white dawn (Black Tiger Series Book 3)

by Sara Baysinger

  Ember apparently got mother’s selfless genes. Titus got Father’s controlling ones. So who do I take after? What’s my dominant trait? A part of me, the part I don’t like to acknowledge, likes the idea of finally, finally having control. Of being able to punish those who threaten me. Those like Titus and Sanchez.

  But another part of me—the part that mirrors Ember—wants to humble myself and free Ky. It’s the harder way out of this mess, but the right road to take.

  Another wave of wind rushes over me, and I release my heavy thoughts with it, breaking into another sprint. I race and race and race until I’m out of breath and have reached the far end of the garden. Hunching over, I drag air into my starving lungs and release it back into the world. I never knew running could be so cleansing.

  When I finally catch my breath, I survey my surroundings. A cluster of headstones surrounds me. I’ve arrived at the royal cemetery. I gasp, then automatically begin searching for Mother’s and Father’s headstones, finding them at the edge of the cemetery. Father’s massive headstone stares at me—as tall and daunting as he was.

  Chief Aden Whitcomb

  Beloved Chief

  Loving Father

  I release a short, sad laugh. Father’s death couldn’t have brought me more joy. Word spread that he died of a heart attack, which didn’t surprise anyone. They say people with anger issues have more risk of heart problems, and, though I haven’t known many people to compare with, Father sure was angry. His headstone should instead read: Careless Chief. Abusive Father.

  I look at Mother’s headstone. It’s smaller, less threatening. She was buried here, only because that’s what was expected from the country even though she was executed as a rebel.

  Lily Whitcomb

  Supportive Wife

  Loving Mother

  Why did they lie about her being supportive? Everyone knows she ran away and was executed eight years later. It’s no secret she didn’t support Father. Maybe it just looks good for the generations to come. I’ll be sure the truth is passed down. I won’t only be the first female chief, I’ll be the first to bring freedom and enlightenment to Ky. I hope…I hope I’m recognized for that in the future, and not reviled for the sixteen years I was locked in my room and did nothing for Ky.

  My gaze wanders to the next headstone. It’s much smaller with faded engravings and cracked stone.

  Aurora Whitcomb

  Died at Birth

  A breath escapes me. Though Walker told me I had a headstone, seeing it with my own eyes still feels like a punch in the stomach. Whoever had this headstone made didn’t even allow me a few days to my life.

  Died at Birth.

  Tears prick my eyes, and I let them slip down my cheek. I might as well have been dead—the empty life I lived. It was pointless and painful, and there were more days than not that I wished it would just end. Would it have mattered? If I wasn’t around, Ember would still be alive. She would still be able to return and take over Ky. So what is my purpose? Why am I here?

  I shake the all-too-familiar dark thoughts and turn my attention back to Mother’s headstone before the voices in my head consume my mind. Supportive Wife.

  It should read: Abused Wife. Or, I don’t know. Unsupportive Wife. Or maybe a better one would be: Revolutionary Wife.

  I smirk. I might have to change that myself. Give Mother the honor she deserves. It’s because of her and Walker this whole revolution began. I read the next line again.

  Loving Mother.

  What kind of mother was she? I never really got a good answer out of Ember. We were too at odds to have a good heart to heart about Mother. Or Mom, as Ember called her. But she did give me one bit of insight that was worth the world to me: She was exactly what you would expect a mother to be. Maybe she was like Krin. Maybe she really was like the female version of Walker.

  Loving Mother.

  I read those two words over and over and over again, trying hard to shatter the image I have of her ingrained in my head, and replace it with the mom Ember might have known. But it’s hard not to see her as a careless, selfish jackal.

  Because if she was so loving, why did she leave me behind?

  CHAPTER SIX

  RAIN

  Night is where the memories find me. And tonight, the memory of Ember’s death slaps me in the face.

