Zimmer shrugs. “It’s a…” I can’t hear the last part.
“A what?!” I yell over the commotion.
He dips his head toward my ear. “A bonus!”
“A bonus to what?!”
He wears a dazzling grin. “I want to see the stars before I die! Don’t you?”
I can’t help but smile. What a Fast-Tracker goal. Zimmer is in StarDust with the sole hope to see the stars. “I guess so!” I shout back.
Zimmer plucks a deserted half-eaten basket of chips off a nearby table. He tosses the bitten pieces on the floor and then offers me a few. In the dark depths of the tavern, he acts more like a Fast-Tracker, and I realize that I can too.
I eat more than the few offered chips and then he shakes the crumbs into his mouth.
Several feet away, a girl in orange braids chucks the dice at her friend’s head—he ducks with more laughter.
As I watch, I expect and wait for yearning. To be welcomed and accepted into their Fast-Tracker folds like long-lost friends. But longing never arrives. With Court and Mykal, I have real fealty. Strong enough that ancient battalions couldn’t raze it.
“I hate that game,” Zimmer says, drawing my attention toward four Fast-Trackers playing Pull the Trigger. Loaded gun in hand, a young man pushes the barrel hard against his temple.
Fear knocks me farther against the wall. I stand too close to that gun and their game.
The man tries to pull the trigger, but the gun jams, not even clicking. The corner cluster of FTs erupts in loud cheers. He takes a measured bow.
“Let’s go,” I tell Zimmer, clasping his wrist for balance. As we push through the congregated Fast-Trackers, a girl with spiky blue hair wraps the barrel around her lips.
Finger on the trigger—boom. The violent gunshot rings out and shock electrifies my body, zipping through my limbs. Something wet splatters my shoulder. I glance to my left—gods.
“Are you all right?!” I shout at Zimmer.
His whole face is sprayed in crimson blood. Like a deathday scene. He swears some of the nastiest Fast-Tracker slang and uses his shirt to wipe off the splotches. “Today’s not my deathday,” is all he tells me.
I’m running. No, I’m not. Court and Mykal are trying to find me. Racing through the masses and uproar. The Fast-Tracker girl cries in pain, twitching on the floorboards. Half her cheek is blown off.
“Don’t move, kid!” the bartender yells from afar. “You’re going to bloody the entire tavern!”
People argue over the angle of the gun and how her injury will look after it’s healed, but no one aids her now. She’ll live, I predict what most people are thinking.
And then some kind of wetness drips out of my nose, sliding down my upper lip. I touch my face and inspect my fingers.
Blood?
My blood.
My mind drifts off into terror.
THIRTY-ONE
Franny
“I’m dying.”
My words hang unpleasantly in the chilled air. We walk across an empty stone street, snow fluttering gently. Like it hopes to blanket our worries for the night. I button my brand-new coat—soft blue wool—tight to my collar.
Our boots crunch ice, shattered glass of broken bottles, and other fallen debris. Court asked to take the long way to the museum, a detour he remembered from his childhood. The three of us aren’t fighting to return to StarDust anytime soon, so our pace is slow and heavy.
“You’re not dying.” Court blows hot breath on his gloved palms.
“You can’t be that sure.” I wipe at my nostrils again, but the nosebleed stopped after ten minutes. Court pinched my nose and then instructed me to tilt my head forward. We left Zimmer and the tavern so quickly—it’s all a blur. The effects of the ale even wore off, since I was so alarmed and panicked.
Each step, my fright carves scars into my lungs. I’m one brutal moment from crying and wailing out in guttural frustration.
We pass a coat shop, lights blinking off, the store closed. “You don’t know why this is happening,” I add, fire scorching my voice.
While Mykal trudges forward, breaking slick ice with his heel, Court slows to my side. “I may not know why you have a nosebleed,” Court says, “but they’re common. I promise.”
I heatedly rub tears that prick. “If it doesn’t mean I’m dying, then why did I have a nosebleed so close to my deathday?” I wasn’t even linked to Court and Mykal when the first one began.
