by Everly Frost
“But a thousand years ago, something changed. The tree began to die. Our President at the time believed that our immortality is connected with the tree and that if the tree dies, we will also die. She gathered every scientist to test the tree and the soil around it. Nobody had an answer for what was happening. The soil was slowly transforming itself into ash and so was the tree. And then … it was around that time that the first mortal children were also born.”
“The first mortals were born here? A thousand years ago?”
“People thought it was evidence that our immortality is, indeed, connected with the tree. That the deterioration of the tree and the birth of mortal children were connected.”
The President’s steps became heavy. “All of the mortal children died at a young age. Their bodies were frail, sickly. Then, five hundred years ago, the first fully-grown mortal emerged from the desert. He died under the tree. There was a new President by then, but she also believed that, unless we did something to save the tree, the whole world would become mortal and over time the human race would perish.
“When the soil around the tree turned completely to ash, she sought help from Evereach. She asked for new soil and water from the purest springs. But Evereach refused. Why would they ship soil and water across the sea for a tree? A tree! They thought it was a joke. But my predecessor was deadly serious.”
President Vale sighed. “When they continued to refuse her, she vowed that she would take what they wouldn’t give. She threatened them with destruction. And so began the world war.”
“A war about resources.”
“Ah, yes, resources. Water and earth. Of course they would teach you only part of the truth in Evereach, but never the reasons for it. For my predecessor, it was a war about ensuring everyone’s survival. But when we lost…”
The glass corridor turned in a never-ending circle, but we’d come to a place with a sandstone enclave on our right and a set of stairs visible inside it. Shadows pooled in the corners above the stars and I backed away from it, sensing a strange chill.
“We built this glass wall five hundred years ago,” the President said. “Before that, the tree was open to everyone. Representatives from every tribe would make a pilgrimage to it every year. After we lost the war, it seemed there was nothing we could do. More mortal children were born, but by then, despair had given birth to a terrible song and it was sung by tribe after tribe.”
“What song?”
“A song that rewrote our history, so that it was not the tree that began to die first, but the mortals that caused the tree to die. Of course, we don’t know which is true—we don’t know which was first—but the belief took hold that mortals caused our suffering. And so began a shameful time in our history.”
The color drained from her face. She pointed to the dark stairwell. “Go in, Ava. Go down. You’ll see.”
My hands were clammy, my heart thumped.
She followed me down the stairs into the crypt and I couldn’t speak. At the bottom of the stairs was a short hallway. It opened into a vast room lined with shelves. At the back of the room was a wall marbled with black threads.
In the middle of the room was a plant that looked a lot like a Starsgardian slumber tree—leaves that caused people to sleep for hundreds of years—except that this plant’s leaves were red. Each leaf had a smooth, curved edge on one side, but the edge on the other side was scalloped like waves on the ocean. The plant was encased in glass.
“That’s Starsgardian technology,” I said, drawing near to it.
“Every country has its own version. In Evereach, I believe you call the substance tranquilizer—that is a much milder form. Starsgard’s has been developed to sustain life for long periods of time, but ours is designed to act very quickly. Painlessly, but quickly. It’s deadly to mortals. We call it the crimson tide.”
Around the room, tiny brass coffins rested on the shelves.
“They weren’t allowed to live,” the President whispered behind me. “You’ve probably heard stories about the tribes—about them testing their children at birth.”
Michael had told me about it and at the time, it had seemed so far away, so impossible that I’d hardly believed it to be true.
“I’m sure the stories make us sound worse than Alexander.” Her hand lifted as though she’d touch one of the coffins, but dropped again. “We are monsters. Every mortal child was brought here to this room to die.”
My stomach turned and rage burned deep. I couldn’t count the coffins. I couldn’t look at them. I didn’t know why she was telling me all this, but I couldn’t stay in that space another moment, inhaling the dusty air. I backed away, my hand over my mouth, the world spinning and my stomach turning as I ran back through the corridor and up the stairs. I dropped to my knees beside the glass wall, gulping oxygen.
The President knelt beside me, running her hand up and down my back in a soothing gesture. “I’m sorry, Ava. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t do it to my son.”
I choked, gasping for fresh air. “Your son?”
“I call them all my sons, but there is one who truly is. I named him Ephron for the fields of dead that came before him. The fields I refused to bury him in.”
Her eyes swam with unexpected tears.
The world stopped. My heart stopped.
“Rift is your son?”
She wrung her hands. “My own son was born mortal and I couldn’t put him in a coffin and watch him fall asleep. I had to find a way to keep him alive. I had to find a way to make my Generals and my people want to keep mortal children alive.”
Her eyes implored me to understand. “My people are warriors. They have deep hearts and intense loyalty, but they’re fighters before anything else. So I came up with the only idea they would understand: that mortality could be a weapon. That we could turn it against our enemies. That mortal children were not our doom, but our salvation. That they must live.”
My mind was a storm of thoughts, crisscrossing each other. “Then … the mortal girl is your daughter too. She’s Rift’s sister.”
