by Trisha Leigh
Pax nods. “Yeah, I know. So what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“We need to split up,” Lucas sighs. “Take the kids who are going to be most instrumental in getting the dymium compound made and push ahead so we have time to do it.”
It makes sense, but the kids aren’t going to like it. Not to mention it’s dangerous. None of them know the Wilds like Pax and me. If they’re behind and the Others catch up with them first, there’s no way to protect them.
“No,” Deshi says, his voice unwavering. “The four of us have to stay together.”
His eyes stare far away into the woods, and it occurs to me that he hasn’t said much at all since Pax and I returned. Maybe he did this afternoon, but I doubt it. Sadness clings to him like a smothering blanket. It could be simply the kids we found murdered this morning—he knew them better than any of us—but it seems like more than that.
We don’t decide anything, instead falling quiet when Leah sneaks over. Mark and Kerstin took the first watch. I take care of the fire, making sure it’s good to survive the night, then slip under the thin blanket between Lucas and Wolf. Lucas fell asleep already, reminding me how long a day it’s been. We started at the Harvest Site, but if it’s as far away as we believe, we lost some time between there and here.
Lucas wraps an arm around me in his sleep, tugging me close and burying his cold nose in my hair. It makes me smile. It’s as though he’s trying to shield me even when he’s unconscious.
In spite of the day’s length, I can’t sleep. Something’s bothering me, something more than the fact that we don’t have enough time to get all of these people to the Summer Celebration and figure out how to defeat the Others once we get there. We haven’t even figured out how they can be killed. Every time we’ve injured one to the point that he should have died—engulfed in flames, for instance—he only falls unconscious until he’s able to heal.
It occurs to me that perhaps Deshi might at least know the answer to that mystery. My eyes go to the dark lump of his body, and it startles me to glimpse his eyes wide open and staring back. After I get over the surprise, I smile. “Can’t sleep, either?”
He shakes his head slightly, not raising it off the ground. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but it looks like tears are shining in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I whisper, not wanting to disturb the boys or Leah.
Deshi seems to have more trust in me than he does in them. We proved something to each other during those long hours in my filthy, smelly cage in the Underground Core.
“It’s… this is a lot. I know it’s the right thing. I can feel it when I’m with you guys.”
He doesn’t keep going, even though it’s not a complete thought. If he feels confident in his decision to leave the Others and help us fight, there must be something that’s making it hard.
Or sad.
All at once the ease between him and Zakej, how they looked at each other, stares me in the face. The way Zakej stopped his father from lumping Deshi in with the rest of us, protecting him in his own way. They might act as brothers would, if Earth were normal. Or the way Lucas and I did last autumn, before our feelings deepened past affection and the simple desire to make each other smile.
I’ve never heard of such a thing, two boys falling in love, but there are a great many things in this universe that we’ve never heard of. Cadi told us that. It’s obvious that Deshi is hurting, and from my limited experience, nothing makes a person hurt like losing someone you care about. “Is it leaving them that’s hard? Were you really close friends?”
It’s hard to keep the disgust and doubt from my voice, but even if Deshi feels that it’s right to be with us, he’s a long way from being one of us. Pax, Lucas, and I spent weeks together, just the three of us. We’re bonded in a way that nothing but time can create, and I want Deshi to feel as though he’s on the path to getting there, too.
“I don’t know, Althea. I thought we were, you know? Kenda and Zak were nice to me; they treated me like a friend, or even a brother. But I know now that they lied. And lying, trying to make me believe my own mother hated me so much she wanted to die… none of that seems like the right way to treat a person you supposedly care about.” His quiet voice creeps across the darkness between us, seeping emotion into the thick grass.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, Deshi, it’s that you can’t help how you feel. You care about them, and there’s no point in feeling badly about it. Zakej and his family made you feel welcome, and they gave you the comfort of belonging when you had nowhere else to go. Even if they did it with ulterior motives, of course your feelings for them aren’t going to change overnight.” I pause, wondering if I should press on or let it drop. “And I don’t think they were faking everything, Desh. Zakej cares about you, too.”
