Under: an Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 5 (The Othala Witch Collection)

by Conner Kressley

  The idea still banged against my head like it didn’t belong there, like it was a horrible lie and I was about to be told it was untrue or some ridiculous joke.

  How could Gemma be the only person Brula could use as a vessel?

  Now the regent wanted to kill my sister, to hollow her out and use her to elongate her already ridiculously lengthy lifespan by another generation. And all we could do was run. Run and hide.

  But hiding from the person who ran the entirety of the known world wasn’t an easy feat. To do that, Gemma and I had to literally become different people.

  Luckily for us, Henrick had connections who could make that happen. So he managed it, coming along with us to ensure safekeeping and to help us take on these new identities.

  I was Allison. He was Frankfort, my husband. And Gemma was my as-of-yet unmarried sister Jane. Together, we moved to the western end of the Dustlands. It was a place nearly identical to the lands in which I grew up, save for the crucial point of no one here having ever seen us.

  This was my life now, at least until we could figure out what to do next.

  “What are you talking about?” Henrick asked, looking over at me and tossing the box he was holding—the latest of seven—onto the floor.

  We had barely started moving into this house, and he already seemed fed up with me.

  This ‘marriage’ was going to be quite the endeavor.

  “There’s too much stuff,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Imagine how you’d feel if you actually had to carry any of it,” he muttered, wiping sweat from his brow.

  “That’s not what I mean,” I said, biting my lip and looking around. “We’re supposed to have come from the western side of the Dustlands, right?” I asked, looking at him. “That’s our backstory. That we’ve been transferred to help buoy the corn shortage.”

  “Right,” he answered.

  “Well, in that case, this doesn’t work,” I said, folding my arms. “I’ve lived my entire life around people from the Dustlands. They don’t keep this much stuff.”

  “These are people from the western Dustlands,” Henrick said, breathing heavy.

  “East, west, it doesn’t matter. Regardless of our region, we’re all just farm folk. And none of the farm folk I know would have even half of this nonsense.” I swallowed hard. “In the best way possible, we’re simple people.”

  “Quick to lump yourself in with the Dustland people now, aren’t you?” Henrick asked, looking me over.

  For whatever reason, a spike of anger rose up in me. Who was this guy to tell me who I was or wasn’t?

  “I am a Dustland person,” I answered, marching over and picking the box back up. It was heavier than I thought, but I tried not to let on just how trying it was. “Always have been. I forgot about that for a little while back there, and look where that got me. But I won’t forget again.” I swallowed hard and pushed the box back into Henrick’s chest. “We might have different names. We might be living in a new house and working on a new farm. But I’m not ever going to forget who I am again, Henrick. I owe that to my parents.” My eyes trailed down to the box Henrick was now holding. “Now get that damn thing out of here.”

  Henrick glared at me for a long moment, and then grinned. “Whatever you say.”

  The next few weeks were less than eventful. After everything we had been through, it was somehow both nice and unsettling to have my afternoons to myself, to not have to worry about someone or something bursting through the front door and ripping what was left of my family apart.

  In fact, it took most of the first week for me to be able to sleep through the night. I kept waking up in a cold sweat, throwing my hands in front of me as if to defend myself from some threat that was half a sector away at this point.

  I couldn’t use my powers, but that wasn’t as hard for me as it seemed to be for Henrick. After all, where his powers had very likely been groomed and molded by a set of proud and loudly supportive parents, while my powers were seen as both dangerous and isolating.

  Suffice to say, this was far from the first time I was forced to pretend I didn’t have a special ability.

  Henrick—as was standard in the Dustlands—was quickly put to work, tending to the stretch of farmland he, under his assumed name ‘Frankfort,’ had been issued when we moved here.

  Presumably, the entire community saw us as an ordinary married couple. They would have no way of knowing that he slept on the couch every night or that we hadn’t so much as brushed hands since the day he broke Gemma and me out of the center, much less done any of the other things married couples were expected to do.

  Of course, I would have no idea what they would or would not have known, as I had made it a point not to actually interact with any of our neighbors.

  That would all change tonight.

  Henrick came marching out of the second washroom, dressed in a dinner jacket that—while it was probably amongst the least ornate things he had ever worn as a circle dweller—was absolutely ‘fancy clothes’ for the people out in these parts.

  He looked me over, his face betraying more than a little bit of disappointment at the casual clothes I wore.

  “You…” His eyes rolled fiercely. “Regent’s name. You forgot, didn’t you?”

  “Of course not,” I answered, standing to meet him. “Forgot what?”

  Just then, Gemma came walking out of her room, also dressed nicely. Obviously, I had forgotten something.

  “The presentation dinner,” Henrick said, shaking his head. “It’s tonight.”

  “Of course it’s not,” I answered. “We have an entire week before the presentation dinner. It’s not until…” My eyes went wide. “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes,” he answered. “Now get dressed. It’s very important that we don’t raise any eyebrows with the people in the community, and part of that is not being late. Our cover depends on it.”

