by Lucy Saxon
‘Maybe you should give him a chance,’ continued Fox. ‘Of course he’s a prat, but then he’s spent his whole life in solitude. He’ll improve – I hope – in time. And he’s your age, and he’ll be king one day if we sort all this out. You could be Queen of Anglya.’
Cat grimaced, shaking her head rapidly.
‘I don’t want to be a queen. I just want to stay on the Stormdancer,’ she insisted.
‘Yes, but the country will need a queen after all this is over. And I can’t think of anyone better than the girl who started the revolution in the first place.’
Cat’s heart twisted painfully. It was clear Fox didn’t have any feelings for her; he sounded far too at ease with the idea of her marrying James.
‘I won’t marry for duty,’ she told him fiercely. ‘If I wanted that, I’d have stayed with my father and married Marcus Gale. I’ll marry for love, and I don’t think I could ever love James.’
She didn’t think – she knew she would never love James. Not now she’d met Fox.
‘Hmm, well,’ Fox murmured doubtfully. ‘There’s marrying for love, and then there’s realising who would be best for you.’
‘The man I love would be best for me,’ she pointed out. ‘Who could be better?’
Fox shrugged, sighing.
‘We need to go back out there,’ she declared softly. ‘I told Mary and James to pack and be ready to leave, but we need to get more proof of who’s involved and start getting the kids out. Ben will be getting impatient with those canisters of his.’ Fox snorted, getting to his feet and helping her up.
‘Ben can wait – we’ll only have one chance at this. Come on, let’s get back out there.’
Wiping the few stray tears from her cheeks, Cat followed Fox, suddenly very aware of how much time she had wasted by running away.
Mary and James looked up when the two entered the room, two satchels on the sofa between them.
‘All better now?’ Mary asked with a smile, and Cat nodded.
‘Yes, thank you. We’re ready to get going again. Stay prepared – we don’t know how long before we’ll be back. We still have some work to do here, but as soon as we’re done we’ll come and get you, and we’ll need to be quick about it.’
Fox started for the door while Cat slung her bag over her shoulder and let Fox get the lock. When they were outside, he turned to her abruptly.
‘I’ve just realised – you must have unlocked this door on your own!’
Cat rolled her eyes at him.
‘Yes, because believe it or not, I’m actually not completely incompetent.’
He shrugged apologetically, giving her a lopsided smile.
‘I know that, but I didn’t think you paid all that much attention when I hacked it.’
Cat didn’t respond, not wanting to sound like a soppy fool by telling him she paid attention to everything he did.
They retraced their steps back to the corridor that led to Nathaniel’s office, and Cat was just about to walk towards the door when she saw the handle turn. Grabbing Fox’s sleeve she yanked him around a corner as the door opened and an all too familiar man walked out.
Cat wasn’t sure what she was meant to feel upon seeing her father again. He hadn’t changed much since she’d last seen him; there were no bags under his eyes or extra grey hairs at his temples from worrying about his missing daughter. He strolled purposefully down the corridor, and Cat saw Fox reach into his waistcoat to turn on his recorders. She did the same, feeling some measure of guilt at spying on her father. But she shoved it away; he wasn’t her father any more, he was a power-hungry bastard who was slaughtering and maiming innocent children.
They didn’t have to follow him far; he went down one flight of stairs, turned a corner and entered a lab that neither Cat nor Fox had yet been in. Cat peered through the window, gasping at what she saw inside. A pair of mechanics were working on an unconscious young girl who lay on a table; a girl who looked disturbingly like Cat. Fox opened the door a crack, enough to hear what was going on inside.
Like many of the other labs, there were crates full of mechanical attachments in various stages of completion lining the walls, with enough of a gap between them and the walls for Cat and Fox to hide. When both mechanics and Nathaniel were absorbed in studying the girl on the table, Cat and Fox slipped through the door and scrambled behind a pile of crates. Finding a narrow space between two crates that she could peer through, Cat unhooked both her recorders to set them in the gap, resting on the crate below. Her father was looking closely at the girl.
