by Trisha Leigh
Pax takes a giant leap over the downed Wardens, landing at Lucas’s side and running his hands over the front of the trap.
My eyes slide to Deshi again as I pick my way closer. “Has he been awake at all?”
“No. He hasn’t moved. How are we going to get in there? These enclosures were clearly made to keep people with abilities either in or out.”
I nod. “I know. They have similar holding areas in the Observatory Pod, and when they tortured me they tied me to a huge chair made of the same material that couldn’t be melted.”
Pax finds nothing, and no matter how hard he pushes air at the bars, they don’t give. The strong wind rolls Deshi onto his back against the wall, reinforcing my belief that he’s actually unconscious. The telltale sign of Pax’s frustration, the acrid scent of burning leaves, makes me sneeze and I push him away from the bars.
My fingers run along the inside, up as far as I can reach. I crouch down, recalling the hidden button that opens the boundary, but find nothing. When Lucas and Pax’s legs appear in my field of vision, pressed up against the marble, the air is sucked free of my lungs. The sour taste of fear and the smell of panic curl vines around my heart and I rise slowly to my feet, trying to prepare myself for whatever I’m about to see when I turn around.
I’d been so intent on finding a way in that the Wardens’ approach hadn’t registered. They were less than five minutes behind us after our fire and wind intervention, we knew that, and now they’re crowded on the landing, snaking back onto the stairs. At least fifty of them made the climb upward, and we’re seriously outnumbered.
Zackej pushes his way to the front, turning my knees to jelly. I grab on to Pax and Lucas for strength, to steady my trembling limbs, and also to remind myself they’re with me. I’m not facing this alone this time, and whatever happens, the three of us are together.
Pamant isn’t with them, a fact that hums in time with the whispers trying to push to the front of my mind. Something’s wrong, a detail we haven’t considered, a variable not apparent to the three of us. Why wouldn’t they haul their most valuable weapon up here to deal with us once and for all?
The sight of Kendaja twirling her way through the clump of Wardens, strikingly lovely in the stark black dress that hugs her tiny waist and flares out until it lands at her knees, kills any borrowed confidence. She hums softly, her eyes locked on Lucas. The panting starts. Her tongue slips out and wets her mouth, leaving too much saliva behind, reminding me of the goop the second slug left on the inside of my ankle.
She lifts her brother’s hand, holding it above her head as she spins in a circle, the dress fanning out while she giggles manically. “Do you like my dress oh do you, would you like to kiss me in this dress? Pine, delicious sticky sweet…” She pauses and sniffs the air hungrily. “I want it, oh I do, I do brother let me have it the apples too for me daddy said, he said.”
My stomach twists, the nauseating memory of the kiss she forced on Ko clawing its way out of the case I’ve locked it in. My body involuntarily tries to pull farther away from her, but all that accomplishes is a smack to the back of the head when I immediately hit the bars keeping Deshi trapped.
“All in good time, dear sister.” Zakej’s cold gaze doesn’t waver, doesn’t lift from the three of us even though we all avoid looking directly at him. “You know, we’re very happy you’ve decided to join us, my sister and I. Father will be so pleased. You didn’t need to sneak in, of course, or cause so much damage. We are your family, after all. You belong here.”
“We don’t belong with you,” Lucas spits, the quiver in the words belying the bravado.
“I do hope you’ll change your mind. Quickly, too, because honestly my hold on Kendaja is not as firm as my father’s. I fear the day rapidly approaches when she’ll slip my grasp entirely and then…” He spreads his hands out in a gesture that’s completely human and unnerving. The way the Others ape their hosts never fails to stand the hairs up on my arms. “At any rate.”
My eyes are glued to Kendaja, who grins and pants in alternating motions, making a gimme motion toward us with her manicured hands. I have an errant thought, wondering if she’s as lovely in her alien form as she is this human body, whether the Prime and his Partner were devastated at her malformed brain when it became apparent as an infant. Whether he meant all along to use his daughter as a twisted executioner, or if there had been a day when he’d simply loved her too much to dispose of her, not imagining she would become a valuable tool.
