He was not her Kai.
He was not her Kai.
He was not her Kai.
But it was no use. She could burn the words into her skin and she would still not believe them. She breathed in the scent of hay and wet wood. Of manure and spoiled milk, of oil and leather, of lanterns and the night wind. The scents she’d known all her life. The ones that said barn, and freedom, and him. She took two steps toward Kai and laid her hand on his chest.
His heart pounded beneath his shirt, but he did not move. The deep thrum sounded so normal, so familiar. This, at least, they had not changed.
Elliot raised her face to his, recognizing in every plane and line the boy who lived inside her heart. He was breathing hard, matching the pace of his pulse. She was sure she was in the same state. For four years she’d subsisted on memories of this—his voice, his face, the sound of his breath and his heartbeat. She felt him like a leaf feels the sun, like a magnet feels metal.
“Elliot . . .”
She listed toward him, unwilling to reply with his name and risk breaking the spell. For four years, she’d been looking for direction, spinning as uselessly as the compass on her grandfather’s wall. She’d tried her hardest, but without Kai she was lost.
“Please . . .”
His voice sounded like all the Kais in her memory. The ones who’d asked for books, for string-boxes, for company on his adventures. He sounded now like the Kai she’d once loved, like the Kai she still loved more than she loved the life she’d been born to lead.
“I’ll give you whatever you want. Whatever it takes for you to keep our secret. A sun-cart? Or money? I have plenty. How much will it take?”
She blinked, as the dream smashed around her. So this is what it had come to. Kai didn’t trust her. He’d never trust her. If he did, he wouldn’t think he’d have to buy her silence. Because now it was Elliot, the Luddite lord’s daughter, who was the beggar, the desperate one, who’d compromise the principles she’d had drummed into her since birth . . . for money. He thought she was a hypocrite, a traitor to her people, and he might be right. But not the way he thought. She’d do it for him. Not for money. Not for a sun-cart.
He loved the people who’d stolen his humanity, but he’d never loved her.
She stepped back. Stumbled, really. And sputtered. “Get out.”
It was Kai’s turn to blink in surprise.
She waved the lantern at him. He was fortunate she didn’t throw it at his head. How could he know her so well and so little at once? “Get out of my barn. Now.”
He stepped away from her, his hands held out to brace himself should she choose to swing. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” She advanced, and he retreated toward the door. “I don’t want anything from you.” Not his money, not his pity, and most especially not his false kindness. “Don’t you ever speak to me again, Malakai Wentforth. I hate you. I hate you. And I’m not sorry anymore.”
“What?”
“I’m not sorry I didn’t go with you. Because I hate the man that you’ve become.”
He had passed the threshold now, and she slammed the door shut in his face. For a moment, Elliot let that door support her. She panted against the wood, giant, gulping breaths that did nothing to soothe her or stop the tears that sprang to her eyes.
The Kai she’d known could never have made her that offer. He would have asked a favor from a friend. She’d been wrong about him all along. He must have been telling the truth the night of the Innovations’ party. He’d never cared for her at all. Perhaps he’d always only seen her as the rich girl in the big house, the one who could help him, who could give him things, who could protect him from punishment, who could get him out of trouble. Why shouldn’t it work the same in reverse, now that he was the rich one? He’d never loved her. Maybe he’d never even liked her.
She slid to her knees on the packed dirt floor. She rested her forehead against the ground. She raked her hands through her skirt and her hair, and she wept.
Many minutes later, she heard his voice, soft and low, on the other side of the door. He was centimeters away. “You were sorry? You were sorry you didn’t go with me?”
Hadn’t he spent every moment since his return making sure she was? Hadn’t it been the unspoken meaning behind every cruel comment? “I said go away!”
“No, you said ‘get out.’ I’m out.”
“Now go away.”
Silence. And then, “No.”
For a second, they were both fourteen again, bickering. Bantering. For another second, Elliot wished it could stay that way. But too many things had changed. “I mean it,” she tried, though she was terrified she didn’t.
“I need to know—” she heard him growl under his breath. “I need to know your mind.”
She jumped to her feet and threw open the door. He was kneeling on the other side, and when he looked up at her in surprise, he nearly took her breath away. But her anger prevailed.
“Get out of my sight this instant or I’ll scream,” she ordered him. “I will scream to the world what you are, Kai. Believe me, I will.”
He regarded her for a long moment, and then he, too, stood. “I have been unfair to you,” he said at last. “I know you wouldn’t tell. You never have.”
Ten minutes ago, those words might have meant the world to her, but it was too late. Not after what he’d said. “Good. You have the answer you wanted. You and your abominable friends are safe. Now go away.”
“Elliot—”
She shuddered. If she heard him speak her name again she might vomit. “Don’t you understand? You disgust me. Go. Away.”
His expression turned hard, and then he left. Elliot breathed a sigh of relief.
It was true. He did disgust her. But not for the reasons he should.
PART III
True North
I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul.
—JANE AUSTEN, PERSUASION
FOUR YEARS AGO
Dear Kai,
Please do not hate me. I couldn’t bear it if you hated me.
But I cannot go with you.
