“No, you said you wouldn’t take me. You never said I couldn’t go.” My excuse seems shaky, even to my own ears. “And besides, I don’t agree with your order.”
“It doesn’t matter how you feel about what I say.” He rakes his hands through his hair, gripping the roots. “I’m the shogun and if I don’t have loyalty, everything turns into chaos. I took a chance on you, and let you in because I knew you were hurting and I wanted to help you, but you have to understand that you can’t walk around and do whatever you please. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, the information that man has is important to the rebellion, to winning the war. I thought that’s what you wanted when you joined us.”
My heart shifts as his expression deepens, at the flash of hurt in his eyes. Though his words bite, there’s no doubt that they come from a place of desperation. I never wanted him to feel like we weren’t on the same side. I just wanted to show him that part of our side is damaged. But again, he doesn’t seem to be listening.
“Is that how you want to win the war? By relying on people who used to torment others? What happens when everything is over? Have you promised the Gardener his freedom? Does the man that killed my friends get to live in your new world?”
“Of course not,” he says. His voice grows softer. “I would never allow it. Your safety and the safety of those the rebellion helped you rescue are my priority. Arianna, you are always my priority.”
My breath catches, hearing him call me by the name no one else knows. For a moment, I falter, caught in the musical way my real name sounds in his voice. I inch closer without thought.
“And you and the rebellion are my priority. I did all of this to keep you safe.”
He sighs, rubbing his hand down his face. The way his scar moves under his touch, like an ever-flowing river, is a sharp reminder of why I joined the rebellion in the first place. “You’ve never had to speak to the Gardener. Do you know how many times he’s asked for you?”
“Doesn’t that statement right there worry you? If he’s asking for me then he hasn’t forgotten about me.”
“And you going in there today, tormenting him, has ensured he may never forget. You gave him exactly what he wanted.”
Yun’s beard.
The Gardener came alive when he spoke to me, his complacency shifting into something more before I stabbed him. If I’d had a few more minutes with him, I’m sure I would have found out. There’s only so long he could have held out against my knife.
“He’s up to something. I went in there to find out what it is,” I say. I force myself to look away from Rayce’s captivating gaze. “And I wanted to prove to myself that he didn’t have control over me anymore.”
My confession leaves me feeling raw and exposed, the words much harder than I thought they would be to speak aloud.
He holds up his hand to stop me from speaking, taking a step forward, bridging the inches between us. This little movement usually sparks a fire in me that his warmth turns wild. It used to mean he just wanted to be near, but right now everything about his stance suggests he’s in full shogun mode.
“Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that you disobeyed my order.”
“Like I said before, I didn’t actually do that.”
“Enough!” The edge in his voice keeps my retort lodged in my throat. “You might have made the words work for you, but you knew very well what I meant and you went behind my back anyway. I can’t have that kind of disobedience, not even from you. I’m taking your weapons while you’re in base until I can trust you not to use them irresponsibly.”
He thrusts out his hand, palm up, waiting for me.
“You can’t be serious.”
But the hard line of his mouth suggests that he is. I rip my stunner out of its holster, but the ties keeping my hilt to my belt fight me the entire time I try to undo them with bloodied fingers. Even inanimate objects know how wrong this is. Once my blade is finally free, I shove both of my weapons at him.
“And you’re on dish duty until I decide otherwise. Report there tomorrow.”
Instead of responding, I glare as he fastens my sword onto his belt and tucks my stunner into his robe. With nothing left to say to him, I head for higher tunnels and a place to scream out my anger.
“One last thing.” His voice stops me and I turn to face him, daring him to reprimand me further for doing what I still believe is right. Instead of the anger that was there a moment ago, he runs his hand roughly through his hair and won’t meet my gaze. “I need you to consider the Gardener’s demand. If you decide to go back in there, it will be unarmed and supervised, but we could use the information he’s offering us.”
