by Lizzy Ford
“Rocky.”
Was she speaking aloud or in her head? He did not turn, and she could not tell. Aveline opened her mouth and prepared to concentrate all her energy on speaking.
She felt them then. Five … ten … dozens of heartbeats, assaulting her all at once.
She staggered and caught herself against the horse. Pushing away, she shook her head and sought her balance.
The furnace raging in her blood was hotter than the fires Tiana’s father used to murder the residents of his city. She was burning up … falling out of herself … being crushed beneath the pounding …
“Avi.”
Just like that, her world righted itself.
“I really think you should see the healer.”
She blinked out of her mind and looked up to meet Rocky’s gaze. The heartbeats had faded. Somehow, she had managed to follow the others into the center of a small village consisting of tents designed to be assembled or disassembled quickly.
“I’m …” fine. By the look on Rocky’s face, he was not making a suggestion. “Maybe I should.”
“This isn’t a normal fever.” He stretched forward to lift a strand of her hair. It was soaked through with sweat. “You look like you went swimming.”
“Maybe I’m allergic to the world outside the city,” she joked. “Where’s Jose?” She started to move around Rocky, who – along with his horse – were blocking her path.
“Healer first,” Rocky said firmly and pushed her to face the other direction. “You need to be well to handle this.”
“Handle what?”
“Tiana.”
“She’s here?” Aveline whirled. “Did Red Moon say where?”
“He didn’t have to.”
“What –”
“You’re not well, Avi. Let’s get you looked at. Then you can deal with this.”
“Deal with what?”
He gripped her arm to turn her away once more.
Aveline tore free and maneuvered around her horse to stand in the center of the village. She stopped, uttering curses beneath her breath.
Tiana and Arthur were in the middle of the village at the base of a large tree. Arthur was in a cage, along with another man Aveline did not recognize, and both appearing worse for wear. The cage was chained to a tree. Tiana sat beside it, neither bound nor caged that Aveline could see. All three showed signs of abuse: Tiana’s cheek, eye, and lips were swollen from fresh blows, while Arthur and the man with him were pale, bloodied, and wearing blood soaked clothing. Their wounds had been bound, but their clothing was filthy, as if they had been prisoners for some time.
Tiana was right, Aveline realized. Arthur was in bad shape. Their father would never have found him in time to save his life.
“Stop staring. You’re drawing attention,” Rocky said and pushed Aveline aside. “We don’t want them knowing –” He trailed off at the approach of two Natives, one of whom bore a scar down one side of his face.
“They are our enemies,” the scarred man said in a hard voice. “At least we did not burn them as you city dwellers do to your own kind.”
“Does that girl look like she could even lift a weapon?” Aveline snapped back. Fury pushed her fever even higher, and the pounding against her skull grew sharper, painful. She started to fall outside herself then wrenched herself back to the present, not about to let down Tiana.
“Why are you concerned with the fate of a stranger?” The scarred man glared down at her.
Aveline heard the warning, both from his tone and from her instincts. It was unwise to cause their hosts to pay more attention to them than they already did, especially since her plan relied on discretion. Unusually close to losing it, she struggled to explain away her behavior to the tense man in front of her. Her brain was being battered too hard for her to think straight.
Rocky rested a hand on her arm. “Pardon my friend,” he said quietly. “She is ill. Fevered.”
The scarred man did not move or speak for a long moment as he studied her. “Go to the healer. You will leave my village by dusk,” he ordered.
Aveline had never wanted to hit anyone as much as she did him in that moment. He had no concern for Tiana at all, no compassion for the two men who barely looked alive. With effort, she suppressed the retort at the tip of her tongue and let Rocky pull her away.
“Thank you,” he called. When they were several steps away, he hissed for her ears only, “That’s the brother we weren’t supposed to talk to, and you just pissed him off!”
Aveline groaned, partially from discomfort and partially because she realized what she had done. Their goal of spending the night, and slipping away with the prisoners before dawn, had been dashed, because she failed to hold her tongue.
“Dammit!” she muttered. “I didn’t mean … burn me! What is wrong with me?” She pressed the heels of her hands to her ears, but it made no difference in the intensity of the pounding.
Rocky pulled her hands away. “I have an idea.” He glanced past her, towards the direction of Tiana. “Pass out.”
“What?”
“No one will think twice of us if you’re too sick to move tonight. Pretend you’re about to die or something.”
Funny. That’s how I feel, she answered him silently. Without waiting for more encouragement, Aveline allowed her body to sag. The sense of falling out of herself returned, and she did not fight it. Suddenly, she was no longer pretending to faint. She slumped and then pitched forward, barely aware of Rocky catching her. His shout was garbled before it vanished into the dark recesses of her mind.
She slid into the place between consciousness and sleep. The pounding would not release her completely to slumber, but neither was she aware of her surroundings. Instead, she floated in and out of herself.
Tiana. This thought was accompanied by a burst of energy that almost allowed her to awaken, but it was soon swallowed by the hammering of heartbeats against her skull.
