by TS Ward
“She’s the one who told us where to find her,” the woman answered. “She already knows.”
I tried to move, and everything split in two. The space behind and above my eyes started to ache even more.
“Shhh,” I groaned, and slid the static-fractured bones of my arm over my eyes. “Shut. Shut—stop.”
Roam continued to smooth my hair under her palms. She hummed softly as Jack walked away.
She knew exactly what was going on, and I knew she did because I knew it too, but I fought the idea with claw and tooth.
Half of it—I allowed half of what she knew, that it was the static that overwhelmed, that flooded and short circuited my wiring and overloaded my brain. The other half screamed of the Genesis.
Where did it come from, the static?
I didn’t know. I didn’t know and it was frustrating.
“I know, baby girl,” Roam murmured.
She knelt on the deck beside me and hid the sun enough that I could lower my arm. She was a dark shadow with hair thick and curly like mine, curly like Percy’s and Pucks’, and it had to come from her because my father’s was straight as a razor and smooth as silk and that was the only difference between me and his sister.
Her hand rested on my shoulder. She leaned over me and her eyes caught mine as they lit up with embers under the sun. Percy was right. She had dark plum bruises in half-moons under that flame.
“Soren, please,” she whispered. “I’ve read the journal. You can tell me if it’s true. You can talk to me. I won’t let them take you again.”
I slipped away from her hands, moved too quick for my aching head.
A rush of blood set sparklers alight in my eyes and burned the smell of copper into my nose. I steadied myself with splayed fingers pressed to the deck. When it subsided, I pushed myself up with stiff muscles, slowly, and searched for balance on the boat as it claimed another dune.
Roam sighed and stood up with me.
She pressed a hand to my back and another around my arm and spoke low. “Do I have to prove it to you? It was your ninth birthday when Astra brought that journal. She also brought you a telescope. The journal was written by Prescott Montgomery and detailed Emma Ryan’s development with her Sceptre genetics. Might as well call that journal the bible the way they treat that thing. Your father became obsessed with the idea that you could be the next Genesis. Because that’s what they call it, isn’t it, Soren?”
My eyes sank to her hand and the gold band around her finger as we stepped around the sail and she let me go.
I saw the shape of her in that marble statue in my mind.
A soft smile danced across her face.
Mama, a voice in the back of my head whispered, but I fought it off with distance. Her touch lingered with a kind of warmth and I closed my heart to it, turned myself to a cold marble statue, because I was—I was scared.
If the woman who looked too much like me was really my mother, then he lied. He lied, to manipulate me to his needs. He made me forget. And if that was true, it wasn’t fair to her, and it wasn’t fair to me, or to any of us.
“He was a good man, you know,” she said to me. Her voice called the attention of the men on the back half of the boat as I backed away from her. There were lines at the corners of her eyes and a certainty that tainted her words with sadness. “He was good. He did everything he could for the Empire. He was a good father, until—well. Just remember, he was good.”
Until. He was good until—
Until Astra brought that journal to him and that telescope to me. Until he spent every waking hour with it glued to his hands, with her research papers open across the glass of his desk and on a tablet at the dinner table, until he wanted my impossible Sceptre blood woken and my mind never certain—he wanted me to be like the woman in that journal. My ancestor.
And his curse.
He wasn’t a good man. Not with the things that he’d done. And it was a bitter pill that made me sick.
I turned and nearly tripped over Percy. He swapped places with Fitz to stand with Jack, wrapped his hands around the rope to help, and this time his help was welcomed without a playful struggle.
“Sparky,” Jack nodded me closer.
I stepped around Percy and rested a hand on the boy’s hair. “Talon?”
“Do me a favour.” He leaned in, spoke in my ear as the wind brushed his hair against my skin.
It tickled, but I stood frozen, afraid to move for the darker tones in his voice. When I blinked, I saw James’ gray eyes.
“You scared the hell out of me. I thought you—I thought you wouldn’t wake up. Look, Sparky, I’ve got a big heart and it takes a lot to keep it beating steady, so just do me a favour. Don’t do that again.”
Something new in his voice made me look at him, some pleading tone, and as much as he tried to brush it off with a lopsided smile—he was serious. He was scared.
Even if he hadn’t said it, looking into those eyes would have told me all I needed to know. Worry was buried deep in the green, etched in the dark eyelashes pinched together at the corners where the short lines in his skin showed themselves. It was in the numerous freckles that somehow appeared to have multiplied for the lack of colour in his face. Chapped lips bitten anxiously. His hair a roughed-up mess. There was a pinch of guilt in me for assuming anger from him, as if he was James.
He wasn’t. Even Fitz with the anger inherent in him wasn’t anywhere near him.
I smiled softly and touched my fingers to his elbow. He was steady and I swayed and I wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to worry about me, that it wouldn’t happen again, but I was a terrible liar.
It would happen as long as I had this Sceptre blood, as long as I couldn’t control it. As long as I was Soren Beckett and my ancestor was Emma Ryan and the realm of unconsciousness was left uncharted.
I slipped around him and caught the console as the Sailer dipped down a sharp dune. Sand splayed out behind us and chased our tail.
