Garden of Thorns

by Amber Mitchell

  I step out of the clearing, diving just into the tree line.

  “Get up!” Arlo shouts, his voice booming out behind me in the silence of dawn. “She’s escaping!”

  Against my better judgment, I turn at his voice in time to see Rayce and Oren spring upward. Oren’s long hair is crinkled from slumber, and Rayce still has his boots off. Almost as if Rayce can feel my gaze on them, he looks in my direction. He’s on his feet and leaping for me quicker than I can blink.

  “Rose, wait!” he yells from much closer than I’d like.

  I didn’t want it to come to this. Slithering off like a cobra in the grass. But if you corner a snake, it strikes. Raising my stolen weapon to eye level, I take aim and pull the trigger at the person who taught me how it works. But instead of kicking back like an angry horse, nothing blasts out from the barrel.

  But why? Then I remember he warned me not to turn the stunner on him when he gave it to me to protect myself from the soldiers. He said it didn’t work on them.

  No time for questions. I don’t waste another second.

  I drop the stunner and plunge into the forest, dodging the nearest tree trunk. Dead leaves crunch out my flight and the morning air dampens my bare skin as I race through the forest. Tree trunks and bushes rush past me in a blur as I push myself faster. I feel like something wild, hair flying out behind me and bare toes touching the earth. Like a real woods spirit come to life. My feet are spurred on by the rising need to save my sisters. They’re probably waiting for me, wondering why I left them. I duck under a low branch. Worse yet, they might think I died. I was in the tent when it went up in flames.

  “Come back!” Rayce’s voice chases after me.

  But he won’t catch me. He can’t.

  I burst through the trees into a meadow, surprised by the clear view of white clouds overhead.

  I look behind me and catch a glimpse of ivory, the color of Rayce’s shirt, striking through the tree trunks, heading in my direction. How can he keep sensing where I am?

  I rush into the middle of the clearing, the long emerald grass tickling my calves.

  One minute my feet connect with solid ground and the next I’m falling through the air. My body slams into rock ten feet below, knocking the wind from my lungs. Morning light pours in from an opening above me, illuminating the dust and dirt in the air. I’ve taken a halo of dead leaves with me into some kind of underground passageway. Its narrow walls are crudely hacked out of stone and look just big enough to fit two people walking shoulder to shoulder. A moldy mix of dirt and stagnant water fills my nose, and darkness stretches out so far it looks endless. If I head into it, I might never find my way back. On the other hand, if Rayce gets a hold of me, I won’t find my way back home, either.

  I push myself up and hobble out of the beam of light just as Rayce’s voice fills the air.

  “Are you hurt?” he yells.

  Nice try. I’m not about to give up where I am now that I’m almost free. Not now that I know they plan to lock me up as soon as we reach Zareen and prod me for information I don’t have. Besides, my sisters need me.

  I don’t stick around to hear what he says next. I wade into the darkness and finally figure out why it was so easy for him to follow me. My entire body casts a dim green glow on the cave walls. Probably another side effect from that awful powder. I’m like a dull lantern, lighting up the grayness in front of me. Behind me, I can still see the beam of light marking the hole I fell through. As long as they don’t cover it back up, I should be able to find it when I come back.

  After what feels like twenty feet, the passage widens and forks. No markings indicate where either tunnel leads. Stepping into the right passage, I notice that the floor gently slants down. I definitely don’t want to go deeper into the earth, so I head left instead, where this passage remains level.

  A loud whistle rings out in the dark, and I drop to my knees. Bright light fills my head as Fern’s scream joins the snaking notes of the flute. I cover my ears as it echoes all around me, but it’s too late.

  The sticky heat of my cage creeps up my back; the stale air chokes its way down my throat. Fern’s black hair shines in the sun as she reaches out with a shaky hand, pleading for her life. Her begging morphs into screams. Shears walks forward, his blades shining in the daylight, but Fern’s head whips around. Her brown eyes lock onto mine, glinting harder than when she used to talk about her father selling her to the Garden.

