Winter Omens

by Trisha Leigh

  The mass of Others who went into the Wilds after Pax return empty-handed.

  Two of them grab me by the armpits and hoist me to my feet. My body, limp with defeat and dejection, drags between them. In the Wilds, surrounded by hundreds of Others, I have never, ever felt more alone.

  CHAPTER 28.

  They sit me on a giant chair made of smooth, black granite. The mittens that covered my hands in the clearing have grown, molded up my forearms and over my elbows. Those two factors combined ensure I won’t be melting myself out of this situation anytime soon, no matter how soaked my clothes get from the uncontrollable sweat.

  I’ve been alone for hours, it seems. Enough time to struggle with staying calm, not enough to prepare myself for what’s coming. Long enough to go over what happened again and again, but not to find a way to exonerate Pax. He could have stayed, but he didn’t.

  He left me. Like he left Deshi, and Tommy.

  It’s my fault for believing that because he regretted those things he’d be made of stronger stuff when things got bad again. But he chose Griffin instead of me. Pax ran away, and if the past is any indication, he’s not coming back until it’s too late.

  So I’ve used the time to prepare myself for the inevitable. As much as anyone can ever prepare themselves for torture and death. One thing being with Pax has taught me, the thing that remains true after everything, is that I am strong. The last miniscule chance I have is to somehow prevent them from getting the answers they seek. Without the knowledge of what exact kind of threat we Dissidents present, I don’t think they’ll kill me. Or they might.

  The memory of the searing pain, the unbelievable surety that my brain was bring ripped into pieces, lands in my stomach like a bag full of scrabbling bugs. Ko and Cadi have endured this for months. Months. And they haven’t given up our most dangerous secrets. They’re stronger than me—there’s no doubt about that. But I can hold out for a while. I can give Lucas a little more time. Time for what, I have no idea. To stay alive, I guess.

  When we left autumn, Lucas and I agreed that we didn’t think we could hide forever. That running wouldn’t buy us anything but time, and it hasn’t. We agreed to do it because we wanted those hours, those days, to maybe figure out a new plan. Only the time we earned wasn’t spent together, and now I can see it was wasted altogether.

  The missing him is so horrible right now, it’s almost worse than the knowledge of what’s coming. Maybe it is worse because it’s always with me, and when the Others step out of my mind, they allow moments of relief, no matter how brief.

  They dragged me through a room identical to the one the Others used in Danbury to refresh Mr. Morgan’s and the Healer’s memories. We went through a door at the back, exactly like the one Mrs. Morgan disappeared into, the one she never came back out of.

  I’ll probably never come out, either.

  A quick inventory of our abilities reminds me what the Prime knows, what he doesn’t, and what he can’t. Most important—maybe the one single thing that cannot be revealed—is our ability to wake up the humans to what happened on their planet. We can’t control it yet, but if the Others learn what we can do, we’ll never get the chance to free humanity and bring them into the fight for their planet.

  The door bangs open, slamming against the cold, stainless steel wall and admitting what appears to be my torture team for the evening: the Prime and his two children, three Wardens, and a slumped but conscious Ko, whose navy blue eyes spill love and sorrow into my heart. I use my mind to put my veil knowledge into a trunk inside my walled-off alcove, lock it, and swallow the key.

  The Prime sits in the only available seat besides mine. The Wardens block the door, holding Ko’s arms, while the Prime’s still nameless son and Kendaja flank their father. With the exception of Kendaja, their faces are taut, stoic masks, but experience has taught me it’s possible to rattle both the Prime and his erratic son. I spare a glance at Kendaja’s beautiful, glee-contorted face and a hot poker of fear stabs my heart. Her unpredictability makes me fear her more than the rest, and when I meet her glittering gaze, she pants harder.

  “You could save yourself the pain and trouble, and tell us what we’d like to know.” The Prime’s eyes are flat, not flashing and angry the way they were earlier. Like he’s determined to not let me wrangle emotion from him.

  “What is that exactly?”

  “I would like to know what abilities you and the boys have inherited from your Elemental parents, nothing more.”

