Winter Omens

by Trisha Leigh

  The ranger’s station has a bedroom with a regular-sized bed covered with a black comforter. Clothes hang in the closet, mostly uniforms for a man named Ranger Wearn. Clean socks and underpants and Tshirts for a man stuff the drawers, and there are more boots in the closet that will probably fit Pax. They’d fit Lucas, too. I sigh as the ache for him opens up and tries to swallow me. I push it away and grab a pair of socks, stuffing them in my pocket.

  Pax is back in the living room, enjoying the fire. His feet are propped on the table in front of the couch and his eyes are closed. He’s covered the two windows in the room with blankets I’ve never seen, and they’re secured with some shiny silver tape. The room is warmer already, and as much as I want to crawl up next to Pax, I sit on the floor by Wolf. Memories of Lucas spin through my blood and empty my insides until nothing sounds better than being in his arms. Pax’s would be a replacement right now, and that wouldn’t be fair. The more my feelings change toward Pax and become grounded in experience and respect instead of wild, almost unwilling desire, the more I wish Lucas were here.

  “Hey, Wolf.” I snuggle up next to him, letting the heat from his body and the fire comfort me as much as they can. He rolls his head my direction and licks my cheek, buoying my faith that he’ll be all right in a few days.

  A pile of bottles and packages next to Pax’s feet catch my eye. “What’s that stuff?”

  Pax opens one eye and smiles at me, the sparkle in his gaze making everything better for about ten seconds. “Medicine to clean Wolf’s wound the next time I change his bandage. It’s old, and probably not as good as what the Others supply the Healers, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “Oh.”

  Pax stares at me for several minutes, heating my cheeks with his bare perusal. A wrinkle appears in between his eyebrows, signaling an unspoken turmoil that I’m not ready to inquire about or even wonder over in silence.

  Finally he closes his eyes again, shoulders relaxing into the sofa. “I’m glad your dog is going to be okay, Summer.”

  “Me, too. Honestly, he’s probably as much your dog as he is mine now.”

  Wolf doesn’t lift his head but his eyes flick between Pax and I, following our discussion as though he knows it’s about him.

  “No way. I mean, if I attacked you he’d eat my face off. And if it came down to you or me against that giant lion cat thing today, he would have chosen you.”

  His sentiment stretches a smile across my lips. I really do love that dog. “He’s a good dog.”

  “Yeah, he is.”

  The warm room makes my eyelids heavy, and when I startle awake a few seconds later, Pax’s steady gaze lands on me again.

  He picks up Harry Potter, opening it to a folded page. “You can go ahead and sleep, Summer. I’ll keep watch.”

  CHAPTER 14.

  When I open my eyes, the sight of the packed dirt walls of the hive curl dread into my abdomen. The scent of moldy earth fills my head, and the sight of Chief’s face explodes flashes of pain in my head. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before in my life, as if he takes a knife in each hand and shoves it into my brain through my ears.

  But he doesn’t hold them still. It’s as though those knives are twisting, tearing tissue and ripping into the backs of my eyes. It doesn’t stop, it won’t stop, what if it never stops, repeats in my head until finally, it does. And everything goes black.

  The next time I open my eyes, it’s like déjà vu. I’m in the room Cadi showed Lucas and me, the one where they had Ko tied to a chair while the Prime Other tortured him for information about our whereabouts. Except this time, I’m the one bound to the chair.

  The same Others sit on the raised bench in front of me, the one they call the Prime in the center. The one I knew as Deshi—Chief—sits on the Prime’s left, and a girl with shining blond waist-length hair and a manic, gleeful expression stands on his right. Their distinguishing marks—three thick black bands looping the Prime’s neck, single bands marking the boy and girl flanking him—set them apart from the rest. I’ve never seen the girl before. She looks like she might be my age, and her obvious agitation as she prances behind the Prime’s chair pummels me with unexpected fear.