I never should’ve left the city.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tiana saw Aveline faint and straightened, eyes trained on her friend. Happiness bubbled forth within her and was quickly followed by concern. Something was wrong with Aveline. It was more than her sickly appearance; she was radiating energy strong enough for Tiana’s skin to prick.
Arthur shifted in the cage beside her. “What … is that?” he mumbled and opened the one eye not swollen shut.
“Arthur!”
When the Native guard glanced her direction, she lowered her voice to a whisper.
“I have been waiting since dawn for you to awaken!” Tiana told him. “I do not know how you are alive. There is so much blood.”
“Me neither.” He grunted and shifted within the cage. “Where is …” His eyes settled on Marshall Cruise, who was slumped and unconscious in his own cage beside him. “At least you are … wait. What are you doing here, Tiana?” He asked, swiveling his head to face her.
She smiled. “Rescuing you.”
Arthur stared at her and then groaned. He rested his head against the cage behind him. “You should never have left, Tiana.” He sounded far too tired to anger. “The world outside the city is not for you.”
“I found you, did I not?” she countered.
“For all of a day, and then we both die out here. If the Natives do not murder us, the Ghouls will.”
She frowned. “I saw a Ghoul. You said they were not real.”
“If I told you they were, you would have wanted to see one!” he replied. “Burn me, Tiana! Why are you out here?” His anger was audible this time. “Why did you purposely place yourself in danger?”
She was quiet. What did she tell him? That she hoped to rescue him and then convince him to go to the Free Lands with her? At the moment, none of the plans she had intended to carry out were feasible.
“Where is your guardian?” he asked, calming. “If she brought you out here, I will burn her myself!”
“I left without her.”
“This is worse!�
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“Warner brought me but fell ill and remained with our allies while I went on ahead. They are supposed to return and …” She stopped. It was too late to negotiate. Her brother would be gone with the dusk, and there was a chance she would be trialed and murdered by dawn. The memory of Warner’s unusual wounds left her no doubt as to whether or not he was capable of traveling anytime soon.
“Warner,” Arthur repeated. “He brought you here?”
She hesitated and then explained the circumstances of her journey. Arthur’s haggard features grew dark and the lines of his face deep. When she fell silent, he did not speak.
Sensing her brother’s anger, Tiana shifted and leaned against the cage to prevent her words from being overheard. “Father burned Marshall Cruise’s family,” she whispered. “All of them.”
“All of them?” Arthur asked skeptically.
“Yes.” She hastily explained the incident with Matilda.
Arthur did not appear surprised to hear of her magic. He listened in silence until she had finished. “Father finally found the ammunition he needed to justify burning the Cruises. If they threatened one of us, fine. But both of us?” He started to shake his head then grimaced and went still. “It does him no good to burn the entire city down to protect us when we will die out here! How did I not …” He gave a sound that was part groan, part growl. “I deserve whatever these Natives do to me for not acting sooner.” His gaze was on Marshall Cruise.
“You may have a chance yet. The tribe traded you to someone who wants you alive,” she said.
“Nothing good can come of that, either.”
“All you have to do is escape, and you can return and take father’s place, so he does not hurt anyone else.”
“That easy?” He snorted.
At a loss as to what to say to cheer her brother up, Tiana reached into the cage and took his hand. “We are together, are we not? Beneath a tree. Did you ever believe this possible?”
“Never,” he said and sighed loudly. Anger left his features. “I wish the world were as simple as you try to make it.”
“Can you not devise a way to escape?”
He was quiet, thoughtful for a moment. “Your magic. Will it listen to you, or does it act randomly?”
“Randomly,” she replied. “Though it consistently works when someone I care about is threatened.”
“It responds to your emotions?”
She nodded.
“We may be able to use that,” he said.
“I cannot control it, Arthur.”
“No need to control it out here among our enemies.”
I cannot guarantee your safety, if I use it, she added silently, thoughts on Matilda. She had managed to murder her stepmother without seriously injuring Aveline. How that happened, and how she had driven off the Ghouls without killing anyone, was beyond her ability to understand.
The siblings fell quiet as several Natives approached. Tiana withdrew her hand from Arthur’s and hunched, preparing for more blows. She had been placed beside her brother an hour after dawn, and several women from the resupply train visiting the warriors’ outpost had taken out their anger with her family on her. She did not fault them, and no one hit quite like Matilda, who had been deliberate in her desire to cause the maximum amount of pain. When every one of the women had thrown a punch or kick, they had left her.
The group of five warriors paused four yards away and began speaking amongst themselves, in their language. The man who hated her family most of all – Diving Eagle – was at the center, glaring at her and her brother.
“He is the one we need to avoid,” her brother whispered. “Those who captured us were allied to neither our enemies nor us. When he found out, he slaughtered five of them to capture Marshall and me. I would be dead, if his father had not ordered me not to be.”
“Did he tell you why?” she asked, recalling the conversation she had with the elderly chief.
