Harvester of Light Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by S. J. West

  “Then who would take you to the dance tonight?” Kale asked.

  “I’m sure Skye would share Ash with me,” Zoe said.

  Ash looked taken aback by Zoe’s suggestion.

  “What?” Zoe asked, seeing the sudden look of alarm on Ash’s face. “You wouldn’t be interested in taking two hotties to the dance?”

  “No, it’s not that,” Ash said. “I was just hoping to have some time alone with Skye to talk about something important.”

  This was news to me. Ash hadn’t mentioned needing to speak with me, though in the past two weeks, we hadn’t been able to talk much.

  After we arrived in the Southern Kingdom, Doc Riley made us stay in the hospital for a couple of days to make sure we didn’t experience any adverse side effects from being exposed to the barrier. Then, we were all questioned separately about the events leading up to the time we became trapped in the radiation field. Even though my father was on the council, I was still subjected to the same questions my other friends had to answer. None of us mentioned the claim Lucena Day had made about being my real mother. I didn’t ask my friends why they had omitted that small fact from their statements, but I had to assume it was close to the same reason I didn’t. What would the people of the Southern Kingdom do to Lucena Day’s child? Plus, I couldn’t exactly make myself say the words. Not yet. Not until I talked to my father about it.

  Ian had it worse than any of us. He was placed in a high security jail cell for over a week before Doc Riley was able to have him remanded into her custody. She argued with the council that his blood could hold the key to defeating the Harvesters. Before we came, no one on this side of the barrier had ever even heard of the Cain virus. Doc Riley convinced the council that if she could study Ian, she might be able to find a way to distribute the virus to every Harvester in the Eastern Kingdom, finally giving humans a fighting chance to regain control over the world. Ian was soon fitted with a security bracelet, which emitted an alarm if he stepped out of the boundaries the council set for him. Ian didn’t seem to mind the restricted access. I think he was just glad to be out of Alliance and out from under Freddy’s control.

  I was surprised Ash hadn’t told me before now that he needed to speak with me about something important. Since being reunited, we’d only had time to have one serious conversation, and I had monopolized most of it by telling him everything that happened after Rose snatched him away from me. Ash let me do what I always did with him: bare my heart and soul, then help me pick up the pieces afterward. When I needed to cry, he held me in his arms and let me unburden my heart without trying to make me believe everything was going to be all right. We had both grown up in a world where happily ever after didn’t exist (if it ever had), and he wasn’t about to start lying to me now.

  “Do we need to talk about it before then?” I asked, wondering how serious whatever he wanted to say was.

  Ash shook his head. “It can wait until tonight.” I saw Ash’s eyes travel to my hair. “Like your hair, by the way. Looks good on you.”

  “Yeah, looks pretty cool,” Kale agreed with a nod. “Though I’m a sucker for women with long brown hair,” he said wistfully.

  It wasn’t hard to guess who he was seeing in his mind.

  “Oh shut up,” Zoe said with a roll of her eyes while tugging on a sleeve of Kale’s shirt to make him start walking down the hallway. “Until you get the guts to tell Teegan how you feel, you don’t get to daydream about her around me.”

  Zoe and Kale continued to banter back and forth like brother and sister as they began their descent down the central stairwell of our apartment building. Ash walked by my side as we gave the other two a wide berth in front of us.

  “Listen,” I said to Ash, “I know we haven’t had a lot of time to talk, but I’ll make time if it’s important to you.”

  Ash grinned as we descended the steps behind our friends. “I know, Skye. But it can wait until tonight.”

  “Why can’t we talk about it now?” I asked, more than a little curious as to what he considered to be so important to talk about but not urgent enough to discuss immediately.

  “Because it’s something I would rather talk about when we’re all dressed up and don’t have anything to worry about except having a good time. Heading to work isn’t the most romantic time to have a talk.”

  The word “romantic” sent up a red flag in my mind. It was the first time Ash had ever used the word when referring to me. I thought back to that moment in the library after we had disposed of the Harvesters’ bodies and before he had fallen unconscious from the injuries he had sustained in the fight with them. I felt sure, then, that Ash was about to tell me how he truly felt for me. If he was waiting for a “romantic” time to have a talk with me now, was he about to declare his true feelings for me?

  Ash seemed to assume I understood his intentions because he casually took hold of my hand as we walked out the double glass doors of the apartment complex we lived in. In all the time I had known him, only once had Ash held my hand: the night we escaped the breeding camp. Back then, it was to make sure I kept up with him. Now, it seemed to convey a completely different meaning, and I honestly wasn’t sure how I felt about it. There was a time I would have been head over heels in rapturous joy, but that was before Jace became a part of my life. Now, my heart felt torn in half between the two men who held it. I couldn’t prevent feeling like I was betraying Jace by letting Ash do something as innocent as hold my hand.

  As we walked onto the street outside our complex, I had to marvel once again at the ingenuity of those who had built the Southern Kingdom. Basically, it was a circular, indoor city with twenty-story buildings forming a double circle. A monorail system was sandwiched in between the buildings, and a green pastoral oasis sat in the middle of it all: Central Park. My father said it was given the title to bring back memories of its namesake.