I snort, crossing the space between us in a few short steps. “Oh, now you want me to visit him? Make up your mind, Rayce, but don’t keep stringing me along.”
His lip curls, but whatever retort he had catches in his throat. An earsplitting boom rings through the hall like thunder rolling through the sky, rattling the insides of my chest as it echoes and shakes loose a spray of rock from the ceiling above us. One second, I’m standing upright, throwing up my arms to block whatever comes up at me, and the next, I’m leaning back, my shoulders crushed against the cave wall as Rayce presses me there with his body, shielding me from whatever might have caused the bang. His frantic breath clatters through his chest as his head whips around, searching for the source of the attack.
“Are you okay?” He turns around, scanning me for any sign of damage.
“I think so…what was that? Is someone invading the base?”
Through the haze of dust shaken loose, I can’t see anyone. I put my hand on his shoulder blade and feel his muscles relax under my fingertips.
“I have no idea,” he says. “But I’m going to find out.”
The sound of frantic footfalls sends both of us looking back the way we came. The older guard who was standing watch over the Gardener stops in front of us, his entire left arm lit up from the stunner he wields. I go to reach for mine and then remember that Rayce took it from me.
“Shogun, miss, are you both all right?”
“We’re fine,” Rayce says, his voice gruff. “Guard her safely to the dining hall. I need to go figure out what’s happening.” He turns to me. “Stay close to him and hurry to the dining hall until I come get you.”
Before I can protest, he swivels around and runs upward, the green light his stunner makes like a beacon as he heads farther into the tunnel.
Every step Rayce takes away from me deepens the well of fear in the pit of my stomach. I have to help him, any way I can, but before I can take off running, the guard grabs my wrist.
“Come on. I need to get you to safety like the shogun ordered.”
“I’m not going to cower in the dining hall when the rebellion needs me. You can either follow me or tell him you lost me in the chaos. Either way, I’m going after him.”
Before he has a chance to answer me, I rush forward, my feet pounding the stone. The blurred shouts and terrified faces of others in the base rush by me as people scramble to make sense of what just happened and get in position in case this is some kind of attack. I keep hearing one phrase over and over again among the chaos—the lab.
All I need to do is track the wreckage. The closer I draw, the more devastating the effects, entire tunnels caved in, people cowering. Turning down one of the main halls, I see five men scrambling to clear out a large pile of rubble blocking the walkway and rush past them, nearly tripping over a crumbling rock in my haste.
A minute later, I stand in front of what used to be a plain, smooth wall, but a giant hole has been ripped into the stone, spilling rubble on the floor before us, and scorchmarks have covered the rock in a strange splatter pattern.
Chaos reigns in what used to be the tidy laboratory I spend most of my days avoiding. A throng of guards fills the room, most having abandoned their stunners to help pull men and women in white robes from the wreckage of what used to be a large wooden cart near the corner of the r
oom. More scorchmarks stain the ground, mimicking a black carpet rolled out, speckled with glittering green Zarenite dust, and smoke wafts into the air in great billowing clouds above the spacious room. Several tables have toppled over on their sides, showering the floor in broken glass vials and jars, adding to the chunks of jagged metal and wood pieces splintered off.
Several guards have already formed a line of injured on the far wall, as far away from the sparking explosion as possible. From the looks of it, most of Piper’s inventors have been spared major damage, but about twelve don’t seem to be moving.
A woman leans over, wrapping a bandage around a younger man’s middle as he whimpers, his white coat covered in green Zarenite dust and something dark and red. Beside them lays a jagged piece of metal coated in the same wet red substance. It doesn’t take me long to connect what I’m looking at, but my mind shies away from the answer. Another man pulls a sheet over a person that isn’t moving.
Fighting is supposed to happen away from the base. It looks more like a battlefield in here right now than the safety of home.
