In A Burning Room

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In A Burning Room Page 17

by TS Ward


  “Yes, for one child, for Percy or Tiger or any one child, undoubtedly, yes,” the words were eager to float from my mouth, and the crowd stirred at the ease in which I would lay down their lives for one. I continued. “And the next, and the next, and the next, because they are only children and we have had a millennium and more to give them a good future and instead of that, instead the Empire is stealing them from their families. I was stolen—I don’t remember the before, but I was. Arden was. Percy was. And I won’t let anyone else be.”

  He was quiet. His head rested against his granddaughter’s as he rocked her slowly. He breathed in deep and his chest grew wide and then he shrank back into a man who was only scared for the remainder of his family and people.

  His signing was slow with Tiger in his arms. “Soren Beckett. You are the future Empress of the United North American Empire. Is that a promise? To keep the children safe, to return them to their families—all of them, and to provide for them a bright and hopeful future?”

  The title of future Empress spoken aloud was something I was not prepared to hear.

  It made my heart pound against my chest in a demand to be released from the cage that was the castle. All I wanted was to slip away into the sweet grass meadow with my little bear, not to be the Empress, but the rest was something I wanted. For the rest of the Empire’s children. If I wanted it for him, then it was only right for the rest.

  I stood up from the ground to look him straight in the onyx eyes. I squared my shoulders, straightened my spine, and lifted my chin. “Yes. Of course.”

  “And, Duchess, is it also your promise to right the wrongs done to the citizens of the Empire by your predecessor? Is it your promise to provide for us a similar quality of life that you promise for the youth of this Empire? Is it your promise to feed us, to provide us with clean water, and medicine, and shelter, and work?”

  He set Tiger down to the sand and reached a hand out, waiting.

  Sadness lived in my throat and in the pit of my stomach, looking around at all of these people and the doubt that was slowly being weeded out by the hope that Rabbit instilled in them.

  These were things I could not say no to, but the difficulty of fulfilling a promise like that was clear in the state of my father’s Empire. It’s only right.

  “Rabbit,” I whispered, “I don’t want to be Empress, or to put that responsibility on others in my family, but I do want to do those things that you wish from me. If I have to, yes, but it’s Percy—”

  “—but you promise it?”

  “Yes, just not as the Empress—”

  Salt’s voice boomed over the speakers as Rabbit clasped his hands over mine and then stood back. “There’s some hope in this young leader yet. Her promise as the Empress aligns with our desires, and our hopes, and our vision.

  “We march on Redbird. We usurp the throne. We give the Beckett girl her chance to make this mess right. Today, the Empire takes, tomorrow, our Empire gives!”

  A feeling of unease burrowed into my bones and filled me with cement.

  They wanted to kill him. They wanted to kill my father.

  And they would put me on the throne with the same promise that he gave.

  I felt like I understood him in that moment. Trapped. Trapped, by my own self and the Empire.

  A roar shook the dead city.

  The rebels raised their fists and their weapons and flooded the streets with war cries like a white-water river flooding its banks in the spring. The coldness of the winter melted and gave way to a new world.

  Each chant was a knife cut and a bullet graze that burned my skin a little more, that branded me with the fear of my blood and my name.

  There weren’t many of them. There were more, elsewhere in the world, but not here. Here, it was a hundred at least and two hundred at best, and the Empire had thousands of soldiers and even more Lumen—and the Sceptres.

  Only the strongest were brought to the Embassy. The rest were hidden from us, hidden away by Astra and Asa Beckett, their Sceptre titles and locations marked on an encrypted list on Isaac Carson’s tablet.

  The rebels were outnumbered. I was outnumbered.

  My ears rang with the chants of a call for blood. Blood from blood. An eye for an eye.

  “Soren, I think it’s time for us to go,” Jack cautioned over the white noise of raging waters, his hand wrapped around my arm as he pulled me away.