I feel Court suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. “What I mean is that a nosebleed isn’t always serious. They can happen because the air is too dry.”
“I was just inside,” I snap. “The air was warm!”
“Franny—”
“No,” I nearly yell again. “Don’t Franny me.” Fear seizes my heart in an iron fist. I hate the unknown. I hate this. My voice rattles with every bit of life inside of me. Every piece of Franny Bluecastle I wish to keep safe and alive. “You’ve had over two long years to come to terms with not knowing. Mykal has had eight.” I point at Mykal, who is stopped a few feet ahead of us. Waiting with his hands stuffed in his wool coat. “I’ve had nowhere near that time. I need answers.”
Court whispers, “A hundred and thirteen.”
I want to scream at my own awful trick. “Why?!” I spread my hands toward the sidewalk as though the answer is there. “Why are we still alive? Why do we share as many commonalties as we do differences? None of this makes any sense.” None of it.
None of it.
I want none of it. I kick the closest stone building. My toes throb, but I kick again.
Court pulls me backward and I spin on him. Shoving his chest. He grabs my wrists.
“I’m dying,” I cry angrily.
“You’re not. You’re right here,” he says strongly. Court cups my cheeks. “You’re right here. I can touch you. You’re alive.”
My hot tear slips down his glove. “What about tomorrow?”
“What about tomorrow?”
“Will I still be alive?” I breathe burning breath. “What about the next day? What about a year from now?”
“I have no answers,” Court says.
I shake my head profusely. “There are answers. You just can’t find them.”
Jaw muscle twitching, his hands drop from me. “We have no time. We’ve been through this.”
My chin trembles with fury. With despair. “I can’t shut it off like you two. I thought I could, but I can’t. I care about what happens to me, and you both feel like the unknown is normal because you searched and searched for answers and found none. I wasn’t with you. I never had time…” He’s been saying I still have none.
I distance myself from Court. From Mykal, who stares at me like I’m the girl who put an iron rod at Court’s throat. Who only trusted herself. Back to the very beginning again. His sadness pools deeply, painfully, and my body quakes as though I just dodged my deathday again.
The onslaught of emotion tries to rush back, so I ask them, “When we have more time, will you ever search for the answers with me?”
“No,” Court says the same time Mykal tells me, “Yeah.”
I loathe every part of Court and he must feel that because his face cracks.
“Franny—”
“I hate you,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’ve been here for you. I’ve done all that you’ve asked and you can’t even spare a single second for me in return.” I leave him and walk down the street.
Court runs after me. “There are no answers,” he says to my back. “You shouldn’t spend your life on an aimless search. You’ll be stuck in misery.”
“I already am!” I spin on him. “Can’t you feel me?” My hands hover over my body like I’m afraid to touch my own skin.
He inhales a staggered breath. “I’m—”
Sirens blare, so near that all of our heads rotate toward the sound. I rub at my face again, realizing that my time is up.
It’s always so short, isn’t it?
When
will I have longer than a moment to process what’s happening to me? I stifle my contempt for Court and all the ill feelings and fear. I stomp every darkened sentiment so far down that I grow numb and uncaring.
We hurry toward the museum, a path that follows the sirens. Louder and louder, they roar. Our street suddenly opens to the largest city square and we skid to a stop.
Altia Patrol swarms the outside of the stone Bank Hall, but all their lights rain down on Yamafort’s most treasured marble statues: three skyscraping silhouettes, made to represent the three gods.
They’re not how I remember. “Good gods,” I breathe, horror-struck.
Court sways backward and Mykal catches him.
Someone chipped out the marble eyes of the first statue. The second: a gaping hole is where a heart would lie. The third is missing a head completely.
Stolen family photographs are taped to the arms and legs, a little boy’s face scratched off the pictures. What chills me from toe to head: the name painted in a deep bloodred on every marbled chest.
Etian.
THIRTY-TWO
Court
Cemented in a malevolent, cruel nightmare, I thrash and thrash.