‘We just wanted to check, m’lord, that it wasn’t her. Before we did anything irreversible, y’see,’ one of the mechanics stuttered nervously. ‘Only she looks awfully similar, and we didn’t want to harm your lordship’s daughter.’
Cat could feel Fox’s eyes on her, but ignored them, watching her father.
‘Very well,’ he murmured, his hand reaching out to roll the girl over, examining her lower back. Cat’s hand went almost instinctively to her own lower back, lifting up the tail of her shirt and feeling across the three twisted lines of scar tissue running down the line of her spine. She had been six years old, and her father had been very angry.
‘This is not my daughter,’ Nathaniel confirmed, letting the girl fall limply to the table. ‘Do what you will with her.’
The mechanics nodded, relieved, and one of them scurried across the room to pick up a thick bronze chest plate with several thin chains and wires dangling from the underside. The other picked a scalpel up from a tray, lowering it on to the girl’s ribs. Cat looked away, nauseous. It disgusted her that, despite the similarities, her father didn’t flinch. She wondered what he would have done if it had been her on that table; would he let them continue with the experiment? She shuddered, unable to answer her own question.
‘The Hale boy accepted the third enhancement, m’lord,’ the mechanic with the chest plate told Nathaniel, and Cat perked up. Andrew was still alive? ‘He’ll be ready to send skywards by tomorrow morning, if he survives the night. One of the strong ones, he is.’
A smile tugged at Nathaniel’s lips, and he nodded curtly.
‘Good. Was that all you needed from me? To check the girl wasn’t Catherine?’
Cat couldn’t believe he was completely ignoring the girl on the table.
‘Yes, m’lord. If you’ll excuse us, we’ve got to get over to Lab Seven to help with a rather difficult arm addition. The subject’s a little small, you see …’ the mechanic trailed off, and Nathaniel chuckled.
‘Small test subjects don’t survive – you know that. But all practice is good, so if you must, then leave,’ he dismissed them.
Cat watched as the mechanics drew a blanket over the girl on the table, not bothering to clear away their dirty surgical tools as they left. Nathaniel didn’t follow, staying by the girl’s side. She was surprised to see him put a hand on the girl’s forehead, brushing her dark brown fringe from her closed eyes. Cat glanced sideways at Fox, who looked both disturbed and frustrated, his blue eyes darting between Nathaniel and the door.
‘You don’t think I didn’t notice you sneak in, do you?’ Nathaniel called out.
Cat’s heart stopped. Fox turned to her, an expression of wide-eyed horror on his face.
‘Yes, I know you’re there,’ Nathaniel called, his voice smooth and dark, amusement clear in his tone. ‘You might as well show yourselves.’
Cat exchanged another frightened look with Fox, then stood on shaking legs, keeping her head held high as she met her father’s gaze.
‘Well, well, the prodigal daughter returns,’ Nathaniel murmured, failing to hide his shock, turning his head as Fox stood as well. ‘And you’ve brought a friend. How sweet! I must say, when you ran off, I wasn’t expecting to see you again, especially not here. Marcus was terribly disappointed when I told him his little bride was no more.’
Heart pounding, Cat walked out into the centre of the room. Her audio and video recorders were sitting in the g
ap between two crates, but the glint of metal on Fox’s waistcoat told her that his were still attached.
‘Marcus can go jump in a hurricane,’ she spat, making her father laugh.
‘Oh, I have missed that razor-sharp tongue of yours, daughter dear,’ he said fondly.
‘I’m not your daughter any more,’ she told him.
He smirked.
‘Of course you’re not. I would never stand for having a street rat as a daughter. I should have known you’d end up associating with commoners. Maybe I should have offered you up for Collection when I had the chance. You would have turned out far more useful than you are now.’
‘You’ll see how useful I can be! We’ll bring down this horrific experiment of yours, Nathaniel! We’re going to let the authorities in Erova and Mericus know what’s happening.’
Cat felt somewhat odd calling her father by his first name, but she wouldn’t ever call him ‘Father’ again.
‘We don’t need those countries, Catherine. We created them. None of those countries would even exist in the way they do if not for the original Anglyan explorers who found them. They’ll learn, though, they all will.’
