Such A Secret Place (Stolen Tears Book 1)

by Cortney Pearson

  “This building is rigged with Prones. Even if I had some, I couldn’t use it. I’m sorry, baby sis. I’m Tyrus’s man now.”

  “Don’t do this,” I plead. Magic or not, I still have my skills. Attacking Gwynn the other night was one thing. But my brother?

  I shake my wrists, trying to recall my training. The moves—ridge-handed and otherwise—that have sprung up instinctively in so many other instances seem to deflate. My mind voids, my bones fizz.

  But I do have something else.

  I start to hum, the harp strings in my heart coming to life. The song is low and caressing. Ren’s eyes roll back into his head. And though he continues to speak, his words are slurred.

  “I know you don’t have magic, but orders are orders. I belong to him. I can’t disobey. I’m—sorry,” he says again before switching his attention to the Arc currently closing the last of the crowd in the chamber.

  “Hold the—door,” he mumbles, tripping over his feet. “I’ve got one more.”

  Ren shouldn’t be able to fight against the song. It’s not diverting him like it should. It’s not working—why isn’t it working?

  The song will protect you. It will help you.

  Humming isn’t enough. I open my lips and at once my chest becomes a vast chasm. The song comes to life, leaking out in ghostly tones. It sways hypnotically, and as I sing, my feet lift from the floor as surely as if I had wings. The soldier’s eyes glaze over, his mouth drops open. Ren sags against the wall, clawing to stay upright, but he drops his headset and stumbles back.

  People within the open chamber sway in a dizzying frenzy as well as the tones froth and swell from my chest. Words I don’t understand, words with power, surge from me until each one of them staggers.

  I fight against the harp strings still plucking away, an automatic music box urging the song forward. I could go on singing, though it would do no good. Not now. These people have a chance—they need to know they can escape.

  With effort, I force my jaw shut. The song extinguishes, lowers me back to stand on my feet once more. The soldier at the door lolls his head. Ren begins to murmur. I don’t have time.

  “Hurry—get out of here!” I yell to the group inside the chamber. “Get out while you can!”

  And I break for it.

  I follow the hallway, hearing people shuffle behind me. Hopefully, some of them at least had the sense to listen to me. I run for a while, uncertain where the door Ren had led me through is. I’m not sure how to get out of here—not without that card Ren used.

  And Talon, where is he? I can only hope he managed to make it back to a tent or something during the fray. It’s a good thing he wasn’t with me just now. I never imagined having such power. I can hardly believe it—I opened my mouth and had total control over them. Control over the soldier at the door, over Ren. Angels, the whole point of me getting the song was to help him, not use it against him.

  I’m so distracted I hardly notice as I round another corner and slam directly into Tyrus. He wears a fitted uniform decorated with several starred badges and pendants along his left breast pocket. His dark eyes flash with a mixture of animosity and triumph at the sight of me.

  Pure fear, sheer panic overrides, drowning out any strength I’ve built over the past several weeks. I open my mouth, but it’s no use. The harp prickings are gone—I used my only shot. I wasted the song on the wrong person.

  “You continue making things difficult for me, Miss Csille,” Tyrus says beneath that mustache, jerking my elbow. And just as before in that basement, I freeze in the same manner at the touch of his purple hand. I clench my jaw, attempt to jerk one way or the other, to no avail.

  His hand aglow, he drags me easily toward a white door with a small plaque in its center. Authorized Entrance Only, it reads. With a beam of tainted electricity from Tyrus, the door shifts open, sliding into the wall and revealing narrow, boxed-in stairs. Tyrus totes me up, my feet never once touching the concrete steps. At our approach, the door at the top shifts open automatically.

  The room is small and rectangular. Several cabinets line the back wall. Two empty chairs overlook a control panel smattered with buttons and switches, and over it, to the large chamber below. The chamber doors are open, and Arcs—including Ren—are shoving the few prisoners who escaped back into the chamber.

  Tyrus gestures toward the glass. “Your attempt was heroic, Ambry. Pointless, but heroic. I am curious how you gained access to siren song, however.”