  Others fill the rest of the room, some dressed in the tan and black uniforms of the Wardens, others in the all-white outfits of the men who refreshed Mr. Morgan, but all of them are staring. At me.

  Like they’re waiting for the show to begin.

  Their nearly identical faces, hair, eyes, and expressions swamp me with dizziness, and the room swims. It doesn’t make sense; I’m not really here. I’m curled up in a warm room in the middle of nowhere, with Wolf asleep at my side and Pax keeping watch. He hasn’t noticed anything’s wrong or he would wake me. Unless he fell asleep, too. Or if the Others found him and are holding him captive somewhere in his own mind.

  I shouldn’t be forced to stay here, and it’s strange feeling as though my mind won’t do what I tell it to. I want to wake up but no matter how hard I wish for that to happen, it doesn’t.

  “Don’t bother. Those threads binding your wrists were made by the Spritans and are powerful magic. They’ll hold your mind in this place for as long as they’re touching you,” the Prime’s silky voice explains.

  They just read my mind. Knew I wanted to wake up.

  Shudders crawl upward from my toes and won’t stop. Panic quickens my breath until I can’t breathe, and my mother’s voice isn’t there to tell me to calm down. She could be working with these Others, could’ve betrayed the location of my alcove.

  Or maybe she really is nothing more than a prisoner, too.

  “Where are you?” The Prime’s voice is smooth and sweet.

  It’s easy to see he’s taller than the rest, even seated, and a muscle in the back of his jaw clenches as he clasps his hands in front of him. His posture conveys impatience, but not anger. His eyes glitter like black jewels, which should be pretty but instead make him appear entertained by the entire situation. In spite of my desire to stay strong, a tear slips down my cheek.

  A firm jab into my brain tissue snatches a gasp from my chest. Instead of encouraging more tears, the Prime’s eagerness makes me angry. When I raise my head to glare, Chief’s sick smile tells me he dealt the pain, not his father.

  “I’m in your hive.” Being smart probably isn’t the best plan right now, but it just pops out.

  Chief leans forward, annoyance twisting his handsome features into a horrid mask, and takes up his father’s line of questioning. “No. Out there. Where are you out there?”

  “I don’t know.” It’s the truth, actually. I know where we’ve been and where we’re headed, but we got off track today because of Wolf. The fact that I can’t reveal what I don’t know brings a smile to my face, which is rewarded with a series of three knives to the brain.

  Someone screams as the last one twists as though it’s going to pop out my eyeball. A few seconds after the pain recedes, I realize the audible evidence of agony came from me.

  “I want you to understand, daughter of Fire, that what you’re feeling right now is a small fraction of what my son is capable of inflicting.” The Prime waits until I raise my gaze to his. “And I promise you don’t want to find out what my daughter enjoys.”

  The breathtaking girl at his right grins, then her tongue lolls out and she pants at me, tiptoeing forward. When her father snaps his fingers she stops in her tracks, shoulders drooping, and shuffles back beside his chair. She emits an irritating clicking sound, like the movement of her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

  The Others don’t allow any sort of mental deviation among humans; they cart anyone who shows signs of being incapable away, labeled as Broken. Until now, I assumed that the intolerance applied to their own race, as well, but this girl—the Prime’s beautiful daughter—is definitely not right in the head. It takes a moment to tear my eyes away from the disturbed girl.

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” I say.

  “Son, t
he council and I have some business to attend to. We’ll be back in an hour, and if she hasn’t told you anything, we’ll try alternative means of convincing her to share.” The Prime rises, the rest of the Others following suit.

  The room empties, leaving Chief and me alone.

  My fear ramps up, dampening my body with sweat, but no good can possibly come from losing my cool here. I’ve got to focus on keeping my mind blank, the way I did that night during the refreshing. It worked to imagine a white board, to use a mental eraser to swipe it clean, a technique I employ again now. Pax’s and Lucas’s secrets are mine, too, and the thought of betraying them is worse than any pain the Others can inflict. I hope. Because it looks as though we’re about to test that theory.

