The Arcadia Trilogy Boxed Set

by Bella James

  Right on schedule.

  The rebels had trapped anyone who might follow them just long enough to stop them making it to Agara in time to create havoc before the wedding.

  So this is it. They're relying on me marrying John Malvin to change the world. Actually believing what I believed, that I can sway him, or what he's stated, that he's marrying me as a promise of peace.

  This is what it comes down to?

  They were out of time. And out of luck.

  Livy let her head hang. It was all she could do to not cry.

  "THE MINSTREL IS HERE."

  It was the first her mother had said to her since Livy had used the fang to wake Tad. She turned, hoping for contact, but her mother was distant, holing herself in and controlling her emotions.

  "You'd best get ready to walk the aisle."

  It sounded so formal, like marching to her own execution. But Livy had expected if she did die, it would matter.

  She turned to look at the other women in the room, dismissing Balk with contempt, but meeting the eyes of her Centurion, who nodded as if everything were still in order, in some message Livy couldn't quite make out.

  She didn't have to. They'd discussed the plans. She knew what to do.

  Livy looked at Pippa. "Ready?" and for the first time realized her sister looked more apt to be ill than even Livy. "Hey," she said, forcing a laugh. "All you have to do is stand there. I'm the one who has to say yes.

  All at once she had her sister in her arms, her eyes wide as she pleaded up at Livy. "Please don't say yes. Please don't say it! You don't know what he's like!"

  How much of the Plutarch had Pippa seen at the pleasure palace? But that was concern for another day. She squared her shoulders and said, "I'll be fine. Come on, Pip, stand for me."

  She was at the door, the Plutarch's chosen attendants for Livy there, obviously loyal to the ruler and so none that Livy would confide in. Balk was right there as well.

  Still, Livy's mother stepped in front of her, barring her progress, and hugged her carefully, hands on Livy's shoulders to draw her near. In Livy's ear, Madeline whispered, "Be ready to run. Be prepared for what will come."

  Livy stiffened, not pulling away, waiting.

  "Your father called them freedom."

  Livy turned her head, kissing her mother on the cheek, taking a look into her eyes, and found regret there. It was time for Livy to go, to walk up the aisle with Pip as her attendant. For the moment, not even the duenna was pushing her. Olivia Bane had come to the hall to marry.

  She was where she was supposed to be and allowed a few minutes to herself.

  If only they knew.

  She gave her mother a grave nod and her mother said one more thing.

  "We're sorry we couldn't tell you everything before. You were young and impetuous and every bit as angry as your grandfather, but not as circumspect." She smiled slightly at Livy. "And you were gone so long."

  Hardly my choice, Olivia thought, but she couldn't deny she'd treated Pippa the same way – too young to tell everything, too much of a risk if she slipped up.

  She'd worry about that later. For now, she only hugged her mother, the same slim, hard, strong mother.

  And then in horror, realized she'd been gone more than a year. When she'd left, during planting, during spring, her mother had been slim and hard, the way she was now.

  Only.

  Pregnant. Not yet showing.

  Nothing showing, now, of course. But at the house? There'd been no sign.

  Livy sagged, suddenly dizzy. All the dreams of the faceless child, but she'd come through the ornithopter attacks and the raid on Arcadia, the first flight of her life and Tad's near death to find her mother looking the same.

  She hadn't asked.

  Rot and frost. All those dreams of the faceless child.

  "Livy?" Her mother's voice sounded full of panic.

  As was Livy's. "The baby – " she sputtered and then Selene was there, trying to lead her, saying they were waiting and the evil hag of a duenna was on her way back if Livy didn't come.

  Her mother had time to say only, "She's alive," before Livy was on her feet, her arm linked with Pip's, and they were out the door of the prep room and into the hall and at the back of the square and the entire village was beginning to turn to see her there –

  And they did not look like people attending a wedding. Hollow eyed, gaunt faced, clearly hungry, obviously afraid.

  When? She thought. How much longer do we wait?

  Or has the whole plan been discovered?

  She studied the face of the Plutarch at the end of other aisle but he only looked triumphant, like a man who has won against some odds he'd expected to beat.

  He'd never even been significantly frightened. He expected to make it here, expected to use the rebel attack to solidify his power as he married one of the commonwealth daughters, unifying the country, calling out for "peace," when he meant slavery. He'd expected –

  The attack on Arcadia.

  Livy's breath stopped in her throat. Even she didn't know the next steps in the fight.

  What if John Malvin did?

  Arash stood as part of the honor guard near the Plutarch and the officiant who would wed Livy to Malvin.

  Arash, a rebel impersonating a soldier in the Plutarch's army.

  Not that the rebels wouldn't foresee such a possibility. But if there was a traitor in their midst?

  Pip whispered, "Just walk. There's nothing else to do now."

  Suddenly Pip sounded very wise.

  Livy looked neither right nor left, kept her eyes straight ahead, studied Arash and Selene, the officiant, studied Malvin for any information she could glean.

  Studied her father as she got closer. She saw the infinitely small nod he gave her, the way his eyes just barely hooded.

  Something was happening.

  Something was happening now.

