Wes lunges forward, his hands wrapping around my neck, but I kick him in the chest before he gets a good grip and chop down hard on his clavicle. He staggers, and before he can regain his balance I grab his shoulders, spin him around, and slam him into the wall behind us. The wall padding softens the impact, but now I have him trapped. I press my knee into his stomach; he struggles, grunting and thrashing, but I don’t budge. I aim a blow at his face and connect just below his left eye. He swings at my head—I duck, twisting around to get a good kick at his crotch. His legs buckle, and he slips to the ground with a yelp. I crouch down over him and pummel the side of his head, again and again and again….
“Stop!” Perrin calls.
I don’t want to. I really don’t want to. But the pendant is starting to cool and my knuckles are starting to ache, so I listen.
Wes gives a soft moan, turning his head towards me; he has blood oozing from his nose and the corner of his lip. I don’t help him up—he wouldn’t want me to anyway—but I back off to give him some room.
I turn back to the rest of the trainees. All of them have wide eyes, dropped jaws, mouths shaped like O’s.
“That was, what, about a minute?” I ask innocently. Wes shoots me his worst glare yet as he returns to stand with Basil. One of his other friends hands him a bag of ice for his battle wounds, which I find ironic.
“Yeah, about that,” Perrin confirms, biting his lip. I wonder if he’s changed his mind about having me come in to demonstrate for other classes. Hopefully I won’t be here this time next week anyway.
“I can beat that.” I pull back my hair, crack my knuckles, and peer into the midst of the Warden class with the most convincing grin I can manage. “So, who’s next?”
This time, no one moves.
Seventeen Months Ago: Westrey
Two days after my sister left for the dustie conference, I was called down to the principal’s office during chemistry class.
What happened now? was my first thought. The last time I’d been sent to the principal’s office was for questioning after Freya and her friends convinced some freshman kid to pull the school’s fire alarm. But now Freya was four hundred miles away, and neither Baz nor Freya’s friend Naira has been called out of class with me.
When I got to the office, Fenella Shirey herself was waiting at the front desk, dressed in blue jeans and a Red Sox shirt.
Jesus Christ. I froze in the doorway and stared, my mouth hanging open.
“Do you have all your books with you?” Fenella asked, her expression unreadable.
I glanced back at my bag. “Uh, yeah.”
“Good. I’m taking you out for your dentist appointment.”
What? “Oh, right. Okay.”
I followed her out of the building, heart pounding. The Chief Warden wouldn’t have paid a personal visit to Samuel Adams High School unless something really serious had happened involving me. To the best of my knowledge, she didn’t actually chauffeur Warden teens to the dentist.
My thoughts immediately jumped to Freya. Something had gone wrong at the conference, maybe. She hadn’t responded to my texts from earlier in the day, but I’d just assumed that she was busy. I swallowed, pushing the thought away.
Fenella led me over to a slick black car and opened the passenger door for me. I climbed in obediently, waiting silently until she was inside and all the doors had been closed.
“Is something wrong?” I asked. My voice was choked and shaky, but I hardly noticed.
Fenella cranked on the engine, not looking at me. “I’m taking you back to the bunker. We’ll talk there.”
“Could we talk now, please?” The bunker was fifteen minutes away, and my palms were already starting to sweat.
Fenella clenched her jaw. “The others are all back in the council room.”
“Others? What are you talking about?”
“All right; fine. We can talk now.” Fenella turned off the ignition. “There was an attack on the Alexandria conference this morning.”
Oh, God. My body went so cold that I couldn’t have summoned fire if I tried. “What happened?”
“Well,” Fenella said, “it was a Sentry attack. I assume it was provoked by the Wardens who trespassed on their land recently. The Sentries crossed the Appalachian Line with a fleet of jet planes at about eight, and we quickly assembled a response force of Wardens and allies in the area, but they outnumbered us two to one. It was almost—”
“What happened to Freya?” I interrupted.
