Spyridon (The Spyridon Trilogy Book 1)

by Lillian James

  And he made his way to the training level to work off the nerves in solitude.

  CHAPTER 3

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Stiff and groggy, Jane woke in the golden afternoon light to the sound of her rumbling stomach. The stone lay beside her, its smooth underside facing the ceiling. A shiver ran over her at the sight of it, and she frowned and put it away.

  She sat cautiously, expecting her temple to throb with the movement, but there was no pain. She touched it gingerly only to find the lump healed. A quick glance in her bathroom mirror showed her pupils dilating perfectly in the bright light. Her concussion was gone.

  But she looked horrible.

  Her skin stretched over her bones, her cheeks sunken and shadowed. Her collarbone was like a knife’s edge, and she could count her ribs just by looking at them. It was as if all her flesh had melted away, leaving only a thin layer of skin over her skeleton.

  Could that have happened in just a few hours? A glance at the clock told her it was nearly four. She hadn’t replaced the breakfast she’d lost, but that meant she’d gone only twenty hours without food. Surely that wasn’t enough to cause her skinny frame to go gaunt.

  But her stomach growled again, and she realized she was starving. Merely walking from bathroom to kitchen had her limbs trembling.

  She didn’t bother taking the time to cook. Stomach clenching, she pulled a tin can at random out of the cupboard with jittery hands, beat out a staccato rhythm with it when she set it on the counter. She cut herself three times while she was opening it and a fourth when she was pulling the lid away, and still she found herself moving faster and faster.

  The cuts burned, and blood mingled with the liquid the beans floated in, but she didn’t notice. Desperate now, ravenous, as if she hadn’t eaten in days, she lifted the can and poured the cold beans into her mouth.

  She was reaching for a second can when she knocked over a row of them. They thundered down onto the counter, the sink, and the floor. And onto a cheap block of knives that tipped onto its side. Metal and plastic clattered onto the counter, and a paring knife tumbled over the edge. The delicate blade caught the dim kitchen light so that the gleam created a graceful arc in the air.

  And then it slid into her thigh.

  She screamed and dropped to the floor. Her vision grayed, and she had to bite her lip to keep herself awake. Her tooth pierced the thin skin there, and a drop of blood trickled down her chin. Pulse racing, stomach turning, she made herself look down.

  The knife was in her thigh to the hilt. She wondered if it had struck bone, and her head went light again. Then her thoughts began to fire in dizzying, disjointed bursts.

  She had to leave it where it was. She had to get to the hospital. It could have nicked a major blood vessel, and if it did, she was fucked.

  She had to be still, didn’t she? If she moved, it would make things worse.

  She couldn’t drive herself to the emergency room. She had no car. She had no friends. The neighbors wouldn’t help her. Johnson sure as hell wouldn’t. She realized, as she thought about it, that she had no idea where the hospital was. She couldn’t walk.

  She had a knife in her leg. She couldn’t walk anyway.

  And even if she could, the hospital was out of the question. Someone might get hurt.

  Call for help.

  The thought rang clear in the jumble, pulling her out of the hysteria. She dragged herself up to the edge of the counter to reach for the landline, and the handle of the knife caught on the groove of a cabinet door.

  And the blade pulled free.

  Pain ripped through her in a blinding rush. The wound began to spurt in time with her pounding heart. Blood showered the floor, and she dropped into the center of it and shoved a towel against her skin to staunch the flow.

  Each beat of her pulse sent an answering throb through her thigh. The towel was drenched in seconds, and her fingers, pressed so hard against it they shone bright white against the red, began to deaden. Then heat built in her leg, an inescapable fire that climbed until the towel steamed and another scream was wrenched from her lungs. But as quickly as it had boiled, her leg froze.

  Then it went numb.

  Her weak fingers loosened, and the looped threads in the terrycloth pulled away from her skin with a sickly sucking sensation. And she felt that.

  She felt the towel. She felt the warm, thick pool of blood, the faint ache from the pressure she’d applied. But no piercing pain of injury.

