Two down. Three more.
Killian pulled out of the dive and shot toward the dark shadows cast by the plateaus. They raced low to the ground, almost low enough for Fenix to touch down and run. He stayed in the shade until his eyes were fully adjusted, slowing Fenix enough to let the others gain on him. He glanced over his shoulder, gauged the distance between each rider and himself, then, when he was sure their reaction time was stunted, guided Fenix straight up.
The instant before he crested the fin, he closed his eyes.
He felt the sun splash his face before he pulled Fenix into a back loop, swinging upside down over the hunters’ heads, then diving again. The riders, so intent on his movement, neglected to note the sun’s position. Two flew blindly on.
The last changed direction in time to avoid the sunlight and trailed him. But Killian had already loosed Fenix’s reins, letting the beast fly as fast as her wings would carry her. He crisscrossed through the last few plateaus, and by the time he locked on a straight shot to the Talons, he was alone.
The field of glittering black rocks that stretched on from there sent a trill down his back. But there was nothing for it. Trust your decisions, he told himself. Continue forward.
He landed at the two finger-like rocks—the Talons—and dismounted. The Strattons were waiting.
“Baron safe?” Killian asked.
George just nodded, his eyes flicking to his brother.
Harold marched toward Killian with poisonous-green swirling through his dull-brown eyes, and grabbed him by the collar, pulling his face close. “Who is Hunter?”
Killian grabbed Harold’s wrists and wrenched his hands off him, then slammed his palms against Harold’s chest. They both reeled back. “Don’t touch me like that again."
“Answer me,” Harold ordered, threatening Killian with a step forward but not touching him.
Killian’s ego bolstered. His quick reaction had subdued Harold’s impulse to fight. He took a settling breath and tamed his own fighting urge. He was safe for the moment.
“Who is Hunter?” Harold insisted.
Killian hated being spoken to like this. But he owed the man for keeping his word—for coming back for him. "He's the reason my mother is dead."
Chapter 14
Ariana glared at the failing light through her prison window as the artificial sun appeared to slip below the non-existent horizon. She crossed her arms to stop them from tapping on everything. Her foot picked up where her hands left off. It was as though her whole body was keeping time, marking each dragging second as it wasted away.
She stalked to the cot against the wall and threw herself down. It squealed under the sudden weight.
Two days.
No one had spoken to her in two days.
The fever of imposed solitude clawed at her brain. Her only company was the soundless footsteps of a guard she never saw and the wordless exchange of meals she hardly ate. She missed Tehya. She missed Ionia. Lawks, she just missed hearing the sound of voices.
Where the Helede were the Strattons? And what about Asrea? Wasn’t it her job to make Ariana talk?
She didn’t know what to make of Asrea. The girl was in charge of a prison. There was no way she was as sweet and innocent as she seemed. But when she’d pulled the shackles out at the docks, she’d slid one of the malignant bangles on her own wrist before latching the other to Ariana. It couldn’t have been protocol to allow a maximum security prisoner to keep one hand free as she was carted off to her cell. Though really, it wasn’t like Ariana had anywhere to run if she’d tried.
That didn't stop her from attempting to escape the cell. They'd given her the strange golden juice with every meal, and she had tried to use the liquid to free herself. But it didn't react to her the way water did, so she hadn't been able to try it on the lock. She needed water. If only her blue eyes hadn't given her away. Had they been grey when Asrea met her, perhaps the girl would not have given it a second thought. Perhaps she would have assumed Ariana was Aeriel instead of Mervais. Though her assumptions would have been wrong in either case.
Footsteps in the hallway. Something clattered on the ground.
She stilled.
Someone swore. The voice was soft, feminine, and so welcome Ariana could've cried, though she’d never admit it.
The door opened to reveal Asrea’s round, dark face. Something inherently playful radiated from her metallic-grey eyes, even though her mouth was set in a slight frown. Ariana couldn’t shake the feeling that, under different circumstances, Asrea could have been her friend.
It made her angry.
Asrea slipped in, closing the door soundlessly behind her. The frown she wore intensified.
“Something wrong?” Ariana asked in a monotone, disinclined to care about what she was asking. But conversation, even an exchange of meaningless pleasantries, was like water to her now.
"Dropped this," she said, holding up a metal cup that held more juice, no doubt.
But something tugged behind Ariana's sternum at the sight of it, and she felt a flare of hope. Could it be?
"Good thing there's a lid."
Ariana didn't respond for fear her excitement would give her away.
In her other hand, Asrea held a lantern. “I didn’t bring enough fireflies,” she said, setting the lantern and the cup on a small stone table beside Ariana's cot. She tapped the glass. “It’s going to get a little darker than I’d intended.”
“Anything’s an improvement,” Ariana noted. She’d had total darkness since sunset both nights. “Unless you brought it to interrogate me. In that case, you can take your light—and yourself—right back out that door.”
Asrea eyed her, thoughtful, unaffected. “You shouldn’t be in here,” she said, as if to herself. “It doesn’t seem right.”
“It’s not.”
“I know,” Asrea insisted.
Ariana cocked her head. “If you know then why aren’t you doing something about it?”
