“My name is Ambry. In case you’re wondering.”
He doesn’t say anything. Figures. Then again, he probably knows my name since he said the tears chanted it.
“And if you think I’m going to stick around just because you can bust a combat move, you’ve got another thing coming.”
The vehicle screeches to a stop, grinding into the gravel along the roadside and shoving me forward so I nearly smack my head. Talon turns to talk to me, but I take advantage of the lack of motion. I pull the handle. The door swings open, and I roll onto the gritty roadside asphalt.
A vehicle sheers past, its wheels glistening with magic. I’m up and ready to run when Talon is at my side. He grips me tightly, does the shove-me-in-thing and gets back into the driver’s side.
Fuming, I try the handle several more times, but it won’t budge. The guy is using magic.
“No fair,” I begin, but my mouth drops mid-glare.
Talon’s green eyes are tight and fierce, and his nostrils flare with each exaggerated breath. His full lips press together. Scruff prickles along his jaw, and through the scruff a small scar scratches at his chin. My heart seizes. It’s a look that spells control. That he’s going to get it, no matter what it takes.
His voice is low and careful. “The Arcaians will go for your family first. They’ll work the Xian slowly, then turn your family’s magic back on them. Oh, they’ll take yours too, maybe even make you watch. They will be relentless. Ruthless. It’s clear they know the tears have chosen you.”
I can’t help myself. “Yeah, because you led them to me—”
He speaks over me with blaring intolerance. “Even if I could take the tears and handle the burning and chanting from them, I won’t abandon someone to the Arcs’ mercy, not when I have the chance and means to prevent it. I’m sorry about your brother, but there’s nothing I can do for him right now. Besides, they want him to fight for them, so he’s probably safe for the moment.”
“They took him to fight?” I thought it was because Ren’s a gatekeeper. Not that it makes it any better.
“The Arcaians have no magic,” he explains.
“I know that.”
“They resent us for it—blaming us for the angels’ decision when the First creatures were created over a thousand years ago.”
“Also known information,” I say, getting more annoyed by the millisecond.
Talon huffs. “At first they only wanted control over us. But it’s never been enough. The Arcaians are starting a civil war so they can ultimately swap places with us. To make themselves the only ones with magic. The more magic they take, the more men they have to fight on their side. They’re pitting Itharians against each other, forcing the races to fight among themselves.”
My frustration simmers. There it is again. War. “Are they going to take Ren’s magic?”
“I don’t know,” says Talon, and then his voice hardens. “But you need to do as I say. And read what is unsaid. Like staying in the vehicle because that means you’re staying with me. Clear?”
He steers back onto the road. I purse my lips, my blood boiling.
“What if I drink these? Right now?” I jostle the tears. I know it won’t work, but I reach for the cork and hold the jar to my lips. I’ve never been around someone who seems to have more of an emotional range like I do. It’s liberating, being able to argue like this.
“No!” he shouts and slams on the brakes again. In seconds, the tears are out of my hands. A muscle flexes in his jaw as he notices I didn’t remove the cork.
Satisfaction glows through me while I try to ignore the hum in my skull and the tiny throbs of pain in my chest.
“I promise I won’t hurt you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he says, and my small victory snuffs out. I expected more arguing. “As soon as I do what I need to with these,” his knuckles whiten around the jar, “I will make sure you also get home. As safely as I can.”
That’s quite a promise to make. Still, he hands the tears back to me. I take them with hesitant fingers.
“And my brother?”
Talon doesn’t answer. I shudder. I don’t know much about Talon, but I believe him. No Arc would promise to keep me safe and take me home. And sure as the sun is hot, no Arc would allow me to hold the tears for him. Not if he wants them that badly.
I fold my arms and sink back into the seat, keeping my eyes to the windshield. Trees puncture the roadside like spines on a hedgehog. The road shifts from rough to smooth and back to rough, sounding like someone fiddling with the volume on a waterfall. Gush, trickle, gush.
I wonder what would have happened if Gwynn selected these tears instead. If this would be her instead of me. She was the one aching for an adventure and an escape.
I’m not so anxious to get out of town, not like she was. Things are pretty good for me. My magic skills are nada, but I manage pretty well in school despite that. Yes, I want things with my parents to change, but I have the coolest brother ever.
Except the Arcs dragged him away. The scene stamps in my mind: Ren’s shouts, his desperate face. And the Arcs. If they’d seen me, if Talon didn't barge in when he did, didn't get me out of that line back at school, they probably would have taken me too.
“Thank you,” I say. “You know, for what you did back there.”
Not only did he save my life, but he protected my parents from ever knowing it. I’m not sure what Mom and Dad will do when they come home to a house in tatters and their son and daughter missing. They may react, but I’m not sure they’ll feel enough to care.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
“Can I at least contact my parents, let them know where I am? Let them know about Ren?” My voice breaks. They may think I’m with Gwynn somewhere. For once the banishment of emotion and tears might be a blessing. I’m sure my parents will have an intellectual reaction, but at least they won’t feel the kind of grief I do now.
“I’m pretty sure they’ll figure it out,” he says. “And I don’t like people to know where I am.”
