by April Marcom
“Kristine?” Luke choked out, his voice full of emotion.
“Luke—” I finally got out. I felt like I was drowning. Wretched coughing tore at my throat as my first agonizing breaths came. “Luke.” I sat up and leaned away, afraid my schizophrenic episodes were getting worse.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as he began to cry.
“You’re dead. Roman killed you. I can’t—”
He grabbed me and forced me to kiss him. I only fought it for a second, and then I felt myself melting against him, pulling him closer, running my fingers through his dark hair, and crying with him.
He was alive. It was all a cruel lie. Luke was alive, and he was there—my rescuer—holding me in his arms again.
“Luke,” I sobbed into his shoulder as he took his lips away from mine to pick me up, cradling me as he stood.
“I can’t believe I finally found you,” he said. “I’ve been looking for days. When he was carrying you away...I was afraid you were dead.” He leaned over to kiss the top of my head twice and then hold me even tighter. “I love you so much, Kristine.”
“I love you, too.”
I clung to him for dear life as I cried over how relieved and overwhelmed I was. His noisy gasping breaths told me that he was doing exactly the same thing.
“Luke—” I said, lifting my head suddenly. “Roman will be here any minute.”
“How do you know?”
“He always comes at six-thirty. That’s why I was trying to strangle you. I thought you were him. You have to leave before he gets here.”
“Why?” He set me down in annoyance. “Why should I leave you with him?”
“Because,” I sobbed. “I can’t lose you again. I spent the last thirteen days wishing I was dead because it hurt so bad.”
“Well so did I,” he said, raising his voice. “I’m not leaving this room without you.”
“But I can’t get away. He chained me to the wall and he has the key.”
“Then I’ll wait here for him.”
“But he has a gun—”
Luke shut me up by kissing me and holding me where I couldn’t move. I was scared enough for him that I would have pushed him out the door if I could have. Anything to keep him alive.
“Get away from her,” Roman said, standing on the door that was lying flat on the floor. My worst fear became a reality as I saw the gun Roman held pointed at Luke.
“No,” I tried to move in front of Luke, but he turned boldly to face Roman and kept me back with one arm. “Why did you tell me he was dead?” I asked Roman, giving up on my fight to guard Luke.
“Because it was the only way to make you love me.”
“I told you, I’ll never love you. Luke’s the only man I love.”
“Don’t say that,” he hissed, his face twisting with fury. “You love me.”
“Get over it, Armstrong,” Luke said. “She loves me.”
Roman fixed his dangerous eyes on Luke. He cocked the gun and began moving closer. “She can’t love you if you’re dead.”
“NO!” I screamed, struggling in vain to get around Luke. “Please don’t hurt him, Roman! Please! I’ll do anything you want. I’ll run away with you. I’ll stay with you forever. Just please, don’t hurt Luke,” I pleaded, crying harder than I had all day.
“No, Kristine,” Luke said, his eyes blazing. “I’d rather die than see you end up with him.”
“I can’t lose you again.”
“I’ll let him live,” Roman said, “if you say you love me and tell your ex-boyfriend goodbye.” He was close to us now. He reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out the blackened key that would release me.
I took it from him when he held it out and sat down to unlock the band around my ankle.
Luke watched me, waiting for something to happen. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I would spend the rest of my life miserable with Roman if it meant his life were spared.
“Don’t try anything or Knight’s dead,” Roman said as the shackle fell to the floor.
I looked up at him anxiously. “I won’t. Just don’t hurt him.”
Roman held out a hand to me. I took it and went to stand beside him.
“Kristine,” Luke said heartbreakingly.
“You shut up,” Roman said. Then he glanced at me. “Say it.”
“No,” Luke begged me.
I locked eyes with Roman and spoke with trembling and fear. “I love you, Roman.”
He smiled and let out a sigh of pleasure. “I’ve waited a long time to hear you say that. You’ll say it to me every day forever, or I come back and kill him.”