  We’re by the bridge. Titus is pinned beneath a Defender, Aurora stands by and watches, doing nothing, and Ember lies limp beneath a tiger, and her name leaves my lips like the raw call of a dying animal. Aurora says something to the black tiger, probably telling it to finish Ember off—and then red.

  Everything I see is red.

  I race to Ember’s side, bracing myself to shove the tiger off—but it walks away voluntarily. Titus, still pinned to the ground by a Defender, is coughing up blood, and rain is falling from the sky, threatening to drown the earth.

  I kneel by Ember’s side. I touch her face, then her neck and check for a pulse, but all my fingers find is blood. Warm, oozing blood. And gashes and muscle and more blood pouring out of her artery and

  I

  don’t

  know

  what

  to

  do.

  I strip off my shirt, bunch it into a ball, and press it against her neck. Then I check for her pulse in her wrist.

  Nothing.

  If she’s bleeding this bad in her neck, she would be coughing, choking up blood, something.

  But she’s not.

  Because.

  Ember Carter is dead.

  Tears spring to my eyes, pour down my face with the raindrops, and I struggle to maintain rationality. She’s not dead. No way can she be dead. I have to perform CPR. Closing her nose, I cover her mouth with mine and blow the breath of life into her lungs, then pump her chest.

  “It’s too late.”

  The deceptively gentle voice cuts into my thoughts, and I look up to find Aurora looking down at me with deceptively sad eyes. Everything about her is deceiving. A lie. A joke.

  “You have to close her artery, sew her neck up,” Aurora says. “She’s already lost a lot of blood, and there’s no way we can save her before we get her to the hospital.” She shrugs and looks away, and if I didn’t know any better, I would almost think there were tears in her eyes. But it must be the rainwater. “She’s dead,” she whispers hoarsely.

  Ignoring her, I continue with CPR, but with every breath I give, a piece of me is stripped away. Every time I pump her chest, my own heart dies a little. I breathe and pump and breathe and pump until exhaustion takes over, and I lean back, tears stinging my eyes and dizziness engulfing me.

  The rain is still pouring form the sky. Spring rains promising to bring life. And yet, the only life I care about is gone, and no amount of rain is going to bring her back. She’s not a seed, that a little water will make a dead thing grow. She’s human. And she’s gone.

  I hunch over her body, and I can feel my heart rip in two, thread by thread. Something breaks inside me, and a gaping hole begins to grow until I can't breathe, can't think, can’t speak. Pictures flash behind my eyes, and I see Ember the first day we met, when I led her out of prison. I remember the way the Frankfort sun danced off her skin when she ran laps in the prison pit. The night I escorted her to the ball.

  Her smiling eyes.

  Her smile.

  I’m vaguely aware of voices going on around me.

  “It’s done, Aurora.” Titus’s voice. “The rebels have abandoned you, and our biggest threat is dead.”

  I look up through the raindrops clouding my vision. Two Defenders are on Titus. I blink again, just to make sure I’m seeing things right. Sure enough. Two Defenders, one on each arm, and it looks like Titus’s hands are pulled behind his back. He’s blindfolded. Ember Aurora is standing in front of him, arms crossed, long hair pulled back in a messy bun, looking completely relaxed even though she lost her sister.

  I see her through the
rain.

  I see her.

  And I want to kill her.

  “Let’s go home,” Titus speaks slowly, as to a child. “And put this mess behind us. The rebels have played with your mind. You need to get back to familiar territory, organize your thoughts, and think about your actions.”

  Titus.

  He killed Ember.

  That thought fuels my anger, and in a moment I’m on my feet, striding toward him, but two Defenders grab my arms and yank them behind my back.

  “Kill him!” I shout. I glare at Aurora. “If you’re really on our side like you claim, then kill him. Kill him, now!”

  She stares at me, unblinking, though rainwater drips down her hair and her cheeks and into her clothes. It’s cold, but she doesn’t even appear to be shivering.

  Shoddy robot.

  “No,” she says.

