A strangled, terrified laugh escaped me. “Amends? Should have thought of that before you strapped me down.” I sounded drunk, but I couldn’t make my words any clearer.
“This doesn’t have to be uncomfortable.” Again, Rubion glanced over the top of me. I tried to turn my head in that direction, but, at his nod, bright lights blinded me. All I could see was him, looming over me on a background of glaring white.
I flinched and squinted, my fear spiking. My heart felt like it was trying to leap out of my chest and run, like I couldn’t. “This isn’t comfortable.”
“We’ll find you better accommodations soon. In the meantime, how about we get rid of these?”
To my surprise, my arms and legs suddenly came free, and a pair of hands found my bare shoulders, helping me to sit up. For a second, I was so relieved I almost didn’t care that they were Rubion’s.
I didn’t trust my legs to stand. I perched unsteadily at the edge of the table, bracing myself to hold my body upright. The lights were behind me now, and Rubion looked a little less threatening without the glare surrounding him.
He rested a hand on my arm. “There’s no need to be afraid. Like I said, this was all unintentional.”
I shrugged off his hand and tossed my head at the ringing lights, the lab. A wave of dizziness swept over me at the sudden movement, so I squeezed my eyes closed and said through a clenched jaw, “What’s with the setup, then? You accidentally have a place like this? Looks pretty intentional to me.”
“This lab is used for our research, yes, but you were never meant to be here. As for the lights, I prefer to meet your eyes while we talk.” He tapped my chin to get me to look at him again, smiling apologetically. “I’m sure you understand.”
He wanted to make sure he didn’t see any Shadow there. He wanted me defenseless. “Oh, so you want to talk before the knives come out. How civil.”
“My aim is not to hurt you, I promise.”
“Right.” I let out another choked laugh. “You’re just like the other royals. You Dracortes like to pretend you’re not, but you’re the same as everyone else.”
“No, we’re far beyond everyone else,” Rubion said, pulling away only to lean next to me against the edge of the table. I wished I could scoot away. “Our research has far surpassed the Treznor-Nirmanas’.”
I hadn’t meant the research, exactly. He must have been deliberately misinterpreting me. Either that, or he was crazy.
“They still imagine it’s possible to beat us,” he continued, “but we’ve simply been feeding their spies false information, with just enough truth to keep them occupied. Unbeknownst to them, we’ve had the formula to bind Shadow as a more stable, organic form of fuel for some time now. The grand reveal tomorrow will be real, of course, but serves double duty as prelude to something else.”
I shook my head, my thoughts stumbling to keep up. “If you already have what you need…why do you need me?”
He smiled in a genuine way that I found more frightening than his eyes. “Don’t you know? You have a Shadow affinity like nothing anyone has ever seen. You have abilities that could be far more valuable than anything to do with fuel.”
I leaned away from him even at the risk of toppling over. “That’s exactly what the Treznor-Nirmanas thought.” It didn’t matter that Rubion had let me up from the table and wasn’t exactly coming at me with knives; I wasn’t close to reassured.
“They think that because we thought of it first. Again, we’re much farther in our research than they’ve guessed. Of course, we’ve already been testing others with milder affinities,” he clarified, as if I’d asked, “from other nigh-uninhabitable planets near smaller Shadow harvesting areas. They’ve taken us far, but not as far as we need. Either the levels of Shadow in their systems were too low, or they were mad already, rendering them less optimal subjects. But your family line has undergone more generations of Shadow exposure than anyone else’s we’ve yet found, and you’re still alive for our tests to analyze—for a while yet, we hope. Your kin go mad and die early, yes?” He paused, as if actually waiting for an answer. When my mouth only dropped open and nothing came out, he continued. “All the more reason for haste. We hope to learn as much from you as we can.”
“But…I don’t understand.” I shook my head again, trying to clear the fog still in my brain, the blinding light, the rising panic. It didn’t work. “Even if you want to study me for something other than fuel, there was no reason to bring me here before the conference. For the ball.”
