Renegade Red

by Lauren Bird Horowitz

  “The Smoke,” she wheezed finally, spitting saliva again. “I’m Green Fae too, so I metabolize it faster. It’s made from…”

  “Other Green Fae,” Noa murmured. “I know.”

  “My body rejects it, like a foreign organ, since it’s Green essence but not mine.” She took a few deep breaths, focused on the ceiling. Then she turned to Noa. “I could’ve sworn you weren’t Green.”

  “I-I’m not.”

  “But you recovered already. Even before me.”

  Noa was saved from replying when the wall directly across from their cots began to shimmer. It turned blurry as it dematerialized, and Arik stepped through, flanked by two Guards. One was Channeling a Blue and had clearly created the passage. As soon as the cadre had stepped in, the wall sealed up behind them.

  “Well, I guess that answers that,” Arik said shrewdly, shaking his head. “Two Greens. Most would say the most dangerous kind of pixie.” He turned to Noa, studying her carefully. “How powerless you must feel here, unable to beguile me.”

  Noa tried her best to show no reaction, only the appropriateness of her fear. Better to have him think her some slutty Green than know the truth of how defenseless she truly was.

  Arik looked at the boys, unconscious on their cots. Wearing their true faces. Arik smiled a tiny, rueful smile. “I should have trusted my own eyes in the Square after all. It just seemed so ridiculous.” He turned to Noa, almost sadly. “Foolish of you, you know, to choose these traitors. I bet you have them competing for your love … but then Greens are never too discerning with their playthings, are they.” He turned back to the boys, though he kept speaking to Noa. “I suppose that makes you my plaything now.” He glanced over at Marena. “Both of you.”

  Arik turned to the Guard dragging the dazed Blue Fae behind him. “Wake them,” he ordered in his much firmer, official voice. The Guard stepped up to Callum, placed his free hand on Callum’s chest. Callum’s body started to seize, vibrating madly; his eyes sprang open and his torso bolted upright, and then he, too, vomited green bile. Noa cringed and closed her eyes. Callum began panting and heaving, coming back to his senses, and the Guard moved to Judah. He touched Judah the same way, and Judah too began to seize and shake and shiver, limbs rattling and flailing.

  “What are you—stop!” Callum cried from his bed, jumping out and falling over his unexpectedly tethered ankle. Judah seized more and more violently, and Noa waited breathlessly but no bile came. Just black foam, bubbling up through Judah’s mouth.

  “What’s wrong? Wake him!” Arik demanded. The Guard bore down harder, leaning his weight into Judah’s chest. Noa bit her lip to stop from shrieking, screaming—until finally, finally, Judah’s body contorted explosively, flipping him around, and black, black ooze spilled from between his lips.

  Arik cringed and stepped backward. “Disgusting.”

  The Guard looked confused. “I’m not—”

  Then Judah slowly rolled himself up, coughing weakly, eyes fluttering awake.

  Arik nodded to the Guard, who got up but kept a wary eye on Judah.

  “Welcome, Forsythes,” Arik said, the name clipped and crisp. His tone stayed even, but when Arik looked at Judah, his lip curled just a touch. “I should have known that smirk could only come from you.” Arik turned to Callum, lifting his chin almost imperceptibly. “The Blue Son,” he said, unreadable. “How very … unexpected.”

  Callum pressed his lips together and glared at Arik.

  “You were banished from this place,” Arik said, with the slightest hint of defiance, “so perhaps you do not know. Your father disowned his Colored ties. Your Green mother, too. I am the Otec’s rightful heir.”

  “You can have him,” Judah spat.

  “The Otec or your brother?” Noa bit her lip; Arik smiled. “Don’t worry, Judah, you don’t have to answer.”

  Arik’s head suddenly flicked minutely to the side. “Ah-ah, Blue Son,” he warned softly. “This is a special cell. If one of your alarms is triggered, a gas comes in. A variation on the Smoke, but made from Blues. Like you.” He smiled a small, cold smile. “Instead of knocking out the limbic system, it denatures your spinal cord. I must say, I’m curious to see it.”