I nodded as Luke took a step forward.
Roman pressed the gun against his forehead. “She’s coming with me whether I kill you or not. I prefer you dead, so you should think twice before you take another step.”
Luke’s eyes were truly blazing now, as he lifted his arms slowly in surrender. “She’s mine,” he said darkly. “You can’t have her.”
“Try and stop me.”
Luke’s arm struck Roman’s like lightning. There was a flash and an explosion. I screamed and fell back, realizing the gun had just gone off.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
~ Indebted ~
“LUKE!” I screamed, looking around.
He lunged for the gun on the ground, seemingly unharmed. Roman, on the other hand, was holding his arm, which bent back at the elbow where Luke had broken it. He kicked the gun when he saw Luke going for it. Even with the torture I saw in his face, Roman went after it too. They both reached for the gun and grabbed onto it at the same time. Yanking and grunting, they fought for control.
My ankle throbbed when I tried to go help Luke, but still, I dragged myself halfway across the room before the gun went off again. The bright flash forced me to close my eyes. I hardly heard it this time, because my ears were still mostly deaf from before. When I looked up, Luke was lying flat on his back, holding his side with a bloody hand. “LUKE!” I screamed, running toward them.
Roman was struggling to cock it back again with his good arm. My course set for Luke veered to Roman. I stomped on his broken arm repeatedly and took the gun from him as he howled in pain.
Once I had it, I picked my foot up to focus on pulling the top of the gun back. It was a lot harder than I’d expected. It clicked back and into place as Roman stood up and ran for the door. I aimed and fired chaotically. He disappeared into the hallway.
Luke took off after him with his hand still on his wounded side.
“Luke, no,” I called after him. “You need a doctor.”
He ignored me and kept going.
I struggled to cock back the gun again, and then hurried after them. Running on my ankle was excruciating, but I had to help Luke. “Luke!” I shouted in the hallway, seeing him turn to the left up ahead. “Take this gun!”
He was trailing blood behind him.
“Errr,” I grunted. The one time I really wanted to be able to run, I couldn’t.
By the time I turned after them, Roman was turning right. “Luke!” I called out again. He ignored me and turned right too.
Not being able to shoot at Roman was maddening. I’d never shot a gun in my life before that, so I knew I had as much chance of hitting Luke as I did him.
When I turned right, I watched them disappear up a long stairway with short stone steps, the same one Luke and I used to get to Rose in the boiler room.
As I got closer, I saw Luke’s headmaster standing frozen close to the top, eyes fixed on Luke. He opened his mouth to speak as Roman shoved him out of the way so he could run past. With no handrail to grab onto, gravity threatened to hurl him to his death.
Luke caught him halfway to the first fatal blow, where his skull would have undoubtedly been bashed in. Luke set his headmaster down hastily and began up the stairs again. He was slowing down, leaning forward enough that he used the hand not holding his injury to help carry his weight up the stairs.
“Why did you have to
help me?” his headmaster asked breathlessly. “Knight! Get back here.” Luke kept going, though.
“Fayre,” the headmaster said darkly when he saw me. “What’s going on?”
“Roman framed Knight.” I hurried past him, my ankle hurting a hundred times worse in the merciless climb.
“You come back here!”
It crossed my mind that Ripper and Hanghard should have been there to save their headmaster when I slammed into something hard at the top of the stairs, something that I couldn’t see. And then a giant greasy man appeared. He reached out to grab my shirt before I fell back. Crooked, brown teeth snarled at me as he said, “I’ve been looking for you.”
“And I’ve got the other one,” an equally monstrous man with dreadlocks and clear blue eyes said, walking up behind him with Luke thrown over his shoulder.
“Luke!” I screamed, fighting to get away.
“Shut up, witch,” the man holding onto my suit said as he lifted me over his shoulder, too.
Luke was shivering and pale now, his eyes fluttering open enough to see me and whisper, “Kristine.”
