The Arcadia Trilogy Boxed Set

by Bella James

  Her mother runs, clutching the faceless child to her breast. In all the time Livy has seen this hellish vision, she's never seen the child have a face.

  Livy runs too, trying to reach her mother, screaming to her parents, her brothers and sister. No one can hear her. She is outside Agara. She is Arcadian. She is safe, pampered, the Plutarch's own and her family can't hear her anymore. Where was she when they first started to scream for help? Exercising her influence on her chosen mate? While all along he let her think her status as his Chosen One allowed her his ear.

  While all along he allowed the villagers their deaths.

  Livy knows she dreams. She's had the dream so many times. Knowing does nothing to stave off the vileness of the dream. Knowing does not allow her to wake.

  The dream turns. She knows what happens next. In her sleep, she cries out, thrashing to no avail.

  Her family runs from the fire, and meanwhile Livy in Arcadia chants her lessons with her classmates, oblivious.

  Her family runs from the Centurions, and meanwhile Livy in Arcadia speaks to the Plutarch, thinking he will love her. Thinking he will listen.

  Her grandfather runs from the Centurions. There's a shot and he falls. But always Livy thinks he's not dead.

  She twists in her sleep. This is when she wakes. This is when the dream eases.

  But not this time. Livy dreams. A fire burns. She can see nothing past it, has no idea where she is. It burns, and from it steps the Plutarch, whispering obscenities and promises, that everything will be all right.

  He offers her his hand and she realizes she has fallen. Her back is against the wall of a cave. That feels familiar. She doesn't know why. She reaches for his hand, lets him haul her upright, but when she looks into the Plutarch's hard blue eyes, they're not the eyes she was expecting.

  "Come with me," he says, and holds out the hand she's dropped.

  Livy reaches, her eyes locked on his. Just before she takes his hand she looks down. His hand is covered in writhing snakes.

  Livy screams and runs. She can barely stumble a few feet. She is surrounded by explosions, by motion, by people running and fighting and dying.

  She's been afraid forever. Afraid when the wedding ceremony was set to commence in her hometown. Afraid when the rebel riders came and took her away, so afraid that now she longs for the Plutarch and his power.

  At least he could free her from the rebel cave.

  No. This isn't part of the dream! Watching the impossibilities of the Void from the cave mouth, she sees her grandfather alive and well, scavenging for equipment left behind from the Before Times, those times of warfare and evil.

  Her grandfather is dead. She knows that. Even in her dream. And now he's here, too, in this dream, running. The world spins and Grandfather Bane holds out his hand to Livy, says her name, and her mother is there, fragile and pregnant, running hard to escape something that chases her that Livy cannot see. A fire burns nearby, lighting the Void; suddenly night has fallen. But Livy is back in Arcadia, in a classroom, chanting lessons with her fellow students and the fire is burning there, too, fires all around them and in every fire when she looks the Plutarch is climbing through the flames, reaching for her, his hands out to draw her from this place.

  When she takes his hand, it is covered in writhing snakes.

  Livy screams, surrounded by fighting, by explosions, by the bombs that once fell on humanity.

  Livy screams, and wakes herself. Her eyes fly open.

  LIVY'S EYES FLEW OPEN. She was in the rebel cave. She still wore the Plutarch's wedding dress, now stained and ragged. She was still barefoot save for the gauze wrappings.

  She was alone.

  She could still hear the explosions in her mind, the dream deaths still with her.

  Weight on her left arm caught her attention. Dream panic surged. Her arm flashed up at her face, a gleam of metal, and unfamiliar weight making her lose control of her own arm.

  From mid-forearm to wrist, her arm glittered under a heavy metal covering. Livy took several steps back, as if she could distance herself from her own arm.

  "What is it?"

  She slammed her arm against the stone wall of the cave. The metal covering rang like a bell. Nothing else happened.

  Bending to look at it again, she noted the part that covered the heel of her hand, and the part that wrapped around her thumb.