  “Why didn’t you help me?” she yells. “You promised!”

  The anger in her gaze sears my flesh.

  I cower on my knees and shut my eyes tight to escape the memory, but she follows me behind my eyelids. I let her die. No matter how many times I relive it, I know. I let her die.

  My nostrils fill with the rancid scent of the Gardener’s breath hot on my cheek as he explains the rules to me. Nine years old and alone in the world for the first time. Dance until your feet give out, never talk back, and don’t ever disobey an order, or your Wilted pays the price.

  The Gardener’s fingers tickle my neck like a spider’s legs as he unhooks my mother’s ruby and then clasps it around his own neck.

  His touch lingers, but it feels uncharacteristically soft on my back…

  “Child, you’re going to be fine,” Oren says.

  My ghosts vanish in the warmth of Oren’s gaze. What just happened to me? How could I have gone back there, even in my mind?

  My mouth feels like I chewed on sand, and my head hangs heavy. I run my hands along my middle to make sure I’m intact. I’ve seen things that aren’t real after starving in my cart for a few days, but never as vivid as that. Have I gone soft like Tulip the first time she combed the air, insisting it was her dolly’s hair?

  I blink back the last of the false sunlight from my vision and notice Oren’s hand lightly touching my shoulder.

  His fingertips burn into my skin, and I crawl to get away from him, but my mind is still dizzy from the hallucination of the Garden.

  “Please, just let me go,” I say.

  He frowns and shakes his head like I’ve given the wrong answer to a question he never asked.

  “Why are you so keen to run back to your captor?”

  “Because I need to save the other girls,” I say, the words catching in my throat.

  “The girls from the Garden?”

  I clench my fists at the word. It grates against my skin, because it sounds so beautiful when people say it. Like something that springs life from the ground. But if they felt the reality, knew what it was like to be powerless…they wouldn’t say it like that. They’d know it was all an illusion made by their god of death, Yun.

  Oren’s brow furrows deeper, creating a little M at the bridge of his nose, and the wrinkles stay there so effortlessly, I get the impression it’s a mask he wears often. For a moment, I even think he might understand why I can’t stay here.

  “I need to rescue them and make sure the Gardener can never steal another life.”

  He rubs his beard, considering my words. “They’re your family.”

  There’s no question in his voice. I nod at his assumption, even though “family” doesn’t express how deeply I care for them. How much it kills me every time the lackeys hold Violet down to color her hair purple and it leaves burn marks all over her scalp. “I know you have no reason to trust us,” Oren says, “but that kind of abuse is part of the reason we started the rebellion.”

  “Of course I can’t trust you,” I say, searching his smooth face for a reaction. “I heard everything you said by the fire. I’m your prisoner, and I wish you’d stop pretending I’m anything different.”

  He takes a step toward me.

  I recoil, slamming against the rocky wall. The moment my back presses against the stone, bright green light explodes from the surface, bathing my skin in its odd glow.

  “What have you done to me?” I shout, stumbling away from him.

  When I separate from the stone, the light disappears.

  �
��No need for concern,” he says in a soothing tone. “It’s just the Zarenite in the wall reacting to the Zarenite powder still left in your body.”

  My arms and legs won’t stop trembling, but it’s unclear whether the tremors are from fear or exhaustion. My predicament weighs down on me, heavier than the rock above our heads.

  “Look, see, it happens to me, too.” He presses his palm to the wall.

  Green veins burst from the stone, brightest where his skin comes into contact with it. But unlike when I touched it, the light spreads from the wall down his arm in a strange spiraling pattern, like what the wind might look like if it could be seen, shining bright even through his clothes. The odd light emanating from the rock feels familiar, but I can’t place it.

  “It’s the same reason you’re glowing slightly,” he says, letting his palm fall away. The moment he does, the green light in the rock surface and his skin fades. “Though, since you only ingested it, the effects won’t last long. Another day or two and it will be out of your system.”

