Lena stood for a long time in the dark and the silence, watching the two girls sleep. She had lost so much. It had never occurred to her she should consider herself lucky.
The Councilors who were responsible would pay for it all. They’d caused too much pain. The only way she could see to purge it was with blood.
The blood rage kept her up. Every time she settled her head on her pillow, images flooded her mind: her mother, Lydie’s chestnut hair blowing softly across her still little girl face, and a child who searched for her, calling out and running toward her, but getting lost in a mist too thick to see through. When she did manage to push them all away, other unwelcome thoughts came boiling up.
Why had she brought the girls back here? Yes, they would be protected from the Council, but she wasn’t naïve enough to think Fort Nevada didn’t hold any dangers for them. They had tried to keep the arrival of the powered girls as quiet as possible, for the girls’ sakes. But Lena could feel the male energy she had learned to differentiate. It pulsed and curled expectantly, mimicking the excitement of the men and boys behind it as word of their arrival spread.
How could she keep them safe, even from the people who intended to provide the protection they all needed? How would she help them heal the wounds the Dust couldn’t knit back together?
She threw off the blankets and rose to dress, rubbing grit from burning eyes. Her mind refused to let go of the fears and images tumbling through it. She left her room thinking of the cafeteria and maple syrup.
“What do you think you’re doing?” The words were a low and menacing growl echoing down the hallway.
Lena jumped and spun. Alex? If it was, she’d never heard so much fury in his voice before. And that was saying something.
She strode down to the next intersection of corridors and looked both ways. Alex stood at the end of one hall. Between him and Lena in the junction, two teenaged boys were staring at him in frozen terror. From the guilt written plain on their faces, they were up to no good. Had they been sneaking toward the girls’ rooms? Lena’s vision flared red.
Enough.
Alex stalked toward the boys, chin down, eyes narrowed, and repeated his question, his normally husky voice grating and hard.
The boys exchanged a quick look. The shorter one told him, “We heard about girls, sir. Like us. We wanted to meet them….” He drifted off as Alex’s brows lowered further.
“Before dawn? Sneaking, like criminals? What, you were planning to break into their rooms?”
Another look passed between them. “It was a dare,” the taller one supplied.
“A dare? To harass little girls who were rescued from a prison where they were being tortured just yesterday?”
The boys exchanged another miserable look.
“Since you like choosing so much, I’ll give you a choice,” Alex continued. “You can come with me now, and we’ll go upstairs where you will wake the Councilor to tell him what you were doing and why. Or you can go with her right now and take whatever she chooses to dish out.” Alex pointed past them to Lena, standing silently in the hallway behind them, head lowered and lips compressed.
The boys turned and stared, wide-eyed. One of them swallowed. “Sir,” the shorter whispered hoarsely. “She’s—”
“Glowing.” Alex’s own attention was glued to her now, though he spoke to the boys. “Yes. She does that when she’s very, very angry. Right around the time the energy she can channel blows things into tiny pieces.”
Well, the truth was a little different. But it might happen this time.
“We’d like to talk to the Councilor, sir.”
Alex held out his arm for the boys to walk past him to the elevators. They scurried up the hall, heads down. He came forward another few steps to ask her in a low voice, “Are you okay?”
She stared into the backs of the fleeing young men. She liked angry Alex. She even liked intimidating Alex. She couldn’t deal with compassionate Alex right now. She shrugged.
“You haven’t slept,” he said. It wasn’t a question, and the words were laced with concern.
“No. I’ve been…patrolling.”
He cocked his head at her. “You should have known I’d have it covered. They’ve been through enough. They don’t need to be harassed, even if it is in curiosity and not—”
“It doesn’t matter why.” Her words were quick and cutting.
He nodded his agreement. Those dark eyes were still filled with concern. One hand lifted to touch her cheek, but she flinched away. She didn’t know what his game was, but Jackson’s rejection had hurt more than she’d let on. And she’d let on quite a bit. She didn’t need another tall, dark, handsome asshole, even if he did kiss like lightning. And even if he looked like Alex.
Remember. He won’t ever feel anything back. Not really.
But he wasn’t accepting her rejection. He waited, hand still lifted, until she turned her face back to him. And then he slowly and gently brought his hand to her cheek until his long fingers curved around it, feather light and comforting. She tried to fight the calm spreading through her, although she didn’t know why.
“Lena,” his voice became husky again, and not hard at all, “it will be okay. We’ll figure it all out.”
She stepped back, two quick steps, breaking the contact between his hand and her cheek. “Tell that to Jubilee,” she whispered, holding onto her anger and disappointment. “Tell that to Hania.”
He nodded to himself and stepped away to go. He’d probably report the glow to Thomas as soon as the boys had been dismissed. Maybe before.
All of her worries and nightmares coalesced. She had to do it now. “Alex.”
He turned back.
“Is there a space big enough for everyone to gather? Guardians and Wards?”
He nodded. “Yes, of course. The north gymnasium, where we have convocations.”
“Please tell the Councilor I’d like everyone gathered there this morning at eight. There are some things that need to be cleared up.”
