“Liana, I am so sorry for how I treated you. I’m sorry that it took almost losing you for me to realize how awful I’d been to you, and I’m sorry that I forced you to feel so afraid of me that you needed to defend yourself from me. To be honest, I don’t think there is a word that encompasses my regret and sorrow for my behavior toward you, but believe me when I say that your father’s anger toward you isn’t about you. Not really. He just… He just doesn’t see that yet.”
“Then what does he see?” I demanded, trying to understand the root of my father’s problem with me. I was certain it was stupid and petty—but if I knew, then maybe I could find a way to address it.
My mother’s face tightened, and she sighed heavily. “He’s jealous of you,” she finally admitted.
“He’s what?” My eyes widened, and I couldn’t help myself—I leaned over to look at my father from around my mother’s shoulder. He was already watching us, his eyes glittering in the dim light, and I met his gaze. His eyes narrowed, and he pointedly turned away, crossing his arms for good measure.
His behavior didn’t strike me as particularly jealous, not to mention… He was jealous of me?! I doubted it very much.
“Mom…”
“Scipio chose you, Liana. Do you understand?” My mother searched my face and then sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “Look, I know it’s hard to understand, but your father… He feels that he should’ve been chosen to do Scipio’s bidding. But Scipio ignored him, ignored his rank, and chose you. He… He doesn’t understand, and he thinks you somehow tricked Scipio into picking you.”
She sighed again, and looked down. “As for us and how we raised you… Scipio forgive me, Liana—I have never been very fair to you, from the day you were born. And then when Sybil died and you remained… I believed that there was a reason, a plan. Hell, I was the one who convinced your father of that! But you were just so obstinate and stubbornly fixated on questioning everything around you! I was scared that you would wind up in the expulsion chambers and that I’d lose another daughter. I couldn’t bear going through that again, so… I was hard on you. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I see now that I was so very, very wrong. I love you.”
I stared at her, my mouth agape. I blinked my eyes several times, and then shook my head, trying to clear it from the verbal punch my mother had just delivered. My father… was jealous… of me. Because he thought Scipio had chosen me to take down Devon Alexander. And both he and my mother had only been hard on me because they wanted to keep me safe?
I didn’t want to believe it, and yet, it held a note of truth. And, it would go a long way toward explaining why his behavior toward me hadn’t improved while hers had, despite the heroic nature of my deeds. But still, a forty-five-year-old man being jealous of his twenty-year-old daughter… That was a bit much.
“Unbelievable,” I muttered. I had no idea how to even address that particular emotion, short of calling him out on it—and now was neither the time nor the place. I had to get my head back in the challenge and think about what was going to happen next, especially with my mother and her team. “Are you okay on your team? They aren’t treating you too poorly?”
She smiled, clearly touched by my concern. “Don’t worry about that, Liana. You just focus on the challenge.”
“I am,” I replied. “But I want to know what’s going on with your team. Are you or Min-Ha planning to take a leadership role for the challenge?”
I hoped that one of them was. It would make things much easier all around, as it would mean I didn’t have Lieutenant Zale gunning for me (or ordering his teammates to come after me). Not to mention, if we were grouped into the same team for the challenge, I was betting the struggle for command would go much easier on Dylan—neither my mother nor Min-Ha cared about the position, so they would have no qualms about stepping back and letting someone else step forward. If my father was leading, however, it would be an entirely different issue. But no use fretting over it until I got her answer.
She shook her head. “No. I thought it best not to petition for it after what your father told the others. Min-Ha didn’t want it, and your father is in complete support of Zale, so…”
I was disappointed, and a little hurt, but not surprised. Still, it must’ve shown on my face, because my mother squeezed my shoulders gently.
“Look, Liana, I know you’re worried about Salvatore, and I can understand why, given his relationship with Devon. But you know the next challenge as well as I do. And if we’re on the same team, I’ll do my best to support you. Even if we’re on opposing teams, I’ll do what I can to help you out.”
“Mom, Dylan is in charge for this challenge, and I don’t feel right planning to take control from her. I’m fine with letting her lead, and if she makes a mistake that might cause us to lose, I’ll step in then. But I should try to follow the rule changes.”
My mom arched her eyebrow and gave me a dry look. “To hell with that, Liana. Nobody really cares if you can be a good follower—that’s not what this competition is about, no matter what the rule changes were. As soon as you get a chance to take control, you take it, and don’t think twice about it, especially if you know that what you’re doing is the best course of action. The judges and Knights will see it as well, and they will only reward you for it, do you understand?”
I didn’t. Well, I understood the words, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that she was urging me to undermine the leader of our group for this round. It meant that she believed in me, and that she wanted me to be Champion. Before, she never would’ve considered me worthy of the position. If anything, she would’ve laughed had I told her I planned to enter the Tourney. The new change in my mother’s behavior toward me, as much as it warmed me inside, still left me feeling confused, especially when she was acting so supportive. She had stopped encouraging me a long time ago, and now that she was again, I couldn’t help but wonder why she was doing it.
