Grayson and Anna had watched with grim fascination when she’d finally persuaded Oliver to save Kayden. They hadn’t said a word afterwards, just exchanged gunmetal glances and disappeared in silence, like they wanted to say something about what had transpired but the experience had robbed them of all linguistic ability. No doubt Anna would recover her sense of speech well before Grayson.
Their absence had left Farley alone with a newly recovered Kayden, who, underneath all of that blood, had been completely naked. Getting him to shower and into some clothes had been problematic. He wouldn’t stop pacing around the hallways of the cabin, running his fingers over the counter surfaces and ornaments like a dazed mute from outer space. She’d followed him from room to room for a while, concentrating on the strange glyph tattoos that swept across his back and up over his shoulders, in order to avoid accidentally looking at any other part of him. That included the ghosts of scars that marked his skin where it had been torn to shreds. He’d been perfect before, and now he was marked. After forty minutes she’d let him wander off on his own, hoping he’d snap back to reality soon. It’d taken three hours for that to happen.
He eventually turned up freshly scrubbed and appropriately attired of his own volition, demanding a game of one-on-one on the courtyard out the back. Having just had a shot of the immortal good stuff, he was full of pent up energy. This, coupled with Farley’s lassitude courtesy of her crappy night’s sleep, meant he was running rings around her.
“I know which side of the line I was on, buddy. I can count. That was three points,” she said.
Kayden brushed his pale hair out of his face with the back of a hand and bounced the ball hard on the tarmac. It sprang high over his head, and he squinted up at the sky. Farley expected him to catch it out of the air, but when the ball dropped back to earth, Kayden remained still, his head craning back, mouth slightly open. His face held intrigue and a hint of something else- confusion.
She followed his gaze up; a faint, wispy contrail stuttered across the sky, looking like morse code where the wind had disintegrated it into dots and dashes.
“Have you been on a plane, Farley?”
“No, not yet. My mom was going to take me to Spain as a graduation present, but…” she hadn’t graduated. And Moira was dead. It felt like a cloud rolled over the sun, and yet the sky was brazenly clear. Farley tucked her hands into the back pockets of her shorts. She studied the blades of grass that had worried their way up through the cracks on the court. “Have you?”
The blond boy closed his mouth and rolled his head around to look at her. He smiled, flashing teeth and a little arrogance. “Why would I have been on a plane?”
“I don’t know. You’re a lot older than me. I would have thought you’d have tried everything at least once by now.”
His gaze fell to the basketball where it had rolled to a stop against the chain link fence edging the court. He paced over to it and thoughtfully prodded it with his toe. After a few attempts he managed to flick it up onto the top of his sneakered foot and then into the air, where he caught it. “I haven’t had time for trying things. I’ve been very busy.”
The sound of a plane- maybe the one that left the contrail in the sky- hummed somewhere off in the distance. Its low drone underscored the lazy chorus of the birds that occupied the forest surrounding them; they sounded drunk or half asleep, like the heat was making them drowsy. Farley sympathized. The sun was intent on trying to melt the court and was succeeding for the most part. It felt a little spongy underfoot, and the air was thick with that burning, heavy aroma that always accompanied tarmac and freakishly hot days no matter where you were in the world.
The drone of the plane dipped an octave as it moved ever further away. Farley shielded her eyes against the sun, watching Kayden turn the ball over in his hands, his fingers splayed wide open against its dimpled surface.
“Busy doing what?” she asked.
“Whatever the Quorum needed me to do.”
Farley nodded, wishing she could stop herself from probing. But she couldn’t. She was ramping up to asking him how the hell he’d ended up on the doorstep, but he seemed too fragile for that discussion yet. “Fetching their dry cleaning?”
He let out a short, sharp laugh- an exhalation accompanied by a wry twist of his mouth. “Something like that.”