‘Learn what? That you have been lying to the entire world for years?’
Nathaniel threw his head back and laughed. ‘When I set my army on them, they’ll realise how wrong they were to demand independence from our glorious empire! You might stop the experiments in this compound, Catherine dear, but you’ll never find my army! High up in a skyship, out of reach of your grubby little fingers. That’s where the real experiments are – the successful ones, the ones that survive enhancement. And they’re almost ready for war.’ He smirked savagely and Cat suddenly realised that he was mad; completely and certifiably insane.
‘You’re a fool! Those countries are far better off independent than they ever were under Anglyan reign. You won’t get away with this.’
He cut her off with a laugh, eyes glinting dangerously.
‘And why is that, little Catherine? I’ve been kidnapping children for years, and no one has noticed. Not when I call it recruiting. And no one objects to rations if I tell them we’re at war. Such mindless little sheep, doing what their lord tells them, not questioning a single word I say. They made it so very easy to get what I want, and I don’t see how that’s going to change just because you managed to run off, humiliate me and now “discover” what’s going on here.’
Cat smirked triumphantly, not realising how frighteningly similar she looked to the man in front of her at that moment.
‘That’s because I know something you don’t, Nathaniel,’ she taunted. ‘And what I know is that this entire conversation has just been recorded for the world to hear.’
Nathaniel’s eyes widened, and he looked around, as if expecting a large newscast camera to suddenly pop into existence.
‘You’re bluffing,’ he hissed.
‘I most certainly am not. Fox and I have recorded everything in this room, and more. We’ve found the Lathams, and we’ll make sure everyone learns the truth about what you’ve been doing to their children. Somehow I don’t think they’ll be too happy about that, do you?’
Nathaniel let out a loud roar of rage, clenching his fists.
‘You little brat!’ he growled. She stood her ground, chin jutting out defiantly. ‘You won’t get away with this, Catherine. You or your little friend.’ He reached inside his long leather trench coat, and Cat froze in shock as he pulled a gun from a holster at his hip. He aimed it steadily at her, pulling back the hammer with a mechanical click. ‘You can’t expose me if you don’t leave this room alive.’
Chapter 21
Cat’s heart pounded against her ribs and her brain whirled in panic. Nathaniel was armed; they weren’t. And there was no scrap of sentimentality in Nathaniel that would stop him from shooting his own daughter. They should have taken one of the guns from Matt and Ben.
Suddenly, a blur of black wool and copper-coloured hair blocked her vision, and a muscular arm pulled her close against an equally muscular back. Fox had stepped in front of her. She growled in frustration. He was an idiot if he thought she was going to let him face a man with a gun.
‘Oh, how disgustingly saccharine – you’ve taken up with a common boy!’ Nathaniel jeered, the gun still pointed at them. ‘That’s all you’d be good for, little girl. Pity I didn’t notice sooner – I could have made good money.’
Disgusted, Cat squared her shoulders, knowing anything that might have remained between them was gone. She would have no remorse, no regrets, whatever happened.
‘I should have done the same with your worthless mother,’ Nathaniel continued. ‘She’s dead, you know? Died crying her eyes out just days after you left. And as far as everyone else is concerned you’re dead too. It’s time I made that rumour true.’
Cat felt breathless. She’d had her suspicions about her mother, but to have it confirmed like that was a shock. ‘You won’t lay a finger on Cat,’ Fox snarled.
‘Oh, so it talks,’ Nathaniel exclaimed in mock surprise. ‘You’re very sweet, little boy, but this is a family affair. It doesn’t involve you.’
‘Fox is more of a man than you’ll ever be,’ Cat said.
‘Little Catherine, trying to stand up for her brat boyfriend. How quaint. It won’t get you very far, though. I’ll just shoot you both.’
Nathaniel moved to pull the trigger, but before Cat could blink Fox had jumped forward, diving for the gun. Cat screamed loudly, sure the gun would go off as Fox and Nathaniel crashed to the ground, both gripping the gun. Fox kicked out roughly, trying to get his opponent to release the weapon. Cat could do nothing but stand and stare as the two wrestled violently on the floor, the gun’s hammer still cocked, ready to fire at any moment.