“The timing is distinctly beneficial, though not crucial for our experimentation as I led Nevarian to believe. It’s more for…how shall I say…the presentation. Our adaptation of Shadow into a mass-market energy source is already enough to keep our family afloat and to satisfy our investors and the public when announced tomorrow. But we needed an edge, a deathblow to our competition. The Treznor-Nirmanas needed to comprehend what we were doing so that they, and everyone else, understood our triumph. We let slip enough for them to grasp your importance, once Nevarian found you.”
Rubion was the reason the destroyer had come after us. He hadn’t only put his nephew in danger, he’d orchestrated the danger.
He rubbed his chin almost ruefully. “We let slip too much because they acted faster than anticipated, and it nearly cost us you. But, no matter, what’s done is done, and our victory will be all the more triumphant for it. Tomorrow, amid the celebration of our revolutionary new fuel, I’ll plant the news in a few choice ears that we’ll shortly have the capability to engineer superhumans. Now that they know we have you, and have even seen you with us, on shining display”—he tugged at the skirt of my gown almost playfully—“they’ll have no doubt. It was brilliant to bring you to the ball, actually. Nevarian has been so useful in this and many other things. Thelarus didn’t believe he was up to the task, but with a bit of misdirection, my nephew can be quite capable. I would thank him, but…” He shrugged that graceful, nonchalant Dracorte shrug. “It’s just a pity he couldn’t have kept you at the ball.”
“Nev…Nev doesn’t know about any of this?” I knew the answer even as I asked. Of course he didn’t. There was no way. He was a Dracorte, and at times he might be naïve, arrogant, and blind…but he wasn’t this.
“Prince Nevarian has no idea what is happening at the moment, and it’s for the best. He had to believe he was accomplishing something noble, rather than something great…a fault in him that Thelarus regrets, since it requires the heir to be kept in the dark for some tasks that require harsher methods. But my nephew is young; he’s still learning. Someday, he’ll understand these efforts were necessary.”
A bitter taste rose in my mouth. The king had let me take his hand, thanked me for coming to help his family and for saving his son’s life…and then he’d commanded the guards to stop me if I tried to leave and told Rubion to use me as he saw fit, wiping away any illusion of choice I might have had.
The thought of Marsius doing these types of things for Nev someday made my stomach turn. Or maybe it was the way Nev’s uncle was still looking at me.
But Nev and Marsius were still good, I knew it—not that it made me feel better. That made it worse. Because somewhere along the line, when kids like Marsius became men like Rubion—or when Nev became king like Thelarus—the Dracortes learned how to be monsters. They didn’t even need powers like mine to do it.
Those Dracortes were the strange, disturbing, inhuman creatures. Not me.
“But you needn’t fear this,” Rubion continued. “You will be part of something important. I don’t mean the conference, or even my family’s forthcoming successes. Something greater.” He brushed the scattered strands of hair back from my face, peering into my eyes as though seeing the Shadow deep inside me. “Something you couldn’t possibly imagine.”
“If I can’t understand, why bother explaining then?” I demanded, my back straightening as I tried to summon some anger—maybe even actual Shadow. But my voice came out high, and only tears w
ere in my eyes. “Why not just cut me open now and get it over with?”
He waved his hand. “There will be none of that. I want us to be friends. You and I are going to do something together that no one else has dreamed. Of course, being a very special young woman at a critical time that means that, while I’m sure everyone would prefer to take more care with you, there are things we must learn quickly. But luckily”—his smile was almost regretful again—“we now have others more suitable for our…baser…experiments. Experiments you will never have to witness or undergo, so you never have to worry.”
I missed most of what he said after we now have others.
Others. My breath, my blood, all thought in my brain screamed to a halt. My entire life teetered in that moment, on that one word.
“I hoped if I explained, told you the truth—because unlike Nevarian, you appreciate the truth, don’t you, delivered without garnish?—I hoped you would understand. You’ll be kept safe, even comfortable after this unfortunate mishap, and become part of something more important than even my family’s well-being, or anyone’s.”