But that suspicion was born from years of neglect and emotional abuse, and I needed to get over the fact that my mother was suddenly on my side. She was trying to do her best to help me, and I was grateful for a sign that she was changing. That she genuinely loved me.
She gave me an intense look and a gentle shake, and I realized she was waiting for me to reply. “Yeah, Mom. I understand.”
I still wasn’t sure that I was going to change my mind about how I planned to handle Dylan, but I had to say something to let her know I was listening.
“Good.” She leaned forward and pressed her lips to my forehead. “Be careful, darling, and I hope we wind up on the same team. I love you.”
Then the screens suddenly cut out, and I looked around as the lights in the room came back on. Officials began to stream in to collect the teams, and my mother let go of me, moving away and toward her own team.
I stood, staring at the spot she had just been moments before, and realized that I hadn’t told her I loved her back.
And for once, I really wanted to.
27
The officials were tightlipped as they led us to our entry points for the arena. We had no idea what teams would be joining ours, and no one told us whether we would be defending the gate, or attacking it. I chafed under the mystery, because I didn’t like going into things blind and without a plan, but Dylan seemed unperturbed by the lack of information.
Which only made my apprehension worse. We could be using this time to come up with ways to unite with the two teams we were about to join, to make the most out of the thirty-minute preparation time, or we could even be strategizing different tactics for defense or offense… But instead, we marched steadily down the halls in a thick, oppressive silence.
It wasn’t good for morale, in my opinion. If I were in her shoes, I would be pestering the officials with questions, trying to get them to let something slip. Anything to distract from this awful tension that seemed ready to snap at any moment.
But maybe this was how Dylan was?
Quietly introspective before a battle?
I wasn’t sure, but it was doing nothing for me. My heart was racing a mile a minute while my palms were sweating. I kept looking around for signs of life—at least some of the other candidates. If I could catch a glimpse of any other teams near us, the odds were they were going to be on our team. I was familiar enough with most of the candidates’ faces to know what we’d be getting if I could see them, and could even offer up some ideas to Dylan on how to proceed.
But I only found empty corridors. I suspected that the officials were intentionally masking our movements and the placements of our teams, to keep us from coordinating plans before the Tourney began. And of course they would; the candidates were given thirty minutes to coordinate, and the officials wanted to ensure that they only had thirty minutes. No more, no less. Still, it was eerie to see such desolation, even as the noise of thousands of people above us in the stands threatened to shake apart the Citadel.
Not to mention, it made the halls feel like they were potentially dangerous. Heightened security aside, if whoever was controlling Scipio had managed to program holes into the system, then we were isolated and alone. As was my mother.
I found myself thinking of our exchange, and a strange anxiety gripped me. It took no small amount of reason to help it pass, some of which included reminding myself that she could take care of herself. Most of it came from my belief that the new security protocols had to be slowing down and limiting the influence of our enemies. At the very least, they wouldn’t be able to do much out in the open without risking exposure, and I believed they wanted to protect their identity more than anything.
Or at least, I hoped that they did.
Just as I managed to finally put a lid on the influx of concern for my mother, anger against my father flared, and I was once again distracted by a useless and unproductive train of thought. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that he was jealous. Of me.
I mean, who was the child in this relationship, really? Even if I had actually been chosen by Scipio, it was an honor I could do without. The cost that came with it was too high, with all of the people who had died along the way. And he should realize that! He knew the hardship that came with being a Knight. He had lost friends—good ones—on the job. He should have known how damaging it was for me to watch people I cared about being killed, all because of something Scipio had ordered.
And then to turn around and take it out on my mother… It was beyond childish. He was acting like a bully. Not that I should be surprised by that, of course. My entire life he’d been a bully to me, so why hadn’t I expected it?
Because it was my mother, and he’d never treated her like that.
I let out a sigh of disgust and cracked my neck, trying to relax. I couldn’t afford to be distracted by my family drama, and all this line of thinking was doing was making me even more anxious.
This was why I liked talking before a mission. It helped keep me calm and focused on the moment. Which was exactly what I needed to be.
We came to a stop just as I was in the middle of recalling the various winning strategies of the Gate challenge, historically, and several officials emerged from a door, ushering us in. Their arms were filled with lash harnesses and batons for us to replace our own with, since our personal ones were not allowed. For once, we had individual privacy screens—though it turned out not to be so private after all, as I had to strip down in front of the official. She performed a quick search of both my person and uniform, and then helped me get into my harness and then uniform again, systematically checking and rechecking the hand controls for my lashes, as well as the connecting pieces of the harness.
I endured her hands, and then the hands of a second official who came behind her to check her work, trying not to think about yet another pair of unfamiliar hands on my body. Instead, I found myself wondering which teams we would be merged with. Whoever they were, I hoped Dylan found a clever way to take charge—or better yet, found herself overshadowed by someone else. If she was overshadowed, it would mean her popularity among the Knights would dwindle—and hopefully make a way for me to edge my way to victory in the final challenge.
