Traitors

by Bella Forrest

  Chapter Twelve

  The Shunter didn’t make any other stops. Whether it was because nobody had called the Shunter down to collect them, or Gianne really had stopped the elderly from leaving early and forgotten to alter the previous programming, I couldn’t be sure. The latter sounded more plausible to me, given her current mental instability—she definitely seemed determined to become a tyrant.

  We reached a neighborhood I recognized. I could see the strip of parkland that bridged the gap between the street of beautiful mansions and the commercial main street, with its stores, bars, and blood banks. The Shunter set down a short distance from the cab obelisk, coming to a halt with an alarming rattle of metal and machinery. A second later, the doors opened, releasing us out into the street.

  Ronad and I took off down the road at a sprint, hurtling for the Idrax house.

  “How late are we?” I wheezed. It had been ages since I’d really run across an open stretch of land, and I’d never felt more unfit in all my life. Secretly, I put it down to the effects of so much space-flight, though I had no idea if that was the culprit or not.

  Ronad made a face. “We’ve got a buffer of five minutes, if we’re lucky!”

  As if to punctuate his point, the moment we darted through the silver archway at the bottom of the Idraxes’ garden, a shadow moved across us, and an engine thrummed overhead. We looked up in unison to see a ship descending into the driveway behind the house. We picked up speed, barreling toward the back door with every ounce of energy we had left.

  I wrenched the door open and flung myself inside, with Ronad bringing up the rear, flicking off the latch and locking it before Jareth or Kaido, or whoever it was, appeared through the front door. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as I dragged myself to one of the island stools and sat down, forcing my lungs to breathe steadily. Ronad padded over to the sink and poured me a large glass of water before moving over to the fruit stash, where he set about making a platter.

  I guzzled down the water like I’d been wandering the desert for days, wiping the sweat off my forehead with part of my cloak. Fear shivered through my veins—we were still wearing the cloak and the coat! I shuffled mine off as quickly as I could, gesturing wildly at Ronad. He looked down and yanked his coat off, hurrying over to grab my cloak. He’d just shoved both items into a cupboard when I heard the front door open.

  Jareth walked into the kitchen a moment later. He appeared to be in a somber mood, his brow furrowed in thought. His eyes narrowed at the sight of us.

  “What have you two been up to?” he asked coldly.

  I looked at Ronad, who answered for us both. “We just watched the executions and came to get something to eat.”

  “You’re all sweaty and breathless—what have you been doing in here?” He pulled a disgusted face that made my skin crawl and my cheeks redden.

  “I did some exercise. Running up and down the stairs, that kind of thing. I was going stir-crazy in our room,” I said, covering my embarrassment.

  Jareth sniffed the air like a wolf scenting prey. “No, that’s not it.”

  He glanced down at my feet, and my gaze followed. There, plastered to the bottom of my shoes, faint traces of it dusted across the kitchen floor, was a layer of ash and dirt. The same clung to the bottom of Ronad’s boots. My head shot up to meet the fierce stare of Jareth Idrax, our eyes locking in anger and fear. Ronad rushed to my side, letting the knife he was holding clatter to the workbench beside me, putting himself between Jareth and me.

  “YOU WENT OUTSIDE?!” Jareth roared. “Do you have any idea what kind of danger you have put us all in? You were told, time and time again, that if you set foot outside this house, you may as well be signing our death warrants!” He looked solely at Ronad the entire time he was speaking.

  “Jareth, if you’d just let us—”

  “Let you what, Ronad? Let you continue to destroy my family, from the inside out?” he snapped, his eyes burning with rage. “This pathetic creature doesn’t know any better, but YOU! You knew exactly what risk you were taking today!”

  Without warning, Jareth grasped Ronad by the back of the neck and shoved him hard against the kitchen island, knocking the air out of him as he slammed against the solid marble surface. As Ronad struggled to get his breath back, Jareth held his head down with one hand, searching his pockets with the other, presumably looking for anything we might have taken. Stepping back empty-handed, he moved toward me, but Ronad stood in his way.

