“How many died?” he whispers.
Anxiety swirls around us, laced in every breath I take. Rayce and Arlo wait for an answer, suspended in place, and Suki frowns, unwilling to give them the answer I can already tell is coming by the defeated way she grips her hands. The news of death has a certain way of clinging to people. Only Oren looks on with a calm face.
“All of them,” she says.
Rayce swings around and kicks the wall not an inch away from where I’m standing. I stumble back from him, desperate to put distance between me and his fury. Where I come from, a man’s anger means my pain.
“All of them?” Rayce yells, his voice bouncing off the cavern walls.
Arlo runs a hand through his hair and looks down.
“By Yun,” Oren says. His pipe nearly slips from his mouth. For a religion with five gods, Delmarions seem to concern themselves mostly with only one. I could never understand why they honor their other gods with temples until Fern explained that the fifth onyx temple was destroyed out of defiance by one of the first emperors after his beloved wife passed away. Even to this day, nothing will grow in the place where it used to stand.
Rayce rubs his eyes and lets out a sigh, his scar appearing to twist like a snake from the shadows. After taking a few deep breaths through his nose, he looks up at his traveling companions, all sign of his anger gone.
“Arlo, gather the others for a meeting,” he says. “Oren, collect the maps and all the intel from the past month. Two failed operations in two days isn’t coincidence. We have to figure out what went wrong.”
“What about her?” Arlo asks, pulling all eyes to me.
“I’ll take care of her then meet you in my office,” Rayce says.
“Are you sure you don’t need assistance?”
Rayce shakes his head and touches the stunner hooked to his belt, turning his glowing face to me. “Don’t test me. Are we clear?”
I clench my jaw and nod.
“This way, then.”
His clipped instructions leave no room for debate, and my feet instinctively follow him. His fingers slide around my wrist, and I pull back like his body heat burned me.
“I can walk,” I snap.
“Fine,” he says. “But fair warning, the ground is uneven in parts here.”
He spins on his boot and heads down the nearest tunnel. The ground slants downward, leading us farther into the belly of the rebel camp. He keeps a quick pace, and his face remains blank, but I can feel his rage rolling off him. Suki’s declaration of the failed mission and the fact that not a single Zareeni guard made it back sticks to my skin like the grime of travel. I’ve been so trapped in the Garden that I forgot sometimes the outside world can be just as harsh. Every time Rayce’s eyes flicker my way, my feet stutter and I wrap my arms tighter around my middle.
The tunnel snakes and forks the farther down we go, and every step makes the ceiling sink heavier above me. The walls grow narrower, and the air begins to taste stale, like it’s been breathed in and out a hundred times before it reaches us. I catch the murmurings of daily life as we pass by openings in the rock, snippets of people walking together as if in the middle of the market instead of deep underground, but we pass by them so quickly it’s hard to keep them straight.
My head feels light, and my vision dims at the edges, from lack of either sleep or air. Small clusters of Zarenite suspended in jars all along the floor distort our shadows in their green light, allowing me to avoid the uneven dips in the floor.
Rayce stops in front of me and places his hand on the tunnel once more, lighting the sleeping Zarenite in the rocks and probably signaling to anyone up ahead that he’s on his way. The fact that I can’t decipher his intent makes me uneasy, and my mind wanders back to how intensely he questioned me back in the alley. I want to ask him what Zareen wants from me, but I won’t let him see signs of the fear swelling inside my gut. Fear breeds power, and power leads to abuse.
Park taught me that lesson. Just thinking his name brings up his soft brown eyes and infectious smile. His face used to come to me every time I fell asleep, but over the years I learned to push it away. He taught me about fear, about the broken words of men, before the Gardener ever laid a chubby finger on my flesh. His deceit was the first root to ever take hold in my heart and the one that strengthened long after I could no longer hear the sound of his silver-tongued words.