I wasn’t really listening to him. “Where’s Arjan?”
Arjan. He was supposed to be at the ball, but I hadn’t seen him—only Basra, who had probably been looking for him too, along with whatever else she might have been doing. She’d had very good reason to disobey my command to stay on the ship, if that was the case.
Rubion paused, lips pursed as if disappointed in my response, and began to say something reassuring in that smooth tone. But his hesitation was enough.
“Where is my brother?” I lunged forward on the table, half sliding off, and seized the lapels of his lab coat. The darkness shivered on the edges of my vision, as if trying to creep farther into my eyes.
I just needed more…
Rubion recoiled as if I were an unfortunate mess that was coming too close to getting on his shoes, while other hands seized my shoulders and pulled me back.
“If you’ll excuse me.” He slid the lab coat from his shoulders and straightened the cuffs of his suit. “I hate royal functions, but I hate unnecessary emotional outbursts more. I must say my formal farewells this evening anyway, for appearance’s sake. I’ll return once you’re calmer and more willing to listen to reason.” He pivoted away as I was forced back down onto the table, my restraints snapped into place once again. I tried to fight, but I was so dizzy and weak I mostly just cursed and yelled. “Keep the light on her, and try to keep her awake. Monitor her eyes along with how much suppressant you’re giving her. If they turn more than twenty percent, increase the dosage. Put her out, if necessary.”
In the blinding glare, I didn’t see him leave. But I heard the heavy hiss of a door opening and closing.
So, Nev’s uncle had just come from the ball, and now he was going back like nothing was happening here. Like he didn’t have me strapped to a table, like he didn’t have Arjan…somewhere.
Where was Arjan? The light…It wasn’t only for them to see me better. It was to keep me from seeing the room. Not whatever, but maybe whoever might be in it.
I needed the darkness inside me now, in more ways than one. I gritted my teeth against the sobs trying to escape and took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Please,” I whispered. Please, please, please. I mouthed the word silently as I strained as hard as I’d ever reached for anything in my life. None of the guards who were no doubt in the room would actually see me reaching, since my struggle was entirely on the inside. Maybe they would think I was praying.
The blackness at the corners of my vision pulsed, once. I closed my eyes before anyone could notice. But even behind my lids, the light grew darker. Dark enough to see, I hoped, when I opened them again.
A hand fell on my shoulder. “Miss, please try to stay awake.”
I almost didn’t want to, but I turned my head in the direction Rubion had been looking earlier in our conversation, dropped my cheek against the cold metal table, and opened my eyes. My vision focused through the dark veil…and my lungs became a void. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. My chest was collapsing.
A guard let out a shout, but I barely heard him.
Arjan was laid out on a table on the far side of the room. He had only a towel draped across his hips, the rest of his body exposed, aside from where the straps held him down. Wires, tubes, and needles plunged into every part of him or clamped onto the ends of his fingers. Along one arm and hand, patches of skin had been burned or cut away, like earth being tested for minerals to mine. A clear film coated any open wounds to keep out infection, but it didn’t hide what they’d done, leaving the tissue exposed as if under glass. And even from this distance, I could see that one of his eye sockets was rimmed in synthetic lining—empty, where an eye had been.
For a moment, only one thought pulsed with every beat of my heart: Arjan, Arjan, Arjan.
The void in my lungs shrank, shrank, shrank…and then exploded.
I wasn’t sure when I started screaming, or if it was even originating from my mouth or from what felt like the gaping hole in my chest. But then I could feel it ripping through my throat. My hand strained for Arjan against the straps.
A half-dozen guards were already holding me down, and someone in a lab coat was readying a syringe.
I couldn’t free myself. But I did encounter blackness like never before. Blackness that entirely swallowed my vision, and then turned to the brightest, purest white.