I spot Rayce and Arlo in front of a man who won’t stop screaming and run forward, my boots crunching over glass, half-finished weapons, and metal bits. People surge in front of me, carrying first aid packs and cradling pieces of projects they’re trying to salvage from the floor.
Dropping to my knees next to Rayce, I try not to gag at the huge chunk of flesh missing from the screaming man’s rib cage. His robe looks more red than white at this point.
“Was this an attack?” I ask, unfastening my first aid kid from the harness on my pant leg.
Rayce turns toward me, his hands slick with blood. “Rose? What’re you doing here? I told you to head to the dining hall.”
“And I didn’t listen.” I make myself useful by pulling out my roll of gauze, even though it’s clear the man in front of us going to need much more than a few patches. “From the look of things, you could use an extra pair of hands, so can we not argue? Are we in danger?”
“No, it was an experiment gone wrong,” Arlo says.
Wiping the hair out of my eyes, I glance up at his voice and see Piper just behind him, her never-changing stoic expression observing the agony of several men and women she works alongside daily with a calmness that immediately sets me on edge. Her gaze turns to me and a hint of a frown passes her lips. She’s never been shy about disliking me, especially after Rayce and the others managed to rescue me but left her younger sister imprisoned by the emperor. I risked my life to save her sister a short time later, which seemed to have no effect on the way she treats me.
“It shouldn’t have,” she says. Her shiny black hair frames her face, chopped right before the base of her neck in a harsh line, and her flat, intelligent eyes regard me with minor annoyance. “But whoever was responsible for loading the mechanism meant to propel it forward with Zarenite powder didn’t get the right ratio.”
“You’re the one in charge,” I say. “That’s your responsibility.”
Rayce grits his teeth, plugging the man’s wound with his hands as blood seeps through. “That doesn’t matter right now! We need to treat this man’s injuries immediately. Arlo, do you have any of that desert rose on you?”
“What are you going to do to me?” the man wails. He grips Rayce’s wrists, slipping from the blood covering them as he tries to pry Rayce away from him. “No, get off, get off!”
“I’m just trying to help you.” Rayce fights against the man’s squirming grasp. “I’m going to need some help holding him. Arlo, the desert rose.”
This time, I won’t stand back useless. My hands shaking, I lean over, my head nearly touching Rayce’s, and grab the wounded man’s shoulders, pinning him to the ground. Although he fights against my grip, he’s so weak it doesn’t take much energy to keep him still.
“I gave it all to Piper when we got back to base.” He turns to her. “Can you get it and a mortar and pestle? You wanted to see it in action, this is the perfect opportunity.”
“It isn’t called that anymore,” she says. “I’ve named it Borenite.”
I bite my tongue, resisting the urge to tell her that whatever she decided to rename it isn’t important right now. No need to make Rayce angrier than he already is. Piper walks evenly over to a nearby table. Her robe flares out behind her frail frame like dove wings as she grabs what Arlo requested and hurries back. He wastes no time, crushing it up like I taught them.
“Hang on,” I murmur to the man I’m holding down. “We’re going to help you.”
His shocked eyes can barely focus on me and he stops thrashing against my hands, lulled into a state of calm by his loss of blood.
“Come on,” Rayce whispers next to me. “This has to work.” He turns to me, his eyes tight. “We were able to heal you with it, so this should work.”
No one dares to mention that the healing paste crushed from desert rose is his only chance at survival. Arlo scoots next to us, clutching the stone bowl near him as he moves toward the wound. He holds it out for Rayce, who dips his blood-soaked fingers in the concoction. Even from here, a gentle, faint wave of coolness washes over me.
Arlo looks back up at Piper. “Hopefully this will convince you of its healing properties so you can utilize them as some kind of salve for injuries in the field.”
The man’s tear-streaked face grows paler than the lab coat he wears, his breathing rattling painfully in his chest, and his eyelids droop closed. Everything inside me shatters. We have to save him. There are already too many families Rayce has had to speak to and every single time he does, it wears on him a little more. We might be furious with each other, but I would never wish that kind of torment on him.