His sharp intake of breath tells me I hit some kind of nerve, and the wet sniffle a moment later lances open my heart. It’s up to him to share, though, so I stay quiet. Lucas grunts softly in his sleep and I put a hand over his until his breathing grows steady again.
“Nothing happened between us. I mean, other than we spent a lot of time together. But I felt the potential of something more between us. I swear I did, Althea.”
My mind tugs at memories of the night by the fire, when Lucas told me he loved me for the first time. How he wanted to acknowledge the possibilities surrounding us as surely as the chilly South Dakota air. Invisible to the eye, but so tangible they couldn’t be denied.
“I believe you.”
Our conversation is cut short when an abnormally yellow bunny hops up and skids to a stop in front of my face, its sides heaving. Its dark purple gaze spills terror into me, and I sit up slowly, trying not to wake Lucas.
A moment later, Griffin stands in the night, panting as hard as the rabbit had been a moment before, his grape-colored eyes wide with fear.
Chapter 26.
Deshi springs to his feet behind Griffin, looking unsure whether he’s supposed to hit him or be happy to see him.
Which is funny, because that’s the way I feel about Griffin, and I know him.
“Oh, you’re alive. You’re okay.” The desire to hug him wins out over hitting him, and I fling myself into his rock-solid chest a moment later. He wouldn’t have left without Greer—Griffin’s presence confirms my friend survived this morning’s attack, too.
To my surprise he squeezes me back briefly before pushing me away, his arms a painful clamp around my biceps. “I need you to come with me.”
“Where are we going? Is Greer okay?” I hold my breath, pretty sure I know the answer but needing to hear him say it.
“She’s alive, but she needs you. They killed Nat, and she won’t listen to me. I’m afraid she’s going to do something crazy, get herself killed.”
“Why did you leave her alone to come here?” I squeak out. The news about Nat hits me harder than I expect. He was a Warden, an Other, but he helped us more than once. He kept our secret.
And Greer loved him.
“I drugged her, but she won’t be out long. Let’s go.”
“Okay, let me wake up Lucas, and—”
“No, don’t bring everyone. She doesn’t need all that commotion, okay?”
Lucas isn’t going to be happy if I leave without telling him, and neither will Pax or anyone else. “I’ll come. Of course I’ll come.”
“I’m coming, too.” Deshi steps around Griffin to my side. “I won’t get in the way, but I can’t let her go alone. None of us should ever be alone.”
My throat throbs with emotion and I reach out, taking his cool hand. His scent of freshly turned earth and wet minerals tingle in my nose. “Deshi’s coming, too. This is Deshi.”
Griffin’s mouth twists in what might be a smile but could as easily be a grimace. “Yeah, we’ve met.”
There’s no point in asking for an explanation for that, not when Greer’s alone and hurting. “Can we be back before they wake up?”
&nb
sp; “I can do you one better than that.” Griffin raises a hand, tossing what looks like a handful of black dirt into the night.
It hangs over our sleeping friends, suspended in the air like the dark eyes of watchful birds. Before I can form a proper question, Griffin spreads a portal, tearing open the air as easily as popping a soap bubble. On the other side it’s light, maybe mid-morning. He jerks his chin through the hole. “Go. They’ll sleep until I get back and take the dream dust down.”
“You have a disturbing amount of power,” I tell him, stepping through the portal and squinting in the sudden daylight.
Rolling green hills stretch as far as I can see. Deshi and Griffin step out behind me and the Sidhe drops the portal closed. “Where are we?”
“Ireland. It’s a country like America. Well, not as big.” Griffin starts walking, leaving Deshi and me scrambling to catch up with his long, steady stride.
“Why is it daytime here?” My constant patter of questions probably annoys Griffin, but I can’t stop. They’re rolling out without asking first. The day and nights are so different at the Harvest Site, not to mention the climate, that we figured it was far away.