  I stare at the spot that was glowing a moment ago and remember where I saw it before. It looks like the large hunk of rock in the Gardener’s collection, but I keep that bit of information to myself. I want to ask him more about it, but I can’t decide if I should. In the end, my curiosity wins.

  “It’s the powder that makes the walls glow?” I ask.

  “No, it’s the mineral in the wall, Zarenite,” he says. “That’s mostly what the powder is made of. It reacts to itself and begins to glow. It’s the same mineral that allows our stunners to work and why we glow when we use them. When Zarenite is heated up by our bodies and comes into contact with more of the same mineral, it causes it to glow. That’s the wonderful thing about our base—even when you are lost in the dark, you can always find light in the stone.”

  So that’s why a dull glow has emanated from my skin ever since I woke up, like a beacon leading my captors right to me. Not only did they ensure I wouldn’t be able to escape by causing me to black out, but they also made sure I couldn’t slip away in the darkness. I clench my fists, a scream crawling its way up my throat, but it’s silenced by a high-pitched whistle that peals through the air. My eyes snap shut and I throw my hands over my ears, telling myself over and over again to stay in the present.

  “We’re over here,” Oren says, his voice muffled through my fingers.

  My eyes open at his words, and I cower under his intense gaze. I watch him reaching out, my heart hammering as he places his hand on the ceiling. As he explained, the Zarenite in his body reacts with a system of Zarenite lining the top of the cave. It continues to light up the corridor overhead, down the way I wandered, bathing the cave in a glow like what the sunlight might look like if it caught a fever.

  Rayce and Arlo are illuminated about thirty feet from our spot.

  “You could have told us you found her,” Rayce shouts as they rush toward us.

  So, Oren kept me talking until the others grew closer and used the connecting Zarenite clusters to signal our location. At every turn, these men are showing me their true colors. My younger self would have missed the signs, but thanks to him, I’m able to see a man’s true colors much quicker now. The anger I felt a moment ago bubbles over, and I jump back from Oren, the man I thought might have understood me.

  Rayce catches me by the wrist, his large hand dwarfing it.

  “Are you hurt?” he asks, his words clipped.

  I shake my head.

  “Then you can walk on your own,” he snaps. “Don’t test us again.”

  His words drip menace, but before he lets go of me, his gentle grip reveals his worry underneath.

  “Oren, do you think you can navigate the tunnels based on where we are?” Arlo asks. “I’ve never been this far out.”

  “You definitely found a new entrance to the mines,” Rayce says.

  “I’ve studied enough of the maps to reasonably lead the way,” Oren says, stepping around us. He leans in as he passes by and whispers, “Don’t worry, we’ll make it just fine. Adventuring is good for this old soul.”

  His kindness isn’t unnoticed, but all I can think about as Oren ducks in the tight space is that in my panic to get away from them, I’ve brought myself even closer to the cage they want to throw me in. The irony escapes my lips as a chuckle. Rayce raises an eyebrow but doesn’t comment as Arlo and Oren head back out to the forked passage. He motions for me to follow.

  Only our footfalls break the stillness as we walk. I’m not sure about the others, but my sleepless night weighs down my eyelids. A deep ache pulses in both of my feet as the bottoms scrape against the scratchy stone.

  We walk until the moments blur together, stuck between my heavy eyelids. The tunnels keep winding, the rock growing rougher the farther we go.

  Every so often Oren presses his hand to the wall, bathing the entire tunnel with that unnatural green light. The air becomes cooler with every step, biting into my lungs, and I’m grateful again for the dirty white robe Rayce gave me.

  Halfway down this tunnel, Arlo touches three long scratches carved in the stone and smiles.

  “This is part of the fourth passageway we made,” he says. “I know where we are now.”

  We walk for another endless stretch of time until we reach yet another fork in the road, and my three captors take a right. I follow Arlo inside then nearly crash into him when he stops. Rayce squeezes in next to me, and Oren moves to reveal a solid wall in front of us.

  They’ve led me to a dead end. My heartbeat picks up, picturing the three of them spinning around with their weapons drawn, murdering me where no one will hear my screams.