“Unfortunately, our family has too many enemies for us to bother tracking why they hate us,” Arthur said dryly. Some of his familiar humor was back in his tone.
“Why is that, Arthur?” she asked, genuinely confused. “Why does our family resort to such measures?”
He hesitated before answering. “To protect our secret.”
“What secret?”
“Father told me once that the Hanover’s must remain in power, or the city would fall. I thought it was pride or arrogance. My unique deformities came into existence soon after. He told me these deformities are what give our family the right to rule, and which protect those around us.”
“He lied about our mother,” she said, dismayed.
“He did. Whether or not she was deformed, it did not matter. He was. Every leader of Lost Vegas has possessed certain gifts that allowed him to retain power and control.”
“But he burned our mother and my twin.”
“He burned a witness to your deformity and the child they thought was you,” Arthur explained. “Our mother was not the only one who died that day. The attending physician and two nurses did as well.”
Tiana twisted her hands together. Had she been too afraid to suspect her father was deformed or to ask him for details about her mother’s death? For too long, she had simply accepted what her father, Matilda, and brother told her to be true. It was not until Aveline that she began to feel comfortable thinking for herself.
“Father has deformities,” she said.
“He does.”
“And he murdered a baby to protect me.”
“He did.”
“Then why does he punish me for what I am?”
Hearing the sad note in her voice, Arthur stretched to touch her then stopped with a groan. “He is also mad, Tiana. I have not wanted to acknowledge how mad, but I feel I cannot deny it much longer. Rather, I feel I will not be allowed to deny it much longer.” He glanced towards the unconscious Cruise heir. “Our father cannot continue to massacre our people in the manner he has for the past twenty years. The Cruise’s were rivals, but they had good people among them. Marshall is one.”
Tiana followed his gaze. “What will we tell him?”
“Nothing,” Arthur said firmly. “Not yet anyway. We will need his help to escape. He will not aid us, if he knows our father wiped out his family.”
Tiana did not say what she thought, that their father was a blight to Lost Vegas and Arthur would be the kind of compassionate leader the city desperately needed. For all she knew, they would die this very day. “Aveline is here. She followed me.”
“Good. Because I do not think I can walk, and I do not believe Marshall can either.”
Tiana’s gaze swept over his legs. One was twisted at an odd angle. “I can help you,” she said. “I am stronger than you give me credit for.”
“I hope so, or we will not make it out of here.”
She swallowed hard. She was nothing like her father and nowhere near as brave as her brother. Was she strong enough to carry him? To fight off anyone who tried to stop them? To do what had to be done? She had never tested her limits, and she had rarely ever done something new without crying.
“You are not tied,” Arthur said suddenly.
“No. The chief has been very kind to me. He knows I would not leave your side and did not feel the need to bind me.”
“One blessing. We could use a hundred more.” Arthur gave a rough chuckle. “Aveline will save you. I hired her for that purpose.”
“She will always try,” Tiana agreed.
“She is more than she seems. Soon, she will show everyone just how fearsome she really is.”
“Maybe. I believe she may be ill.” Tiana toyed with the necklace she wore identical to Aveline’s. The light within the pendant was bright.
“She is not ill,” Arthur said.
“You have had a vision of her? Of us escaping?”
“The nature of my recent visions, since entering the custody of the Diné, has been different than usual. Stronger. I have seen farther than I
thought possible, and I have witnessed the materialization of secrets in those around me I did not know existed,” Arthur said mysteriously.
“All night long, I was plagued by one vision. I am not like you in this, but I felt like I was there,” she said in a hushed tone. “And when I woke, it lingered. The magic or …” She shuddered, still able to feel the odd energy from the vision, the sense of being grazed by a cool breeze that did not exist.
“I feel it, too,” Arthur said. “Someone here is very powerful and is enhancing our abilities.”
The group of Natives fell silent, and Tiana glanced towards them. They were watching her brother. Fire burned in the gazes of all of them. One by one, each member turned away and left the tree.
“They really hate us,” she murmured. “How does one come to loathe someone else with such passion?”
“Sometimes I believe our family deserves no less.”
“But you … we are different, Arthur. How do we deserve such hatred?”
“Such is the nature of a blood war. Reason has no place in hatred.”
“You are not frightened?” she asked.
“Of course I am. After hearing what Father did to the Cruise’s …” His focus was on Marshall Cruise. “He saved my life, Tiana, more than once. How do I tell him his entire family has been wiped off the Earth by our father, our blood? How do I look at him knowing he represents every wrong our family has ever committed?”
“You tell him you are not the same as our father, and you show him who you are,” she replied. “You show everyone. The Natives, the city, everyone. When they see in you what I have always known to be true, they will not wish you dead.”
“You are always optimistic.” Arthur forced a smile. “I admit, I never thought you would make it this far. I am proud of you, Tiana, and extremely disappointed at the same time.”
“I want to be brave like you.”
“Sister, you are far braver,” he said with a hoarse laugh. “I left the city with weapons and an army, and you left with one man and hope. Here we are, in the same place, and you are better off by far!”