After a few more minutes of complete silence, a figure appears in the darkness up ahead, standing in front of a barred metal gate attached to the wall with rusty hinges. Hearing our footsteps, the man salutes as Rayce approaches then wrenches the door open. The old hinges squeak in protest.
Rayce scoots to the side and motions for me to go ahead.
“Get in,” he says.
My feet stay rooted as my heart hammers against my chest. Watching Fern butchered before my eyes, my desperate attempt to escape the Garden, running for my life from the Delmarion soldiers—all of it flashes in my mind. All my efforts can’t have been to wind back up in a cage. The opening looms dark like the mouth of a giant beast.
I lick my dry lips. “And if I don’t?”
His fingers wrap around my forearm—commanding but not so hard as to hurt. The cage opening grows larger.
“I don’t have time to argue with you,” he says, his voice edged with annoyance. “I have forty different families to inform that their loved ones won’t be returning home.”
“Why are you going to tell them? Why not one of your—”
“Because they gave their lives under my orders. Hearing it from the person responsible is the least their families deserve.”
He’s going to personally deliver that horrible message? He tilts his head toward the cage, rousing me from my shock, and I remember what I’m fighting for.
“Wait,” I say, grabbing his hand.
Our eyes meet, and I wonder if he can see the fear streaming through mine. Something soft sparkles just underneath the surface of his dark eyes.
“What are you going to do to me?” I ask, my voice sounding meek even to my own ears.
His grip loosens for a moment, and he presses his eyes closed like whatever he’s thinking might flash before them.
“Please,” I say, seizing this momentary break in his resolve. I remember him whispering that he didn’t have a choice about taking me as his prisoner back at the Garden, and I hope he might waver. “Please don’t throw me back in a cage.”
His gaze flickers to the robe he gave me, still hanging loosely around my middle. The shoulder of my Garden outfit glitters red in the strange light.
“I wish that I didn’t—” Whatever he wanted to say gets lodged in his throat.
He shakes his head, his next words sounding hollow and rehearsed. “You are a prisoner of Zareen and will remain here until we can conclude whether or not you’re a threat. Now please go in, or we’ll have to use force.”
Before I can speak again, he spins away from me, waiting for me to walk into the dark unknown. I take a step forward, my eyes snapping shut as the great beast of an entrance swallows me whole. I trip on the uneven ground and tumble forward, my hands colliding with the chilly rock. For a moment the terrifying silence overwhelms me, until the slow drip-drip of a water leak fills my ears.
Slowly, I open my eyes and see the cage they’ve chosen is a cavern many times taller than the hallways we’d been walking through before. Water drips from a hole about a hundred feet above, expanding a puddle near the door. A soft beam of blue light streams down from the opening, throwing enough light to make out a crudely cut wooden table in the middle of the room. A red quilt sits folded at the foot of what must pass for a bed carved into the stone wall. Overall, it’s a step up from what I had in the Garden, but a cage is a cage.
The door squeals shut behind me, and I spin around, my last second of freedom slamming with the metal as it locks.
Rayce turns to the man guarding my door. “Don’t speak to her unless she tells you she’s ready to talk to
me. Someone will relieve you later.”
The man nods his understanding.
“Thank you,” Rayce says, then turns to me. He presses himself against the metal bars, his face shrouded in darkness.
“You’ve got a day.” He takes the key from the door and slides it into his pocket. “Figure out a way to convince us you aren’t an assassin, and you have my word that we’ll let you go.”
Rage burns through me like fire, and I cut a glare at him. At least the Gardener knows what he is. Rayce pretends to want change, to oppose those that would lock us up, and yet, here he’s doing the exact same thing.
“I don’t have anything to tell you,” I say. “Whether you keep me in here for a day or the rest of my life, I can’t give you what you want.”
He takes a step back, completely swallowed in darkness. The slightest glow of his tattoos swirls from the black depths like a beautiful trap set for moths.
“Remember, Rose, your cooperation is what will get you out of this,” he says before the tapping of his boots on stone signifies his retreat.