“Let him go or I’ll shoot,” I said, pointing the gun at Luke’s captor’s face. He only laughed and nodded to the man holding me.
I felt myself being bounced up on his shoulder and then sliding back down in front of him. I did my best to hold onto the gun, but with my balance gone and everything happening so fast, the man who had dropped me took it away easily. He put one hand around my neck and the other on top of my head. “I’m gonna break your neck in two,” he said menacingly.
“No, Hanghard...” I could hear his master still trying to catch his breath as he hurried up the stairs. “...Armstrong...Get me Armstrong instead...”
Hanghard glared at me and growled as he let me go, pushing me back enough that I had to grab the wall beside me not to fall. Then he ran away with Roman’s gun.
“We’re still taking care of Knight, aye?” the man I presumed to be Ripper asked.
“No...” His Headmaster took a deep breath. “I owe him a great debt now. You must get him to the hospital wing immediately.”
Ripper looked almost as livid as Hanghard had as he turned away and walked stiffly down the hall.
“You will come with me, Fayre,” Tobias said.
“I’m going with Luke,” I said as I walked after Ripper.
“You would do well to remember that I hold his life in my hands.”
I stopped in my tracks. I felt the same frustration and stiffness Ripper had shown as I turned around.
The Cinder headmaster went down the hallway in the opposite direction as the other three. I followed because I had to. Two turns later, he stopped beside a tiny shelf with a small black vase sitting on it and picked it up. He pressed a button underneath and I heard a robotic voice say, “Headmaster Tobias Veziamo, password.”
“Loyalty to your master and to your school.”
He placed the vase back on the stand as a piece of the wall below slid back and then to the side. Lights came on in the secret room behind it. Luke’s headmaster led me into a round office room, decorated with antique-looking things. The desk he sat behind was badly stained and scarred. The books and little toys lining the walls were dusty and faded.
“Where did you get all these old things?” I asked curiously, taking a seat in a beaten up green chair.
“All taken from the house I grew up in.”
As the wall slid back in place behind me, it struck me that this headmaster might be a bit more sentimental, at least about his childhood with his parents, than mine. Suddenly, the man before me almost seemed human.
“When can I see Luke? I mean Knight,” I asked.
“The problem is that everyone is hunting you and Knight. If I let you go off alone, the first Cinder that found you would take you prisoner or kill you. I’ve given orders to every student and adult I employ to do either one of these things if they should find you.”
“Then what about Knight?! Won’t the Cinder doctors try to kill him?” I fought very hard to keep from jumping out of that chair.
“Not as long as he’s with Ripper. Any command he gives will be a command from me, and he won’t leave Luke’s side until I say otherwise.”
Cinder Headmaster put an elbow on his desk and rubbed his forehead. “I wish he hadn’t saved me from that fall.”
“Seriously? You would rather have fallen and broken half the bones in your body?”
He turned his powerful stare back on me. “Don’t you understand? Now I owe him a great debt. Whatever he wants, even. I swore I’d have him killed when he beat those guards half to death and got away. Now I can’t. I have to go back on my word, which is something I’ve never done before. My students will no longer respect me as their master.”
This was followed by a long, heavy silence. I didn’t know what to say to this. But I was so, so, so relieved to know he wouldn’t kill Luke.
“Well...maybe you could tell them he’s paid his debt—Tell them he’s suffered or been punished nearly to death and that he begged you for it. Instead of killing him like he wanted, you kept torturing him or something.”
His gray eyebrows bent down halfway to his nose. He was looking at me like I was absolutely insane. And then he cocked his head and smiled, making him look even more human. “Are you suggesting I lie?”
“Well, yeah, if that’s what it takes to keep Knight alive.”
He sat back and continued to smile, but not the happy sort, more of a deranged grin. “I do believe you’re more Cinder than Havener, deep down.”
“I am not,” I said defensively.
