“Shiloh?” Lysander had let her have a moment, but there were still other matters to attend to. They didn’t have the luxury of lying around mourning the dead, feeling sorry for themselves.
Shuddering with the will it took to push down the emotions, Shiloh blinked back tears and tried to remember what else they’d been discussing.
“What happened the first time?” Lysander pressed, albeit gently. “Is that what happened at the raid? Why you disappeared? The Seraphspan picked you up then, too?”
Right. Her little detour. Sweet golden shores, Sol was so beautiful.
She shook her head, expelling the persistent lament from her focus.
“Yes… Yes. They…the wings…they picked me up and dropped me in the wilderness. I...I was infected. Stung. There was a dandelion field; the spores were like nettles. I got stung half a dozen times.” The account came out fragmented, her ability to concentrate touch-and-go.
“And what of Mother Eve?”
“Mother Eve...she came for me, in the wilderness. Angry I had wounded her, or...maybe she thought I was some heightened threat, when wings carried me off. As if I'd become some wild-card beast to be reckoned with, some secret weapon she couldn't allow to escape.” She squirmed against the discomfort of the foreign appendages bonded to her back, reminded of their presence. Then she realized – she hadn't mentioned Mother Eve since returning to the refugees. How did Lysander know something had transpired between her and the chieftess?
“Has there been communication with the Tribal?” she asked. The reverberations of the Tribals' wardrums echoed suddenly through her memory. Oh, hell. How long had she even been out? The Tribal could have marched an attack on the Dauntless already – things could have progressed in any direction, all while she was unconscious. Urgency spiked in her voice. “Did they come while I was out? I heard the wardrums while crossing the island. Is everyone okay? Are we okay? Did we…lose any others, after Sol?”
Lysander shook his head vaguely. “'They' haven't come. Though the wardrums would be worth sounding the alarm about. There has been no retaliation as of yet, but one man did come to me.”
“One man?”
“He ambushed me while I was harvesting nectar for Farah. Not violently. But he had a message.”
“Is Mother Eve dead? Did they find her? Have things changed?”
A slight crease shadowed Lysander's brow. “I hoped you could enlighten me about Mother Eve's fate.”
Shiloh's face mirrored his expression, neither of them quite clear on the situation. “Is that not what he came to you about?”
“He mentioned her. But he was cryptic about it.”
“How so?”
Lysander hesitated to answer. When he did, he tried turning the question on her. “Is she dead or not?”
But Shiloh didn't know how to answer. It had been extremely unlikely that Mother Eve would ever make it out of that predicament alive, but she hadn't exactly been dead when Shiloh left her.
The sudden realization that they might never really be able to say for certain, and how maddening of an open-ended taunt that would be in paranoia-ripe Paradise, filled her with dismay. In hindsight, she could do nothing but kick herself for not ensuring the job was done when she had the chance.
“I don't...” she began, but didn't know what to say. “I fought her. There was a struggle. The venom in my blood gave me an edge, but it was a tribe of other beasts that finished the job. They strung her up in a web. She was bleeding...they converged on her. It was all I could do to escape the same fate.”
Lysander thought about this, and pursed his lips. After a moment he nodded. “Most likely dead, then. That's good news. I should warn the others about the wardrums.”
There was still something he was trying to avoid saying. Shiloh couldn't let it go so easily. She stopped him as he started to rise. “Lysander. What message did the Tribal man give to you?”
Lysander looked back at her, reluctant to answer. Shiloh saw the conflict play across his face. Discretion versus obligation. Some sensitive piece of information weighed against her right to know – against the fact that she already knew it was something.
She'd put the pieces together for him – who was he to not do the same in return?
In the end, that seemed to be his conclusion as well. “A personal threat from one of the chieftess's lovers to you, of a fate worse than the war we started. He said whatever you have done to Mother Eve, you have also done to his son.”
Startled, Shiloh said nothing. It was not what she had expected to hear. His...son?
All at once a keen, out-of-place memory slid through her bones. That dual heartbeat she'd picked up on when her head had landed against Mother Eve's chest in the web... It had been so brief and cryptic an observation at the time that she hadn't really catalogued it as any relevant piece of information, but she should have paid more attention. It had been all too real, and more than some symbol of Mother Eve's own supernatural ability to harbor multiple lifelines in her body. It had been a separate life. Another being.
She was pregnant.
It should not have been a surprising fact, but Shiloh found herself stilled by it. She knew of the Tribal Queen's proclivity to breed often, but somehow she had never imagined the possibility that the Crossers had been hunting anyone aside from the Mother herself, in their efforts to eliminate her. She'd never imagined they had inadvertently been hunting her unborn child as well.
“What's done is done, Shiloh,” Lysander attempted to ease her conscience, bringing her back to the cabin around her. “Like I said...from the sound of it, she is most likely dead. I just thought you should know there is a new figure you should watch out for. His name was Ungar.”
Shiloh hardly heard him, trapped in her own thoughts. Frozen behind her own private mirror of horror. What had she done?
The second time she had thought that since awakening.
“I'll send Jayx to assess you; hopefully get you out of those things.” He nodded toward Shiloh's restraints, and then turned to leave.
