Ensnared (Enchained Trilogy Book 2)

by Janet McNulty

  The railcar comes to a stop, and neither Amal, nor I, wait to be told to get off. We follow Real onto the empty platform—its eerie silence unnerves me—and to a waiting transport, crawling into the back seat, while Renal sits in the front. The driver says nothing as he puts the vehicle in gear and we speed off, heading toward the manor, and I watch as it grows larger in the windshield, wondering what awaits me when I arrive. The transport stops in front of the door, and a small smirk crosses my face as I look at the yellowed pane of glass covering it, preventing anyone from being able to see inside, remembering my first day here. I wonder if Commander Vye knew then how much of a burden I would be to her.

  Renal gets out of the transport, and Amal and I do the same. “Go to your quarters,” he says to us.

  Amal wants to argue—I see it on his face—but decides against it, knowing that he is already in enough trouble and not wanting to be on the receiving end of Renal’s anger. He goes inside and disappears, but before I can follow, Renal stops me.

  “Noni, a moment.”

  I hang back, working up the courage to look into his eyes.

  “Caution is your friend,” he says to me in a cryptic sort of way, and in a gentler tone than what he had used earlier.

  “Sir?” I say.

  Renal drops something into my hand. “One day, your luck will run out.”

  He walks off, leaving me alone outside of the manor. Confused about his warning, I look at what he had placed into my hand and gasp when I see the thin metal wire I had fashioned into a wristband on one of the nights I had snuck out after curfew: a warning in and of itself.

  Not wanting to get caught outside, I rush inside and up the stairs to the second floor, wasting no time in going to my room, where I find Chase. He covers his mouth before I can speak, warning me to stay quiet, and I shut the door, running to him.

  “Are you all right,” he whispers to me, examining me.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him.

  “What were you thinking sneaking out last night and today…”

  I place a finger over his lips to calm him, touched by the concern in his voice, and knowing that I owe him an explanation. After everything we have been through, the least I can do, is let him in on my secret. I sit down on the bed, and he does the same.

  “I have something I need to tell you,” I say.

  Chase looks at me with gentle eyes, worried about what I am going to say, or perhaps more concerned about what I won’t tell him. His hand reaches up and touches my chin, and I cringe just a little from the pressure, realizing for the first time that I am missing a patch of skin there. The intensity of the chute, and my desperate attempts to get free, must have prevented me from noticing it and the bit of blood that dots it. He takes his shirt off, unable to find any other sort of cloth, and knowing the importance of keeping the uniforms in my closet free of stains and contamination, and pours a bit of water from the pitcher onto it before holding it to my face and dabbing the blood and dirt away from the scrape on my chin. I pull back as it stings, but stop myself, reminding myself that the feeling of pain is weakness.

  “What did they do to you?” he asks, as he cleans my chin, being careful not to cause too much discomfort. I think back to that night in the cave, when I had tended to his injuries and stayed with him to make sure he had made it through the night. It wasn’t that long ago, but so much has happened, that it seems like a lifetime ago.

  Words form in my throat, choking me, forcing their way out despite my desperate attempt to keep them confined, so that I could continue to have the illusion of safety, but in Arel safety is a figment of one’s imagination. No one is safe in Arel.

  “They gave me a test of my commitment to Arel.”

  Chase lowers his hand with his crumpled shirt in it.

  “They threw me into a garbage chute, and I had to climb my way out before burning to death.”

  “Animals,” Chase spits.

  “I have been,” I say, keeping my voice low so that no one outside the room can hear me, “helping people leave the city.”

  “What?”

  I place my hand over his mouth to stop him from saying anything else, for fear that he might be overheard.

  “It started the night of the bombings,” I tell him. “Sigal—you know him?”

  Chase nods.

  “Renal had caught them trying to leave. He never saw me come up from behind, and I knocked him out. After that, I helped Sigal and his family get past the wall. And then, during the riot, I stumbled upon this pregnant woman.”

  “But the sterilization in the water…”

  “I know. But somehow, she was, and she had a bag with her. I knew, right then, that she was not a part of the riot, but was just trying to get out before her baby was born and taken from her. So, I hid her, and went back to get her that night. Everything had gone so well, until after she had gotten outside of the wall, and”—tears form in my eyes and my throat clenches in an attempt to stop them, but they refuse to be stopped—“she stepped on a landmine.”

  Chase holds me close, wrapping his muscular arm around me, comforting me as I relive my failure, and images of the woman’s body fill my mind, tormenting me, refusing to let me be free of my guilt.

  “She is dead because of me.”

  For the first time, in a long time, I cry without fear of repercussions, or of appearing weak. Tears stream down my face, stinging my skin as they edge their way down past my chin and drip onto my chest. The more I try to control myself, the more the tears force their way out, refusing to let me rest. In an effort to stop this outpour of emotion, I wipe my face with the back of my hands, doing my best to stop the tears, but Chase grabs my hands and force them away from my face as he stares into my eyes, his soft expression soothing me and forcing me to calm down a little.

  “It’s okay to cry,” he says.

  “I am an arbiter. I am not supposed to show weakness.”