His brows rose. “I—okay. If you want a general address, we should probably have a conversation about it first. Maybe later in the morn—”
“I’m not Jackson. I don’t clear everything I do with either of you.” She lifted her chin. “Eight will be fine. You can tell Thomas I said so when you report I’m glowing again.” She held his gaze for a moment longer, then turned on her heel and marched back down to her hallway. After a moment, she could hear the sound of his brisk footsteps moving away down the hall to the waiting boys.
She made it halfway up her own corridor before a door opened behind her. She looked over her shoulder, ready with a word of comfort, but it was Rose. She didn’t want comforting.
Rose joined her. Awake and alert, she inspected Lena minutely.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Lena asked her. She wasn’t going to bring up the glow herself. What would she say? She had no idea why or how it worked.
Rose shrugged. “We have long days back home. They start early.”
“The Kewa are the same.” Lena told her with a nod. “My days started earlier when I lived on my own outside the city, too.”
Rose’s brows rose. “You lived with Natives? And on your own?”
Amused and flattered by the newly appreciative light in Rose’s eyes, Lena lifted her chin with pride. “After I decided to leave Azcon, I found an old gas station on the edge of Kewa lands. I cleaned it up, converted it, and built a life for myself out there. Spent time with the Kewa.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes.” She laughed, but the sound she heard coming from her throat was more than a little sad. Why did it seem so long ago? “It was good.”
“You should come with me when I go,” Rose blurted. Her lips turned up. “You belong with us, not here. There’s nothing to challenge you or hold you here, not if you have it in you to carve your own place out there.”
“I would have believed that not so long ago.” She would have, before her mother, and Lydie, and a
little girl named Jubilee, alone and haunting her dreams. Before the girls sleeping behind the doors of the hallway. “I don’t anymore.”
Rose made a small noise somewhere between frustration and understanding. “You’re going to teach them, too?” From the way Rose voiced the word ‘them,’ she referenced the men of Fort Nevada.
“Maybe.” Lena lowered her head, thinking of the meeting she’d called for a few hours from now. “Depends on how the, um, convocation I just demanded goes.”
“What are you going to say to them?”
Lena rubbed her hands together. She reached up and tucked her hair behind her ears. “I don’t know yet.”
“But it’s about us?”
“About all of us, yes. You, the girls, me. The rules have changed now. I won’t have them do to you all what they’ve done to me.”
Rose’s face went cold and her lips curled back.
“No, no. They haven’t abused me. It’s…an issue of access. No.” She shook her head. That wasn’t it, either. “An issue of expectations.”
“If they’ve treated you badly, then why stay? Why not come back with me?”
Lena took her time answering. “Because they’re right,” she finally said with a sigh. “They’re right. The Council has to pay. And this place is…they…we are the best bet.”
“Am I allowed to ask about that?” Apparently deciding to move on, she eyed the light Lena’s skin gave off.
Lena shrugged and huffed a laugh. “You can ask anything you like. In this case, I don’t happen to have an answer. Don’t know what it is. Don’t know why it happens.”
“Don’t know if it’ll happen to the rest of us?”
She shook her head. “Nope.”
“It seems like it’d be a distinct disadvantage outside, especially at night.” She stopped and turned in front of Lena. “But it is arresting. Beautiful. Terrifying.” She grinned. “How long does it last?”
“Little more than a couple of hours?” Lena wanted it to fade before she had to walk in front of the collected men of Fort Nevada.
“Hmmm. Should be long enough.” It seemed Rose had a different idea. “If I were you, I’d use it to my advantage. A big meeting requires a big impression. We, men and women both, have ceremonial gowns we wear to address our people. Do you have anything like that?”
She didn’t, and it took them some time to agree on what she should wear. Ultimately, Lena was out-voted. After the girls woke, they’d brought them back to her room. Eventually, all of them were gathered there.
She looked around at the girls in their borrowed clothes. Thomas had provided Ward uniforms for the girls after their baths the night before. They were all so thin that their bodies were swallowed up in folds of material. They’d belted and folded where they could. The girls would need clothes made to fit them, Lena told Thomas before he’d left for the night, and soon: just the first of her demands on behalf of the girls.
She hoped she wasn’t making a huge mistake. She stood before the girls, the glow emanating from her skin magnified by the buff-colored clothing she wore. Rose had wrapped her in a long length of natural linen and tied it around Lena’s hips. She’d then wound a long shawl of pale, raw wool around Lena, crisscrossing it behind her to knot at her waist.
The girls looked at her in awed silence, the light of her reflected in their wide eyes.
She felt ridiculous. She moved her shoulders restlessly.
“Stop fidgeting,” Rose told her. She made a final adjustment to the crisscrossing section over Lena’s breasts and stepped back. She wore a satisfied smirk. “Now, you glow. You’re a vision. Intimidating from the moment you walk in.”
Lena took a deep breath. “Thanks.” She hoped she could pull it off. She looked at the ring of expectant faces. She had to make it work. “Before we go, you have to prepare yourselves. There’s going to be…a lot of energy in there. And it will all be directed at us. It’s going to be—”
“We know,” Phoebe told her. “We can feel it.”
