True Born

by L. E. Sterling

  A wave of dizziness. Heavy steps behind me. I look up to see buzz cut coming toward us, chiseled face intent.

  I turn and grip Dorian’s hands. “So good to see you.” I smile. “Please tell Jared to drop in and see us sometime.”

  But confusion fills her face. “Jared? But I was under the impression—”

  “Father will be expecting me to see to our very important guests now, Doctor. But I’ll be sure to set up that appointment tomorrow. I’m sorry we’ve been so unforgivably rude.” I bow my head, pretending to blush as buzz cut comes to stand at my back with the clink of his rifle against his belt buckle. Dorian looks the man over impassively.

  “Yes, of course, do that,” she murmurs.

  “Please be sure to pass on my remembrances,” I tell her, tightening my hands around hers. “And drive safe.”

  Buzz cut whisks her out the door before I can say anything else. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Dorian Raines is a smart woman. The kind of woman who puzzles things to death until they make sense.

  At least, I hope she is.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  There must be a dozen girls waiting for us as we arrive that morning. Shane grumbles his good-byes and idles the car by the curb while we are engulfed in a gaggle of blue plaid-wrapped flamingoes.

  “Spill it.” Harmony Everett puts a hand to Margot’s chest and holds her there. “It’s only two weeks away already. Why so secretive?”

  They would never believe the truth. So as I push Harmony’s hand away, I tell them what they want to hear. “We were sworn not to reveal any details. It’s for security,” I say, and am amazed when I can fake a blush.

  Margot must be amazed, too. “Lucy,” she seethes at my lie. But this just confirms the story for the girls. We’ve been holding out.

  “What is it—celebrities?”

  I shake my head with a tragic air. “No, no one you’d know. Just some foreign dignitaries,” I stress, hoping she gets the point.

  Her blue eyes widen. She grabs for the hand of her long-haired friend in a near swoon. “You’re kidding.” She drools.

  I pause dramatically, looking down at my shoes. “We’ve got to go, Margot,” I say in a quiet voice. She darts past me as we run up the stairs and into our stone haven.

  “Was that really necessary?” Margot’s whisper is fierce. But a smile hovers on the corners of her lips.

  “Yes,” I say back. A grin overtakes me as Margot’s life throbs within me, bright and shiny for one beautiful, brittle moment. “It absolutely was.”

  Robbie Deakins corners us in the hallway on our way to lunch. “You’re serious?” he practically yells. I’ve never seen him so annoyed. No mocking smile sits on his usually pretty lips. He tosses back his glossy head of short curls and glares at us.

  “What’s wrong with you, Robbie?” Margot calls as we stop before him. But Robbie leans an arm against a post and manages to look even more annoyed.

  “You got another date to your party, Margot?”

  Oh. So that’s it. “You know we don’t get to choose, Robbie. Our parents aren’t as liberal as yours.”

  “Am I even invited, now that you’ve got some prince attending?”

  The gossip chain has been very, very busy. “We never said,” Margot starts, raising an eyebrow at me.

  I jump in with the sternest voice I can muster without laughing. “Nobody is supposed to know about that, Robbie.”

  Robbie waves his arms expansively. “The whole damned school is talking about it, Lucy. I feel like such a fool!”

  He’s pouting. I can’t see what my sister ever saw in him. And maybe Margot can’t, either. “You feel like a… Robbie. You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I thought we were going to be together.”

  “Robbie!” Margot snaps her fingers in his startled face. “Get with it. It was never up to me. It never will be.” Her voice curls bitterly. “I’m quite sure your family is still on the guest list. I’ll be lucky if our father allows us to have a dance. That’s it. That’s all it’s ever been.” She sighs.

  And suddenly I feel the weight of Margot’s exhaustion: the prison of our family, the heavy sadness of the past month, punctuated by the terror of not knowing what is brewing in our blood and bone.

  How can we not have the same blood?

  I reach for my sister’s hand just as she reaches for mine. “Let’s go outside to eat,” Margot murmurs, tugging me from the hall.

  “Sorry,” I tell her as we head out into the bright gray of outside. “I went too far.”

