The Sentry

by Lyssa Morasey

“No…it’s not your fault.” I remove the hand as gently as I can. “I’m just—the trip here wore me out, and I’m not really used to riding horses. I just need some rest.”

  “Of course,” the prince says. “I should’ve known.” Carefully he wraps an arm around my waist; I let him, only because I can’t trust myself to walk on my own.

  Iven leads me back across the ice, reinforcing its surface wherever the lapping waves have eaten away at it, and takes me back to the horses. I lean on him the whole time, but neither of us say a word.

  This can’t be happening, I think. Not again.

  Four Months Ago: Cassatia

  Keira had always told me that Coeur d’Alene wasn’t a real Sen city, but for someone who’d never been around any number of Senex before, it was overwhelming. I’d seen cars and roads and tall buildings before, and I’d watched a few Sen movies on Keira’s phone, but never before had I been out in their world like this.

  “Keep your head down,” my father said quietly beside me. “You’re drawing too much attention to yourself.”

  “Sorry.” I stopped gaping around at the Sen shops and studied my feet instead, slouching down self-consciously.

  My father stopped me in front of the entrance to a place called Ataraxia. Looking through its curtained windows, I saw that it was a restaurant—a very fancy restaurant.

  “Is this what we came all the way out here for?” I wondered, trying not to sound too disappointed. “To eat at a restaurant?”

  “Not exactly,” my father said, smoothing out the sleeves of my dress and fixing a few unruly strands of hair. “We’re meeting Professor Fayeren here, and his son Ainsil.”

  “Really?” My father had never allowed me anywhere near Nixan boys before, other than my little brother. “I didn’t even know he had a son.”

  “He does; a boy about your age.” Satisfied now that I looked presentable, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and guided me forward. “I hope that the two of you will be able to get along.”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean it, Cassatia.” He stopped me before I could push open the doors, turning me around to face him. “This is important. I need to make sure he’s suitable for you.”

  Oh. I had a bad feeling about what he meant by that. My heart squeezed in my chest. “Suitable?” I echoed, my breath hitching.

  “Yes,” Fenris said. “You’re a Nixan lady, Cassatia. You had to know that this was going to happen.”

  “That what was going to happen?”

  “Don’t play dumb—you know what,” he snapped. “I’ve been in talks with the professor about this for years. We want to see the two of you married.”

  Married.

  “No.” I struggled my way out of his grip. “That’s insane. I’m not getting married to someone I’ve never met before.”

  “You’re meeting today.” My father caught me again; through the doors I could see the restaurant hostess watching us concernedly. “Come on inside, Cassatia.” I didn’t have any way out of this, so I followed him in, my legs like wobbly lead.

  Inside, soft jazz music filled the air with easy sophistication. My father nodded to the wide-eyed hostess and led me to the back of the restaurant, where two Nixan men sat on opposite sides of a four-person table—Natanael Fayeren, chancellor of the Royal Academy, and a teenage boy. A teenage boy who my father wanted to be my bond. Nixa, please help me.

  My father drew back the chair beside the boy and motioned for me to sit. I obeyed without a word, swiping the skirt of my dress clumsily underneath me.

  “Cassatia,” Professor Fayeren said as Fenris took his seat beside him, “this is Ainsil, my oldest son.” I turned to look at him, taking in his wide blue eyes, his puckered lips, the shadow of hair growing beneath his nose. He wasn’t bad-looking, to say the least—but the thought of marrying him filled me with intense revulsion.

  Ainsil Fayeren held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you, my lady.” Reluctantly I took it, and shook it as gingerly as possible.

  “They’ll have to do better that that,” the professor said to my father, shaking his head. I tensed, dropping Ainsil’s hand as fast as I would a burning ember.

  My father nodded. “But they’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted. Anyone can learn to be bonds.”

  “We should start looking at rings, then,” Fayeren replied.

  “You’re kidding,” I said; I couldn’t help myself. “Bond-rings, already?” Both men flinched at my tone. I felt Ainsil’s eyes searching my face, but I refused to turn and acknowledge him again.