  Wake up, Althea. Wake up!

  I try pushing thoughts at myself the way I did when I Broke Mrs. Morgan, but Chief’s gorgeous, cruel face stretches into a wider smile, his black eyes endless black pools. Pain that feels like nothing more than a pinch now stabs my eyes when I look right at him, and the star-shaped scar below his ear—the one that looks like the locket Ko left me as a child—seems to writhe and pulse with the radiating waves.

  “It won’t work. Talking to yourself like you’re a moron human. Last autumn I thought perhaps you would be a worthy adversary, but you are not. No more than Ko turned out to be.”

  The agony begins anew, and it’s fire instead of knives this time. Licking the inside of my skull, burning my flesh to ashes. When Chief lets up, I taste blood. It’s trickling from my nose into the corner of my lips like snot. The back of my head aches from my neck up, and the memory of Ko, Cadi, and Lucas banging their heads in keening misery slams into my mind.

  I can’t think about that; I have to get back to Pax.

  “Pax? Oh, you’ve found him, then? That’s convenient.”

  Tears mingle with my blood as they run down my face. More hot liquid drips down the back of my shirt; the banging must have ripped open my scalp. It’s hard to think between the throbbing headache, the fear of the next bout of Other mind torture, and the ravaging guilt over giving Pax up to these monsters.

  “You care about him. What would your Lucas think of that, hmm? You’re nothing but a little tease. Like your mother. Do you know she and I were to mate, before she met your disgusting, unworthy, human father? I took great pleasure in killing him. Slowly.” He watches me as he speaks, that languid, malicious smile eating away at everything good in this world, as though his existence is so terrible it can consume all of the light and kindness.

  “I care about them both. Because they’re my friends,” I gasp out. “We’re not like you. And I didn’t know my father but I am sure he was worth about a hundred of—”

  I break off with a shriek as Chief comes at me with more this time, the blades joined by pliers twisting and ripping off chunks of my mind a piece at a time. He waits for perfect intervals, until the pain from the first begins to ebb before he tears off another. What feels like freezing liquid comes next, and it burns holes in my brain tissue.

  Somewhere inside me, in a place that still fights, I know he’s not really damaging me. He can get to a place in my brain that issues pain signals but still leave my mind untouched. I know this because he tortured Lucas in the woods, too, but as soon as I lit Chief on fire, Lucas came back exactly the same. At least physically.

  The knowledge gives me strength for a minute, but the next dousing of acid rolls opaque black clouds through my field of vision. A sharp slap across my cheek brings tears to my eyes and the world back into focus, although the room still wobbles a little around the edges.

  “What’s your name?” My voice is raspy, as though he took my throat and ran a cheese grater over it. My whole body feels a little bit like a block of cheese that’s been shredded, now that I think about it. The image won’t go away, and the confused look on Chief’s face is almost enough to amuse me. It hurts to be amused. It hurts to be.

  “Chief.”

  “No. Your real name. Hobej? Boboj? Jerkfacej?” All of the Others’ names end with the letter j, but I’ve only known him as Deshi or Chief. The idea of calling him either doesn’t sit right with me, though. “What’s the matter, ashamed of the name your daddy gave you? Maybe he likes your sister better and she got the good name.” He still doesn’t answer, which is interesting, but I shrug. “Jerkfacej it is, then.”

  I don’t know how many more times he pushes the pounding, gnawing wretchedness inside my head. I think about trying to summon enough heat to perhaps melt my bonds, but it takes all of my energy to keep hold of a blank picture, and even so, the effort fails a couple more times. When the Prime returns with the rest of the council, my vision is thin. Too bright in the center, too dark around the outside. The throbbing never leaves, even when his son stays out of my head, and even though I swear I’m concentrating on sitting up straight, my cheek keeps banging into my shoulder.

  “What have you learned?” The Prime seems more annoyed than ever, and my torturer sulks at his father’s expectant tone.