  He cocks an eyebrow at me as if I’ll give him an answer. “I’m sure you are,” I say through my teeth. “Let these people go.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  Outside, beyond the glass, soldiers pump their fists in the air, chanting, eager for their next dose. I scan faces, searching for Talon, for some signal to let me know he’s out there, that he’s okay. But the same unease from before sinks lower into my gut like a rock.

  “You expanded the Xian’s power somehow,” I surmise aloud, “to attack so many of us all at once.”

  “Very astute. Ah, I think they’re ready.” He taps a finger to his ear. “Proceed. And Csille? Report back here when you’re done.”

  An alarm sounds. The darts shoot out from their places in the walls like quills from a spooked porcupine, knocking people down. Men, women, and children squeal, shriek, grab at the wounds, one at a time until they each thud to the floor.

  Rage fills my chest. I fight against my invisible cage once more, without success. Enraged shrieks are about all I accomplish.

  The captive people tremble in utter loss. Bodies cluster across the space. Their blood trickles like red veins across the floor.

  “You disgust me,” I tell Tyrus, whose hand glows along with the floating purple glimmers outside. “If you’re going to do this to them, then you do it, don’t make my brother your scapegoat.”

  “I’m doing my duty. If you felt as I do, you would act the same.”

  “Sure,” I say, seething. “I’ll just nab one of those little barbs and see how you like being punctured by it without warning.”

  Tyrus’s mouth quirks below his mustache. “I assure you, you would die before you succeeded.”

  “No,” I say with a promise, “you’ll die once I succeed. You’ll be on the ground if you so much as lay a hand on me.”

  Tyrus jeers. “Funny. It seems I’ve already done that. And here we are.”

  The door behind Tyrus opens, and Ren steps into the tiny room—no headset this time. Without a word, Tyrus heads toward him and removes a dazeblade from its sheath at Ren’s thigh. The gleam from his purple hand extends to the blade, and he stabs it straight into Ren’s stomach.

  “Nooo!” I scream.

  Ren bends over as if vomiting, though nothing expels from his open lips. Tyrus stands, watching Ren writhe as blood oozes from the knife blade embedded into his belly.

  “This can be easy, or it can be hard,” he tells me. “I need your cooperation.”

  “You—you—” Words fail. Utterly and purely fail.

  “You’re wasting my time, Ambry,” he says and then speaks into the mic on the control panel. “Clear the room. Ready the last group.”

  I tunnel inside, ready to yank my magic free, Prone or no Prone. The axrat—he can’t do this. To these people, to Ren. To me. After all I’ve gone through to get my brother back, I’m not about to let this monster take him from me for good.

  “It’s clear you needed more persuasion. I’m sure you have some gallant dream of parading in here and making me bend to your wishes, but it’s time you learned who is in command.”

  I sniff, my eyes stinging with unshed tears. “What do you want from me?”

  Tyrus sneers. “I’m glad you’re beginning to sound more reasonable.” All at once I’m free. I drop to the floor, landing on hands and knees.

  “Now—” The Office of the Arcaians begins.

  I march straight up to where he stands—still smirking over Ren’s buckled form—and punch him a
s hard as I can. Tyrus stumbles backward, and I kneel beside Ren, willing my magic to rise. If only I knew how to heal.

  Ren trembles, bloody hands clasping the dazeblade protruding from his stomach.

  “I’m—sorry,” he sputters. “Never—should have—”

  “Shh,” I tell him, wiping sweat from his brow. Magic swirling around his purple hand, Tyrus extends it, trapping me once more. I fight. I jerk and writhe, but he’s holding me fast.

  “I thought you were going to be reasonable,” he says. His cheek is red from my blow. He waves his sizzling hand, allowing me to speak.

  “Not when you kill my brother right in front of me!”

  Now my only option is to wait for Tyrus to finish Ren off, to plunge the dazeblade further in, slice his throat. I can’t watch that. I won’t.

  Tyrus removes the blade from Ren’s hand. More blood seeps out from the wound. I want to cry, to scream, to break free, but I can do nothing.

  “Get away from him,” I snarl, jerking against my invisible restraints.