“You stood up to me for a Cinder. You got yourself down to the prisoner’s floor. How you did this, I have yet to figure out. You held a gun to Ripper’s head, even though Haveners don’t use them. You’re sitting here trying to help me come up with a manipulative way to get around this situation so that I’ll let your Cinder boyfriend live. And—” He leaned forward to grab my hands and turn them inward. “—you’re wearing one of my suits.” I pulled my hands away and sat back. He was confusing, not the terrifying vulture I was used to.
Maybe the last few weeks had hardened me. But it was survival. Mine and Luke’s. That didn’t make me a Cinder. “Yeah, but I’m still a North Havener at heart.”
The smile dimmed slightly, but he didn’t look angry. “I’ll find a way to explain this to my students, but first you need to explain what you said earlier—about Armstrong framing Knight.”
“Okay,” I told him everything from getting caught in the hallway on my way to find Luke up until this very moment, but I refused to tell him how I got to the underground prison cells. All the while, I couldn’t decide if I was more worried about Luke’s life or mine. He was in the hospital wing with a bullet wound. And his headmaster still hadn’t mentioned sparing my life.
“Hmm...” He leaned back in his chair and stared at the stone ceiling when I was through. “My brother would never have one of his own students killed. Always the weaker twin. If Hanghard catches him, I’ll kill Armstrong myself for making such a fool of me.” The silence that followed was driving me crazy.
I couldn’t wait to know if he planned to kill me any longer. “What about me? Will you have me killed, too? For helping Knight?”
He stared at me lazily. “That depends on him, I suppose. If he survives, the thing he’ll ask me for will probably be your safety. He loves you, I’ve been told, so much so that he would sacrifice his own life to save yours.”
“You mean you’ll kill him if he wants you to let me go?”
“I’ve already explained; I can’t kill him now. He saved me from that fall, forcing me to be forever in his debt. He’s untouchable. You don’t understand Cinder code.”
Not the clearest answer, but it sounded like we were both okay.
Except that Luke’s life was still on the line somewhere upstairs. I felt myself tearing up already. “Couldn’t I use this shadow suit to go see Knight? I need to know how he’s
doing.”
“We’ll wait for Hanghard to report back. Then I’ll have him escort you to my brother and explain what’s happened.”
We sat there in that drafty room for a long time. I fought not to cry, because I didn’t want to appear weak to Luke’s headmaster. After everything he said and the way he seemed to tie the two of us together, it felt like anything I did would be a reflection of Luke. I needed his headmaster to continue viewing me more like one of his Cinders.
They weren’t all bad, after all.
Chapter Forty
~ Manhunt ~
When the wall finally slid to the side and Hanghard walked in, I jumped out of my seat. “Is Knight okay?”
He glared at me and then looked at his headmaster. “Armstrong got away. I lost him near the front. He may have fled the school entirely, but I doubt it. With that arm, he wouldn’t be able to survive out there.”
I stared at his master, hoping he’d finally let me go. Then maybe my headmaster could tell me how Luke was doing.
“I’ll alert both schools and send guards to the tunnels and out on the grounds,” the headmaster said. “He must be found. In the meantime, I need you to take her to her headmaster. Tell him not to let her out of his sight until I join him. It’ll be Knight’s request that she be kept alive and safe when he wakes up. Nothing can happen to her.” I could tell he resented Luke for that.
I could also tell that Hanghard resented having to look after me, as he grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the open wall.
“Use your shadow suits, both of you,” his headmaster said, walking out of the room behind us. Hanghard and I looked at each other as we did what we were told. His grip tightened, making me want to cry, but I held it in. We all walked together until we entered the dining hall.
The delicious smells and the sight of my schoolmates laughing and eating breakfast filled me with joy. Until then, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see them again. It felt like the nightmare of the last two weeks was finally coming to an end. If only Roman wasn’t still out there and I knew Luke would be all right...
