by Bella James
Unthinkable.
She hesitated one last minute, thinking of the interrogations and executions of the morning. None of the men and women captured and questioned and ultimately killed had breathed a word of the rebel network, in part because as far as Julia could tell, most of them were harmless, people who couldn't fit into the system, who fell into it and lost themselves and eventually fell afoul of the Centurions or the army or the leadership itself.
The memories made her shudder. If only she had someone to talk to. And if only there were someone else, someone on her side, heading off to whatever journey with the ruler was beginning. She hated feeling so alone.
Worried, Julia went to change.
"YOU'VE GOT to get out more," Kaley said to Julia, reaching out to stroke her cheek. The woman's fingers felt like sandpaper. "You're very pale. John, you've made it clear to the poor girl the Centurion will answer to her, haven't you?" Just as fast, the older woman turned away from the Plutarch and back to Julia. "You have but to tell them and they'll accompany you anywhere. Your wedding isn't for several weeks. You should get away, get some summer sun."
"Madame Kaley," the ruler said coldly. "Please hold your tongue. My bride to be is not coming to any harm by staying in the capitol."
Kaley, undersecretary of finance, pulled back away from Julia, her face registering a distant hurt.
Her eyes, Julia noted, showed her pleasure at having brought negative attention to Julia. However much the entire exchange had been none of Julia's doing, the old bat faced woman had riled Julia's intended.
That was never good.
Sometimes he took it out on her, in private. Though they had yet to wed, and he hadn't yet touched her intimately in any way, he'd had her beaten for his amusement, tied her to the stocks and had her flogged. Nothing like Violet had endured, but her back had been a mass of bruises and small cuts the next day. He'd slapped her, punched her in the stomach until she couldn't breathe, and often forced her to kneel in attendance to him for hours while her legs ached beneath her.
Julia didn't know if it was because she wasn't Livy, or because he would treat any so-called mate and wife this way. It had been hardly any time at all since Livy had been taken by the rebels. Livy had been a friend when they were both in the Institute, but Julia had come to hate her a little for being where Julia longed to be – with the freedom fighters.
THE JOURNEY LASTED A FEW HOURS. They went by car, a luxury vehicle from the Before Times, long and black and sleek. It had been modified to run high along the ground, able to negotiate the rubbled roads where rebels had blown things up, able to elevate the Plutarch until he looked down on nearly everything they saw.
They passed through war-torn stretches of villages in the lands outside Arcadia. The closer to the capital city, the worse the fighting seemed to be. Large tracks of land were stripped of trees, roads disrupted, bridges bombed. The rebels were doing their job well and Julia schooled herself to look nothing but horrified at their nearness or bored with the jaded aspect of Aristocracy.
Within, her heart pounded for the nearness of the attacks. Her part to play would come soon enough. If the rebels could breech the city defenses, Julia would try to find a way to kill the Plutarch. Absolute power was a myth. He couldn't rule by himself, no matter how much his ego demanded it, but the cabinet answered most certainly to John Malvin.
As they passed through a stretch of beautiful Arcadian landscape, she saw another place a battle had been waged. There'd been a small village there, possibly one of the feeder farms that existed to bring goods to the city faster than they could be obtained from the other lands. Now the fish ponds were drained, the fish dead and stinking on the ground, the orchards burned, the livestock freed or slaughtered.
This wasn't the rebels’ touch. This was something else. Maybe the Centurion, presenting the picture of the rebels’ betrayals of the community?
She felt the Plutarch's hand on her arm. "You mustn't look if it upsets you, little one," he said solicitously, and she heard the cold snake hiss under his voice that gloried in the things he'd do to her when they were alone again. She shuddered, and let that be from the view, turning from it to look up into his eyes. She couldn't pretend he'd never hurt her, not to the Plutarch himself, but she could put on a show of delicate female sensibilities for the cabinet members.
"Is this the work of the rebels? It's so horrible," she said without waiting for an answer.