I see Bastell the instant I shut my eyes. His sinewy frame clothed in a crimson Vorkter jumpsuit, his ash-brown hair flying madly in high winds. The graying rough stubble on his jaw and that feverish gaze, which devours all the purities of my soul.
His full weight bears agonizingly on me. Two daggers puncture my chest. And I scream and scream. A bloodied pickax lies a few feet away, my jumpsuit and skin torn to shreds. Bleeding, I pat helplessly at the snow. Ice splits beneath my back while I lie on a frozen lake. And I try to add more pressure. I would rather drown than feel this torture.
I want to quit, but somewhere, someone is tugging at my aching muscles and arms. Yelling at me to fight.
To live.
“Is it your blood?” Bastell asks, his voice melodic. Tranquil, almost.
My first months at Vorkter, his voice soothed me to sleep. In my dreams, I recognize the tone for what it truly is. Sinister.
Bastell licks my blood off his fingers. “If you refuse to give me your gift of life, I will just take it.” He slices my ribs in a quick movement as if conducting an orchestra. I kick and cry out and my actions are met with a blow to the face. My vision fades while he brings the bloodied blade to his mouth and tastes the glistening tip.
“I’m not…,” I choke. Cold twists through my naked body, fabric torn terribly, flesh ripped even worse. All around me, the snow is red.
I’m not gifted. He searches for the meaning to why I dodged my deathday. He searches for more life that I cannot give.
Bastell appraises me like I’m a stranger, not his cellmate of five long years. “I don’t think it’s the blood either.” Digging both daggers, he severs my inked snake and I wail, vision blurred from tears. Snot running down my chin, I sob from the pain.
He cocks his head. “Maybe the heart, then?”
The daggers pierce my flesh deeper and deeper. My world erupts in violent colors and then bleeds out altogether. My mind clatters. Vibrates. Reroutes. Pressure never releases from my chest and I hear that sickeningly silky voice again.
“Maybe the heart, then?”
I jolt. Waking upright in thick sweat and coughing hoarsely into my fist. My sheets are tangled, pillows smacked to the floor. Canopy tied back. The other four beds lie empty, all my roommates expelled, but Mykal is truly here.
He sits beneath the askew covers, awake beside me.
With a shallow breath, I ask, “Franny?” I’ve been trying to protect her from this terror. I can’t stomach dragging Franny or Mykal down with me every night. And I’m afraid to focus on her and sense a wide-awake, quivering body.
“She’s still asleep,” Mykal assures me.
Good.
Good.
Tears rise.
As soon as I start shaking, Mykal wraps his arms around my sweating build, my shirt suctioned to my chest. I tuck my head against the crook of his neck and shoulder.
“You’re all right,” he coos. “You’re all right.” His gruff voice contrasts my nightmare.
I hold on to him. Terrified to let go. My eyes leak, my nose runs, but he just clutches tighter and whispers in my ear. “You’re all right. You’re all right.”
I grasp the base of his neck—his soft hair between my fingers. My pulse begins to slow and breath begins to strengthen.
The nightmare always ends the same. For some reason, my mind never relives the parts where I survive. In the quiet, I think about the very next moment.
I sensed Mykal swinging his head—it felt like my head—and the forceful motion overtook me. Mimicking Mykal, I banged foreheads with Bastell.
I knocked him backward.
Scrambling weakly to my feet, I subconsciously focused on Mykal’s strength to stagger and run out of harm’s way. Others had tried to attack me before Bastell. Three people: the rest of the prisoners who escaped Vorkter with us.
Bastell had stabbed and hit two men unconscious. Wanting me for himself. The young woman, Nattala Icecastle, had been stripping the men for their clothes and boots. The second I detached from Bastell, she clocked him in the head and scavenged his jumpsuit.
I ran faster. Until she was so far out of sight, I believed she’d fall through the ice trying to catch me. Crimson droplets trailed my every step. I stumbled. Tripped. And I sensed someone screaming at me to never quit.
I rose. And trudged onward.