  Callum’s calm rippled into a sneer. Again Arik lifted his chin—just slightly—in defiance. Or maybe, Noa realized, fear.

  “Just kill us and get it over with, Arik,” Judah snarled. “Your slutty mommy always wanted that anyway.”

  Arik turned toward Judah. “You really are the poster boy for all the bad the Colors can become.”

  “Tell us why you’re keeping us here,” Callum demanded quietly. Noa thought she saw that flicker again, that nervousness in Arik’s eye. But just as quickly, it was gone.

  “Your … disturbance … caught my attention,” he replied carefully.

  Very carefully.

  “You’re in trouble,” Noa realized. “For not knowing who they were, and for letting us escape—”

  “You didn’t escape!” Arik spat, then quickly mastered himself. “And I’m not in trouble. I simply choose now to make this an opportunity.” He looked at the brothers. “Yes, I could simply deliver you as prisoners to the Otec now and let him deal with you, but I’ve decided to do better. Take some initiative, as it were.”

  “Need to impwess Daddy Otec?” Judah simpered.

  Arik ignored him, addressing Callum instead. “I’m going to deliver you as soldiers, dedicated to the Otec’s cause.” He smiled, smug.

  “Good luck with that,” Judah snorted. “We hate Darius.”

  Arik only grinned more gleefully. “Oh, but dear Red Son,” he said to Judah, as if Judah were simply an amusing little child, “the Otec loves for us to innovate these days.” He leaned in close to Judah’s ear, “I have such great things in mind for you.”

  • • •

  After delivering his threat, Arik used his Blue slave to slip through the atoms in the wall like a frightening paper doll. Noa’s eyes went instinctively to Callum’s, but he was staring pensively at where Arik had vanished.

  “How’d he know you?” Judah demanded, eyes fastened on his brother. “Darius didn’t adopt him until after you were gone!”

  “You’re really them, then? The gobbin’ Otec’s banished sons?” Marena cried in disbelief. She looked so defiant, so like Judah in fact, that Noa almost laughed aloud. Marena wasn’t amused, however. She glared accusingly at Noa. “Think you left a little out, cullie?”

  “Would you have believed her?” Callum snapped.

  “I didn’t think it was my secret to tell,” Noa said, more gently.

  Marena screwed up her face. “I’m not mad. I mean, I knew you was risky business being some mad Tunnel Fae.” Marena’s face suddenly flashed bright with hope. “So you do have Queen Lorelei then! You got the gobbin’ princes and the new rebels in the Tunnels!”

  “What new rebels?” Callum said sharply, as Judah demanded, “Who has our mother?”

  Marena looked from Judah to Callum, faltering. “Your rebels … I thought. Don’t you have her? Don’t you run the new Resistance?”

  Noa’s heart seized. She couldn’t bear to look any of them in the eye, even as she felt both brothers’ eyes burning into her.

  “What do you mean, new Resistance?” Callum asked Marena evenly.

  “Well, you know how Otec Darius said he drowned all the rebels with the Flushes, but people always was whispering how some escaped, and you’re here so that means it’s true….” Noa felt tears spring her eyes as Marena feebly persisted, “And with Queen Lorelei too. Because that was another gobbin’ lie, they didn’t kill her like they didn’t kill the rebels, and you lot wasn’t really Banished….”

  As she trailed off, Noa closed her eyes, cursing herself. She’d given them fruitless hope in a moment of weakness, and now they’d have to repay her debt. She forced herself to look at them
, to at least watch the pain she had inflicted. She, who knew so well the desperate hollowness of hoping for what could not be.

  Judah’s face alone was enough to break her heart.

  It was Callum who found, somehow, the ability to answer Marena. Who found the bravery to say what Noa had not been able to, and now made so much worse. “No, Marena,” he said softly. “We haven’t been in the Tunnels all this time. We were Banished, both of us. And when we were down in the Tunnels … I’m sorry. There was no one there.”

  “Hilo,” Judah whispered angrily, swiping at his nose.

  Callum nodded. “A pixie came and found us. Before they … ‘flushed’ the Tunnels.”