He smiled.
Julia felt a bone deep fear.
Her memory went back to the morning. The only man she thought might be truly a rebel had been tortured, stretched on a rack as if they were living in the barbaric Before Times, centuries earlier and inhumanly unkind. Sweat had poured off the man's brow. His body had trembled with strain and agony. Julia had watched, stoic inside because she could not break without endangering how many? But she'd allowed her outer shell to crack, crying to her intended to let the man live, to let him down, surely he knew nothing.
The Plutarch had rounded on her, shouting. "Knows nothing? He knows where the rebel camps are! He knows where the people who kill our own are hiding! He knows where to find those who betray us! You cannot be so stupid!"
For an instant Julia had thought she was dead. He had never exploded in front of any members of his cabinet before. To lose control like that, it would humiliate him. Later he might well say she'd taken her own life.
One hand to her bruised ribs, she continued the memory. Of the rebel who had resisted the questioning. Who had screamed only once when the Plutarch moved the wheel that stretched him, then given a bloody grin that spoke of lost sanity and ultimate triumph.
"Rot and damn you," he spit, bloody spittle hitting the Plutarch's face. "The time of the Chosen One is now. She will rise."
His eyes, not quite sane, found Julia's. She froze, anticipating in his delirium of pain he'd give her up. Instead, he'd given her a long look that seemed to emphasize the message Julia had received only hours later – Olivia Bane lives.
Before the ruler could react, the man bit down on something inside his mouth. Instantly he began to froth at the mouth, and before John Malvin could react, he was dead.
Safe, Julia had thought unwillingly.
The Plutarch raged then, hacking the body on the wheel, turning the wheel tighter and tighter until with a series of snaps and grisly sounds, it began to come apart, the skin stretching so tight over dislocated joints it began to split.
Julia, horrified, had looked at the cabinet members. Was this unusual? Should she react? Go to him?
It was the second in the cabinet who went to him, one hand out in caution. "It is not seemly you let the rebels affect you like this. Calm and address the people. Make certain everyone knows you are in control, now and always." His name was Wren, and he was older than the Plutarch, gray and yet still tall, strong, fit. When he said the ruler's name again, John Malvin came free of his rage and stood breathing hard.
For about thirty seconds. Then, in one of the scariest feats of will Julia had ever witnessed, he demanded a basin of water, a towel, a mirror, a new jacket, and within minutes, he was calm and collected, smooth and sane and in control. The rebel had been questioned. He had given them much good information the army and the Centurion would use to hunt down and wipe out the menace of the rebels who sought to destroy their way of life.
He said it over and over, just within the torture chamber, and Julia had stayed still as a mouse confronted by a cat, not moving or breathing until he had ordered his cabinet and his fiancée up with him to the village square where he had addressed the Aristocracy, the leadership, the rabble of villagers, Beta and Gamma, necessary to the existence of the true Arcadians but loathed.
Addressed them and told them all was well, all was as it should be.
Lied. And she had no idea how much of it they believed.
CHAPTER 6
T he Plutarch's entourage reached their destination midafternoon and though she'd never been there, Julia knew instantly w
here they were.
She just hadn't expected the Plutarch to subscribe to such superstition.
The tiny village of Delphine existed because of the Oracle, and the Oracle existed, throughout time, because one family had found a way to make hereditary blindness work for them. That was Julia's belief and she doubted very much anything she witnessed in the next few hours would change that.
Around the Oracle's temple, flowering trees still bloomed with pink and white flowers, even this far into summer. The grass was beautifully kept, green and velvet and short up to the edges of the temple, where it was allowed to bloom free. Tall waving Pampas grass, white plumed, swayed in the easy summer wind, mixed in with three-foot-tall pasture grass, green as emeralds. Overhead the sky was a flawless blue, as if even nature, without a gardener, conspired to make the place unearthly beautiful.
