by Bella James
Livy moved anxiously and quickly, swallowing over and over as the villages started coming out of their homes and businesses, held back by military guard and Centurions, but still lining the road.
By now her parents should have come out.
Livy started to run.
Selene and Arash flanked her, Pippa instantly got in front of her and led, feeling the same churning panic.
The guard tried to hold them at the door. They'd go in first, search every room for dangers that wouldn't be there.
A barked command by John Malvin stopped them. They assumed positions of guard. Livy forced herself not to look at Arash before she dashed through the door and skidded to a stop.
Her parents were there, her sister Vicki, brothers Kellan and Geoffrey and Geoffrey's bride Sarah, their faces drawn as they turned to look at Livy and Pippa.
I'm too late.
She couldn't be.
Her family was gathered at the door to the back bedroom, the room her grandfather had occupied in the new house until his death, one of the few that allowed some kind of separation of one member of the family to another.
Her mother was nowhere in sight.
Livy's heart banged so hard she couldn't breathe. She pushed farther into the room, reaching out, and Geoffrey caught her by the arms, trying to stop her.
"You don't want to go back there. Olivia, please."
"Let go," she said, barely looking at him. "Get out of the way! Move!"
And when he didn't, she heard Selene moving behind her, the sound of her body armor creaking as she moved fast, but Livy was faster. She took Geoffrey arm and spun him, not quite flipping him, not with a stone floor underfoot, but she sent him off balance, careening into the arms of the Centurion, who held him.
Pippa was on her heels as she sprinted across the house and into the room.
Her mother sat at the edge of the bed, her face pale and exhausted, dark circles under her eyes. The tables and floor around the bed bore witness to every attempt she'd made at healing, the woman who had patiently taught Livy all the herbal and flower lore she knew.
The woman who had taught Livy how to heal a pilot's burned hands, looked up, hollow eyed and hopeless.
Livy dropped to her knees beside the bed, not noticing the pain as she hit the stone. In the bed, her youngest brother Tad lay, his breathing thick and labored as her grandfather's had been at the end. His own eyes bore purple bruises underneath, and his skin was sallow, falling away from the bones as he lost weight.
He burned with fever.
Madeline reached for Livy. "Don't, love, all we can do is make him comfortable, don't risk – "
Livy almost yelled to be heard over the words. "Do you have the fang?"
Her mother just stared in pain, loss and confusion. From behind Livy her father said, "Olivia, you need to – "
She looked past him, past a face so traumatized and miserable he couldn't hear her. Geoffrey stood in the doorway.
"Geoff, where's the fang?"
He, at least, focused on her. "What fang?" His voice was dull.
Livy's impatience made her grit her teeth to keep from screaming. "The fang from the sand snake. The thing I killed when you were in the desert to see me tested."
When his eyes found hers now, they were full of contempt. "Surely you can think of something other than yourself at a time like this – "
"Get the fang!" Livy screamed.
And slowly something about her panic sank in. Her parents moved aside. Her brother went into another part of the house and came back seconds later. There was something worse on his face now than contempt or despair.
Now, there was hope.
Livy had no idea if she could answer that hope. In the desert, she'd barely noticed the temperature of the fang. She'd restrained herself from hurling the thing at the council members, understanding only after the test how easily she could have been killed.
Now she took it from her brother and held the long, cool, dagger-sharp fang. And had no idea how to use it.
Studying it, she tried to block out the people around her and concentrate only on the puzzle in her hands. The snakes moved easily in and out of the Forbidden Zone, the Void where the Before Times radiation crested to levels that had killed her grandfather after years of scavenging. The snakes went farther. It was believed they could cross the Void from one side to the next, going through the most poisonous lands and coming out –
Unscathed.
Because of something in them. Something that cooled the serpents, their blood or their being, something that resisted the radiation fever that had somehow mutated into something spreading between villagers who had never been anywhere near the zone.
Not true.
Or rather, not completely true. Maybe the majority of Agaraians had never been anywhere near the Void. Maybe no one in the village today had ever even gone into the Forbidden Zone or traveled as far as the border towns.
But someone among them had.
Her Grandfather Bane had moved through the lands, trying to stay out of the most deadly parts, but once his beloved wife had become ill he'd gone as deep as he dared and still be able to return, looking for anything that could have saved her.
Livy shut her eyes briefly, grateful her grandfather would never know it was his own journeying into the landlocked abyss that had undoubtedly caused her grandmother's illness. His treks into the desert to find the cure had produced the opposite.
Because he didn't know where to look.
And in every village across the land where the plague crested and killed, everywhere in Pastoreum, Tundrus, Oceanus, even Arcadia, probably, there were those adventurers and those desperate enough or hopeful enough to penetrate the Before Times-poisoned lands.
And spread the fever.
But the Bane name. It mattered. Selene had told her the Oracle had named Julia a Bane. Olivia no longer really doubted she'd been chosen because she was a Bane.
The name mattered.
Her grandfather had gone into the wastes.
No, Livy thought slowly. No. Livy herself had gone into the wastes.
And come back out again.
And she wasn't sick.
Because?
