by Frankie Rose
Contents
copyright
Pronunciations and Meanings
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Books by Frankie Rose
SOVEREIGN HOPE (Book 1 in the Hope Series)
ETERNAL HOPE (Book 2 in the Hope Series)
LOST HOPE (Book 3 in the Hope Series)
HALO (Book 1 Blood & Fire Series)
NEW ADULT FICTION
Written as Nikita Rae
WINTER (Book 1 in the Four Seasons Series)
Copyright © 2014 Frankie Rose
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at [email protected]
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places and characters are figments of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
Pronunciation and Meanings in Halo
Halo- A collar-like device which controls the wearer’s emotions and pain.
Falin- (fah-LIN)- The Sanctuary’s fighting caste. Falin wear halos, and are trained from a young age to fight in the Colosseum
Elin- (eh-LIN)- Pureblooded children of the Sanctuary. The Elin do not wear halos.
Trues- Owners of the fighting houses in the Sanctuary. Parents of the Elin.
Therin- (the-RIN)- Servants of the fighting houses. Therin wear halos.
Tamji- (Tam-Gee)- Freetown’s most common fighting caste.
Mashinji-(Mash-IN-gee)-A rogue fighter level. Mashinjis can be called to fight by whomever wishes to match them, and there is no limit to how many matches they can fight in one sitting.
Kansho- (Can-SHO)- The highest level of fighter in Freetown.
Where I come from, your expiration is an inconvenience. Years of training and resources wasted. Money and time straight down the drain, the result of an average six-minute bout with another resource that someone else poured time and money into. When that other resource kills you, you’re removed from the arena floor, taken to be cremated—there is no room for burial plots in the Sanctuary—and your clothing, weapons, boots, shoelaces, everything is returned to the Trues who owned you. At least that way not everything goes to waste. Your halo is recycled, held for use by some other Falin or Therin should theirs malfunction or fail to produce the pacifying drug that has controlled you your whole life.
Your ashes are tilled into the earth beyond the Sanctuary walls, and there the basic components that used to make up your body, the nitrogen, the carbon, the hydrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, iron, sodium, all that you were serves one final purpose by enriching the soil that used to feed you. Now, you will feed others. No one stands over you. No one whispers kind things about who you were and how you lived your life, how much you will be missed. You’re just…gone.
Not so in Freetown. There has never been a greater dichotomy in belief as the funeral rites in the Sanctuary compared to that of my new home. I’m standing on the edge of a huge hill of freshly dug earth. The sky is an angry thing overhead, white and grey and seething. The earth reaches up to it, a steep ten-metre climb that has already been compacted with hundreds of pairs of boots. Around me, the fighters of Freetown are bare chested, sweating, panting, cheering, running up the huge mound of dirt in turn, knives in hand, running back down bleeding and cheering. There’s a wild light in their eyes.
I stand with them. I’m panting and sweating, too, and it’s all because of them. Their fervour is like wildfire catching in my soul. It’s my turn. I take a first step, feeling hands on my back, urging me forward, hearing ragged voices filled with emotion.
It’s time, Kit. It’s your turn. Bless him. Go and bless him.
I swallow down the pain in my chest and pull my dagger from my knife belt. Then I am running, propelling myself blindly up the incline, boots slipping out from underneath me, pitching forward, righting myself, carrying on upwards. At the top, I see him. He’s the reason we’re all here.
Max.
His eyes are open, the blue brighter than it ever was in life. His hands are clasped over his chest, and in them is a beautiful dagger. On sight, I know it’s one of Callum’s. The engraving on the blade, intricate and painstakingly done, tells me so. Max’s twin must have spent sleepless hours making the knife for his brother to take with him into the afterlife. Callum is still out in the woods with James and the others. I don’t even know how he would have gotten it here in time. My throat swells when I see it, making it hard to breathe. After all the dead bodies I’ve seen, you would think I’ve become desensitised to this sight, but now that I am without my halo I’m a flayed, raw thing and even the slightest hurt stings brightly. Max’s death is more than a slight hurt. His loss is crippling.
I go to him and kneel in the dirt beside him, placing my hand on his shoulder. He’s been dead for days, but it’s still a shock when I find him so rigid and cold. The fighters below me chant Raksha, and I whisper the word, too. Just once. Max’s body is covered in blood, but it’s not his. It belongs to the fighters of Freetown. Every single one of them has bled for Max to send him on his way. To bless him. I take my dagger in my hand and clasp hold of the blade, drawing it slowly from my closed fist. My blood flows free, accompanied by a dull pain, which is barely felt—I can’t seem to feel anything above the angry thump of my heart right now. Red drops fall and land with an audible pat, pat on Max’s hand, on his blade.
