Her eyes go wide when she spots me sitting on the edge of the feather mattress. From the expression on her face, my hair must look pretty bad. “Kit! What―?” Her mouth falls open and she loses the ability to speak. An irritated flash plays over her face after that. “Did you do this yourself?” she says. I hear the accusation in her voice, that she thinks my new haircut is a drastic way of rebelling.
“Of course not!” I’m a little snappy, but I can’t help it. I really need some time alone, and I just don’t have it in me to be polite.
“What happened, then?” She sits beside me on my bed, hitching her skirt up a little so she can tuck one leg underneath her. She reaches out to touch my hair but I flinch and she lets her hand drop into her lap.
“Some men―” I start. A really bad start.
Olivia grows a bright red. “Oh, Gods, Kit. What happened? Who was it? Did…did they—”
“No!”
She ignores my protests and pulls me into a hug. “Don’t worry, I’m going to tell Jack. He’ll make them pay for what they did.”
“They didn’t do it, Olivia. It was James.”
She stops fussing and pulls back. “James?”
I nod and run my fingers over the ends of my hair. It only just reaches my jaw line now. “Yes. He said if I didn’t want to act like a woman of Freetown, I shouldn’t look like one either.”
“I can’t believe he would do that.”
“Believe it.”
She shakes her head. “No, you don’t understand. James has been canvassing for women to have their own matches for years.”
“What? Why would he do that? Hardly seems like he would care if the women here are treated like second-class citizens.”
Olivia shoots me a disparaging look. “It’s not equality for women he’s after. It’s equal rights for the men. James thinks men should be allowed to be priests. The women who work in the kitchens at the Keep say he’d have himself as the High Priest before nightfall the day Jack and the priestesses ever allowed that to happen.” She takes a deep breath. “James is just about the most power hungry individual in Freetown. He’ll do anything to get ahead, even if that means faking his beliefs in the Faith. Or putting women in the pits. He figures that you can’t change one tradition without changing the other.”
“That’s really messed up.” I screw up my nose and sink back onto my bed, feeling my hair fan out around my head in a way it never did before. “Are you going to tell Jack what happened?”
“No.” Olivia finds my hand and squeezes it. “It’s not my place. You should be the one to tell him.”
I eye her in my peripherals. “Can we just let him think I did it myself?”
A vaguely irritated expression flashes across her features. “It’s your decision. You have to do one thing, though.”
“What?”
“You have to let me tidy it up for you.”
Olivia disappears and returns a few minutes later with a pair of slim, narrow scissors, and spends the next twenty minutes trimming my hair into what she deems ‘tidy’. I sit on the floor at her feet, trying my hardest not to think of my halo, or how I took it back to August to get it fixed. If he had said he was able to repair it, if there was an easy fix, I might already have been wearing it. With hair this short, barely brushing the bottom of my ears, I’ll never be able to hide a collar around my neck in Freetown. Everyone will know if I put the thing back on, and that scares me half to death. I’m already a social pariah, and with that loop of metal flattening out my emotions, I really would have no place in the world. No place but the Sanctuary.
BEAUTIFUL
Sky-blue eyes widen at me as Olivia and I walk across a clearing in the vast tent maze. I can’t see the girl’s whole face; half of it is hidden by a male shoulder, which she is looking over. The guy’s back is broad, and even before I see his hair, I know it’s Ryka. The way his body weight rests on his left foot. The way his shoulder slopes down as he whispers into her ear. After all of our time spent together training the other day, I now know the way he holds himself, and that makes me feel conflicted. So does the way he angles into her as he continues to talk into her ear, too close to notice the surprise on her face, presumably at seeing me.
I’m really turning heads with this new haircut. I can’t say that I’m enjoying the attention, although Olivia warned me I can’t be shy about it if I want to pretend I did it myself. For a few panicked moments after leaving my brand new tent, I worried about what I was going to say when people asked me why I’d done it. Shouldn’t have worried, though: of course, no one breathes a word to me. They just stare.
Blue Eyes blushes as Olivia and I drew closer, and I can’t help but wonder what Ryka is saying to her to make her react that way. He shifts his weight slightly and reveals more of her: flowing red dress with bronze bells, stitched into the gentle pleats of the material; very slim, with softly curled brown hair all the way down her back. I’m pretty sure my hair used to look like that only this morning.
“I didn’t know he was going to be here,” I hiss. For some reason I feel self-conscious about seeing Ryka after our day together. Olivia pivots to smirk at me over her shoulder. There are tiny white flowers woven into her hair, painfully pretty.
“I didn’t know he would be, either.” Her smirk gets wider. “He told me he had better things to do. I didn’t realise he meant Simone. Oh well, if he’s all distracted with her then he won’t bother us. That’s not a problem, is it?”
Something tells me she’s trying to goad a reaction out of me. I shake my head and bite my tongue between my teeth quickly, just enough so that I taste copper. “No. No, of course it’s not a problem.”
Olivia tuts, giving me a weird look. I ignore it and let her grab hold of my hand, and she draws me farther into the clearing, where a huge fire licks and spits at the sky. A horrible feeling wells up inside me, one that makes me feel sour and a little angry. I try to put aside the awful, niggling sensation, try not to wonder who the girl is and what she and Ryka are doing together, but it doesn’t seem to work.
The only thing that distracts me from my line of thought are the looks I’m getting as we make our way through the crowds. The hair. It has to be the hair. It’s better to believe that, anyway. It will grow back eventually, and it’s nice to dream that as it does, people’s interest in me will diminish.
“Come on, Melody’s over there. I promised we’d meet her.” Olivia pulls me in the red-haired girl’s direction, close to the fire on the other side of the clearing. Standing beside her are two guys, about the same age as Ryka, and as the light plays over their skin I see the tattoos on their arms. They’re fighters. Melody squeals when she sees us, but then her happy expression dissolves the second her eyes hit me.