I never thought things like that before we met Nat. About the Others having feelings besides hate and ruthless arrogance.
Kendaja’s grin morphs into an alluring pout, except for the drool and the crazed look in her pitch-black eyes. She crosses her arms and sticks out her bottom lip, giving her the appearance of a much younger girl. “Hurt me, you hurt me water, water everywhere, ice it’s hard so hard, ow ow ow.”
She’s tiptoeing toward Lucas, and if she comes much closer I am going to lose what’s left of my mind. Fear of her unpredictable nature, her special method of killing, snags down every nerve ending in my body. I can feel the danger emanating from her, and sweat breaks out on my palms as my heart gallops harder.
Her voice drops to a whisper. “I won’t forget about the hurt the way it hurt. Hurting isn’t bad, no, it’s good, I’ll show you water, Kenda wants to show you, she wants wants wants to make it hurt.”
I jerk my hand free from Lucas’s, balling my fingers into fists. Trembles run over me, stir terror in my stomach, squeeze all the air from my lungs. The time to fight her inches closer and closer, but the thought of touching Kendaja makes me want to retch.
A groan climbs over my shoulder and into my ear, stopping her in her tracks. It came from behind us, which can only mean Deshi is awake, or at least headed that direction.
“Cover me,” Pax mutters, moving behind Lucas and me so he can peer at the boy he knew briefly before they were both tossed in a prison and tortured several months ago.
Even though Pax is the only one of us Deshi knows, I wonder if he’s the best envoy given that he abandoned him to all of this, even if he didn’t have a choice. I hear him speaking softly to our fourth and know we need to give them a minute.
A deep breath later, one eye still on Kendaja as she retreats to her brother’s side, I face my fears. Again, and likely not for the last time.
“So here we are. Trapped. Backed into a corner like animals. What are you going to do with us now?”
Zakej doesn’t give any indication that he means to answer me, but even if he were going to, it would have to wait. At that moment the ground quakes, even though Pamant is presumably still far below us, at the bottom of the cavern. The staircase jumps and shimmies, the sound of cracking wood and screeching metal pounding in my ears.
Then the suspensions snap, the noise vibrating in the air, and all of the Wardens below the landing drop out of sight.
CHAPTER 27.
The shaking continues. My mind conjures horrible images of Cadi, of the other beings trapped and unable to save themselves, crashing into the hard stone floor hundreds of feet below.
I stumble to the side, fall against Lucas, and then we both topple backward. My hands go instinctively to the back of my head, trying to protect my skull from the smack of the thick marble bars. Instead of hitting them, my rear end hits the floor and bounces, hard.
We fell right through the bars, as though they weren’t there.
It’s not possible. The obsidian marble stares me in the face as though it never moved, and Lucas and I exchange a glance. Had the quaking knocked something loose with the mechanism?
As quickly as it began, the event ceases. Deshi drops from his feet to his knees, then into the dirt; he must have started the quake. He expended too much energy for someone clearly not well.
With the landing steadied—and now the only remaining refuge, and at least thirty stories up—Zakej recovers his cool. He grins at the sight of all four of us inside the cage, and b
oth he and Kendaja approach the bars.
I ignore them, for now, and turn to the boys. “Let’s travel. Now. We can take Deshi.”
“I don’t know, Althea. He doesn’t have a bracelet and he’s too out of it to use his own power. What if we lose him? What if he doesn’t get out?”
My eyes race over the boy’s arms, the sight of him hitching fear in my lungs even though I know he wasn’t the one who tried to kill us in Danbury. Zakej’s mimicry was perfect, though, and the Deshi lying on the floor looks identical to the one we knew and came close to maybe trusting. The one I saw torture Others, who got so much pleasure out of Cadi’s pain, and it’s hard to separate my feelings.
It’s true that no rainbow threads ring either of his wrists, and I bend down, swallowing bile as I check his ankles. It’s not there, either. I guess the Others might have taken it from him, but I don’t see why. They couldn’t have known its purpose or origin, unless they tortured it out of him.
They probably did.
