Golden

by Melissa de la Cruz

  Nat coughed, then laughed. “Coward.”

  “Witch, you’ll see for yourself,” Daran said. When he bent over her, covering her body with his, Nat screamed, her arms flailing around Daran’s back.

  Wes saw his chance and took it. He rolled up in a flash to grab the knife from Daran’s waistband, but it wasn’t there—huh? What? He looked up and saw Nat holding it in her hands as she plunged it deep into Daran’s back.

  Nice work, he thought, admiring her speed and ferocity as she quickly rolled away.

  “Miss me, icehole?” Wes asked as he pounded Daran’s head with his fists, sending him sprawling.

  “What the freeze . . . ,” gurgled Daran, blood pouring from his mouth. He turned around, his eyes wide. “You . . . I knew you were ice trash from the beginning.” He pointed at the small white star that was shining above Wes’s eyebrow, the one everyone had thought was just a scar, even Wes.

  Wes knew better than that now, of course. It was his mark, the one that let the world know he was one of the children of the ice. Marked by magic. Just like Nat.

  “Then we’re even, ’cause Shakes was right,” Wes huffed as he pressed his foot on Daran’s back and removed the bloody knife, making Daran scream from the pain. “I should have let you drown.”

  Daran choked in a puddle of his own blood.

  Wes bent to help Nat stand. “You’re okay?” he asked.

  She stared. “And you’re not dead?”

  He shook his head and shot her a cocky grin. “Who, me? And leave you?” he said huskily, all seriousness now.

  They didn’t say a word after that. Later, his eyes seemed to say, meeting hers. Later, her fingers seemed to agree, as they twisted around his. They heard nothing, saw no one else—

  Until the sound of muffled screams interrupted them.

  “Liannan!” Nat cried, pointing to the other side of the boat, where Zedric had disappeared with the sylph. In all the excitement during the attack on Daran, Wes had almost forgotten the other brother—and what he had threatened to do.

  “Here!” yelled Roark, who was nearest to the struggling Liannan.

  Wes tossed him the knife, and Roark jumped up and slashed at Zedric’s arm, making an ugly gash. Liannan broke away from Zedric’s grip, gasping, her robe torn.

  “What the ice . . . holy freeze, you’re supposed to be dead!” Zedric yelped when he saw Wes.

  “Sorry to disappoint you.” Wes shrugged.

  “Don’t worry, he will be,” said Daran from his prone position on the floor, bleeding heavily, his face contorted into a vicious mask, holding up his automatic and pointing it at the reunited couple.

  “Oh, for freeze’s sake,” said Wes, annoyed it wasn’t over, but even before he’d cursed, he was already reaching for one of the guns his crew had laid down on the deck. He had it cocked and pointed at Daran’s face when Nat stayed his hand. “Let me.”

  “But—you’re still wearing the iron collar . . .”

  She shook her head with a smile. “It doesn’t matter now. I have you.” Her iron chains broke, one by one, crashing to the floor.

  “That’s my girl,” Wes said, grinning proudly. “Now go and smoke ’em.”

  5

  NAT TURNED TO DARAN, HER GREEN-GOLD eyes glinting. “Any last words?”

  “Ice you,” Daran cursed as he hit the automatic, releasing a spray of bullets, but she waved them away as if they were pesky flies, and they disintegrated harmlessly into ashes. He kept firing until he was out of ammunition, his eyes full of panic as Nat bore down on him.

  She leaned over him, her rage growing, wanting nothing more than to litter the deck with his bloody carcass. He had put his lips in her ear. He had panted and slobbered, warm and wet, on her skin. He had tried to take her by force and infect her with his hatred, his fear.

  But if she killed him she would be just as wrong as he was. Just as twisted with revenge and hatred. She shook her head. She would spare his life, if only because she cared for hers.

  As if Wes could read her mind, he reached into his pockets and removed a pair of standard military-issue handcuffs and locked them around Daran’s wrists, chaining him to the rail.

  She nodded to Wes, who cocked his head in approval.