  The presentation dinner was an age-old ritual that no one I had ever known had actually seen. The act of welcoming a new family to the Dustlands with a feast prepared and served in the village square was a nice thought, but not anything that had ever been put into action.

  After all, people moved out of the Dustlands. No one ever moved in.

  Unless, of course, you happened to be hiding your baby sister from the likes of the regent.

  But that wasn’t really something we could lead with.

  To say that I didn’t want to go to the presentation dinner was like saying that ravagers were ‘a little less than cute’. There was a reason I didn’t know our neighbors, and it wasn’t because I didn’t want to be friendly.

  The presentation dinner meant that everyone would be looking at our ‘family’. They would survey us and try to figure out what kind of people we were and how we’d come to fit in with their already-tightknit community.

  But since we weren’t actually a family, that could be problematic.

  What if Henrick and I weren’t believable as a couple? What if he didn’t touch me enough? What if he touched me too much? What if there was no spark between us?

  What if we just didn’t fit together, and everyone could see it?

  It would mean that, as Henrick warned, our cover would be blown.

  All it would take was one message sent to the center. One person who thought we were acting suspiciously or being less than honest about our intentions for being here, and Brula would descend upon us with all the certainty of the setting sun.

  She would take Gemma, rip her spirit right out of her body, and toss it aside like rotten crops during harvest. And there would be nothing I could do to stop it.

  Which meant that there was no room for error. I couldn’t allow any of this to happen, which meant I couldn’t allow it to start.

  I was going to have to be perfect.

  We arrived at the presentation dinner with much fanfare.

  The people of the Western Dustland village seemed more than happy to see us. Their smiling faces and extended arms certainly
did a little to put my mind at ease. But that also meant their eyes were on us. All of them.

  Henrick grabbed my hand, leaning into me in a way obviously meant to portray our innate and effortless closeness.

  Only, it wasn’t effortless. Not for me.

  As we moved through the crowd toward the long, expanding table, I struggled with the urge to pull away from Henrick.

  It wasn’t that the closeness wasn’t nice. There was something about having someone to lean on that felt right, that opened something up inside of me that I didn’t even know was there.

  But that was the thing. Being here, pretending I was part of this couple, part of a family, reminded me I wasn’t.

  If I’d have stayed back home, I’d have undoubtedly been married by now. There were no career women out in the Dustlands. I’d have been someone’s wife, maybe even someone’s mother.

  Perhaps I’d have even been able to stop the horror that killed my parents, seeing how I was able to save Gemma from the flying fire once it followed her into the circle.

  More or less, anyway.

  I shook my head. It wouldn’t pay to think about that right now. Not at all.

  “You okay, sweetheart?” Henrick asked, looking me in the eyes and squeezing my hand hard.

  It was less concern and more of a message.

  Get it together, Razz.

  I smiled warmly. “Just fine, love. Just fine.”

  I spied the feast as it lay on the near endless table, stretched out before us like a Harvest Day cornucopia. Fresh ears of corn, carved steer steak, stewed carrots and broccoli, sweet potatoes basted in butter and sugar, and fried apples. It was enough to make my mouth water.

  I sat down, my stomach churning noisily as I forgot to allow Henrick to pull my chair out. “Oops,” I muttered as I realized what I had done. I wasn’t as good at this as I needed to be. Hopefully, it didn’t show.

  Henrick squeezed my hand again and gave me a withering look as he settled next to me.

  This was starting. There was no turning back.

  I was in over my head, and we both knew it.

  Chapter 16

  With Henrick next to me and Gemma sitting at the foot of the long table with the rest of the unmarried boys and girls, I wondered just how I had gotten to this place.

  I had such high hopes for myself. I was going to guard the wall. I was going to protect people from the ravagers. I was going to make my sector a better place, and, if I were insanely lucky, I’d be remembered for doing so.

  But now, I wasn’t going to be remembered at all—not as myself.

  Razz was gone. She was dead, along with Gemma and—for now—Henrick. But he’d one day have a way out, a way back to who he’d been. Meanwhile, all my dreams would have died with my identity. I was done. Well and truly finished.

  Replacing me was a shell of a person who now sat at this table in a part of the Dustlands I had never been to before, living a life that I’d left home to get away from.

  I was a farmer’s wife. I had my hair pulled off my neck, and I wore a dress with flowers along the hem. It was a good thing the people here were inclined to call me a different name, because I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to recognize myself for much longer.

  Henrick leaned in to me, like he was going to whisper something playful in my ear.

  I tensed up, half because he looked very good tonight, and half because this was something I had seen my mother and father do on more than one occasion. It was their thing. In watching them do it, it grew into something more for me. It was a sign of love—a thing two people who were meant to be together did with each other.

  But Henrick and I weren’t meant to be together, and what he whispered into my ear wasn’t playful.

  Although, it was thoughtful.

  “Take deep breaths. Let them steady you. Don’t worry. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.”

  But it wasn’t me I was worried about, not completely.

  Gemma sat in the distance, chatting up the single people as they passed food back and forth.

  She didn’t seem as out of place as I was feeling at the moment.

  And why would she?