“We’re used to it,” Marin added. “Our guards were Sparks. They liked the way we felt.” She shrugged and looked down at her hands.
Constance and Charity shifted, moving closer together.
Lena’s stomach turned over. Her furious gaze snapped to Rose. The woman stared back at her in silent confirmation. Her shoulders were back, tight and squared, and her hands fisted at her sides.
Hania had been looking off into space, her upper teeth scraping over her lower lip again and again. Now she brought her gaze directly to Lena. “Will they do that to us here?”
She felt a fire burning in her chest, white and pure as the root of a Sparked flame. “No.” She answered Hania’s hoarse, plaintive question. She wanted to say more, to reassure them all, but her gaze moved over them. Their treatment had been depraved. Words would mean so little. Even Marissa, the youngest of them, watched the other girls with knowing, pained eyes. Perhaps she hadn’t been touched herself yet, but she knew.
A knock made them jump. After a polite pause, the door pushed open, revealing Alex. He searched the room, counting the girls. When he reached Lena, he stopped. Everything about him became still.
“Well,” he finally said, “that’s an effective look.”
Rose snorted her agreement.
“Are they ready for us?” Lena’s words were clipped. It was all she could do to remember that this man, this Spark, had not been to blame for what had been done to her girls. She had to remind herself he was one of the good guys, fighting for their safety.
He held onto the knob, twisting it. “I doubt it, but they are all in there waiting.”
She nodded. The girls picked themselves up off the floor where they’d settled. She moved through them, touching hands with each of them as she went. When she stood before Alex, she ignored his weighing, cautious look and told him, “Lead the way.”
They followed him out and through the warren of halls. Lena could feel the heaviness of male energy growing as they got close.
As they approached the filled hall, the buzz of voices augmented the energy. The energy rippled through the walls, pushing at them. Lena glanced over her shoulder at the now-alarmed faces of the girls and gave an angry push back at the male energy. The sound through the walls muted immediately. Her push had been felt.
Alex hesitated before opening the wide doors.
He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, she reached out, grabbed the handle nearest her and pulled back. The muted sound became a total hush. She strode in ahead of Alex and lifted her chin.
Thomas stood toward the center of the open floor area, but forward. He’d been talking to a group of Guardians seated above him in the raised seating. His eyes widened as he took in her light.
She wished she hadn’t brought the girls. It was too much energy. Even as she focused her will and pushed back, she knew she couldn’t handle it. She didn’t know if she’d be overwhelmed or intoxicated, but her time in this space would have to be limited.
Lena looked back over her shoulder and held out a hand, motioning for the girls to stay back.
Rose nodded her agreement, and she reached out to Hania’s shoulder to reinforce the twins’ hold on the fragile girl. They filed back along the wall beside the doors.
Jackson appeared beside them. He’d been standing at the back of the big room, but he moved into a protective posture now so they wouldn’t have to stand alone.
Thomas walked across to meet her in the middle and greeted her with a solemn nod. She could see he, like Alex, was worried over what she was about to do. Still, they had honored her wishes and gathered everyone anyway.
Alex touched her on the arm, holding the contact. “Lena.” His face was serious and his voice low. “Thomas and I worked a very long time to build what you see. We don’t begrudge you the need to do this. Please don’t tear it all down when you do. Remember there are only two of us—four damn hands—holding it all together.”
“It’s a delicate job,” T
homas agreed softly, “and there’s only so much damage control we can do at a time.”
She shook her head at him. “No. There are six damn hands now. And honestly, I’m surprised the two of you didn’t spend the last couple of hours figuring that out for yourselves.”
The men exchanged a look. Thomas took a deep breath.
She wished they’d hurry. She felt battered. She stood straight and tall before them all. Mentally, she felt as if she leaned against a broad barrier of energy she had to make herself, her arms extended, palms pressed flat to keep it in place, back and legs braced. And she was slipping back.
The men parted, each moving to stand to either side.
She faced a thousand people alone. Thomas and Alex were still there with her, lending their support and, in effect, their agreement. But what she was about to do, she did alone. Could she?
Someone toward the back, high up above her, coughed. The sound echoed down to her. Her vision swam as she swept a look over them all. She blinked to clear them, and her eyes fell on a familiar face in the front. Guardian Wils.
He wasn’t looking at her, though. He had reserved his calculating interest for her girls. The avaricious gleam was unmistakable.
She cleared her throat and projected as much as she could, straining with the pressure both to make herself heard and keep herself upright. “I know word travels fast,” she said. “You all know I have joined you. And by now, you all know we have retrieved others like me. We—” she indicated the men beside her, drawing unexpected strength from them “—have gathered you here so there are no misunderstandings.”
She turned and indicated her girls, wincing as she felt the energy pulse away from herself as attention shifted. She spoke quickly, drawing it back to herself to spare them. “We all feel the Spark within us. There’s a pressure, a reaction that builds upon so many of us living and working together. The stronger we are, the stronger the weight. The stronger the pull on our attention and focus. But there are more of you than there are of us, at least for the time being. We need you to be mindful of that. I’m here now asking you to help us deal with the pressure and curb the demands on our time and attention as we settle into a routine.”
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