  “HELP! HELP! COME BACK! TURN AROUND!” Zedric yelled into his comm. “We’re being attacked!” Screaming, Zedric viciously kicked at Roark—and his knife—and managed to skitter away before Nat could even raise a hand.

  Brendon grabbed his gun from the floor and began to shoot after the fleeing target.

  “GET HIM!” yelled Roark.

  But Zedric was zigzagging away, and the bullets missed. He disappeared into the smoking, burning city, still yelling for Avo and his battalion to return.

  Liannan went to work at Shakes’s side, while Roark attended to Farouk. Before long, it seemed both would be back to consciousness. Wes had returned to life for them—all of them—just in time.

  “How?” she asked, wondering at his brightly shining eyes, his worn but strikingly handsome face, his steadily beating heart. He was so incredibly alive, she almost couldn’t believe it herself.

  “You,” he replied simply. “You did it.”

  “It worked?” she said, unbelieving. He’s a miracle. My miracle.

  “You bet it did,” he smiled. “Like I said, I couldn’t leave you.”

  “Never,” she said.

  “Never,” he echoed.

  “Swear it,” she said.

  He took her hands in his, pressed his forehead to hers. “I will never leave you. I give you my oath, because you are my oath. You are the one thing I would swear upon.”

  Their fingers laced together, and Nat felt the warmth flow between them, until she could no longer feel the edge of her own heart, the place where she left off and Wes began. We are one thing again, as we were always meant to be.

  Nat stood on her tiptoes, and Wes bent forward, but before their lips could meet, an explosion rocked the boat.

  Wes grabbed Nat by the arm, steadying the two of them against the rocking deck.

  “Boss!” yelled Shakes. “We’ve got incoming!”

  “Bazooka,” Roark shouted back. “Zedric’s got himself a motherfreezin’ bazooka launcher.”

  Zedric fired again. Another missile flew, blowing a second hole in their boat.

  Nat ducked. Wes dropped behind her. The deck splintered beneath their feet, and water began to spray up through the hull. So much for escape.

  “We’ll cut through the city,” said Wes, pulling him and Nat back up. “Take over a tank and get it through the mountains to the other port. Find another boat there.”

  “Right on.” Shakes nodded, his arm slung over Liannan’s shoulders. “Come on, this way.”

  But before they could move, Zedric scrambled over the bow and flung himself back on the boat, bent on revenge. “How do you like this now, iceholes!”

  He aimed his weapon right at Farouk and pulled the trigger. The bazooka recoiled as he fired. Time slowed as the muzzle exploded in fire—

  And as Nat and Wes and the crew watched, half of Farouk’s body disappeared in front of their eyes.

  One minute his legs were there. The next, gone. Farouk’s life with them.

  “NO!” yelled Wes as the youngest member of his crew fell dead.

  Wes tackled Zedric, bringing both them tumbling to the ground. Wes kicked the bazooka away, but Zedric managed to free himself.

  It was Nat who blocked his escape, stepping directly into his path. Zedric launched a fist at her jaw but the blow never landed. It met the butt of Shakes’s fist first. He caught Zedric’s hand and twisted his wrist. Nat had never seen Shakes so angry.

  “This is for Farouk,” Shakes said, his voice hoarse and his eyes shining with tears. “And Liannan.”

  “Then give this to them,” said
Zedric with a smile, showing Shakes the wicked blade he held in his other hand. Shakes tried to pull away, but Zedric held on—and laughed as he carved an ugly wound in Shakes’s side.

  “Stop it!” Nat screamed.

  Shakes shuddered and doubled over in pain, but before Zedric could strike again, Liannan was already there.

  She raised her hands and a force stronger than wind picked up the knife and sent it flying.

  Zedric fell to the floor, and before he could move, Wes had already restrained him and cuffed him to the rail next to his brother.

  The rest of the crew stood in silence, breathing heavily after the fistfight, trying to get their bearings and solemnly taking in all that remained of Farouk. He was one of them. He was theirs to mourn, and theirs to bury.

  And he was so young, Nat thought. Too young.