The Oracle's temple was built of native stone, towering two stories high, open in design so it seemed to draw the outside in, wide arched windows and skylights letting in sunlight and the occasional stained glass panel turning that light to jewel colors.
Attendants bowed to the Plutarch as he entered, fully aware he was coming. They wore simple clothes, white pants and tunics, butterflies embroidered on the lapels. Julia only allowed herself one glance at the insignia before she looked away, shaken.
The butterfly was the mark of the Chosen One.
Livy was chosen as the Plutarch's bride.
Surely the tales of the Chosen One who would lead the world from the Plutarch's despotic rule and into sunlight were apocryphal. Only fairy stories to reassure rebels in the deeps of the night. The war was meant to be fought, and fought by flesh and blood humans who would live and die, not by heroes from myths.
But memory twitched, from her frightening days in the Institute dorms, where she hadn't been meant to go. Julia had been caught in the unexpected sweep of 16 year olds and taken to Arcadia before the rebel plan was in effect.
That she'd bunked with Livy spoke of interference with the Plutarch's rule from inside the Plutarch's cabinet. That she knew.
What she hadn't known – expected, anticipated or noticed – was the birthmark on Livy's neck. The one that now surfaced in her memory.
Moving into the sunlit depths of the Oracle's temple, Julia stumbled, biting back a smile even as she pitched off balance. One of the attendants caught her, soft words and soft hands putting Julia back to rights.
"I’m all right, thank you, all right," Julia said, her hands briefly on the attendant's forearms as the slight dark girl steadied her.
Julia was at eye level with the insignia on the attendant's tunic. There, picked out in brown thread, was the butterfly, one edge of one wing missing.
Exactly like Livy's birthmark.
Julia allowed herself a smile. It would look like nothing but gratitude for the girl who had stopped her fall.
She followed the Plutarch and his entourage into the Oracle's chamber.
THE CHAMBER WAS HOT. On a summer's day in Arcadia, the Oracle burned fires inside her chambers. Hewn from natural rock, the innermost room of the Oracle's temple opened not to skylights but to the sky. Sunlight poured in through the roofless structure. Huge, arched windows reached skyward, higher than the roof surrounding the outer ring of temple. Stained glass panels in the arched windows lit the chamber in rich clear blues, purples and greens.
The center of the chamber was a dais, raised up stone steps to the plant filled surrounds of the long, low couch covered in shifting white chiffon and satin, silk and lace, velvet and wool, all white, all glittering in the light. Beside her couches burned bright fires, venting through the open roof, and keeping the temperature as hot as any ever recorded in the Void.
Julia stepped inside and was reminded of the summers in Pastoreum, the way the heat seemed to cling like too hot clothing, thick and wet and impossible to peel off. She shivered suddenly, aware she'd been cold for far too long.
The cabinet members stood deferentially. The Centurions marched determinedly, stamping their staves upon the ringing stone floors.
The supreme ruler, arrogant in his knowledge of his place, strode in, snapping his fingers for Julia to follow. She did, more curious than commanded.
The Oracle reclined on one of the couches, clad in layers of white, shifting clothes that floated around her like clouds. Her eyes were closed as they approached, pale white lashes gracing her petal pink cheeks. Her white hair crowned her. She might have been eighteen years old.
When she opened her eyes, she might have been one hundred years old.
Julia gasped. She'd heard of the Oracle's blind white eyes but seeing them, with their milk blue hue, was unnerving, more so when the girl turned toward her and said, "Welcome, Julia Bane."
The Plutarch snapped his head around, staring first at Julia as if confirming for himself who it was who followed in his wake, then back to the Oracle. "They call you infallible. First words from your lying lips are wrong."
"I am not wrong."
Her voice was tinged with the hallucinogenic mist that filtered from her braziers. The Oracle lived in dreams, her mind lost to reality. Her blind eyes saw inward, saw before and after but almost never the present.
Maybe Julia would marry. Maybe Livy's grandfather had a grandson somewhere. Maybe…
"Maybe nothing. You are who I named you."