  “You’re not touching her, Jareth,” he hissed.

  “I want to see what you ungrateful guttersnipes have stolen from me!”

  “That’s rich, coming from you,” Ronad returned, seething. I flashed him a warning look, and he instantly backed down. The last thing we needed was him knowing we’d been in his lab. “Look, she doesn’t have anything of yours. The only thing we took from the house was this,” he said, striding over to the cupboard where he’d thrown the coat and cloak. He emerged, brandishing the pay device, though he hadn’t brought out the black box.

  Jareth took the pay device and checked the amount, his cheeks reddening with fury. “You dare to steal money from me?”

  “A few credits for two tickets, that’s all. We could have run away with all of that, and then where would you be?” Ronad challenged. “We came back, Jareth, because we’re not idiots. We were careful, and we stayed hidden.”

  “You must think I am the idiot,” Jareth said, sneering and turning to me. “Riley, take off your clothes. Ronad, you do the same. I want to see what else you’re hiding.”

  I looked from Ronad to Jareth, feeling my cheeks burn with embarrassment again. “I’m not going to do that, Jareth.” I could feel the small chunk of opaleine in my pocket that Cambien had given to me and knew how it would look to Jareth. He’d call me a thief, and I couldn’t allow him to confiscate it.

  Jareth’s eyes narrowed. “Either you do it willingly, or I will do it for you.”

  “I am not your slave, or your pet, to order around as you please!” I spat back.

  He looked amused, taking a step closer to me. Ronad tried to intervene, but Jareth shoved him roughly to the side. “Remove your clothes, now!”

  I lunged for the knife that Ronad had dropped, and tossed it skillfully from hand to hand, doing tricks I’d learned in training. Jareth froze. “If you touch me, I will throw this. You don’t want to find out just how good my aim is.”

  “I’d have it out of your hands before you could even release it,” Jareth challenged.

  “You know, I wasn’t just standing around in Northern Vysanthe, doing nothing,” I said, my tone dripping with menace. “I guess I’m fortunate that Queen Brisha doesn’t have the same prejudices you have. I’ve trained with coldblood soldiers, and I’ve got news for you… I’m one of the best.” He didn’t need to know that it was only in the field of knife-throwing.

  He turned to Ronad. “Throw me whatever you’ve got hidden under there,” he demanded, gesturing at the cupboard.

  Reluctantly, Ronad reached in for the cloak and threw both items at Jareth, who caught them deftly. He lay them out on the island, checking the pockets, keeping one eye on me and my knife as he searched. Before long, he found the black box device, his brow furrowing with annoyance as he retrieved it.

  “Tell me you weren’t out there trying to contact your precious Queen Brisha? Tell me you aren’t that stupid?” he growled.

  I smiled sweetly. “Actually, we were contacting Navan. We wanted to make sure he and Bashrik were still alive.” Now that I’d found my courage, it was showing no sign of leaving. Jareth Idrax would never scare me again. Well, not as long as I had a knife in my hand.

  To my surprise, the news seemed to calm Jareth down a little bit. “Thank Rask for that. There is a brain cell between the pair of you!”

  “Wait, you don’t mind?” Ronad asked, incredulous.

  “As long as you didn’t take any unnecessary risks and weren’t spilling secrets,” Jareth replied with a heav
y sigh. “My only concern is word finding its way back to Queen Gianne that someone has been contacting Brisha’s side. If she finds out it has anything to do with me, she’ll have my head covered in sap before you can say ‘for the South!’” A weariness washed over him, making him look older than his years.

  Ronad glanced at him as though he were a stranger. “I told you, we were careful.”

  Jareth nodded. “I hope you were careful enough. What was the verdict?”

  “Navan and Bashrik have agreed to sneak back over to rejoin Queen Gianne’s side, as soon as they’re able,” I said, the white lie tripping easily off my tongue. I hated saying the words, wishing they weren’t true.

