Bisecter

by Stephanie Fazio

  “Hemera!” Brice’s cry is muffled against the side of my neck where his lips are pressed. “Is it really you?”

  I can’t tell if I’m laughing or crying, or a little of both. It doesn’t matter. Brice is alive. And we’re together.

  I wrap my arms around him, trying not to think about how I can feel each of his ribs.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” I say, my words barely audible because my face is pressed into his shoulder.

  Brice takes my face in his hands and kisses me.

  The kiss awakens a longing so fierce I can’t breathe. More, my body screams. I twine myself around him, pressing closer, until there’s no longer a place where I end and Brice begins.

  “I love you,” I say.

  The words come so easily and feel so right. A giddiness takes hold of me.

  Brice is here. He’s alive. And we’re together.

  There are tears on my face. I don’t know if they’re mine, or his, or both of ours. I stop thinking about it…stop thinking about anything…except for this moment.

  “Forgive me,” he breathes between kisses. “Hemera, please forgive me.”

  I pull back just enough to look up at his dirty, too-thin, perfect face. There is a desperation in his eyes I don’t recognize.

  “There is nothing to forgive.” I cling to him, wanting—needing—this moment to last. “We’re together. Nothing else matters.”

  Like some spell has broken, Brice is pulling away from me. “Hemera, you have to get out of here.” His eyes flick to his open cell door. “If he finds you….”

  “Do you think I came all this way to just abandon you?” I trace the edges of his jaw and curve of his lips with my fingers.

  “Please,” his voice is desperate. “You have to go. I can’t protect you from him.”

  “I won’t leave you.” I wrap my arms around him, trying to make him understand.

  When I reach up to touch his face, his cheeks are wet with tears.

  “Brice—”

  “Please, Hemera. Go.”

  “Not without you.”

  He looks down at his ankles, which are bound by a thick, tangled rope. “I don’t think I’m going anywhere.”

  I suck in my breath in hopeless dismay, until I remember the small knife tied to my leg.

  I unstrap the knife with trembling fingers and begin to saw through the thick ropes. “What happened?” I ask. “Why were you brought here?”

  I look up from my cutting, only to see a strange emotion pass across Brice’s face. Regret?

  He opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again without making a sound.

  “Tell me,” I urge.

  “The—Master—he’s training an army of Halves.”

  That much I had gathered. “But why?”

  “To be able to take control of everyone.” Brice snarls. “Duskers, Dwellers…you name it.” He curls his hand into a fist and punches the wall. “And the Halves just love it. They just love to torture us—”

  “Don’t!” I stop him from hitting the wall again and cradle his bloodied knuckles in my hands.

  “Why the human prisoners, then?” I ask as soon as I’m sure Brice won’t try to punch anything again. “What use does he have for you?”

  Brice won’t look at me.

  “Brice?”

  “The Master needs us for the jobs the Halves are too dumb to do, which is mostly everything. Digging new tunnels, harvesting the specere leaves….” Brice’s voice is filled with a bitterness I don’t recognize. “He’s chosen some of the more…brutal…of his prisoners to be his personal guards. They’re the ones who deliver his orders.”

  Brice is so angry. I’ve never seen him lose his temper, but his nerves are frayed and there’s a wild look in his eyes.

  You have no idea what he’s been through, I remind myself.

  It was foolish for me to think I would find him unchanged. He’s fragile and uncontrolled in a way I’ve never seen before. I’ll need to be patient with him while he finds his way back to himself.

  I kiss his brow. At the touch of my lips, Brice flinches almost imperceptibly.

  I swallow the tears threatening at the corners of my vision. Give him time, I remind myself.

  I go back to cutting through the ropes, needing a distraction. “Specere leaves?”

  What happened to you? What aren’t you telling me? is what I want to ask.

  “The white trees,” he replies. “Their leaves reflect the sunlight. I don’t think they exist anywhere but here.”

  “Has he—the Master—killed any of the prisoners?” My voice is a whisper.

  Brice nods his head, his face a storm of emotions. “Once prisoners are taken down to the catacombs, they don’t come back.”

  “Catacombs,” I repeat.

  “It’s where he experiments on them. I think he calls it the catacombs because so many of them die.” Brice still won’t look at me. “He cuts them up just like Taniel….” His voice breaks. “I didn’t know…I had no idea….” He covers his face with his hands and slumps against the cell wall.

  I put a tentative hand on his chest. This time, he wraps his arms around me in response to my touch. His heart thuds against me.

  “Hemera.” He says my name on a sigh. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  When he turns to face me, his eyes are tortured. I’ve never seen him so vulnerable, so uncertain. It frightens me.

  “Your father,” Brice begins.

  “Is dead,” I finish. “Halves attacked the Subterrane after you were taken.”

  Brice shakes his head. “You don’t understand.”

  There is a satisfying snap as I pull the rest of the rope apart with my hands.

  “Let’s go.” I pull him up from the ground.