‘Get off me, you little brat!’ Nathaniel snarled. Fox tugged at the gun, feeling Nathaniel’s fingers loosen, but the older man abruptly rolled to the left, causing Fox to fall back, Nathaniel on top of him. The dark-haired man struggled to his knees, then jumped to his feet, using the momentum to shove Fox hard against the wall, his head slamming back. Cat gasped, watching her friend lie immobile, the gun in his unresponsive hands.
There was no time to move as Nathaniel came rushing towards her, an ugly sneer on his face as he wrapped his large hands around her neck, shoving her down and pinning her forcefully to the ground. She choked and spluttered for breath, feeling his fingers crushing her windpipe, Nathaniel’s family ring cutting into the flesh of her neck. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think, her vision was full of black spots and her limbs didn’t respond when she told them to move. She struggled desperately to hold on to consciousness. Just as she could feel herself slipping, there was a loud bang, and the fingers around her neck loosened. She inhaled a frantic lungful of air, which was squashed out of her almost immediately as Nathaniel’s heavy body fell on top of her.
As she tried to push him off, she came into contact with something slick and hot. She stared at her hand, which was covered in thick, red liquid. Blood.
‘Cat!’ She flinched instinctively at the voice, her breath coming in short, harsh pants as the heavy weight on her was lifted.
‘Cat, it’s OK,’ a voice murmured, and she scrambled away in panic, backing up against a crate.
‘You killed him,’ she murmured feverishly, shaking her head slowly as some dim part of her brain recognised the voice as belonging to Fox. ‘You killed him!’
‘He was strangling you, Cat,’ Fox replied calmly. ‘It was him or you, and I wasn’t about to lose you.’
Yes, of course. Fox had saved her. Her breathing still uneven, she didn’t back away as Fox approached a second time, allowing him to drop to his knees by her side, helping her sit up. His hand was on her back, rubbing gentle circles, and he pressed his forehead against hers.
‘Breathe, Cat. Just breathe, it’s OK, he’s gone. He can’t hurt you or anyone else ever again. I’ve got you, it’s all right, everything is going to be fine.’ Fox’s low voi
ce was all Cat could concentrate on, and she buried her face in his shirt for what felt like the hundredth time that day. She was safe; her father was dead, and he’d never hurt her again.
‘I’m OK,’ she murmured, her voice coming out as more of a whimper than actual words. ‘I’m OK.’ She felt a finger on her cheek, and lifted her head, meeting Fox’s eyes. He brushed away the tears clinging to her cheek, smiling softly at her.
‘I’ve got you,’ he repeated quietly. ‘You’re safe.’
Before she could say or do anything, his head moved forward and his lips pressed against hers. Her eyes widened, and she froze, her hands gripping his waistcoat. He held the kiss for only a few seconds, before moving back, a faint blush rising on his freckled cheeks.
‘You kissed me,’ she breathed, surprised. ‘Why … why did you kiss me?’
He snorted, rolling his eyes.
‘Honestly, how have you not noticed how utterly besotted I am with you?’ he asked, stroking her cheek gently.
She blinked, stunned.
He what?
‘But … you were telling me to give James a chance. I thought … I thought you didn’t like me,’ she confessed.
‘James would be better for you,’ he agreed in a whisper. ‘If we change the way things work around here, he’ll have better standing than I have, and he’ll give you a better life. I’m not nearly good enough for a girl like you, but … I’m awfully selfish. So much so that it’s going to be impossible for me to do the noble thing and let that prat of a prince have you.’ His lips twitched, and Cat smiled, tentatively pressing her lips to Fox’s for the briefest moment.
‘Even if that prat of a prince does want me, I don’t want anyone except you,’ she assured him solemnly.
This made Fox grin broadly, and he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Her eyes widened as she saw the bloody handprint she’d left on Fox’s waistcoat, and felt the liquid soaking into her trousers.
‘This … really isn’t the place,’ she remarked with a shell-shocked laugh, trying not to stare at the dead body of her father lying a few feet away.