Do you think…do you think you could tell her I’m sorry? Max’s words float to the surface of my mind, reminding me of our last conversation before he died. He Claimed Simone, broke Olivia’s heart before she became one of the priestesses, locked away forever in the Keep beyond the hill.
“I’m sorry, too, Max,” I whisper. And then I’m scrunching my eyes closed and turning, running blindly down the piled earth, my heels digging in for purchase. At the bottom, Ryka waits for me with painfully sad eyes.
“Hey,” he tells me.
“Hey,” I tell him back. He’s already shed his blood for Max. He takes my hand and holds it tight, and for a moment I feel like his strength is literally pouring through the contact between us, lifting me, helping me stand straighter. Ryka does this for me more and more these days, and I let him because it feels like the right thing to do. And I need him. I need him more than anything.
A line of fighters are still waiting to charge up the hill to say goodbye to their brother, and their chanting makes me dizzy, the words completely devoid of meaning now that they’ve been repeated so much.
Raksha! Raksha! Raksha!
The dead must hear Max coming.
“Do you wanna get out of here?” Ryka’s breath is a hot whisper against my skin, making me shiver.
“Yeah, let’s go.”
We turn together, but we don’t move beyond that. No matter how much I want
to, I just can’t leave. The priestesses have come. A silent line of them approaches—graceful, anonymous figures covered head to toe in red material, and a soft humming sound arrives with them, high-pitched and sweet.
“Are they singing?”
Ryka nods, swallowing hard. “It’s the only time they make a sound.”
There are eight of them, and they all carry folded red material reverently in their hands. Without acknowledging us or anyone else, they begin to climb the high wall of dirt. The fighters stop making their running pilgrimage up to Max; everyone just goes silent.
An unsettled churning starts up in my stomach. “What are they doing?”
“Readying him for the Rest. He won’t make it through without being cleansed by the priestesses.” Ryka’s words don’t ready me for what happens next. Just like when Olivia was accepted as a priestess, the priestesses begin wrapping long folds of red around Max’s body.
“Gods...” Ryka breathes. His voice is rough and pained. I hold onto his hand even tighter and he looks at me, his eyes shining. “Did you see the blade?”
“Yeah, I—Callum must be—” I shake my head. I can’t imagine how Callum is feeling right now. I was so surprised when I found out that he and Max were twins. That two people could be born at the same time. It just doesn’t happen in the Sanctuary. For two people to share that—forming in the womb together, growing side by side—I can’t possibly begin to understand how it would feel to suddenly be alone. Callum hasn’t come today. Some things are just beyond a person’s capabilities.
Max is almost completely shrouded now. The priestesses stand in a circle around his red, bound form, and they begin to chant. I can’t hear the words, but they sound low and angry. Too harsh in comparison to their sweet humming a moment ago.
“What are they say—” A flutter of movement cuts me off. One of the priestesses sags to the ground, like her legs have been pulled out from underneath her, and a horrible, low wail tears through the early morning air. The other priestesses stop their chanting and gather around their fallen sister, pulling her roughly to her feet.
“Oh, no. No, no, no. Please, no.” Ryka steps forward, his hand on his knives as he begs for the priestess sobbing on her knees not to be his sister. To not be Olivia. But it must be, has to be. No one else would be this broken. “Why? Why would they make her do this?” he whispers. The pain in his voice is staggering. My eyes burn like crazy as one of the priestesses drags Olivia to her feet and shoves her down the slope. Olivia trips on her veils, falling to the ground and tumbling the last few feet to the bottom. I see bright blonde hair and a white ceramic mask, haunted brown eyes staring out from within, and I almost break.
“Olivia!” I rush forward and grab hold of her, helping her to her feet. A sob comes out of her, utterly bereft, and for a second she’s limp in my arms. She feels frail, thinner than she used to be, and I want to rip the stupid fabric from her body and drag her back to Jack and her brother so we can take care of her. There’s a moment where I think she’s almost begging for that to happen, a silent plea from behind her veils, but then her body stiffens. She shoves away from me and her hand flashes out, striking me hard across my cheek.
“What the—”
Olivia pulls the veils back down over her mask in a hurry, like she’s frightened. She staggers back but freezes when she catches sight of Ryka.
“Liv, please…” he says softly.
Another muffled sob reaches my ears, and then Olivia turns and peels through the sullen crowd of people, leaving us behind. My cheek stings like crazy. I can feel the hand print forming there in a red welt, but I don’t try and take the burn away. It feels right to hurt a little.
“You can’t touch her, little Kit,” Ryka tells me, brushing my fallen hair out of my face. “She’ll have to spend hours scrubbing herself now. The others won’t let her back into the Keep until they consider her clean.” I feel like bursting into tears at his sad words, but I don’t. I lean into his hand, letting him cup my cheek. He runs the pad of his thumb over my skin, studying me, and then places a soft kiss against my forehead. “Thank you for loving her, Kit. She won’t be forgotten if we keep loving her.”