  “It’s not as sudden as you think, my lady,” the professor said with a smile. “Your father and I have been planning this since you were a child.”

  “I don’t care what you’ve been planning. I just met him,” I said. “I’m not going to marry him.”

  Fayeren tensed, looking to my father expectantly. “You’re seventeen, Cassatia,” Fenris said sternly. “You aren’t a Sen; it’s time for you to get your bond. This is how we have always done things.”

  “You can’t make me marry someone I don’t want to,” I insisted. “It’s not your choice.”

  “We had a deal, Your Grace,” Fayeren said quietly to Fenris.

  Fenris held up a hand to placate him. “My daughter will come around,” he promised. “She’ll marry your son—I will make sure of it.”

  I will make sure of it. I felt like I was about to throw up.

  A waitress chose that moment to stop at our table, brandishing a pen and notepad. “Can I start you all off with something to drink?”

  “Where’s your bathroom?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

  “Cassatia,” Fenris said under his breath.

  “Past the hostess’s stand and to the right,” the waitress replied, directing me with her arm.

  “Thank you.” I stood and walked off before anyone could stop me. I passed the hostess, but I eschewed the bathrooms and headed instead out the restaurant doors, running straight onto the road.

  A car flying towards me honked loudly, its driver slamming on the brakes. It screeched to a stop just inches from my knees. Loud music pounded from inside it; when the driver rolled down his window, the pounding grew even louder, spilling out onto the street.

  “What’re you doing in the middle of the road, dumbass?” the driver yelled at me around a cigarette. “You looking to kill yourself or something?”

  I circled around to his window and ripped off my necklace—a tight string of pearls, gleaming in the sunlight. “I’ll give you this if you can get me out of here.” The man made a grab for the pearls, but I held them up out of his reach.

  “Get you where?” he asked.

  “I don’t care. Just get me away from this place.”

  The man motioned for me to get in the car; I opened a back door and climbed in amongst burger wrappers and the powerful stench of smoke and grease. A suspicious-looking little box was tucked underneath the driver’s seat.

  “Go,” I said, trying not to cough. “If you’re fast enough, I’ll throw in my earrings.” I held one up to show him: miniature diamonds dangling from tendrils of silver.

  The driver hit the gas in response, and away we flew.

  3 October: Keira

  We drive west from Norfolk into northern Pennsylvania, where I tell Wes and Basil we’ll have the easiest time getting past the Sentry border guards. As we wind our way through the mountains, the sun climbs into view and glares at us through the rearview mirror.

  Wes takes out his aura detector and fiddles with it every five minutes or so, as if waiting for Sentry guards to pop up on it. Eventually he says, “We have to be close to the border stations now.”

  “We are,” I tell him truthfully.

  “Then we should find somewhere to stop and rest before we cross over.”

  “And eat,” Basil adds, fingering the empty peanut bag beside him.

  Great Goddess, why now? “We can’t stop in the middle of the buffer zone,” I protest. I’ve never felt less in n
eed of food or sleep; my body is pounding and buzzing like I’m amped up on caffeine. We’re so freaking close. Once we get to the border guards, I’ll be all done with this mess.

  “The buffer zone is a hell of a lot better than Nixan land,” Wes says. “I’d rather stop now instead of waiting for Baz to fall asleep at the wheel just across the border.” Baz shoves him, but nods his agreement.

  I take a deep breath. “If we stop now, we’d just be giving the Wardens time to band together and come after us. I’m sure they’d be fine crossing into no man’s land for something like this.”

  “They have no idea where we are,” Wes says. “And even if they did, they wouldn’t dare come this close to the Nixan border. Another minute of driving and we’ll be showing up on Sentry aura detectors.”

  “You’re outnumbered two-to-one,” Basil tells me.

  I grit my teeth, fuming. We’re starting to get uncomfortably close to October sixth—Cass’s birthday, the day she’ll be permanently exiled to Nixa knows where if I’m not back in New Fauske with Ferignis. But teenage boys are going to do what teenage boys want to do; there’s no use in arguing. “Where do you suggest we stay, then? I don’t see any Marriotts around here.”