“Actually, no.”
“What?”
“I ordered that all mortal children must be brought to me. There were two other boys and a little girl. The mothers of the two older boys had bravely kept them hidden from their tribes and had to return to their homes, but the mother of the little girl was able to stay. Her tribe knew about her daughter and supported her choice. She was able to be a mother to Ephron and I decided that was for the best—for him to have a mother when I couldn’t…”
She drew a shaky breath. “We kept them in a pod beneath these very walls and I told my country we were developing a weapon from them. All I really did was keep them safe. I made a show of taking their blood and our scientists went to work on a weapon that was no more than a figment of my imagination.”
She shuddered. “I didn’t realize the impact it would have on Evereach. They took the threat seriously.”
I said, “So Michael’s father came here to steal the weapon. When he didn’t find a weapon, he took the boys. But he couldn’t smuggle them any further than Starsgard. Then when my brother was discovered…”
President Vale took my hands. “Only Michael’s father was capable of creating such a weapon and to my shame, I played him too well. I made it clear to Evereach that our girl was all we needed. That her blood was limitless and all-powerful. We told them that one girl could change the world. He proved us right when he made the weapon from you. And suddenly … suddenly my empty threats became reality. Suddenly the weapon was real.”
“Wait…” I stared at her. “What are you saying?”
“I’m telling you the truth, Ava.” She shook her head vehemently. “Our girl’s DNA is not like yours. It’s you, and you alone, who can tear the world apart.”
I tried to breathe. “You never made the mortality weapon. That’s why you never attacked.”
“We tried. But you alone have the keys inside your body that allow a weapon to be creat
ed.”
Cheyne’s words echoed back to me. He’d told me that I had a very unusual gene that contained the additional information they needed to stabilize the mortality formula. He’d said that even as a mortal, I was a scientific anomaly.
“Does Olander know about your girl?”
“Only my scientists know and they’re sworn to secrecy. Even the girl herself doesn’t know. The world believes that two deadly girls walk this earth. If Olander knew the truth—if he knew it was all a bluff—he would strike, and he would never stop.”
She ran her hand across my cheek, wiping away the tears that ran down them. “There’s a part of me that believes this is the way it should be. After all, there was only one Eve. One Eve to secure immortality and one to tear it all down.”
I threw caution to the wind. “You said everything’s changed. You can’t have dragged me out here just to tell me what you did to those children—the choices you made about Rift’s life.”
“Olander’s throwing my actions earlier today back at me. He says that since I threatened him, how can he trust me? After we swap girls, how can he trust that a war won’t start anyway?”
“What does he want?”
“Tomorrow, instead of a treaty, he wants peace to be attained in the only way that guarantees a mortality world war will never be possible.”
Her eyes bored into mine. “Tomorrow, you will die.”
Death
Chapter Sixteen
I WAS numb. So numb I didn’t even ask the name of the other girl. President Vale walked me to my room and the only thing I said was, “Please, get Michael.”
President Vale was pale, her back stiff. “I’m sorry, Ava. I did all of this to save mortals, not kill them. I’ll send Michael and Ember right away.”
Within moments of entering the room, Aaron and another Evereacher, along with two Seversandian warriors, took up guard outside it—one on each side of the door and two at the window.
President Vale ordered them. “Don’t let Ava leave this room without one of my guards.” She gave Aaron a threatening look while she spoke. It was plain she didn’t trust Olander’s people for one second.
After she left, Aaron dropped my backpack beside me. “Here are your medical supplies. In case you need them.”
I almost laughed. Bandages couldn’t save my life right then. He stared at me for a moment, and I was grateful when he returned to his post at the door.
The room was large and airy with wide windows to the left looking across the corridor and out to a full view of the tree in the distance. A small table and two chairs took up the space beneath the window and a bed rested against the far right corner. The room was much too beautiful to be my prison, my last place of rest. A painting on the opposite wall took my breath away.
It was a bright red flower with a golden scorpion on it.
I’d seen that image when they first gave me nectar. I’d seen the flower bloom and the scorpion come to life, ready to strike. But what good was that vision to me now?
On each side of the painting at about eye height on the wall, were two horizontal gold loops. They looked like the kind of thing I’d hang clothing on, except that loops were closed. I removed my white cloak and folded it on the bed instead.
I huddled in a chair. For the first time since Josh died, I was truly lost. I rocked in a sea of fear and panic. If I revealed to Olander that Seversand never had a weapon—that I was the only one—he’d slaughter them.
He’d strike at Starsgard too. Michael had opened the grid and it wouldn’t take Olander long to start asking questions about how that happened, how to get inside Starsgard.
But if I didn’t tell him, I was going to die.
The other girl would too, even though she wasn’t a threat. I drew my knees to my chest and pressed my eyes to them, trying to dislodge the image of all the brass coffins buried beneath the ground. I had to find another way. I had to find a way to save all of us without triggering a slaughter.
The only way to stop another war was to escape to Starsgard. The Starsgardians alone had proven they wouldn’t wage war against another country. They’d proven they would never use my mortality to make weapons. If we were all safely behind the Starsgardian border, the threat of war would finally end.
