by Lucy Smoke
I glance over at the obstacle course of death. I know I’m going to have to tackle it at some point. Why not today?
I climb off the stacks of mats and make my way towards it. I don’t know how far I can make it in synthetic cotton sleep pants and a t-shirt with no shoes, but if I head back to the penthouse now, I may lose my nerve. I step up to the first obstacle and look up at the behemoth that awaits me.
A set of stairs lead up to a single strip of flooring—a beam so tiny that, if I hadn’t seen it myself, I would have questioned Noaz’s ability to sprint across it the way he had before. I slowly make my way up, then start across. On either side there’s a dip. I place one foot in front of the other, moving at a snail’s pace. Slow and steady wins the race, right? Except the only thing I’m racing against is myself.
I slip and nearly topple over the side to the mats below. Cursing, I right myself and take another unsteady step forward. This time, I do slip. My foot slides off the side of the beam and I yell as I try to make a mad grab for the beam to haul myself up. I miss by a mile and fall four feet down to the mats below. My back hits with a thud and I stare up at the beam in irritation.
Standing, I make my way back around to the beginning. This time, I go a little faster. I wonder if Noaz had crossed it so easily because he didn’t give himself time to slip. I make it halfway across before my foot slides off again. Back to the start. The faster, I go, the easier it is to cross. Once I’m across to the other side, there’s a tiny platform with a rope dangling from the ceiling leading to a platform several yards up. I grab the rope and climb. My arms burn as I hoist myself up. My hands sting as they slide up the rope. I should have done this with gloves, but I’m not fucking turning back now.
I get to the top platform and look down and across. Three fucking body length trampolines span the width of the next obstacle. Across from them is an equally high platform. There’s no room to make a running start, which would have helped my height. So, I leap—aiming for the last trampoline, hoping my momentum will propel me up. I almost make it, but instead land on the middle one. I shoot up—the exact height I need to be and barely catch a glimpse of the next obstacle.
“Shit,” I hiss when I hit the trampoline again and my ankle crumples beneath me. I go down on my side, still bouncing, but much lower. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Scrambling, even as I’m hovering mid-air, I manage to get my feet under me again. Sweat slicks the middle of my back under my t-shirt as I bend my knees, trying to pump my legs harder when they land. I can’t only get this far. I have to make it to the end.
My hands reach for the edge of the next platform just as I hear a door open. My fingers close around it and my entire body pulls down, stopping its descent. I ignore the sounds of the guys entering as I leverage myself up to the new platform and start across. Looking down over the edge, I notice the other side is a wall filled with small fist sized holes. Wasting no time, I get on my stomach, edge over the side, and scale down.
“Damn!” Thayer calls, causing me to nearly lose my grip.
I curse and barely manage to grapple with a new handhold. “Shhh.” Haze hisses in the background.
“No way! Come on, Firecracker! You got this!” Thayer shouts. Asshole. I grin.
I make it to the bottom and start right back up. The muscles in my arms and legs feel like liquefied jelly. My neck aches, and my head is pounding. I crawl up a giant net, my feet catching in the webbing more times than I care to admit, but I reach the top and vault over it. When I land, my knees buckle, and I go down.
“Hey, are you okay?” Thayer calls out.
“She’s fine,” Noaz replies, not waiting for me to reply. “Let her catch her breath.”
Catch my breath. Yeah, I think. That’s what I need to do. Just breathe. My chest pumps up and down. My entire body feels drenched in sweat. My throat aches from how hard I’m breathing. Slowly, on shaky legs, I stand.
In front of me, a wall of pegs leading up to yet another platform is accompanied by two metal rings. They’re cold to the touch, but I grab them off their pegs and realize that I’m supposed to use them—and the muscles in my arms— to lift myself up all the way to the top. There’s no fucking way that’s possible. It’s one thing to dangle myself from a zipcar using the remains of my t-shirt, it’s another to scale the side of a mini-fucking-building—or so it seems—with nothing but my arm muscles for support. All without gloves. I barely rode that zipcar for a couple of minutes. And despite the exercises that Noaz has been having me do to strengthen both my abs and arm muscles—they are nowhere near as strong as Noaz’s or any of the guys. I squint up, debating.