  Basil pulls off onto a little side road snaking through the mountains. “No, but there are plenty of abandoned little summer cabins all around,” he says. “We’ll find something.”

  We do, pretty quickly: an old log cabin at the top of a big, steep-sloped wooded hill. A fallen tree, dead long enough that it’s begun to rot, blocks the pebbly driveway halfway up, a good sign that the cabin hasn’t been lived in for a while.

  We park the car beside the fallen tree and climb the rest of the way up to the cabin ourselves. It’s the kind of worn-down and out-of-date abode that some charitable people would describe as quaint—old, tattered lacy curtains in the windows, a tree bough hanging precariously over the roof, half the paint (lead paint, probably) chipped off the door. The door’s hinges are so rusty that it takes a solid two minutes for us to open it.

  Inside is no better than out—the air is stale, and everything is covered in several layers of dust. Basil immediately heads for the kitchen, burrowing through the cabinets and pantry in search of food.

  “Nothing,” he concludes, exasperated. “Not even canned beans.”

  “There has to be someplace to buy food around here,” Wes says. “Maybe fifty miles away, but still.”

  “We only have forty bucks between the two of us for this whole trip, Wes,” Baz points out. “And I’m sure my parents have already gone and frozen my bank account.”

  “I have money,” I say reluctantly. I do; I’d been saving up my miniscule Sentry allowance for the past year so I could buy Cass a phone for her birthday. But thanks to my current situation, my priorities have flipped around a little. Now my primary concerns are making it back to New Fauske with Ferignis in time and making sure Fenris knows I’m not still locked up in Boston. And since Wes idiotically left my phone back at the Warden compound, debit card purchases are the only way my progress across the country can be tracked. So I pull my card from my jacket pocket and grudgingly hold it out to Basil.

  Basil waves it away. “You get the food,” he tells Wes. “I’m the one who’s been driving all night.”

  “Not with her I’m not.” He raises his cuffed wrist, indicating the form chain connecting us. “If you want to take her instead, be my guest.”

  “Fine,” Baz sighs. “But you don’t get to sleep till I get back.” Wes nods, rolling his eyes.

  Once Baz is gone, his car disappearing trunk-first down the hill, Wes sits down at a rickety old table pressed up against a cracked, grimy cabin window. He fastens his cuff of the form chain to one of its legs—if I wanted to, I could easily flip the table over and break free, but whatever—and kicks his Ferignis-laden backpack against the wall. I take the seat across from him and lean back against the window glass, sighing.

  “I couldn’t fall asleep right now even if I wanted to,” Wes admits.

  “Same,” I say dryly. “Why did we stop here, then?”

  “Because,” Wes says, “we’re not meeting the Sentry Line guards sleep-deprived.”

  “You don’t have to worry about the Line guards,” I lie. “I promised you I know how to deal with them.” Wes raises an eyebrow, prompting me to elaborate, but I don’t; I doubt he’d be too pleased to hear the details of my plan.

  “So,” I say, clearing my throat, “how long are we going to stay here?”

  Wes shrugs, not letting his eyes leave mine. “As long as we need to sleep for, I guess. We can leave sometime tonight.”

  Good. By the end of tonight, Wes and Basil will be Sentry chow, and I’ll be on my way back to New Fauske with Ferignis. Maybe I can even get Caphian to fly a plane out here for me. I close my eyes and picture myself reclining back in a cushy plane seat, sipping a soda and humming along to music, with the jnani sword propped up by my side….

  “What’re you smiling about?” Wes demands.

  “Nothing,” I assure him.

  But first, I have to ensure that my Warden captor is sufficiently annoyed and uncomfortable. If he’s going to delay my victory flight, he sure as hell is going to pay for it.

  So I crack my knuckles and splay my hands out on the table, lean forward an inch too far, and ask the question most despised by the antisocial, ultra-cagey Westrey Dorsans of the world: “So, I was thinking—while we’re waiting here, why don’t we take the opportunity to tell each other a little more about ourselves?”