  “Hemera, wait.” Brice shrinks back into the corner of his cell. “He can’t see you. He can’t know you’re here. You have to leave now.” His words are pleading, desperate even. “I haven’t told you—”

  “Whatever it is, you can tell me when we’re away from here.” I give his hand another tug. “We need to get the prisoners out and figure out how to defeat this…Master…and his army of Halves.”

  Brice rises and lets me lead him from the cell.

  Relieved not to have to drag him, I ask, “Are all of the prisoners kept here?”

  He sighs in resignation. “Except for the ones in the catacombs.”

  I move toward the cell’s opening, but Brice pulls me back.

  “It’s no use, Hemera. These stone doors are impossible to open.” He rubs the place on his ankle where the ropes chafed his skin and then stares up at me. “How did you get my door open, anyway?”

  I bite my lip. I need to tell Brice everything I kept secret in the Subterrane. Guilt gnaws at me for everything I should have said long ago but didn’t because I just wanted to feel normal around him. Later, I promise myself. As soon as we’re free from this place, I’ll tell him everything.

  “Come on,” I tug his arm. “Get your cloak.”

  I step into the tunnel and go to open the next cell door.

  “Wait.” Brice holds my wrist. “If you’re really set on doing this, we’ll need weapons to kill the guards. Otherwise they’ll just round us back up and tell Him.”

  “So, we have to leave them all tied up in here until we have weapons?”

  I hate the idea of leaving anyone in here for another second.

  “Yes. But the only place to get those—”

  “Is the other building,” I finish.

  “You’ve been to the weapons building?” Open horror is written across Brice’s face.

  “Come on.” I take Brice’s hand and tug him onto the path between the cells. The Halve that led me here is gone.

  I decide to say nothing about it to Brice.

  “This way.” Brice leads me in the opposite direction from which I had come.

  “What’s on the other levels of this building?” I ask.

  “More prisoners and the
Halves guarding them,” Brice replies. His green eyes darken with hate.

  I count forty cell doors, twenty on each side of the path, before we reach a cross-section. So many, I think. What is the Dusker doing with so many prisoners?

  The passages to the left and right seem identical to the one we just walked through, with the same number of cells on each side. Brice moves past the ladder in the center of the floor, skirting the edge of the opening between the floor we’re on and the one beneath. He motions for me to be silent. In the dim light, I can just make out the hunched figure of a Halve sitting beside the ladder on the level below.

  “Why aren’t there any guards on this floor?” I whisper.

  “They’ll be back,” Brice says.

  My gut twists at the anguished calls from inside the cells.

  There’s a ladder at the far end of the row. It’s rickety and looks unused. This is the one Brice uses to climb all the way down to the bottom floor of the building.

  Brice slaps his hands against the two stone slabs blocking what must be the way out. He lets out a string of curses as he shoves all of his weight against them. They don’t budge.

  “Here, let me.” I press my hand against one of the stone slabs and it gives way.

  Sunlight streams onto the path through the crack between the stones. Brice leaps back as he pulls his cloak on.

  Brice stares at me in amazement.

  “I uh….” I stammer, not knowing what to say.

  My cheeks heat, and I curse myself again for having kept this secret from him. I look for fear or pride or anything else on Brice’s face, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

  “It’s true, then?” he asks. “You really are as strong as the Halves? And the sun, it doesn’t hurt you?” He eyes my new silk cloak.

  I’m saved from answering. Just beyond the stone doors are dozens of Halves. They haven’t noticed us yet, but there are too many to fight.

  “Is there any other way out of here?” I whisper.

  “The river,” he says. “It’ll take much longer to get back to the courtyard, but we won’t have to deal with any Halves.” He continues to stare at me like he’s never laid eyes on me before.

  “Lead the way.”

  “Hemera,” Brice begins.

  “I’ll explain later,” I tell him. “I promise.”

  Right now, we need to get back to the weapons building without fighting an entire army of Halves.

  As we run back along the path, choruses of pleas echo from behind the cell doors. I look at Brice, but he just shakes his head. “We won’t be any help to them without weapons,” he says.

  Just beyond the last pair of cells is a dark tunnel that descends underground. There are no candles to light this passageway. The air is stagnant and the walls seem to press in against me. I reach for Brice’s hand.

  The sound of running water grows louder with each step. As we round another corner, my face is bathed in a spray of cool mist. I catch faint glimmers of white as the water froths in the darkness.

  The path ends without warning. My legs kick out and meet nothing but air.

  CHAPTER 37

  I plunge into frigid water. It’s colder than anything I’ve ever felt. I can’t breathe.

  “Hemera!” Brice shouts my name over the sound of the swirling water.

  We somehow manage to clasp hands. The river is flowing too fast to do anything besides allow ourselves to be carried along by the current. I cling to Brice with numb fingers as we’re carried into the darkness.

  Even when I dove deep into the river near the Subterrane, the water was still sun-warmed. But this…the way it makes my teeth chatter and my hands bone-white…is like nothing I’ve ever known. For the first time, it makes me wonder about the darkness we’ve always been taught to pray for. Without the sun, would everything be like this?

  As we’re swept around a bend, I forget about the cold. A gasp escapes me.

