Between Frost and Fury

by Chani Lynn Feener

  The Rex lifted his chin and the Tellers moved forward, one roughly spinning Pettus away from Gibus’s cell and shoving him toward the door.

  Half a dozen more Tellers entered, a few breaking off to surround Delaney, while the rest moved toward a panel on the side of the wall. One man clicked away at a few buttons and then waited for the barrier keeping the Sutter trapped to drop.

  “Stop!” Delaney took a step forward when they yanked Gibus out of the cell.

  He tripped, and the Tellers holding him yanked him back to his feet, causing him to cry out in pain.

  “Careful with that one,” the Rex ordered. “We need him fully functional. The only real issue I took with my son’s plan was not utilizing Sutter Gibus more appropriately. He’ll be tremendous help in conquering Earth.”

  Delaney tried to move toward them, but she was effectively blocked off by Tellers.

  “I wouldn’t fret about it, Miss Grace,” the Rex offered. “We won’t start preparations on that until well after Olena’s coronation. You’ll be long gone by then. Take her.”

  Ruckus began yelling her name, pounding against the barrier as two Tellers reached for her. No one paid him any mind, too focused on completing their tasks.

  She punched the first Teller who touched her, slamming her knuckles into the center of his throat. When he went down, she elbowed him at the top of his spine, then twisted and kicked out at the next Teller.

  He dropped just as quickly, and she was about to attack another when the distinct click of an opening fritz gave her pause. It wasn’t aimed at her but pointed directly at Ruckus.

  She met the Rex’s gaze head-on, anger warring with fear.

  He held up a hand to the Teller currently holding the weapon on the Ander, and gave Delaney another once-over. The look in his eyes spoke volumes of what he thought of her, that she was becoming a nuisance he couldn’t wait to be rid of.

  “We’ll be holding the Ander there awhile longer,” he said in an even tone. “I suggest you go along quietly, Miss Grace, to ensure that nothing happens to him. I can leave him in that cell to rot if I so choose.”

  Olena opened her mouth, and without looking, the Rex stopped her with a hand gesture.

  He didn’t care what Olena wanted; obviously he never had. The only thing he cared about was himself, which made him more dangerous than Delaney had initially believed.

  Had she been wrong about everything? This whole time?

  “You never wanted peace,” Delaney stated, needing to hear him admit it himself. “This whole thing, convincing the Basileus to betroth his heir to yours; it was all a setup from the start. You never intended equal rule, did you?”

  But by being the one to suggest it, he’d certainly convinced the world otherwise. Even Ruckus had bought into it.

  “Send Delaney home,” Ruckus suggested desperately. “Like you said, she’s no longer necessary. She did her part. Let her go. You owe her that much for dragging her into this.”

  “Technically,” he corrected, “it was you who led the initial kidnapping, Ander. Even if that weren’t the case, it’s out of my hands. I can’t have her warning her people we’re coming, now can I?”

  He was going to kill her. He’d hinted as much, but this last comment made it blatantly obvious. She was going to die on Xenith, despite all the things she’d survived. This was it, and there was no one left who could help her.

  “Take her and the Teller outside,” the Rex ordered, pleased when Delaney didn’t fight this time. “Lead them as far from the castle as possible, somewhere no one can accidentally witness the deed. After that, leave them. We’ll let the elements take care of the bodies.”

  “I want to be the one who does it,” Olena said, and he paused to think it over.

  “All right. You’ll need to suit up. The temperatures are already dangerously low. They’ll be deadly by the time you find the right spot and are ready to head back.”

  Great, more to look forward to. Delaney seriously doubted they were going to stop and get her a jacket as well. She tried to keep her expression neutral, but as soon as they started dragging her from the room, she felt her mask waver.

  “Delaney!” Ruckus screamed, and pounded against the barrier again.

  She tried to turn, to see him, but the Tellers blocked her view and picked up the pace.

