by Sharon Hinck
Cameron ignored my show of temper. “So, you met Tristan in Shamgar?” He steered the conversation back to where he wanted it. “Was he alone there?”
My mouth went dry. The image of Tristan killing the Rhusican flashed into my brain. I forced it from my thoughts, as if afraid Cameron could see right into my mind. When I didn’t answer, he stood up. I took a step backwards without meaning to.
“I’ve heard some interesting rumors about what you’ve been doing in Braide Wood,” he said in a deceptively casual tone.
I swallowed and again fought to keep memories from my mind: killing a Rhusican, training with the guardians, arguing with Kieran about Hazor, healing from blistering burns, gathering information from Nolan. Even though I understood so little, I suddenly realized I knew too much. Facts it was much better that he not know.
Cameron stepped closer.
I stood my ground. When I first met him on the transport, he was menacing as a man secure in his strength and position. Now I saw something else in Cameron—an insatiable lust for power. Like Shakespeare’s Cassius, he had “a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.”
I longed for the hilt of a sword in my hand. “I have nothing to say to you.”
His smile grew for a slow second. Then he backhanded me across the face.
I stumbled back, eyes stinging from shock more than pain. Out of reflex, I brought my fists up in front of me as I recovered and turned toward him.
He nodded to Case, who stepped away from the door to yank my arms back and hold me painfully still. Cameron walked around me, his voice purring from outside my line of sight. “Oh, you’re very wrong about that. You have a lot to say. I just need to be more convincing.”
The dread I had been fighting off rushed back with a vengeance, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing my fear. “I’m not telling you anything.”
He leaned closer and his breath brushed against my face as he spoke in my ear. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Chapter
18
Cameron dropped all pretense of being a benevolent politician.
I stopped pretending he would let me answer a few questions and walk out the door. I fought against Case, struggling so hard that I came close to dislocating my shoulder. But he weighed twice as much as I did and had three times my strength.
Cameron opened one of the two doors flanking the shelves, and Case wrestled me into an inner room. The object in the middle reminded me more of a dentist’s chair than a medieval torture device, but in my mind, they were one and the same.
God, give me the power of Samson. Give me the courage of Daniel. I bucked against the arms holding me, waiting for a surge of strength. If I could just get to my sword.
But no wave of might or courage welled up in me. I wasn’t Samson. I wasn’t Daniel. I was just Susan. Weak and terrified, I was hauled into the room and forced onto a reclining chair that felt like a medical table.
A woman with curling auburn hair reaching midway down her back stood in the room. She stared out a high, narrow window and ignored the sounds of struggle behind her.
I tried again to break free, but Case held me down, and Cameron fastened straps across my torso, arms, and legs.
Now. Now would be the moment that Restorer power would flow through me, and I would jump up and grab my sword. I strained against the straps, fully expecting them to snap, but they held firm.
Case left the room and Cameron retrieved something from a nearby table. Maybe Wade would burst through the door to rescue me. Or Tristan. Something had to happen soon. God wouldn’t leave me here, would He?
From deep within my memories, I heard Lukyan’s quavering voice asking again, Susan, are you willing to walk any road that the One has chosen for you?
“No!” I cried, not realizing I had spoken aloud until the word rang in my ears.
Cameron’s lips quirked upward. He pushed the sleeve of my woven sweater up past my elbow and adjusted the straps so he could twist my inner arm to face upward. For a moment, he looked like a lab technician preparing to draw blood. Instead of readying a needle, however, he pulled the backing off of something that looked like a large band-aid and pressed it against the skin over the veins in my arm.
“It would have been simpler if you had taken the drink I gave you,” Cameron said. “But this is just as effective. As amusing as it would be to continue batting words around with you, I really don’t have the time to waste. This will help you be a little more . . . forthcoming.” A tingling burn burrowed deep into my arm as a chemical soaked through my skin and entered my veins.
I bit my lip, fighting back a shriek of pain. A heavy pressure began to contract my lower chest. My ribs seemed to cave inward, and it took massive effort to expand them enough to breathe. I broke into a cold sweat and my heart began to flutter. Black fog collected at the edges of my vision, and the light shrank until there was only a pinpoint. Shallow gasps shook me as I struggled for air.
“It’s taking effect too quickly,” said a woman’s expressionless voice. “Odd.”
Cameron ripped the patch from my skin. He tore it and replaced a piece. I heard the woman step closer, and Cameron say, “It’s not supposed to destroy her heart. I don’t want her dead yet.”
My heart still pounded, but the strange flutters stopped. The black fog also retreated, although the pain in my chest was so fierce, I wished for the fog to return, to swallow me up and make this room disappear.
The woman moved into my range of vision. She had a smooth, flawless face framed by auburn curls. Her eyes were a piercing green, and she leaned over to look into mine. “Yessss.” She drew the word out. “We know her. This is the one.”
I closed my eyes. Terror chased around my veins along with whatever drug they were giving me. I knew what she was, too. A Rhusican. “The Lord is my shepherd. . . .” I could only mouth the words. What came next? I couldn’t remember, so I tried something else. “Our Father, who art in heaven . . .” Laughter ricocheted inside my head, and I couldn’t focus. I opened my eyes and saw the ceiling. It looked like it was pulling away from me. Or maybe I was falling.