  My eyes were on Rabbit and the burning coals that stared me down as he grew small. The crowd enveloped him as he lifted Tiger to his shoulders.

  The girl cried.

  She sat above the heads of the people as they danced, celebrated, and she knew the toll that this would take as well as I did, as well as Rabbit, as well as Jack as he tried to keep the Beckett girl from getting lost in the crowd of the ones who would kill her father.

  I stumbled on the cracked pavement as we fought against the mob of bodies.

  Fitz, Ellie, Pucks, Roam—they were lost in the crushing and angry sea that tried to swallow us, and I clung to Jack like a raft in the swell.

  The Empire took my little bear, my Perseus, and the rebels would take my father.

  Jack’s hand slipped from my arm against the pull of someone cutting between us. An elbow rammed into my ribs with bruising force. I kept my eyes on the earth brown of his hair and the mark of a soldier on his jacket shoulders, tried to catch up, slipped between the people rushing into the garden.

  I broke through the edge of the ocean and found the sandy shore, but I blinked and he was gone and I was alone in the shadow of an ancient city. I stared back at the crowd and the sand that fell in curtains from the vibrations of hammering feet and voices.

  My heart pounded its own earthquakes into my ribs.

  There were so many of them. There was so much noise. There was so much static gathered in a frantic ball of undulating blue light.

  I still felt the ache of the bullets that shattered against a barrier I created.

  I still felt the pins and the needles of it piercing my skin.

  I still felt the Lumen and the boot that kicked my chest.

  “Sparky!”

  I spun toward his voice. A flood of relief washed the fear from me when I saw him standing next to a bus shelter. He held his hand out and waved me to him and I ran to him.

  These people were going to kill my father. My little bear was ripped from my grasp. And James—there was so much noise, so much static. Everything was so frantic, except for Jack.

  His hand waited for mine, but I didn’t take it.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck, fell into him, and the world grew quiet. The static softened and faded as his arms came to rest around me. He laughed softly.

  “What’s that for?” Jack asked, voice breathy.

  “What’s it not for?” I crossed my arms, suddenly defensive.

  He was quiet for a moment, and then he shook his head and grinned. “Alright, then.”

  I floundered as he walked away, a flush in my cheeks as I hurried after him. “Don’t get the wrong idea, soldier. That—I was panicking and I lost you and I was scared. That’s all.”

  Jack led the way between two buildings.

  The creak of them made me more nervous than the noise that chased after us. Even the distant sound of glass that broke somewhere found us here.

  “What’s the wrong idea?” He wondered as he slipped through an open doorway.

  No—there was no door left, no windows, but the hall we walked into had clean floors. A broom leaned against the wall next to painted words. Doctor, with an arrow that pointed up next to a crude drawing of a staircase. Weapon-smith, with an arrow that pointed ahead.

  The two things seemed to go hand in hand.

  “What’s not the wrong idea?” I bit back, and then bit my tongue when he threw a smile over his shoulder. I shook my head and searched the rooms for any hint of static.

  My Sceptre blood flooded the building and came back into my bones with a sharp pang, coming up empty and
a little bit weaker.

  “Jack. I’m not trying to—I’m trying to not freak out.”

  He nodded. “I know. It’s hard not to.”

  “I don’t understand them,” I sighed. “Why would Rabbit want to replace my father with me, and why would they agree so… so excitably? It’s just—what reason does Rabbit have to pull something like that?”

  Jack stopped and turned back to me. “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “What do you get out of this?”

  I stepped up to him, glanced at the marks of his jacket, his gold ring, and that bone knife tucked away at his hip. He didn’t carry a pistol like Fitz did. That rifle, it was his, but I only ever saw his uncle move it and only heard it fire when Roam shot Prometheus from the Sailer.

  “I’m just doing my job,” he shrugged. “Keeping you safe.”

  “You were my shadow. In Redbird, you… you must have been a shadow, but you were my shadow, weren’t you?”

