Raging Rival Hearts

by Olivia Wildenstein

  My head thudded as I coughed and sputtered. I dragged my knees underneath me and pressed my palms into the gritty sand, but toppled when I attempted to right myself. Thankfully I was still close to the ground, and the blow wasn’t as debilitating as it could’ve been if I’d been upright.

  I rolled onto my back to catch my breath. The rain needled my exposed skin and drummed against the packed sand while huge waves crashed at my feet and hissed around my waterlogged jeans.

  I started spasming violently, from the shock of the accident and from the terrible cold. A shadow fell over me. Not a shadow. A person.

  Kajika?

  I stilled.

  The figure crouched over me. Long, pale hair dripped water onto me. I scrubbed at my eyes, getting sand into them. Even though it was as dark as night, light rippled over the girl’s face.

  Thunder shook the ground, or maybe I was trembling so hard it felt like the thunder had penetrated the beach.

  Tendrils of steam danced around my face as my fire responded to the cold rain.

  “You have finally found us,” she said, a note of wariness in her tone. “Cole, get the iron chain!”

  No! Please no. She wouldn’t hear my silent plea. Kajika!

  I turned my head to scan the beach for him. If they’d saved me, then they must’ve saved him. The girl gripped my chin and pinned my head down. Lightning scarred the darkness and reflected on her skin like a torch over a faceted diamond.

  I blinked and blinked. Had her shininess been an illusion?

  “Cole!” she barked.

  “I’m coming. I’m coming. Geez, give me a sec.”

  The girl stood and stepped back. And then another face loomed over mine—this time a man’s. More of a boy than a man. The jaw was too narrow to belong to an adult male. Cole—I guessed—gathered my wrists and wound a chain around them, then secured the links with a padlock. I gritted my teeth and wriggled to slide my leather sleeves between the chain cuffs and my skin, but I failed miserably, exposing more of my wrists to the metal. My skin blistered and smoked.

  “Shit. It’s burning her,” Cole said.

  “Duh. That’s the whole point. Relax, it won’t kill her.”

  Headlights sliced through the thick darkness and caught Cole’s forehead. Like the girl’s, his skin sparkled. His eyes widened when he saw me studying him, and he scooted away from the light.

  He yanked hard on the chain, bringing me to my feet, and then his hands cinched around my ribcage, and he hoisted me onto his shoulder, where I settled like a ragdoll. As the chain slid down over the backs of my hands, tears sprang up and coursed over my forehead, mixing into my stringy hair.

  I didn’t squirm, didn’t hit him, didn’t fly away. I was tired and in too much pain to put up a fight. Besides I wanted to go wherever these people were going.

  I’d come searching for Daneelies, but instead of finding them, they’d found me.

  15

  The Chain

  Cole shoved me in the back of a van loaded with surfboards, oars, and stacks of wetsuits. I scooted into a sitting position and scanned the dark confines for another body, but there was no other body.

  The boy hopped inside and sat opposite me while the blonde got behind the steering wheel.

  I mouthed the word stop, but the only reaction I got was an eyebrow raise from Cole. I mouthed the word again.

  The van rumbled to life and then jolted as it maneuvered from the beach to the road.

  “I think she’s trying to say something, Kiera!” he yelled.

  “She can’t talk, you idiot.”

  The boy’s forehead scrunched.

  A cell phone rang up front. Kiera picked up. “Yeah?...What do you mean the iron isn’t working on him?”

  Him. Kajika… They had Kajika. He was alive! Not that he could’ve drowned, but I was still imagining him bobbing face down in the lake, alone in the vast darkness. As though he heard me sigh his name, my palm glowed, which caught Cole’s curious gaze. I rolled my fingers closed.

  “Yeah, it worked on her,” Kiera was saying.

  “Her hand is glowing,” Cole said. “What does that mean, Kiera?”

  Kiera spun in her seat. “That she’s trying to use her magic dust! Wind some chain around her neck. That’ll teach her not to threaten us. And put on a mask.”

  I whimpered and shook my head.

  Cole strapped a mask to his face, then pulled out another length of chain from underneath the pile of life jackets.