  Instead of slashing the blade across Ren’s throat or stabbing it straight to the heart like I expect, magic courses once again around Tyrus’s palm, purple and glistening with violet sparks. Tyrus concentrates and inserts magic into the gaping wound.

  Blood siphons from Ren’s shirt, his skin, his hands. The wound seals itself and heals as if it was never there. Ren collapses to the floor.

  “So much anger,” Tyrus says, resting a hand on his knee as the glow from his skin fades and his hand is a muted purple once more. “It’s a shame the other Itharians don’t react as well as you do.”

  “You don’t know anything about us,” I hiss, eyes on Ren who trembles as he lifts himself to sit.

  Tyrus laughs, a deep rumble. He stands and dusts his violet palm against his olive-colored one. “On the contrary, I know quite a lot about your people, Miss Csille.”

  “Why did you do this? Why have Ren go through all the trouble of bringing me in?” And where is Talon? Angels, please help him. Protect him.

  “Do I really need to answer that? Once again, you have something I want.”

  “I don’t have the tears with me. And I don’t know where Talon is. You might as well let me go.”

  Tyrus smiles at me. It’s not a nice smile. “Conveniently enough, Talon was found outside the Station just minutes before you were brought in. He put up quite the fight, but my soldiers will be happy to receive their reward for bringing the traitor in.”

  I continue to struggle against my bonds. “You’re lying.”

  He raises an aud to me and shows me the image on the small screen. Talon in the stolen Arcaian shirt, struggling within the grasp of two other men, a thick metal cuff strapped around his neck and his hands shackled together at the wrists.

  Realization plunges down painfully. Talon. What have I done? He came back for me. He told me it was pointless, that Ren belonged to Tyrus, that there was no hope. I should have known the song wouldn’t work. I should have told him to go back to Solomus, back to Shasa.

  “I have someone who wanted to see you one last time,” Tyrus says.

  “One last time? You make it sound like I’m dying.”

  He reaches toward the control panel in front of the window and retrieves a long, curved Xian claw. Its silver is smudged and tarnished. That, along with the shape of the tool, so much resembles a dismembered mechanical arm that I shudder.

  “I’ve heard losing your magic feels like that. Death. Like draining blood from a person’s body.”

  A frightening sensation builds, climbing up my spine. Ren guards the door, hands crossed in front of his body. A gash tears at the front of his bloodied shirt. I could go to him, but he said it himself, he’s Tyrus’s man. It would do me no good.

  “Why do you do it?” I ask Tyrus. “Are you that egotistical, you’ll strip people of their magic just to get a high?”

  Tyrus bends to level his eyes with mine. “This isn’t a momentary escape like those people search for in places like Black Vault—which we now know the base location of, thanks to your brother. He really has been one of our most invaluable conquests. But when a person’s magic becomes mine—” He pauses to inhale, not elaborating, but basking in whatever disgusting satisfaction he gets. After a few moments he turns.

  “Restrain her,” he orders, gesturing toward me while Ren wheels a cart in my direction. My body is frozen, still in his hold in that invisible cage. I grit my teeth, try to veer one way or another, to jerk free and run for it. But it’s no use.

  The cart resembles the one Tyrus used at the school assembly back in Cadehtraen. Only, this time I know he won’t be scanning my hands with it. The tethers in the white box come to life and ensnare my wrists, holding me fast. My limbs loosen, free once more, but I’m not going anywhere.

  A door on the opposite end of the small room sheers open. Gwynn steps through, poised and dignified. Her blonde hair is pulled into a tight ponytail, and she wears a long gray tunic over tight pants and tan, ankle boots.

  “Gwynn,” I say.

  “Gwynndol’s upset, you know,” Tyrus says as she crosses to his side.

  “Gwynndol?” No one but her stepdad ever called her that.

  “That you attacked her.”

  I tug at my hands. I prop a foot against the base of the cart, which somehow remains unmoving despite the wheels or my strain against it. Gwynn’s clacking steps close in. Her face holds a devastating glare. She doesn’t once look over at my brother. A person would never be able to tell they’d been into each other before all of this.

