by Trisha Leigh
I shoot to my feet, almost leaping across the cell to his side by the bars. He spins around, putting the DVD player up between us as though he needs to defend himself, but relaxes when he sees my arms are at my sides.
“Deshi, I’m going to tell you a secret. It’s something that could hurt a lot of people, if you decide to tell Zakej and his father, but I need to find a way to show you what’s true. This is the only way I can think of, but… please. Think about what will happen if you betray my trust.”
He stares at me, and finally gives me a nod. It’s not a promise to keep the secret, only to think about the consequences, but it’s all I’m going to get.
I take a deep breath and raise up the light in my palm until the shadows fall away from both of our faces. “There’s a cabin that’s hidden from the Prime. I don’t know how—Griffin and Greer’s mother did it somehow when they were children. We have friends there. My dog is there, too.”
“Wolf.”
Tears fill my eyes before I can stop them and I nod, unable to speak for a moment. “Yes. Go meet him. Scratch him behind the ears. He likes that.” I clear my throat. “There’s a girl, too. A human girl. She… shed her veil, so she knows what’s happening to Earth.”
Deshi jerks, his eyes going wide. “How?”
I pause. This is the moment where I decide whether or not to trust him with everything. I’ve already given up the cabin. Maybe our last chance. But I have to give up more. Everything. He’s one of us.
If I believe it, maybe he will, too.
“We can unveil people. The four of us. It’s the only thing the Prime doesn’t know. It happened on accident at first, but together we have more control over it, and we unveiled Brittany—the girl at the cabin—on purpose. So that if we die tomorrow, people will at least have the chance to fight for themselves.”
A shell-shocked, wrecked expression crumbles Deshi’s features from the top down as I tell him how to find the cabin, until finally it drops his jaw open. “That’s what they wanted me to tell them. All those days before they finally believed me that controlling the elements is all I can do. But I didn’t know.”
It’s almost like he’s talking to himself, as though he’s forgotten I’m here. I reach out and take his hand; it’s cool against mine, and I tug on it a little to get his attention. “None of us knew, Deshi. I found out when I accidentally unveiled my Danbury mother. She Broke and the Others disposed of her. Lucas unveiled a girl at school and she went banana balls for a while. Pax… his family in Portland died, Deshi. None of us knew.”
“So, we hurt people.”
“No. I mean, we have hurt people, but this thing we can do… it also might save them. If the four of us pool our power, Cadi believed we’d gain strength the way the Elements do. We could unveil a lot people. Everyone, maybe. Let them decide what’s best.”
“No.” Deshi jerks his hand out of mine, stumbling back until he bumps into the marble bars. He turns, waves his hand, steps outside, and replaces the bars in one fluid movement. From outside, his eyes lock onto mine.
I see nothing but fear.
“People are better off this way. In a few months, the Others will move on. The veils or whatever they are will disintegrate and humans will be fine. There’s no need for us to do anything, and the planet doesn’t need help.” His words tremble, banging around in the air like blocks. Like someone had stacked his beliefs into something solid and I just scattered them all over the ground.
“Deshi. You’ve done a lot for me already. You healed my burns, you kept me from going insane in here. You let me say good-bye to Pax and Lucas.” I swallow the pain that flares with their names. “One more thing. Please. Go to the cabin. Meet Wolf. Talk to Brittany. If you still think letting us die in here is the right thing to do, fine.”
“How do we know the ‘right thing,’ Althea? No one has ever been honest with us. Not ever.”
The desperate ache in the words hit a familiar longing inside me, but now that I’ve seen Deshi’s film, I’m more convinced than ever that it’s not true. “Ko has. Our notes, they’re true. And he wrapped them in gifts that explain this world we don’t understand.”
His sleek eyebrows knit together. “What do you mean? Your locket and my DVD tell us something important?”
My throat feels raw, but I answer around my emotions, my voice scratchy and foreign. “Yes. Don’t you see? My locket tells us who we are and where we came from—Dissident, part Other. Lucas’s music, with the words that are more than the sum of their parts, that things are not always what they seem. Pax’s book—and the boys who are all affected by the faraway war--that it’s impossible to hide from the world, or from yourself.”