  “She and Vant’s bastard, Pax, are together. She hasn’t told me where they are right now, but he’s taking her back to Portland.”

  “To Portland, the rain the rain, I can make pain rain, pain in the rain.” The Prime’s daughter intones nonsense interrupted by fits of giggles, twirling in circles around her brother. The sweet notes of her voice belie the sickening words.

  When did they all return?

  “Why?” The Prime ignores her, as though she’s said nothing at all.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What has she told you about their plans? About their abilities other than the element control?” A deep and fluid anger infuses his melodious tone, snapping me to attention.

  “Nothing.”

  The fact that those two pieces of information, so precious and indispensable to Pax and me, remain secret causes a mixture of pride and determination to flow through my screaming body. I’ve done something well, even if they know we’re going to show up in Portland sooner or later. We can fix that. If I can just get out of here.

  “Very well. If you’re not persuasive enough, we’ll move on to something else.” The Prime raises his voice to a commanding pitch, catching the attention of the two Wardens stationed inside the door. “Fetch Ko.”

  CHAPTER 15.

  Dread, new and fresh and strong enough to wake me from my half-passed-out stupor, arrives with the sound of that one name. Ko is still alive. I feared the worst, and Cadi did, too, after he was tortured so much that he gave up at least some of our secrets last season. They’re going to use my soft spot for him to try to make me tell them the rest. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to sit here and watch Ko, the being who gave up everything to get me this far, suffer the kind of distress I’ve survived the past hour. Hours. Especially since I know for a fact he’s already been through so much.

  When they bring in Ko, two Wardens have to drag him between them. His feet try to keep up but stumble continuously, and he appears half dead already. The yellowed bruises beneath his eyes have deepened, as though his lifeblood is draining, puddling above his cheekbones. The midnight blue of his eyes is dim; the light behind them flickers dangerously close to going out. Tears and undiluted love fill those eyes at the sight of me, followed closely by a sorrow so deep it aches in my chest, too.

  “My life means nothing compared to yours, Althea. Remember this.”

  Ko pays for his selfless statement with a crack to the jaw, delivered by one of the Wardens holding him upright. To my horror, the Prime’s daughter spins toward him after a flick of her father’s finger. Her feet seem to barely touch the ground, as though she’s floating across the glossy floor. One finger rests in her mouth, ruby lips pursed tight around her skin, and her black as night eyes shine animalistic hunger and expectation.

  She bends at the waist until she’s eye level with Ko, but if she’s looking for his fear, she’s disappointed. Instead his gaze hardens, as though it can prepare him for what’s c
oming. “Kendaja, dear girl.” Her name sounds lovely even on his exhausted tongue, making me wonder for a moment if Chief really did get the raw end of that deal. Ko holds her gaze, an expression like sorrow infusing his features. “It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to be what they expect.”

  Apparently unmoved by his heartfelt sentiment, Kendaja pulls her finger out of her mouth with a slight pop. It glistens with saliva as she reaches it toward Ko slowly, licking her lips and panting hard.

  A hairbreadth from his forehead, she pauses. Her voice, dainty and as sweet as sugar, hums through the cavern. “Give it to me, little magic man. A small touch, He says, but worth it. Oh ,worth it, for you, too. Feel me, magic man, feel my magic.”

  Her wet finger brushes Ko’s skin by his right eyebrow, then traces a line down the side of his face. He screams, tears gushing from his eyes, body twitching and jerking so hard the two Wardens have to plant their feet and hold on with both hands to keep him from wrenching free. It goes on for minutes, until her nail slides off the end of his chin and he slumps forward. Skin gapes open on either side of the gash, golden blood bathing his neck like a scarf. He might be dead.

  Honestly, for the sake of his relief, I almost hope he is.

  Sitting here, clamping my teeth shut to avoid crying out and telling them everything they want to know, is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder than watching Chief torture Cadi last autumn, or even the night he forced me to defend Lucas by hurting Others.