Her mother said something. Livy scrunched her eyes closed and held up a hand, whispered One minute trying not to even be aware of her own voice.
She'd made it out again because she had been in contact with the sand snake. The others around her, fellow rebels, they were underground. They were in the desert but had had contact with a snake. Or because they'd been raised there. Or for some other reason and it didn't matter.
What mattered was the fang in her hand.
Part of the world snake, the sand snakes.
The cure.
"I don't know what to do with it," she said to her mother.
Who shook her head. "You cannot make it worse, Olivia. Only better."
Tears in her eyes, Livy stood and held the fang out to her little brother, tucking it into his hand and waiting, minutes dragging by. Nothing happened.
What had Livy experienced? She'd been unbloodied by her encounter with the snake. But she'd been in contact with its blood.
She had no snake blood.
She had no idea if there was anything inside the tooth.
"Heat water," she said abruptly to her sister, and Pip fled. To Geoffrey she said, "Get me something to chip this with. I need a couple small pieces to test."
Her mother moaned and her father said, "Livy, love, there isn't much time."
"Go," she told her brother, and to her father, she said, "I know."
Her brother came back first, and Livy chopped the fang, finding nothing inside. Holding it had changed nothing for Tad. Nothing inside.
So she took the water from Pip and chipped a larger piece and soaked it like an infusion her mother might make of tea leaves for a poultice or the black fig nettles for an emetic. Only minutes, and then she couldn't bear waiting and the water was cool enough and slightly off
color, looking muddy though there'd been nothing in it but white fang.
She took out the piece, stored it safely by the fang itself, then tipped the bowl of the water gently, carefully, into Tad's mouth.
The new house filled with terrified silence, as if every one of them held their breath.
Until Tad stilled completely, unmoving, his color a mottled gray, and Livy's parents made horrified sounds and started to move together toward the bed.
Tad jerked, coughed violently, his entire tiny body shaking from the attack.
Everyone stilled again. And waited.
And Tad, his eyes squeezed closed, shuddered, coughed, gagged, then ran a hand over his sweating forehead. Where the hand passed, no more sweat sprang up.
Livy didn't dare look away. She wanted to reach for him. She didn't dare.
Instants later Tad broke out in a sweat as if held under running water. It sprang from his forehead, drenched him, left him shivering in the warm house.
Livy's sister gripped Livy's shoulder across the bed her parents squeezed each other's hands so hard their knuckles were nearly clear.
Tad opened his eyes, looked bemusedly at his family, wiped his forehead and looked displeased. He wiped it on the coverlet, and no more sweat took its place. Content, he moved into a dry part of the bed, pulled the covers up, said, "Tired," to his family.
And fell into a normal sleep. The fever was broken.
The silence was broken by Livy's mother's ragged sobs.
CHAPTER 11
L ivy sat outside in the last of the day's heat. After Tad had gone back to sleep, the party had caught up to her, all her minders and warders, chaperones and jailers. Earnestine Balk had tried to force her way into the house, and Selene's protests about what that meant and Arash's reassurances that Livy's military guard were not enough to keep her at bay.
Livy's father had. He'd met her at the door and threatened to kill her and when the woman demanded that, being part of the Plutarch's group, he couldn't, Livy's father had simply shut the door.
That had made Livy laugh. So simple. She'd never thought of just closing the door. When her parents had started up again, about Tad, about Olivia herself, she'd shut a door on them, going out the back way and sitting by the edge of the stream that ran across the property.
Pip finally joined her. "You saved his life." She let a moment of silence pass and said, "You should come back inside."
Livy pulled up a handful of grass and threw it. The blades just drifted down slowly, unsatisfyingly.
"I wanted to be the agent of change," she said finally, staring up toward the horizon where the sun hung.
Pip said easily, "You are." Probably she could sense Livy's feelings and what Livy meant and only wanted to avoid the drama.
"No," Livy said. "I'm not. Mom and dad knew. They knew I was to be something special. It's part of why they let me spend as much time as they did with Grandfather."
"I don't see why that's bad," Pippa said.
"I never got to make a difference because I chose to make a difference."
Pippa gave her a sideways glance and a half smile. "Not helping with the explanation, Liv."
Livy smiled slightly. "It's like when you clean the dishes for mom to be nice because she's tired or something and then she comes in and hardly notices and if you ask, she says she was going to ask you to do them anyway, so thanks, and all, but – you know."
Pip had stopped smiling and was just staring at Livy. "Are you crazy? Because seriously what you're doing is very different from unexpected and unthanked dishwashing."
"I know that," Livy began, irritated.
Pip interrupted. "No, I don't think you do. Olivia, you're changing the world. You're bringing about the rebellion."
Livy's jaw dropped. "You know it's me?"
Pippa just rolled her eyes. "What else were we talking about? Plus, yes, for so many reasons, I know. What you don't get? Even if everybody expects you to do what you're going to do? Even if everybody knew you were going to do what you're going to do?"
She waited until Livy looked at her.
