Arise (Cruel and Beautiful World Book 3)

by L. Stoddard Hancock

  “Those names do not leave this room,” he emphasized.

  “Don’t worry, we won’t compromise their safety,” Matilda promised. “If they’re against the president then they’re one of us, and we take care of our own.”

  Xander nodded, though he still looked hesitant.

  “There is one thing I’ve been wondering about,” said Talon, putting down his notes. “That day when Dax and I came across you near Redwood.”

  Xander pursed his lips and waited.

  “Those guards you came for, you seemed to think that we’d left them hanging there.”

  “Didn’t you?” he asked with a shrug.

  “No, we didn’t,” said Talon, furrowing his brow. “One of them was ours. Reynard. He’d successfully infiltrated the guard and he must’ve been discovered. We don’t know who the other one was or why he was killed.”

  “What exactly is your question?” asked Deryn.

  “If Saevus trusted you and was considering making you his successor, why did he send you on that mission without informing you that you were going to find two bodies hanging?”

  Xander blinked. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t know about Deryn living with you?”

  “If he did then why would he be so angry now?”

  Deryn pursed her lips, an idea forming in her mind from several memories she couldn’t quite put together. And then it clicked.

  “Were they burned from the ‘toxic air’?” she asked, adding air quotes.

  “They were,” answered Xander. The trademark look of anyone who’s died suddenly after being exposed to the outside air.

  Deryn nodded. “Think about this for a second. The majority of Guardians believe all of the lies Saevus has told them. They have no need to fake peoples’ deaths because the air is already toxic. The only person he’s told the truth to other than Xander is -”

  “Elvira,” finished Talon. “But she’s loyal to the bone. Why would she kill a spy and not tell her father?”

  “Elvira is who now?” asked Sam, still taking notes.

  “Saevus’s daughter,” answered Xander. “But ...” He remembered something. “That day we went to the Black Market.” He looked at Deryn. “I ran into Soren and when a man suddenly keeled over and died, he gave me this unnerving smile.”

  Deryn nodded. “He’s told me about it before.” She paled and looked toward the floor. “After ... When I was trying to sleep, willing him away. He’d call himself the president’s assassin. Elvira must have told him the truth and Saevus used that to his advantage.”

  “Did he enjoy it?” asked Talon, avoiding looking at her.

  Deryn sighed. “Talon -”

  “Did he?”

  She looked at her brother and frowned. “No, he didn’t enjoy it. He hated it. He was venting to me about how much he hated it.” She paused. “But that doesn’t mean he’s a good person. I know you were friends once but the killing of that guard was an attack. The burns are his trademark and Xander saw him outside that day in our house. And do you want to know why Saevus didn’t know about it? Because he didn’t order it. Soren was punishing you and you know it.”

  Talon finally glanced at her and sighed. “I don’t think he’s a good person.”

  “But you’re still trying to find some sort of validation for what he’s done.”

  Talon reddened. “I’m not -”

  “You are. And that’s fine. At one time he was your friend. But people change, and while Soren may see himself as someone different than his brother and family, someone better, he ended up exactly the same as them.”

  “A piece of utter shit,” said Xander.

  Deryn nodded. “Exactly.

  “Well, this sounds like a family matter,” said Sam. “We should probably return to the topic on hand, though I have added the name Soren into my notes with the annotation ‘piece of utter shit’. I just have one last question before we break for training.” He looked up at them. “Have you contacted the former president since he helped you escape?”

  Xander and Deryn looked at each other. They were the ones with the two-way capable of contacting Asher Saevus so the question was directed at them.

  “No,” answered Deryn. “We were going to shortly after we met him, but we didn’t know what to say. We don’t really have a purpose for him right now.”

  Sam nodded. “Right. But we might in the future, so do me a favor. Leave the base a couple of times a week, always going somewhere different in case he has a way of tracking you, and just talk to the man. Build a rapport. He may come in handy one day and we don’t want to contact him out of the blue for a favor.”

  “Okay,” said Deryn, looking unsure. “What are we supposed to talk to him about?”

  “Your grandmother,” said April, closing out her hologram of notes. “Ask questions, tell stories. Whatever gets the conversation rolling. Try to find out what you can about his son and granddaughter without flat out asking. People tend to not like that.”

  She and Sam stood up and stretched.

  “Well, this has been fun, kids, but April and I need to do a pre-workout before we get all judgy on this treehouse-living band of misfits. Xander Ruby.” He pointed at Xander. “Make sure you’re there. I want to know how guards and Guardians fight. If anyone bitches about you being there we’ll take care of it.”

  “Conformists make the best soldiers,” said April. “It’s unclear how Sam made the cut.”

  “It’s because I take risks, April, I believe in the greater good, and my superiors kept promoting me to get rid of my smart mouth.” He grinned.

  As they headed for the door, Deryn asked, “Could I do your pre-workout with you?”

  “Sure,” said Sam.

  She stood, giving Xander a kiss before following them out.

  “I hope I don’t slow you down too much. For five years I barely used any of my muscles and even walking was limited, so I’m still working on rebuilding my strength.”

  “You look healthy,” said April.