I thought I could. Last night, I thought everything was possible. I thought you were right, that there was nothing for me here, either. Mother’s dead, Grandfather’s locked in his own head, and you’re leaving. Why in the world should I stay? It was a beautiful dream. But outside your room, outside the barn, in the cold light of morning, I realized that was all it was. A dream. There is nothing for me here, but that doesn’t mean I am nothing to the North estate.
Today, when I was supposed to be packing, I wandered the estate. I watched the Posts in their little cottages, I watched the Reduced in the fields, and I thought about our lots in life.
We can’t escape who we are born to be, Kai. The Reduced are Reduced. They will always be Reduced. And I will always be a Luddite. I was born this way. I will die this way. I can’t turn my back on that. Luddites were handed a sacred trust—we are the caretakers of humanity. Without us, the world would have burned, and all mankind would have been destroyed. I cannot ignore that. I cannot forget who I am.
But you are not a Luddite.
That’s why I cannot go with you. And also why I can’t ask you to stay.
God be with you.
Yours,
Elliot
Twenty-six
ELLIOT HAD ALWAYS HATED the birthing house. Of all the indignities the Reduced were forced to endure on the North estate, this was the worst. Left to their own devices, too many Reduced women harmed themselves or their unborn babies during the final stages of pregnancy. Many, following some sort of primal, animal instinct, wandered off the estate and hid when they went into labor. Without assistance, they didn’t survive the birth. Afterward, it was no easier—both Reduced mother and baby needed special care. Long ago, it had been deemed necessary to literally confine mothers for the months before and after birth, which came with its own troubl
es, especially when there weren’t enough caretakers on the estate.
Eighteen years ago, the mothers of Ro and Kai had died in the birthing house when the estate’s healers had been called to Victoria North’s bedside to deliver Elliot. They’d died helpless and alone, and it was a miracle that they hadn’t taken their newborn infants with them.
And now Dee was trapped here, with a single Post nurse to watch over her and all the pregnant Reduced women and their babies. Elliot could hardly contain her dismay when she saw her friend among the cots, surrounded by bawling infants and their exhausted, hollow-eyed mothers. The windows had been shut to keep out the cold, and the smell of sour milk and soiled baby clothes hung in the stale air.
“Don’t feel bad for me, Elliot,” Dee said, her tone more cheerful than it had any right to be. She was knitting despite the gloom. It was winter, so there weren’t even any fresh flowers Elliot could have brought in to relieve the drab daub walls and everyone’s plain gowns. She needed to recruit Ro and her house-grown blooms. “I’m experienced at this now. And I have the opportunity to help these women get the hang of things.”
Around them, the Reduced women in the other beds lolled, staring dumbly at the ceilings and occasionally moaning with discomfort. The ones in the latest stages of their pregnancy were even secured to their beds to keep them from wandering off. Elliot abhorred the practice, but there was little choice in the matter—there weren’t enough people to watch over them. Several of the women in the beds nearest Dee were Elliot’s age, or even younger. Elliot balled her hands in her lap. Ro would wither here. These other Reduced girls must be miserable.
“How’s Jef?” Dee asked, her bright tone not fooling Elliot at all.
“Staying with Gill and Mags,” said Elliot. “He’s helping Gill in the dairy today, but he said he’d be by this afternoon.”
“I’m glad there are still Posts on this land to take care of him in my absence,” said Dee. “He’s not old enough to be on his own, as Kai was when Mal passed.”
“I don’t know if Kai was old enough to be on his own, either. Maybe he wouldn’t have run away if he was placed with a Post family instead of left alone in the barn.”
“And then where would he be?” asked Dee. “Things seemed to have worked out for the best.”
He’d still be human, for one thing, thought Elliot. It had been a week since the disaster on the cliff, a week since she’d fought with Kai in the barn, and she hadn’t seen him since. Olivia still hadn’t woken up, either, and reports placed her devastated brother and equally devastated admirer, Captain Malakai Wentforth, at her bedside night and day.
Elliot had been too scared to visit Olivia and risk running into Kai, but she reasoned that if the girl was still in a coma, she wouldn’t notice Elliot’s absence. And while she waited, she couldn’t stop thinking about her argument with Kai in the barn. She’d been foolish, she’d been hasty, and, most of all, she’d been too unguarded with her feelings.
“Dee?” she asked. “Would it be wrong to accept money for something you were planning on doing anyway?”
Dee narrowed her eyes. “You’re asking the wrong person. I’ve never gotten money for anything in all of my life. I don’t know much how it works. But isn’t that exactly what the point of money is? It’s much better than accepting money for something you don’t want to do.”
“I mean—if it’s something that someone shouldn’t have to pay you for. Something they’d think less of you for if they paid you for it.”
Now the Post’s eyes went wide. “What kind of thing are we talking about, Elliot North?”
Elliot shook her head. “Nothing like that.” On a purely practical basis, if Kai was willing to give her money for silence, then she should take it. She could be calm and rational about that now, despite her response in the barn. The estate could certainly benefit from such an arrangement. But she didn’t know if she could bring herself to broach the topic with him. She didn’t know how she’d ever speak to him again after the things she’d said to him in the barn.