  Maybe it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. With an unsteady breath, she risked a glance at the wound. There was so much gore, it seemed impossible that she hadn’t hit an artery, but the bleeding had stopped. She grabbed a clean towel from the drawer over her head and dabbed at the wound to assess the damage.

  Only there was no damage.

  No hole, no tear. Not even a scratch.

  Brow furrowed, she wiped again, smearing red streaks over sallow skin. Then she stood slowly, painlessly, to wet a new rag and cleaned every drop of blood from her thigh. Only smooth, unharmed skin lay beneath.

  “What the fuck?”

  Hands shaking, she threw the bloody towel into the sink. Stupidly she checked her other thigh, as if she’d somehow been mistaken about where the knife had landed. But of course there was no gash there. There was no gash anywhere. If the kitchen wasn’t covered in blood, she would have no proof she’d been hurt.

  The empty can still sat on the counter, dotted with tiny smears of blood from when she’d cut her fingers opening it. Almost afraid to look, she lifted her hand and studied the tips of her fingers. They were unhurt. She touched her lip where she’d bit it, but there was no puncture.

  Then her knees gave out, and she had to catch herself against the edge of the counter. She was still incredibly weak. One can of beans in twenty hours hadn’t been enough to begin with. After losing a great deal of blood, it was laughable. She had to eat more. Stomach turning, she sank onto the bloody floor and downed the cold, bland beans like medicine.

  She dozed as her body pulled nutrients from the food and the blood grew tacky on the floor. When she was strong enough, she scrubbed the linoleum until it shone. After she discarded the bloody towels, she stripped and tossed her clothes in to join them.

  Then she stood naked and motionless at the sink. And she wondered, what did one do after eliminating the evidence of a miraculous healing?

  She gave a bemused laugh and rubbed a hand over her face. “Hide under the covers, Jane. That’s what you do.”

  Because she saw no other option, she decided to take her own advice. But she didn’t get far before her feet stopped. In the last few years, she’d run away from nearly everything. Fear, hardship, regret. Life was hard, and then it got harder, and then she’d stopped trying. And where had that gotten her? Alone and, apparently, delusional.

  Running her fingers over the scar on her wrist, she turned away from the bedroom and went to her desk. She minimized the message boards and translation documents that were always up and opened a search engine instead. And then she searched for the word hallucinations.

  She read about the phenomenon for over an hour, poring over medical and wiki sites alike, searching for any indication that what she’d just seen didn’t mean she was losing her mind. After a while she touched the smooth skin of her temple and added a search for head injuries.

  And ground her teeth at the results.

  The causes of hallucinations ran from mental illness to grief, and almost everything suggested she visit a doctor for treatment. But since she couldn’t leave her apartment, that was out of the question. With no knowledge of her family history, she couldn’t rule out mental illness.

  And grief…she shook her head. If grief was going to make her crazy, it would have done so three years ago.

  Head injury seemed like the most likely cause, but that didn’t help her. If she was having hallucinations brought on by a concussion, the next step was still to go to the doctor.

  She wondered if
illness would bring about sustained human interaction, if only in the form of doctors and nurses. As if she couldn’t have health and companionship at the same time, but she could trade one for the other. The idea seemed fitting somehow.

  Her fingertips were drawn again to the thick, raised scar on her wrist. It beckoned, that scar, as it had so many times in the past. She remembered the blissful numbness, the ecstasy of floating into oblivion. The feeling of relief that she was finally taking control.

  She walked to her bedroom and found fresh clothes, and she donned them with hands that no longer shook. Whatever happened now, she’d made her decision. Sometimes it seemed that was the only way to take any control over her strange, alienated life.

  Fully dressed, she crossed to her bathroom, pulled a pair of scissors from the medicine cabinet, and sat down cross-legged on the floor. Scissors in her right hand, she spread a towel across her lap and studied the scar on her left wrist.

  Just one cut and she’d stopped, drifted, convinced she’d done enough. But now she knew that it would take more than one deep slice. She thought, in a cool, detached sort of way, that three ought to do it.