It’s all clear to me now, though I’m explaining it badly and Deshi hasn’t read the beautiful words in Lucas’s little booklet or felt the sorrow and discomfort threaded through A Separate Peace.
“And It’s A Wonderful Life?” He gives me a small smile, as though it’s a test.
“It’s your truth, Desh,” I say, using Pax’s nickname for him on purpose. “What do you think it is?”
He stares at me for a long time, but there’s no inkling as to his thoughts. Then he turns and disappears into the tunnel.
After a minute I let the warmth in my hand go out, plunging my dungeon cage back into darkness. It’s ironic that Deshi doesn’t want to analyze his message wrapped around Ko’s note. I think his message is that although life may not turn out the way you dreamed it would, it’s still right and good. That even though Deshi did not expect to be a Dissident, or to be asked to fight the captors he’s come to care for, he is built to do so. It is right and good.
Chapter 8.
There’s no way I can sleep. It’s longer than I expect before someone comes—long enough that I’m thirsty again and have been forced to mess up my nice non smelly room—and when a face does finally appear, I’m even more surprised to see Zakej.
I figured they would send the Goblert to get me; a half-breed is the only being lowly enough to ferry me back and forth, or something like that.
“Get over here.”
My legs don’t want to support me, my feet don’t want to go anywhere near him. I can’t figure out what point there would be in making a scene, though, so I follow directions. He waves a hand, displacing the bars the same way Deshi did, and twists his fingers in my hair, which is down because I was in the process of redoing my ponytail.
He jerks my head back, and a whimper escapes before I can find a way to stop it. “Spare me the girlish simpering, Althea.”
Zakej pins my arms behind me in a cruel pinch, and my heart sinks when I feel the slippery Spritan gloves cover my hands and wrists. They block our powers. Will they staunch the bracelets’ ability to help us travel, as well?
“Just in case the three of you get any wild ideas.” He spins me around and grins, and the sight of his gleeful face makes my knees sag with fear. I topple into his chest for a moment, but before I can heat my body up enough to burn him, Zakej pushes me an arm’s length away. “Nice try.”
My heart stops when he leans in close, but with my arms pinned behind my back there isn’t much I can do. With a cheek brushing mine, he inhales deeply. When he pulls back slowly, his eyes lingering on my mouth, vomit crawls up my throat until I gag.
It doesn’t stop him from tightening his grip in my hair, forcing my face closer to his until our mouths are a breath from touching. At the last moment he bites my bottom lip, hard. I scream, tasting a combination of my blood and his saliva, and gag again until puke dribbles down my chin and drips onto my shirt.
Zakej only grins. “I don’t break the rules, Althea. No fooling around with the hosts. And for all of your fine qualities”—his eyes roam over my body, and the hungry look in them makes me believe he can see through my clothes—“you aren’t good enough for me. Plus, you stink. Let’s go.”
Tears fill my already swollen eyes and relief makes it hard to walk. He’s not going to touch me. I’d rather he just ki
ll me.
I lick my lip, trying to clean up the blood, but it’s still gushing. It’s swollen, too. Add that to the layers of dirt caking me, the weeks without bathing, and the scar on my face, and I can’t imagine anyone less tempting.
We don’t talk at all during the walk through the underground tunnels. Zakej shoves me ahead of him, yanking my shoulders painfully when I stumble, and eventually we step into the expansive lighted cavern that Lucas, Pax, and I invaded the night Deshi betrayed us. Except the staircase is gone, along with all of the cages that dotted each landing. It hits me again that Cadi’s dead, but there isn’t enough room inside me to grieve for her. There’s too much fear.
If the bracelets don’t work, if a miracle doesn’t come through in the form of Deshi, we’re going to die tonight.