Right. Just like he didn’t want me to know his name. Something serious is going on with this guy.
I can’t call my parents, Gwynn has disappeared, Ren has been taken, and I’ve just been kidnapped by a smack-happy boy who speaks like he’s way older than I am instead of just a few years at the most…These would be reason enough to invoke tears in any normal kind of world. But not in mine. Nope, my sinuses just fill with fuzz, and the backs of my eyes throb. But there’s no relief.
“Are you on the run?” I ask once the feelings fade. “Did you…do something?”
Arcaians handle the small, day-to-day misdemeanors mostly brought on from people’s recent dreams, like stealing from a farmer’s market or traffic violations. But I'm not sure something that minor would be the case.
The corners of his mouth turn up. He waits a few long seconds before answering. “No, the Arcaians aren't after me. They probably will be now, though.”
“But you said you’re not an Arc.” I’m utterly confused. The Arcs will be after him? How can that be? “How old are you?”
“Does it matter?” he asks, raising a scarred eyebrow.
“Well, yeah. You have to answer some of my questions.”
“I have answered them.”
I tilt my head to one side and give him a pointed look, letting my annoyance and disbelief of that statement show itself.
He sighs. “I’m seventeen.”
A seventeen-year-old boy roughing it, on the run from Arcaians. Still doesn’t explain what he wants the tears for.
We drive until we hit Leland, about forty miles from Cadehtraen. I stare at the Population: 3,500 painted on the elaborate sign and finally snip into the silence.
“Why do you need these things so badly, anyway?” I lift the tiny jar. The pearly blue tears jostle.
He gives me a sideways glance. “Put those in a pocket instead of waving them around.”
My jaw clenches, and I throw my hand in his fac
e and flap the jar back and forth as fast as I can. “What, you mean like this?”
He swears and swerves slightly. I fall back and clutch the door. I can’t help laughing.
He slants his head to one side, eyes glued to the road.
“Would you mind putting those out of sight?” he grits out. “You will be killed if you’re seen with them,” he adds, a little more forcefully.
“What a good idea! I’m so glad you ran it past me.” I tuck the teeny jar into my jeans pocket.
His fists clench over the steering wheel and glisten with a steady shimmer, the magic reflecting in the glass over the dash Muscles rope around his arms, testing the limits of his shirt. He’s so sculpted—even without magic he’d be enough of a threat all on his own.
Even without magic…
“I want to fight like you,” I say. “If Ren had known how, they wouldn’t have taken him. Can you teach me?”
It’s a long shot, but if I knew how I never would have hesitated. Then maybe I could have stopped them from taking Ren. He has magic like everyone else, but obviously it wasn’t enough.
Again, Talon says nothing. I squint in frustration. The quiet game, is it? That’s one I can match him at.
I see more of Itharia than I ever have before; passing little towns here and there that I didn’t know existed. We enter Kimbria County, and the trees flatten into rolling fields speckled with the occasional tractor or farmhouse. Herds of cattle and horses scatter across plains that seem to stretch on for miles.
I try to keep my mind busy, but all I can think about is Ren. How he used to make me run back and forth across the living room so he could dart forks at me. Or the time Milo Whitlock and his friends followed Gwynn and me home from school, teasing me about a test I just failed and throwing snowballs at us. I didn’t know Ren was nearby, but he ran out from behind a skeletal tree and bowled Milo and his friends over.
“Think twice about hounding my sister,” he shouted before smearing Milo’s face with snow.
Ren always had my back. And I just stood there and watched while soldiers hauled him away.
I fidget around on the leather seat, put my feet on the dash to hug my knees, sit cross-legged. I’d kill for an aud so I could see the news or send a message, maybe try to figure out where Gwynn ended up. Except it wouldn’t help me much anyway. Auds run on a person’s magic and I’d refuse to ask Talon to power it for me.
We pass through another small town called Bethaen, about two hours from Cadehtraen, and my overwrought mind can’t handle any more. “Okay, I stink at the quiet game,” I say, turning toward him. “At least tell me where you’re from.”
Talon sighs. Silent as the dead. He might as well be—he’s about as interesting as a corpse. Unless you’re one of those people who are into stuff like that. Which I’m not.
“Fine. If you won’t talk, I will. I’m about to go insane. Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”
“We’re driving until nightfall. We’ll stop wherever that leads us.”
“He speaks!” I toss up my hands.
Talon shocks me by continuing. “I’ll ask you questions if you want.”
My mouth drops open.
“You’re the one who’s so eager to talk,” he says. “Talk about yourself.”
“You don’t really want to know anything about me, do you?” That’s the only reason he hasn’t asked me anything before now. To him, I’m just a tears-carrier.
Talon shrugs, gracing me with his face. His scars make a map across it. “We may be together for a while. It wouldn’t hurt.”
A while? How long is a while? A sigh shudders its way out. “Great.”
“What were you doing at Black Vault?”
I don’t want to talk about Gwynn. Knowing him, he’ll track her down for her tears, too. She already drank them, but he doesn’t know that.
“Next.”
“Looks like I’m not the only one who doesn’t want to answer questions.”