This place is more familiar—the weather, the sunlight—but it’s obviously not too close to South Dakota, either. It’s hard to imagine how big Earth actually is sometimes, when I spent my life believing it was made up of only four Sanctioned Cities. My perception expanded to include the Wilds, then the abandoned cities, and now the location of the Summer Celebration, but every bit of knowledge asks me to believe more.
“I’m not in the mood for a science lesson, but this planet is huge, and it rotates on a magnetic axis. So different parts of the world are exposed to the sun at different times of day.” He tosses the quick-and-dirty explanation over his shoulder.
“Why didn’t they teach us about that in astronomy?” I ask, skeptical that the Others would remove any piece of understanding so significant.
“They want you to believe your world is small. If you knew how big it was, would you have so easily believed they can control it all?”
I fall silent and hustle beside Deshi, trying to take in the gorgeous scenery along the way. The day smells new and fresh, with dew still clinging to the grass and dampening my sneakers. After a mile or so a huge body of water appears on our left, and not long after that, a giant, broken house looms ahead of us. It perches on a rounded extension of land that pokes out into the water, but sits high enough that jumping from the cliff or any of the windows would probably kill a person.
Not caring whether Griffin keeps going, I stop and stare. Even though it’s another question, I can’t help but ask. “What is this place? Is that where we’re going?”
Deshi stops, too, staring with a look of awe that probably mirrors my own expression. We’ve never seen anything like this. It’s made of gray stone instead of the ordered tan bricks that make up all the houses in the Sanctioned Cities, and it towers at least four times as high. At least.
Griffin stops and turns, irritation tightening his face and displacing the worry lines that creased it earlier. “That’s a castle. It was built by the Celts hundreds of years ago.”
This entire place feels old somehow, as though the roots of the hills descend deep into the foundations of the earth, as though those hills have existed since before there were people to see them. The building—the castle—appears the same way. That even though it’s crumbling, it will stand for another three hundred years, staring out into the sea and waiting for the world that constructed it to return, to recall the glory of creating such beauty.
“This is where you and Greer—where the Sidhe—come from.” It’s not a guess. The timeless, heavy magic throbbing through the bedrock tickles the souls of my feet playfully, tugging me into its mercurial web. When it touches the elemental ability inside me it feels the way Griffin’s power did when it mingled with mine—like it drags roots that go on forever.
Griffin nods, then turns to go inside. This time we follow, stepping into the dank structure with more than a little trepidation. The smell of wet stone reminds me a little of Deshi. The roof is missing, and only portions of the outer walls remain, but there are still interior walls separating the space into rooms.
Griffin stops outside one, putting a hand out to halt Deshi and me. “Greer’s inside. Deshi and I will wait out here. Talk some sense into her, Althea. Remind her there are reasons to live even though Nat’s gone. You. Me.”
He chokes on the last word, the first time the Sidhe has revealed any sort of genuine emotion in front of me. That he loves his sister has always been a given to me. He stayed cooped up in Other captivity all these years because he refused to leave her. But to see the worry written so plainly on his face makes me care for him in a way that’s eluded me until now.
The simple fact that he isn’t taking this opportunity to lecture us on the superiority of their race betrays his desperation. Even if he and Greer aren’t part human, even if maybe they’re hard to love, they have the ability to love. In that moment, that he loves her is clear. And I love them both.
I nod, then take a deep breath and push my shoulders back, trying to prepare for what’s waiting for me on the other side of this wall.
What I find is Greer curled up on her side atop a mat of straw and blankets, her eyes open and staring. It’s scary to see them again the way they were after I trapped her in her mind, but it’s obvious from Griffin that being caged in their sinums has had no lasting mental effect. She smells as though she hasn’t bothered to bathe or change clothes in several days, a scent with which I’m unfortunately well acquainted.