I just need to think, I tell myself. Then I see it. My way up. Man, I’m brilliant.
Grinning, I start up with the metal rings—hooking them around a peg, pulling myself up and then hooking the next ring around an even higher peg. I just need to get half way up. Just half… I pant with the effort it takes… way. I jerk my arm up and hook the ring around another peg and haul my leg up at the same time, using a nearby peg to push myself up.
“Hey! That’s cheating!” Thayer calls.
“No, it’s not!” I call back. “I can use any part of my body as long as I make it, right?”
There’s a quiet moment in which I’m sure the guys look at Noaz for the answer. I don’t have the luxury. I make my way further upward. When I reach the top, I grab hold of the edge and roll onto it, hearing one of the metal rings fall back below while the other one remains dangling from a higher peg.
“Yes,” I hear Noaz say finally. “That’s correct.”
My smile hurts my cheeks.
I end up crapping out on the obstacle course of death—it didn’t get that name for shits and giggles. Every muscle in my body feels like it’s been bruised and beaten to within an inch of my life. I groan, laid flat out on one of the mats as Haze and Thayer approach. Thayer grins down at me. Haze lifts an eyebrow.
“Okay, assholes, go ahead and say it.” I close my eyes, waiting for the shit talk.
Thayer chuckles. “Not bad, Firecracker.” I peek one eye open. He grins down at me. I glance to Haze. He nods approvingly.
“Never thought I’d see the day…” I say, my chest heaving.
“Nah, we knew you had it in you,” Thayer replies.
“Yes, it wasn’t bad for a first try. The more muscle building exercises you do, the longer and farther you’ll be able to go,” Noaz says, stepping up between Thayer and Haze, clipboard in hand. I glare at that evil clipboard. What does he even write on it?
“I wasn’t a slouch to begin with.” I groan as I manage to push myself up until I’m sitting up halfway.
“No, but there is a lot that adrenaline can do for you. From what I understand, a lot of your strength comes from your legs—I’ve been trying to build your arm muscles. You can’t rely purely on your leg muscles, though I applaud your quick thinking today.”
“Great,” I say. “Thanks for the applause.” I roll to my feet and try not to appear like I’m about to fall over even though I wish I was lying down. My head tilts and the world swims. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. I chant the motto in my head. What would I even throw up? I barely had anything for breakfast.
“Why don’t you take a break for the rest of the day?” Noaz suggests. “Go upstairs, take a shower?”
I narrow my eyes on him. “I can take the rest of the day off?”
He nods. “You’ve proved your progress today.” He marks something on that clipboard of his, and I slide steadily closer, trying to peek over the edge. Noaz drops the damn thing to his side, hiding it all the while looking me up and down. I straighten. “Besides,” he continues, “even if I wanted you to do more exercises, I don’t know if your muscles could take it with the beating you just put them through.” Noaz. A smartass. Who would have thought?
I grumble but make no complaints at having the rest of the day to myself. Instead, I make my way back to the elevator banks and stairs. My gaze li
ngers longingly on the stairwell, but I don’t know if I can make it up the nearly ten flights of stairs to the penthouse.
I have to get used to it, I remind myself, pressing the elevator button. Haze jogs back out of the training center. “You’re taking the elevator?” he asks.
I nod, and the elevator chimes its arrival. He steps in with me. “I’ll come too.”
I don’t turn him away.
We’re both quiet as we ascend to the top. My foot taps restlessly against the floor. My eyes jump from wall to wall, to wall, to doors, to floor, to ceiling. When the doors finally slide open, I bolt from the tiny little box of doom. Maybe a little melodramatic, but it’s whatever.
“So, what did you follow me up here for?” I ask curiously, heading through the sitting room towards the hallway where our rooms are.
Haze follows behind. “I wanted to ask you something.”
