Betrayals in Spring (The Last Year, #3)

by Trisha Leigh

  This looks awful. I can’t believe we lost track of time, or maybe he’s come back quicker than we imagined. The conversation was intense, and Pax and I needed it, but what Lucas sees now is pretty much the opposite of what it looks like.

  Pax lets his arms fall from around me as though nothing’s amiss. I try to copy his nonchalance, and maybe succeed half as well. Relief floods me at the sight of Lucas, unharmed, but I don’t go to him. “Are you early?”

  “Yeah. I found Deshi. I couldn’t get him alone.” Lucas sits down on the rocky surface, flopping as though his legs have given out.

  I move closer, not caring whether he’s angry at finding me in Pax’s arms anymore. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” he answers tightly. “I think all my adrenaline is gone, though.”

  I sit near him but not touching, and Pax joins us on Lucas’s other side.

  “What did you find out?” he asks carefully, as though Lucas’s feelings are eggshells. I hate the sound of his voice like that but sense it’s going to take a few days for things to level out between the three of us.

  Lucas closes his eyes like he’s counting to ten.

  Maybe more than a few days.

  “It’s huge in there, a ton of open space. There’s one big room where it looks like at least half the Wardens in existence were playing some kind of card game with colored tokens. I went the opposite direction, obviously. I remembered how in the hive the oldest places are down low, and Deshi is pretty new, so when I found stairs I took them up.”

  “You mean you didn’t sit down and play a round of poker? I’m disappointed with your undercover skills, Winter.”

  Lucas shoots Pax an irritated look but in the end can’t contain his curiosity. “What’s poker?”

  “I read about it in one of the books I took from the cabin. Remember the guy Greer told us about, Summer? Wild Bill Hickok?”

  I nod, a smile tugging the corners of my mouth at Pax enjoying local history.

  “Well, he was a big poker player. It’s a card game, and the tokens you saw are called chips. They use them in place of money, but I couldn’t really figure out why.”

  “Is there a point to this story, or can I continue?” Lucas interjects.

  “Not really a point, per se. Althea likes stories, is all.” Pax appeals to me and probably sees the shining interest in my eyes. Whatever he glimpses makes him smile and continue. “So, Wild Bill died playing a poker game. Someone shot him in the back of the head, and the hand of cards he had—aces and eights—has been called a ‘dead man’s hand’ ever since.”

  Lucas snorts. “That’s it?”

  “Give him a break, Lucas. It’s pretty interesting. Morbid, but interesting.”

  “So there.” Pax only grins when Lucas shoots him a look that says shut up.

  My autumn friend might have showed his sensitive, bigger side a few minutes ago with me, but I should have known better than to assume he wouldn’t have a little fun with the awkwardness blooming between us, at least for a little while.

  “Go on, Lucas. What was upstairs?”

  “I didn’t go all the way to the top. There’s water falling from the walls in places; everything is slippery. It’s treacherous, that’s for sure, and the steps going up are suspended and rickety. I stopped when I passed the first holding cell.”

  “Holding cell?” I think of Greer and her marble prison, underground in an Observatory Pod.

  “Yeah.” He blows out a shaking breath. “Cadi was in one of them. She’s not…it’s not good, you guys. She didn’t recognize me, her eyes are black. Her body twitched but she never moved from the floor. The whole cage smelled like waste.” He stops as though there’s more but he doesn’t want to remember it well enough to relay it to us.

  I think I’m fine with that. “You couldn’t get her out?”

  “No. The cages don’t have doors or handles.”

  “She was awake but she didn’t recognize you?” Pax’s voice takes on that thudding anger, the way it did when he saw the dark bruise across Greer’s cheek.

  “She didn’t even know I was there. Whatever they’ve been doing to her all this time, she’s Broken. In the real sense, in the way that people can’t recover their minds. We’re not going to be getting any more help from her.”