  Marena studied her feet. Noa cringed to see her, Marena, the tough one, look so upset. “They send scouts down there. Good way to get out of Indenturing, be a spy for them Clears. The Scouts tell ’em if they need to flood those Tunnels again, so no one can gather there again….” Her voice grew smaller and smaller. “That’s why my brother always told me not to believe. And I didn’t, but then…” She wiped her nose roughly with her arm, nodded her head in Noa’s direction.

  Callum sighed. He looked so tired, but his face was filled with compassion for Marena. It was so like him. Even in the moment he learned the truth of his mother’s death, he was concerned for someone else in pain.

  Or maybe, Noa realized, he had not been so foolish as she or Judah. Callum was stronger than they were in that way. He knew always to prepare, use his mind, not just his heart.

  Noa gasped as a sharp pain suddenly split across her head.

  “Noa?” Callum cried. “Are you okay?”

  “I-I just have a headache,” Noa said, blinking rapidly. Thankfully, the pain began to lessen to a background buzz. “I think it’s been a long day, and…” She wanted to apologize for what she’d done, but she couldn’t even give it words. They didn’t seem to blame or accuse her, which, in a terrible way, made it even worse.

  “I guess we all should try to rest,” Callum said. “Then we’ll start to figure a way out of here.”

  Judah was already lying on his cot, rolled toward the wall. “Don’t you get it, Brother? It’s over. It’s all over.”

  “Maybe you think so. But I can’t.” Callum answered. “We’ll all feel better once we rest.”

  Callum and Marena lay down, but Noa remained sitting, unable to look away from Judah’s back. She wanted to believe with Callum. She owed them that. Both of them.

  When they woke up, Callum was gone.

  • • •

  Noa had never known panic like the panic she felt when she opened her eyes and saw Callum was missing.

  “He probably found a way out and took it,” Judah said bitterly. “We would have slowed him down.”

  “He wouldn’t do that!” Marena cried, indignant.

  “You don’t even know him, shrimp!”

  “I know he’s the Blue Son, who lost his freedom for the rebellion—”

  Judah laughed fiercely. “Like I said.”

  “Enough! Enough!” Noa pleaded. “Judah, you do know Callum and you know he wouldn’t do that.”

  “Are you serious?” Judah cried in utter disbelief. “Are you forgetting he’s abandoned me before?”

  “That was different, it was—t … to rescue someone—”

  Judah looked at her pointedly. Noa bit her lip. Sasha needed rescuing now too, just like then.

  “Point is, he’s poof!” Marena interjected. “Arik will probably blame us!”

  Noa tried to keep calm; she didn’t like how Marena’s voice had trembled on Arik’s name. Without Callum, she would have to step up and be the leader, the voice of reason—even if inside she felt like anything but. “We can’t panic. If he did somehow escape, we truly didn’t know anything, so we can’t be held accountable. But”—she eyed Judah—“he wouldn’t leave us anyway. When we were running before, he could have let us get caught and saved himself at any time. But he didn’t. He almost killed himself trying to fly all of us to safety!”

  “Big hero—”

  “Judah! You have history with him, but so do I. When my world shut down and I was broken, he saved me. He didn’t run. He helped me heal.”

  Judah seemed to struggle. But when he spoke, it wasn’t what she expected at all:

  “You think he fixed you because he acts as if he did. But Noa, you were never broken in the first place.” With that, he turned from her, lay down again. Noa’s headache sliced through her again, the pain so strong she had to lie down and close her eyes, find the relief of blackness—

  When she finally opened her eyes again a long time later, Marena was catatonic with shock and fear…

  And Judah had vanished too.

  • • •

  Noa lurched toward Marena, her ankle catching where it was chained. Spitfire Marena, who had introduced herself with a brick to the forehead, was rocking in terror on her cot, arms wrapped tight around her knees.

  “Marena, please stop, please—” Noa pleaded desperately, flailing for any way to reach her. Finally, helpless, she slid down and sat on the floor, put her throbbing head against the cot. It still ached dully, as if it weren’t enough that her migraine had clearly knocked her out.

  Noa gave herself five seconds.

  Five.

  She took a deep breath, pushed her fear down deep. She wrapped it tight, caged it in her ribs, and left it there.

