A Taste of Ice (The Elementals)

by Hanna Martine

  She sprinted down one hall that dead-ended in a large room divided by floor to ceiling windows. Reminded her of a hospital nursery. Only this place was empty and spooky and filled with ghosts. Spinning around, she backtracked and came face-to-face with the curved corridor leading into the Circle. She remembered now. They’d turned right coming through that door there, so that meant she had to go left to get out.

  And there, at the T intersection, yawned the entrance to the first cell block they’d walked through. That meant it was close to the Plant exit, which was where Xavier was undoubtedly headed.

  She burst through the double doors and let them swing wide behind her. He’d almost reached the end. When the squeak of the door hinges filled the block, he stopped. Turned around. His face burned red, his silver eyes swirling and tormented. His lips pulled back from his teeth, like she was about to attack him.

  These past weeks together? All the progress he’d made? Gone. The connection they’d tenuously formed and then cemented that night in Shed? Severed. To him, she was his enemy again, and now he had the blood connection to prove it.

  She stopped but he slowly started to move backward, toe-heel, toe-heel, toward the exit. She held up her hands. “We’ve gotten through this once. We can do it again.”

  He jabbed a finger deeper into the Plant, his face twisted with unspeakable pain. “Before it was just in my head. A hallucination, a fucking nightmare. But that man is real. He’s real. And he’s your father.” He opened his arms, so long, so full of strength. “Ask me how I’m supposed to get over that. After all I told you that he did to me, and everything that I didn’t.”

  Those words sliced and stung and bled like one of those fancy knives he kept in his kitchen.

  “I am not him. And I’m just as shocked and horrified as you.”

  “I need to get out of here.”

  “Cat.” Griffin again, coming through the double doors and sounding a little out of breath.

  “I have to talk to Heath Colfax,” she told Xavier. “He has information we need.”

  We.

  Xavier winced and turned his face away.

  “I am Ofarian,” she said. “There’s no changing that.”

  At length, he finally nodded, but it didn’t mean, “I accept you.” It meant, “I understand what you just said…and I don’t like it.”

  “Can you just wait here for a bit? Until I’m done?” She was pleading with him now, her hands even pressed together in prayer. “Please. Don’t go anywhere yet. Not until you and I have talked more.”

  Though he raised his eyes to her, his face was still pointed away and down, his hair grazing his cheek.

  “Please.” She whispered now. “Just wait.”

  There were other things she probably should have said. One thing in particular. But she hadn’t even fully worked it out in her mind, so how could she voice it? Her entire life had been thick and cloudy as a river bottom, and then suddenly Xavier came along and everything he’d told her about her heritage had washed her away in a flood. Her body and emotions and life had spun so furiously she had no idea which way was up, which way lay the sun and the air.

  One problem at a time. What she and Xavier had created couldn’t disappear overnight. She would be there for him, always, but the Ofarians needed her help right now. She couldn’t let an entire race—her race—be a victim of war if she had the means to stop it.

  Griffin said her name again, his impatience widening the cracks between her and her Tedran.

  “It’s just talking, Xavier,” she said. “I can help innocents. You of all people should understand that.”

  He didn’t move—not forward, not backward—and she allowed herself to be fueled by it.

  She’d done all she could at this point. Telling him she loved him wouldn’t change a thing, because it wasn’t her he feared. It was what ran through her veins.

  It was the man who’d given her life. The same man who’d stolen Xavier’s away.

  “I can’t go back in there,” he said, his voice the lowest she’d ever heard it. “I won’t go any farther than this spot.”

  “All right. Good.” Small victory, and she ran with it. “I’ll go talk to Colfax, then come back for you.”

  She left the cell block with Griffin.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he asked as they hurried back through the halls.

  Maybe it would have been easier for her to say if Griffin was a hard-nosed, stoic leader who barked orders and wasn’t so good at sounding like he cared. Except that she was pretty sure he did care. He cared greatly for his people, and she was one of them now.