  This time she shouted and smashed the metal repeatedly against the wall until a hand shot out from behind her and grabbed her metal wrist, freezing her in place. Another hand on her shoulder turned her back to face the person who held her.

  Arash. Of course.

  She threatened him with the metal arm. "What is this? How do I get it off of me?"

  "Relax," he said, and when she didn't, caught both of her wrists in his hands, her frail human wrist and the one wrapped in metal.

  "It's a dampener."

  "A what?" Instead of watching him, she was digging at the only thing that looked like a clasp, breaking the already short nails on her right hand.

  "Oliva, stop. It's not going to hurt you. It's a dampener. It's so the Plutarch can't track you by your ID chip."

  Livy narrowed her eyes at him. Arash raised both hands and looked innocent.

  "Remember when you first got to Arcadia, someone came and cut out your ID chip?"

  Burning, searing pain. That's what she remembered. Just the scalpel and the chip being pulled up, no one doing anything to dampen the pain, not even with the sap of a daisy.

  Reluctantly, she nodded, still staring at the thing.

  "They added a wire to it, right? That's so they can track you."

  Livy met his eyes. "I thought they could always track us through our IDs."

  Arash took a breath, as if not convinced she was planning to be reasonable. "Sort of. They can tell if someone from Beta is moving into Alpha territory, if someone is running where they shouldn't be and might be trying to get away from whatever it is they're supposed to be doing. Without the wire, they don't have instant access to all the information in your chip."

  Now she was curious. Her grandfather would have hated the way the technology was being used, but he would have loved the technology itself.

  "The wire?" she asked.

  "Sends out a signal," Arash said, nodding. A few people had gathered round them in the last couple minutes, a couple of young boys, Tante Tia, Cal. Now they heard Arash starting to lecture, they began talking together and moving away. "From the signal, they can always know where you are, pinpoint you on a map. It would be easy for them to find you."

  Livy stared at the wrist cuff. Without it maybe the Plutarch would be able to find her? She had to find a way to get free of it.

  "What else does the wire do?"

  Arash looked at her steadily. "It can be programmed from wherever they are to wherever you are. To explode."

  Before she could think what she was doing, Livy took a step back, as if she could step away from her own arm. Arash, nodding like he understood that, put a hand directly on her wrist where the chip would be.

  "It can't hurt you now. Not with the dampener on."

  Livy felt her breath coming shorter and her heart beating harder. "Why can't you remove the chip?"

  "Eventually we can. For now, this is safer. For now, because otherwise they may choose to blow the chip the minute your signal becomes visible."

  Nausea crept over her. "But you didn't do this before now? Why couldn't he have – "

  "We're somewhat protected here. It wasn't a big risk, Livy. Things are different in the Forbidden Zone. Nothing works quite like it should. There are – things out there that aren't anywhere else. Electrical signals get mixed up. You're safer here than you'd be anywhere else." His eyes pleaded with her to understand.

  Livy felt the panic building past all control. Safe here meant trapped here when the only thing she wanted was to get away. The ruler had been able to control her with a chip in her wrist, even if she hadn't known it yet. Now these p
eople could control her with the same thing, because if she didn't do whatever they wanted, what was to stop them from taking off the sleeve?

  And she wanted it off! It was hot, bulky, wrong, it made her feel more trapped and more terrified and she wanted to run, wanted to get away from it. If the signal didn't work in the Void, that meant they intended to take her out of the Void.

  Even use her as bait.

  She had to get away from them. She had to go somewhere she could remove the cuff and cut out the ID before some random change in the Void meant she could be traced.

  The panic hit again and Livy ran.

  "Agara!" he shouted, the name of her village, not of herself. "Where are you going?"

  No one moved to stop her. Livy ran, pelting to the exit.

  Behind her she heard Arash laughing. "Have a pleasant trip, Mrs. Plutarch. And don't forget to take water with you."

  No water. No food. No robes. Nothing but Livy, running.