“Huh. Okay. Something like that.” She was used to non-committal responses to her questions, but their frequency didn’t temper how annoying they were. “And what about now? You’re not very busy doing whatever the Quorum needs you to do now, are you?”
“Nope.” Kayden pivoted on his foot so that his back was to her and threw the ball. The chain net barely whispered as it sailed through. He hadn’t missed a hoop yet, and he probably wasn’t going to, either.
She had a ton of questions she wanted to ask him, but there was one blazing away at the forefront of her mind. “Kayden, do you know where Agatha is? The others, too? Beatty? Otis and Brynn? Cliff?” Cliff and Brynn’s whereabouts had been bothering Farley most of all. At least she knew the others had escaped from the hangar; Cliff and Brynn could have both died in the explosion, or worse still…her mother could have gotten to them. There had been those screams in the night. Horrible, awful screams that still plagued her nightmares. The thought of Cliff, the guy who had trained her to defend herself with a blade, gone mad because of Moira was almost too much to bear.
Kayden studied her for a moment before sadly shaking her head. “No, I’m sorry. I was cut off from the moment I helped you in the Tower. I was on my own after that.”
Disappointment soured Farley’s fleeting hope that he might have been able to cast some light on the mystery. She sighed. “So you’re gainfully unemployed?”
“You could say that.”
“What are you going to do?” A worried note worked its way into her voice. She’d tried her best, but there was just no concealing it. Kayden had been cast out by the Quorum, and it was all her fault. If she hadn’t accused him of enjoying Daniel’s suffering back in the Tower, if she hadn’t demanded he help them, then-
“Quit it.”
“Huh?”
“Just quit it, okay? I can practically hear you thinking from here. It’s exhausting watching you panic. You start chewing on your bottom lip like this.” Kayden turned, biting down repeatedly on his lower lip until it went white. “I keep thinking you’re gonna bite it clean off. I’m sure Daniel would find some way to blame that on me. I’d rather not have him come home and find that you’ve mutilated yourself over some misplaced sense of guilt.”
Farley just stared at him. After a stunned moment, she said, “Tell me you aren’t some kind of telepath.” That was all she needed. Her dreams weren’t safe since Aldan had gone and died, leaving her mind open for goodness knows whom. If her thoughts were up for public analysis as well, then there truly was nowhere left to hide. Kayden gave her a blank stare.
“No. Of course not. You’re about as easy to read as an open book, though.”
“Oh.”
“Look,” he sighed, “you might as well just get anything you want to ask me off your chest now. You’re a very subtle interrogator compared to the last one I encountered, but your overwhelming sensitivity is making my head itch on the inside. Get it over with.”
He tossed her the ball, and it arced perfectly so she didn’t even need to reach out for it. It landed directly in her hands.
“I want to know what happened. I want to know why they did that to you.”
Kayden sucked his teeth. “Because disobedience is not considered an acceptable pastime by the venerated elders of the Quorum. I was supposed to do a job. I didn’t do it. On top of that, I actively worked in opposition to my orders. Hence the Interrogator and the Pax blades.”
Farley’s stomach twisted. “Pax blades are hardcore, aren’t they?”
“Yes. They’re anointed scimitars. They’re the only kind of blade that can cut my skin without my body healing instantly. They have this curse
set upon them, I guess. When they slice a messenger’s skin, they leave behind a trace of something dark… something…” he struggled to find the right word.
“Unholy?”
“No.” He screwed up his face. “Well, yeah, kind of. Something bad, anyhow. It’s almost like a poison. I can’t heal from that unless they want me to. Those blades are the highest form of punishment amongst the messengers.”
“And they left you here without healing you. Are you saying they wanted you to die?” That seemed like the only plausible explanation, if what he was saying was true.
Kayden shook his head. “I don’t think so. The Interrogator was set on killing me, that much was obvious. But then something happened. I was too out of it to really understand what was going on, but a Quorum member came and stopped him. Less than a second later I was where your friend found me. The sun was on my back. Where I was…” He shook his head. “I thought I’d never see the sun again. It’s probable that they knew Oliver was here and he could save me. They just couldn’t be seen to do it themselves.”