  “His hand is glowing too?” she barked into the phone. “Fuck. You got a mask?...Wrap your shirt around your nose and mouth.”

  As Cole inched toward me, I rammed my back into the wall of the truck. Tears trickled out the corners of my eyes as I shook my head beseechingly.

  Kiera pulled the van to such an abrupt halt I was thrown sideways. The metal chain around my wrists jostled and burned new patches of skin, and the sharp plastic edge of a paddle rammed into my ribs. She stuck the van in park, then climbed into the back and crouched next to me. Even though her hair was still wet, her clothes were dry. How I longed to get out of my soggy outfit.

  “What exactly is your friend?” she asked.

  I tore my gaze off her cotton hoodie and looked at her. Kiera shoved her cell phone into my hands, but I couldn’t grip it, and it fell. She grumbled, then swiped it off my lap and pushed it again toward my hands.

  “Type or you’re getting a new necklace. What the fuck is your friend?”

  I didn’t even attempt to move my fingers. They were too numb anyway. Besides there was no way I was sharing what Kajika was with them. Not until they showed me some decency.

  Kiera flicked my cheek to get my attention. “Type!”

  I wanted to launch my dust into her face. Not to kill her, just to subdue her surliness, but my hands were useless stumps.

  Cole touched Kiera’s shoulder. “Maybe she’s deaf too, sis.”

  So Kiera was Cole’s sister. Her eyes were as dark as his, yet they seemed darker.

  “Nah. She can hear fine.” She pocketed her phone. “Your fault we’ll have to torture the truth out of him,” she said before climbing back into the driver’s seat and setting off again. “Collar her.”

  Grimacing, Cole slid the iron chain around my neck. The acrid stench of burning flesh made my eyes water. I concentrated on keeping my hands as still as possible, which was a feat in a moving vehicle. The skin around the chain had bubbled, some had even flaked off, and pale smoke puffed from the open sores.

  A peal of thunder echoed outside, making me jump. Every chain on my body shifted, and I hissed. More tears fell down my cheeks and evaporated, blending with the smoke curling from my wounds. My father used to say crying was the most terrible sort of weakness.

  He’d tried to toughen me up one year. I was to trek from the valley surrounded by the five cliffs back to the palace with lustriums for my only source of light. If I took to the sky, or if the sun peeked before I reached the palace, the lone royal guard hovering overhead had the order to carry me back to the departure point. All Wood heirs went through that pilgrimage, but until me, the heirs had all been male. Never had a woman, let alone a girl, completed the strenuous journey where wild capra slithered along the rock, their rubbery skin slick with a substance that could paralyze their prey for days, and where flocks of quila circled the sky in search of flesh to peck with their curved beaks.

  During my first attempt, I’d climbed the stone ledges, scraping my knees and elbows on the pale-gray rock, while fighting off a pair of mated quila with my dust. I lost my first fight, and had to start over in the Valley. The second time, I killed the eagle-like beast, but a few ledges from the top of the cliff, I encountered a nest of capra. The creatures drove me to the edge of the rocky shelf, which crumbled, sending me flailing all the way back down into the Valley. Had I not been a faerie, I would’ve died on impact.

  And I’d cried because I would have to make camp and then start my trek over at sundown. I’d been desperate to fo
rfeit, and I tried, but my father wouldn’t hear of it. Cruz and Ace had flown over the Valley, but they’d been ordered not to approach me, so they watched me from their perch in the sky.

  On the fifth night, I reached the plateau at the top. Pride enveloped me, and for a moment, I’d allowed myself a moment of respite under the ancient panem tree. I’d sat against its thick, twisted trunk, which was the color of wet clay, and nibbled its iridescent leaves. I remembered thinking they were the most delicious food I’d ever tasted. As juice ran down my chin, I took in the vast kingdom that my family had ruled over for generations. The mist almost kissed the ground, which made the view from atop startling. It also made adrenaline churn in the pit of my stomach, for to reach the palace, I had to cross the Hareni. Like all Seelies, I’d been taught Unseelies were the creatures of nightmares, more dangerous than diles, and quila, and capra.