  Just everything. Nothing more. “Haven’t you had Deshi here for months? Why don’t you already know?” I’m stalling, but this has been a nagging curiosity. They’ve been able to study Deshi, so why is the Prime still so curious about the rest of us?

  He narrows his eyes, seeming to consider his answer.

  “Answer the question,” Chief butts in, unable to control his irritation with me another moment.

  I seem to be able to get under his skin with relative ease, though I’ve never been able to figure out why. “What’s your name?”

  He doesn’t answer. In the silence, Kendaja giggles again then clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth until my nerves can no longer bear it.

  “If you tell me your name, I’ll tell you what we can do.” It’s a lie. I want nothing more than a few extra moments, although I admit the longer he refuses to tell me, the more curious I am.

  His eyebrows shoot up, but nothing comes out of his mouth.

  The Prime’s lips twitch into a snarl. “This is ridiculous. Your playing games with this girl is going to get us nowhere, Zakej. His name is Zakej. Now, tell us.”

  Zakej. Somehow I expected it to be embarrassing, or for there to be an obvious reason he doesn’t want to tell me, but now it seems to have been nothing more than a piece of information to hold out of my grasp just because he can. There must be a reason the Prime’s son hates me in particular, and I would give just about anything to know what it is. Perhaps it is simply spilling over from Fire to me, since she rejected him in favor of my human father.

  He strides forward, and when I close my eyes to avoid his gaze and the pain it will bring, he wraps rough hands around my neck. Zakej’s fingers tighten around my throat, choking off my air supply, but he doesn’t go into my head. There’s no imagined pain, only real pain as he crushes my windpipe and my body panics without my permission.

  As black spots dance closer and closer to the center of my vision, he drops his hand. My ragged gasping fills the small room, but it feels detached and far away, as though it’s not coming from me at all.

  “Talk. That was me being kind.” Zakej’s voice is similar to the rest of the Others’, smooth and coated, but it’s always held an edge of bitter rage. He leans down, bracing his hands on his knees so he can peer directly into my face. “It is not the same, in the physical world, when I enter your mind. It will hurt more. And the damage will be permanent,” he whispers, like it’s a secret between the two of us. He reaches out and runs his fingers through my hair, leaning close and inhaling. “It will be a shame to damage such beauty. Necessary. But a shame. I would like to put it to much more enjoyable use.”

  A new kind of fear trips through my blood, slams my heart into my rib cage. The implications of the statement suck all the moisture from my mouth, and the hard glint in his eyes say my terror-filled reaction is thrilling him in some way.

  I clear my throat, coaxing sound from my scorched windpipe, and return his conspiratorial whisper with as much haughty confidence as I can muster. “We can control the elements with our emotions. I can light things on fire, Pax can kick up a heck of a windstorm, and—” Zakej’s hand whips across my cheek, snapping my head back into the chair and exploding sparks in front of my eyes.

  “We are already aware. Tell me what else.”

  “We can’t do anything else. Except your mind control doesn’t work on us, but you’ve surely figured that one out on your own.”

  With my lie, he reaches out and gently picks up my h
and. Zakej runs his fingers over my knuckles the way Lucas used to, making me sick and hurt and full of longing all at once.

  Then he’s in my mind.

  He laughs. “Oh, such feelings for two boys who both abandoned you instead of fighting to save your life. Those are a product of your weak human half, I assure you.”

  I grit my teeth, resentful of the prodding, windy presence in my head, but open everything to him except what’s in the trunk. He can’t get all the way in, because of my wall, and the feeling of him bumping into it rattles my teeth. The first few minutes help me understand a little more about how this works—he heard the thought about Lucas as it happened, but the trunk rests safe in my sinum, protected by the brick wall built of sheer determination.

  Zakej pushes harder, toppling a few bricks inward as dust flies in my mind. When they hit the ground, it’s as if someone slammed a fist into my jaw three times in a row. My head snaps back, pounding hard into the back of the chair. When the rolling black clouds clear from my sight, the Prime’s son gives me a grim smile.