  This had always been Gemma’s scene. The Dustlands were her place. This life—the one I had spent so many years trying to run away from—it was her dream.

  So, maybe it shouldn’t have been surprising to me that she would be able to slip into it with ease. Either that, or she was just better at pretending than I was.

  The sound of voices quickly brought my attention back to what was in front of me. The married couples populating my portion of what had to be the sector’s longest table began asking questions of Henrick and me—using our made-up names, of course.

  “So Allison, I hear you’re quite the quilter,” a woman said from across the table as she handed me a heaping bowl of green beans.

  It took a few seconds and an elbow from Henrick for me to realize that I was the ‘Allison’ she was referring to.

  “What? Quilts?” I asked, looking at the woman with overly wide eyes. “Yes,” I finally said, snapping back to the moment. “I love…quilts. They’re so…soft.”

  “Right.” She blinked, watching me spoon food onto my plate. “Well, we have something of a quilting group. It meets during the ides of every month. You’re welcome to come along and join us if you’d like.”

  “She’d love to,” Henrick said for me.

  He had warned me that this was standard in this part of the Dustlands—men speaking for their wives—but something about it still irked me. I wasn’t cattle or property, and I didn’t care to be treated like it, regardless of what was or was not customary.

  “Perhaps I will, perhaps I won’t,” I said, for no other reason than to assert a touch or two of self-assertiveness. “I do appreciate the offer, and I’ll take it into consideration.”

  “Of course,” the woman answered, her voice low and a little shaky.

  She cut her eyes up at me, as if she couldn’t believe that I was actually stating something for myself and not simply abiding my husband’s law.

  “I’d be happy to see you there,” she added.

  “If she’s even there herself,” said the man sitting beside her, shoveling potatoes onto his plate with the forcefulness of a backhoe during planting season. He huffed loudly. “There’s so much damn drama all the time lately. Who knows what any of us will be able to do this time next month.”

  My heart rate picked up to a panicked state. He had to be talking about us, about what happened back in the center.

  “That’s circle business,” a man beside him said. “And circle business never comes out to these parts.”

  “I don’t know,” the man with the potatoes said. “Criminals busting free of the center, making the regent look like a blasted fool, and then said criminals disappearing to parts unknown. I don’t see how it couldn’t.”

  “It ain’t like their good fortunes ever bleed down to us,” Henrick said, throwing on a distinctly Dustland accent and wrapping his arm around me. “I don’t see why their blunders need to.”

  “Smart man,” said a third, nodding at Henrick.

  The man with the potatoes was not pleased, nor was he convinced. “I’m telling you—I’m telling all of you—this is bigger than we think it is.” He shook his head. “That damned prince has assembled a task force. They’re bouncing around these parts, out in our lands, looking for the fugitives.” He shoveled a forkful of potatoes into his mouth. “Shit falls down, and for those people, it don’t get no further down than where we’re sitting.”

  “Prince Park?” I asked before I could stop myself. “Surely, you’re mistaken. He wouldn’t do something like—”

  “Enough,” Henrick said from beside me, squeezing my hand harder than he had before. The panic in his voice was evident, and the look on his face spoke of just how close to destroying our cover I was. “You’re only to speak when spoken to, Allison.”

  I bristled. I understood I
had messed up, but was this really the path he wanted to go down to fix it?

  “You would have no way of knowing what the prince of the sector would or would not do, and I, for one, am frankly tired of hearing your unsolicited opinions.”

  He stood, pulling me up with him.

  “Forgive me, neighbors, but I’m afraid that my family and I are going to have to take our leave from this wonderful act of kindness you’ve rolled out for us.” He nodded and motioned for me to begin walking. “I apologize and look forward to getting to know all of you better.”

  He shot Gemma a look. Like clockwork, she stood, curtsied, said her goodbyes, and marched toward me.

  I was more than a little mortified as Gemma and Henrick caught up with me. We were walking away from the table, and I had very nearly done what I was afraid of. I had almost blown our cover. Even though Henrick had smoothed it over, I had certainly piqued enough interest to get people talking. We would have been better off to stay and keep eating, but turning back now seemed worse yet.

  At best, I was the lippy problem of a man who couldn’t control his wife. At worst, I was a question that needed answering. What would I have known about Prince Park anyway? And why would I even care in the first place?

  “Look,” I said as soon as I felt like we had walked far enough away. “I know this wasn’t my finest hour. I wasn’t prepared for this. At least, not in the way I needed to be.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Gemma said, but she grabbed my hand.

  “I know,” I answered, shaking my head. “It’s just—”

  “It’s fine,” Henrick said.

  I glared at him. “No, it’s not.”

  “It’s not,” he said, confirming my fears. “But it’ll have to be. Did you hear what they said back there?”

  “About the quilts?” I asked.

  “About the task force.”

  “That’s hogwash,” I answered. “Park wouldn’t do that.”

  “He’s the son of the regent. He’ll do what he’s told. And if anyone outside of the three of us ever hear you referring to him so informally, that’ll be the end of what we’ve worked so hard for.”