  And now my anger has evolved to blind rage. I try to jerk free from the Defenders, but their hold is strong like iron fists. “Then I was right.” My voice breaks, and I choke out a laugh because, of course I was right. In something I don’t want to be right in, I am right. How the world must be laughing at my expense. “You had Ember and even Forest fooled.”

  “I’m trying to make things right, Rain.” Her voice is firm. She definitely has more confidence now than she ever did in the caverns. Shoddy actress.

  “If you want to make things right,” I say. “Kill. Titus.”

  “I need him.”

  Another short laugh escapes me. “You need him? You can’t survive without him? What is he, your father? You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself without him bossing you around?”

  She winces, and I wish I felt some measure of satisfaction from her pain, but I don’t. I feel raw. I feel like I’ll never feel anything again.

  She nods at Titus's Defenders. “Lock him up.” She looks at me, then at the Defenders holding me. “And him, too.” She glances at Forest, then Ember, and she winces. She swallows convulsively, then looks at another Defender. “Defender Shepherd, take the bodies to the royal mortuary. We’ll give them both a proper burial.”

  And she turns around.

  And walks toward the chief’s jeep with the regal dignity of an unfeeling queen.

  The Defenders’ grips tighten around my arms, and I’m jerked around. I don’t fight. Why bother? Ember and Forest both lie dead on the ground. Forest. My brother. My best friend. There’s nothing worth living for anymore.

  I am a shell.

  An empty shell.

  And I’m crumbling into five million pieces of dust.

  * * *

  I wake with a start. I jerk upright, and force the memories out of my head. Force the nightmares out of my head. Force anything and everything out of my head. I push the walls back. I push the thoughts back,

  push,

  push,

  push,

  and I focus only on the future and my next breath. But it’s so hard. Too hard. I’ve always felt like one of Peter Pan’s lost boys, but I’ve never felt more lost than I have since Ember’s death. She was my star in the night sky.

  She was oxygen and I’m suffocating.

  I’ve lost count of the many times I’ve prayed to God to give her back, asked him what I could give in return, shouted at him to turn back time and take me instead.

  I’ve lost count of the days of deafening silence that met my cries.

  So I take every day, every hour, every minute as it comes, and go through the basic motions that require very little to no thought.

  Open my eyes.

  I’m in a room. A bedroom fit for a palace worker. It’s nothing elaborate. It’s not too shoddy, either. I mean, it’s no prison pit. Thank you so much, Aurora, for not sending me there. How Ember managed to live down there for a week is beyond me. It’s cold and dank and reeks of raw sewage and death.

  No, Aurora is still trying to gain my trust, and so has had me locked in this room for the past three weeks, waiting for me to break or end my life. I’m not sure which. I’ve come close to doing both, but I refuse to allow her the satisfaction. I don’t know why she even bothers keeping me around. Well, yes I do. More citizens admire me than her. I mean, I spent the majority of my youth up till now working the crowd. She just made her first appearance last month. So of course the Patricians trust me more than her. They were pissed when she arrested me.

  She put me in somewhat comfortable quarters to ease their rage.

  No hotel like what Ember got the second part of her stay in Frankfort, but a room with a bed and private bathroom at least. And I’m not locked in the normal prison, but in the Chief’s Mansion—in the same building both Aurora and Titus live in.

  And Holy Crawford, it’s suffocating to be in the same building as my two least favorite Whitcombs.

  What I can’t understand is, if Aurora was truly on our side, why didn’t she kill Titus when she had the chance? She agreed to let him live as long as he handed his title. He apparently values his life more than his dignity and did it with no problem. And now he and Aurora are buddies again. Just more proof that Aurora is as deceptive as a fox. Didn’t she say she would kill him herself? I snort.

  Shoddy vixen.

  So this is it. My prediction? Aurora will keep me here until the Patricians either forget I’m held captive, or until they adore her enough to trust her decision. Won’t be too hard to garner their trust. They trusted Titus wholeheartedly, and he’s a conniving viper. And since he spoke well of Aurora during the Transition of Power ceremony, according to James, it won’t be long before all the people trust her, too.