  “Farouk,” said Brendon, his face streaked with tears. “We can’t leave him here with them.”

  Liannan tended to Shakes’s wounds, chanting in some language Nat could not understand. Shakes ignored his own injuries, letting his own tears fall instead for the loss of Farouk and the end of one of their own.

  “We have to,” said Roark. “He would have been the first to say it. ‘Get your freezing asses out of here,’ he’d say.” He smiled at the memory of their friend.

  “He’s right,” Shakes said. “That’s just what he’d tell us to do.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Wes said. “It’s just . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Nat nodded, even though she had no desire to leave Farouk, either. Just as she would not have left Wes. Not next to their enemies, next to his murderers, to freeze in the cold without a proper burial. But they had no choice but to do so.

  Wes knelt next to Farouk’s broken body and gently closed Farouk’s eyelids. Liannan whispered a word of prayer and nodded to the others. Wes and Nat took the lead, Liannan followed, helping Shakes, and the remaining members of the team jumped off the boat and followed them into the burning city.

  Even after everything she had seen, Nat was still stunned by the devastation wreaked by the RSA upon the temple city so quickly.

  All around them was chaos.

  There was no law and no mercy. Only violence for the sake of violence, and destruction for the sake of destruction. The few remaining drones and soldiers who hadn’t peeled away with Avo’s troop were firing on fleeing prisoners, herding them into corners and alleyways before executing them all.

  The RSA hadn’t returned to take back the White Temple; they had come to destroy it. To show the marked prisoners what happened when they attempted revolt, attempted escape. The whole city was a killing floor.

  Wes took the lead and Nat covered the back, Liannan and Shakes trying to keep up with Shakes’s bad leg, while Roark and Brendon yelled at any prisoner they could find to join them.

  “Pick up the pace back there,” Wes yelled. “Come on!”

  “But we can’t leave them here; we have to do something!” yelled Brendon, helping a young boy to his feet. The mark on the boy’s chest was evident, even at a distance.

  “Nat! Behind you!” Wes shouted as he took out a drone that fired on them, from where it hovered in the air above the next intersection. It exploded in front of them, sending flaming debris skittering their way.

  Nat turned back to find a group of soldiers rushing at them from all sides.

  She raised her hands and, with one swift gesture up, sent every weapon within sight flying to the sky, ripping them out from soldiers’ hands, breaking fingers and tearing muscle.

  This is for Farouk.

  Cries echoed through the snowy air.

  This is for Faix.

  The strength of her attack lifted some of the men off their feet.

  This is for Drakon Mainas.

  A few clutched bloody hands, searching in the snow for lost fingers.

  For the hole in Shakes’s belly.

  She was just getting started.

  For the fear in Liannan’s throat.

  Leather ripped as knives flew from sheaths.

  And for Wes.

  The sound of crunching metal filled the air.

  This, and everything, is for Wes.

  It was a sick, awful, mechanical sound, but Nat thought it sounded wonderful. It was the sound of their weapons made useless by her power and her rage. She was the rydder after all, wasn’t she? The girl who tamed the drakon.

  Fear made the soldiers tremble. As their weapons sunk into the snow, bent and folded, they retreated, one step, then another, exchanging confused glances before they ran the other way.

  “Follow me! Hurry,” she said to another group of prisoners huddled in a corner.

  “Over here,” signaled Wes, leading the way, already across the street. His face was streaked with grime from the gunpowder all around.

  “Wait, wait,” said Liannan. Shakes was limping and leaning on her in order to walk. She slung an arm around his torso and propped him up.

  “You’ll be okay,” Nat said to Shakes. You have to be. We can’t lose you, too.

  Shakes nodded. His leg and torso were bandaged with Liannan’s white silk. The blood seeped through the fabric, but he tried not to look pained. He kept his head up.

  “He’ll make it,” said Liannan, her face fierce with determination. “I’ve got him; let’s go.”

  “I’m okay.” Shakes was breathing heavily as he slumped against her.