The wheel of the land boat creaked as Pucks pulled against gravity to keep us straight, his eyes set on a compass and a map tied down to the wood in front of him.
Fitz leaned on his elbows next to him.
“How long until Warren?” I asked them, but my eyes drifted beyond either of them. I didn’t see or feel that Lumen anymore.
“Nightfall, at latest,” Pucks drawled.
Nightfall. It seemed so soon, but then again, this land boat picked up speed with each dune it crested and married.
I nodded, and my hand drifted to the zippered pocket of my jacket.
I was going to meet Moon Rabbit, the leader of the rebellion against my father and my family and my Empire, the father of my friend, and I was going to tell him that she was dead. That she was dead because of me.
Fitz looked up at me with a frown. “How the hell do you know where we’re going?”
I froze, remembered that it was James who said it, but it was Jack who answered him.
“I told her.”
His uncle eyed him with scrutiny. “What the hell did you go and do something like that for? And what’s going to happen when we get there? I don’t suppose we have a plan. Rabbit won’t be happy without his goddamn weapon.”
“I think we have the weapon,” Jack said carefully. “The Genesis. That’s what they all called Soren—”
“I want to talk to him,” I announced suddenly, and looked back to the horizon that shifted in waves behind us. It was near, and then it was far, and then it was near again and my stomach churned with the motion. “To Moon Rabbit. I will to talk to him, actually.”
“No way in hell, Sparky,” Jack said.
He wrapped the rope around his left forearm and let go with the other hand to reach out to me, touched my back as lightly as I touched his elbow.
“You’re not going in there. It’s bad enough for us, going in dressed like soldiers, but you—no. Even Roam doesn’t go down.”
I breathed out slowly and closed my eyes for a moment. I w
ould talk to him whether they let me or not, because there was a girl who I made a promise to and I intended to keep it.
“I want Soren to meet Tiger!” Percy shouted. He jumped up to me, caught my arm, and nearly pulled me off my feet.
We hadn’t said a word since this morning, so I shot him a questioning look to ask, you aren’t mad at me anymore?
He smiled. “I told Tiger all about you.”
Pucks pulled a spyglass from a compartment on the console, and held it out to the kid. “Why don’t you keep an eye on the horizon?”
Percy’s face lit up as he snatched the spyglass and took off, crawled underneath the sail, and disappeared to the front of the Sailer.
I would rather go with him than stand here and talk about this. I would rather pretend that the rest of the world didn’t exist, to play like a child with a child without a care or concern—but this was for him.
“I told him not to say a word about you coming back to us,” Pucks sighed as his hand tugged at his beard.
“Shouldn’t have told him in the first place. You know how kids are. Secrets are between them and the world.” Fitz grumbled as he watched the kid over the slope of the sail. He scratched the scar above his eyepatch and then slid his hand through short red hair. “Now Tiger’s likely gone and told Rabbit.”
I looked at the deck. “He’ll think you chose me over his weapon.”
He stood up straight in the corner of my eye, and I felt him look at me. “That’s right, princess. He’ll think we chose to take the Emperor’s mission and the Emperor’s daughter over the weapon that would protect hundreds and then thousands.”
“You know, it’s really weird to hear that a weapon would protect thousands. How? After you kill just as many? It’s worse when you consider the context that we’re discussing, referencing me as a weapon—by the stars, Fitz Talon, do you ever listen to yourself?” I bit my tongue and pressed my palm to the edge of the console. I was not going to be held against another living soul by another again and— “What did they say? About the weapon. What information were you given?”
Fitz snorted a laugh. “Like you don’t know.”
“I don’t know, Talon.” My voice shook but it was strong enough to reach him. “What I know is what I have had to wean off James, off Mercury, and it is all just bits and pieces that have had a stupid fucking price. If you want me on your side then let me be.”
Pucks lifted his chin and rolled his shoulder. “All we know is that there was a weapon that your father was planning to use, that he would set on the Empire within the month. We came to an agreement that Jack and Fitz would follow the orders they had.”
“That’s… that’s all you had to go off,” I muttered. “Rabbit took the plane down without knowing what kind of weapon would be on it. It could have been nuclear, or a hydrogen bomb, for all he knew, and he still—and you sent people to destroy the Embassy and now they’re dead—”
“How do you know that?” Fitz demanded. A frown narrowed his eye and tugged at his eyepatch.
“James.”
I didn’t hesitate to implicate him, but my heart was in my throat when I remembered where and when he told me. If they found out that he was here, if they found out that I spoke to him and then he walked into that camp and—I swallowed my heart back into my chest again.
“You’re not the only soldier out here giving away secrets.”
The three of them exchanged looks—Jack was grim, Pucks shot a stern eye to Fitz, and Fitz gave them both an I told you so glare. And then the one-eyed soldier looked at me with a snarl on his mouth.
Pucks held a hand out toward his chest.
“What else do you know?” Fitz growled.
I bit my tongue and stepped back, and I looked at him with confusion slapped across my face. “What else do you know?”
