Traitor Born

by Amy A. Bartol

  I touch my moniker, and my hoverdiscs turn off. My hair whips past my face as I fall toward the ballroom floor. I reengage the hoverdiscs just inches from the glass tiles. Lifting my fusionmag, I aim at the dark-winged god above me, shooting him out of the air. When he hits the ballroom floor, he doesn’t move.

  A horde of Death Gods on this level does battle with a few of Valdi’s security personnel. Bodies litter the ground all around me. From the pocket of my leather costume, I extract the rose-colored goggles Crystal gave me and set them on the bridge of my nose. Lifting my right arm, I twist the rose-shaped emblem on the bracer. Red powder sprays out in a sprawling crimson cloud that billows like a shifting sandstorm. The dust swirls, blinding the Death Gods and everyone else in its path. Blood-red tears—the hallmark of the Goddess of War—weep from my victims’ eyes.

  I stride through my hunched-over enemies, blowing holes in their heads. When I reach the far end of the ballroom, a Death God, standing by the wall of glass, holds up a grenade. Crying tears of blood, he pushes the detonator down with his thumb. Rapid flashes of light pulse from it, warning of impending destruction.

  First yellow. I engage my hoverdiscs and skate toward him.

  Then orange. From somewhere above me in the gallery, Hawthorne calls my name.

  Then red. I plow into the Death God and hug him to me, knocking us both through the window and out into the night sky. Jagged shards of glass scatter around us like a thousand stars, cutting us both. He lets go of the grenade, which falls from his fingers. Silently, I brace myself, counting the seconds to detonation. And then—boom.

  Fire blows out in every direction. The wind from the explosion push us upward. The Death God clings to me, screaming. As he hugs me, I clutch the fabric covering his chest, holding him like a shield from the impact of the grenade. His body blocks the shrapnel and keeps the flames from engulfing me. Metal riddles his back, but I remain mostly unscathed. His grip loosens, and I let go of him. He falls from me into the black cloud, disappearing from my sight.

  I begin to fall as well. I try to gain control of the hoverdiscs on the soles of my feet, only to realize that one has been ripped from my boot. The other one can’t keep me aloft on its own. I lose altitude, slowly at first, but as I fall into the choking black cloud of smoke, I gain speed. I can’t see anything except for the lights below me, growing closer by the second. I dial up the power of the hoverdisc, which slows me down some, but it won’t matter when I hit the ground at this velocity. I’m going too fast.

  Bracing myself, I shut my eyes.

  I’d forgotten about the lake, and the shock of hitting the water is overwhelming. My entire body feels as if it will break apart. Water fills my lungs.

  I can’t breathe! I’m unable to tell which way is up in the darkness.

  On the verge of blacking out, I feel someone tug a fistful of my hair. An arm encircles my waist. I’m listless. Water gushes into my nostrils. It hardly registers when I break the plane of the surface. “Roselle,” Hawthorne growls in my ear, “breathe!”

  Brutally strong arms around my waist. Something presses beneath my sternum, thrusting upward several times. Water leaves my lungs, flowing from my nose and mouth. I cough and gasp. Hawthorne’s arms shift. One crosses my chest, and Hawthorne drags us through the water with sidestrokes and scissors kicks.

  We reach the shore. Hawthorne wades with me to a low wall. He yanks my limp body from the lake. Sitting on the stone edge, me on his lap, he tries to catch his breath.

  Roses hang in my face. He snatches them from my hair and tosses them away. My goggles are gone—washed away at the bottom of the lake. Touching my cheek, Hawthorne pats it lightly. “Don’t die,” he whispers hoarsely.

  I open my eyes. Water drips from Hawthorne’s chin onto my chest. He lost his helmet at some point. The thorns in my hair dig painfully into my back. My hand struggles to reach his. I touch his skin, and my silver holographic sword entwines with his gold one before my fingers slip limply from him. He lifts me in his arms and carries me over the wall and into the night.

  Chapter 9

  Something Left Behind

  The inside of Hawthorne’s chrome airship has that new-craft smell.