  They ran across the intersection, as the bombs continued to drop from the sky, and the screams of the dying echoed through the broken city, accompanied by the constant staccato of gunfire.

  Nat hung back, making sure all the prisoners had crossed, looking over her shoulder in case anyone ran after them. This was her crew as much as Wes’s. She would keep them safe. She had to.

  Sure enough, the soldiers had regrouped, and now they were carrying broken pieces of glass and twisted pieces of steel as their weapons, ready to attack again. Nat turned to them, her eyes filled with fury. She was sick of fighting but she would fight to the last.

  Don’t these iceholes ever learn?

  6

  “WHERE’S NAT?” WES YELLED AS ROARK and Brendon crossed the intersection with a number of marked prisoners.

  Roark shook his head while Brendon gaped at Wes. “We thought she was with you!”

  Wes cursed and kept his eye out for her as he fired a few rounds at their attackers. But there was still no sign of Nat. Shakes and Liannan brought up the rear, and the whole group stumbled into the alleyway. “Where’s Nat?” he demanded again.

  This time, Wes didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he fought his way back to the open intersection.

  There she was.

  Nat was surrounded by soldiers on all sides. They were hurling anything they could find through the snowy air at her. She was ducking and weaving, pushing them away with only the force of her mind. A rock crashed upon her magic, shattering to pieces just as a second hunk of concrete hit the same invisible barrier. It bounced off, but a third was able to pierce through her shield, nearly striking her head. Another exploded in midair, the debris hitting everyone, the soldiers, Nat. She’s growing weaker, Wes realized, agitated at the distance between them and trying to close in faster. A concrete block shattered in the place where she had been standing just a moment earlier.

  “Nat!” he cried, pushing his way toward her, but he could barely see her from the back of the crowd. The soldiers pressed forward, forming a tighter circle around her, hurling cracked bricks and the broken fragments of signs, shards of glass, sections of steel beams, and fractured window frames.

  “I’ve got this!” Nat cried, when she saw Wes shoving and kicking everyone who stood between them, slowly but surely coming her way.

  “No chance,” he shouted back at her. Not on your life or mine. He knew she wanted him to run. He
knew she only wanted all of them to be safe. But Wes could never feel safe if she was in danger.

  She was his heart, and it didn’t beat without her.

  A rock struck her in the face, and a second one hit her chest. More blood, more bruises. She staggered back, lost her footing. They lobbed a broken window at her, jagged glass hanging half out of the frame, and Wes pitched forward, putting his body between hers and the glass, absorbing the blow as it struck him. Nat closed her eyes, summoning her strength. In a flash of light, she propelled the pieces of wreckage hurtling back toward the soldiers, sending the men running, ducking for cover, leaving them alone for now.

  She had bought them a brief reprieve.

  “Motherfreezer,” Wes said, groaning from the cuts on his back from the broken glass. The streets were eerily quiet.

  “Are you okay?” asked Nat, helping him stand.

  He winced. “I’ll live. You?”

  She nodded. She was all right. He exhaled in relief that he hadn’t been too late.

  “Where’s the team?” she asked.

  “Up ahead. I told Shakes to get out of the city and follow the trail in the mountains,” he said, but even he knew it was a long shot. The RSA was sure to capture them first. Then he grimaced as a shooting pain erupted from the side of his head, and a voice whispered through the chaos.

  Let me in. The lady in white. In his head. Again.

  She visited him in his hour of death, and now she’d come back for him. He let her in once, and now he couldn’t keep her out. For some reason, the thought filled him with a particular dread.

  “Wes? What’s wrong?” Nat looked worried.

  “Nothing.” Wes shook his head.

  Foolish boy. Remain still, said the lady in white. The one who had stolen Eliza. The one who had spoken to him in the darkness. Was she the reason he was still alive now? But hadn’t it been Nat who had brought him back from the deep dark? To whom did he owe his life? Nat, it had to be Nat. Only Nat. If only he could be sure.

  “Wes?” Nat shook his arm.

  Let me in.

  Wes stumbled back from Nat.

  Why? he said to the lady. What do you want with me?