  Then, with a deep breath, she moved the scissors to her left hand, held her right arm out, and dragged the thin edge of metal across her skin.

  Pain flashed, bright and sharp. Her eyes narrowed as blood welled to fill the shallow slice, and she wiped it away so she could see what happened beneath.

  If she was going to hallucinate, then she was damn well going to understand it.

  The cut burned nearly as much as the stab wound had, but in seconds she saw what she sought: the two sides of opened skin sealed themselves together. She strained to feel the wound healing, but all she could detect was intense heat. When the skin was closed, only a thin red line remained. Then the heat slipped into cold, and even the fresh scar disappeared. It was like nothing had ever happened.

  She set aside the scissors and leaned back against the tub. As she saw it, there were two possibilities. One, she was hallucinating a miraculous healing. Both tactile—she felt the “healing”—and visual. Or two, she was hallucinating being injured. Also tactile and visual. The problem was, how did she know which it was? Or was it all one big hallucination?

  What if, even now, she was actually standing in her kitchen, dumbly holding a can of beans and imagining the rest?

  She shook her head. Whatever was happening, she wouldn’t find answers leaning against the bathtub. She started to rise when another dream had her slumping onto the floor.

  CHAPTER 4

  Dhóchas

  Mikhél shifted and murmured in sleep, some small, lucid part of him wishing to both prolong and escape the dream. But she came to him like the silvered waters of Nhóstravai Falls, her essence a mere shimmer of light, and he knew he would never escape her.

  She stood atop a field of embers, with a wall of fire at her back. He was drawn to her—helplessly, recklessly drawn to her. She was life itself, a cool river of renewal against raging flames, and he ached for her.

  But he couldn’t reach her. No matter how quickly he moved, she stayed the same maddening distance away. Just out of reach, as always.

  She drifted toward that impossible wall of fire, and he thought that she turned back just once. That those amethyst eyes sought him out just once. And then, before he understood what she meant to do, she slipped through the flames.

  His cry of horror echoed around him as the last of her mist evaporated in the heat.

  Mikhél shot up, the cry on his lips as he woke. The light above his bed flickered indifferently, the silence of the room a reminder that whatever he dreamed could not follow him here.

  However much he might want her to.

  He ran a hand over his face as he waited for his stomach to stop churning, his heart to stop aching. When the muted tone rang through the room, he rose with a profound sense of relief.

  It was time.

  Eithné sat in the lounge of the shuttle, eyeing the crew that manned the gate. Each time one of them moved, she stiffened, certain their true purpose had been discovered. She wished the Endet would arrive. She just wanted to be gone.

  The girl across from her kept fidgeting, her feet tapping, her silvered gaze darting around the room. When Eithné thought the movement might drive her insane, she said, “Be still, child.”

  Leima jumped, and her already pale skin lightened further. “My apologies, Alna Dhújar. I am nervous.”

  Eithné pursed her lips and glanced again at the gate crew. They were well beyond earshot, so she said softly, “It’s safest to keep your feelings to yourself.”

  Leima nodded, but her limbs remained twitchy. Eithné sighed. For perhaps the hundredth time, she wished that Da-Fein had come herself instead of sending her daughter. Leima was too young, too green. And too transparent. She’d give them all away if she didn’t learn to hide her tension.

  When Eithné finally saw Valaer and Mikhél striding through the launching bay, her palms grew damp. However unnerving this journey had been thus far, the true danger of their mission was just beginning.

  “They’re coming,” she warned. Leima jumped, her beautiful silver eyes widening. “Try to hide your fear, child. The Endet has no use for it.”

  The young woman straightened in her chair, but her pale irises betrayed her nerves. Eithné sighed again, resigned. Whatever she might wish, the girl would have to do.

  After the men boarded the shuttle, the gate crew closed the doors and prepared the bay for a launch. Valaer disappeared into the navigation pit without a word, and Mikhél eyed the shuttle’s lounge in the sudden quiet.