  She turned to Marena, whose knobby knees were tucked under her scraped-up chin.

  “Marena,” Noa began, but she couldn’t find the right words to bring Marena back. Instead, Marena surprised her by speaking first, voice strangely tinny:

  “The Blue Son’s a warrior, we all know that. Rose high. We all know that.”

  “You mean Callum?” Noa asked, but Marena didn’t look at her, as if she wasn’t talking to her at all.

  “Otec’s boy, but then he turned. Rebelled for us. We all know that.”

  “Marena—”

  “But not at first, no not at first.” She began to tremble, and a tear trickled down her cheek. “A good son, the Blue Son, a very good son. A very good son…”

  Deep fear tingled in Noa’s stomach; she pushed it down. “I know, Marena, he told me already,” she soothed. “He served in the Blue regiments when his father asked, as a healer—”

  Marena shook her head vehemently, eyes wide. “Heal and hurt! The Blues! Heal and hurt!”

  Noa bit her lip. Healers and torturers, the selfsame gift. Where had she heard that before?

  “Maybe the others did, Marena, but not Callum, he couldn’t—”

  The pixie shut her eyes. “Yes, yes, yes! We all know that!”

  “Marena, listen to me!” Noa said urgently. “You know Callum now. He helped you to escape—”

  “A good son! A very good son!” Tears streamed thick down Marena’s face but she wouldn’t unwrap her arms to wipe them. They spattered from her chin, her nose, sopped messily down her knees.

  Noa’s fear broke free. “What happened, Marena?” she cried. “Where’s Judah?”

  “He came! He came!” Marena sobbed, loudly now. “They made me watch!”

  “Who came? Who? Where was I?”

  “They tried to wake you! To make you watch too!”

  “I don’t understand!” Noa cried, tears flooding her throat.

  “He came! The Blue Son came!”

  “Mar—”

  “And he ripped his brother’s soul apart.”

  Noa’s body slammed her backward against her cot; the air in her chest was gone. She was a vacuum, gasping to stay alive.

  “Not Callum, it couldn’t have been Callum—”

  “A very good son! A very good son!” Marena shrieked.

  “No, Marena! It’s something else! He must be pretending, as a way to get us out—”
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  Marena’s eyes met Noa’s for the first time, and they were wild.

  “He says he’s coming back for me.”

  • • •

  Marena didn’t speak again, and neither did Noa. The night stretched out before them, somehow endless, even as neither could bear for it to end. Noa didn’t know what to make of Marena’s words. Callum couldn’t, wouldn’t, do to Judah what he had done for her—maim his soul. He had done that only to protect Noa, because it had been the only way to make a talisman to keep her safe. He would never inflict that on his brother. On anyone.

  Not the Callum Noa knew, the Callum Noa felt in her heart.

  He had lied before, it was true. But Noa had already made peace with Callum’s dishonesty about Sasha. And she had memories like touchstones to remind her of who Callum really was. Like the way Sasha had instinctively trusted him and curled into him while Noa read to her class. Though of course now, Noa knew that trust had been memory as well as instinct.

  But there was also the kiss beneath the tree, his tree, when the world swirled and flew around them as arms and lips intertwined. Except … he’d also taken her Light in that moment, unable to stop himself. And that had happened again, when she’d rescued him from Kells’ shed—

  Noa bit a scream. It was like each memory she had of Callum had turned to soapstone, worn into some new shape. This world, this room—they were taking things from her.

  “Stop!” Noa cried aloud, pressing her palms against her aching, throbbing temples, head pounding like it might explode. She squeezed her eyes shut, reached back for something, anything steady to hold on to, something deep inside her core, but all she wanted was to run far away as far as she could go—

  “They ran,” Noa gasped, eyes flying open. She turned to Marena urgently, wildly. “They ran, Marena! Before! They both ran from this world, because it was the only way to fight! Don’t you see—”

  “You don’t know—”

  “I do know,” Noa interrupted. “I do know, because they ran to me.”

  Marena became quite, quite still. For the first time, her eyes sharpened, became once again the fierce eyes Noa had come to know. “What do you mean?”