I stop outside my bedroom door, hand on the knob, and turn back. “Yes?”
“What did you tell Levi when you went down this morning?”
I pause, looking up into his face. Dirty hazel eyes stare back at me. “I think that’s something that he should tell you if you want to know,” I say.
He nods. “Okay, I just wanted to know if you would tell me.” Haze steps away and moves further down the hall. I narrow my eyes at his back. “Were you testing me?” I ask.
He stops and turns back. “I don’t know what you mean.”
I frown, stepping away from my bedroom door. “You followed me all the way up from the training center to ask me that?”
He shrugs. “Yes.”
I’m not sure I trust that, but Haze doesn’t give me a second to interrogate him further. Instead, he flips around and disappears back into the penthouse. I debate for several seconds on following him but shake my head and decide against it. I may be feeling more like my normal self, but I’d rather not fight right now.
I enter the bedroom, avoid looking at the bed, and make my way to the ensuite bathroom. The shower stall is small, but still twice as large as anything I had in the old pod complex. When I get in, my knees and elbows don’t bang into the glass. I step out feeling clean, and equally exhausted.
Changing into a fresh pair of synthetic cotton pants, I still don’t move towards the bed. I won’t get any sleep if I stay in here. Instead, I move back to the door and head down the hall. Penny is busy placing flowers in a vase on one of the tables in the sitting area in front of the elevators. I sit down and watch her work.
“Where do you get those?” I ask, finally, gesturing to the flowers. They’re so rare on Tartarus.
Penny smiles and touches her fingertips to one of the yellow roses in the bouquet before rubbing her baby bump. She pulls one free and walks over to me, reaching out to offer it to me. I blink, taking it from her hand and nearly jump at the sensation. The stem is warm, a bit rough. But it’s nothing like the blades of grass that I’ve seen and felt before, the little weeds that grew outside of the detention home I once stayed in.
It’s nothing like real plants at all, because it’s not. “It’s fabric,” I say, shocked.
She nods. “Vincent has offered to import flowers for me,” she explains, “but I can’t stand the thought of having so much more than everyone else here already.”
“Why doesn’t he just take you to one of the other cities?” I ask.
Penny sits next to me as I let my fingers trail across the fake petals of the flower. “I’m not allowed,” she admits. “I was exiled from Arawn, remember?”
My gaze jerks to hers as she leans forward and slips the rose from my grasp, holding it in her lap. She continues talking, “I would have been executed if it wasn’t for Noaz. He, too, suffers for my mistakes.”
I nod. “I remember,” I say. Glancing down at my hands, I debate my next question—the last time we had talked about this, all she had said was that she had committed a crime. But what crime could be so bad? Before I can think better, I ask again. “What did you do?” I breathe the question, almost afraid of the answer.
Her eyes don’t raise to meet mine like they usually would. Instead, she continues to finger the flower. “There are a lot of ways to commit treason in Arawn,” she says quietly. “So many that it can be argued that it’s easier to commit treason there than to remain innocent. It’s a dark, dark place—the Capital city. I was born there, you know.”
I swallow around a thick throat as her head tilts back. She meets my gaze, eyes serious. “My baby is coming soon, Cassie. I doubt we’ll all be safe before he does.” She places a hand on my cheek, her fingers cold despite the warmth of the fake flower. “Exiled is not the worst thing I can be,” she says.
She’s right. Noaz saved her from nomadic life, he saved her from death. Kida’s face flits through my mind—except this time, it doesn’t consume me and drag me into the depths of my grief and despair. Instead, it morphs into Aaron’s face, Levi’s, Haze’s, Thayer’s, Noaz’s, Vincent’s, and Penny’s.
I don’t want them to die. I don’t want to suffer losing them either.
Penny stands, her hand falling away from my cheek. She smiles down at me before turning and replacing the flower in the vase that I now see is filled with small metal pebbles. “You should sleep, honey,” she says in that motherly tone of hers. “You’ll need your rest.”
