was just my stomach, Amara.”
“Thank, Gejaiwe. Here I thought our new home was about to cave in.”
His glistening lips bowed. “No more trials.”
“Are we sure of that?”
“Yes.”
I sighed. “If only we didn’t have my uncle to deal with, I’d be partying it up right now.”
“Soon.” His stomach rumbled again, momentarily distracting me from Kingston and his poisonous apple.
Wasn’t there a fairytale about a poisoned apple? Was that where Gregor or my grandfather had gotten their twisted idea?
I threaded my hand through his. “Let’s get you fed.”
When we emerged from our cave, only Quinn, Kiera, and Cruz sat by the fire. My uncle must’ve turned in for the night or gone to retrieve his fruit, because he was nowhere in sight. As I took a seat next to Kiera, my gaze traveled down the dusky cavern toward cave number one.
“Just grab a fork. The meat should tear right off,” Kiera instructed, her chin glistening with a dribble of fat.
As I leaned toward the fire to grab a slender branch topped with two metal prongs secured by twine, I caught Quinn scrutinizing me. The flames bounced against his hazel irises, heightening his already suspicious air.
“What do you eat when your supply of tigri runs out?” I asked, taking a small bite. Although unseasoned, the meat was delicious, melting on my tongue before sliding into my empty stomach, which emitted its own little pleased rumble; nothing like the sound that had come from Remo earlier though.
“Panem leaves and mollusks.” Kiera wrinkled her nose as she wiped her chin on the back of her hand. She’d probably eaten too much of both.
Remo finally sank down next to me, leaned over to grab a Scourge-made fork, and pierced the roasted leg of tigri. He gobbled the chunk of meat so fast I didn’t think he even tasted it. His stomach grumbled again, which spurred him into tearing through a second piece.
I thought of all the cuts of tigri dangling in the jungle. “How long will the meat keep?”
“Once it dries, we’ll smoke it.” Cruz carved himself another piece of browned roast. “And then, we bring it into the caves, dig up a hole in the sand, and layer panem leaves around it. It’s not as effective as a freezer, but it’ll keep a few weeks. Months even.”
“What’s your deal with Kingston? Why’d you two kill him?” Quinn’s change of subject was so abrupt it made everyone fall quiet.
“Just keeping him in line,” Remo finally said.
“In line? Who do you take yourselves for? The police?” Grease glossed Quinn’s beard. He brushed the wiry hairs with blood-crusted fingernails.
Kiera shrugged. “He tried to assassinate her dad, Quinn.”
“Are you just going to shrug when she comes after us seeking revenge for what we did to her aunt?”
Kiera’s shoulders locked up tight. “We never tried to assassinate no one, Quinn. We were protecting our people.” She slanted me a look. “You don’t have any plans to off us, do you?”
“You’re seriously asking them?” Quinn snorted, tore off a chunk of meat, then swallowed.
“Do you plan on hurting Amara’s aunt when you get out of here?” Remo asked calmly.
“We don’t care about her!” Quinn stared at Remo through slitted eyes. “But we plan on giving your granddaddy a piece of our minds.”
“Quinn . . .” Kiera hissed.
Remo’s grip tightened on his fork. “He’d deserve it.”
“What he deserves is to be locked up in this fucking prison,” Quinn huffed out. “I give him a week before he bites the apple. Fuck, even I was tempted. If Kiera hadn’t knocked it out of my hand, I would’ve given up. What sort of life is this?”
A sorry one.
“And you, Cruz?” I asked. “Were you ever tempted to bite the apple?”
He swirled the prongs of his fork in the sand, shaping an image that looked so much like Lily’s face it made my heart miss a beat. When he caught me staring, he swept his palm across the sand. “Yes.” The muscles in his arms flexed as he pressed his hands against his knees as though to rise. He didn’t, though, just stared at me from across the flames. “She’s happy right? With Kajika?”
“She is, but she’ll be happier once she sees you still exist.”
Cruz’s jaw stiffened, then relaxed, then stiffened again. “I heard she had twins.”
I found myself smiling. “Giya and Adsookin. They’re a couple months older than I am. They’re both”—my voice caught—“they’re both amazing.”
Remo’s hand landed on my thigh, stayed there.
“Kingston told us the Farrows and the Woods hated each other’s guts,” Kiera said, not missing Remo’s grip on me.
My heart felt as though it were ballooning a little. “They do.”
“But not your generation?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” I said, with a smile. “Our generation hates each other.”
“Then why are you two so”—she wrinkled her nose—“touchy-feely?”
“Because he’s my fiancé.”
Her eyebrows, which were a few shades darker than her white-blonde hair, jolted up. “Your fiancé?”