A rushing whoompf sound draws me back to the other priestesses, and my mouth falls open when I see what they’ve done. They’re making their way single file down the slope toward us, and behind them Max is burning. Flames and acrid black smoke curl into the bright, colourless sky overhead, and the fighters set to running back up and down again. Except this time they’re casting their blood into the fire.
The priestesses purposefully walk right by Ryka and me, and it’s obvious from the slight inclination of their heads that they’re trying to pass me some silent message. Don’t touch us? Don’t interfere with us? Don’t underestimate us? The priestess on the end breaks ranks and steps forward. There is at least four feet of space between us, but it feels like she’s standing way too close.
“Come to the Keep at nightfall,” a hoarse voice whispers from within. The sound is like water rushing backward, layers of sound split apart and poorly woven back together. “You are”—her head tips to one side—“expected.”
She means me. I shiver and retreat so that my back is pressed against Ryka’s chest. He places his hands on my hips, holding onto me. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.” He feels it, too. These women aren’t normal, aren’t totally human anymore. As we retreat from Max’s funeral pyre, I wonder how long Olivia has left until she’s just like them.
On top of the bluff that overlooks the beach Ryka used to train on, Freetown shows its scars more obviously than at ground level. Everything was always kind of crazy down there, anyway, but from a distance you used to be able to make out some sort of regimented organisation to the countless tents and walkways. Now there are great gouges in the land and scorched black depressions that tell stories. Burning. Explosions. Running. Fear. Anger. Loss.
From our vantage point we can read it all, as easily as if we were reading it from a book. Overhead the sky looks like it’s boiling, all angry reds, oranges and pinks. The effect is quite unsettling, and if you half close your eyes it would be easy to believe that Freetown is still ablaze. Ryka lets me sit between his legs, my back resting against his chest, and we stare over the destruction for a quiet minute, trying to take it all in. We can’t, of course.
Down there families are homeless, their possessions and food stores gone. People are dead. Children are parentless. There’s a deep fury running like a river in the hearts of Freetown’s people, and the Sanctuary is the sole cause. Ryka wasn’t wrong when he said the people were going to go to war. It’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue, visible in the hard looks that are passed around and traded in place of insufficient words. There is no point ranting about injustice and unfairness, and so the people of Freetown don’t do it. Instead, they make silent plans to kill with a barely defined nod, or a consolatory clap on the back.
“Are you nervous?” Ryka breathes softly into my ear. His words remind me of Caius asking me something similar. Are you worried? My halo had still been firmly in place and working the day we’d fought, and I’d told him I wasn’t worried. Wasn’t worried that he would beat me. Wasn’t worried about killing him in order to win my match. I close my eyes and try not to think about Caius and what I did to him.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m a little worried. Do you think I’ll actually make it inside today?” Since we arrived back to Freetown seven days ago, I have been called to see the High Priestess three times. This makes the fourth. And each and every time I reach the Keep, I’m informed that the withered old woman isn’t ready to see me, after all. She’s supposed to have had a vision, one in which I’m the star player, but I have no idea what it was about—whether it means she’s going to renew her efforts to have me killed at the earliest possible juncture.
“Who knows. Maybe,” Ryka says softly over my shoulder.
I blow a sharp breath down my nose. “She’s playing with me, asserting
her power.”
“Probably. But there’s not a lot we can do about it right now. If you don’t go, everyone’s going to object.”
“I don’t understand why everyone’s suddenly so religious,” I mumble.
“How can you not? Their family members have just been killed. It’s an immediate reaction for the grieving to believe that their loved ones aren’t really gone. Just on the other side. They’re clinging to that.”
That makes total sense, but still sounds like hypocrisy to me. I lean my head back and Ryka nuzzles into my neck. A wave of heat tumbles through me, foreign and confronting. It makes me feel…different. Ryka makes a soft hmmming noise for me, his lips pressed against my skin, and stops what he’s doing. Somehow he knows when I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.
Despite everything that’s happened and being entirely free of the halo’s drugs, I’m still learning how to do all of this. It’s taking time.
“Okay, little Kit,” Ryka says softly. “It’s time to go.”
And we go.
******
The Keep thrusts out of the ground like the jagged prongs of a trident, the dark, black pillars more claw-like than ever. I’m filled with the same sense of foreboding that I get every time I see the sinister formation of rock, the one that tells me it is a dangerous place. A place I should avoid at all costs. Four priestesses wait at the mouth of the Keep, and I have plenty of time to get angry on the journey down the Holy Walk. This is the same reception party that has awaited me on my last three visits to the priestesses’ sanctuary, and I am in no mood to be told to turn around and go back the way I came for another time.