The tone in Kayden’s voice was hard and flat, devoid of any emotion. Who knew how long he’d been serving the Quorum for, but the number of years was probably pretty big. Surely he would feel something about the way they’d treated him? Surely, after all those years, he would be wounded or horrified or some combination of the two?
“Aren’t you worried?” she asked.
Kayden stared at his shoes for a moment before sinking to the ground. He sat with his legs crossed, looking up at her. “About what?”
“About the fact that they could come back? They could find you anywhere. Take you again. Kill you.”
A shadow played across his face. He looked older than when she’d met him in Aldan’s mind. Older than when he’d helped save them in the Tower. “That’s exactly why I’m not worried. If they wanted to kill me, they would have. The Quorum doesn’t play games. If I was supposed to be, I would be dead right now. Since I’m not, I figure we’re square.” He shrugged, like his fuzzy logic made perfect sense.
Standing while Kayden sat at her feet felt a little weird. Farley folded herself up to sit in front of him, the hot tarmac scorching the bare skin on the backs of her thighs where they made contact with the ground. She laced her fingers together so she could rest her bent knees in the crooks of her elbows, supporting them so her legs wouldn’t lie flat.
“ And you’re okay with that? You’re okay with their punishment?”
Kayden’s eyes were pale, pale blue. Stark in a haunting way. He narrowed them at her. “I’m okay with it. I’m no longer bound to them anymore. That in itself is worth the pain I went through. Even if I weren’t free, though, helping you guys would still have been the right thing to do.”
“I don’t understand. I thought…” Farley trailed off, trying to work out what he meant. He gave her a bitter smile.
“You thought my ties to the Quorum were through loyalty?”
She nodded, fingering the sharp prickle of the Velcro on her Dunlop Volleys. She tugged at the strap, stretching out the rough, ripping sound before pressing it down again. Kayden raised his eyebrows.
“Try indentured servitude. The work I had to carry out on their behalf is important, sure, but I was hardly a willing participant.”
“Then why do it?”
He stared at her, apparently watching her face work through all the emotions she was feeling. He reached out and stilled her hand halfway through pulling back on the Velcro again. His fingers caught hers.
“He didn’t tell you, did he?”
The intense way he suddenly stared at her made Farley’s mouth go dry. She shook her head. “Tell me what?”
A visible wave passed over Kayden. His shoulders tensed, and he sucked in a sharp breath. He looked like he might speak, but something caught Farley’s attention. She spun to look up at the cabin beside them, her skin burning with the unnerving sensation that comes with being watched. Sure enough, Cassie stood at one of the upstairs bedroom windows, staring down on them. She looked small and sad but still strikingly beautiful.
Kayden hissed in surprise, blinking up at the form of the girl in the window as if he’d seen a ghost. A deep burn leapt up to Farley’s cheeks- immediate anger at seeing the girl who’d stolen Daniel away this morning, mixed in with a hint of panic. The girl was watching them, and Kayden’s hand was still on hers. They were only a foot apart.
Farley looked back to Kayden. He blinked up at the window with a hard look on his face; after a second, his gaze fell to where his hand rested on Farley’s. He slowly drew it back.
Nine
Truth and Promises
Going inside didn’t feel right. The cabin was huge, but knowing Cassie was in there somewhere made it feel too small. The tiny chance she might run into her on the way from the back door to her bedroom was unacceptably big. Instead, Farley abandoned Kayden to shoot hoops alone and walked around to the clearing in front of the house. The grass there was long and wild in an unkempt kind of way, and slender flowers with tiny pink and white petals peeked out from amongst the sea of sun-scorched browns and greens.