Zakej walks me through the room with the tables filled with cards and poker chips. The benches are empty of Wardens, lending an eerie feeling to the space. The sight of playing cards reminds me of Pax’s inane story about Wild Bill Hickok and his hand of aces and eights—the dead man’s hand.
That’s what the three of us are holding tonight, and I don’t see how it’s going to be any luckier for us than it was for Wild Bill.
At the back of the game room, Zakej shoves me through two thick wooden doors. On the other side of them is an amphitheater space exactly like the torture chamber in the hive—except this is real. It looks like the place they tortured Ko for information about the four of us after they found out about the Elements’ affairs.
The benches that rise against all four sides of the room are filled with Others—Wardens, white-clad Refreshers, and more whose jobs and duties I’ve never learned. The Prime sits in the raised center seat at the front of the room with Kendaja twitching behind him.
The Elements are nowhere to be seen, and Deshi isn’t present, either. But in the middle of the room, tied to marble chairs with their hands stuffed into gloves and bound behind them, are Lucas and Pax. When Zakej marches me around to the third chair, between the two of them, their eyes darken in unison at the sight of my face.
So it is as bad as I imagined.
The Prime’s son shoves me into the seat, then secures my hands behind it. He goes to take his place at his father’s left hand, settling in with a faint smile. No one speaks for what seems like an hour. Even though it’s probably more like a minute, the utter silence in the room makes me want to scream.
It’s odd to be impatient at one’s own sentencing, but that’s how I feel. We’ve been waiting for weeks for the Prime to return, for him to pass his judgment and order our deaths, and now that it’s finally here I don’t want to wait. I try to concentrate on how we’re going to communicate when to travel, or whether it will work through the gloves, or if we’ll be able to stay together since we can’t touch one another. We probably won’t.
But if the bracelets work it’s our best chance. Even if we’re separated, we have a place to meet now and we all can read the maps well enough to figure out how to get back to the cabin. I’m waiting for one of the boys to give some kind of signal that it’s time to go or for a perfect moment to arise.
For some reason, I’m curious to know what the Prime will say.
He ends the torturous quiet and my curiosity. “We meet again, abominations.”
It’s as though he’s waiting for us to say something, but none of us do.
“I am so pleased you decided to join us here at the Core. We’ve never had human guests before—even half-humans such as yourselves.”
“Half is not a whole, not good enough, not whole enough like me. But not special. Not special enough to live, not like Kenda.” She quiets into a pout when her father shoots her a look, crossing her arms across her chest like a child.
They’re all dressed the same today, in black with red accents. The Prime and his son, their blond hair glinting, black eyes shining and deadly, are both clad in black pants and button-up shirts, with pressed jackets completing the ensemble. Red rings their waists and the cuffs of their sleeves, and from where I sit the thick black bands that hug their throats seem to throb in time with their heartbeats. Kendaja’s wearing what looks like the same knee-length black dress she wore the night they captured us, the long hair that hangs halfway down her back brushed out and glinting under the bright lights. Her red lipstick is smudged on the right side, the side she licks more than the other, and a glossy red belt wraps her tiny waist.
Maybe they have special outfits for murdering people.
The thought strikes me as funny and a giggle escapes. It’s followed by the realization that I haven’t been this close to completely losing my mind since the night Mrs. Morgan went berserk in the kitchen and I knocked her head against the door. The memory sobers me.
“There’s no need to draw this out. We’ve determined from studying your counterpart that there is no scientific purpose for keeping the three of you alive. Your parents handle the elemental control of the planet, and will continue to do so until they produce true heirs. Any last words before my daughter dispatches you?”
“Dispatch means kiss, kiss, I’m going to kiss you last, Autumn, the apples are so sweet, they’re my favorite I love them, love him, love you, it’s going to taste so good. Your life tastes like love and—”
“Enough!” The Prime smacks his hand on the railing in front of them, finally stopping his daughter’s rant the moment before I start sobbing. “Stop talking about it. Do it in whatever order you wish, Kenda, just get it done.”