  She'd slept the night away. When she hit the outside, the air was already heating, starting to burn. Her feet felt the heat, burning through the bandages, but she didn't stop, moving faster as from somewhere behind her came shouts, the sound of pursuit. In the mix of voices, she supposed were Arash and Tia.

  There had to be a way across the desert. There had to be a way out of the burning lands because there was a way in. Being trapped here was proof of that.

  She reached the end of the rocky trail that led to the drop off of the outcropping before she'd drop to the sand.

  Panic drove her. In Pastoreum she grew up outside working in the fields, helping in her mother's gardens, caring for the cow until that was over, caring for the sheep.

  The cave in the Void was unnatural. She ran to outdistance it.

  In Pastoreum the Centurions were always there, overseeing. In the Void there wasn't anything but prison, and she felt far more trapped.

  Livy ran until she ran out of rock to run on. When the end of the rock causeway loomed up at her, she jumped, hit the sand, and managed three or four steps before reality caught up to her.

  The sand was porous and thick, like a hot tide, like the time she'd gone with friends to a natural lake and learned how hard it was to walk through water. Or the time her parents had taken her to the shore of the Pac and she'd learned how impossible it was to push against the tide.

  She plodded forward, one foot dragging after the next, every step a monumental achievement, and the sand around her began to stir. The sand topping the dunes began to blow in sheets, though there was no wind. They were being disturbed from underneath.

  She'd asked what caused the wavelike ululations, the shifting of the sand. No one had told her anything.

  Livy pushed harder, almost running against the clinging, pulsing sand and still she was making no headway. If she turned around, the rock face she had jumped from would be right behind her. Now the sand moved toward her, shifting from a central point, something long and undulating coming through the sand, heading right for her. Whispers surrounded her, the sound like an ocean, and Livy froze, not sure what to do, and the thing came closer, long and serpentine.

  She took a step back, and another, and another, then turned and fled for the rocky safety she'd left behind, but the thing coming for her was too fast and the rock wall too slick and high.

  Livy turned around, preparing to fight.

  With a crash, Arash thrust something into the sand. Livy jumped away from him and away from the thing coming toward her, watching wide eyed as Arash pulled a rip cord and the machine began at once to issue bass sounds, a heavy, unnatural heartbeat banging out across the sands.

  Whatever was beneath the sands, it paused, hovering, and turned away. The machine behind her continued to send out pulses, thick, heavy beats that made the sand around it jump. In front of Livy, the things that had been chasing her retreated, moving faster and faster as the machine beat more loudly.

  She turned back and stared up the rock face at Arash. "What were those things?"

  Without answering, he thrust a hand down to her, motioning for her to grab hold. For an instant Livy drew back, the dream of the Plutarch's serpent covered arm too recent and Arash's own helping hand seeming threatening. But there was no other way up the rock. Maybe she could follow it around, looking for a way up. There had to be access points. But the thick, nearly wet feeling sand was exhausting to move through and she'd hardly eaten since coming to this place. Besides, whatever was in the sand, she didn't want to take any chances of being on the ground if it came back.

  Livy jumped a little, enough to drag her legs inches from the sand, and to meet Arash's out thrust hand. The fit of their hands together was surprisingly warm and comfortable. She grabbed the rock with her other hand, scrabbling with her feet for purchase, and Arash pulled her up on the rock beside him.

  The instant she was up she turned to survey the sand. There was no sign of the things that had flowed toward her so fast. It was terrible to think that, whatever they were, they could move so fast and so invisibly. She whirled back to face Arash, furious over her fear.

  "You could have warned me! What were those things?"

  Concern for her lasted one heartbeat after her outburst, then changed to his usual lazy eyed contempt. "Those were sand snakes, and you don't want to get caught in the sand with those after you. Those of us who live in the desert, we know how to avoid them. You never go to the sand without a noise maker."

  He looked so serious she half wanted to laugh. Whatever he was telling her, it couldn't be true. She'd seen predators in Pastoreum – nothing could be as big as what she'd seen, or as horrible sounding as what he was saying.