Something about his appearance, something besides the fact that he looks exactly like my torturer last autumn, tugs at the edges of my mind. It hums like the concern over the missing Pamant, the whispers over the secrets Greer and Cadi were unable to share, but no matter how hard I study him, nothing jumps out at me.
His skin is the yellowish shade I remember, not bronze like Pax’s but more golden. The slick black hair falls over his almond-shaped eyes, cheekbones a little flatter and more spread out than any of ours.
“Well, what else can we do?” I ask.
“Yes, what else can you do?” Zakej mimics from outside the cage.
Lucas takes a step toward him, hands clenched into fists, crossing to the Prime’s son in two steps. It’s not until he’s too close for me to call him back that the danger slams into my chest. “Lucas!”
My shriek splinters, joins his shrill yell as Kendaja reaches through the bars and wraps one hand in his shirt. The other she holds against his jaw, splitting the skin with the gentle press of a finger the way she did to my face.
Both Pax and I are off the floor and at his side within seconds, and loathing pours through me as I grab her arm, burning her until she lets go of Lucas. Pax’s hands tangle in her hair, pulling as she tries to back away. Kendaja pants hard, spit covering her chin, and looks for all the world like we’ve hurt her feelings.
She raises her injured arm to her face and licks it like Wolf does when he’s hurt. The way her eyes roll back in her head, as though the pain is something to be treasured, sends unstoppable chills down the back of my neck.
“Pax, let her go. We have bigger problems.” I’m not sure that’s technically true, but we need to get out of here. “Are you okay?” I ask Lucas.
His normally pale face has turned ashen, and blood drips through his fingers as they pinch the shallow cut. “Fine,” he responds through clenched teeth.
“Okay. Then let’s go.”
We turn around to go to Deshi, to put him between us and travel away—somewhere, anywhere but here.
But he’s gone.
“Did you lose something?” Zakej’s smooth water-over-rocks voice pours freezing water over my back.
“You lost it him, it, we found it, too bad too bad, take care of your things, they’re your things treat them right. It’s your job but you’re bad at it. Bad,” the Prime’s insane daughter trills, laughing.
We spin back around, slowly. I try to prepare myself for the sight of Deshi in Kendaja’s clutches, for watching her kiss him until his brains slop onto the ground.
Except Deshi isn’t held captive at all. He’s standing, perfectly straight and unharmed, between Zakej and Kendaja. He studies us with an unflinching gaze, making no move to disable our captors or free us from the cage he obviously knew how to slip out of any time he wanted.
Zakej spares Deshi a look of annoyance. “You didn’t have to break the stairs. You know how I like them.”
“It doesn’t matter. They’re just for show, and we needed to get them secured.” Deshi shrugs, clearly unafraid of the Prime’s son.
It’s then that the warnings in the back of my brain peal loud and clear. They don’t need Pamant because they have Deshi. The reason Cadi and Greer couldn’t warn us about why it would be so difficult to get Deshi back is because Deshi doesn’t want to be gotten back. His appearance doesn’t seem right because it’s not marred. No bruises, no blood. Not a speck of harm has been done to him, at least not recently.
But why?
I want to ask, but it seems like exactly what Zakej wants, so I bite my tongue.
Pax, true to form, has no such qualms. “Why?”
He asks Deshi the question, but our fourth remains stubborn and silent.
“I think the real question is, why would you assume Deshi would be on your side? After all, son of Air, you left him alone in Portland. We have been good to him, taken him into our family, shown him the true extent of his abilities.”
The air goes out of Pax at the reminder that he abandoned Deshi, guilt collapsing his face even though he tries to hide it. My heart hurts for him, but there’s more to worry about right now that whether or not he feels bad.
“Deshi, I didn’t have a choice. I meant to come back. We tried for months to come back, but…I’m sorry.”
“It’s true,” I add, unable to leave Pax alone in his explanations. “We’ve been looking for you, Deshi. We never abandoned you. They kept you from us.”
Something flickers in his blue eyes, and I notice for the first time that black veins run through the whites. It catches my breath, this evidence of his Otherness, but it doesn’t change the fact that we need him. The slight shift in expression is almost invisible, equally unreadable. It doesn’t look like forgiveness, though.