"You're still the only one who can actually do it. Not the saying 'go!' to the rebellion. Not the getting close to the Plutarch. Not the assembling of pieces. But the everything. The snake fang, the cure for the plague, the relationship with Julia, the talking back to the Plutarch. The compassion to heal an enemy soldier because he was just doing his job. No one else can do what you're doing because no one else is you."
The small, cold, angry kernel of hurt in her soul refused to completely relent. "I wish someone were. I'm going to marry a monster."
And that caused Pip just to stand. "You can sit here and feel sorry for yourself, or you can get up and do what you know you need to and have for a long time known you were going to. I get that you're scared, Livy. I just don't get how that means you get to quit on everybody."
She turned her back and walked back to the house, leaving Livy wondering if they'd all known she meant to run. If she could make it in the desert, she could make it in Pastoreum. With the explosive disarmed in her chip and the chip's identity scan scrambled, with everything she knew on how to survive? She could easily go.
She could make it on her own.
Which maybe meant, pawn or not, she had some control. It was her choice right now to stay or walk away.
For a long time Livy sat and watched the sun sink in the sky. Then she rose and went into the house, letting her attendants begin the preparations for the next day.
CHAPTER 12
T he dress was beautiful. The angular neckline, the tiny sleeves, the fitted bodice the seamstress had driven her to distraction with, the full beautiful skirt.
It was long enough to hide that she was wearing boots she could run in underneath, and a pair of old shorts she had worn when she ran, back in the days before she left Pastoreum.
Her attendants dressed her long reddish hair beautifully, with tiny white flowers and tiny white pearls, her hair fanning out over her shoulders. Even Livy was pleased at what she saw in the mirror.
Which was when Arash arrived in the reflection and nodded at how she looked, right before he scooped her hair up and pinned it on top of her head, curls tumbling, flowers and pearls scattering.
"Way to change everything," she said. "You're a hairdresser now?"
Arash didn't smile. He touched her butterfly birthmark said, "Show the mark, Chosen One," in a voice so cold she only stepped away from him and went back to getting ready.
THE FEAR FORMED ice in her stomach. It felt as if her heart would actually stop beating, the way it raced and stuttered and then ran too slowly. Livy's palms were wet with sweat and she didn't dare touch the beautiful dress.
She wanted a weapon. Something she could carry under the dress for – for in case anything happened that might save her.
The plan had been to either attack or wed. Somehow in her deepest soul she'd never believed it would go this far.
An elegant vehicle pulled up to take Olivia Bane and her family to the town hall.
Arash stopped her in the hall. "It will be all right." His dark eyes bore into hers, as if he knew something she didn't.
"How?" Livy asked shaking her head slightly. "How will it be all right?"
He gave her a long, hard look, as if some knowledge burned inside him he didn't want to share yet. "Can you just trust me?"
She looked at him for a long time, drinking him in and committing him to memory. "I can try."
THE TREES WERE in full leaf, shading the road on the way to the town hall. Flowers lined the fields, eerily empty of working serfs.
Everyone was gathered at the town hall, waiting for them. For the first time Livy felt honest stage fright, the simple fear of making a fool of herself in front of everyone she'd ever known. She tried to talk herself out of it as she paced the antechamber where the bride was to complete her preparations, but even telling herself she had far greater things to worry about didn't help.
Every girl h
as butterflies on her wedding day.
Livy's butterfly was on her neck, the birthmark that identified her as the One who would change the world.
Geoffrey kissed her cheek before he took his Sarah and disappeared into the throng of villagers. Her parents, unable to make the duenna leave, had little they could say. Finally her father took her by the shoulders and said with emphasis, "I'm going to miss your help in my workshop, Olivia."
She blinked at him. It wasn't like she hadn't been gone for more than a year. What was he talking about?
"Remember how you used to sometimes hold the molds for me to pour the metal?" His voice was rambly and full of reminiscence.
His eyes were bright, cold, hard and aware.
"Of course," Livy said lightly. She had no idea what he was getting at. She'd only held molds a very few times. Most of the time he only let her do things that stood no danger of showering her in sparks or shrapnel or molten metal.
"Having you with me?" her father said plainly. "While I worked on my own projects?" His eyes still locked on hers. "That was freedom."
Livy blinked and sucked in a breath. But he said nothing else and she wasn't certain what he meant, only hopeful. There'd been no word that her parents would be any part of the – wedding – other than by being parents of the bride.
Her father nodded, a serious look passing between father and daughter on her wedding day. Then he kissed her cheek and left her to her mother and sisters, with Pippa fluttering and making minute adjustments to Livy's dress. Pulling away from her, Livy paced from the open door that led to the hall to the back of the room where a series of doors led somewhere she couldn't imagine. She'd been in the town hall over the years. There were doors everywhere, usually locked, and if she asked, identified as broom and storage closets.
There were so many of them.
"Do you want to see the broadcasts?" Selene asked.
Livy, frowning, nodded, and moved to where the television hung on the wall, one of the town square and town hall amenities.
On the screen the Plutarch's wedding party was preparing to step forth in Tundrus, in Oceanus, in cities and towns all over the world. There were reports of rebel activity in the capital, confused reports that stated just that morning the rebel forces had unexpectedly pulled back.