  Jareth’s entire face seemed to crumple with relief as he took a seat on one of the island stools, his shoulders slumped. “I hope their return will make some difference,” he mumbled, almost to himself. “I do what I can for my Lorela, but she seems to be failing regardless. I can’t bring the light back to her eyes. She calls for her missing boys every day, and I just want to give them back to her, so she can be at peace.”

  I’d never seen Jareth Idrax so open and vulnerable, looking like a scared old man at the end of his tether. By the looks of him, he wasn’t angry anymore. He was just exhausted. The two most important women in his life were floundering, losing their minds, and there was little he could do for either of them. Had it been anyone else, I might have felt bad about the lie I’d just told, but a weary face didn’t erase the bad things he’d done.

  “Do you really think it’ll change anything?” Ronad asked.

  Jareth looked up at him. “I’m willing to try anything. I only hope Navan and Bashrik can get here without Queen Gianne noticing.”

  I realized he had the same doubts we did, as to whether Gianne would pardon Navan, or simply kill him on sight. If her right-hand man was dubious, now I was downright petrified for Navan’s safety. I glanced at Ronad and saw my expression mirrored on his face. Navan was entering a risky game, with no assurance of winning. His immunity had been taken out of the equation.

  “I must go to my wife,” Jareth murmured, heading for the kitchen exit. He turned on the threshold. “In the wake of what you have done today, I will be inviting Sarrask to stay at the house. He can bring his work here and keep an eye on you. I will not have a repeat offense.”

  “We understand,” Ronad replied coldly.

  “Oh, and if I find out you’re telling me lies, and Navan and Bashrik don’t come home soon, I will let Queen Gianne deal with the pair of you in any way she sees fit,” he declared, his words sending a chill up my spine.

  What exactly did he mean by “soon”? If only Navan came back, would he take that as an acceptable alternative? It was all too vague, and I needed answers. I was about to ask him to elaborate, when he turned his gaze on me.

  “And if you ever threaten me with a knife, or any other implement, again, I will make you wish Navan had never brought you to this planet. Moreover, I will make him watch whatever fitting punishment I have in mind,” he hissed. A malicious smile spread across his lips. “Have you ever seen a creature flayed alive?”

  I gulped.

  “Pray you never do.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Two weeks passed in the blink of an eye, but there was still no sign of Navan. Jareth’s warning weighed heavily on my shoulders. Every time we saw each other on the staircase or happened to be in the same room, I could tell he was growing impatient.

  Hell, I was getting impatient. Since Brisha had given Navan direct permission to rescue me, I’d expected him to arrive a few days after we spoke, but the knock on the door never came. Now, I was in a constant state of worry, pacing the hallways of the Idrax house, fearing not only what Jareth might do, but what might have happened to Navan, too. The only thing that brought me any comfort was the flash of my climpet, pulsing steadily.

  Then there was Ronad to worry about. If Navan did turn up, and we made it back to the North, I knew there would be some explaining to do, where our former-coldblood friend was concerned. Maybe Brisha would find him interesting. Maybe she would find him disgusting. Or maybe she wouldn’t care. There was no way of knowing with her.

  Moreover, Jareth had made good on his threat to bring in a constant babysitter, in the form of Sarrask. We’d overstepped the line of Jareth’s trust, and in doing so we eliminated our freedom. Sarrask wasn’t exactly watching us, per se, the way Pandora had, but he had the uncanny ability to be everywhere at once, wandering around with a book in his hands, or inspecting a rock on the go, or sitting in the living room watching the video screen, or working away at the kitchen counter. Every room I wanted to be in, he was already there. I had no idea how he did it, but he always seemed to be one step ahead, guessing where I’d be before I’d even decided.

  It was more inconvenient than anything else, made all the more frustrating by the fact that I was desperate to get down to the basement again. I wanted to sneak back through the passageway to Jareth’s alchemy lab, in the hopes of stealing back the black box device so I could figure out where the hell Navan was. Regardless of the time of day, or where I’d last spotted Sarrask, he would always be just around the corner when I turned.