  A dampened response opens inside me, as though someone is trying to cut me with the dull side of a knife. We’re alone. The Spritans, the Sidhe—they’ve been brief benefactors but have all been injured or worse for trying to help us. Cadi, rotting in a cage while her body tries to die along with her mind. Griffin and Greer, trapped in their heads, maybe wasting away with the inability to nourish themselves. Even Nat, who’d never done much for me personally, but would most likely be dead the next time we saw him.

  Anger returns with the realization. The Others think they can simply eliminate—dispose of—any being that stands in their way or ceases to be of use to them. What gives them the right to decide who lives or dies?

  “What about Deshi?” I growl.

  “He’s way up. In the highest cage.”

  “Guards?” Pax asks.

  “Two.”

  “How do you know he’s up there?” I want to know the answer to that, but I also want to know what it is that Lucas doesn’t want to tell us. “Is he okay, or does he look like Cadi?”

  Lucas pauses. “I don’t know. I only saw his face, poking through the bars, but he saw me. And I think he recognized me. It seemed like it. Only…we’ve never met, so how could he know who I am?”

  “I don’t know.” I let the information trickle over me, as though testing a new food item before deciding whether or not it’s something I can swallow. “What are we going to do?”

  “I say we go back down right now, all three of us, and march up there. We can take out the two guards, get Deshi, and then the four of us can blast our way out.” Pax gets to his feet, dusting the gravel and mud off his palms. He looks at us expectantly.

  But my mind has been wandering; I’ve realized that, once again, we’re totally alone. It seems important that we’re not, that the planet not depend on only the three of us, especially if we’re probably about to get captured or worse. “We’re not going in there now.”

  They both pause, perhaps at the conviction in my voice. I’m not sure where either came from, the confidence or the idea budding inside my brain, but they’re both welcome.

  “Why? What’s the point in waiting?” Lucas stands next to Pax, his shoulders slumped.

  If nothing else, he needs time to absorb what he’s seen tonight and regain some of the hope that usually straightens his shoulders. I stand, too, brushing Mount Rushmore off my rear, and pick my way back toward the trail. When their steps don’t sound behind me, I turn and cross my arms. “Come on. You can’t go in without me, and it’s too cold to stand out here discussing. I have an idea.”

  They still don’t move, standing like shadows against the lightening sky. “You know you want to hear it,” I coax.

  The two of them relent at the same time, following me down the steep rocky trail. The sun peeks over the horizon as we crawl back into the gift shop, swap our damp, dirty clothes for clean, dry ones, and settle back beneath the blankets. Well, two of the three of us, anyway. Lucas hasn’t come near me and refuses to met my eyes. I know he thinks something romantic was happening between Pax and I while he was inside, and when I close my eyes and picture how he found us—Pax’s arms around me in the quiet night—I can’t blame him. Instead of the irritation it immediately sparked, now he seems resigned.

  I hate it, want to fix it, but now’s not the time to focus on us. Even if we could steal a moment, I can’t just blurt out Hey, if you still love me, I think I love you, too. I want to be together. Don’t ever leave me again.

  I’ve never had that kind of discussion before, but I’m guessing I need at least ten minutes to do it properly.

  We’ll have time. I’ll make time, but probably not today. Maybe not tomorrow, either, depending on
how fully we decide to embrace my harebrained scheme.

  “Lucas, when you told us about Cadi, something clicked. She kept telling us how we need Deshi, that only the four of us could have a chance to oust the Others from Earth. But the thing is, we never would have made it this far without help. Cadi and Ko hiding us, Griffin getting the three of us to safety, Greer finding a way for Lucas to return from the Harvest Site…” I pause, waiting for them to interrupt.

  They stay still, watching me with carefully neutral expressions. I have their attention, though. Even Lucas isn’t pretending not to look at me anymore.

  “The bottom line is, maybe the four of us are important, but we can’t do it by ourselves. There are too many Others, and with the Elements on their side—”

  “In all fairness, we can’t assume our parents will help kill us,” Lucas interjects. Not in a defensive way, as he would have when he first returned to me, but as more of a reminder.

  “We can’t assume they won’t, either,” Pax mutters.