Using a thorn from a ricket bush—buried under sheets of ice—and wispy tendrils of its shaved stem, I sutured my cuts. Stitched, I began to walk once more. For days and days and days.
The rest of the story—where I find Mykal, where I race into his arms—calms me.
You’re all right. You’re all right.
After a while, my heartbeat levels. I lift my head off his broad shoulder, my bloodshot eyes meeting his reddened ones. “To think,” I whisper, “there was a time where I called him my mentor, my friend.” It sickens me.
“You couldn’t know he’d maul you,” Mykal reminds me. “I would’ve killed him myself.”
“You can’t kill him,” I say. “He’ll die at eighty-five.” He’s in his thirties and still, Bastell desires more time to live.
“I’d injure him until he wishes he were dead,” Mykal always rephrases. It’s a thought that eases him, not me.
“I don’t want you near him,” I say. “Promise me, if he finds StarDust—”
“He won’t,” Mykal growls. “He won’t be finding this place. He won’t be finding you. Not ever.”
I want to believe, so badly, that I’ll only meet Bastell in my nightmares, but the maimed statues said, I’m close, Etian. I’m coming for you.
Bastell knew me as Court, but he chose to call me Etian. The maddened boy who believed he could save lives that would soon die.
In another whisper, I tell Mykal, “Of my names, I know which I like the best.” A prisoner scratched a quote into a hallway wall from a novel called While the Wind Sings. I was entranced back then and I’m more entranced now.
Rest all passions at your heart’s highest court.
There, you are the authority of your own soul.
“Which?” Mykal wonders.
“The name I had when I met you,” I say assuredly. “The one I had with Franny.”
Nodding, Mykal begins to smile wider and fuller. “Court Icecastle.”
Yes. That name is mine.
THIRTY-THREE
Franny
The final exam to determine the most qualified thirty candidates arrives out of nowhere. Amelda wakes everyone in the early morning. Then she orders all fifty candidates to dress in their best formalwear, then line up outside of the dining room and remain completely silent.
We linger in the marbled hallway and, one by one, candidates enter the dining room but never return. I’m ahead of Mykal and Court.
No mathematics, no mathemati
cs, I pray. I’ve only passed classes with multiplication because I cheated. To my dismay, Gem has speculated that the indigo cards may involve a mathematical equation.
I must be the tenth person in line. Before I even fantasize about what exists beyond the door, I’m stepping through it.
Motionless and untouched, the dining room appears like a preserved museum exhibit. Rows and rows of tables sit varnished and shiny, as though no bodies have ever sat on the tufted chairs, no one has ever spilled syrup and goat’s milk. No chatter has disturbed these walls and no feet have scuffed the carpet.
I spot one difference to the usual dining layout. An onyx StarDust cloth cloaks a long table where an ornate golden box waits for me. Quickly, I close the distance and walk urgently up the aisle.
I hear my own anxious breath, and if it weren’t for Mykal drumming his thigh and Court rubbing his lips nervously, I’d feel all alone.
Once I reach the table, I exhale deeply and scan the items. A stack of blank paper sits beside the box, then a black pen and very tiny, hand-painted directions on a slab of polished wood.
Peering forward, I read the directions aloud, “‘Congratulations candidate, you’ve proven your aptitude in sciences, quick-learning, history, flight, and teamwork.’” I smile at the word flight.
Of all my classes and simulations, I enjoyed flying the most, and toward the end, I even excelled without cheating. Court wasn’t surprised since piloting the starcraft shares a few similarities to driving.
I lick my lips and read on, “‘Now you’ll prove how well you can keep a secret.’” The bottom of my stomach drops, but I shouldn’t be scared. I dodged my deathday and never spilled the truth to anyone. So I’m a confirmed secret-keeper, aren’t I?
My reading skills have improved so much that I read all the directions out loud, hoping Court and Mykal can sense my lips, but then I skim them over a second time and digest the fine print.
Your task: List three words from the candidate cards. (You may use your own.)
You will be expelled for the following:
1: Listing a stolen card.
The Raging Ones Page 29