Letting Go
Penny is right. I’m fucking exhausted. So exhausted that I fall asleep in the sitting area right in front of the elevators even though the day isn’t even halfway over. I only wake when I hear the chime of the elevator again and the boisterous sound of the guys talking as they exit.
I sit up, rubbing my eyes. “Hey, Firecracker.” Thayer approaches with that ever-present smile of his. “Did you fall asleep here?”
My jaw cracks open to yawn before I can even reply. That’s answer enough it seems as the others chuckle. Levi steps up next to Thayer. “Come on, Troublemaker.” He reaches down to help me up. “The others are gonna go shower and get changed. Why don’t we go make something for dinner?”
As the others wander off towards their respective rooms, I look around with blurry eyes—blinking at my surroundings. The room is much darker than when I first fell asleep. I look to the windows.
“How long have I been out?” I ask.
“Well, from the looks of it, I think you slept most of the day.” Levi tugs me in the direction of the kitchen.
Another yawn cracks my mouth open. “Why do I still feel so tired?”
“Probably because you haven’t been sleeping well for the last few weeks.”
“I slept like a rock today,” I reply. “Didn’t even notice when I fell asleep.”
“What were you doing in the sitting area?” he asks, glancing back over his shoulder.
I shrug. “Penny was there at first, then I was just looking out the window—watching the city.”
“Hmmm.” His hand is warm in mine. I blink at the back of his head as he faces forward once more. “Well, I’m glad you got some sleep. Hopefully you’ll be able to sleep again tonight. Noaz wants us to go down to the docks tomorrow to check out the airship.”
“Why?”
Levi rolls his shoulders absently. “Who knows what that man plans.”
We go looking through the cupboards in the kitchen and find small, thin bags of dried vegetables and broth in cans. “Soup?” Levi suggests, throwing them on the counter.
I shrug and nod. “I’m just here to help,” I say. “I don’t know much about cooking. I usually just ate rations straight from their packages.” Levi shoots me a look—brows drawn down low, lips pinched as if he wants to say something, but he doesn’t.
We’re halfway through meal preparations when Noaz returns, his hair dripping wet from a recent shower. Water slides towards the ends of the dark strands and drips onto the thin white shirt stretched tight over his frame. Wearing white, his skin looks even darker bronze.
“Hey, would you mind watching the pot?” Levi asks, disrupting my thoughts. H
e looks back at me as I finish tearing open the vegetable packages. “I wanna catch a shower before we sit down to eat.”
I nod. “Sure.”
I move towards the pot as Levi disappears out of the kitchen. Noaz props himself against the table and thumbs through a communicator. What does one think when there is silence in the room? I mean, there isn’t complete silence—I hear the sound of Noaz’s thumb tapping almost rhythmically on the communicator—but there’s enough to give me a sense of peace. Or is this peace?
Lately, every free waking thought has been consumed by my thoughts and memories of Kida. But right now, I feel empty. Not the hollow, pricked emptiness that I felt before—but at rest.
“Cassandra.”
I jerk when I hear Noaz say my name and realize that I’ve been stirring broth for the last several minutes without putting in anything else. I turn quickly and snatch the dried mushrooms, asparagus, tomatoes, and other veggies from the counter top and drop them into the pot.
“Cassandra?” Noaz steps up alongside me, and I turn my head—looking up at his rounded jawline. Fissures of heat lick up my skin as he reaches out and touches my wrist. He stares down at me. I wonder what he’s thinking. I always wonder what he’s thinking. The others are a little more transparent. Even Aaron is easier than Noaz. Thayer is a jokester—someone who makes me smile, even when I don’t want to sometimes. Aaron is a protector, a quiet presence and the solid foundation that I’ve been relying on lately, while Levi is his companion. Levi can be both fun and serious. And Haze—well, even though I haven’t figured him out yet, I have a feeling it might be easier than this man.
Noaz’s hand circles my wrist and pulls it up and away from the edge of the pot. He’s so close, I can smell the soap he used. Something simple, I can’t truly make out the scent, but it smells clean.