  Quietly shivering, I feel my lips tremble. Water drips from my hair, sliding down my shoulders and arms. Droplets of red blood from scratches and cuts from broken glass and thorns stain the creamy leather of the copilot’s seat. Hawthorne leans into the cockpit, fawning over me. He grasps the straps of the seat, securing them over my shoulders. The thorns in my hair dig into my skin. I wince.

  Hawthorne scowls. “Who put these vines in your hair? It’s completely asinine!” He tugs my bristly braids from behind my back, laying my hair over the seat back. I don’t answer him because the violence of my chattering teeth won’t allow it. “I left you in the hands of a bunch of sadists.”

  He opens a compartment next to me. Inside is a small aerosol device containing CR-40, a topical polymer. He shakes the can and coats the skin of my left hand with the chemical. The silver sword of my moniker dims, and then goes dark.

  I reach up and touch his cheek, finding it almost hot compared to my icy fingers. He’s cut up, too. Bruises are forming on his jaw and chin, and under one eye. His bottom lip is swelling. Seared skin on his forearm is red and angry. His hand envelops mine for a moment, and the fierceness of his stare warms me. Then, he straightens and closes my door.

  Hawthorne comes around the airship, touches a fingerprint panel, and the pilot’s door lifts. He seats himself, and the door glides down, locking in place. The engines fire with serious growls that only erupt from a premium airship with power-upgrade modifications. He must have spent a fortune on it.

  As if reading my mind, Hawthorne mutters, “I didn’t buy this. It was a gift from my parents—or maybe not a ‘gift’—maybe a bribe.”

  He doesn’t bother to spray his own hand with the CR-40 but tosses it behind his seat. The golden glow of his holographic sword shines between us. Reaching over, Hawthorne touches a light on a holographic cockpit board. Heat radiates from a vent in front of me. I lean forward, extending my juddering fingertips to it. We lift off into the night sky. The windscreen in front of us modifies, illuminating the terrain, making it discernable as if everything is bathed in the first blush of morning light. He flies the airship away from the chaos of the social club. The heat warms me, and I stop shivering so hard.

  “A bribe?”

  Hawthorne’s expression turns brooding. “What do you do when the son you sent away at ten suddenly returns and holds your future in his hands?” he asks.

  “You’re loved, Hawthorne.”

  He gives me a side-eyed look. “They don’t love me.”

  “No . . . I do.”

  He turns to me. “I love you, too, Roselle, so maybe you can understand how I felt when I saw you throw yourself off a building, clutching a man who held an incendiary device. You could’ve vaporized before my eyes.”

  “They killed my father.” I can hardly say it without choking. Kennet didn’t love me. I know that. But now he never will. I lost my chance. My heart feels puncture, as if it’s being forced through the narrow space between my ribs. I didn’t know how much I was holding out hope that he’d one day love me, until this moment. “Someone had to stop those soldiers from killing everyone. I could, so I did.”

  “If you love me, like I love you, you won’t do anything like that again.”

  I look away. “I can’t promise you that. I’m secondborn—”

  “You think I care that you’re secondborn?” he snarls, and then clenches his teeth. “The only person I care about is you.”

  “I’m still a soldier. It’s my job to—”

  “You’re so much more than a soldier—just promise me you won’t do anything reckless like that again. Everything is about to change. The Rose Garden Society has an agenda, and you’re at the top of it. You know as well as I do what Salloway is planning. After tonight, it won’t just be Gabriel’s death
they call for—Salloway and his cronies will up their timeline.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Who do you think had your father killed tonight?” he asks with a note of cynicism that was never there when he was secondborn. “I would’ve thought it was the Rose Garden Society. Don’t get me wrong, they wanted Kennet dead. But Kennet wasn’t just executed, Roselle. He was tortured. Someone hated him enough to make it extremely painful. It wasn’t just political. It was personal.”