  I didn’t remember a damn thing, and I was terrified to. But I remembered the silver and gold leaf stars painted across the ceiling of my bedroom and the room across the hall that was emptier than it should have been and how being there was an ache of loneliness.

  A fear of the dark that returned with a vengeance.

  He was quiet as he turned away again, but I saw the muscle in his jaw jump and I felt a knot of guilt for saying anything about it. I could tell he didn’t want to talk about it, that it hurt, but I couldn’t figure out why.

  I followed him at a distance, to a set of stairs, and frowned when his every other step was stiff.

  “Jack?”

  “I know,” he breathed out through clenched teeth. “Ellie said it’s not that bad.”

  I bounded up the narrow staircase and slipped under the arm that steadied him against the wall. My hands pulled his jacket away from his side and it nearly stopped my heart at the sight of the blood that darkened his shirt.

  “Jack,” I hissed, “It’s not that bad but you’re still bleeding, you idiot! You didn’t think to say anything? Ellie didn’t think to—by the stars. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, you’re sorry? Sparky, you didn’t do this. Don’t apologize for it.” He laughed, but worried wrapped my arm around his waist to help him up the stairs and he grew quiet for it. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I should have known, I should have asked, I was focused on Percy but I should have checked on you. You’ll be okay.”

  I pushed open the door that had doctor painted across it and found electric lanterns to bring some light into the room. It was blue light, with sunlight that spilled in from the windows to make half the room orange.

  He shook his head. “You aren’t responsible for me.”

  “I’m responsible for the Empire, and you’re my shadow so you’re responsible for me. What am I supposed to do if my shadow gets sick or injured, or gets an infection from an injury and therefore sick? I need you to be healthy, for my own good.” I scanned the room for supplies.

  “For your own good? You mean you want me to do all the work while you stand back and look pretty? That’s unlike you, Sparky,” he chuckled. “It’s starting to sound like you care about me.”

  I turned to him and shot him a glare for the look on his face. “Keep laughing and I won’t be gentle.”

  He sank down on the edge of a metal cot with a thin white mattress. “You won’t be gentle? That’s a surprise—I’m joking. No, we’re waiting for Ellie.”

  “Ellie? You want Ellie to stitch you up? Do you want a scar like this?”

  I pulled up the bottom of my shirt and pointed to the mark left from the Pluto girl’s bullet, from the incision they made to pull it out. Ellie was a former neurosurgeon with lackluster clean-up after her son damaged the nerves in one hand, but she was the only one there who could do anything about it.

  Jack stared at the raised mark, his face paled, until I covered it again. He worked his jaw and pressed a hand over the cut in the same place on his stomach. “You were shot?”

  I nodded. “Wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “What happened?”

  I turned away and scanned the room.

  Cupboards lined the walls, labeled in messy handwriting. Antiseptic? I pulled out a nearly empty bottle with a long nozzle, and then turned to the stitch kits, pausing to walk over to him.

  “Show me, please,” I gestured to the cut as I crouched in front of him and set the antiseptic on the cot next to him. I waited as he pulled his shirt up before I gently prodded it. “Not deep. You get the sticky stuff.”

  “Thanks, doc,” he smiled and tapped his knuckle to my wrist as I walked away again.

  There wasn’t much in this place. The cupboards were almost barren but there was a tube of glue and butterfly strips and a gauze patch that would protect it just fine. And a cloth, to dry his skin for the glue to hold. I grabbed all of it and knelt in front of him again.

  “You know what you’re doing?” He asked as he shrugged his jacket from his shoulders and pulled his shirt over his head.

  “No idea,” I muttered.

  “That’s encouraging—that stings, Soren,” he grimaced as I washed the cut free of sand and searched for glass left over. He gripped my shoulder as I wiped it clean and picked up the glue tube. “You know how I can tell you’re not a medical professional? You’re too gentle. You’re wincing more than I am.”