  Rayce lays his hand on the small of my back, pushing me to the side as he walks up to the dead end.

  “When we return, you remember your duties?” Rayce asks.

  Oren and Arlo nod. Rayce’s gaze falls onto me.

  “I’m letting you enter my base without restraints, even though you tried to escape once already, because of your previous circumstances.” He doesn’t meet my eyes. “But if you show even the slightest hint of aggression toward my people, there will be consequences, understood?”

  I glare at him but nod.

  Satisfied with my answer, he turns around and presses his free hand to the rock. It bursts to life, obliterating the darkness.

  Green light cracks up the middle of the rock like a vein. As it grows brighter, the markings on Rayce’s skin dim. The stone wall rumbles like the earth is shaking, and I hold my arm up against the light like a shield, as if the rock might explode.

  “Arlo, I think I’m going dark,” Rayce says. “Care to lend me a hand?”

  “The rebellion’s own leader can’t even get into the base.” Arlo tuts at Rayce.

  He steps beside him and places his hand next to Rayce’s on the wall. It flashes brighter, the rumbling growing so loud it feels like my chest will burst. Rayce and Arlo begin pushing on it, parting the thick slabs of stone to reveal a hidden passage behind it.

  At one time, I might have stood in awe at such a trick, but right now, all I can wonder is what the insides of their base will hold for me. Another cage to rot in? This one buried so deep that no light will leak through? Chilly fear pumps through my limbs.

  Rayce’s eyes meet mine, and that same smirk he wore when he asked me to run away with him at the Garden plays on his face.

  “Welcome to Zareen, Rose,” he says.

  Chapter Ten

  My first impression of Zareen is the barrel of a stunner shoved in my face. The woman clutching it stares intently at me, her mouth in a thin, no-nonsense line and her brown eyes staring hard through the green light. She’d be imposing even without the weapon, standing at just about Arlo’s height with her dark hair tucked back in a low bun on her neck.

  “Were you followed?” she asks, her stern gaze sliding from me to Rayce.

  “No.”

  She lowers the weapon, allowing us to step through the hidden passageway into one with a lower ceiling. I
remain completely still, my feet unwilling to cooperate. Rayce places his hand on the middle of my back and nudges me forward into the base.

  Oren steps in after us, the top of his head grazing the low ceiling, and he takes up most of the hallway with his wide shoulders. He pulls an ivory pipe in the shape of a dragon from the folds of his cloak and runs his fingers over the bumpy scales on the long stem that makes up the dragon’s tail.

  The female guard’s eyes burn holes in my face as I walk past her, and I’m acutely aware of how her skin also glows with Zareeni markings. It’s a sharp reminder that I’m an outsider here. The icy chill of the stone floor seeps into the bottoms of my feet, and bumps prickle down my arms. No sound reaches us, almost as if we’re the only five people crazy enough to be underground. But that can’t be right. Last I heard the rebellion had recruited more than a thousand to their cause.

  Rayce’s hand still rests on my back like he’s afraid I might run again, even though I gave him my word I wouldn’t. Besides, I wouldn’t get far in a place like this, where they can easily find me with their magic mineral in the walls.

  “I’m glad you made it back safely, Shogun,” the guard says to Rayce. I’m surprised to hear her use such a formal name for him, since Oren and Arlo have been referring to him by his first name. They must both be high in rank.

  She helps Arlo yank the wall back in place. The two pieces of stone meet with a rumble, sealing me into whatever fate they have in store for me.

  When she turns back to face us, her eyes are downcast. “Unfortunately, I don’t have good news for you. There’s been an incident.”

  Rayce’s grip on my robe tightens. “Report, Suki.”

  She holsters her stunner. The light radiating in her skin dies as soon as she lets go of the handle.

  Her gaze remains fixated on the tops of her boots. “The food supply cart heading to Dongsu was ambushed.”

  I glance at Rayce. The color drains from his face, and his grip slackens on my back, pulling the fabric away from my skin. The chilly mine air slips down my robe, attacking every inch of my skin.