  “Delaney! Delaney!” He swore, the sounds becoming more and more desperate, trailing her all the way down the hall and up the stairs.

  “I love you,” she sent through the fitting quickly, before they’d gotten her too far away to be able to do so. There was so much more she wanted to say to him, but there wasn’t any time.

  Delaney had been delusional. About all of it. She’d actually convinced herself that somehow, someway everything was going to work itself out.

  At least, from the sounds of it, Ruckus was still going to get out of this alive even if she wasn’t.

  The second she could no longer hear him, the world seemed to fuzz around the edges. She continued moving in a trancelike state, thoughts too scrambled to catch and hold for long.

  They walked for a while, Olena leading the party down the twists and turns of the halls, which were emptier than usual. At one point, they stopped and the Tellers took turns holding a fritz to Delaney’s head as they each attached a strange object shaped like an octagon to the center of their chests.

  “D,” Pettus whispered, his voice barely breaking through to her. “Delaney, you need to focus.”

  Why? There was literally nothing left to do, no way out. If she fought them, and by some miracle actually managed to get away, they’d kill Ruckus. She wouldn’t be able to make it back inside without being caught, even with Pettus helping.

  “If you can get away, do it,” she said back, ignoring the slight chuckle of the Teller currently guarding them. “They want me dead. As long as that happens, it shouldn’t matter if you live. They won’t hurt Ruckus for it.”

  Knowing Olena, a girl who somehow always managed to get what she wanted despite all odds against her, she wouldn’t allow it. The Rex would give in, and Ruckus would live another day. Hopefully he’d find a way to escape later on.

  “Delaney.” Pettus inched closer, stopping abruptly when the Teller shook his fritz in warning. “You can’t give up. It’s not like you.”

  “All right,” Olena returned, a smug look painted across her deceptively angelic face. She made a big show of swinging her hips as she approached them. “Have you ever felt true cold before, Delaney? You’re about to. This is going to be so much fun.”

  A humorless bark of laughter slipped past Delaney’s lips.

  “What could you possibly find funny?” Olena demanded.

  “Nothing.” She let out another chuckle, cluing her in to the fact that she was definitely losing it. “Just something Trystan said to me a while back. About hypothermia.”

  “Well”—Olena flicked her jet-black hair over her shoulder—“you’ll be dead long before you have a chance to freeze.”

  “Suddenly you’re fine going along with whatever the Rex wants?”

  “After spending a month locked in an empty room?” Olena momentarily sobered. “Yes. You heard him the other day. Keeping my appendages is a good trade-off for having to go through bonding to Trystan.”

  She motioned toward the doors, clearly done explaining herself. “On our way now.”

  Delaney noted all of them were now wearing one of those octagonal devices. She and Pettus were the only two without. She wasn’t sure how they were supposed to protect against the cold, and was partially tempted to ask. It made her feel more foolish that she could still be curious at a time like this, when she should be worried about dying.

  “If we can get the cilla suits off them, we might be able to get away,” Pettus murmured out of the corner of his mouth. “It’ll have to be quick, though. We stay out there too long without protection, despite what the oh-so-brilliant Olena thinks, we’ll begin to freeze.”

  “Quiet!” ordered o
ne of the Tellers at their backs. His tone was brusque, and he was tall and muscular. Like the rest of the five Tellers, Delaney had never seen him before. They must be the Rex’s private stock.

  “It’s fine,” Olena drawled. “They’ll be dead soon anyway; let them have their meaningless last moments. Oh, we’re here!”

  Two large doors stood before them. They were traditional Kint blue with silver paint depicting falling icicles at the top. There weren’t any Tellers to open the doors for them. In fact, this entire part of the castle was silent and still, their footsteps against the solid floor the only sounds.

  Olena slammed a palm onto the center of the octagon on her chest. There was a slight pressure releasing sound, a hiss, and then black fabric began shooting out from all angles. It wrapped itself around her body, somewhat like a second skin. Less than a minute later she was completely covered by the cilla suit.