  He pulls me close to him, allowing me to feel his strength and his calmness. I place my ear on his chest and listen to the air as he breathes in and lets it out, remembering the night I had done the same just to make sure that he was alive after he had spared me from the wrath of Commandant Gant.

  “You’re not weak, Noni,” he says to me as he holds onto me. “You are the reason we survived the wilderness. Your resourcefulness, your fortitude are why we are here. It is not weakness to feel shame, or to cry when things get to be too much to bear. It is human.”

  “But…”

  “You are the strongest person I have met, next to Gwen, of course.”

  I chuckle at that last statement.

  “So, you do smile,” he says to me.

  “Gwen despises me,” I say. “And she should.”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “But I am the reason you were taken from her.”

  “No, you are the reason I am reunited with her.”

  More tears spill onto Chase’s bare chest as he continues to hold me close in a comforting hug, letting me know that he is here for me.

  “Don’t worry. I will help you carry your secrets,” he says.

  I lift my head and look at him, unsure of what to say.

  “You’re not alone, Noni. You don’t need to do any of this alone.”

  “I have to,” I say. “I don’t want to endanger any of you.”

  Chase cups my cheeks with his hands, as he brings his face close to me and his warm forehead touches mine. “This is my choice, and I choose to be here for you. If this is what you want to do, if you are going to continue helping people leave the city, then I am going to be with you, by your side.”

  I manage a weak smile, unsure of what to say. I have never had anyone willing to risk their life just for me, or willing to help me break the law, knowing full well what the punishment is if we are caught, but Chase is; and the resolve in his voice gives me strength.

  “Now, tell me about last night.”

  I swallow a lump in my throat, doing my best to moisten my mouth
before I speak. “Last night, I helped a group escape the crematorium and get outside the wall. And they did. They made it to the woods beyond the grassy field. But I wasn’t alone this time.”

  “What do you mean? Who helped you?”

  “A man who has every reason to hate me.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “What do you say that?”

  “I’m a plebeian. I have more reason than any to despise arbiters, and I don’t hate you.”

  I snuggle into his embrace and he kisses the top of my head, but before I can fall asleep, Sheila bursts into my room, her face filled with worry and fear, and I jump up, forgetting all that has happened to me and only caring about what troubles her.

  “It’s Commander Vye,” she says, her voice squeaking just a little.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, my voice taking on the arbiter tone.

  “She’s… she’s acting strange.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Her office.”

  I glance at Chase who motions for me to go, and run out of my room, racing down the hall and to the stairs, while still trying to not make any noise. I reach Commander Vye’s office within a minute and stop once I open the door and see her slumped on her desk with an open bottle in her left hand. The once neat stack of reports on her desk lay strewn all over the room, forming mishappen piles in every crevice; one even has the print of a boot on it. She raises her head a little and looks at me with an unfocused gaze as I shut the door and pick up the papers, shoving them together and placing them in an even stack on her desk, in the same corner they had been in on my first day here, and pause for a moment when I notice a report with my name on it, and my curiosity urges me to pick it up and read it, but I’m stopped by the solemnness that has taken possession of my commander’s once strong and curt voice.

  “You needn’t bother,” she says, her words a bit slurred.

  I ignore her.

  “I see you survived the detention center. I don’t know if I should congratulate you, or offer you my condolences.”

  Puzzled, I just stare at her for a moment, unsure of what to make of her words. There is no malice in them, no mocking, no condescending undertone, just unabashed honesty. I reach for the glass bottle in her hand. She jerks it back, but my firm grip stops her unsteady one, and I rip it free of her grasp, not caring if I anger her.

  “Take it, then,” she says as she sits up and leans back in her chair. “You’re going to need one.”

  I place the opening of the bottle underneath my nose and sniff, wrinkling it as the aroma of alcohol fills my nostrils. Drinking among arbiters is forbidden in Arel, but that doesn’t stop a few from sneaking the occasional one in.

  “Go on. Take a swig.”

  I scrunch my eyebrows together, uncertain as to why my commander is ordering me to disobey the arbiter code of conduct, but decide that I have already committed several infractions; so many, that it is a wonder I am still alive. What’s one more? I place my dry lips over the rim of the bottle, ignoring the thin film of saliva that already coats it, and tip it up, taking a mouthful, wincing as its amber liquid burns my throat and warms my chest on the way down, wondering why anyone would want to drink this.

  “First drink, huh?” Commander Vye laughs.

  I walk over to the window, open it, and dump the contents of the bottle onto the bushes outside, before closing the window and tossing the bottle into the open drawer of her desk. Commander Vye smiles as though she had expected me to do just that.

  “He wants my job,” she says, and I just stand there, listening to her as she talks, seeing a side of her I would never have guessed existed, a vulnerability, a weakness. “He won’t stop until he has it, and with the riots and recent attacks within the city by a group of terrorists, it won’t be long until he gets his wish.”

  “Attacks?” I ask. I know of two: one on the night I helped Sigal escape, and another on the day of my questioning before the tribunal.