  “Heath Colfax…my father…was Xavier’s guard in here. Xavier didn’t tell me everything, but what I know, it was bad.”

  “Shit,” Griffin swore under his breath. “Does Colfax remember?”

  They reached the door to the conference room again. Her hand shook as she touched it, and all that rattled around in her brain was the awful way Colfax had slurred Xavier’s prisoner number.

  “He remembers,” she murmured.

  She opened the door and stepped back inside.

  THIRTY-THREE

  That morning in the coffee shop, Cat had told Xavier: I feel like I’ve been treading water my whole life. Just sort of lost…out there. To me? Finding out about my parents would be sort of like a raft floating along. I could grab on, rest a bit, get to safety. But I always thought that knowing them would be a new beginning, not an end.

  She’d gotten both: an end to any hope of family, and the beginning of a whole new chapter filled with deceit and hate.

  Heath and Jessica had been in love, had created Cat out of that love, but weren’t allowed to keep her. She expected to see evidence of that on Heath Colfax’s face as she looked at him from across the conference table. She expected to see some measure of love or yearning, that burst of emotion that came with bittersweetness. Maybe a smile. Maybe a flash of regret.

  There wasn’t any of that. And yet Gwen had said he’d cried when she told him Cat had been found.

  Colfax rested his forearms on the table, his wrist shackles jingling. His frown was made even more considerable by the smeared half of his mouth. He watched her, but it was only with disappointment.

  She was here for a purpose. A very specific purpose. She had to remember that.

  Behind her, the door clicked shut. Griffin stood just inside, his back against the door.

  “They said your name is Cat.” Colfax’s voice was choppy and rough, like he was speaking around a bag filled with jagged marbles.

  “It is.” Though she didn’t really want to, she pulled out a chair and sat.

  “That wasn’t what Jessica was going to name you.”

  She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t.

  “She wanted Josephine or Jennifer…something that started with J. She told me that…after.” A little bit of emotion crept into the light brown eyes that were the exact same shape and shade as hers, then he shook it away with a jerk of his chin. He kept running his good fingers over the pattern of scars on his bad hand.

  He cocked his head, giving her more of the good side. “You don’t really look like her, but I can tell you’re hers. It’s the freckles, maybe. You look more like me. Or how I used to look. When I knew Jess.”

  Griffin shifted. Get on with it, the rustle of his pants seemed to say.

  Heath Colfax was her father, but she couldn’t call him Dad. Not after how he’d treated Xavier and hundreds of other Tedrans. Not after the way his memory had haunted Xavier for so long, and how that memory had destroyed what little life he’d been given. She wanted to tell Colfax a million things, none of which had to do with the fire elementals or her mother, but she didn’t even want to look at him, let alone talk to him.

  Xavier had given himself to Lea and Michael—had put himself in chains again for her. The least she could do was face this horrid man. Feeling brave, she, too, leaned on the table. “What happened to you?”

  He grinned, and w
hile it wasn’t malicious, it certainly wasn’t pretty. He turned his burned side to her. “You mean this?”

  She nodded, her throat tightening.

  “Fire elemental,” he said.

  She straightened in her chair. Griffin went still.

  “That’s what you wanted to hear, right?”

  “Was that not how it happened?” she asked.

  “No, that’s how it happened.” He coughed and it was a gruesome sound. “I was coming off a massive, two-day bender. Still drunk. Nothing but Jessica and what’s-his-name, the lawyer they ordered her to marry, on my mind. I literally stumbled into their territory. Didn’t even recognize the shift in signatures until I was surrounded.” He shrugged and the movement of his shoulder below his melted ear was stunted. “I could’ve gotten out of there easily. They didn’t know me from Adam, to borrow a Primary phrase. But I wasn’t thinking and I opened my big mouth. Told them exactly who I was. Who I thought they were.”

  “What did you say?” Griffin asked, a little impatiently.