  Margot tosses her hair. “You didn’t go far enough,” she tells me darkly.

  ...

  One moment I’m daydreaming about him. The next? He’s crossing the quad on catlike feet as I sit, bathing in a patch of pearly white light in the crisp, cool air outside the school. He’d stick out a mile even outside of my exclusive private school: he might have the arrogant manner of a Grayguard Academy grad, but Jared Price is messy. Tousled blond hair clashes against the bright red of his shirt stenciled with an enormous black question mark. On his feet he wears a pair of brown, twisted leather sandals, just peeking out from the frayed hem of his pants. Still, it’s my heart I’m worried about as he saunters over.

  “Who dresses you?” I ask as I take him in, piece by piece, pretending I’ve not been starving for a glimpse of him. The indigo eyes, the mocking twist to his full lips. A flip of his hair trails down his forehead. I am distracted by a long scratch poking out from the top of the slightly stretched neckline of his shirt.

  Jared shrugs, eyes sweeping over the small octagonal courtyard—accessible only by two doors on either side—before landing back on me. I brace myself, waiting for the sting I am sure is coming. Instead, he flashes a coy grin. “Us poor folk have to dress ourselves, Princess.” What’s this? A joke…? From Jared? “What are you doing out here alone?”

  This particular courtyard is safe enough: the only real way in, aside from the heavily armed school, is via the roof. But I’m not about to explain that to Jared. Nor will I tell him about the extra security running patrols up there. They have promised us, again and again, that there will never be another situation like the one from the other week. More importantly, they have promised our father. Still, I am happier in this space, confined on all sides by a prison of bricks and mortar, a dry, bleak jail yard, than I am just about anywhere else these days.

  The bigger mystery is how Jared snuck in. “How did you get here?”

  “Dammit, Princess, answer the—”

  But I’m getting better at navigating the arrogant, bossy True Born. “What happened to your neck?” I reach out and trace the angry line of red with the lightest of fingertips. Jared sucks in a quick breath and rears back as though I’ve hit him. Lightning fast, he grabs my wrist, even angrier than he was a second ago. “Where is your security?” he grumbles. “Where’s Margot?”

  “Inside. The bathroom.” I don’t know how I manage to sound so calm and collected as pleasure washes through me. I like knowing I’ve thrown him off-balance, even if I have no idea how or for what purpose. “She’ll be back in a moment.”

  He nods, shoulders relaxing a fraction, but he forgets to let go of my wrist. “You shouldn’t be out here. Not alone,” he lectures.

  “I shouldn’t be alive. That doesn’t stop me from breathing. Besides, I’m not alone, am I?”

  “I swear, you are the biggest pain in the neck I’ve ever met.”

  “Right back at you,” I tell him, dry as toast.

  For just a moment his eyes flare full green. He takes another step back, still grasping my arm, and pulls me into the shadow of the wall. But his eyes are serious rather than angry as they hook on every inch of me, heavy as caresses: my hair, my shoulders, the curve of my neck, my fingers, the fall of my skirt and my bare legs ending in short leather pumps. With a funny stare he reaches out and cups a bouncy curl that skims my shoulder. Currents ricochet through my body. “Did you cut your hair?”

  I swallow,
not trusting myself to answer.

  “Lucy,” he starts.

  A helicopter sounds directly overhead. It’s loud, jarring, close enough to be a concern—or so Jared clearly believes as he sweeps the sky and curses. The courtyard door creaks. Before I have time to see who it is, Jared has me flattened against the wall behind the door. It isn’t Margot. Male voices—soldiers’ voices—break the air. Jared’s hand flies over my mouth, trapping whatever I was going to say, along with my breath. His other arm snags around my waist. Alternating between glaring at me and glaring at the door, he mouths at me to keep my trap shut. His nose twitches angrily, his eyes a luminous bright green. I reckon we’ve been here before.

  But this feels…different. Jared’s chest rises and falls against me like the sea. I can smell him, too: woodsy and familiar, a scent I can only call his. I wonder if he can feel the trip of my heart as it knocks against his chest.