And once again, I’m all alone in the dark, and the hole in my cage teases me with a world I can never have.
Chapter Eleven
The light fades from the hole in the sky, growing weaker with each passing minute. A deep darkness rolls into my prison like a fog. If I’d known while running through the great open field above that it would be the last time the sunlight might touch my face, I’d have appreciated it more.
Now the chill of the base has buried itself within me, slipping through my eyes and mouth to freeze me from the inside. A flower can’t grow when every breath is visible.
Rayce’s parting words echo in my mind like a drum. How can I convince him I’m not an assassin and that I know nothing about whatever treaty the Gardener and the emperor were trying to make? They’re approaching this situation like the Gardener viewed us as people instead of pets. The only thing I have is my secret. It’s what Fern whispered before we were ripped from each other. But they can’t have that. The Gardener has always been right about one thing: if anyone finds out who I am, I’ll never be safe.
Even though Fern confirmed my past was part of the treaty between the Gardener and Delmar, I can’t let them know that. So what can I trade for my freedom?
I know what the Gardener would want in return—to have his show sanctioned and a premium spot in the middle of Imperial City, but that seems like common knowledge. I throw a pebble into the puddle, hoping the ripples might reveal something I’m not seeing, but it holds no answers. If Fern were here, she’d know exactly what to do. What else do I know? How can I convince them?
I bite my lip, searching through any scrap of information I overheard, but the cries of my sisters begin building over my thoughts. They must be so scared now… First Fern’s death and then my disappearance. Do they think I was killed in the fire? Did Calla and Lily see my attempted escape? If they did, I hope they know I’m coming for them. Nothing can keep me from freeing them all, not the rock surrounding me or a thousand of those stunners pointed in my direction.
Calla’s and Lily’s faces swirl in the darkness, so close I could reach out and touch their pale cheeks.
A sharp whistle echoes through the air, slicing through the illusion.
Before I can determine the source, Fern’s shriek rises up with the pitch, two warring entities that fill my head. My breath catches as the picture in front of me changes. The twins dissipate like smoke parting, and ice shoots down my back as a familiar laugh rolls through the room. The smell of his breath—like rotten meat—surrounds me, ripping the air from my lungs. The Gardener appears in the darkness, his long open robe turning to smoke at the edges, and his mouth splits into a cracked smile.
My hands tremble as I try to scoot backward, but I can’t stop staring into his dark, soulless eyes. The sound of Fern’s screams plays behind us. His clothing and skin burst into flame, and he continues to laugh, clenching his fists like he’s gained power from the fire.
He reaches out a burning hand and wraps it around my neck. A scream pours out of my lips as my hair catches on fire, but it’s sucked up by the darkness. He lifts me by the neck until I’m eye level with his face, my flesh bubbling underneath his fingers.
“You are mine again, lovlee,” he says, his words dousing me in an icy chill. “You will always be mine.”
I twist away from him, stumbling backward. My back slams into stone, and bright green light bursts from behind me, slashing through his flaming body, banishing him back into the darkness. I blink against the light and freeze. I watch as it races up the wall, swirling around the round room as it rushes to meet the top in a thousand tiny rivers. And I realize as I’m standing there with my mouth hanging open that the whistling stopped.
“That is the wonderful thing about our base—even when you are lost in the dark, you can always find light in the stone.”
Oren’s words echo in my mind. It’s almost like he was trying to prepare me for this moment.
I step away from the wall, and the light vanishes as fast as it appeared, leaving me alone in the emptiness.
It’s so dark I question if the green glow was actually real. I reach out my trembling palm, bracing myself for the feel of the cool stone.
A loud squeal echoes through the chamber as the metal-bar door swings open, and I pull my hand back before it touches the wall. I scuttle back into my bed.
“Why’s it so dark in here?” asks a female voice not nearly as far away as I’d like. “Hang on, there’s a trick to this.”