  “Does talking help the pain?” I hummed and cast a look up at him.

  It was meant as a half-assed attempt at a joke, but his thumb rubbed my shoulder and his eyes closed and he kept his mouth clamped tightly shut. He was in pain—it was always the shallow cuts that hurt, and no matter how hardened the soldier was, the sight of your own blood was always dizzying.

  He wasn’t wrong, either. I had my heart in my throat and I was being gentle because I was afraid to hurt him even more.

  It was almost the same as the humour-filled conversation we had to keep our heads clear. We wouldn’t be any help to Percy in a panic, but it was hard not to. It was hard to keep breathing.

  The glue was cold but he was warm. I worked quickly to press the pull strips down and get the gauze taped to him, and pressed my hand over it to make it stick.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “Don’t move. Let it set.”

  I kept my hand pressed to his side and closed my eyes for a moment. I let a small trickle of static move between my fingertips and his skin.

  A nest of nerves around the cut burned brightly and pulsed along canals to his brain and I pulled them from him, let them settle sharply in the ghost of a bullet that tore through me. The static brought the sensation of the bullets that shattered against a wall of static.

  I grit my teeth and pressed my forehead to his knee.

  His hand rested over mine. “What are you doing?”

  “Shh,” I hushed him, but the world was dizzying and his pain was gone and I saw that girl who stood outside the dark room with the gun. I felt the bullet that burned through me and the heat of blood and— “You’ll feel better for a while.”

  You’ll feel better for a while, I told James.

  He sat on the edge of my cot in my dark room, and I helped the wires of his mind connect the way they were meant to connect in the way that medication would have.

  “What did you do?” Jack’s voice was there but when I opened my eyes, it was James.

  It was James with his blond hair that fell over his forehead and his smoke gray eyes that drilled holes through me and his hands that fought against the gravity that wanted me on the floor. “Why did you do that? Soren, look at me, please.”

  Please. He was a beggar in that dark room. You fix me. You heal me.

  Darkness ate at the image of him and I knew that I would see him again and I knew what would happen when I did, but I collapsed like a pillar of salt touched by water and I wanted him gone.

  Look at me! I saved you, and now you save me.

  “Jack?”

  ———r />
  The darkness was a hungry beast.

  It swallowed the light but left the ghosts behind. I knelt behind a spectre of a starved monster worse than any darkness. He wasn’t quite here. Half here, half somewhere else. He sat on a black leather seat with his head leaned back and his eyes closed.

  I stepped around him with my stomach in a knot of fear as rage climbed up my throat.

  He almost looked… normal. Human.

  He looked the way the crust of lava did—something solid and as safe as a rock, something to lean on and touch, but he was a thousand degrees of molten earth just barely hidden by the temptation of a smooth surface. He would swallow me whole if I got too close.

  I sank to my knees. “Where is he? Where is Percy?”

  James twitched and cracked on the surface. Sparks rose from the thin lines of fire that brought orange light to the dark, his veins full of ember and ash.

  Once, he compared us to gods, and now with this volcano of a man before me, an untamed planet still wild and deadly, I saw it. He was Hephaestus, he was Helios, he was Vulcan, he was Ogun, he was Ra.

  He was still.

  My hands shook as I reached out to him, my skin blue fire to his gold. There was a storm in me that was ice cold, and in him it was hellfire. When I touched his hand lightning bolts graced my fingertips and drew smoke and ash from his.

  Even as he sleeps, he burns, a voice whispered in the back of my mind.

  I sucked in a breath that tasted like burnt metal. “James, wake up. Look at me.”

  He’ll bleed the sun, if he cracks the right way.

  “James!”

  My voice splintered through the darkness like thunder, split his skin like fissures from an earthquake. Flames danced along the edges like ichor. The fire burned the air from my lungs as his eyes cracked and golden light dripped like water down his cheeks. It filled the fissures around the smile that crept onto his mouth. His teeth were white fire in that grin.

 

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