  The river deposits us into a lake that glitters as though lit from above by hundreds of blue and gold candles. The lights shimmer on the water’s surface and reflect off the wet rocks. When I look closer, I see they aren’t candles. They look like long blue and gold tails that swing from the domed ceiling.

  “Glow snakes,” Brice answers my question before I ask it. “At least, that’s what I call them.”

  “They’re beautiful.” I crane my neck to look up at the dazzling lights.

  We paddle to the stony bank and pull ourselves out of the water. Our sodden clothes cling to us. Water drips off the ends of my hair and makes me shiver as it runs down the back of my neck.

  Brice leads me away from the water toward an overhang of rock. We duck underneath the narrow space to find ourselves in a spacious chamber. A mist fills the air from the waterfall that pours out of a gap in the rock wall. It steams and froths as it spills into the lake.

  “Seems we’re fated to be together only where there are waterfalls,” Brice says.

  I know he meant it as a joke, but his words still make me sad.

  We sit on the rocks at the base of the waterfall. I move closer to Brice and examine his face in the soft light of the glow snakes. Brice reaches up and cups my face with both of his hands.

  “I love you, Hemera. Whatever else happens, I need you to remember that.”

  “I love you, too,” I whisper, hardly daring to breathe for fear he’ll let go of me.

  There is a fierceness in his green eyes. Brice pulls me to him and crushes his mouth against mine.

  I melt into his arms. He’s so warm, so alive. Every part of me strains toward him. His touch fills all of the empty places inside me, awakening both desire and longing.

  I cling to Brice as his lips move down my neck. I wind my hands around his waist, drawing him closer.

  “Hemera.” He says my name like a prayer. When he pulls away from me, his eyes are smoldering. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Me first.” My words are dulled against the pounding of my heart.

  I begin speaking before I lose my nerve. “It’s not just my eyes that are different. I’m strong and fast like them, except not really.” I pause. How can I explain this?

  I try again. “I’m stronger and faster than the Halves. It’s like being part of both Halves and humans has made me somehow…more. The sun doesn’t hurt me. And any wound I get, no matter how deep it is, heals itself in a matter of hours.” I pause to take a breath. “Oh, and I can heal people who have been poisoned by Halve blood.”

  Now that the words are out, all I can do is wait for Brice to react. A long time passes before he says anything.

  “It was true, all this time.” There’s a hollowness to Brice’s gaze that cuts me to my core. “And you never told me.”

  I feel sick at having betrayed him for so long. I never should have kept a secret like this from Brice. All along, he’s been nothing but honest with me, and yet I lied about a part of myself because I wanted to feel…normal.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

  Silence hangs between us for several moments.

  “I should have told you sooner,” I try to explain, “but I only knew a small part of everything when we were in the Subterrane, and I guess I was afraid….”

  “It doesn’t matter now.” Something in Brice’s voice makes it clear the conversation is over.

  My shoulders slump in disappointment. I don’t know what I expected from Brice—understanding? Forgiveness?

  “What was it you wanted to tell me?” I ask Brice, desperate for a change in subject.

  Brice stares out at the water for a long moment. When he turns back to me, there’s something in his eyes that makes my heart splinter. He lets out a heavy sigh. I hold my breath, waiting for whatever he’s going to tell me.

  But all he says is, “You’re shivering. We’d better go.”

  ✽✽✽

  We spill out of the mouth of the tunnel into blinding sunlight. A red sky stretches above us, interrupted by the apricot globe of th
e sun. I shut my eyes and watch the flashing orbs against the blackness of my eyelids.

  Our legs churn up silt as we step out of the water and onto a sandy alcove surrounded by steep boulders. Brice wrings out his cloak, careful not to allow any sunlight past the protective material. I notice him eye my silk cloak again.

  Logic tells me he needs time to adjust to everything I’ve told him. My heart just wants everything to be the way it was before all of this.

  “Let’s see where we’ve ended up.” They are the first words Brice has spoken since we left the underground lake, and he doesn’t look at me when he says them.

  What did I expect? I’d probably react the same way if he’d been less than honest with me all this time.

  We both go still at the sound of footsteps crunching on sand. Brice’s face turns pale. I motion him over to a hidden spot between two boulders.

  The footsteps are followed by the harsh, wheezing breaths of at least four Halves. One of their shadows crosses our hiding place.

  I put a hand over my mouth to stifle the sound of my breathing. For the space of several seconds, nothing happens. Then, the Halve bends down to look inside the rocks where we’re crouched.

  Black eyes gaze directly into mine.

  CHAPTER 38

  It's the Halve that led me to Brice, the one that saved me on the bridge. I hold my breath as we stare at each other.

  The Halve nods almost imperceptibly. It doesn’t even look at Brice before it turns back to the others. Their grunts turn to other sounds I’ve never heard a Halve make as they slosh through the shallow part of the river. Their volume rises and falls almost conversationally.

  I tilt my head to hear better. They are talking to each other, and they’re talking about me. They’re trying to find me.

  I gape at Brice.

  The Halve that saw us is telling the others to follow the river back the other way to look for me. Their voices recede as they move farther away from our hiding place.