  Colfax shot a steel glare at Griffin. “How the fuck should I know? Was half in the bag and ready to slit my own throat because of your boss.”

  Griffin pushed off the door. “You mean the boss who’s imprisoned in here with you?”

  Cat threw out her arms, one to each man. Griffin settled back against the door. Cat laced her fingers on the table and pushed herself into Colfax’s line of sight.

  “You told Gwen Carroway,” she said, “that you’d tell us what you remembered about the fire elementals’ location if I came here and met you. I’m here.”

  He just stared. And stared. One of his eyes looked slightly foggy, like maybe the fire had stolen half his sight, too. “Did he come back here for you?”

  Cat looked over her shoulder in confusion. “Who? Griffin?”

  “No. 267X.”

  Cat’s stomach tumbled. A sudden and terrifying hate made the blood surge in her veins. “He has a name and it’s Xavier.”

  “Did 267X come back to the Plant for you?” Heath snarled, bending over the table. “Or did he come back because he was forced to? Because something was held over his head?”

  She didn’t say anything, because the answer to those last two questions was yes.

  “They’re a weak race, Cat. They depend on us to tell them what to do. You don’t want someone like that. You don’t want a Tedran.”

  “Xavier has absolutely nothing to do with the reason I’m in this room with you.” You son of a bitch. She struggled to not explode, to not set off Colfax in the process. “Leave him out of it.”

  Colfax drove a fist into the table and she jumped. “He has everything to do with you and me. He’s a filthy whoreslave. And he was touching you. Had his hands all over you. Dirty, fucking Tedran. And you let him! My daughter, my blood, with one of them.”

  Now Colfax was crying. No, not really crying. His sobs had nothing to do with love and everything to do with hate and rage.

  “Do you know what he’s done?” he said, trying to catch his breath. “Do you even understand what he is?”

  She began to shake. A barely contained fury exploded in her heart and made her skin vibrate. How much could she say? How much was worth it? If he got upset enough, would he withhold the information about the Chimerans, just to spite her? Heath Colfax would always be locked up in the Plant, where his words couldn’t hurt Xavier or her, but the Ofarians still needed protection. They needed what was in his head.

  She gritted her teeth and replied, “Of course I understand what he is.”

  How her mind would have been poisoned, if she would have been raised by this man.

  “You don’t want him.” Spit flecked his lips.

  “Yes. I do.”

  “I’ve known him since he was fourteen. He’s nothing. He’ll turn you into nothing.”

  “You didn’t know him at all!”

  “I know enough. He’s empty. He’s ruined. He’ll soil you.”

  She jumped up, turning. Griffin’s eyes widened with panic, his hands pressing in a “sit down” gesture. “The Chimerans,” he mouthed.

  She only half turned back to Colfax, finding she couldn’t look straight at him anymore. “Where are the fire elementals?”

  He leaned back in his chair, shackled wrists falling to his lap. “You have to do something for me first.”

  “What? I’m here. I met you. And let me say, it hasn’t been the experience I was hoping for.”

  He ignored that. “Here’s what I want you to do.” Colfax raised those familiar eyes up to Griffin. “I want two radios. One here in this room, the other I want taken to 267X.”

  The sudden heaviness in her limbs tried to drag her to the ground. “What? Why?”

  Colfax fixed that stare back on her. “Because you’re going to cut him loose. And I want to hear you do it.”

  She opened her mouth but no sound came out. Not a refusal, not a scream, not even a gasp. It was impossible to believe she’d heard those words correctly.

  “You’re going to tell him,” Colfax went on, kneading at his throat like too much talking had hurt him, “that you choose your people over him. Whatever it is you think is between you two is held together by wishes and spider silk. Invisible, thin, made of nothing but an idea. Nothing that delicate is ever meant to be permanent.”

  Fuck you, was what she wanted to say. Was dying to shout in his face. This wasn’t about him and Jessica. She wanted to fly across the table and tear into that disgusting webbed skin.

  She shook her head. “I won’t do it.”