  I set out again, knowing that if I didn’t reach the palace before sunup, it would be game over. The lucionaga would carry me back to the Valley, and I would have to begin again.

  I skidded down the steep bank with caution but fell so many times I bled smoke like a faulty plane engine. The deep amethyst sky had lightened to a pearlescent lavender by the time I arrived at the edge of the Hareni. Keeping my gaze glued to the grotto-like entrance of the underground Unseelie prison, I raced through the coppery sand dunes.

  The sun spiked over the horizon before I made it back home.

  I was transported back to the Valley. It took me four more Neverrian nights to complete the treacherous pilgrimage. I reached the palace on the Night of Mist, Unseelie specters whirling around my battered body. Unlike most of the Seelies, Ace had waited for me outside the palace walls. He’d swung me around when I reached the floating garden, telling me how proud he was of me.

  But my father, who hadn’t come out to greet me, was ashamed. Never had it taken a Wood heir nine days to complete the hike! I was an embarrassment to the family, unfit to carry the name. Thank the skies, I would marry and take my husband’s name someday, he’d proclaimed.

  As I sat in the van, chains scorching my skin, I experienced deep gratitude for the man who’d nurtured me with cruelty and indifference. If I could survive in the Neverrian wilderness alone, I could survive whatever these two Daneelies had in store for me.

  Unless they used their dust…

  The car lurched to a stop. When the back doors grated open, I squinted to see into the darkness, but the dense rain screened off the world.

  “I’m gonna carry you again, okay?” Cole said right before his hands scooped me off the floor of the van. He hopped out, then tossed me over his shoulder.

  The chain skidded down my throat, searing the underside of my jaw. I bit down hard on my tongue to squelch a rising scream.

  Mud slurped around the boy’s bare feet, and his shorts and t-shirt were plastered to his skin. I wondered if he’d also been swimming or if the rain had soaked him.

  The damp earth beneath his feet turned to concrete, and then we were out of the rain and inside a dark warehouse. Strings of Christmas tree lights were duct-taped to the ceiling and offered a faint glow. A brighter, almost green, light burned in the back of the warehouse. I squinted to make out what it was shining on. Dirty plastic tarp curtained off whatever occupied that space.

  Thunder clapped through the dusky chamber, while rain pounded on the tin roof like mallets on a percussion.

  Cole turned a corner, and then slid me off his brawny yet bony shoulder. The chains settled back on the strips of skin that had started healing, singeing them anew.

  The air inside was almost as frigid as the air outside, but at least it was dry. In the semi-obscurity, I noticed Cole gather an armful of chain. I stared in horror at him, assuming he was about to cocoon me in iron, and shrank backward until my tailbone hit a wall.

  “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Not going to hurt me? Did he not realize how much pain I was in?

  He grabbed the piece of chain dangling from my shackles and hooked it to the new portion with another padlock. Only then did I realize the new length of clinking links was bolted to the wall.

  They’d chained me up like a rabid dog.

  Steam puffed in the air between us, mixed with the smoke of my barbecued flesh.

  “You really have fire in your veins.” Cole gaped at the water evaporating from my clothes. “I heard you can fly. Why didn’t you…when the boat sank?”

  Because I’d been too paralyzed with shock. And then his sister—or was it he?—had grabbed me. I thought it had been to save me, but that hadn’t been their intention. People who saved others didn’t treat them like prisoners.

  Footsteps resounded next to us. I peered past Cole and straight into a face with unseeing eyes that had somehow managed to see what I was.

  16

  The Interrogation

  “And so you have found us,” Charlotte said. “How did you find us?”

  “She can’t talk, Ma,” Cole said.

  Ma? Cole was her son? I looked from mother to son but didn’t see much of a resemblance. Where Charlotte’s hair was a graying-black, Cole was as blond as his sister.

  “I know she can’t talk, Cole.”

  He blushed and mumbled, “Sorry.”

  Charlotte kept staring unnervingly at me.

  “Where’s Kiera?” Cole asked.

  “With Quinn and the girl’s friend. Trying to get some answers.”