  The door slams shut, cutting off the voices. Jared’s shoulders inch down but he still seems ready for a fight. I pluck at his hand, still plastered over my mouth. A weird expression creeps over his face. He watches my efforts but doesn’t move. I wonder if he’s being amused at me as he says, “I don’t know if I should set you free,” and continues to stare down at me, his hard length pressed against me. It’s as if he’s forgotten where we are, forgotten everything as he stares at me quizzically.

  “I really don’t get you, Princess,” he tells me with sincerity. I glare at him from beneath my bangs. He smiles, more tender than I thought he had in him, which just makes me want to punch him all the more. Then, like he’s forgotten his train of thought, his mouth perks up, popping out a dimple I haven’t seen before. “Today you look like a cross between a kitten and an angry pixie.” Slowly his hand comes away.

  “Do that again and I’ll show you an angry pixie,” I shoot back. Jared’s head tips back as he laughs. I want to kill him, but I haven’t seen him look so relaxed since…well, not since we danced around Storm’s living room, if I’m honest. “I really don’t get you, either,” I whisper, feeling something unknot in my chest.

  Jared sobers. “Dorian passed on your message.”

  The way he says it, so matter-of-fact, makes me livid. “Forget it. Go back to Storm and leave us alone.” I turn my back on him and head back for the table.

  He grabs my arm. “I swear to God, Princess. You make me so crazy I could just—”

  “What?” I twirl back to him, yelling. “Leave us alone as prisoners in that house? With that man? Ignore me? Who cares! Is that the worst you’ve got?”

  “Stop it.” He grits his teeth. “We’re doing what we can.”

  “Are you? Did you know our father is pawning one of us off on Resnikov? Do you even know what that means? Something terrible is happening, and we have no idea what it is and no clue what to do. And we’re alone.” My breath heaves like I’ve run a mile. I put a hand to my stomach and breathe deeply, attempting to calm myself. In truth, even I don’t know what Leo Resnikov means for our lives, but it surely can’t be good. Jared considers me for a good long while, features softening.

  “I reckon we need to do a better job communicating,” he finally says.

  “Come again?”

  “We haven’t forgotten about you, Lucy,” he hushes. His hand slides down my arm, fingers scalding my skin, as though I’m a frightened colt. “There’s a plan.”

  “Yes, well, our father has a plan, too.”

  “You need to trust us.”

  “Trust Nolan Storm’s True Borns?” I scoff.

  “Trust me then, Lucy. Just me.”

  Tears threaten, but I can’t let them fall. I choke the words out over the lump in my throat. “Why would—why would I trust you?”

  “Because. Because even though you make me so damned crazy I could tear up a room…” He hesitates, suddenly a lost little boy. “You know. You know I’d rip apart anyone who so much as looked at you funny.” The words sound like a revelation even to himself. My breath catches in my throat. Does he protect all of his clients this fiercely? Or am I—I don’t let the thought progress an inch further. Now isn’t the time to contemplate Jared’s role in my life—now is the time to save it.

  I rub tears out of my eyes and look at him. Really look. Purple shadows sit beneath his eyes. His cheeks are pale and hollow underneath light blond stubble, like he hasn’t bothered to shave in a while. He looks tired. Worn.

  “She said our blood is different.”

  “Yes,” Jared acknowledges. “But we don’t really know what that means yet.”

  “What about the witch?”

  Jared performs another visual sweep of the courtyard. “There’ve been some leads but we’re still looking.”

  “Oh,” I say, downcast.

  “Lucy.” He sounds exasperated as he pushes a strand of hair from my mouth. Then he rubs the back of his neck as though I really have given him pain. “Even if there is such a thing as this witch… She’s probably dead. If Westfall had any sense at all, he would have killed her.”

  “How can you say that?”

  He shrugs. “It’s what a smart man would have done.”

  Sometimes I lose sight of what Jared really is. A soldier. A killer. True Born. I can’t afford to forget. But is he my soldier? My killer? My protector? I don’t have the time, or the means, to find out.

  “So what now?”