  Ash held my hand while we rode the monorail and didn’t let go as we got off at our stop in front of the greenhouses. He was assigned to work in the corn farming units next to the orchard unit Zoe and I worked in.

  “You’re having lunch with your dad today, right?” Ash asked.

  “Yeah. I’m planning to ask him about Lucena and get that whole nightmare over with once and for all. I need to know the truth one way or the other.”

  “Just remember,” he said, squeezing the hand he held tightly, “no matter what the answer is, you’re still you and nothing can change that. You’re the best person I know, Skye.”

  “That’s probably because you don’t know many people,” I said, trying to shrug off his praise.

  Ash smiled. “I know enough.” He leaned down and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “See you tonight.”

  “Ok, see you.”

  I let go of his hand and watched him enter his greenhouse before I stepped into mine.

  Once inside, I saw Doc Riley was already giving everyone their instructions for the day. Zoe, Ian, and a few other volunteers stood around her in a semicircle. When Ian saw me, he arched an imperious eyebrow and turned to pointedly look at the digital clock on the wall, which showed me I was five minutes late.

  “I know,” I mouthed silently, coming to stand with everyone else.

  “Well, nice of you to decide to join us, Skye,” Doc Riley said. From anyone else, it would have sounded like a condescending remark, but I knew Doc Riley was just picking on me for being late. She was a hard-as-nails woman to most people, but for some reason, she held a soft spot in her heart for me.

  After giving everyone their instructions, Doc Riley pulled me to the side out of earshot of everyone else.

  “So, is today the day?” she asked in a hushed, conspiratorial voice.

  Other than Ash, Doc Riley was the only other person in the Southern Kingdom I had told about Lucena Day’s claim to being my mother. She had urged me to speak with my father about it as soon as I told her, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Something inside me already knew the answer. I worried having my father
confirm it would push me past the point of no return.

  “Yes, I plan to ask him at lunch today.”

  Doc Riley nodded. “Good. You need to get to the truth. If what she said is true, then it will unburden your father from a lie. I’m sure keeping such a secret from you hasn’t been easy to do all these years, especially something so monumental. But, anyway, I digress. I have something for you to take on your picnic.”

  Doc Riley walked to one of the large stainless steel refrigeration units on the far wall and took out a small Tupperware bowl. When she walked back to me, she handed me the bowl.

  “Try these out,” she said excitedly. “They’re a hybrid I made of a strawberry and grape. Simply delicious!”

  The combination seemed odd to me, but I thanked her for her generosity and tucked it inside my backpack to share with my father later.

  The wait for lunchtime was made easier with work. In the orchard unit, we took care of a cornucopia of apple, orange, and pear trees. We were in the middle of harvest time for the apple trees, which took a lot of manpower since we weren’t allowed to squander gas or electricity on machines to help harvest food. Everything that could be done by hand in the Southern Kingdom was.

  “So, I hear you have a hot date tonight,” Ian said, coming to stand beside the ladder I was perched on to collect apples.

  I looked down at him and saw he had already collected his first bushel. Ian may have had the Cain virus, but he still maintained some of his Harvester abilities, like super strength and agility. He could collect more fruit in an hour than I could in a whole day of working.

  “It’s not a hot date,” I told him, continuing to pluck apples, hoping he would get the non-verbal hint I didn’t want to talk about it with him.

  “Out of sight, out of mind?” he asked.

  I looked back down at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Ian shrugged and put his container of apples on the ground. “Seems like, only what, two weeks ago, you told Jace you loved him while he sacrificed himself to the Queen for us? Or did you just do that to make sure he didn’t change his mind and try to run off before we could make our escape?”

  A red, blurry haze clouded my vision. I quickly descended my ladder and promptly slapped Ian’s face, drawing the unwanted attention of a few of my coworkers. My hand throbbed from the force of the blow, and a patch of red flamed against Ian’s cheek before slowly disappearing.

  “How dare you! Don’t assume to know how I feel about Jace, or Ash for that matter. You have no idea what I’m going through.”

  “What I know is that Jace gave up his freedom so you could have yours. And how do you repay him? You jump into the arms of another man without giving him a second thought. Do you even think about him anymore? Don’t you wonder what the Queen has him doing for her? If you thought the people of Alliance were bad, you don’t know what bad is. That woman is pure evil. I sure as hell wouldn’t want someone I claimed to love to be under her thumb.”

  Ian’s words brought my fears for Jace’s safety bubbling to the surface. I couldn’t have prevented the tears that racked my body next any more than I could have stopped the flow of a river. I put my hands over my face to shield my display of grief from Ian. For the past two weeks, I had tried to put on a brave face for my friends. They all seemed so happy to be in the Southern Kingdom. I didn’t want to dampen their joy with my feelings of loss and worry.

  I felt Ian try to put his arms around me but pushed him back.

  “Don’t,” I told him. “Don’t touch me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I believed him, but that didn’t matter.

  “I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten about Jace,” he continued, the hostility in his voice gone. “He’s not here to fight for you, so I thought I should at least try to make sure you remembered he was out there.”