Fenella turned to look me in the eye, and for once her gaze was soft. “The Sentries went for prisoners first—the two youngest at the conference, I believe. The first was a ten-year-old dustie boy living near our auxiliary compound in DC.” She paused, but I already knew what she was going to say next. “The second was your sister.”
No. My hands clenched compulsively. I pictured Freya, bound and gagged, dragged off into a jet by a couple of bloody Sentries, thrashing and screaming the entire time.
“We’re going to rescue her, right?” I asked quietly.
“We can’t, Wes.” A crease appeared between Fenella’s eyebrows. “We can’t cross the Line—she was taken as retribution for the last time Wardens crossed the Line.”
“We’re going to leave her there, you mean. Leave her with the Sentries to be tortured and killed.” My hands lit up. “It’s your fault she was even there. You never should’ve let a sixteen-year-old be a conference guard.”
“I’m sorry, Wes,” Fenella murmured. “If I had any idea—”
“You did.” The fire climbed up my arms. “You were worried the Nixans would attack after those idiots crossed the Line last month. You should’ve known.”
“Put out your hands, Wes,” Fenella said. “We’re in a Sen school parking lot. Someone could see.”
“I don’t care,” I growled. “My sister’s been captured by Sentries, and you won’t even try to rescue her. I don’t give a rat’s ass if someone sees my hands.”
“You’re not thinking clearly. You’re blinded by your anger.” Fenella turned on the car again and pulled out of the parking lot. “I’m taking you back to headquarters, okay?”
I ignored her. “This is all because of our parents, isn’t it? You still blame me and Freya for who they are, sixteen years later. You don’t care about either of us.”
“You’re wrong, Wes,” Fenella said calmly. “This has absolutely nothing to do with that.”
“I don’t think so. If we had parents in the bunker, there’s no way they’d let you get away with leaving Freya to die. She never had anyone, just me. She was all I had—she’s all I’ll ever have. And I’ll never get to see her again.”
As I spoke, going on and on and on, the car’s temperature dropped back down to normal, and the flames licking my arms finally petered out. A wave of nausea swept over me. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I whispered.
“I’ll pull over,” Fenella said quickly. She pulled into an empty spot outside a corner café, and I wrenched open the door and stumbled out with bile rising in my throat.
I crouched over the nearest storm drain, throwing up my insides. Fenella peered out from the open passenger door, looking as concerned as the Chief Warden could possibly look for a child she barely knew. A couple of boys sitting outside the café laughed at me. “Someone had too much to drink last night,” one of them called.
I barely heard him. Freya’s screams echoed through my head, drowning out everything else.
“They won’t get away with this,” I whispered to myself. “I won’t let them.” I’d taken my Warden’s vows the week before on my sixteenth birthday—lifelong vows of duty and allegiance. And as I knelt over that storm drain, letting each wave of bile course through my body while Fenella looked on and the Sen boys laughed, I added another vow to my list. As long as Freya was alive, I’d find a way to save her from the Nixans. She didn’t have anyone else—no special connections, no parents in the council like Baz—but she had me, and that was enough.
I would make it enough.
1 October: Westrey
I don’t speak to Keira for the rest of the day. I don’t speak to anyone at all, really.
The news of my sixty-second fight with the Sentry girl managed to spread all across the bunker before our training class even let out. Walking through the halls after, the youngest Wardens leap back in fright at Keira’s advance; the rest shake their heads at me, smirking and laughing and curling their lips. I’m used to negative attention, of course, but usually it’s over something completely out of my control. This is different—this time it’s all my fault.
I wear the signs of my failure on my face, in the smarting bruises that frame my nose and dot my jaw. My back aches, too, and my left ear is ringing. I wish I could go see one of the bunker’s doctors and get checked out, but that would require explaining the situation behind my beating to them.
Keira, for her part, doesn’t push the subject, though I do catch a smug gleam in her eyes whenever a scared little kid scurries out of her way.