Cameron watched me with clinical detachment. “Susan, tell me where you were before you met Tristan in Shamgar.” His voice was arrogantly reasonable, as if I were a petulant child and he were being generous in his patience.
“The attic,” I said through teeth clenched against the pain. “I was just moving some things around. There was lightning, and I woke up in an alley.”
I can’t say anything about seeing Tristan kill the Rhusican. It would get him into more trouble.
“So it was him.” Cameron exchanged a look with the woman.
I had spoken my thoughts aloud. God, no! You have to stop this! Where are you?
“Was Tristan alone?” Cameron asked.
“Kieran was with him. But he went to Hazor. He’s gone.” Pain compressed in my chest again, as though a great weight threatened to crush me. Threads of agony spread through my shoulder and down my left arm. I wanted to scream but couldn’t take in enough breath. Tears ran down my face into my ears. My mind seemed split in two very unequal parts. One tiny part kept shouting to stop the flow of words, aware enough to know the damage I was doing. Yet the other part—the person in the chair—kept talking. And all the time there was searing pain.
Question by question, Cameron probed for any hidden pocket of knowledge. The drugs made me voice all my thoughts and emotions. At times I was alert enough to notice things around me. The natural tendency of my mind to veer off into tangents caused Cameron a great deal of annoyance. Mark always teased me about the way my mind worked—joking that I had “jumped the tracks” again when he would lose my train of thought in a conversation. When the drugs wore off enough at one point for me to recognize Cameron’s frustration, I felt a moment of satisfaction.
“I don’t care how sorry you feel for the Hazorite messenger. Tell me more about the weapons,” Cameron demanded in irritation. The Rhusican woman showed no impatience. She listened to every word, her eyes seeming to twirl as they watched me.
I looked toward the high, narrow window across the room. Somewhere outside there was fresh air and trees and sanity. I longed for a glimpse out that window—anything to pull me away from this. But then Cameron placed another strip on my forearm; the devastating pain returned to my chest, and I lost awareness.
The next time I was conscious of being in my body again, Cameron was still asking questions. I had lost track of what I’d told him, where I was, and why I had been fighting so hard not to talk.
“But why did Tristan take you to Braide Wood?”
The room was spinning, and I couldn’t take a breath to form words this time.
A stinging slap burned my cheek, and Cameron’s face came back into focus. “Why do you matter to him?” he asked again.
“Restorer,” I mumbled, barely able to speak.
“What?”
I tried to lift my head up. “He thinks I’m a Restorer,” I gasped. My head fell back against the chair’s padded surface.
Stunned silence filled the room. I sighed in relief. The badgering questions had stopped for a moment. That was all that mattered. Blood pulsed in my ears—a swishing rhythm that gradually slowed. Cameron tore the chemical-laced bandage from my arm.
“That’s why the drugs nearly killed her,” said the Rhusican woman. “She absorbed them too quickly.”
Cameron pushed his chair back and moved across the room. When he returned, a sharp pain cut across my arm.
I jerked against the restraining straps and lifted my head to see what he was doing. Blood ran down my arm where Cameron had sliced it. The wound healed rapidly, and I let my head fall back, closing my eyes again as Cameron wiped the blood from my arm to examine it more closely. Couldn’t these people figure out a better way to identify a Restorer?
As the drugs began to clear, I struggled to remember what had just happened. Questions. So many questions. What had he just asked me about? What had I said?
When the answer came to me, the knowledge grabbed and twisted my stomach. What had I done? Cameron’s plans required getting the Council to reject the Verses. The Restorer’s role was to bring the people’s hearts back to the Verses. I had let him know exactly how much of an enemy I was to his schemes. Worse than that, he now knew he could inflict all the damage he wanted on me, and I would keep healing. I opened my eyes.
Cameron watched me, waiting. “You know, they say Mikkel was stabbed fifty times with Kahlarean swords before his wounds stopped healing.” His voice was smooth, musing. “I was never sure if I believed the stories.”
Apprehension washed through me more quickly than his drugs had earlier. I read his intentions even before a slow smile curved across his face. Raw terror gripped me by the throat.
“Wait,” the Rhusican woman said, stepping closer. “Let me finish first.” Looking into my eyes, she smiled gently. “It’s fortunate you have us for friends now.” Her tone was so soothing that I felt my tension soften in spite of myself. “You’ve betrayed your old friends, you know.”
Shame flooded me. My revelations to Cameron would cause untold damage.
“Kieran will kill you if he ever finds you. And what do you think Tristan’s family will do when they learn you are the one who told the Council that he’s a murderer? The people of Braide Wood will despise you when he’s banished because of you.”
I tried to fight the despair growing in my heart, but everything she said was true.
“Of course, you’re a murderer, too,” she breathed. Her soft tone betrayed an edge of malice.
I longed to feel my sword in my hand again. I’d run her through. Her and every one of her kind. My breathing quickened, ready to pull me deeper into anger.