She sticks her tongue out at her father, then licks her lips as she descends the steps toward us. The scents of pine and winter, apples and smoke, collide with my scent of jasmine. The evidence of our fear infuses the air, and the uncontrollable heat inside me tries to push through my hands. The gloves force the heat back into me, and hopelessness rips a cry from my throat. Maybe the bracelets will be enough for us to travel, but if they’re not…
I try to kick Kendaja as she tiptoes toward Lucas, sucking on a finger and grinning around the drool. She’s out of range of my foot, and as she leans in toward Lucas, he turns his head to me and mouths now.
In the next second, three things take place. One: I turn and give the message to Pax.
Two: I concentrate on Danbury with all my might, trying to push my power through my wrist and into the bracelet.
Three: Nothing happens.
Chapter 9.
Lucas groans, and after I look to my left it’s impossible to tear my eyes away.
Kendaja straddles his lap, her dress riding high on her creamy white legs, and rests her arms loosely on his shoulders, thin fingers toying with the curls at the nape of his neck. A scream builds inside me, and with it the desire to knock her sideways, but I can’t do the second so I don’t do the first, either.
Instead I stare, wishing I could light fires with my eyes instead of just my skin.
“So pretty handsome nice you are, Water, and smells okay too, but not like Air, no, not like him at all, not so nice. Still I’ll kiss you, you’ll like it, I’m good, it feels nice…” She leans closer, her lips an inch from Lucas’s.
“So nice,” Kendaja whispers.
My anger turns to terror in an instant, my gaze riveted to her cherry-red lips inching closer and closer to Lucas’s. He presses his lips into a tight line and tries to jerk to the side, but her arms clamp down like a vise, holding him in place.
A sob spills from my throat. “No, please. Don’t touch him, please, stop.”
The sound of doors banging open silences my teary begging.
“Wait.” A familiar voice halts Kendaja’s lips, although they’re touching Lucas and he’s holding perfectly still. The saliva from her mouth cuts his top lip open, the crack slicing deeper with each passing second.
“What is the meaning of this?” At the Prime’s question, Kendaja sits back. She doesn’t move from Lucas’s lap and continues to run her fingers through his hair, down his body, but she’s careful not to touch skin and doesn’t harm him further…
for now. Blood coats his mouth and chin like the beard my Portland father likes to grow.
Deshi strides past the three of us without looking, approaching the Prime and Zakej on their bench. Kendaja twists around, still sitting on Lucas but no longer touching him, and the heat slowly bleeds out of me.
Their voices are low but the room isn’t built to keep secrets. Words bounce off the walls and high ceiling, hitting my ears louder than they were uttered.
“I’m going to ask you one more time. What is the meaning of this?” the Prime demands.
Zakej is surprisingly silent, watching Deshi through wide eyes. It almost appears as though he’s worried about our fourth, as though perhaps in the course of bringing Deshi around to their way of thinking, the two of them have actually become friends.
“I don’t think you should kill them.” Deshi’s voice is steadier than mine would be, addressing the Prime Other.
It also occurs to me that when he’s talking to me about the Others he uses the term we, but now it’s you, a clear separation between himself and them. It sprouts a beam of hope inside me, but I stomp on it. The Prime probably doesn’t see Deshi as one of them any more than he sees the three of us that way. It doesn’t mean anything.
“And why not?” The Prime’s lazy question doesn’t fool me. He’s about to snap and probably sentence Deshi along with us.
“I’ve been thinking—”
“Not again,” Zakej says playfully.
I swear Deshi blushes, leaving me more confused than ever about what’s going on between them, and where it might leave the three of us.
“Where have you been, anyway?” The Prime narrows his eyes at our fourth, who looks away. The question burns a painful fire in my stomach, and not knowing where this is going leaves me feeling helpless.
“Talking to the Elements. Like you asked me to.” The statement shoots curiosity past my discomfort and fear. “And seeing Apa made me think, what if one of them tries it again? Suicide? Or what if we’re the only four Elemental offspring you’re going to get this generation?” He stops talking, waiting for the implications of his questions to sink in.