  But a shiver rocked through her, leaving nausea in its wake. A cold sweat started up on her forehead and she used her arm to swipe it away unselfconsciously.

  "Come on," he said, turning now as if everything was back in order. "You haven't eaten much and didn't eat at all last night."

  She waited for him to add something like After your temper tantrum, but to Livy's surprise, she saw a flicker of concern pass over his face just before he turned away from her to start up the carved path on the rock, back to the cave.

  She wanted to stand her ground. She wanted to demand, If I come back, will you tell me what it is I need to fear out here? What I have to be careful of? But hunger and the need to get out of the sun or at least into something hooded and long sleeved, beat out her need for knowledge and her longing to have him apologize.

  Livy followed Arash into the cave.

  CHAPTER 3

  T here was no one in the dining area, for which Livy was grateful. She didn't quite feel foolish about running, but she was happy enough to have no one near her. Tia had met them on the way back in, saying nothing but frowning at Livy. That was all right – Tia usually frowned at Livy.

  Arash led her through the maze-like corridors hewn of the natural rock. This time, without the fear of being left behind by someone moving too fast or her need to run, Livy realized there were drawings carved into the rock walls and stopped to study them. So engrossed in the images, she didn't hear Arash who had come to stand beside her, until he spoke.

  "You know the histories?"

  Cynically, she smiled, and turned to meet his dark brown eyes, enjoying his confusion at her expression. "Histories plural? Yes. Which one are you asking about?"

  That made him smile, maybe the first real smile he'd given her. It revealed one chipped front tooth that gave him a boyish look to what was otherwise a worried face, older than it should be. The rebel cave was full of adults, but Livy had been left in Arash's care. Not because he was a teenager like she was, probably, but because he'd found her. Whoever brought someone into the community became responsible for that person. No wonder he was so concerned when he saw her plunge into the sand.

  But she wasn't just some weary traveler, lost and rescued by the rebels. She'd been taken.

  "How did you learn the true histories?" Arash asked.

  Livy sighed, and poi
nted to the carved figures on the walls. "This represents the wars that destroyed the world. Bombs fell, the biggest ever produced, all because people in the Before Times couldn't allow other people to believe whatever they wanted." She traced a finger under the pictures of sleek long bird-shaped objects in the sky and a later picture of clouds and flames.

  "That hasn't changed," Arash said dolefully. "Now we're told what to believe by one man and his army."

  Livy let her hand fall away from the rock wall. What was it about this boy that made her want to argue? She wanted to say "No one starves" but people did starve. She wanted to say the new system kept everyone safe.

  The best she'd be able to offer would be the new system put everyone equally at risk. Everyone but the Plutarch, his army and his aristocracy. So nothing was equal and nothing had changed.

  She wondered if the Aristocracy and the leadership ever realized that.

  WHEN HE HANDED her a plate of cold potatoes, heavy coarse bread, a meat she didn't want to identify and a tumbler of wine, Livy lost all sense of herself and all knowledge of Arash sitting across from her. Focusing only on filling the void inside her, she wolfed down the food, only looking up at Arash when she'd finished mopping up any last juices on the plate with her bread.

  He was laughing, but not at her for a change, just pleasantly. "Those manners are more suited to field hands than the Plutarch's wife."

  Livy felt the instant fury rising in her, but instead of shouting at him, she said, "I wouldn't know. You grabbed me before I had a chance to find out if marrying the Plutarch would refine me."

  They held each other's gaze for several long seconds before they both burst out laughing. "Come on," Arash said as she finished her food. "I have something else for you."

  He told her to come with him a lot, Livy thought. For once it might be nice to lead rather than follow.

  Not yet, a little voice inside said, and she listened. She followed him beyond the kitchens, glancing at the stories carved into the walls where men and women rode huge beasts. When she moved closer and squinted at the drawings, the people were riding giant insects, scorpions and spiders. She shuddered and hurried to catch up with him.