  I hold up my hand. “Either way, we’re outnumbered. I think after what happened in Portland, we can assume that the Elements aren’t going to switch teams. Even if they’re unwilling to kill us, they’re still not on our side.” My eyes find Lucas’s. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugs his shoulders and motions for me to continue.

  “We’re planning to march into the Others’ Underground Core and attempt to rescue Deshi. Unless that works out better than any of us imagine, it’s probably not going to go smoothly, and there’s a really good chance we’re going to end up locked under this mountain, too. Right?”

  It’s a worst-case scenario, but honestly, it seems like the most feasible outcome. Pax opens his mouth, then closes it. Lucas swallows hard, squashing chunks of blanket inside his fists. They might want to correct me, but they’re too honest to lie. It’s dangerous. Better we accept before going in that we might not be coming out.

  “If we never come out of there, if all of us die, what happens to Earth?”

  “It goes kablooey when the Others leave. What’s your point, Althea?”

  “My point is, we’re not even giving them a chance to fight for themselves. When we talked to Leah last winter, she got pissy with Pax for assuming the fight only belongs to us. And she’s found out a few things that could help us, right? It’s their fight, too—the humans. They just don’t know it.”

  Pax’s eyes narrow on mine. “So, you’re suggesting…what?”

  “I’m suggesting we unveil more people before we walk into that nest.”

  CHAPTER 20.

  “Wh-what? How? Who?”

  In spite of the serious discussion, Pax’s sputtered questions drop giggles past my lips. Lucas doesn’t laugh, either at Pax or the idea, and I wait as patiently as I can for his response.

  In the meantime, I settle Pax with a few answers. “Well, we go back to Danbury, for starters. Brittany and Leah are already there, so they’re a good start. I’m not talking about tons of people, maybe five or ten in each city we travel to.”

  I stop, the memories of Mrs. Morgan and what happened in Portland last winter popping like burst stars in the center of my mind. “I think we should only do kids, too. Our age or maybe a little bit younger.”

  Lucas and Pax nod together at that suggestion, but it’s Pax who speaks first. “Yeah. It seems to work better on them. All of the adults who’ve gotten caught in our melty mind beams have gone bonkers.”

  “Right. And the fewer humans running around all banana balls, the better.”

  “But what purpose will this serve, Althea, to make them aware of the situation? If Cadi said we’re their only hope, and we’re captured, then isn’t it worse to deny them the chance to go up in flames with a smile?” Lucas’s voice is quiet but insistent.

  The imagery shakes a wave of shudders through me, but as usual, Lucas has a good point. Except there’s more to consider. “How does she know, though? None of us knows for sure what they’re capable of, without the veils. We have a few books and we’ve read a couple of plaques about human history, but that doesn’t tell us everything. Those events have passed, the people who lived them are dead and gone. What might these people—maybe even the kids we know—concoct that might save their own planet?”

  “Summer has a point. Everyone we know is pretty amazing at math and science. Maybe they won’t even need our weird elemental abilities; they could figure out how to make their own weapon, or figure out how to remove the substance the Others need.”

  Lucas nods, looking right at me with a warm admiration. “I agree with the concept, sure. Why shouldn’t we believe in them? The Others certainly didn’t…don’t.” He tugs on an ear, and the gesture floods my chest with warmth. “But how will we get there? Travel?”

  I hold up my arm, still adorned with Cadi’s rainbow bracelet after all these weeks. We haven’t used them recently, and a tiny worry crops up that they won’t work with Cadi out of commission. But the glinting threads, running together with impossible clarity, bolster my faith. They’ll work. “We have more power together. It might be easier to get where we want to go. I mean, we may as well try.”

  ***

  An hour later, the three of us have cleaned the visitor’s center of the evidence of our presence. Pax and Lucas wear heavy backpacks, even though I tried to take Pax’s from him. He hasn’t showed any signs lately that his injuries bother him, but it wasn’t that long ago that metal rods pierced his body in two places.