Keeping a smile in place while returning to the royal dais was one of the hardest things I’d had to do in my life. It took everything I’d ever learned about controlling my facial features and body language. As I made my way through the crowd, part of me didn’t care if I managed to fool the hundreds of onlookers into thinking Prince Nevarian was as lively as ever. And yet I had to care. Saving face for myself might not matter, but if I embarrassed my family here, now, with all the systems watching, the result would be catastrophic.
I heard people talking, and the Unifier Bishop spread his hands in blessing, but it was in the background. My mouth formed a smile and my hand took Ket’s, but all I could think about was Qole, somewhere in the palace, angry and despising everything about me.
The music began again, a choir lending our first dance as a betrothed couple an almost reverential air.
Ket tilted her chin up and didn’t smile as we began to dance, alone on the giant ballroom floor. One of her hands rested in mine, the other on my arm, which I held out in the rigid posture customary for the slow walks and cross changes of the form.
If Ket remained this emotionless and unengaged, it would almost be worse than not having the dance at all. I tore my mind away from Qole and set it on the task at hand.
“Ketrana, you dance as lovely as you look.” Before the sentence was out, I knew it was a pathetic attempt.
She didn’t respond, except to arch her neck away from me even more. My dance with Qole must have been more attention-grabbing than I had realized. That, and Solara’s snide commentary couldn’t have helped.
I briefly toyed with ordering her to look happy, but if that made her angrier it could seriously backfire. I couldn’t fight with her on the dance floor; I had to make her smile.
Everything I’d been learning about how to make Qole smile simply didn’t apply here. Any sense of the absurd, any self-recognition, and most especially any honesty would have the exact wrong effect.
Which probably meant I would just have to act the opposite.
“This is one of the most important moments of my life,” I told her. If I hadn’t felt such revulsion, I would have laughed hysterically.
No reaction.
“The honor you grant me is supreme. I thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart.” I want nothing to do with this; I want nothing to do with this.
Evidently, Ket was vain enough to believe she was honoring me, since she relaxed a little into the dance for the first time. Her tiny frame felt so different from Qole’s that I remained silent for a mo
ment, trying to process it.
It was progress, but not enough, and we were running out of time. I knew what she wanted to hear. I knew the lie that would kill anything real.
I tasted bile in my mouth as I opened it. “I’m glad to be finally dancing with someone who knows what they are doing. I was just trying to be polite, but that poor, rustic girl was so bad it was embarrassing.”
But the dance was so much better.
I couldn’t bring myself to say anything directly against Qole’s character, but even so, it felt like I had betrayed her yet again. First each member of my family had mistreated her, and now I was joining in, behind her back.
Ket giggled and tossed her hair. “Oh, I know.” Her hand lightly caressed my arm. “There’s nobody quite like me.”
Mission accomplished. I felt misery settle into my bones.
When the song finally ended, applause erupted, cheers rang out, and everyone felt like they weren’t uptight, backstabbing poseurs. Except, notably, me.
People crowded back on the dance floor as another song began, but I moved to escort Ket back to the dais to greet my family. Solara intercepted us. I narrowed my eyes, trying to decide if a public altercation with my sister was worth it. Given how publicly she had demeaned Qole, it was an attractive option.
“My darling, gorgeous Ket!” Solara cried. “You were a vision. Would you mind terribly if I tore my brother away from you for just a moment? I’ve asked the musicians for ‘Flight of the Dracortes,’ and I doubt anyone else here is up to speed. Besides, it’s tradition. Unless you’re afraid, brother.” She grinned at me, tugging on the lapel of my suit.
“Flight of the Dracortes” was as dynamic a piece as it was a difficult dance. Most participants never attempted the proper steps, and instead used a simpler variant that had been developed over the years. Customarily, a Dracorte performed it after officially completing the trial of their Dracorte Flight, as a further sign that they had proven themselves.
“Afraid? What would I be afraid of ? Your skills?” I brushed her hand off my lapel. “But honestly, I haven’t the time for this, Solara.”
Shadow Run Page 24