  “Taking down that wall is going to hurt, I’m afraid.”

  The next two bricks that fall smash into my collarbone, and the crack reverberates off the metal walls. The third smashes my cheek. The fourth and fifth fall into my ribs, snapping them until they feel as though they’re trying to stab through my skin. Screams of pain tear from my throat until it’s raw, and I swallow a rusty tasting liquid that can only be blood. This can’t be happening. The wall I built is made of mental strength, not real bricks.

  But it is happening. Zakej is in my mind, battering the organ that created the barrier, slamming destruction through the rest of me.

  The line between my brain and my body, between the realm of the hive and the physical plane, blurs and then dissolves until I am in both places at once. Inside my head. In the Observatory Pod. And there is nothing except pain.

  It’s hard to know whether the imaginary bricks crash through my body or Zakej beats me with his fists. It could be either. It might be both. It doesn’t matter. Either way, the experience is not like before when we were in the tunnels. My bones are snapping, my face throbs, and one eye is swollen shut.

  I can’t sit up, but sagging only pokes what feels like a hundred knives into my lungs. I think I’m going to pass out, but I can’t. I want to. I’ve never wanted anything more.

  Zakej steps back after he’s knocked down a big enough hole to walk through, nodding at his father. “Her sinum is open.”

  “We can find out whatever we want, Althea. I take no pleasure in hurting you, and I promise, if you cooperate, I will kill you quickly.” The Prime’s voice sounds slurred, probably a result of my damaged mind.

  My ravaged body rejects the idea of enduring this kind of pain for days or weeks on end, but the sight of that tiny trunk in my mind, locked and safe, gives me a mental strength that should be impossible. Zakej snapped my bones, he pummeled bricks into my face, but he will not Break me. I raise my eyes to the Prime’s and let him see my determination.

  The act of defiance sparks the loss of control always lurking near his surface, and he is out of his chair and across the room in an instant. His strong, cold hands land on my left shoulder, ripping it out of place. The resulting shriek emerges without my permission but doesn’t placate the Prime at all, and he rushes into my mind, ripping off pieces of my sanity as he goes.

  Chunks of my brain shred under his clawing hands as he reaches deeper and deeper into my personal space. He tears memories of Val into snowflakes until they’re so thin they’ll never be the same. They feel false now, as though they were never real, that she was never my friend. The Prime has spotted my memory of the first time Lucas kissed me, and races for its happy glow, and even though I clutch at it and stumble backward, I know he’s going to get it.

  “Father!”

  Zakej’s voice reaches me like a bolt of lighting through a haze of clouds. I must have blacked out for a moment, but his command stopped the Prime from annihilating my memories completely. He’s no longer touching me, but his chest heaves while he attempts to regain his composure. Fire more deadly than anything I’ve ever created burns in his gaze, and although the hatred isn’t personal the way it is with Zakej, it’s powerful all the same.

  He turns slowly, walking in deliberate steps back to his chair, where Kendaja pants and twitches, excited by the commotion. Once he’s seated, the Prime reaches out to pat his agitated daughter on the hand. She smiles, a crazed, twisted expression that reminds me of Leah when Lucas first punctured her veil.

  Kendaja is a violent, bloodthirsty animal on a chain. What will happen when the Prime allows her tether to slip from his fingers?

  “She hasn’t told us anything useful. You were going to render her useless.” Zakej explains himself to his father, licking his lips nervously.

  Render me useless. A snort escapes my nose. It shouldn’t be funny considering the amount of pain it causes on the way out, but still I feel like laughing. Zakej doesn’t care that I’m in pain or that his father almost destroyed my sanity. He intervened because he didn’t want me to become useless.

  “Quite right,” the Prime agrees, straightening into a calmer posture.

  “And there are different means at our disposal. To encourage her cooperation.” Zakej’s eyes flick to the doorway, to the Wardens and Ko.