I skip dinner—Keira looks at me questioningly when the meal bell rings but doesn’t ask—and head back to my room early, wanting more than anything to be alone so I can wallow in my embarrassment away from judgmental eyes.
Of course, once I’ve freed myself of the form chain and climbed into bed, I find it impossible to sleep. Not because of the pain; I’ve slept off plenty of combat training injuries before; but because of my shame in its source, and because of a little knot of something that has twisted its way into my gut.
I lean over my bed and stare down at the girl beneath it, already sound asleep on the hard metal floor. She is tiny, little-boned—I have at least thirty pounds on her. How did she manage to finish me off like that? She definitely doesn’t look like she could beat me in a fight, sans shifting at least.
The door to my room suddenly swings open, letting in a flash of blinding light from the hallway. I sit up with a gasp and reach for the fire-gun by my bed, aiming it at the figure on my threshold.
Basil steps in, laughing away the gun. “Come on, Wes. I’m not that intimidating.”
I lower the gun with a soft exhale and toss it back onto my bedside table beside the key to the form chain. “Sorry. Spending five days with a Sentry girl chained to you tends to make you a little paranoid.”
Baz snorts and plops down on the bed beside me, leaving the door cracked to let in some light. “You didn’t wet yourself, did you?” I punch him in the arm, glaring. He grins.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. “Come to check on the shifter?”
“I came to check on your battle scars, actually.” I punch him again; he holds up his hands. “Okay, I get it, touchy subject.” I groan, rolling my eyes and leaning back against the wall.
“Jesus.” Baz looks around my room. “Somehow I keep forgetting how tiny and lonely this place is.” He twirls a finger through his shaggy hair. “If my dad wasn’t such an asshole, I would’ve asked if you could move into my family’s place. Now that Freya’s been gone for so long, it’s depressing that you have to live here all by yourself.”
The knot tightens around my gut. “You know,” I say, “she might not be gone, actually.”
Basil’s grin is gone in an instant. “What do you mean?”
I look down again at Keira, somehow still asleep despite all the noise we’ve made; the light from the cracked door has lit up half her face, and she looks deceptively young and angelic. “Before training today, Keira told me that Freya and Quincey are still alive, locked up in Fenris’s castle.”
“That’s crazy, Wes” Baz says quietly. I turn back to him, my heart sinking when I see the disbelief etched into his face. “She’s just trying to mess with your head.”
“I know.” I clench my pillow, gathering up its folds into my fist. “But what if she wasn’t? What if Freya’s still alive, being tortured by the Nixans while we just sit here?” I bite my lip. “The day I found out she was taken, I promised myself I’d save her, as long as she was still alive.”
“Trust me, I know,” Baz says. “You spent months obsessing over how to get her back. I was there. I swear you went weeks without eating.”
“And then I gave up—I decided she must be dead. Everyone said she was, and I forced myself to accept it, eventually. But now I’m hearing she isn’t from someone who was in New Fauske only last week.”
“A Sentry who was in New Fauske only last week,” Basil corrects me. “Her word isn’t enough for anyone to go risking their lives over. She has zero proof—don’t tell me you actually believe her.”
“I don’t,” I insist. “But still, I can’t get it out of my head. I can’t sleep because of it.”
Baz rolls his eyes. “Of course you can’t sleep—it’s not even nine o’clock yet.”
“That’s not the point.” I set my jaw. “If there were any proof, even the tiniest bit, that Freya’s still alive, I’d cross the Line myself and go after her. I was too scared to when she was first taken, but I’m sure as hell not scared anymore.”
“That’s good to hear,” a voice says from beneath us. “Because I’ve got your proof.”
Baz and I turn in unison to find Keira rising to her feet in the light of the cracked door, a smile lifting her cheeks. “What if I could get your sister on the phone with you?” she asks. “Would that be enough?”
1 October: Keira
The Warden boys look even more startled than they did when they found me in their elevator.