  Deryn nodded. “Thanks to Xander. But I’ve only been working out since just after Christmas so I still have a long way to go.”

  “As long as you know how to aim a gun I’m sure you’ll be fine,” said Sam. “Now, let’s see what you’ve got.”

  • • •

  Sam and April definitely pushed Deryn to the limit during their pre-workout. It was all simple things she should have been good at, and she felt frustrated when she wasn’t. Even when they ran a few laps she was left in the dust. It was her best run to date but she was still trailing so far behind. She needed to fight in this war. She would just have to push herself even harder.

  The entire base showed up for Sam and April’s training session. Really, they just wanted to evaluate everyone’s skills, see what they were good at. Deryn asked to be their assistant since she wasn’t sure she had any skills to contribute yet.

  “After five years of limited muscle use you’re doing fine,” said April, digging through one of the bags of supplies she and Sam had brought. Deryn sat on the bed in the woman’s temporary room, watching her closely. “I’ve met people with similar stories to yours and the majority are a hell of a lot worse off than you.”

  “So this sort of thing happens in other parts of the world too?”

  “Yes, because no matter how hard we work to keep the peace, some human beings are still nasty pieces of shit.”

  April took out something that looked like a large metal tank with backpack straps and leaned it against the wall.

  “What’s that?” asked Deryn.

  “Something we’ll be playing with another day. Once we decide who’s worthy and who’s shit. Don’t worry, you’re worthy. And so is your boyfriend and brother.”

  Deryn smiled. No one else had called Xander her boyfriend before.

  “Help me carry these.”

  April held up several large wooden rods and plopped them into Deryn’s arms. Even though April carried three times as many, it
was Deryn who struggled as they walked. Training would take place in the largest open space in the base, in the center circle where Deryn had watched Talon command his soldiers the first day they’d arrived in Blackbird.

  As people arrived April tossed them sticks, silently taking note of anyone who stumbled or dropped it. Sam arrived shortly after with a bag of weighted gloves. No wonder their packs had been so damn heavy.

  While April and Sam talked game plan, Deryn continued tossing the sticks to new arrivals.

  And then Dakota appeared.

  Deryn’s cheeks flushed as he approached and she accidentally fumbled with the stick she’d meant to toss to him. It did not go unnoticed.

  When he got there, she held out the stick. He didn’t take it.

  “Can we talk?”

  “Training is about to begin.” She shoved the stick toward him more forcefully.

  “After?” he asked, finally taking the damn thing.

  Deryn sighed and grabbed another, tossing it to the person coming up behind him.

  “Two weeks you’ve barely spoken to me and now you want to talk? Why?”

  “Because ... last night ...” He gulped. “You were ...”

  Deryn shrugged. “I was what?”

  Dakota glanced around, making sure no one was listening. About ten people were.

  He leaned in and whispered, “Jealous.”

  Deryn froze. “Excuse me?”

  “You were.”

  She furrowed her brow. Grabbing another stick, she tossed it to a girl walking up and nearly knocked her over.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Dax. I was not jealous. It wasn’t about that.”

  “Then what was it about?” he asked, his eyes focused completely on her and not on their growing audience.

  Deryn’s hand tensed around the next stick. “Any girl, Dax. You’re handsome and sweet and clearly have status here. You can have any girl you want but you pick the one who has been horrible to me since the moment I arrived. Why her? Out of all the girls here why the hell did you pick that one?”

  Dakota paled. “I didn’t pick her.”

  “Oh please. We both know you didn’t go up there with her to look at the view.”

  “She dragged me -”

  “I didn’t see you struggling.”

  “I wasn’t ...” He paused and huffed. “I didn’t -”

  “What?” she snapped, throwing the next stick so hard that it knocked Adrian, who had just arrived with Harper, hard in the groin. He keeled over, but Deryn was too angry to notice. Her flaming eyes were only on Dakota.

  Dakota’s nostrils flared as he glared right back at her. “I wasn’t going to do anything with Hera again! Not that it’s your fucking business. You came here with someone else!”

  Deryn blinked, her heart clenching as she repeated one word over and over in her head. “Again?”

  Dakota stiffened.

  “When were you with her before? In the last two weeks?”

  His silence was all the answer she needed.

  “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me, Dax?” she growled, unable to hold still as everything sank in. “You’ve made me feel horrible that I didn’t wait for you but you didn’t fucking wait for me either?”

  “I ...” Dakota gulped. “I did wait for you. It was just ... I was lonely. It didn’t mean anything.”

  “And something meaningless is supposed to be better? If the situation were reversed and I came back here without Xander and found you with someone else I would have been fine with that. I would have been sad at first but I would have understood. But while I was being tortured and raped you were out having something meaningless with a shitty person?”

  Deryn turned away, doing her best to suck back the tears she knew were coming.

  “What’s going on?”

  She looked up and Xander was standing in front of her. His presence immediately brought her relief. “Nothing,” she lied.

  “Well, that’s a fucking lie.” He knew her so well. “Is there a problem, Trigger?”

  And the relief was gone.

  “Xander, not now,” she said.

  “But -”

  “Please?”