Then again, she’s been lying in the cabin for months without a shower or change of clothes, and she hasn’t been away for more than a day. I kneel next to her head, but she doesn’t respond to my presence. Tears leak in a constant stream from the corners of her eyes, running in little rivers into her tarnished gold hair and the creases around her mouth. Her hands are clenched around a dirty sheet, pieces of straw stabbing into her fingers.
I stretch out in front of her on the cold, bare stones so I can see her face, feeling centuries of dampness seep through my thin T-shirt and into my bare legs. She looks through me, doesn’t flinch when I reach out and smooth back the hair stuck to her forehead. “Greer.” I swallow, trying to control my own emotions in the suffocating presence of her grief. “I’m so sorry about Nat.”
She doesn’t respond, but bites back a whimper at the sound of his name.
“Can you look at me?” She does, finally. I expect to see anger in her eyes, or blame for what happened, since we’re the ones who trapped her injured boyfriend in his mind all those weeks ago. And did the same to her and Griffin.
It kept them separated, and now they’ll never have the chance to be together again.
I don’t see anything in her expression besides a girl drowning in what she’s lost, and fear tingles through me like an electric pulse. I’d rather she be mad, throwing things or screaming at me to get out. This inability to even function isn’t right.
Or maybe it is. If Lucas and I found ourselves in this situation, if he were ripped from me and I never had the chance to say good-bye, to kiss him one more time or tell him I loved him, if I didn’t get the opportunity to at least try to save his life, would I be any better off than Greer?
The mere thought of it sends my heart racing in fear, sucks the moisture from my mouth. I put my hands over Greer’s and squeeze. I don’t push her, don’t say anything. For a long time we stare at each other and I try to just be there, to be ready when she wants to talk. I’m guessing Griffin hasn’t been so accommodating; he’s probably been trying to snap her out of it by reciting a list of reasons why she can’t give in to the grief this way.
Like I told Deshi earlier this evening, our feelings can’t be changed simply because we want them to, or someone else says they aren’t valid. If she needs more time to come to grips with the way things are, how they’ll be from now on, then that’s oka
y.
***
It works sooner than I expect. The sun climbs a little higher, burning off some of the moisture in the air. Deshi and Griffin’s voices penetrate the silence but their words remain far off and indistinguishable. Greer’s eyes focus, almost surprised to see me, then fill with fresh tears.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” It’s another hunch, but Griffin’s personality leans more toward bucking up and moving on, not rehashing the source of the pain.
After a moment she nods and licks the tears from her chapped lips. “It’s good to see you.”
The simple statement wets my own eyes. “I thought you would hate me.”
“I did. I blamed you. But it’s not your fault, Althea. You and the boys, you’re doing the best you can. It’s not Griffin’s fault for getting us out of the cabin and leaving Nat, either, although he took a beating from me when we first got here.” She sighs, and her gaze turns inward again. They come back, winding relief through me. “It’s the Others. They got Nat back, and they killed him for… for loving me. So if anyone’s to blame for his death, I am.”
“No, Greer. They are. And Nat, he would have given everything to be with you.”
“I remember you taking the wall down that trapped me all that time, and coming into my alcove to wake me up. Then Griffin was dragging me out of the bed, and Wardens burst in and grabbed Nat. He was awake, Althea. He was so scared, and he screamed my name over and over until they hit him and he passed out.” Greer’s crying again, deep sobs that sound as though they’re ripping her insides into shreds trying to claw their way free. They tatter my own heart until it struggles to beat under the weight of her anguish.
There’s nothing I can say that will ever make it better. Instead I sit up and pull her into my arms. She lays there, her body limp but her arms locked around my waist so tight I can barely breathe.
Her hot breath gasps against my arm, tears scalding my skin. “I’m going to hear him screaming my name for the rest of my life. Every time I close my eyes, I see his beautiful, terrified face, his eyes full of fear—for me. He’s the one who told Griffin to get me away.”