  “Did he bring him to—”

  Charlotte silenced him with a glare. I swear, if it weren’t for the way her lids so rarely came down, I would never have guessed she was blind. “Would you like me to draw out a map so the girl can go to him?”

  Cole tucked a piece of longish hair behind his ear and garbled another apology.

  Little did they know I didn’t need a map. All I needed was to concentrate on his location the next time my brand flared to life.

  Charlotte took a step toward me. “Are more of you coming?”

  I shook my head.

  “Negative,” Cole translated.

  “What do you want with us?” Charlotte continued.

  I stood there unmoving, facing mother and son, all at once dripping water onto the dusty floor and steaming. How was I supposed to answer them without the use of my hands?

  “Ma, she can’t talk,” Cole said sheepishly.

  “Get her a pen and a paper.”

  I didn’t dare hope the pen and paper would lead to the removal of my iron cuffs.

  Cole’s quick footsteps resonated in the low-ceilinged complex. The wall next to Charlotte was red and the one behind me was yellow. We were in the shipping-crate building. Not that it would help me escape, but it comforted me to know where I was.

  Cole returned with a pad of lined yellow paper and a ballpoint pen. He extended them to me. I tipped my chin to my shackles.

  “Ma, she’ll need her hands to write. Should I take off the chains?”

  “Not yet. I don’t trust her not to use her dust on us.” She circled around me, giving me a wide berth. “Your friend doesn’t react to iron, but one of his hands glows with dust, and he can control minds with sight and voice? Is he a new breed of faerie?”

  “Ma—”

  “I know she can’t talk, Cole. I’m just thinking out loud.”

  She drummed her fingers against her calf-length, khaki skirt. It was snagged in places and bleached an ochre color on the hem. Not that I think she minded. One, she couldn’t see, and two, this community lived simply.

  Loud, rushed footsteps beat the cement floor.

  Charlotte stopped pacing and turned toward the noise. It was coming from the opposite end of the crate complex.

  I inhaled a sharp breath. Was Kajika coming?

  No such luck. It was Quinn.

  “The son of a bitch tried to strangle me with his chains.” Quinn was puffing hard, his face as red as cherry juice. “He’s fucking strong, too.” He stopped a few feet in front of me, and his upper lip
hiked up. “What the fuck is he?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Charlotte replied calmly. “Perhaps a mix of human and faerie. Did you blindfold him?”

  “I did better than that…I duct-taped his fucking eyes shut,” Quinn snarled. “And his mouth.”

  Quinn had a death wish. Once Kajika broke free—because there was no doubt in my mind he would—he would kill Quinn.

  “I didn’t appreciate being turned into a puppet.” Spittle flew from his mouth and glimmered in the air.

  “Did you leave Kiera alone with him?”

  “No. Pete and Tamara are there too,” Quinn said.

  “Did you secure the perimeter?”

  “Yes.”

  Securing it so we couldn’t break out, or so that if anyone came looking for us, they wouldn’t be able to get in? How I hoped someone would be coming for us. Preferably Cat. She was like them. They’d listen to her. They’d release us and see we weren’t their enemy. I sent a silent—surely useless—prayer up into the sky.

  “Ma, get back. Her palm’s glowing.” Cole reached for his mother’s arm and pulled her back. He raised the dive mask that was dangling around his neck back onto his face.

  “I thought you said iron would nullify her dust,” Kiera said, suddenly there again.

  “Apparently we thought wrong,” Quinn said.

  I curled my fingers into a tight fist. The iron had numbed all the area surrounding the chain, so I couldn’t feel the bond, but the sight of it almost made me weep. I tried to concentrate on his location, but all I got from our link was that he was close.

  “If you attack us, we will kill your friend,” Charlotte said calmly. “And we will make you watch.”

  I must’ve gotten noticeably paler, because Kiera smirked. “So he can be killed…”

  Had she deduced this from my complexion? At least she didn’t know how, or she wouldn’t have looked for validation in my expression. She would’ve known she could use her dust… unless she didn’t have any? Maybe Earthly Daneelies didn’t possess dust.

  How I prayed I was right.