  Xander’s gaze moved from Dakota to Deryn, his crinkled forehead relaxing as she attempted to smile. He sighed. “Fine.”

  Xander took her hand. He led her away from Dakota and toward Sam and April.

  “That was ... interesting,” said Sam as she approached. “I did really enjoy when you whacked that poor man in the balls.”

  “What did I do?” she asked.

  “Not important. Let’s get this shit started.”

  Deryn nodded. She glanced back at Dakota, who was standing off to the side by himself, silently holding his stick while staring at the ground. Hera appeared and approached him with a big smile on her face. When she reached for him, he moved away and walked to the front and center of the crowd. As Hera stared at him, looking flabbergasted, another woman Deryn didn’t know approached her and whispered something in her ear. Hera’s angry eyes immediately found Deryn.

  Deryn wanted to be the bigger person but instead she found herself scowling right back at her. At that moment she didn’t think she had ever disliked someone so much before.

  And then she replayed the past five years in her head.

  Oh. Right. There were a lot of shitty people she more than disliked out there.

  Deryn knew she was being irrational. The old Deryn would never let someone like Hera get to her.

  But she had. She really, really had.

  CHAPTER 27

  “Feel any better?” Finley was hanging her head over the side of Luka’s bed and watched him from upside-down.

  “Your pills are shit. They did nothing for my headache,” he said, picking up a bottle of whiskey and taking a swig.

  “You’re welcome.” She took the bottle from him and flipped onto her stomach so she wouldn’t drown herself. “The president would turn me into his own personal stress ball if he knew I was sneaking them to you.”

  “Oh, you mean like what he’s been doing with me?”

  Finley frowned. Even though President Saevus had released Luka and let him heal - to an extent - he still tortured him daily. To relieve some of the stress that had been building up since Xander’s escape. He had to take it out on someone and Luka was an easy target. Mind-controlled or not, the president was not forgiving.

  The door opened and Luka’s father Barath barged in.

  “Ever heard of knocking?” uttered Luka. “What if Finley and I were fucking?”

  Finley chuckled and took a swig of the whiskey.

  Barath scoffed. “From what I’ve heard, it wouldn’t be difficult to get that done.”

  Her jaw dropped slightly.

  “Don’t be rude to my guest!” shouted Luka, his fists clenching.

  “It’s fine, Luka,” said Finley, staring coldly at the man. “At least I don’t need to force people to fuck me, unlike some other dick in this room.”

  She took another swig from the bottle. She wasn’t sure when these rumors about her started. She’d only been with three men ever. Four if you counted Luka, but she preferred to forget that embarrassing fiasco. If she had a brother and fucked him, for whatever reason, it probably would have felt similar to their encounter.

  Luka grabbed the bottle and chugged a good third of it down. “What do you want, Father?”

  Barath sneered at his son. “You have another guest. One much more appropriate for a Voclain to be associating with.”

  Finley’s lip curled. “So when exactly did the Scouts become lesser in your eyes?”

  “The Scouts have always been lesser than the Voclains,” said Barath. “But anyone who’s been tainted by that traitor is nothing but a piece of trash to me.”

  “So this attitude of yours is all because I dated Xander five years ago?”

  “Who’s the guest?” asked Luka.

  “Lona Von.”

  Luka and Finley both tilted th
eir heads.

  “She would like to take you to dinner and I have already accepted the invitation.”

  “Then you better go un-accept it,” said Luka. “Finley and I already have plans to consume a liquid dinner.”

  “Cheers to that!” said Finley, taking back the bottle and holding it up in salute.

  “You’re going, Luka,” Barath said sternly. “All of this sulking you’ve been doing over the past week doesn’t sit well with the president, especially when you spend all of your time with the woman who just happened to guess you were under mind-control.”

  Finley sneered. “I didn’t guess, I’d hoped. One would think his father would throw the suggestion out first. You’re such an ass.”

  “And you are a filthy whore!” shouted Barath, pulling out his Element.

  Before he could do anything with it, Luka had his own Element off of his desk and aimed. “Stand down, Father!”

  “Put your weapon away, Luka,” said Finley. “You know if you do anything he’s just going to spin it to the president like he’s the victim. And then you’ll be tortured again and all that bullshit. It’s not worth it.” She placed the bottle on his nightstand and slid off of the bed. “Just go to dinner with her and meet me later. After what happened this morning, she could probably use her own liquid meal.”

  Finley had a job to complete that evening anyway. One that just happened to concern Lona.

  Luka followed Finley out of his room, making sure to shove hard into his father’s shoulder as he passed him. Lona was standing in the center of the parlor, her face falling the moment she saw Finley.

  “Lona,” said Finley with a civil nod. She walked right past her to the front closet, grabbed her coat and left.

  “Hello, Luka.” Lona smiled awkwardly. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

  Luka shrugged. “It was just Finley.”

  “Did your father tell you -”

  “Yeah. Let’s get this over with.” Luka walked over to the same closet as Finley and put on his coat. “Are we taking a car?”

  “I thought we could walk,” said Lona.

  Luka groaned. “Fine.” He opened the front door and waited for her to go through.