No! The rage building in me wasn’t mine. It was hers. I had killed one of her fellow poisoners and had protected a man who had killed another. She hated me. I forced myself to take a deep breath. She couldn’t plant this hatred inside of me.
God, help me fight this!
I must have said the words out loud, because she smiled. “Your god isn’t here. He pulled you away from your family and left you alone in this world. The same way he abandoned Bekkah when Hazor attacked the outpost. And the way he left Mikkel alone to fight hundreds of Kahlareans and die.”
I was alone. Even the people who had befriended me would despise me now. I was a worthless pawn dropped into this world for no purpose except to cause more heartache and then die.
“Do you think if your god could hear you, he would have let us take you? Wouldn’t he have stopped the pain? He didn’t rescue you. He gave you to us.” grey fog swirled in my mind, and I saw myself walking along the edge of a dark abyss. I recognized it. I had been here before. This same despair had called to me when I hiked to Braide Wood with Tristan and his friends. The knowledge helped me step back from the edge.
“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble,” I recited softly.
The woman ignored my words and nodded to Cameron. “You can have her now.”
“God is our refuge and strength . . . ever-present . . . ever-present . . .” I breathed again. I didn’t feel strong or invulnerable. But at least the grey fog in my heart wasn’t consuming me.
Cameron walked the woman to the door and called to Case. “Bring me her sword.”
The three of them hovered in the doorway. Case handed Cameron my sword, but glanced over at me and frowned. The Rhusican woman touched Case’s shoulder and murmured something. He straightened, the expression of hardened resolve back in place. The woman turned to smile in my direction. Then she left with Case.
Cameron closed the door and faced me.
I prayed in a whisper. “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way.” More verses were returning to my memory. I couldn’t stir up a feeling of confidence in the words, but I clung to them anyway. The confusion caused by the drugs had worn off enough to make me all too aware of what was coming. I wrenched against the restraints but couldn’t break free. My clothes were damp with sweat, and I began to shiver.
Cameron stepped closer, admiring the sword in his hands. My sword.
“I’m here to help your people,” I said. “You don’t want to do this.”
His smile grew wider, and he threw back his head and laughed. “You’re very wrong.” He lifted the sword.
I closed my eyes. At that same moment, I heard a disturbance in the outer office, followed by a thud. I opened my eyes and saw Cameron’s back as he turned. He slid aside a small panel in the door and hissed an oath at whatever he saw in the outer office. Then he dropped my sword onto a side table and quickly pulled away the straps that held me.
He was letting me go? I drew a difficult, shallow breath and tried to move, but my numb limbs couldn’t respond.
From outside, a heavy fist pounded the door.
Cameron glanced around the room, nodded to himself, and slid the door open. “Who let you in to a chief councilmember’s office? You’re interrupting an important interview.”
A man stepped into the doorway. He wore the formal tunic of a councilmember, similar to what Cameron had worn on the transport. My efforts to get up triggered another burst of pain from the drugs that were still in my system. Welcome darkness closed down my senses, but just before everything went black, I saw the face of the man in the doorway. That’s when I knew the drugs were still confusing my mind. The man looked exactly like Mark.
Chapter
19
Mark’s arms wrapped around me and I burrowed my nose into his neck. I loved the unique male scent of his skin touched with a hint of Ivory soap. I sighed and curled up
in his arms, sliding my head down to rest on his chest. “I have the strangest dream to tell you about.”
His deep chuckle rumbled under my cheek. One of my arms was pinned beneath me, so I shifted to slide it around him for a hug. My chest ached deep inside, like it had the winter I had a bad case of bronchitis. Maybe I was coming down with a cold. My hand rubbed along Mark’s arm, and instead of the flannel of his plaid pajamas, I touched the nubby fabric of raw silk. What on earth was he wearing? I opened my eyes a slit.
We weren’t in our bed at home. We were on a couch made of honey-colored wood. And Mark wasn’t in pajamas. He was in a formal, rust-colored tunic and woven black pants. I popped my head up to talk to him face to face, banging my head against his chin in the process.
“Ow,” he complained, unwrapping one of the arms he had around me to rub his jaw.
“Where are we?” I asked, fully awake now. The walls glowed with light, and the room felt warm and cozy, but unfamiliar.
“Still in Lyric. But now that you’re awake, I’ll take you home.”
So I wasn’t out of the nightmare yet. But Mark was here now. Everything would be all right. I soaked in every detail of his face. A few silver strands highlighted his wavy blond hair. Now that I had spent several weeks in this strange otherworld, his conservative haircut looked too short to me. He had the perfectly formed nose of a Greek statue, and I often teased him about his classic profile—sometimes making him blush in embarrassment. The jaw he was rubbing had strong lines that hinted at his stubborn streak. But his silver-blue eyes were soft and warm as they met mine.
Tears pooled in my eyes, and I squeezed him hard, afraid he’d disappear. “Mark, how did you get here? How did you find me?”
He hesitated and looked away.
I eased off his lap to sit beside him on the couch, bracing myself. If Mark looked this uncomfortable, I knew I wouldn’t like what he had to say.