Then again, whoever overshadowed her would likely become a new favorite among the Knights, which would make them all the more difficult to beat in the final challenge. I gritted my teeth, feeling very much like the entire weight of the Tower were pressing down on my shoulders, reminding me that real lives were at stake. And here I was acting all “honorable” by letting Dylan lead instead of planning ways to take the position away from her. Not to mention, if she screwed up, we would lose, and I would be out of the Tourney completely.
It took several deep breaths for me to shift my thoughts before they got caught in that particular mental trap again, and returned my mind to the challenge at hand. I couldn’t afford to be distracted like this, yet here I was, minutes before we were going to enter the arena, and I couldn’t seem to get it together.
And I desperately needed to.
Once we stepped into the arena, we’d only have half an hour to plan our attack or defense, and after that… it was basically a fight down to the last person. If I failed to pull it together before we stepped through that door, I’d be next to worthless for anything but the fight.
I jerked my mind back on track, again, forcing myself to think about past challenges and what victorious teams of the Gate challenge had done in the past, trying to fill my mind with strategies that had made them successful. No matter what happened, the leadership of the teams needed to be decided within five minutes, so that the bulk of the time could be devoted to the actual challenge. The strategies for selecting a single leader varied—and to be honest, weren’t easily replicated, which made it important for someone to get command as quickly as possible. If we didn’t, then we risked losing valuable time necessary to constructing a complete defense. In the past, too many teams had lost because they couldn’t stop fighting over who was in charge, and had wasted their precious planning time and lost the entire challenge.
If that happened to us, we’d be out of the Tourney. Lacey would come after us with everything she had, and whoever wound up winning the Tourney would either kill the Tower intentionally, or through ignorance—and everyone I loved and cared about would be dead. Every man, woman, and child would be dead.
I wasn’t about to let that happen.
Once the officials were satisfied that our uniforms and equipment were up to all safety standards and were working properly, we were ushered through another door and into a small antechamber, which I recognized as the armory reception area. The officials closed the door behind us, sealing us in.
“This is fun and new,” Maddox said, tugging at her uniform.
“Just keep your mouth shut and follow my lead,” Dylan said, shaking out her arms. “I have to assert control quickly once we get out there, or everything will devolve into chaos and infighting.”
I begrudgingly gave her an internal nod of respect, glad that she realized the first few minutes of this challenge would be crucial. But the way she said it bothered me; it was like she thought she could just strut out there, declare “I’m in charge, do what I say,” and get away with it, which almost never worked. Not to mention, she was being completely dismissive to her teammates.
Maddox gave me a hard look, her jaw tight, and I shook my head, answering her silent request to punch Dylan. She rolled her eyes, exhaled, and folded her arms over her chest. “What should we do while you’re doing that?” she drawled.
The look Dylan gave her was deeply serious. “Assess the environment they put us in and start brainstorming. I want you to have a list of five different plans ready for either offense or defense by the time I get the other two teams in line, depending on which goal we receive.”
Again, that easy confidence. She completely ignored the derisive quality of Maddox’s tone, and dispatched her orders in a dispassionate voice. I was impressed yet again—and a little put off by the lack of c
oncrete planning. It felt very underprepared, but then again, some people were more capable leaders in the moment, and I couldn’t judge her without seeing her in action.
Still, my mother’s words rang in my ears, and I resolved to follow her advice the second Dylan proved that her leadership was failing. It didn’t matter if I wanted to or not. I couldn’t allow us to lose this challenge. So if she made smart decisions, I wouldn’t waste any time arguing with her. And if she didn’t… Well, I wasn’t going to argue with her then, either. I’d just seize control without a second thought—and I wouldn’t apologize, either.
There was a chiming sound from the door leading to the arena, and I looked past Dylan to see words forming on the dark screen.
Candidates will stand in the center of the room.
Confused by the instructions, we clustered together into the middle of the room, and waited. A moment later, the floor shuddered, and I experienced a moment of weightlessness as the circular disc we were standing on began to move upward, lifting us quickly toward the ceiling. I looked up in time to see a part of it slide away, and then we were thrown into complete darkness, with only the rush of air blowing my hair to show that we were still moving.
My heart plummeted down into the soles of my boots, and each individual muscle clenched as images of being crushed against a ceiling above danced through my mind. Suddenly a white light from above blinded me. The air whooshed out of my lungs as I went weightless, my feet disconnecting from the flooring for a microsecond, and then gravity returned. I wobbled in place, my knees like gelatin, and looked around, wincing against the bright spotlights that were shining in my eyes.
White blobs cut across a dark background, and then slowly drew into focus, forming into bricks, banisters, statues… It took a second, but finally I realized that the arena had been constructed to resemble a life-sized replica of the Bridge of Heroes—the massive bridge that connected the Medica to the Core.
The Girl Who Dared to Rise Page 26