Asrea started to reply, but pinched her lips together and looked away. “How are you healing?” she asked, her casualness forced.
Ariana brushed her fingers over the scabbed stripes on her thighs. “Well enough."
Asrea took two steps to the window, forcing Ariana to endure more wretched silence as the girl's eyes followed something, someone walking perhaps, on the narrow road nestled between the prison and the view-obscuring building across from it. As the silence filled the room, Ariana felt the urge to pick up the cup. She leaned over, the cot creaking slightly, and reached for it.
“Ariana,” Asrea turned back around, startling Ariana away from the cup. Asrea's eyes lit with earnest determination. “I need you to tell me what you wouldn’t tell the Strattons.”
“No.”
“It will get you out of this cell.”
Ariana raised a brow at her. And to where? Execution? “No.”
“What can it hurt?” Asrea prodded.
“Me, if you don’t like what I tell you,” Ariana argued.
A soft ha! escaped Asrea's lips. “You’d rather stay in this cell meant for thieves and murderers than a real room where you can come and go as you please?”
“Of course not.” Ariana slid off the cot, struck with a sudden restlessness and the urge to avoid Asrea’s eyes. She dropped to her knees and made a show of investigating the lantern, though, really, she was determining the contents of the cup. Her heart leapt. It was water.
“They light the whole city, you know,” Asrea said.
Ariana frowned, confused, then realized the girl was speaking of the insects.
Asrea waved a hand toward the lantern. “Fireflies. Millions of them. They only live here, under the ground. They’re as bright as the surface of Helede is hot, and at night, when the surface cools, their flames dim.”
Ariana smothered her sudden intrigue and turned back to the fireflies, their flame-wings flickering as they fluttered about the lamp’s interior.
“They do this thing, when they hatch—w
hich is only every fifty years—that creates these massive trees…” Asrea’s eyes glazed over, dreamlike, as she spoke, gesturing an image of branches with her arms. The world outside the window shifted to black behind her. The fireflies lit her skin like a campfire. She dropped her hands and returned Ariana’s gaze. “I’ll show them to you.”
Asrea’s sincerity diffused Ariana’s defenses.
But then she added, “All you have to do is talk to me. Tell me the truth.”
Ariana pushed away from the table. “So you can run and tell the Strattons?” She shouldn't have let herself get caught up in Asrea’s game. “So they can stick me—I don’t know—in some dungeon where no one can ever find me?”
Asrea regarded Ariana with a bird-twitch tilt of her head. “Keemeone,” she purred, “Bolengard is a dungeon. No one can find us here. That’s the point. And yes, of course I’m going to tell the Strattons what you say.”
Ariana bristled, but Asrea lifted her hand, not to be interrupted.
“You don’t belong in a prison. The healing ward, more like.” She sent an actual glare at Ariana’s scabby thighs. “The Strattons are sorely lacking in the ability to deal with teenage girls.” She shrugged. “Well, George, anyway. Harold is fantastic with children.”
Before she could think, Ariana laughed.
Asrea’s eyes widened.
Ariana stifled her smile. But it was too late. Asrea was encouraged.
“Please. Tell me what you wouldn't tell the Strattons, and I’ll get you out of this cell.”
It was tempting. So tempting. But that wasn’t enough. “I can’t trust them,” she admitted. “I’m sorry.”
She found she really was.
Asrea deflated but regarded Ariana the same way Tehya always did, with eyes that could read the words unspoken in the air between them. “Then trust me.” She picked up the lantern and strode to the door.
"I can't," Ariana said, her voice almost a whisper.
Asrea shook her head in disappointment before slipping the key in the lock and turning the handle. “There's a special thing happening in the Atrium at the city center tonight,” she said. “You're missing out.” She stepped out of the cell and stopped. Glancing over her shoulder, mischief in the curve of her lips, she said, “Also, I know where they keep your bag.” The door snicked shut, the lock reengaging.
Then she was gone.
Ariana stared after her. A thousand questions slammed into her skull as the thick, black darkness swept into the room and swallowed her.
Asrea’s words seeped through the concerns, the doubts, the paranoia. She knew how to get the freedom Ariana wanted, and she had just given her a way out.
Ariana grabbed the cup and popped the lid. Etâme sang through her veins at the sight of it.
Giddy, Ariana put her hand on the lock of the prison door. There was no time to waste. If she was going to get out of here, she had to find her bag, and she was willing to bet the Strattons had it. She could tail Asrea until she found the Strattons and could follow them instead. Someone would lead her to the bag. Somehow.
The metal was cool to her touch. She concentrated on the feeling and, with one finger dipped in the water, adjusted the temperature until the metal groaned from the cold and the air inside the keyhole was freezing. Carefully, she tipped the open end of the cup to it. The water turned to ice as it streamed into the keyhole. She let the ice continue to form outside of it until the entire lock was covered. Then she grabbed the makeshift key handle, jiggled it to hit the tumblers, and turned. The lock clicked. The door swung open.
Ariana was in the corridor before the cup even hit the ground.
The darkness of the hall pressed in on her. But a lantern glittered on the floor at the far end, illuminating a heavy wooden door similar to her own. There were no other guards along this hall, and, as far as she could tell, no other prisoners either.