  “Mother,” I say. A lot of people had a motive to kill my father, but no one hated him like my mother did. Kennet would have inherited the title of The Virtue before I would. Dune and the Gates of Dawn want me to rule. I’m closer now that my father is dead, but the viciousness of Kennet’s murder is not their style. They would’ve simply put a fusion pulse in his head. Mother sent the Death Gods to brutalize my father. If they’d caught me, would they have tortured me as well?

  “Othala hasn’t been able to get to you at the Halo Palace, so she changed her line of attack,” Hawthorne says. “If she becomes The Virtue, she’d rule everything. Now that your father is dead, she’s one step closer to her goal. That’s bad for the Rose Gardeners. They need you to become the firstborn heir to The Sword before your mother has a chance to become The Virtue, or you’re as good as dead. If she eliminates all the other heirs to the title, then everyone bows down to Othala, and she saves her son.”

  “My mother would then become The Virtue, and Gabriel would become The Sword. I’d still be a threat to Gabriel, so they’d get rid of me. Then Gabriel will inherit the title of The Virtue when my mother dies.”

  Hawthorne’s expression is grim. “But Othala can’t save Gabriel. He’s the only one who can do that, but he won’t. No one needs to kill him; he’s doing that all by himself. He’s completely psychotic now that he’s mixing Rush with Five Hundred.”

  I cringe. A painful ache squeezes my heart. Separately, the drugs Hawthorne is talking about are dangerous. Together, they’re lethal. “Something can be done. Gabriel—”

  “Doesn’t care about anything except getting high and killing you.”

  In a broken whisper, I ask, “How are you still alive, Hawthorne?” The night I left him, he’d betrayed my brother, a death sentence in the Fate of Swords, especially if Gabriel is as sick as he says.

  “I don’t know,” Hawthorne admits. He sighs, as if he’s trying to sort it out. “Your family doesn’t know what we did the night you escaped. Everything was erased.”

  “Erased? How?”

  “The security logs were all compromised. Not one drone camera, security camera, satellite, or maginot recorded us. Not on the Sword Palace grounds, or in the streets of the city, or even near your apartment. Every file was corrupted—they’re all blank. Tracking in the city of Forge was wiped out—a total blackout. Gabriel and Othala suspect The Virtue is behind it.”

  My eyebrows pull together. The only explanation is that once the malware I uploaded into the maginot infiltrated the industrial systems, Reykin took over and covered our tracks. That must have been risky. He could’ve let Hawthorne burn for what he did that night. It would’ve been smarter where the Gates of Dawn are concerned. No one would suspect a breach. Maybe Reykin’s program is such a ghost that it doesn’t matter?

  “What are you thinking about?” Hawthorne asks.

  “I was wondering how that’s possible.”

  “I’ve wondered the same thing. At first I thought Gabriel was playing me, but then it became clear that he truly doesn’t know what happened that night.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him you slipped away. I followed you and the maginot, but you were able to escape to your apartment, where you were met by The Virtue and taken away.”

  I stare out the side window. “They still believe you’d murder me if given the chance?”

  “I don’t know—maybe. Things changed after that night. Gabriel has become more and more deranged. I’m his first lieutenant. I run the Heritage Council now, but we haven’t met in days because there’s no point—no information is coming from the Sword Palace. Gabriel doesn’t leave its walls—for his own protection—and no one’s allowed to see him.”

  “Is anyone getting him help?” I ask.

  “The only person who isn’t terrified of Gabriel is your mother, and I think she’s in denial. She’s like a lioness. I don’t believe the Rose Garden Society saw tonight’s attack coming. Salloway would never have put you in danger like that if he had.”

  Neither would Dune, I think. “Have you spoken to Clifton?”

  Hawthorne grunts. “You think Salloway talks to me?” The derision in his tone is telling. “He’d never let me near you if he could help it.”

  My brow wrinkles in confusion. “But you were at the party tonight. Surely Clifton would have made certain that you weren’t on the guest list if that were the case.”