  It was airtight, forming gloves over her hands and even encasing her boots. A collar stretched all the way up her neck and then her head, turning to clear plastic at the front so that she was wearing a helmet. A row of built-in lights lined from her shoulder to her middle finger on each side, the colors flashing from yellow to orange to red. The lights were also on the outside of each leg, from hip to ankle, a thin piece of reflective tape beneath them.

  The rest of the Tellers activated their suits, so in no time at all, she and Pettus were surrounded.

  Delaney looked at them, feeling more like she was on an alien planet than she had in a while. That feeling heightened when one of the Tellers shoved open the doors, exposing the outside.

  The closest she’d come to seeing the landscape had been in the Ice Dome, and even then there hadn’t been much to see other than never-ending white. While that was still mostly the case, they’d opted to exit near a thick forest. The trees were dark purple and stretched so high, they looked like they disappeared into thick gray clouds. The blanketing snow had the same glimmering sheen it had in the Ice Dome, rainbows sparkling with every turn of her head.

  A massive gust of wind immediately assaulted them, slapping against Delaney’s cheeks hard enough that she gasped and stumbled back a step. One of the Tellers shoved her from behind, and she fell to her knees. The cold of the snow she landed in seeped through the thin material of her pants faster than she could blink.

  Pettus helped her up, keeping an arm around her waist as Olena began leading them into the forest. He huddled his body close to hers, turning to take the brunt of another gale, this one almost taking them both down.

  It was better among the trees, but not by much. They shielded from most of the wind, but not the ice. The sky was also darkening, and it was hard to see in front of them. While the Tellers seemed to have no problem moving in their heated suits, Delaney and Pettus stumbled around like drunks, desperately trying not to nose-dive into the deadly snow.

  “If we’re going to attempt this,” Pettus whispered to her through chattering teeth, his face beet red, lips already turning purple, “we have to d-do it qu-quick.”

  Delaney clutched at him as he tripped, tugging him back up before more than one of his hands could brush against the ground.

  Even still, he hissed and held his hand curled close to his chest, shaking. He’d only made contact for a split second.

  She caught herself against one of the trees, the prickly pine-like needles cutting through her windburned skin as if it were tissue paper.

  Trystan had warned her that the temperatures were brutal out here. But this was so much worse than she’d even imagined. This was the painful kind of cold, the sort that felt more like fire licking against your skin, burning through your veins.

  She realized with a sick twist in her gut that that was the point. The Rex hadn’t only wanted to make getting rid of their bodies easy. He’d wanted her to feel this. He’d wanted to torture her for daring to think she could be with his son.

  This had been the real plan the whole time.

  CHAPTER 28

  Trystan tried to focus on the voices rushing around him, on his men gathering information from the beaten Tars, but it was a struggle. Since he’d boarded the ship yesterday, one thing had constantly hounded him, fraying his thoughts whenever he so much as attempted to place them elsewhere.

  Delaney was all he could think about on the way to Kilma. Even once he’d gotten there, his mind refused to let her go, distracting him when he needed to stay focused.

  “You keep claiming you don’t know, but someone here has to.” One of Trystan’s Tellers jabbed a finger against an older Tar’s shoulder as he spoke. “You will tell us the truth.”

  Trystan was only partially listening, annoyed by the fact his men could have easily done this job without him. Which meant he’d left Delaney for no good reason, and in the company of his father, no less.

  Being away from her was hard. He’d never truly missed a person before, hadn’t understood what it felt like when people claimed they did. There was this strange unsettling feeling in his chest, this annoyance whenever anyone approached him because they weren’t her.

  “I promise,” urged the Tar currently being interrogated. “I only know what we all do. The meeting was scheduled anonymously. It’s usually done that way. We have a series of secure phone lines to help conceal our identities.”

  “Zane?” called another Teller standing in the corner of the room, momentarily snapping Trystan back to the present.