  “You struck her down,” Tyrus goes on. “Stole her responsibility from her.”

  “You, of all people, know what my childhood was like,” Gwynn says, folding her arms. “And yet you treated me just the same way he did.”

  She’s comparing me to her stepdad? “I’m sorry, Gwynn. I never wanted to hurt you. But you don’t understand—the tears were my responsibility. I had to get them back.”

  Of the three prongs on the discolored claw, Tyrus strokes the longer one curving down the center. The metal clicks in anticipation. For a fleeting moment I wonder how the thing actually works, how they redirect the magic to another source through the filthy tool.

  I urge my magic forward, but the Prone is still active. Tyrus has covered all the angles, leaving me helpless. I think of Ren, of my parents who lost both of their children in one day. Of Solomus. Of Talon.

  Tyrus’s purple hand begins to glow once more. First from the wrist, then the radiance expands until the tips of his fingers shine. I grit my teeth and writhe against my restraints, but the terror climbing up my throat retaliates, urging and spiking my pulse and making me weak.

  Gwynn strokes his hand, riveted as the violet glow illuminates her fascinated expression. Tyrus touches her cheek with his tainted fingers. Her lids flutter in response.

  “Are you ready?” he asks in a gentle, soothing voice.

  Gwynn swallows, but raises her chin in affirmation. I imagine something similar happening when her stepdad was brought in. She, standing there in approval, while the Arcaians executed him.

  But instead of Tyrus stepping forward and stabbing into my leg, he hands the claw to Gwynn.

  “What are you doing?” I ask in total shock.

  Gwynn admires the metal appendage, wielding it like a scepter, something to give her instant power just by being in her grip. She takes a few stately steps toward me.

  “I saw you use magic back at that house, Ambry. I know you found some. Too bad you won’t get to have it for long.”

  “Gwynn, don’t do this. This isn’t you!”

  Tyrus urges her forward. I attempt again to push against the cart, to free the hold that has me slightly hunched over. Gwynn stoops before me, one hand on my thigh to get a closer look.

  “Anywhere you like,” Tyrus says in instruction from over her shoulder. “The Xian will sense her marrow. It will find its way in.”

  Gwynn’s hands tremble, but her voic
e is strong. “You’ll be my first one, Ambry. I should have done it on Clarke, but I wanted him dead. You, though. Your magic will be mine.”

  I can’t believe this is the same person I’ve known all my life. The same friend who would come over after pre-col to do homework; the same friend who confided in me time and time again, over her stepdad, her mom, her dreams. Over everything.

  “Whatever happened to not giving up on each other?” I say. “Think of what you’ll become, Gwynn. Think of what you fought for before you drank those tears!”

  “I fought for this!” she cries.

  I search for some way to connect to the old Gwynn, for something to remind her of how things were. She wanted a better life. Happiness. But she can’t really think this will give her that.

  I glance at my hands secured in the white box, the way Weston’s had been when he was caught. Oh angels. Weston. He used magic that day, despite the Prone. But I have no magitats, no more song, no other resources…

  Too late, Gwynn shrieks and drives the metal in.

  It stabs, my blood welling up at the source, and I yelp at the intake of pain. The claw chews through muscle with a violent agony that charges down the length of my leg. My eyes sting and rip at the seams, and the irony of my inability to cry has never been more obvious.

  I twist and writhe but find no release from the stinging puncture. Nothing flows at my eyes but a dry torment as the claw sinks deeper and deeper until it drills blindingly through my bone.

  I scream again. Not now, not after I finally know I have it! After I’ve finally learned how to use it!

  Something at my chest prickles like a spiked mace. My stream of magic struggles, frail and shaking. It tries to come but soon whips back like a flimsy rubber band.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. Praying. Begging. And though they’re far from me, I swear I sense the tears trembling as well.

  I dig once more against the pain, trying to awaken the magic, to warn it somehow before it’s stolen from me. I pull against the restraints around my wrists and continue tunneling inward, pleading, wishing I knew what Talon did to push it along, wishing I knew what caused the Prone to work so I could figure a way around it.