  “Do you think there’s been a day that’s gone by I haven’t thought about him? Do you think it’s easy for me to walk around this place and try to pretend I like it here? I don’t want to be here, Ian! I want to be out there, looking for him!”

  “Then, why aren’t you? Your father’s a bigwig around this joint. Can’t he help you?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve asked, but he says he can’t do anything. I think he just doesn’t want me to leave. He just got me back.” I wiped the tears from my face. “But don’t you dare think I’ve forgotten about Jace. He’s in my thoughts all the time. I just haven’t figured out a way to get him back, yet.”

  “You know I’ll help you if I can,” Ian said. “I just don’t want to see you make a mistake with this Ash guy. I know you’ve been friends for a long time, but if you ask me, he had his chance while you guys were running around the Eastern Kingdom alone together for the past five years. Jace has always been upfront with you about his feelings. He never tried to pretend he wasn’t in love with you, and I knew you were in love with him, even before you said it. Everybody in that van saw it but you, until it was too late.”

  I closed my eyes, lifting a hand to my temples to ease the sudden headache, which was squeezing my temples like a vise. “Leave it to a reformed Harvester to be the champion of romance.”

  Ian shrugged. “Just looking out for Jace’s girl.” He held his hands out, palms up. “Forgive me?”

  “I’ll forgive you this one time,” I said, pointing my index finger at him. “But just remember, I haven’t forgotten about Jace. I couldn’t forget about him, even if I tried.”

  As Ian picked up his bucket of apples, he winked at me. “Like the hair, by the way.”

  “Thanks. Needed a change.”

  “Suits you. Kinda shows your spunk but keeps you looking like a lady at the same time.”

  The sound of a whistle marked lunchtime. I suddenly realized I was just leaving one emotionally charged conversation for another.

  CHAPTER TWO

  My father was waiting for me outside the orchard unit when I stepped out. He had aged since I last saw him as a child, but time had only made him more handsome. The gray in his brown hair accentuated the sharp angles of his classically handsome face and gave him an air of wisdom. He leaned down to me and kissed my forehead before taking my arm as we walked to the artificial pond built in the center of Central Park. The nuclear-powered sun slowly made its way across the blue sky above us, mimicking what the real sun had done in the days before the war. The gentle breeze blowing across the greener-than-green grass almost made me forget the things around me were man-made.

  “Want to try one?” I asked my father, handing him the Tupperware bowl filled with the fruit Doc Riley had given me. It truly did look like the misbegotten child of a grape and strawberry with its thin purple shell dimpled with small seeds.

  My father’s left eyebrow arched involuntarily. “You’re sure it’s safe to eat? It looks like it might eat me instead.”

  I laughed, causing my father to laugh as well. The rich rumble of the sound coming from his chest made me smile. Before the war, laughter filled our home around every corner. Now, it seemed to be a rare commodity.

  “Doc Riley is always trying out new hybrids in the greenhouses. I haven’t tried it either, so we’ll both be her guinea pigs.”

  Before I lost my nerve, I picked up a piece of the fruit and popped it into my mouth. The juices spilled out of the thin purple skin and pooled against my tongue. The sweetness was on the verge of being overwhelming until a slight tartness revealed itself.

  I swallowed the juices and nodded. “It’s good.”

  Since being reunited, my father had done what seemed like a million little things to make me feel comfortable in our new home. He didn’t push me to tell him about the last five years of my life, and I wasn’t in a rush to know how he had survived what happened after Ash and I escaped from the breeding camp. I knew that knowledge would most likely lead to a retelling of how my mother died. Or at least the death of the woman I always believed to be my mother. I needed to know if what Lucena Day said was true
. Was the most reviled woman in history responsible for giving birth to me? And if she was, what did that mean for me?

  “Dad, I need to ask you something. I’ve been putting it off, but I just can’t anymore. I have to know the truth.”

  “You know you can ask me anything, Skye.”

  I looked my father straight in the eyes because I needed to see his initial reaction. I feared he might try to lie to protect me, but protection wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted the truth.

  “Is Lucena Day my real mother?”

  He didn’t seem surprised by the question. He actually looked like he was expecting it.

  “In a way,” he answered, suddenly finding something interesting on the red-and-black checkered blanket we sat on to pick at.

  “What do you mean ‘in a way’? She either is or isn’t.”

  My father took in a deep breath, as if preparing himself, before looking back up at me.

  “Lucena is your biological mother, but she is not the woman who gave birth to you, raised you, and loved you.”

  “How can she be my biological mother and not my birth mother?”

  “Your mother and I tried to have children for a long time. When we finally learned she was sterile, we went to Lucena for help. Back then, your mother’s sister was a fertility specialist, among other things. There wasn’t anything medically Lucena could do to help your mother, but she offered to donate her own eggs, fertilize them with my sperm, and implant them inside your mother’s womb.”

  “Why would Mom go through all that?”

  “Because Emma and I were desperate to have you. You should have seen your mom when she found out it worked and you were on the way. It was like she swallowed sunshine she glowed so much.”

  “Why don’t I remember Lucena? If she was Mom’s sister, why wasn’t she ever in our lives?”