  Livy climbed the steps to the dais where her fiancé stood and took his hand, turning so she faced the officiant who stood with his back turned to the assemblage.

  Her ears rang, nerves making everything hard to hear and see, her vision blurred, her heart thudding, and she risked a look around, past the damned muttering cleric who droned the ceremony which bound Livy to the Plutarch but the Plutarch to the land, which gave Malvin her province but Livy only the right to move through his, which demanded she obey and that he –

  "Livy!"

  Selene shouted it. Livy jolted instinctively, falling into a crouch, pulling away from Malvin. Her eyes locked on Selene who threw her a knife, a glitter of silver arcing end over end through the air. Livy leapt and snatched it by the handle, came down on her feet to find the Plutarch already in play, grabbing for her, his attendants facing off against Arash and Selene.

  Her father shouted and gave chase after Malvin. Livy lost several long seconds tearing the bottom of her dress free, leaving herself in desert shorts and the top of the wedding dress.

  At the edge of the platform, where the officiant had stood before he ran, she scanned the room. Arash and Selene were holding their own. Her father and several of his friends from the village were running.

  Running? She couldn't believe it.

  But even then the Plutarch's Centurion and soldiers were pouring through the outside doors, surrounding the villagers –

  Who were opening all the myriad interior doors Livy had sometimes noticed, vaguely wondered about in the days before she became a pawn in the battle of power.

  "Arash!"

  He'd just put down his opponent, was turning, scanning the room. He saw her, gestured at her to stay where she was, and pointed at the doors her father and the others were tearing open, forcing the locks, breaking them, not bothering with keys.

  Her neck started to sting like she'd been bitten by a grain fly, and then to burn, hard enough she clapped the hand not holding the blade over it.

  It was her birthmark. The skin there was burning hot.

  "Livy!"

&nbs
p; She picked Arash out of the crowd again.

  "Don't cover it!" he shouted.

  "What?"

  But even then she understood. Because as he shouted the doors came open, most of them at the same moment, and armed men and women poured into the room, holding weapons, shouting, wearing desert white tunics with the green hummingbird stitched over one breast.

  And the notch-winged butterfly over the other.

  For only a second, everything paused. Everyone waited. All eyes focused on Livy.

  Who found a scream welling up inside her. Nothing coherent. Not words.

  A scream of pure rage. A battle cry.

  She lifted the knife in the air and brought it down like she signaled the start of a race.

  With a roar, the rebels burst from the tunnels behind the doors into the hall, heading directly for the Aristocracy and leaders gathered for the fete, heading for the Plutarch, the same as Selene and Arash and Livy.

  Livy had been primed to marry him.

  She got there first.

  Malvin was bigger than she was, older and better trained. But over the years he'd come to depend on all those things and more, on the people he surrounded himself with.

  Like Arash, who hurtled toward him. And Selene, who held the duenna at bay, Balk snarling and clutching a gun she'd already emptied ineffectually.

  Like Livy.

  Who got to him first. And put her blade to his throat.

  "Kneel," she said in a voice of ice, as all her anger and her grandfather's and her people's rang through her.

  The Plutarch smiled.

  Livy frowned, pressed the blade to his throat. "Call off your people," she demanded.

  "Or yours," said a cold voice.

  Livy froze as a blade pressed against her neck. She'd seen the man leap to the stage.

  Wearing desert whites and the hummingbird and butterfly.

  Maybe Arash wasn't the only traitor in the midst today. Maybe both sides had plants.

  Where are the guns? Surely both sides would also be armed. The Plutarch's peace for the day of the wedding might extend to weapons of all kinds but she didn't think he would have actually followed his own dictates.

  "Livy!" Selene ran from the floor of the hall, toward her, eyes wide, stave at the ready.

  "Call them off," snarled the voice behind her and the knife bit into her neck where it met her shoulder.

  Just above the burning brand of her butterfly mark.

  Whatever she shouted, everyone would hear it simultaneously. She didn't think they needed her to guide them. The rebels had been planning this before they knew the Chosen One walked among them. When they only knew the Chosen Bride had been located.

  They knew what to do.

  But her vision, now sharp, showed her factions of rebels not moving. Waiting. Watching her.

  Even her mother wasn't moving. Her father, the traitor she'd known years ago had leanings against the Arcadian government.

  It had been part of her life. Natural as holding the molds for her father to pour the molten metal into.

  Natural as her grandfather teaching her to read, telling her Before Times politics from Shakespeare to the rocket strikes that had ended the world that had come before theirs.

  Natural as her father telling her the bullets he was turning out, red hot and doused in ice water, were called –

  "FREEDOM!" Livy screamed at the top of her lungs and struck back with her elbow, jolting the traitor just far enough away from her she could turn, sweep his legs out from under her and drop a kick onto his neck that left him unconscious or dead.

  She took his weapon. She ran to the stairs.

  Already the room was in chaos. From outside she could hear the battle raging now. From inside she could see the rebels pulling their guns.

  From closer she could see Selene and Arash grabbing for her, urging her to come with them.

  Through the doors.

  Into the tunnel.

  Into safety.

  "I'm not going anywhere," Livy snarled. "Give me a gun."