I clench my teeth as a click like stone hitting stone sounds out, and I wonder what type of weapon could produce it. The sound reminds me of when I was new in the Garden and Shears would circle my cart at night, slowly opening and closing his scissors. The tick, tick, tick still makes my stomach roll.
“Here we go,” the female voice says. As she finishes speaking, the walls burst to life, light crawling up the cavern.
I blink against the brightness, forcing my eyes to adjust. But instead of light reflecting back from some sort of blade like I feared, I see a girl crouched in the corner. She holds a hand over her forehead to shield her eyes and touches a glowing green stone with her other hand.
She scans the room until our gazes meet, and I blink back my surprise at noting she can’t be much older than I am. Her soft brown eyes resemble a doll’s, round and hooded, and hold a rare joy among all the jagged rocks surrounding us. Though her skin is the color of the white sand on the beaches of the Lao Lin Ocean back home, her long, bushy light brown hair and pointed jawline suggest she isn’t exactly Delmarion. As she heads toward me, she carries her lithe frame with the jaunty steps of someone who hasn’t seen a lot of fighting.
“Stay back!” I sink farther into my bed.
“There you are,” she says, letting out a little chuckle. “It was too dark to see you from the door, and you were so quiet I was beginning to wonder whether you’d found a way to escape or hurt yourself.”
She runs her hands through her pile of curly hair, pulling it off her face. So she’s even more out of place in Delmar than I am. Varshans are rare in Delmar since the emperor shut down the border, but a Varshan and Delmarion getting along well enough to have children is almost unheard of.
“You should try keeping the Zarenite active so you don’t have to sit in the dark,” she says. “The trick is to keep the stones touching.” She motions to a few glowing stones pressed up against the wall, where she was just squatting. “That way you don’t have to sit against the wall if you want light. I can give you a few extras if you want.”
She takes a step toward me, and I scoot back, the coolness of the stone leaking through my borrowed robe.
The girl frowns, tucking her outstretched hand into the long sleeve of her crisp green tunic. “Sorry,” she says. “Didn’t mean to frighten you. I just brought you some food.”
Instead of trying for me again, she leans down and picks up a small plate of bread, cheese
, steaming rice, and a slice of some sort of meat and sets it on the rickety table in the middle of the room, her curls bouncing with every move. The toe of her boot catches on the uneven flooring. So she must be new to this particular room. I’m not sure why, but that puts me a little at ease.
“I’m Marin, by the way.” She looks up from the plate she just set down and gives me a toothy smile that reminds me of someone, though I can’t place whom. “In case you need anything else.”
I continue to stare at her the way I always stared at Shears, somewhere between distrust and disgust. When I don’t move or say anything, the grin slips from her face and she tucks both of her hands into her sleeves. I fight to keep my eyes on her instead of the food.
My stomach rolls with hunger. I haven’t eaten anything since Rayce and the others split up their rations for me.
“Well, I guess I’ll leave you to it.”
She spins around, putting her back to me as she walks to the door. She clearly hasn’t had this position long enough to know better. All I’d need to do is rush her and I’d be out. I’m willing to bet my years in the Garden have made me quick, and if I’ve got momentum, she wouldn’t stand chance against me. My gaze falls on the stunner contraption holstered to her hip, and I think better of the reckless plan. It isn’t like I could find my way out of the base undetected anyway.
She pauses, almost at the door.
“Are the rumors going around the base really true?” she asks, turning back toward me. She wrings her hands together, and her voice softens. “Are you really from the Garden?”
I tilt my head up slightly, rebuffing her sympathy, but keep my mouth shut. Her brow furrows, obviously distraught by my silence. Something about the hurt expression on her face reminds me of Juniper every time one of the lackeys would stomp on her scrap of bread before she could get to it.
My dry lips crack as I croak out a single word. “Yes.”
The sound of my voice slides across the room like a draft, sending ripples in the chilly air.
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