  Too late, Eithné wished she’d chosen the seat next to Leima. Now Mikhél would have to sit next to one of the women, a prospect none of them had a taste for. Eithné was surprised when he chose the seat next to her until she saw him eyeing Leima dubiously. The girl was looking everywhere but at the Endet, and her discomfort couldn’t have been more obvious.

  He muttered, “She’s too easy to read.”

  “She’s young.”

  He raised a brow. “You thought her old enough for this mission.”

  “She is,” Eithné replied, though she’d questioned this very issue moments before. “She’s nearly Seirsha’s age, and I’m sure she’ll serve us well. But she’s understandably nervous. She’s never been away from her parents before—”

  She snapped her mouth shut and cursed under her breath. She hadn’t meant to remind him of that transgression. He knew about the young woman’s past, but no good could come from keeping it in the forefront of his thoughts. She risked a glance out of the corner of her eye, but his expression revealed nothing. He was staring at the young fuel processor, but she suspected he barely saw the girl.

  After a pause he drew in a breath and opened his mouth. She braced for his recrimination, but he said, “She’s lucky to have had so much time with family.”

  The words might have been a warning, but his voice was not angry or hard. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought he sounded wistful. She fell silent, and Mikhél followed suit as the shuttle drifted out of Dhóchas’s range.

  Leima tried to pretend she didn’t know that Eithné and the Endet were talking about her. It didn’t take a sedfai to deduce the topic of their discussion; she’d seen the same look on her parents’ faces the day she’d left. They were wondering if she’d make it through this mission. Truth be told, so was she.

  She stared at the viewscreen, but she barely saw the stars. Instead she imagined the Northern Forest. She pretended she was there, in a place as close to home as any, with dried leaves underfoot and the slow, heavy thud of a ghent lumbering nearby. The wind was warming with the coming summer. Days were getting longer, which meant more food to eat and less dark in which to hide. And nights were getting warmer, which, in the Other, meant her family had survived one more winter.

  But she would miss the summer. Had already missed half of it. And at the moment, she thought she’d be lucky to se
e another winter.

  She hadn’t wanted to come. The shame of that was overshadowed only by the understanding that she wasn’t the best person for this job. She’d tried to tell her mother as much, and her mother had said, “You can’t hide from destiny, Leima. You can either wait for it to come to you, or you can go after it with everything you have. But it will find you either way.”

  Then she’d sent Leima off with the last man any of them should trust.

  Leima risked a glance at the Endet. He stared forward, his face hard and his eyes unchanging. Were the rumors true? Did he feel nothing? She supposed apathy would almost be a necessity in his position. She’d thought the opposite was true in hers, but now she wondered. Everywhere she turned on the ship, there were potential Watchers, waiting to catch her in a mistake. And every time her eyes paled or her hands shook, she wondered if that was the mistake that would get her killed.

  Her mother had spoken of destiny. At the time Leima had hoped her destiny was to bring back the Baanrí. To protect the woman who would end the war and so, in a way, have her own part in securing the freedom of her people. But now she suspected that her destiny was not so grand.

  The more time she spent on this impossible mission, the more likely it seemed that the only end she’d bring about was her own.

  Valaer sat in the dark, oblivious to the stars. In one hand he held a wrist link, its strap worn thin by the worrying of his thumb. His other hand, which bore its own link, was fisted in his lap. When he sensed Mikhél approaching, he shoved the extra link into his pocket.

  Mikhél stepped into the cockpit, communicator in hand. “Status.”

  “We’re disengaged from the main,” Valaer said. His throat was too tight, and he cleared it and flexed his hands. It would do no good to lose himself when they were so close. He turned to study the delicate swirl of Saroyan ore and added, “It’s safe to determine her location now.”

  Mikhél ran his thumb over the clear jewel in the corner of the device. After a moment’s pause, he pressed it down into the metal. Valaer sensed the gentle vibration that shimmered through the ore, and every jewel on the surface of the sheet flashed. Then a single jewel in the northmost setting of the design began to blink steadily. Valaer pressed a button on his wrist link, and a wide beam of light projected into the air: a three-dimensional image of their destination planet.