  CHAPTER 13

  I t was the Plutarch she went after. In the instants the knife had been to her throat she'd seen him jump into the melee on the floor, seen him vanish out one of the doors, only a handful of people behind him in the chaos and those confronted nearly one on one by the Plutarch's own guard.

  She ran from her minders, from the hall, into the blinding sunlight of an Agaraian morning.

  She'd be too late. He would have taken off. Someone else would catch him.

  Or worse, no one would.

  But he was there, at one of the ornithopters, less time having passed than she thought because everything was happening at once.

  Livy screamed it: "Malvin!"

  He should have kept going. It would have been logical for him to keep going. He owed her nothing.

  That she believed. She'd been a pawn. She'd been a free agent. She'd gone into the Plutarch's palace idealistic but not stupid.

  But he stopped. And faced her. And Livy realized suddenly there were men and women climbing from buses that hadn't been there before, and from butterfly bedecked ornithopters.

  They flooded the already white-lit morning with more light. Blinding light.

  Camera light.

  They were filming the battle.

  They were filming her.

  She risked a glance at the closest camera and was unsurprised to see Julia.

  A Bane wouldn't pass up the chance to be in on the fight. There was too much rebellion in their souls. Too much anger.

  "Go," Julia said. "Before he does."

  Livy ran. The Plutarch, instead of running to the closest chopper, stood to meet her.

  She didn't waste time with the knife at her waist, the one she'd tucked into the back of her shorts. Livy pulled the gun on the Plutarch.

  "Stand down. Just stop. It's over."

  From the sound of it, it was anything but. The sound of gun fire, of screaming, of people in rage and people in pain came from behind them and even now rebels and military alike were racing from the building.

  But Livy had the Plutarch.

  "It's over," she repeated. "Order them to stop."

  Malvin turned his back on her. Her gun was already trained on him. The finger she held on the trigger tightened. If he climbed onto the craft, she'd fire to disable it.

  When Malvin spun back, it caught her unaware.

  The gun in his hand gleamed an ugly shiny black in the morning light.

  The cameras behind her jolted, their lights dimming and swimming before they focused again. Julia breathed, "Olivia," but Livy stayed focused.

  On the Plutarch, her fiancé.

  The one who had hurt her, starved her family, imprisoned her sister, would have killed the man she loved and the woman who protected her.

  The man bent on keeping the world enslaved for the comfort of the few deemed worthy to forever rule.

  The man who brought his pistol to bear on her.

  Livy shot first. High and to the left. She hit him in the shoulder of his gun arm.

  Malvin's shot went high and wild, ricocheting off the top of the town hall building and into the sunlit air.

  Livy screamed. Her grandfather's rage. Her sister's fear. The preventable near death of her brother. She screamed for every man and woman deemed traitor for caring more for humanity than for the government that beat them down.

  She screamed out the fire that always burned inside her.

  She shot the Plutarch a second time, her second shot just inches from the first, shattering his shoulder.

  He dropped the gun and fell to his knees, staring up at her, a snarl on his face. That, Livy thought, was the true face of the man she had been meant to marry.

  Rebels rushed around them, kicking the ruler's gun away, making certain the cameras caught every move, every action. The Plutarch was dragged to his feet, shoved face first into the metal of the chopper cockpit, his arms wrenched around in a way that must have grated his sho
ulder, because he screamed, then went pasty white and limp as he was spun around and dragged back into the building.

  The rebels surrounded him, guns drawn, half pointed at the Plutarch, half at the army and the Centurion who paced them.

  Arash reached Livy, supported her as if her knees were going to buckle, as if the panic was going to catch up to her.

  It didn't. She stood proudly, a savage grin on her face as she smiled up at him. Up on tiptoe, she kissed him, then said, "Come on," making him laugh as she dragged him in her wake to the town hall, Selene catching up to them halfway there.

  THE THREE OF them mounted the dais where the Plutarch knelt with more than one gun held to his head. Julia followed them in, filming. Broadcasting. All the world was seeing the wedding that wasn't.

  And the rebellion that was.

  That was when her words and courage deserted her. When faced with a world watching her.

  It wasn't Livy's rebellion. Not like that. She wasn't the one who had worked for years to put the pieces in place. She was the catalyst but not the cause. She'd had her say when she shot the Plutarch.

  Now it was the turn of Arash and the rebel leaders, but the councils hadn't come. She hadn't expected them to. Like the Aristocracy, many of whom had already slipped away, they'd stayed behind and sent others to fight for them.

  Arash. And Selene. And Julia. And Livy's father, Jep. The plants in the government and the rebels in the desert.

  Livy let her trembling legs finally collapse out from under her. She leaned against the dais and watched as Arash and Selene and her father and the rebels pronounced the end of hostilities, demanded that all over the world, attacks cease. The broadcasts went out, and in 10 minutes, Julia's feed showed city after city reporting in. Hot spots still raged in some countries, but in most, the rebels now held the upper hand, locking down the Arcadian government wherever it was represented.

  In Arcadia itself, a rebel flag – white with a green hummingbird – flew next to what reporters on the ground were calling the Bane flag – the notch-winged butterfly on a field of green.