  My stomach sinks to the floor. All of the pain in my body—in fact, there exists barely anything besides pain in my body—goes numb as the Prime flicks his finger and the Wardens drag Ko over to where Kendaja hops excitedly from foot to foot, twirling in circles like a small child.

  Ko’s eyes lock onto mine at the last possible moment, before they turn him to face her. He’ll have to endure her pain again. I have no way to know how many times he’s gone through this before, for me. For all of us. It isn’t fair, and I have the power to put a stop to it right now. He must see the conflict in my expression because he gives a tiny shake of his head. His lips don’t move but his voice, kind and gentle, like a soothing caress, flows past my tumbled wall and into my mind like sunlight refracted on water.

  I am not what’s important any longer. My life means nothing, was for nothing, if you do not survive to fight another battle. This must happen.

  Love coats the words until it drips from them, until the sheer force of their power squeezes my heart until it wants to burst open. Ko has never done anything but love, and the Others will punish him for it. Still, like Lucas and I did in the Wilds with Cadi, I will sit here and watch. Because the Spritans have made it clear their sacrifice is a willing one, and they understand so much more about this fight than we do.

  Kendaja wraps her spindly arms around his neck, holding him in place as she peers into his face. She coos, a strange sound usually reserved for women holding a new baby, and presses her cheek against his.

  “A little kiss, magic man. Need, I need it. You’ll be tasty, like love, I’ll eat it. A last taste, one more kiss.” She croons the words against his ear, holding him tight and swaying their bodies in an erratic rhythm. A shudder rolls through him at her words.

  Kendaja leans forward and gently presses her full, rosy lips against Ko’s. He screams, the sound muted because his mouth melds to hers, and his lower body flops and twitches for what seems like an eternity. Her arms squeeze him around the neck, tight enough that his head remains still as he convulses and moans.

  She doesn’t stop when he goes still, his frame limp, or when the light leaves his eyes. Her mouth doesn’t lift from his until what can only be his brains leak from his ears in gray-gold lumps, sliding down the sides of his head and onto his shoulders, smacking the floor with sickening wet splats.

  Once they stop oozing, she gently kisses the corner of his mouth. “That was nice,” she whispers, and drops her arms to her sides.

  Ko’s body collapses into the mess on the floor, but screams still fill the room, bouncing off the walls and pounding in my head.

  It takes a long time to reali
ze that I’m the one screaming.

  CHAPTER 29.

  I wake up in what feels like a tomb. Dark walls surround me on four sides, except for a door made of the same granite as the chair the Others tied me to during their interrogation. I’m assuming it’s a substance that won’t burn or melt, even though they still aren’t comfortable enough to have removed the shiny, power-trapping sleeves on my arms. It gives me a small amount of satisfaction that my abilities still worry them even when half of my bones are broken and I’m unconscious from pain and horror.

  Agony returns within minutes, and not just the stabbing ache in my chest and shoulder or the throbbing pulse in my face. Ravaging grief tears into me so deeply it feels as though my very essence is ripping in half. This must be what it’s like to Break…they Broke me after all.

  The thought sparks fear and I crawl inside my mind, inside my invaded alcove, and sob with relief when I find the trunk with our secret still locked. Back in my prison, the tears don’t stop, even though every shuddering breath washes a fresh wave of pain through my shattered body.

  “Would you stop that, please? It’s annoying.”

  A girl’s voice wriggles out of the darkness. Even though my eyes have adjusted well enough to make out the nearest walls and the door, my roommate’s form soaks into the shadows, remaining hidden.

  Her voice intrudes on a moment that should be private, sparking a kind of indignant anger that helps me forget everything else, if only for a moment. “Who are you?”

  “Someone used to the peace and quiet of being alone.”

  I spent years and years alone and found very little peace in it. Quiet holds plenty of truth, though after my experience it’s hard to believe anyone would choose it. Her tone annoys me, but it takes several moments to stir my scarred, debilitated brain into action.

  “Well, I’m sorry. I’ll put in a request for a new roommate first thing in the morning. I’m sure there’s good service down here, right? Perhaps a daily debriefing where I can voice my concerns?”