He was a bristled animal on its haunches, ready to leap with sharp teeth aimed at my throat. He stepped around Pucks, his boots heavy on the wooden planks of the Sailer’s deck as he came toward me. They were more orange stained than they were in the Embassy, rough and not shined and weathered through countless missions.
His voice was just as worn. “Don’t talk back to me. What else are you hiding? What do you know?”
I breathed sharp dust into my lungs and felt my exhalations tumble back to me from his chest. I backed into the railing. “I don’t know anymore than you, asshole—”
“Fitz, take the sail,” Jack ordered his uncle.
Reluctance settled in the set of the man’s shoulders and in the glare of his eye as he sidestepped me to go to Jack. His spine stiffened as his nephew put a hand on his shoulder and whispered something to him. He took the sail and held his tongue.
I sank to the deck, my arms wrapped around my knees.
“Coordination,” Jack said as he sat beside me with a pained sigh that he tried to hide. “Coordination and communication make for effective missions. That is a line that I have heard a thousand times over, and I’m sure it’s been drilled into your head too. Let’s follow it, yeah? We work together, and we talk. Deal?”
I am not good at lying. “Deal.”
“If you stay outside while we talk to Rabbit, I don’t doubt that he will want to see you, so please be patient. It is safer to stay with Percy and Roam, especially for them, having you with them. Besides, I hear they get into a lot of trouble. I’ll stay up, too.” He nudged my arm with his and ducked his head down to look me in the eye. “After. After, we’ll talk to him, but before that I need you to talk to us.”
“I am,” I breathed.
His arm rested across his knees and his fingers bridged the gap between us to tap mine. A hum purred behind a soft smile. “Then talk to me now. Tell me if you were happy there. Tell me if they hurt you. Tell me if you wanted to leave.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. My fingernails drew crescent moons into my forearms.
I remembered the Lumen that dragged me across the green field with a scream in my throat. I remembered being terrified when all the things I thought I remembered about my mother were stripped from the Manor and my father insisted that she was dead—all of the pictures, every physical hint of her.
The world wasn’t right. It didn’t feel real.
I remembered with vivid, lucid recall Astra in the dark room and Astra in the training room. I remembered her and the black sand and the sea.
Arden. Facedown in the pool while James and I stood barefoot at the edge.
I remembered the salvation in a dream of a little boy.
I leaned my head back against the side of the Sailer and reached a hand to find Jack’s. I needed the certainty of another human the way I needed Percy in the dark, while my mind was uncertain, and he was the one to sit next to me, who spoke with kindness.
“Soren,” he hummed, but he didn’t push the questions further.
13
Every time I closed my eyes, a flash bulb image pulsed on the backs of sun-red eyelids.
The dark room held an infinite black sky.
I stared at it, lying on the floor or the cot or sitting under the cold water of the shower, and every time that door was cranked open, I rushed to the center of that cube and stood at attention in that graphene jumpsuit.
Hands behind the head, back turned, heart racing.
Like a prisoner.
That’s what you are, a whisper of a voice tingled in the back of my mind. A prisoner alone in a cell.
I couldn’t walk away from it, but I fought it until it hurt too much to continue, or I let it happen. Either way ended in what they wanted, and either way I went back to that dark room. Ten by ten by ten. I went back into that little room with one fluorescent light and counted the seconds until they turned into minutes until they turned into hours until I couldn’t keep track any longer.
I swore it was days.
I swore the night was never ending.
And when that door opened—hell, I barely kept myself from falling to my knees in some sort of religious acquiescence.
Are you afraid of the dark? James asked me once.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
The Embassy was empty that night and so was my dark room and the memory of it burned like acid in the back of my throat. For a fraction of time in a universe stretched thin and sparse, I was not alone. I was not in the dark. I was wanted.
My Sceptre blood was good for something, to keep his hands from me. To make him only think there was something between us.
Even though I still saw it, still felt it, at least it wasn’t real.
Still, I collapsed under the weight of a desert and was buried by the unmoving mountain of shame cut from marble. For a fraction of a time, I was weaker than I had ever been, and it poisoned me.
Arden cut that fraction in pieces when she found me in the bathroom of the training hall, her chin held higher that day and a bit of lightness in her step.
We were the opposite of our usual selves. We were in each other’s place, and in that moment, we were two binary stars caught in the same spiral that seemed to never end. The Milky Way and Andromeda colliding at the edges.
She thanked me for it.
I remembered that when I woke up from sen-dep and he stood over me.
His pale blond hair hung straight over a pale face, his gray eyes filled with smoke, and I hated that I could remember that and look at him and believe all the things he said. But—a fire was a fire and I was so goddamn cold.
I wanted to let the desert sun burn the memories from my mind, but opening my eyes—I was cast in the shadow of someone as they knelt in front of me, leaned over me, and all I saw was him.
All I saw was James with his eyes that pierced mine while his hands searched out my skin in too-rough ways. All I saw was the smoke that swirled and all I felt was the heat that burned the air from my lungs and suddenly I struggled under a weight that wasn’t there, that dragged me deeper into my head, deeper into a place that I didn’t want to be in—my veins surged with fire.
A scream ruptured from me and I shot my hands forward.