Face drawn tight, Rayce spreads the light blue paste over the man’s wound while Piper, Arlo, and I watch. For a second, nothing happens, and I wonder if we all collectively hallucinated what happened in the desert. But not even I can imagine that kind of pain.
His eyes snap open, a strange blue tint flashing through them for a blink before he screams. His limbs and shoulders convulse under my hands as his cries echo throughout the cavernous room, causing people all around us to turn their heads in our direction.
Even though I want to look away, I can’t help but study his grimacing face and lock onto those tense eyes, watch as they slowly fade into blankness. His wail dies on his lips as his body goes limp under my grasp, but it doesn’t loosen the sound wedged in my mind.
Rayce’s hands still pressing on the gash do little to stop the final flow of the man’s life force from dripping onto the ground. We all stay silent, shocked by the turn of events. I had screamed, felt like I was freezing from the inside out, but then the pain lessened and I could breathe. This time, desert rose had the opposite effect.
Finally the spell breaks and I’m able to scan the room, my eyes wide, and notice that every other pair of eyes looks to me. My voice is too hoarse to push words through at first. “I don’t know what happened.”
“H-he must have been too far gone?” Rayce’s tone shakes and he pulls back his hands, resting them in his lap as he sits back, staring at the man we just tortured into the grave.
A deep discomfort settles over my body like a wet blanket. None of this is right. We were supposed to come back into the arms of the base and feel safe, but right now, everything is spinning out of control. Above me, I hear Piper promise to study the crystal further after Arlo calmly explains how this result was so different than our last.
Someone tugs me up and drags me to one of the tables not overturned by the explosion so Piper can examine my shoulder, and although her small gloved hands claw into my skin, a dull ringing in my head won’t let me focus anything but the life we just took.
My gaze wanders back to Rayce as he kneels down next to the man, his face tight with grief as he covers him with a white sheet. A bright red stain blooms through the once-pristine surface like a grotesque flower. Permanent. A life that will never come back. We might be angry with each ot
her right now, but I know how much this hurts him, can tell by the jerky way he moves his hands and keeps his head low. This feeling, like a rock has been shoved into my gut, this is war. And I want to lean into it, force time to move quicker to save those fighting for the freedom of the land…the Flowers, Arlo, Marin, and the man I love.
Chapter Eight
The next few days are a flurry of dodging Rayce. Not only because I disobeyed him and ran into the lab, but because I still haven’t answered him about the Gardener’s offer. I haven’t even decided yet. Life would be so much simpler if Rayce wasn’t responsible for the entire rebellion, or perhaps, if we were both bred our entire lives to rule. Waking up by his side every day, feeling the warmth of his mouth on mine, these are the things I dream about when I close my eyes, but lately, all I’ve been able to see is the choices we’ll have to make in order to get there, and at every corner, I fall short.
Today, our little game of tag has finally come to an end. It’s difficult to avoid him when he’s scheduled my dish duty for the same time he preps for the dinner rush. Normally, I look forward to these quiet moments. It’s the only time I get to spend with him completely alone, but this week it feels like I’m walking to my own sentencing. The Flowers and Marin accompany me on the way to sword training.
“I can’t believe you’re actually accepting the Gardener’s deal,” Calla says.
“I never said I would.”
“But you’re considering it, serving him again.” She spits out her last phrase, shaking her head. “It’s ridiculous, and the fact that the shogun is even asking this of you infuriates me.”
Marin takes a step closer to me like she can shield me from Calla’s words. “Well, he didn’t order her to do it and he would have been within his rights to. He’s letting her make her own decision.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I say. “I want to help, but this deal feels like I’m selling my soul back to that monster.”
“Then say no.” Calla begins to walk quicker. “Because if you accept, I don’t think I’ll ever respect you again.”
War of the Wilted Page 7