  And here I am. A failed Resurgencie. Forgotten and stuck in the place I succeeded to avoid for years.

  I sigh and sink back down on my bed. Lay back and cross my arms behind my head while propping up one leg. I wish I had my hat. It was my one source of comfort. The only thing I owned that defined me, the one piece of fabric reminding me of who I am and why I’m alive. And on days like this, it was easy to pull my cap over my eyes and pretend like nothing existed outside of my mind.

  I close my eyes. Try to get some sleep. But the events from three weeks ago come bombarding back. It doesn’t matter how many times I go through the events in my head, no matter how hard I try to convince myself there was nothing I could do, they still sabotage my thoughts. Because deep down, I know I’m lying to myself.

  I could have stopped Forest and Ember from dying.

  Starting with when I first found out Aurora was being kept in the caverns. I should have killed her at first sight. I shouldn’t have let Jonah Walker dissuade me. His attachment to family was clearly the fall of him—though he’s been forgiven and is being treated like a regular old Patrician because of his loyalty to Aurora.

  Pretty much, whenever Aurora took the throne, she compelled every single Defender that she was the new leader. Then she had every Resurgencie who trusted her moved to Frankfort Hotel. Those who didn’t trust her, like the Fearless Six, stayed across the river in Indy. This is all news brought to me by Mcallister.

  I wonder now if the Resurgence will try to take down Aurora, or if they’ll give up and make Indy their home. I wonder a lot. It’s all I’ve been able to do these past three weeks while locked in this confining room.

  Aurora has allowed visits, but her motives are borne out of her desire to torture me, as evidenced by the visitors she’s allowed.

  First, my father, who visited two weeks ago. He embraced me for the first time in ten years, then proceeded to tell me what a fool I was for working with shoddy rebels and how lucky I am that I’m imprisoned beneath the rule of the chief, because if we were home I would wish I were dead. He clearly doesn’t understand that I already wish I were dead.

  Mother visited the next day. A much gentler species than Father, but no more enjoyable. She apologized for her absence during my childhood, and I told her that her absence was a blessing. She asked me to try to work with Aurora, and I told her to go to hell. As
if it wasn’t bad enough that Walker—who was more a father to me than my real father—chose Aurora’s side, my own mother chose her side, too. Mother sat with me and talked to me longer than she’s spoken to me for any length of time since I was eight. I lay in bed, curled up in my agony, while she talked and talked and talked. I pretended to ignore her while every word she said latched onto my brain cells.

  I wept when she left.

  My next visitor was James Mcallister. And thank God he didn’t say a word to me about our shoddy chief. Which leads me to believe that he’s still on the Resurgence side and is waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. Good old James, always able to pull the wool over the Whitcombs’ eyes when the rest of us have failed.

  It was good to spend time with my best friend again. We talked of old times before we grew up, when he was the son of our gardener. We talked of those precious few weeks within the caverns, when Ember was still alive. He asked me questions about how I was doing with all this, and for the first time since her death, I talked about Ember. I talked about her life, reminisced when I first saw her, cursed the day she died. For hours, Mcallister listened while I gave in to my need to talk of Ember. He didn’t leave until his phoneband blinked, and he announced that Aurora needed him.

  That was five days ago. I’ve endured five days of utter loneliness, accompanied by only the memories that haunt me. The only human faces I’ve seen are those of the maid who brings me my food and the Defenders who open the door for her.

  I’m going mad. My nightmares threaten to eat me alive. My memories promise to drown me. I’m not sure I can survive one more week of this.

  A knock at the door, and my eyes fly open. Aurora steps in, then closes the door behind her. Oh. Hell. No. Not her, please. This is the first time I’ve seen her since Ember’s funeral. Shoddy rot, why does she have to look exactly like Ember? Their similar appearance is a dagger to my heart.

  I don’t even bother sitting up in her presence. Instead, I look back at the ceiling and close my eyes. “You have some balls coming in here without a Defender to protect you.”