But to do that, I had to first find the other girl and then my brothers. And then find a way out of this burning desert.
My thoughts flew to the tree. Was there any way it still produced nectar? With nectar I could do anything—escape this place, survive the heat. There was no way I could get through the glass wall to the tree itself, but the nectar from the tree in Starsgard was primarily produced at the roots.
I hadn’t studied the walls of the chamber with the coffins, but I knew it was possible that the tree’s roots reached that far. The ones under the tower in Starsgard had plunged through concrete; they’d spread far and wide and the nectar had invaded other plants, even the moss.
I shuddered to think about going back to a room that was so filled with violence, but right then it was my only choice.
However, it was on the other side of the Coliseum. Which meant my first challenge was getting past the guards—especially Aaron, who hadn’t torn his eyes off me, even following me back and forth as I paced.
Michael appeared in the doorway with Ember close behind. She was humming, a gorgeous sound that made me forget my worries for a brief moment.
Concern flashed across his face but was quickly hidden as he noticed the guards watching us. “Ava?”
I strode up to Ember. “You’re one of the President’s guards, right?”
She hesitated. “I serve the President.”
“I need to stretch my legs, but I’m not supposed to leave my room without one of the President’s guards.”
She caught up fast, but didn’t like it, judging by the way she suddenly chewed her lip. I wasn’t about to give her a choice. I grabbed Michael’s hand and headed down the corridor without waiting for her permission. “C’mon,” I called.
Ember paused long enough to smile at the scowling guards. She patted the dagger at her waist. “Don’t worry. Ava won’t get away. Besides, where would she go?”
She took up a brisk pace close behind us. Just as I suspected, Aaron detached himself from his position at the door and followed us, keeping his distance.
Michael drew close and kept his voice low. “What happened?”
“It’s bad.”
Ember was only a couple of steps behind us, giving us space.
“Olander’s forced President Vale into a corner. He says the threat of a mortality war has to be destroyed once and for all.”
Helplessness descended over me as thick as the night around me. “They want me to die.”
He froze. “What?”
Light from the golden stones cast shadows across his shocked face and I wanted to scream. Somehow I kept my voice low, but it felt like it was someone else speaking, as though I was already desperately trying to escape my body.
“They’re going to kill me at the ceremony tomorrow. And not just me. They’re going to kill the other mortal girl too.”
Michael grabbed my arm. “No. I won’t let them.”
There was a gasp and a soft thud as someone dropped to the ground behind us. At first I was afraid we’d been attacked, but I was surprised to find Ember fallen to her knees, her arms loose at her sides, tears glistening in her eyes.
Her voice was so small I could barely hear it. “She didn’t tell me.”
Further behind us, Aaron stopped, his head tilted as he tried to hear us. It probably didn’t matter. Maybe he knew already. Everyone would know tomorrow anyway.
Michael’s anger was quickly caged as he bent to Ember. “It’s not your fault. You’re my family. I know you wouldn’t do this to Ava or me.”
“No,” she said, her face upturned. “You don’t understand. They’re going to kill me too.”
Michael and I stared at her, confused.
She said, “I’m
the other girl.”
Chapter Seventeen
MICHAEL SHOOK his head. “But, how is that possible, Ember? Your mom’s a fast healer like my mom. You’re a fast healer too … aren’t you?”
“When I was born, my mother rebelled against our tribe’s customs. She brought me here and raised the President’s son with me in the pod beneath the Coliseum. I didn’t know that he wasn’t my real brother. After he was stolen, the President kept me in her sight at all times. She trained me as one of her personal guards. She named me ‘the People’s Guardian’ and decreed that nobody was to touch me. She treated me as much like a daughter as my own mother did … and now…”
Her eyes met mine. “Now she would have me die.” Her head sank to her chest, but I dropped in front of her.
“It’s not going to happen. We’re both getting out of here.”
My mind sped through all of what Ember had just said. The President hadn’t told Ember about tomorrow—she’d chosen to tell me instead. She’d also made sure that Ember was with Michael—and the President knew that Michael would come back to me.
I remembered what the President said about wanting to save mortals. She’d wanted us all together tonight for a reason. I grabbed Ember’s shoulders. “She wanted me to warn you. She wants us to escape.”
I glanced at the only person preventing us from doing just that. “We need to lose Aaron.”
Aaron was no longer keeping his distance. He strode up to us, gesturing at Ember who was still on her knees. “What’s wrong with her?”
Ember took a deep breath and forced her tears to stop. “Demonstrating how you should never underestimate an opponent based on their size.”
In a swift move, she swept his legs out from under him. He fell hard, but bounced right back up, only to meet her blade. With a quick flick of her wrist, her dagger met his throat.
He backed away, coming up hard against the glass wall. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Mortality poison? Of course. This on the other hand…” She held up her free palm. In it was a small red leaf like the crimson tide the President had shown me. “This will knock you out. Which do you choose?”