Moments later, Shiloh was alone.
Suddenly, she couldn't stand the restraints a moment longer. Everything felt cloistering – her bonds, her wings, the tiny cabin, the constricting inside her chest.
Her conscience.
She felt like she was going to be sick. A vision of up-chucking her upset stomach all over the cot, and then being forced to lie there, stuck in her own vomit, squirmed through her mind.
Straining against her tethers, she only succeeded in re-pulling half a dozen tender muscles. Panting, she slumped limply back against the slab. Useless.
There she was, bound tight like some criminal. Like some killer. Maybe she should be. Maybe this was for the best. Maybe she should never let them untie her, and stay where she could never hurt anyone ever again.
You killed a child.
On top of feeling responsible for Sol’s death, it was just too much.
There were the rational arguments to try to justify her actions, of course:
You didn't know.
If you had known, would it really have changed anything? Can the mutant, viciously-inclined spawn of the Tribal even be considered human?
Has it ever been a viable option to let the children of the Tribal live?
They were freaks. Ungodly, Frankenstein souls with both human and animal traits. Victims of incestuous breeding, at the very least.
And yet... Innocent, hissed Shiloh's conscience.
Innocent.
Innocent.
Innocent.
And wasn't there animal in everyone? Had humans ever been anything more than savage creatures putting on fronts of manners and etiquette, masks of civilized illusion when behind closed doors and down dark alleys they raged and rioted with carnal abandon?
Now more than ever, animal instinct had resurrected itself across the globe, gnashing its teeth for survival.
Shiloh's own humanity had thrown itself into question a dozen times over in recent weeks.
All the more so, given this latest atrocity she'd committed.
This latest atrocity that made her no different than the creature whose life she was trying to justify taking.
Her eyes fell shut in remorse. There were times you crossed lines without even knowing it, and once you realized you could never go back, it was easy to question whether you should ever have pushed yourself close to those lines to begin with.
But what was done was done. Lysander's words trickled back to her, the only thing she could cling to. In all likelihood the Tribal Queen was dead, and there was nothing to be done.
But if there was even a chance she was still alive... It could go either way, really. Shiloh had already agonized over how maddening it would be to never know if she was really gone or not. It was the perfect excuse to return to the scene of the crime, for one reason or another.
You can't possibly be considering going back there. Not after the hell she had just been through making her way back across the island the first time.
Not to mention she had other problems, now. Like these wings hijacking her body. She couldn't very well untie them if they insisted on piggy-backing along with their own agenda, and she couldn’t go traipsing across the island with that much extra baggage.
In that moment, though, she wasn't so sure she wouldn't end up taking her own underestimation as a challenge.
The sound of footsteps on the cabin stairs distracted her. She expected Jayx, come to assess her condition and hopefully release her from this embarrassing prison she'd called down on herself.
She was surprised when it was Zack who entered the room.
He paused at the bottom of the stairs – either to let his eyes adjust or in hesitation because he was uncertain of her mental state. “Shi?”
A mixture of affection and relief stirred through her at the sight of him, and all too easily she tucked away the ulterior motives that came with the relief. “Zack,” she greeted fondly. “Come in, please. Help me with these, would you?”
“Your ropes?” He did a good job of smoothing over the skepticism in his voice, but it didn't escape Shiloh's radar entirely.
“There's nothing to be afraid of now. I was just sick from poison, but Jayx took it out.”
“It's in the needles now?”
Shiloh wondered what she looked like, all pricked from head to toe. “That's right. I’ll probably need help with those, too.”
Zack wandered closer, unable to curb his curiosity about the needles. “Do they hurt?”
“Not really. The ropes do, though.”
“Do the ropes on your wings hurt, too?”
“They're not my wings. They just... They're just a little confused about whose they are. So no, they don't hurt. I can't feel them.”
“Not even where they're stuck in your back?”
“Er, yes. I can feel them there, a little. It's not too bad.”
“You should have seen it,” Zack breathed.
“Seen what?”
“You were flying.”
Shiloh winced at the memory. “I was being carried off by a big, bodiless bird. There's a difference.”
“Not much of a–”
“Zack.”
“What?”
“Please. My wrists are killing me. I have a bad itch on my ankle that I can't scratch, and I really have to pee.”
“Ew.”
“Just help me with the needles and ropes. I promise you won't get in trouble.”
If Zack was loyal to anyone, it was the big sister figure he had crossed an entire ocean with. Similarly, if there was anyone he wasn't afraid of, it was the girl who had threatened continuously to feed him to the sharks, meant it, but had never been able to bring herself to do it.
Moving up closer beside her, he reached for her tethers.
24 – Palace in the Clouds
Jayx was halfway down the stairs when he saw the feather, and knew something was off. It rested in the crook where one step met another, almost tucked inconspicuously into the shadows, but not quite.
He knew what it must mean, but rushed down into the cabin to confirm his fears.
Shiloh was gone.
The volatile angel was on the loose.
Curse you, Lysander. Shiloh shouldn't have been left alone for an instant. Now they had the warning of wardrums and an unstable mutant of their own to look out for.