  Kaido hadn’t been as friendly toward me after discovering he’d been duped. Ronad had taken the blame for the deceit, but I could tell it would take some effort to rebuild the bond that had been developing between us. The only sign of him thawing a bit was him asking me to participate in another of his experiments two days ago. He said he’d come and get me when the time was right, but that day hadn’t arrived yet. Even so, I was determined to repair the broken trust between us.

  He no longer sat with us during executions, since Sarrask had taken his place. By all accounts, Jareth had switched the title of primary caregiver to Sarrask, so he could be exempt from the weekly proceedings.

  Ronad wasn’t faring very well either, with being confined in the Idrax house, under Sarrask’s constant scrutiny. If I’d thought he hated Kaido, that resentment was nothing compared to the ongoing feud between him and our new security guard. Sarrask continued to wear the bracelet that had once belonged to Naya, and Ronad continued to snap at him for it. From time to time, I wanted to bump their heads together, to make them see that they both missed the same person—they shared common ground, and a common loss. What should have bound them together had, instead, separated them.

  In fact, I was just about ready to scream in exasperation, sick of seeing the same people and listening to the same quarrels, when a visitor came to the Idrax house. Seraphina had come for Lorela, to see how her health was doing, but it was Seraphina’s health I worried about. She looked despondent and even thinner than she had at the convocation, her cheeks sunken. Her engagement to Aurelius was taking its toll on her.

  “How are you?” I asked, walking her up to Lorela’s room. It was a stupid question, but I couldn’t stop it coming out of my mouth.

  She smiled sadly. “I’ve been better.”

  The hope had gone from her almost-red eyes, and I wanted so badly to offer her good news. As much as it pained me to think about it, I wanted to tell her that I’d asked Navan to marry her. I wanted to give her a glimmer of hope, even though the video feed had cut out before I’d had the chance to explain it all to him. Then again, if I did tell her that little white lie, I knew it might hurt more to have those hopes dashed if Navan didn’t get here in time, or he refused to go through with it.

  “Why don’t you just run away from it all?” I took hold of Seraphina’s thin arm and pulled her into a nearby doorway. “You can head for the border, or take a ship and get the hell out of here.”

  Seraphina shook her head. “I can’t leave Vysanthe during such turbulent times. If I only had myself to worry about, perhaps I would, but I can’t leave the children. My students barely understand what’s going on, and they rely on me for answers,” she explained solemnly. “If a bomb hit the elementary school and I wasn’t there to trigger the emergency shelters beca
use I’d run away, I could never forgive myself.”

  “Surely, someone else would do that for you,” I insisted.

  “It is my duty to ensure the education of our future generations. I want them to be better educated than all those who have come before, so we never end up in this situation again,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “I have come to accept my fate, in the hopes that one of my students will change the future, so this kind of thing—war, and arranged marriages, and all the terrible things that our homeland holds on to as a matter of perceived right—is never permitted to happen again.”

  There was something magnetic in the way Seraphina spoke; it was impossible to look away from her. She was fiercely intelligent and had more integrity in her little finger than either of the queens currently blowing each other to smithereens. I had no doubt that, if some young coldblood had her as their teacher, they could very well end up ruling the country, and be far better at it than any who had come before.

  “I’m just sorry I can’t do more,” I murmured, dropping my gaze. If I’d just told Navan earlier, then I might have been able to change things.

  She rested her hand on my shoulder. “You’ve done all you can, Riley. It will be an unpleasant journey, but I will survive.”

  I put my arms around her, pulling her into a friendly hug. For a moment, I thought she was just going to stand there, leaving me feeling like an idiot, but then she let her arms copy the motion, squeezing me tightly.

  “I’m sorry this is happening to you,” I whispered.

  As she pulled away, she looked into my eyes. “If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.” She sighed. “Now, I’d better go and see Lorela before my time is up and I have to head back into the city.”

  I let her leave, wishing I had the courage to tell her the truth. I felt terrible, having her look at me with such understanding, when I was the one who’d sealed her fate. Trying to shuffle off the guilty feelings, I turned around and made my way back downstairs, determined to reach the basement. I had to find out where Navan was. Maybe there was still time to fix this.