  He glanced over his shoulder at the other man, silently giving him the okay to proceed. They were currently standing in a small room built inside an abandoned warehouse. Another three spaces had been set up along the hall, each containing other high-standing Tars who’d been present for the meeting.

  When Trystan and his men infiltrated the building earlier, he’d been surprised to find the Tars ill equipped for battle.

  After all the trouble they’d caused, he’d expected them to put up a better fight. Instead it’d taken under an hour to subdue them, and even less time to sort the leaders from the rest.

  “It’s the same story, sir,” the Teller continued, motioning with his chin toward the Tar.

  They’d seated him against the wall but hadn’t bothered with restraints. Up until this point, the Tar man had actually kept himself pretty humble, bowing, answering questions without hesitation.

  It was something Trystan should have noticed right away. Something he would have if he didn’t have Delaney stuck in his damn head. That was also why this was the first interrogation he’d bothered making himself present for, so he unfortunately needed the Teller to elaborate further.

  “About?” he asked, seeing no other way around it.

  “Everyone claims someone discovered a way around the Uprising tradition and scheduled this meeting to discuss it. But that no one here knows what it is,” the Teller said.

  “Truly, we do not,” the Tar stated, his voice almost pleading, which caught Trystan’s attention.

  He made himself focus on the Tar, sitting there on the filthy dirt-covered floor. A large bruise was already starting form beneath the Tar’s left eye, and his shirt had been torn at the sleeve. This man was his enemy, deserved this type of treatment, and yet Trystan couldn’t help but wonder what Delaney might think if she saw what he was currently looking at.

  “What’s your name?” Trystan asked, taking a step closer.

  “Henran, Zane.” He appeared to be in his early sixties, and tipped his head respectfully at the Zane’s approach.

  “I was told by one of your members you all planned to riot in the streets, Henran.”

  “The only ones mentioning riots are you and your men. We only came here for a meeting.”

  “About undermining my authority and the authority of the Uprising tradition? How?” There was no way around it—Trystan had been sure of that—but he couldn’t help the strain caused by the possibility.

  “We came to find out.”

  “It’s the same all around, sir,” the Teller repeated. “This is the sixt
h time I’m hearing this myself.”

  “How do I know this story isn’t just well rehearsed?” Trystan asked. Their organization was smart; coming up with a cover story wasn’t too far of a stretch.

  “It’s not. But that’s impossible to prove, Zane, I know that,” Henran said.

  “Then give me something that isn’t,” he countered. “Tell me something that can be proven, something legitimate.”

  The Tar hesitated, clearly not wanting to betray his people by giving up their secrets.

  “This is your one chance,” Trystan warned, “and it’s amazing I’m even giving it. Think about your people in here with you, not the ones out there. You could save them a lot of pain by talking to me now.”

  None of this felt right, and Trystan had a bad taste on his tongue. There were less than one hundred Tars in the building, but their numbers more than tripled that. If this was meant to be an orchestrated attack, a riot, wouldn’t more of them have shown up to participate?

  “It’s not just the one secure line that needs to be called…,” Henran finally began. “There are three. Each requires a password, and the last only gets you a location.”

  “Of?”

  “A lockbox.” He sighed. “That’s how we schedule random meetings. Someone leaves a coded message in a lockbox. There are only five of them in Kint, and they all need a key code. That’s not given over the phone; that’s something we all learn when we become members.”

  If that was true, anyone could set up a meeting, so long as they had the codes and passwords. But that left one element out of the equation.

  How had the Tar prisoner he’d tortured in Inkwell gotten the idea there was going to be a riot?

  Trystan took out his shing and then opened a file, pulling up a photo of Mickan from before he’d started his interrogation of him.

  “Do you recognize this man?” He turned the screen toward the other Tar, watching closely for any sign he did. Any hint to give away he might try to lie if that were the case.

  It was so clear, though, that Henran didn’t, Trystan didn’t even wait for verbal confirmation, already turning to the other Tellers even as the Tar stated, “No.”