Time for a change in subject. “Things have been going well in the dairy. You know that old churner I haven’t been able to get working for six months? Turns out there was just a screw loose.”
“Really!” Dee said. “I thought you’d been over every piece of that machine half a dozen times.”
“I know.” Elliot shrugged. “Guess I was just distracted with my work on the wheat before. Thank goodness for winter boredom.”
“I’m sure the dairymaids thank you. Things have got to be much easier with the mechanical churner running again.”
“They are, but we’re still shorthanded. We didn’t have enough Posts on duty even before you came here.”
“Give it ten years.” Dee nodded her head in the direction of a nearby cot, where a Reduced woman dozed with a big-eyed newborn in her arms. “That one’s a Post, you know.”
Elliot examined the baby. “You can’t tell already.” Common opinion held that Post children started showing their colors around six months.
“Oh yes I can,” Dee insisted. “I raised my own, didn’t I? Jef was just like her at that age. Watch her looking around. She’s already figuring out the world. She already wants to see what else is out there.”
What else was out there? The infant, if a Post, was still bonded to the North estate. And if she remained here, one day she’d be back inside these four walls, confined, just like Dee. The alternative was to take the path Kai had chosen.
And all the dangers that came with it. Posts like Dee thought the Reduction was ending, that soon every new baby would be a Post. But what if Kai and his friends had started the nightmare all over again?
ELLIOT WAS JUST FINISHING her duties in the barn several days later when Benedict found her.
“Hello,” he called over the top of one of the dairy stalls. Elliot was inspecting the cows while Ro and two other Reduced girls cleaned out the rest of the stalls. “I’ve come to see if you’ve heard anything more about that poor Grove girl.”
Elliot brushed hay off her tan skirt. “I haven’t had a chance to.” It wasn’t a lie. With Dee moved into the birthing house, Elliot had her hands full with extra duties. But even if she’d been as free as Tatiana, nothing would induce her to return to the Boatwright house.
Benedict was dressed in the same Post-style plum jacket he’d worn when he arrived. Apparently the Norths were missing out on a major fashion trend. Elliot had spent the morning listening to her sister hounding the baron for a new riding habit made with Post fabrics. A few months ago, Tatiana would have sneered at the thought.
“Are you planning to visit her? I’d love to come with you.”
“I wasn’t, no.” If she never saw Kai again, it would be too soon.
“Would you?” Benedict’s tone was insistent. “I barely got a look at the Boatwright estate the day we arrived, but I’ve been all over the North estate with your sister.”
Elliot was taken aback by his words. The Boatwright estate was not Benedict’s, nor would it ever be. It belonged to Elliot’s grandfather. “Is there a special reason you wish to see it?”
“I’m curious about their project, of course!” Benedict exclaimed. “It’s all anyone will speak of in Channel City. I want to see what they’re up to, but I haven’t been introduced to anyone over there. I feel awkward going by myself.”
She glanced up at him. He felt awkward? The heir presumptive of the entire North estate, the man who’d seen as much of the world as the Fleet Posts and far more than she, felt awkward going alone to say hello? Elliot sighed. “I’m a little short staffed this morning, I’m afraid.”
“It’s because of that pregnant foreman, isn’t it? Tatiana mentioned she’d been taken off her duties—perhaps a bit earlier than she needed to be.”
Elliot raised her eyebrows. “Tatiana knows that? I’m shocked.”
Benedict smiled. “Your sister follows more than you think she does, Elliot. It makes it easier for her to justify not getti
ng her hands dirty herself.”
Less than two weeks here and already he knew the lay of the land pretty well. Elliot regarded Benedict carefully. She didn’t know what had brought him back to the North estate, or why her father had chosen now of all times to reconcile with his nephew. Eight years ago, Benedict had been sent away from the only home he’d ever known, and yet he appeared not bitter or angry about it at all. It was a mystery.
The Reduced girls had by now lined up outside the stalls for Elliot to inspect their work. Benedict looked them over, too, and Elliot stiffened, remembering the old rumors. If Benedict did take over, would the North lands become like the estate where the Phoenixes had grown up?
“Very good,” she said to the laborers, gesturing in signs they’d be sure to understand. “You’re free to go.” Two of them ran off, while Ro lingered, clearly wanting to spend more time with Elliot, but nervous about Benedict’s presence.
“Pretty girl,” said Benedict. “And that’s a lovely scarf. It’s nice that you let them have their own possessions. Did she do anything special to earn it?”
Elliot frowned. “Ro,” she said. “I would like you to go visit with Dee in the birthing house today. Can you do that?”
Ro nodded and took off.
Benedict turned back to Elliot. “So you are free now.”
“Not really.” She cast about for a way to broach the topic. “Benedict, I am glad you and my father have reconciled. While you’re here, I think it’s important that you know the things that happen on other estates do not occur on North lands—”
His eyes lit up with amusement. “You don’t put credence in that old story, do you, cousin?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Yes, she did. Everyone knew why Benedict had been sent away.
“Yes, you do,” he replied. “And frankly, I’m surprised.”
Elliot folded her arms. “That I could think it of you?”
For Darkness Shows the Stars Page 17