  “I didn’t have an invitation. I snuck in tonight—came in through the roof. I had to try to see you.” He puts the airship on autopilot. Reaching up, he unclasps his chest armor and opens the side, exposing a gravitizer inside the breastplate. We employ these antigravity mechanisms in combat jumpsuits. They use a magnetic force to repel themselves from the molten core of the planet and slow the descent during airship jumps. That explains how Hawthorne survived the fall from the building and his plunge into the water to rescue me. “I was locating a quiet place in the social club where I could bring you to talk, and then I was going to find you when you walked by.”

  “I was following my father.” I realize that I might have been able to save Kennet if I hadn’t been distracted by Hawthorne.

  He reads my face. “I’m glad I stopped you. They might have killed you, too.”

  “Did you see Dune or Clifton during the mayhem in the ballroom?”

  “No. I was only watching you,” he replies. A grudging tone of admiration enters his voice. “You destroyed them all, Roselle. They didn’t even stand a chance. I could hardly take my eyes off you.”

  “Even when I temporarily blinded everyone?”

  “I was on the gallery level. Your red cloud didn’t make it up there to the end of the gallery. I watched you shoot every single target. Then you stopped my heart, throwing yourself on the grenade. After the glass blew in from the explosion, I saw you fall. I ran along the balcony and dove through a window after you.”

  “That was brave of you,” I murmur.

  “Brave.” Hawthorne laughs self-effacingly. “It was self-preservation, Roselle. I’m lost without you.” I reach my hand out to his. He takes it and holds it. “I’ve been to the Halo Palace a handful of times, hoping you were there, demanding they let me see you.”

  My eyes widen. “No one told me.”

  “I figured as much when your mentor informed me that I should move on with my life.”

  “Dune said that?” I shift in my seat. My side aches, making it hard to breathe. I can’t find a comfortable position.

  “Yeah. He said, ‘Secondborns don’t have the luxury of friends,’ as if I have no clue what it’s like to be secondborn. As if I don’t understand the dehumanization and subjugation, being treated like a piece of meat! Then he gave orders not to let me back in the Halo Palace without an invitation.”

  Anger swells in my heart. All this time, I’ve been worrying that Hawthorne was dead. Dune could’ve easily assuaged my fear, but that didn’t fit into his agenda.

  No longer surrounded by skyscrapers and the bright lights of the city, I wonder for the first time where Hawthorne is taking me. The night travels by. I don’t care where we go. I just want to keep flying and never look back. I wonder if there’s any place in the world to hide with Hawthorne. It’s too hard to be without him, every night lonesome and long.

  The aircraft slows and descends, passing over a tall wall that has a fusion-powered security dome. As we near the energy field, a hole develops, allowing Hawthorne’s airship to enter before it closes behind us. We circle a
sprawling estate centered amid pastoral grounds. The house itself is old and majestic, made of stone and glass with cathedral peaks. “You live here?” I ask.

  The airship sets down on a hoverpad adjacent to the formal entrance of the mansion. “It’s my family home in Virtues. This is Lenity; we’re just outside of Purity.” An illuminated path leads through a formal garden to the stone steps of the house.

  Lenity is the sister city of Purity, but I don’t see a city. I just see land and lakes in every direction. Hawthorne powers down the engines. My mouth hangs open a little in awe. “This is quite a change from the air-barracks. It must keep you busy.”

  “The secondborn staff runs the place. I have very little to do.” Opening his door, he climbs out, pulls his armor from his chest, and sets it aside on the ground. He closes his door and walks around to my side, unlatching my door and offering me his hand. I take it. As he pulls me up, I wince. My ribs feel cracked. My hand goes to my side. “Are you okay?” Hawthorne asks, concern etched in the lines on his face.

  “One of the Death Gods slammed me into the railing. I think I cracked a rib—hitting the water like a brick didn’t help.”

  “Can you walk?”

  I nod. “Yes. It just hurts.” I limp forward. My boots squish with water.

  “Hold on.” Hawthorne bends down and pulls my boots off, leaving them on the ground. The powerful muscles of his side look a little like shark gills. He straightens, and I get to see him in just a leather war skirt and sandals. My heart beats harder. My cheeks feel flushed. “Better?” he asks. I nod. He takes my arm gingerly, hugging me to his side with his arm around my waist for support.