Jayx took the steps two at a time on his way back up, bursting onto the deck and striding toward the nearest gathering of Crossers. They were making weapons – and almost getting good at it. But Jayx had other concerns.
“Has anyone seen her?” he blurted.
Ophelia's rhythmic strokes to sharpen her weapon slid to a stop, and her gaze cut past the blade to him. “Tell me you don't mean Shiloh.”
That got everyone's attention, and Jayx found all eyes on him. Their stupid, clueless, pleading eyes. They were never going to survive here.
“You can't have lost an entire angel,” Ophelia said, getting to her feet. “I thought she was tied up.”
“She was.”
“We should have cut off her wings.”
Jayx amended his most recent opinion: Ophelia might survive here.
“Did they carry her off again?” Galen asked.
“Not unless they also untied her and walked her up the cabin stairs. She's calling the shots this time.”
“Where would she go?”
Leia stood in a rush. “Has anyone seen Alex?” It was all too fresh in their memories: the animosity Shiloh had displayed toward the redhead upon her return.
They fanned out without discussing it, scattering to locate Alex lest he find himself alone with a half-drugged, venom-crazed angel who'd dreamed up a target on his back.
Jayx found him with Lysander and Farah. They were tinkering with Pulsers, trying to reprogram the devices for better reliability. Lysander was holding one out toward Farah, adjusting an exposed wire. She was wincing and covering her ears.
“Shiloh's freed herself,” Jayx announced. “She's gone.”
“Gone?” Alex laid down his tool, surprised. “She didn't free the wings too, did she?”
“Hard to say. Half the ship is looking for you, in case she still wanted to make good on her threats.”
Alex didn't appear shaken. “Well, she's not here. It's been quiet as a tomb, except for poor Farah.”
Lysander had disconnected a wire so Farah could drop her hands from her ears, and stood there with the wire in one hand and the device in the other. If Jayx didn't know any better, he might have thought Lysander had zapped himself while disconnecting the wire, so still had he gone.
“Lysander?” Farah probed, reading the man she loved all too easily. “What is it?”
Guilt sank into his shoulders. “I know where she went.”
Jayx waited, wondering what Lysander knew of Shiloh that he didn't. An unexpected accusing twinge pricked his blood, ever so slightly. Too small to make anything of it.
Too small to admit it could be jealousy.
Lysander told them of Ungar's appearance and threats, and when he was done Jayx could hardly keep from hitting something.
Shiloh had done it – essentially taken the Tribal Queen out of the picture. And then there was Fate and its ironic, sick sense of humor, throwing alien conflict into Shiloh's head and offering her an opportunity to reclaim her humanity by reversing the one thing she had accomplished.
The information from Ungar could not have come at a more inopportune time where Shiloh's gullibility was concerned. She would have jumped at the chance to fight the beast taking over inside her. Jayx had seen her struggle with giving herself up to a more savage nature. The wings had tipped the scales too far, too forcefully, and would make her more resistant than ever to losing herself. After their intrusion and the possession of the predatory toxin, she would be desperate to cling to a trace of humanity.
He could see her now, in his mind's eye – running fast and unstoppable through whatever may hinder her, because turni
ng on that spirit could blaze an uninhibited trail a second time just as easily as it had delivered her the first time.
It was a beautiful thing, really, to be able to set your mind to something and watch the wearying impossibilities shrink into just another regular day's work in front of you, accepting the challenges as normal...but as with most things in this cursed wonderland, beauty could be a very, very treacherous thing.
*
Shiloh stood beneath the towering canopy of dusky, interlacing trees. Like a huge wintry target, the spider-ape web dangled above her, and at its center, the mummy that Shiloh was half-relieved, half aghast to find still there.
Whether or not the Tribal Queen was still alive had yet to be determined.
Shiloh couldn't say which she hoped for.
Trickles of sweat ran down her temples, a breathless ache piercing her chest. These wings were heavier than one might think, like a cumbersome backpack that she couldn't take off. Her muscles quivered with fatigue, her shoulders already unbearably sore from the extra weight.
Well, she was here. Now what? Conflict still raged inside her, a cold, cloudy storm, but she had to know. The need to know had been so great, she'd taken off into the jungle without even knowing how she'd find the spider-ape's nest again. Only after she trailed off to get her bearings had she remembered her dream, in which the dandelion spores had retraced her steps for her. She could not shake the instinct that on some level, that dual heartbeat had stuck with her, nagging at her, and in her comatose state her subconscious had been keen to prod her back to the scene of the incident. Lysander’s revelation had merely been the trigger that brought it all front and center.
For a moment Shiloh thought she could hear that symbolic heartbeat thumping in the air around her. Then she realized it was just her own, thudding louder with nerves.
She had come bearing a slippery serum of sap and fruit juice to coat her hands for navigating the web, and blades to sever the strands.
To cut Mother Eve down. Let's call it what it is, shall we?
She couldn't believe she was back here, preparing to do what she was about to do, but she already had one too many things haunting her, and she did not think she could withstand another. Not something like this.
Wonderland (Deadly Lush Book 2) Page 16