“Yeah. My father wanted to appease Gregor, so they agreed on tying me to this one.” I nodded to Remo, whose fingers traveled to my waist and pinched the skin, which just made my smile broaden. “It was the worst day of my life. Well, until I went through the portal your brother told me about.” I looked back at her, saw so much of Josh, the same blue eyes and smattering of freckles, although he had a thicker spray. “Then again, it was the same day.” I tipped my face toward one of the holes in the ceiling. “Maybe it’s still the same day.”
“Not if you went through four cells, it’s not,” Kiera commented.
“Feels like one endle
ss day.”
“So now, you don’t hate each other anymore?” Quinn asked.
“Something like that,” Remo said, his fingers no longer teasing my waist. Or rather teasing it differently. His nails raked across the skin he’d pinched, raising bands of goose bumps.
“I can’t believe Ace agreed to an arranged marriage.” Cruz’s quiet proclamation made Remo’s fingers still. “I was certain he’d abolish them.”
Remo’s face became an assortment of angles and edges. “Massin Wood thought my grandfather was about to orchestrate another coup.” He swallowed jaggedly, his hand drifting away from me. “He looked miserable about giving me his daughter. Almost as miserable as Amara.”
“I wasn’t miserable; I was furious. And you didn’t exactly look happy.”
He held my gaze before staring back at the fire.
“I’m beat,” Quinn announced.
Kiera rose, too, stretching her arms over her head. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Don’t forget to put out the fire.” She trailed Quinn toward their caves.
“Cat, is your—” Cruz’s eyes grew wide as he realized by what name he’d just called me. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“You just look so much like her. Though she probably doesn’t look like you anymore.”
“Don’t tell her that. Neenee Cass and Nima are all about forty-one being the new twenty.”
“Forty-one? Wow.” Cruz stuck his fork inside the sand, right where Lily’s face had been. “Skies, how strange it will be . . . seeing everyone again.”
Silence draped over us, interrupted only by the snapping flames.
Sighing, Cruz stood. “I’m going to call it a night, also. If you need to . . . you know . . . relieve yourself, there’s a designated area fenced by a wall of fronds. Just circle the outside wall of the cave. Can’t miss it. As for drinkable water, you can find some in there.” He tipped his head toward the wall behind him, or rather toward a piece of scrap metal fashioned into a squat barrel. “The blown-up train comes in handy. If you two feel like it in the morning, I’m planning on heading back to the explosion site to gather usable pieces before they fade.”
“Fade?” I frowned at the barrel.
“If you don’t pick them up within a certain timeframe, they vanish. Once you touch them, you lock them into this cell.”
Why anything still surprised me was beyond me. “What happens now that there are no more trials?”
“Unless Gregor’s changed the rules, it’s all dreadful peace and quiet until someone new shows up.” He rubbed his hands down his jeans that were a few inches too short on him. “To turn off the fire, just kick sand over it.”
“And the meat?”
“Leave it. No animals roam around here except the vamp beetles, and they don’t come down into the valley.”
I looked at his retreating figure until the archway of his cave gobbled him up. When I turned back around, I found Remo poking at the blackened, sputtering logs. I held my palms out to the flames, relishing the heat. Although not cold, the air inside the cave system carried the mustiness of a basement and the chill of a place in dire need of sunlight.
I propped my chin on my shoulder and studied Remo. “Are you okay?”
He blinked at me, then at the dancing blaze. “Yeah. Fine.”
“I made you mad again, didn’t I?”
His eyebrows scooted a little closer to his nose.
“I’m sorry I blabbed about our engagement. I didn’t think it was a secret since you told Cruz—”
“That’s not it, Amara.”
“Then what is . . . it?”
“Getting engaged shocked and confused me, but I was neither miserable nor angry,” he said without glancing away from the fire. “I guess it just hurts to hear how upset it made you.”
“You scowled at me throughout dinner.”
“Because you had your back to me, Amara. You didn’t even attempt to be civil.”
A startled breath escaped me.
He ran one hand down his face. “Forget it. I’m just tired.”
“You can’t say something like that, then tell me to forget it.” I lowered my palms and leaned back. “I’m sorry. I promise not to turn my back on you, or bite your head off for holding my hand during the binding ceremony next time the Cauldron appears.”
His rigid posture finally softened under his borrowed cream Henley. “Next time, huh?”
I circled my finger in the air as though I were trussing him up. “Strings. Everywhere.”
His face broke into a heartbreakingly sweet smile that heated my blood quicker than the little fire in front of me, quicker than all of his crooked grins and promises to keep me safe. Was this lust or love? How did one know the difference?
As the feeling strengthened, I decided it had to be lust, because how could I love him after such a short period of time? Yes, we’d lived intensely, but did intensity speed up feelings?