“Make them less…personal!” My voice rises to an almost hysterical level. I don’t usually let my emotions fly like this, but I have a hard time controlling them around him. The corners of his mouth crack fully for the first time. A miniscule smile rides on them, igniting a flame to my blood.
I fold my arms, pursing my lips. He has a point, though. Maybe what I asked he didn’t want to talk about either.
That short spurt of conversation fuels me until the sun falls, and the starry blue sky blankets the horizon. Talon gets off at an exit into Waenton. The town name sounds familiar, but I can’t figure out why.
Vehicles in various colors line both sides of the street beside the double-level City Center building. Columns support the roof above the main entrance. People spill from the doors, peppering the sidewalks, and a kid in a black cap scampers among them, shoving fliers at anyone who will take one.
No one does.
“Let’s do something about this!” the kid yells as people walk past, hardly noticing him. His sunburned face is bent, distraught. The people around him could be walking automatons for all the expression they show. A woman passes him, her gaze on the ground. Another couple trudges by, expressions as still as if they’ve been hardened in clay.
“What’s going on here?” I ask, thumbing the window.
Talon takes a corner away from the crowd and the center of town—if you can call it that. It’s so small there’s not even a restaurant or fire station. Just a single, meager market.
“People don’t like the raids, the Arcs taking their men and boys. They’re gathering. But they don’t really know what to do.”
“The war,” I say, though the voice seems to belong to someone else. House after house flag past the window as we make our way deeper into the small town.
“The war.”
I want to know how many of their men and boys have been taken—and at the same time I don’t want to know at all. And though I know why, it still ruffles me that nobody cares as much as the boy passing out fliers did. I want to run out and join him.
“Why do some people feel more than others?” I can’t help the question. I’ve wondered it so often, but I’ve never asked anyone. Talon seems like the type of person who would know the answer, though I don’t expect him to share it.
He surprises me by speaking. “The dreams have something to do with it, I guess. But I think it all comes down to how much magic a person has. The weaker they are, the less they feel.”
Talon turns onto a street called Belmot Avenue. The vehicle is way too silent while I mull his words over. It makes sense, that a person’s emotions are tied to the strength of their magic. I’ve just never considered it before.
“That’s—” I don’t know what it is, so I don’t finish.
“Something so weak can’t fight against something so strong,” Talon adds softly.
Then why do I seem to feel everything when I have no magic at all?
***
Talon takes a few more corners and finally parks in the driveway of a small, white brick home with a wide porch.
“Whose house is this?” I ask. For a moment I suspect it’s his. But if he doesn’t want me knowing where he’s from, he wouldn’t take me to his house. I catch a glimpse of the star-bruised sky out the window.
“Dunno,” he says. “But it’s vacant.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
Talon kills the ignition and faces me. “I don’t waste time with hotels.” His tone is firm and explanatory. And condescending.
He must realize it because he sighs and purses his lips. The action brings out a flesh-colored scar below his nose. “I’m not used to talking to someone normally like this. Usually, I have to be firm with people. I guess I’m not used to being casual.”
“Was that an apology?”
He blinks heavily as if to say, Are you done bothering me, yet?
“You’re not going to explain any of that, are you?”
“No.” And he exits the vehicle.
I hustle out behind him. “What’s wrong with hotels?” I say loudly just to bug him. He spins and moves in close so I can see the squiggly dark blue designs along the edges of his irises.
“I never stay in hotels,” he says, sounding annoyed. His voice is half as loud as mine was. “Too much hassle, too easily traced. I feel my way around towns and find a house that’s empty for the night.”
“With magic, right?” I know the answer, but I want to see if he’ll tell me so himself. He doesn’t.
If he thinks I’m breaking into some stranger’s house, he’s in for a rude awakening. I have to get away.
His steps make sweeping noises across the grass behind the white brick house. He assumes I’ll follow, but I stare at the houses along the street, thoughts stirring.
I can run. I can knock on a door, ask for help. I dodge a look at Talon and then head down the sidewalk when someone calls my name, prickling the hairs at my neck.
“Ambry. What are you doing here?”
I rotate to find a boy staring at me. But it's not Talon, as I thought. This boy is shorter, closer to my height, with long brown hair tucked behind his ears. He meanders nearer to me in the moonlight.
"Paul?" I say, completely dumbfounded.
It's not possible, how can Paul Crowder be here? His dad was my dad's best friend in pre-col. Our families get together about once a year, but the Crowders always come to our house, not the other way around. I wonder if I'm seeing things.
"What are you doing in Waenton?" he asks again.
"I--what?"
I nearly smack my forehead. Waenton! I knew there was a reason the town sounded familiar.
“Paul! Can I use your aud? I need…” Should I tell Paul about Ren? And who will I call? I can’t go home, not with Arcs trying to kill me. The thought sends shivers down my backbone.
“Is everything okay?” Paul asks, scuffing a finger under his nose. “Is your dad here?”
I peer back toward the barbed wire fence and groan. Talon pokes his head around the corner of the white brick and rolls his eyes before making his way toward me. There goes my chance.
Such A Secret Place (Stolen Tears Book 1) Page 8