  Two Years Ago: Keira

  The morning of our final Sentry trial, we were all frisked for weapons and handed daggers and folded photos on our way out of the dorms.

  The dagger was nothing special, standard steel with a bronze hilt; it was the photo that was important. I broke its seal with my nail and opened it, studying the face that glowered back at me. It was a girl, blonde with emerald-green eyes. Not Delphi, thank the Goddess.

  The blonde girl would be getting a similar photo of me—maybe she already had. They’d taken the pictures during lunch, so I most likely had spaghetti sauce smeared all over my face. Hopefully that would make me harder to recognize.

  I glanced back behind me into the dorm, wondering if I could find my girl right then. But I couldn’t see much of anything; there were too many people crowded around the door, all too eager to get their daggers and assignments.

  We were taken outside to the endless expanse of desert extending out behind the Sonoran building. The morning sun was blinding, boring right into my eyes—I should’ve grabbed the sunglasses Diana packed for me.

  Two strings of observation towers, spaced about a hundred feet apart, stretched off into the distance. Coaches stood at the top of each tower, arms crossed behind their backs. We candidates were directed to stay within the space between the towers. I found myself wedged somewhere in the middle of the pack, with a little bit of elbow room in each direction.

  I looked around some more for my girl, squinting into the sun. But it was hopeless—there were a thousand kids around me, and a few hundred of them were blonde girls. I wished I could’ve gotten someone with pink hair or a mohawk or something.

  “Keira.” I spun around to find Delphi grinning sheepishly at me. My stomach flipped. Delphi….

  “Hey,” I breathed. “You ready for this?”

  Instead of answering, Delphi snuck a hand behind my neck and pulled me closer, the cool metal of his dagger pressing into my nape. I made a startled noise deep in my throat. Delphi’s other hand cupped my chin, angling it up until I was staring point-blank into his deep dark eyes. And then he leaned into me and planted a kiss on my lips.

  Instinctively my mouth opened to make room for his, and I felt Delphi’s hot breath traveling down my trachea. It took me a second to come to my senses: What am I doing? I quickly shoved him away, stepping back and wiping the taste of him from my mouth. “What the hell was that?”

  Delphi’s eyes were twinkling, and
his smile was wider and whiter than ever. “I wanted to kiss a girl before I die,” he said. “You seemed like a good choice.”

  My head reeled as he disappeared back into the crowd. The desert spun and flipped and somersaulted around me. A good choice? What did that mean? Did it mean anything? A good choice….

  Focus, you idiot, I snapped at myself. This is important. Life-or-death, literally.

  Asreil the lieutenant stepped out of the building with a microphone; everyone, coaches and candidates alike, immediately went quiet and turned to face him. “Congratulations, all of you, on making it to this stage of the trials,” he began. “You have all proven to myself and to your coaches that you have the potential to be great Sentries.” Everyone took a moment to applaud themselves, while I squeezed shut my eyes in an attempt to dispel the image of Delphi’s smile.

  “We have narrowed down our pool to one thousand and twenty-four of you,” Asreil continued. “Exactly twice of what we need this year. You have each been paired randomly with another candidate. Only one of you will take the name of Serasul.”

  I looked at the picture of my target again. She had a little mole on the side of her neck and a healing scar along her left cheekbone. Nothing that really popped out.

  “I will go over the rules now.” The lieutenant stepped forward and cleared his throat. “No shifting is allowed, nor any weapons other than the dagger you were given today. You may only kill the candidate that you have been paired with.” There was a collective intake of breath from the mob at the word kill. “Any other kills will result in your immediate disqualification from the trials.”

  I felt the thrumming of my pulse everywhere from my throat to the heels of my feet. And as my pulse rose, so did the temperature of Cass’s pendant, pumping strength through my bloodstream and helping to quell my fear just a little.

  “You will begin at the blow of my whistle. When you have completed your trial, hold up your dagger and one of your coaches will come to confirm your kill and assign you a sector. Those who finish first will get their first choice of location.” He glanced around, shielding his eyes against the sun. “Any questions?” No one came forward. I bit my lip and tightened my grip on my dagger. This is it.