The Viper sat silently on the other side of Grayson’s Jeep. Its very presence was loud. The taught lines of the car made it appear crouched, a coiled spring, ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice. Farley did her best not to look at it: if it was here, that meant Daniel was too, and she wasn’t sure what to say to him right now. She sank down into the grass and laid flat on her back like a starfish, arms and legs spread wide. The tall grass tickled against her skin, slightly itchy against the backs of her knees. She half hoped it hid her where she lay, but she wasn’t holding her breath.
She stared up at the sky until her eyes unfocused and the trees in her peripherals turned into black, shapeless smudges. She’d almost managed to clear her head of the day’s horror, of finding Kayden and watching him die, when she realized Daniel was laying beside her. The guy had some serious stealth skills.
“Hey.”
She didn’t respond. Just stared up at the sky, realizing that she hadn’t blinked in a while and her eyes had gone dry. When she closed them, they stung. She kept them shut.
“Are you going to talk to me?” Daniel whispered. She felt the proximity of something close to her face- probably his hand- but he didn’t touch her. The feeling lingered for a second and then vanished.
“That depends,” she whispered back.
A pained pause. “On what?”
“On whether you’ve been lying to me for the past three weeks. On whether that cow Anna was telling the truth when she said you agreed to have children with Cassie. On whether I’ve made myself look like a complete fool because you didn’t feel like filling me in on some really important stuff, knowing how nervous I was about coming here in the first place.” It was like a small victory. Inside, Farley celebrated the fact that her voice hadn’t shaken or cracked, despite the searing pain in her chest.
Daniel drew in a deep breath. “Can you look at me?”
She shook her head. If she looked at him, she would start crying for sure, and that wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Even talking and keeping her breathing steady was pushing her luck right now.
“Okay,” Daniel said. “I haven’t been lying to you. I promise you, here and now, so you won’t ever have to doubt it, I will never, never lie to you.”
A memory of the night at the fairground back in Monterey Hills when Agatha had told her who she was punched its way up through Farley’s mind. She let her face twist a little as she remembered Daniel’s words. “I lie. All the time,” she mimicked.
He sighed, all frustration, and Farley felt the movement of him rolling onto his side. This brought him closer. She could feel the heat coming off his skin, feel him looking at her.
“That…” he paused, fighting with his words, “That was before… before this.” He traced a single hesitant fingertip down the side of her face. It travelled from her temple slowly to the bottom of her chin,
where it lingered before he took it away. The quiet pain in his voice and the simple touch of his finger triggered something inside Farley that she couldn’t control. Without permission her diaphragm started to spasm, doing its level best to initiate the first stages of sobbing. She held her breath, knowing what would happen if she allowed any oxygen into her lungs. Behind her closed eyes, the tears that had been building pricked at the corners of her eyelids until she had no choice but to let them fall. They streaked in hot lines over her temples and into her ears.
“Oh, Jeez, Farley… please… please don’t cry. Can you look at me?”
She shook her head again. Hopefully he understood that she wasn’t just being difficult. If she looked at him, it was game over.
He let out an agonized groan. “In answer to your question, Anna was telling the truth. I agreed to help Cassie out. She’s my friend, and… and I thought it wouldn’t matter if I gave her what she wanted.”
At this, Farley stiffened. “How?”
“How?” he echoed.
“How could you think it wouldn’t matter?”
“Because I thought I was going to be dead. This was before I’d even met you. Dying didn’t seem like such a big deal then, and I thought it might be rather nice to have a part of me continue on in this life. I’m sorry, okay? I should have said something before we came here, but I thought Cassie was back in England and I was so caught up in me and you and…”
His body shifted again. Feeling him gone, Farley cracked her eyes to see him sitting up holding his head in his hands. “Feeling what I feel for you… the whole thing just seemed so ridiculous. It felt like another life. In my head, I guess I kind of convinced myself that I couldn’t really have agreed to something so stupid. Because I’m alive now and I’m with you and I don’t want anything else in the world. You’re all I want.”
Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) Page 5