  Jared shrugs again and gives a bored flip of his blond locks. “We keep looking for her. And we have a plan.”

  “Have you seen Richardson again?”

  “No. He’s gone underground.”

  “And you aren’t going to share your plan with us?”

  “Better that you don’t know.”

  Our Reveal is just two weeks away. Resnikov and our father are clearly up to something. And Richardson—who is he? Resnikov’s evil twin? Doppelganger? Whoever he is, he’s running around somewhere with a falcon man, looking for us, but we can’t know the plan?

  “It’s for your safety as much as ours.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t considered that. It makes sense. If Margot or I are captured, would we not tell our captors anything they wanted to hear? “Right. Well, I’ll continue on with my own plan, then.”

  I stumble against Jared as he suddenly pulls me close. He catches me and rubs his mouth against the shell of my ear, working a shiver up and down my spine. “Trust me, Lucy Fox. I won’t let anything happen to either of you.”

  I don’t even have time to finish thinking, You can’t protect us from everything, by the time he’s pulled away and has darted across the courtyard. The door opens without a protest. And Jared Price disappears like he’d never been there at all.

  ...

  I hear the sobbing before my eyes open. The room is dark, half lit by dawn. I am alone in my bed. It takes me another moment or two to realize the sobbing comes from me.

  Margot bursts in the door and rushes for me. She checks me over with her eyes before sliding into bed beside me and throwing her arms around me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I shake my head. “Dream,” I say, and that’s as much as I want to tell her. I don’t dare tell another soul about the images floating through my mind, over and over again. Of the Lasters crushing into the gate, their limbs running red. The blond lady with the white, unseeing eyes in the yard, holding out her hand to me as though she sees me. Only me.

  The yard awash in blood. Laster. True Born. Splicer. Witch.

  Because, as I shake off the remnants of sleep, I think I finally might know who my dream lady might be.

  “Margot?” I croak through the lump in my throat.

  “Shhh. It’s going to be okay.”

  “I don’t think so. I think—”

  She scoots back into the headboard. “Don’t say it. Okay?”

  I hang my head, defeated. “Do you believe they’ve abandoned us?”

  She knows who I mean. Margot’s gray-green eyes spark with anger. “I don’t care. I’m looking forward to our
party and then…then maybe we’ll take a trip,” she says with false brightness.

  “Do you really think our parents are just going to let us go off somewhere together?”

  Margot bites her lip. “I heard them talking about a trip.”

  My eyes narrow with suspicion. This is the first I’m hearing of it. I can’t imagine our parents benevolently sending us on a relaxing cruise. “What kind of trip?”

  “I don’t know.” Margot shrugs. “Something with the whole family, I guess. I think even Resnikov is coming.”

  I’m nauseous at the thought. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I reckon he’s a really important business contact. It will be so good to get away from the preacher men and…everybody.”

  “Margot,” I yell, shaking her slim shoulders. “Snap out of it! We’re never going to get away from the preacher men. There will be preacher men wherever we go.”

  Margot twists viciously out of my grip. “You don’t know that.”

  “And there will be True Borns, too. Only I doubt they’ll be as nice as Storm. They’ll be more like Richardson and that weird bird guy.”

  “Stop!” Margot covers her ears, like we are children in a fight.

  But we’re not children, not anymore, and the stakes are far too high. “Margot,” I say, gentle now as I pry fingers from ears. “Margot, we’ve got to stick together. If you hear anything else, and I mean anything, you need to tell me.”

  Margot stares at me as the minutes tick by. “I’m broken, you know. And for a little while, when we were with them…when he… I felt I could at least pretend everything was going to be okay. But it’s not going to be okay, Lucy. I’m never going to be okay.”

  “Yes, you are, shh,” I soothe, pulling her head to mine and running my fingers through her silky tresses. “Margot, you’re going to feel better. You’re not broken.”

  “Oh, Lucy, yes, I am. Yes, I am,” she repeats through fresh tears. She hasn’t cried for days now, but as the gray light of morning rises we are back in that room, that terrible room, mourning the loss of our innocence.