I stretch my chain as far as it will go so I can flick on the lights, leaving all three of us blind for a second, and kick shut the door.
“You were listening to us?” Wes demands, his voice an octave higher than usual.
“Of course I was. No one actually goes to sleep at eight-thirty.” I try to bite back my smile, but I can’t. After five days of zero progress, I now know exactly how I’m going to get Ferignis back to Duke Fenris. All it will take is a little bit of emotional manipulation.
“You never answered my question,” I say. “Would talking to your sister on the phone be enough to convince you that she’s still alive?”
“How do you plan on talking to her?”
“I have a friend in the castle,” I explain, thinking on my feet and fighting to keep some resemblance of a poker face. “Arion. He’s on our side.”
“Our side,” Wes repeats doubtfully.
I ignore him. “He has access to the cell where they’re keeping the infidel prisoners. If you give me my phone back, you can talk to her.”
“There are no numbers in that phone,” Wes says. “I checked.”
“Of course not,” I say. “What if it got stolen? I have all my contacts memorized.”
Wes climbs out of bed to stand face-to-face with me, his eyes searching mine. He pulls out my phone, slowly. “You’re telling me your friend can get to my sister?”
The loud beeping of a ringtone keeps me from replying. Basil pulls his cell from his pocket. “Damn it,” he mutters, “it’s my dad. I better get this.”
Wes lets him with a frustrated jerk of the chin, and I avail myself of the interruption to reopen the Sentry mind-link I had so resolutely shut myself off from the day I left New Fauske.
Instantly, thoughts from all over the continent bombard my brain—“Need an extra guard at the Juneau post,” “Algery’s missed quota again,” that kind of thing—thoughts sent through the public link for every Sentry to hear. I tune them out as best I can; there’s only one Sentry I need to worry about.
Caph finds me before I can find him. “Where the hell are you?” he demands, his thought aimed directly at me outside of the public link.
“In the Warden bunker,” I tell him. “The headquarters in Boston. Fenris and Evana sent me, but I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
Silence. Then: “Is there something you need me to do for you?”
“Yes—I need you to put me on the phone with one of the prisoners in the holding cell.”
“Hey.” Wes’s v
oice jolts me back to my immediate surroundings. He’s wiggling my Solas phone in front of my face; I hadn’t even noticed. “Don’t you need this?”
I look to Basil—he’s finished talking with his dad, his phone shoved back in his pocket.
“Thank you.” I take the phone and type in Caphian’s number as he feeds it to me.
“Speaker phone,” Wes says as it begins to ring. I click on the speaker obediently.
“Hello?” Caphian’s voice, a little strained, asks from the phone.
“Are you off-duty, Arion?” I ask.
“Yes,” he replies, not missing a beat with the name change. “Do you need something?”
I drop my voice down to a level I judge to be appropriate for a clandestine conversation. “I need to speak with one of the prisoners. The Warden girl.” I look at Wes. “I’m with someone who needs to hear from her.”
“Hold on,” Caph says, his voice hushed as well. We hear a bit of static as he walks, then indecipherable low voices.
“He doesn’t sound like a teenager to me,” Basil says dubiously.
“I never said he was.”
More static, a beep, and then a shaky girl’s voice: “What is this?”
Wes snatches the phone from my hand. “Freya,” he breathes. “Is that you? It’s Wes.”
“Wes.” There’s a soft thud on the other end of the line, followed by a scuffling noise—she dropped Caph’s phone, I’d guess, and had to pick it back up. “Oh, my God, Wes.”
Basil leans over the phone. “Freya, where are they keeping you?” Wes demands.
“Some little room in Fenris’s castle,” she breathes. “Somewhere they can beat the shit out of Quincey and me without anyone hearing.” Wes clenches my phone so tight I’m afraid it will shatter to pieces. “What is this, Wes—what’s going on? They don’t have you too, do they?”
“No,” Wes says. “I’m sorry, Freya, I—I’ll get you out of there. I promise.”
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