He says nothing; the silence begins to unnerve me.
“My father asked that the three of you be alive when he returns from the Harvest Site. I’ll do the best I can, but I’m afraid I can’t predict the ramifications of those burns on your leg, Althea. I’ll tell him to hurry.”
“Nitric, sulfuric, hydrochloric, we can cure it. Hydroflouric turns the living into bones, bones full of holes, eaten eaten eaten up.” Kendaja regards me seriously, as though she’s making some kind of sense.
Deshi’s black-veined eyes jerk to my pants where they’ve been burned away, but his expression doesn’t change.
“I’ll be seeing you, my dear abominations. Perhaps sooner than later, yes?” Zakej takes a couple steps back on the landing, then turns to go.
I wonder dully how they’re going to get down, but Zakej merely wanders to the edge, kicking the two Wardens Lucas incapacitated earlier until the last of the ice falls off their hair and from around their noses.
“Get up,” he snarls.
What’s left of the group that pursued us, including the Prime’s family and the boy we risked everything to save, walk out onto what must be an invisible staircase, leaving us alone.
CHAPTER 28.
“Althea, let me look at your leg.” Lucas flops down against the back wall, still holding the wounded skin at his chin.
I sink down beside him, and Pax joins us. Exhaustion eases out of my limbs until I want nothing more than to lie down and sleep. Now that we’re alone, my leg burns as though it’s on fire, and this kind of fire hurts as bad as anything the Others have ever done inside my mind. It’s as though someone sawed off the nerves in my calf and is holding a hot hair dryer directly against the raw ends.
Lucas runs his fingers over the ruined skin until water gushes across the wound. It offers little relief, but he doesn’t stop when I tell him it’s not helping. The grim set of his mouth spears new anxiety into my heart.
“I’m not cleaning it to stop the pain. Those words Kendaja said? They weren’t nonsense.” He squints at me, trying a halfhearted smile. “I mean, I know you were distracted by my mere presence in chemistry last year, but what about the hundreds of classes you sat through before that?”
Too many things t
rip and stumble through my mind for me to be able to respond to his teasing, even though I appreciate the effort. The events of the past couple of hours run over me like a rider, leaving imprints on my body that won’t heal. I call up the memory of Kendaja’s strange rhyme, and after a moment, the words she said strike a chord. “Acid.”
“Yeah. Where did it come from?” His fingers continue to gush cool water over my injury.
“The black goop they launched was alive. It secreted it.”
“Did it get you anywhere else?”
“There was one on my ankle, but it didn’t burn.” My voice sounds far away, detached from my body somehow. I really am so tired.
Pax leans over now, inspecting the second spot. It’s still a bit pink, but otherwise unharmed. Nothing like the plum-sized hole in my calf. The look they exchange tells me I’m still missing something.
“Let’s get out of here.” Lucas reaches for my hand, nodding toward Pax.
They’ve left us our bracelets, which seems a little odd now that I think about it. They’ve seen us travel, and they must know by now that we can do it without help. Maybe Zakej is smug enough to believe Cadi’s death will put an end to it, but that doesn’t seem right. He and his father have learned by now not to underestimate us, so something else is going on. Either way, we can’t leave.
“No,” Pax and I say in unison.
My eyes meet his, finding the same concern and resignation that’s pressing against my skin from the inside. I nod, too tired to explain.
“We can’t do a thing without Deshi, Winter. There’s no point in leaving. Better we stay here and try to find a way to bring him back around to our side.” Pax pauses, glancing at me. “And if Althea’s hurt as badly as Zakej thinks, we need to be here. They’re the only ones who can fix it.”
“They won’t fix me, but you’re right about Deshi. He doesn’t know everything we do, and we owe him. He’s been in here all this time, without the benefits of meeting Cadi and Greer and Wolf. Even Griffin and Nat have helped us see our responsibility for what it is. We can’t leave him again. It would only reinforce what he thinks—that we don’t care about him, that he can’t count on us.”