She closed the door to her cell and crept down the hall. Her boots clacked against the stone floor, betraying her position. She cringed. But only echoes responded. She held her breath, certain someone would step out of the shadows and grab her at any moment. When she reached the door, she gripped the handle of the lantern and held it out in front of her, then pushed it open and descended the stairs beyond it.
At the base of the stairwell was another hallway like the one she’d come from. She started down it. Again, the cells were empty.
The end of that hall revealed another flight of stairs. She eased down them, then peeked around the corner. Another unguarded hallway, another row of empty cells—these with crossbars for doors.
She took the last turn with extreme caution. Gold light shone through the rippled glass of the windows flanking the front door, exposing the empty lobby. The place was so still, so quiet. She was the only one there. She ran to the door and cracked it open, peering through the slit to be sure the street was clear.
Shadows shifted in the firefly light, but there was no one around, so she slipped out and crossed the street in two strides, avoiding the sparse light of the firefly lanterns. She looked around, gaining her bearings.
Asrea said the Atrium was in the city center. Ariana looked past the buildings, spotted the walls of the cavern, and headed away from them. If Asrea knew where the bag was, Ariana needed to find her.
It felt wrong, on every level of her being, to be out on the street past dark—authentic or otherwise. A chill settled on her back and refused to be shaken away. It climbed her throat and curled into a ball, making her gulp air with the persistence of a fish pulled from the water. But for all that, the city, once she was a few blocks in, was even more beautiful than it had been at first glance from high above it.
The streets were wide, the paving mismatched and worn down. It had a rural feel, despite being probably three times larger than Eastridge. And even at night, it sparkled red and gold, dim fireflies flying freely, dipping in and out of lanterns hanging from street posts and the earth colored buildings.
On each block, archways led into courtyards surrounded by red, brown, orange, cream and taupe houses. In the center of several courtyards stood strange, glittering trees, their leaves sparkling with the brilliance of stars in the dim light. She wondered if these were what Asrea had mentioned or if there were just thousands of fireflies resting in the branches of normal trees.
But she didn’t stand around to gawk. She was running out of time, and running into more people the closer she got to the city center. She was unnerved by the people she saw. They didn't look like the night guard that stalked through Eastridge. They looked like regular, everyday citizens. An old man hovered over his broom beneath a lantern post, absently sweeping ashes into the street. A little girl tugged on her mother’s skirts and held up something shiny when she got her attention. The woman patted the girl on the head, nodded, and returned to haggling with a shopkeeper.
The city, it seemed, had no intention of shutting down, even with the absence of light.
Ariana mustered her courage and stepped into the street. Slinking in the shadows made her look suspicious, she decided. But her resolve shattered when the old man’s eyes found hers, and he abruptly stopped sweeping to gape at her.
She froze beneath his gaze.
Her flight response kicked in and she raced up the street. She searched out a dark alley and dove into it. With her back against the wall, she tried to catch her breath and listen for the footsteps of the night guard.
This was a mistake. I should go back.
She looked down at her scabby legs. Blood oozed from cracks at the sides of the crusty brown clumps. She groaned. Would she ever heal? Her thoughts turned to Harold Stratton dropping that awful liquid on her skin. She flinched. The image morphed to Harold snatching the bag right out of her hands. Then it melded to one where Ariana snatched it back in the dead of night, pressed her hand in the page of the book, and escaped.
She slid off the wall and stood. She wanted that image to be real. Asrea held the key to making it happen. With another deep b
reath, she marched out of the alley and fell in step with the trickle of traffic toward the city center.
When she reached the Atrium, she knew it without even seeing the sign. It was the light. The street disappeared through seven evenly spaced arches three stories high. Between the columns stood groves of giant, sparkling red-gold trees; long, thin limbs cascading downward like willows.
Ariana stood in the center of the road beneath the first arch, staring into the vast, glistening, jewel-like quality of the Atrium, suddenly unconcerned about the crowd of people around her. It felt like she was in a bubble somehow trapped inside a fire.
Someone brushed against her.
“You like them?” Asrea asked.
Ariana startled.
Asrea did not seem remotely surprised to see her.
“How…?” Ariana couldn’t find the words.
“A Firefly’s wings, when it’s born, aren’t lit,” Asrea said by way of answer. “It hatches in a bunch—a pod—and when it takes flight for the first time, its wings light with flame and it shoots toward the cavern roof. Each Firefly in a pod flies off in a different direction. There are hundreds of pods, too. And every single one leaves this massive trail of sparks when it happens. That’s what made these trees.”
Asrea was not at all surprised to see her out of the cell. Ariana started to ask why Asrea had planted the water, but before she could get a word out, Asrea continued.
“The etâme is so thick around the pods when they first light their wings that the sparks linger. It’s like the Fireflies explode through some invisible mud, so the sparks just hang in the etâmically dense air forever. They never fall to the ground.”
“That’s… incredible.”
Asrea smiled wider, then tucked her hand in the crook of Ariana’s arm. “Come,” she said, tugging gently.
The Onyx Vial (Shadows of The Nine Book 1) Page 15