  When Cadi and Ko moved us from season to season, family to family, they used an enchantment I’m guessing only a Spritan can manufacture. Since they’ve been under duress, the enchantment has worn thin—maybe off completely, after the way Leah’s mom reacted to Pax. But they gave us these bracelets, and some of their light, fizzy magic races in loops around my wrist. It’s been enough to get Pax and I away from the Wardens, and keep us in the same season and together.

  Here’s hoping it works a couple more times.

  With me in the middle and no Wolf to worry about this time, the three of us clasp hands. Our powers mingle, streaming through my blood like ribbons. It’s so potent I can almost taste their scents of pine and spicy apples trapped alongside my own sweet jasmine, and I close my eyes, letting it crash over me like waves on the shore. I hold an image of the park in Danbury in my head, of how the spot by the boundary where we met Cadi looks in spring. The same place where the Wardens tried to draw us out with their “gift” of pink whatever-it-is.

  “Althea, open your eyes.” Lucas squeezes my hand once before dropping it.

  “We did it,” Pax breathes, dropping my hand and turning in a slow circle.

  The day is cool but not cold, with the patches of wet brown grass turning green and reaching up toward the sun. The sky above fades from blue to gray as the afternoon eases into evening here in Danbury. Maple and oak trees are scattered through the forest behind us, signaling our arrival in Danbury, and a heady power slips through my bloodstream. It swells pride when it reaches my heart. He’s right. We did it.

  It’s surprising that, even with the Spritan bracelets, we managed to end up where and when we wanted to. Our power really has grown with the three of us together.

  “Now what?” Lucas asks, checking out our surroundings.

  “I say we grab Leah again, like we did the last couple of times. That worked pretty well,” Pax suggests. Then he pauses, face darkening. “Mostly.”

  I know he’s thinking about Leah and her mother, about what we’re going to find when we sneak into her room later tonight.

  Lucas’s lips tighten, and I can tell it bothers him that he wasn’t with us the last two times we were here. We filled him in on what happened with Mrs. Olsen and what Leah suspects about primordial nuclides, but didn’t bother with specifics.

  “What did you do the last time?”

  “We waited until the adults retired and woke her up,” I explain.

  “I bet that scared the waste out of her.”

  I sh
rug. “She got over it pretty quick. Leah’s an adaptor.”

  “I know.” Lucas reminds me with a small smile that he knows Leah better than any of us, since he spent three years in Danbury once.

  The tiny girl has been through so much, but it’s never Broken her the way it might have. She went a little wonky when Lucas first damaged her veil and the Others refused to fix it, thinking to use her oddity to smoke us out. Pax and I having to fix her mother probably didn’t help matters, but she’s strong.

  A little lonely, perhaps, but mentally sound.

  The sun dips below the horizon as we pace the trees like Wolf when he’s trapped inside during a snowstorm, all anxious to get moving.

  “Now that we know we can travel and not lose any time, we should go to all the cities tonight,” Pax offers.

  I bite my lip. “I don’t think so. Leah’s the only one we know won’t have a complete meltdown over finding us in her room at night. Do either of you have good enough relationships with kids in Atlanta, or Portland, or Des Moines that you’d be able to keep them calm?”

  Pax doesn’t look happy that it means more waiting before going after Deshi, but both he and Lucas shake their heads. They look as dejected about having to answer that way as I feel. Almost seventeen years on this planet and between the three of us we have exactly one friend. I can’t even count Brittany, really. And even though my heart wants to include Monica and Val, my old sort-of friends from Portland, in my tally, it remains to be seen how they’ll handle being unveiled. Until their minds are their own, I can’t assume they’ll want to take up our cause.

  We sneak into town later, double-checking to make sure all of the porch lights have been extinguished, then slink through the shadows to Leah’s. The back door is unlocked like always, but when we step into the kitchen, something feels off.

  I stop, putting one hand out to still the boys and the other to my lips, looking around. The furniture and appliances sit where expected, a low hum of electricity coming from the refrigerator. Maybe it’s the lack of scent, or the way the air seems to hold completely still, but the house feels…empty.