  “While you were gone, there were at least two. Terrible ones. So, many citizens dead. The bodies—if you can call them that—mangled and spread all across the city with pieces scattered among the pavement and entrails dangling from the eaves of the nearest buildings. But that isn’t what bothers me most. It’s the silence that follows. The awful, deadened silence of nothing left alive.” Commander’s Vye’s gaze, sharp and hawk-like on so many occasions, focuses on the door to the hallway, as though she doesn’t see it at all, just the aftermath of a bomb’s wrath. “The council believes that they originated in the eastern sector,” she finishes.

  If that is the case, then Commander Vye’s days are numbered, which explains her slippage and indulgence in a forbidden vice. For the first time in the year that I have known her, I pity her. She had seemed so strong, confident, as though nothing would ever strike her down, but, on this night, alone in this room, she seems wounded, but instead of being visible, her wounds are attached to her soul.

  “Who wants your job?” I ask, already guessing the answer.

  “Molers,” she hisses. “You know the saying. The one who can control the eastern sector can govern all of Arel.”

  If there is one thing Molers craves above all else, it’s power. He more than craves it. It’s an obsession.

  “I thought I was cursed when I was first assigned here, much like you did. Don’t deny it,” she says when I start to protest. “I saw it on your face the moment you walked through that door.”

  I keep my mouth shut and say nothing as my commander rambles on, but it seems more like she is confiding in me, instead of just babbling nonsense.

  “They allow the commanders of every region to watch the gauntlet, if they so choose. I went every year as recruit after recruit battle their way through, hoping to make it to the end, searching for someone strong enough to withstand this place, but even more so, someone I can trust. You were the first recruit I noticed. While the others thought of themselves, you went back to help a fellow recruit. You’re an enigma, Noni. Most like you are sent to the crematoriums and last only six months, but you managed to finish your training, and passed the gauntlet, all without allowing your intricacies to be noticed. It isn’t often, but sometimes the commander of a region can request that a particular recruit be assigned to them.”

  She requested that I be assigned here? Everything I have gone through, is because of her? “Why?” I whispered, without realizing it.

  “I told you once, that I see a lot of myself in you. The eastern sector is the first line of defense for Arel. If it falls, the entire city falls, and so do the people within it. Prestige isn’t found in the halls of the presidential palace, but in what you do, in how you conduct yourself, and in the choices you make. Arel needs someone who will defend her, defend her people.”

  “But Arel is flawed,” I say, knowing the risk I take for voicing such a sentiment.

  “Every place is flawed. It is up to you to choose how you deal with those flaws. If I fail here as commander of the eastern region, a more stringent policy will be implemented, and a new commander, more strict, more unforgiving, and harsher than me will be assigned here, and who do you think will suffer for it?”

  As Commander Vye speaks, I start to understand why she insists on staying here. This isn’t just a job to her, but something more; she believes that her presence here helps the people of Arel more than if she were somewhere else. Though she has never shown mercy to me, I wonder how many times she has shown it when I wasn’t around. Has she chosen the lesser of punishments in order to give someone a second chance, much like what I have done? How many arbiters have done the same, conflicted between upholding the laws of Arel no matter the cost, and doing what they knew to be right?

  “Don’t be like me,” Commander Vye says, her voice so soft that I almost don’t hear her.

  It seems strange for her to tell me such a thing, and not knowing what else to do, I just look at her and notice her haggard appearance for the first time, with a few bags under her eyes, lines arou
nd her mouth, as though she has aged 20 years in one day, and is worn and tired, and the sense that much has happened in my absence, and despite her efforts to keep others from seeing its effect on her, it rears its ugly head anyway.

  “Don’t you think it strange that you were taken to the detention center for challenging a fellow arbiter and not for what happened at the crematoriums?”

  Once she mentioned it, my mind goes back to the crematoriums and how Commander Vye not only challenged Commander Aeron, but killed her as well. There have been no inquiries, no summons to the tribunal—nothing.

  “Why do you think we haven’t heard from them?” I ask.

  “There could be a variety of reasons,” replies Commander Vye. “None of them good.”

  “May I ask you a question?”

  Commander Vye waves her hand, and I take it as a sign of approval.

  “Did you know Commander Aeron personally?”

  Commander Vye’s lips form a thin line, answering my question, but just when I think that she is not going to speak, she opens her mouth and stilted words spill from it.

  “Soon after my assignment to the eastern sector, when I was about your age, I was sent to the outposts, just like you, to see how Arel operated outside of the city. Commander Aeron ran one of those outposts. The smell of death surrounded her, and to this day, I cannot get it out of my nose. That night, I awoke to a commotion. I went outside to see what it was… and she had my commander chained to two transports, carving out entire chunks of his flesh from his body, feeding it to the two wild dogs she kept as pets. I still hear his screams, and they will haunt me until the day I die. Being young and stupid, I demanded to know why my commander was being tortured, and demanded that she stop. Aeron knocked me down and placed her foot on my head, pressing against it. I thought I would die that day, but she released me at the last minute, lifting me up and placing her knife in my hand, telling me that my commander was a traitor to Arel and that to prove my loyalty, I had to carve him up like an animal for slaughter.