As though my thoughts were scrolling across my forehead, his smile vanished in increments and then completely. He jerked up to his feet, kicked sand over the fire, then extended his hand, and just like the dozens of times he’d offered it to me since we’d arrived in the Scourge, I took it.
As we walked to our newest nest, I ran my thumb over every crease and callous, the shape and feel of his palm as familiar to me now as my own. Once inside the round cavern, he lifted my knuckles to his mouth and kissed them chastely.
“I’ll take first watch. You sleep.” He let go, grabbed a few pelts from the pile, shook them out, then layered them over the sand, adding a rolled one at the top of the makeshift bed.
My nerves jangled as though I’d drunk an entire gallon of coffee. “I don’t think I can. Why don’t you sleep, and I take first watch?”
He grabbed his machete and dropped a kiss on the tip of my nose. “I’m used to night watches; you’re not.”
“But—”
“No, buts. Rest.”
“Remo . . .”
He backed out of the cave, and then his footfalls whispered across the sand. Sighing, I laid out on my furred pallet and stared at the pinpricks of white light, which through my lashes almost resembled the lustriums that lit up the night sky in Neverra.
Even though they weren’t stars, I wished on them.
I wished Josh had told someone about our gajoï and then I wished Kingston would choke on his apple and be gone forever.
37
The Tremor
“Amara, get up!”
I grumbled, attempting to twist away from the hands shaking me.
They shook harder. “Amara! Someone just arrived. You have to get up.”
My lids flipped open, and I found that no one was even holding me. Remo stood at the entrance of my stone chamber, eyes gleaming wildly.
Another hard tremor dynamited the ground.
Great Gejaiwe, someone was here? Was it to get us out? I vaulted to my feet, adrenaline hemorrhaging through me. I lunged toward Remo, then past him. We took off running down the center aisle just as Kiera and Quinn emerged bleary-eyed, spears in hand.
Soon, they were running alongside us. And then Cruz was there, kicking up sand next to Remo. The only one missing was Kingston. He was probably hiding, sensing the death bells tolling for him, because if we were on our way home, he’d be judged and executed, this time by my father.
When we burst through the tree line, thick smoke clogged the sky and shards of metal and glass already littered the sand. A groan rose from beneath a curved sheet of metal. I ran toward it and heaved it up.
My grip faltered, and the piece of metal, which had shielded the new arrival, flipped over and seesawed at my bare feet. Shock spooled in my chest, and a gasp filled my mouth. I dropped to my knees, my hands scrabbling over the prostrate body.
“Giya? Giya!” A thin cut along her cheekbone wept blood. “Giya?” My voice rattled with shock.
Her lashes fluttered, and then her beautiful, gray eyes alighted on me, and her trembling
lips parted around my name. She rose onto her forearms, and then she was sitting, and we were hugging. And although I should’ve been horrified by what it meant that she was here, I was too damn happy that she’d come.
I smoothed out her long brown hair, the locks so crusted with salt and tangled they almost resembled Kiera’s dreads.
“Great Gejaiwe, Amara, I thought I’d never find you.” Her torso hardened suddenly, and she pushed me away. “Wait. Am I dead? Is that why—”
I smiled, a wobbly smile so full of emotion my body shook even though the world around us had finally stilled. “You’re not dead. I promise.” I combed back a lock of hair that stuck to her weeping cut. “This is the final cell. It’s why the train exploded.”
Shock rippled over her drawn face. Even though she had never been pale a day in her life, her skin became bone-white.
“Giya, how did you find this place?”
“Josh. He commed me. Asked if I had any news from you.” She gulped in air. “We didn’t know what had happened to you. We thought . . . we thought Gregor made Remo kidnap you and destroy both your Infinities, so we couldn’t track you, but Gregor . . . he said . . . he said he never ordered his grandson to do that. He said that if Remo took you . . . it wasn’t on his orders.” Again she gulped in air.
I rubbed the spot between her shoulder blades, trying to soothe her. “Does anyone know you’re here?”
“Sook.” Her lower lip rose over her upper one the way it always did when her heart was about to break. “B-but that bagwa decided to follow me inside.” She shuddered.
“He’s here?” I swung my gaze around the mishmash of sand and train parts, looking for another body, but located none. Had he died on impact? Was he waking in the field of mud?
“Oh, Amara . . .” Tears tracked down her cheeks, thinning her blood. “He didn’t make it. He . . .” She choked, then let out a heart-shattering wail.
My blood became ice. “He ate the apple?” My tone sounded clinical.
She sniffled, then squeaked, “The apple?” She palmed her cheeks, making a mess of the blood. “No. He’s allergic to apples. The pistri got him.”
Reckless Cruel Heirs Page 30