  He looked pointedly at Griffin. “Then you don’t get the location.”

  Griffin surged forward. For a moment she thought he’d strike Colfax, but he pulled up. “Goddamn you. Xavier has nothing to do with this.”

  Colfax looked up at Griffin, incredulous. “She’s my blood. She’s an Ofarian. And you let this happen?”

  Griffin held his ground. “The marriage rules you despised, the very rules that took Jessica and Cat from you in the first place, you’d have had me uphold? Cat’s a grown woman and can do what she wants. Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Colfax didn’t blink. “I’m the guy with what you need most.”

  Cat stared at the table, considering everything her father demanded and all the possible repercussions.

  Even if she did as Colfax wanted, Xavier wouldn’t believe her. He couldn’t believe her.

  Except…what if he did? What if he left here thinking she was telling him the truth? It would destroy him. And she hadn’t told him she loved him because she thought it wouldn’t have mattered. That the timing hadn’t been right.

  She was a horrible, selfish person.

  She didn’t want to reject Xavier, but she had to give her people a chance to plead their case to the Chimerans, to stop violence and death before it happened. He shouldn’t believe what Colfax wanted her to tell him, but because Xavier had always feared she’d eventually choose her people over him, he would.

  He would.

  And because he wanted to be far, far away from her people and this place, he would leave.

  “Cat,” Griffin said next to her. “It’s your call.”

  But she knew Griffin didn’t really believe that—or want her to take the time to find another way.

  She felt completely disconnected from everything. A puppet. A breathing husk of a person. “Okay.” The single word sounded like it came from far above and beyond her body.

  Beside her, Griffin exhaled, but with it came a little groan of sorrow. She would never let anyone say the Ofarian leader was heartless, or that he didn’t struggle with making tough decisions.

  “It’s the only thing to do,” Colfax said, his voice softening like all of a sudden he was this sympathetic, warmhearted father. “You’ll learn I was right, and then you’ll come back and—”

  “Enough,” Griffin snapped. “I’ll take Xavier the radio.”

  Yes. Cat perked up.

  Griffin had heard
everything that had gone on in this room. He knew how she truly felt about Xavier—suspected, at least, but it wasn’t exactly a secret. He’d give Xavier the radio, tell him that everything that was about to come out of Cat’s mouth was crap, and Cat would tell Xavier whatever the heck Colfax wanted. She and Xavier would disconnect, Colfax would give them the Chimerans’ location. Voila.

  “Nuh-uh.” Colfax waved a finger. “You’ll call for another guard. You’ll tell the guard, within my hearing, to bring 267X the radio. After Cat’s done, if the stars-cursed Tedran hasn’t left on his own, I want his ass thrown out of here. For good. And if I hear anything from the two of you that might tip your hand, my lips are sealed. Also for good.”

  Cat had thought she’d hated Michael, but what she felt toward her own father at that moment made Michael’s machinations seem like a minor annoyance, a fly in the ear.

  Griffin caught her gaze and held it. He knelt before her. “We have to. There are no other options and no time.”

  She just stared. The cheery yellow wall paint had chipped away in a spot, showing the dismal Plant gray underneath. Just a show, that’s all this was, inside and out.

  “You’ll get him back,” Griffin whispered.

  She had no response to that. Wishes and spider silk. Her bastard father had spoken the truth. Maybe, if that’s all that had tied them together, it was never meant to last in the first place. That had been their thought from the very beginning, hadn’t it? Maybe they’d been wrong to fight it.

  She nodded at Griffin. He stood and spun for the door in the same movement. Opening it, he gestured to someone outside. “David.” He waggled an invisible phone. “Need two two-ways.”

  David had them on his person and handed both radios to Griffin, who only took one. David raised an eyebrow.

  Griffin cleared his throat. “Take the other to Xavier. He should be in Cell Block One. When we’re done talking to him, escort him out.”

  David blinked. “Out of the Plant?”

  “Yes. Let me know when it’s done.”