The white blonde's voice was tinged with insanity. Julia needed the Oracle to focus on something else – anything but her before her secrets spilled out. There were ways to shield the mind, but she didn't know any of them. Putting up a block, could it be simple as imagining herself with Trevor, the two of them in the dorm room Julia had shared with Livy, alone because Livy and Simon were off training somewhere within the Institute?
Your secrets are safe with me. I have only moments to live as it is.
What? No! Julia almost said it aloud. At the last instant she managed to think it instead.
Do not be sad. I am not sad. I have lived in death and life for years. I will feel nothing. He will expect me to die in agony. I am not going to give – the ruler – there was something ironic about the way she said, or thought, that – the answers he needs. Steer clear of him. You will not be harmed. Do not reach to comfort –
She broke off abruptly as the Plutarch placed himself directly in front of her.
"I have brought you the flowers you requested." His voice sounded both as if he meant the Oracle to believe he only humored her, and as if he was angry to have to answer to nothing more than a slip of a girl.
She was so much older than anyone could ever fathom. The thought rang in Julia's mind, followed by one she almost got, almost missed, something confusing that said – what?
That where the Plutarch bred to be immortal, the belief being that his death in life was transcended by life in death, his spirit moving at the instant of the ruler's death into his already born child, a child sometimes already in his late teens, for the Oracle the reincarnation was true. She was ancient, far more than anyone knew, and she had not reincarnated but rather renewed.
"Throw the flowers on the fire," she told the Plutarch. "Do not hesitate. You must be habituated to the effects before they will work for you." Amusement tinged her voice.
Julia saw the ruler's hands tighten hard around the flowers. The blind seer was angering him. Almost without meaning to she thought at the Oracle, Are you certain?
And felt the corresponding laughter in her head.
He'll kill me. It matters not. I cannot die. The drug will mask the pain. He will order my head on a pike.
I do not think his people will manage it.
Impatiently, the Plutarch approached the dais, even as the Oracle stood, small, slight, white blond, blind.
"Your chosen one is alive, John Malvin."
Julia felt and saw the Plutarch recoil. He managed not to speak.
"She lives within the belly of the beast, burning at its core, a cold flame that will waken the Chosen One. Do not fear her absence, lit
tle man; you will be reunited soon."
Her head rocked back when he slapped her, a vicious thrust of the back of his hand. "Bitch. Tell me where she is."
The Oracle giggled. "She is near and she is far. Here and there. In your dreams. Look for her there. She will come to you. Or you to her. It doesn't matter. There will be blood. There will be fire. There will be pain. But your true bride will be returned you. You call her the Chosen One." She laughed, her hands fisting in the white fabrics. In her mind, Julia heard the thundering pulse of the Oracle.
"You call her the Chosen One. We call her the Chosen One! She lives and the beast turns its head toward Arcadia. She is coming.
"She will find you.
"Nothing you can do will stop it."
With a roar, the Plutarch surged onto the dais, grabbing the girl's head by her glaring white hair, yanking it back savagely to expose her throat. He plunged his blade into her throat, slashing in a jagged cut across it.
The Oracle fell back, red gore spraying out and turning the white chamber red. Her blood pulsed over the Plutarch's arms.
Her laughter sounded in Julia's mind.
Until we meet again.
"Tear off her head!" the ruler shouted, turning away from the girl before she even dropped. "Mount it on a pike. Leave no one confused what happens to anyone who crosses me."
She didn't, Julia thought, and heard the other girl's laughter again.
She followed her fiancé as he stormed to the waiting car. She didn't try to touch him, to comfort or minimalize what had happened. No one in the cabinet did, and so no one of them died.
When he reached the car, he bellowed back to those left behind them: "Find the new Oracle before the sun has set."
Those cabinet members left behind, those who weren't undersecretaries or heads of state, gathered together looking frightened. Their wide eyes shifted from one to the other. There was no precedent for this. No one knew how to find the next Oracle.