“What happened?”
My hand hesitantly goes to the short ends of hair. “It’s nothing. I— my hair’s very thick. It’s been really hot, so I cut it off.”
“Is that a Sanctuary thing?” one of the boys asks. His eyebrows are pinched together, and I can’t decide whether he’s being confrontational or if he’s just interested. His blue eyes are sharp.
I nod my head. “It just makes sense.”
“Mmm. It seems like everything in Lockdown is more sense than the natural order of things,” he says.
“Oh, come on, Max. We came here to enjoy ourselves.” Olivia playfully slaps his arm, and Max smiles. The sharpness fades from his eyes the instant she touches his skin.
“It was just an observation, Liv. Didn’t mean anything by it.” He offers me his hand, still smiling. There’s no concealed malice in his face, nothing to make me wary. “I’m Max. This is my brother, Callum. We’re celebrating tonight. This loser has finally made Tamji.”
The guy Max gestures to steps into the light to shake my hand as well. His black hair is ruffled and falls into his face, almost disguising the same colour blue eyes he shares with Max. The boys are so similar that I find myself confused.
“Yeah,” Olivia laughs, �
�they’re twins.”
“Twins?”
“Yeah, you know, born at the same time?”
I can’t hide my shock. “You mean from the same woman?”
Everyone but me laughs. Hard. My cheeks burn like crazy but I’m too concerned over the idea that a woman can carry two children at one time. “How do they not die?” I exclaim.
“Well, sometimes they do,” Olivia tells me. “But Cal and Max’s mother was just fine. They were just tiny when they were born is all. They’re identical. Cal’s hair is longer, though. And if you can’t tell them apart by that, then their personalities are a dead giveaway. Callum’s a whole lot nicer than his brother.”
“Hey!” Max lunges at Olivia and throws her over his shoulder, making her squeal. She reaches out to me for help, eyes bright, her pleas gasped through her laughter. I just shrug my shoulders. Twins? I’ve never heard of anything so strange. Max runs off through the tents behind us, crowing, with Olivia still doubled over his shoulder. Melody sighs. “One day they’re going to stop pretending they’re not in love with each other.”
Callum laughs. “The day my brother admits to anything other than a fierce need to pound his fist into something, the Gods will crown me king of Freetown.”
Melody rolls her eyes. “Come on, he may play the tough guy but he knows Olivia wants to join the priestesses. I think if her plans were different, he would have Claimed her already.”
“What?” This is news to me. I tug nervously at the hem of the loose shirt Olivia picked out for me. “Priestesses? And what do you mean, Claimed her?”
The look on Melody’s face is pure conflict. “Oh―I shouldn’t have said anything. She hasn’t told Ryka or Grandfather Jack yet. She’s waiting to see if she’s accepted into the order first. As for the Claiming thing, that’s pretty straightforward. If a man wants a woman for himself, he Claims her. Sometimes someone else wants to Claim the same woman, so there’s a challenge. Whoever wins the fight, wins the girl. Isn’t that how it’s done in the Sanctuary?”
“No!”
Callum clears his throat. “No, it’s much more civilised there. Women are just given away by their Trues, right?”
When he puts it that way, it does sound pretty bad. That was the future I had to look forward to. If I lived long enough to make it out of the colosseum, that is. “There’s an algorithm that selects cohesive partners. That’s how they work out if two people will work well together,” I tell them.
“And where’s the fun in that?” Callum’s eyes rove over my face. It’s like he’s trying to work out if I believe in what I’m telling him.
“Is it supposed to be fun?”
The laugh that bursts out of Melody is so loud that people turn to look at us. Across the fire, Ryka’s head lifts and our eyes lock. “Yes,” Melody says. “It is supposed to be fun. You definitely want to have a little more than cohesion with your partner.”
“You mean love?” I ask. My eyes remain locked on Ryka, trapped by the way he’s staring at me, unblinking, still leaning into Little Miss Blue Eyes. “How can a girl fall in love with someone who ‘Claims’ her? It’s a little barbaric, don’t you think?” My cheeks feel warmer than they should, even by the fire. I manage to force my gaze back to Melody and Callum.
“I’ll take barbarians over cold-blooded scientists any day,” Melody sighs. Her face becomes serious. “No offense, of course.”
No offense? I’m so past taking offense at anything anyone says these days. “None taken.”
“Besides, times have changed. The Claim is more of a traditional thing now. People usually fall in love and agree to be together. If a woman is Claimed and doesn’t want the guy who did it, she can always object.”
“I think we should go back to the old ways,” Callum adds. “Knock ‘em over the head and drag them back to the cave, that’s what I say.” He’s clearly joking, but if that were going to happen anywhere, it’s in Freetown. Anything could happen here, with so much life happening all at once. Max puffs as he arrives back at our group, tipping Olivia off his shoulder with a pretend roughness that makes her squeal again. He catches her up at the last second and sets her on her feet gently, all the while grinning at her.
“Jerk,” she slings at him, but she can’t keep the smile off her face. Max crosses his arms and grins, too.
“Whatever. We all know you’re too privileged to walk anywhere on those dainty little feet of yours. I was doing you a favour.”
Olivia’s cheeks blush deeply, and Melody thumps his arm. “Rude.”
“Sorry.” He’s not sorry. If he were, he wouldn’t still be grinning. “Hey, while we’re talking about archaic traditions, how about you three girls get up at the crack of dawn and bring us our breakfast? Cal’s finally joining us down on the beach for Tamji training. ‘Bout time, too.”
Callum folds his arms across his chest, the very replica of his brother, and scowls. “You were only called to Tamji last month. You make it sound as though you’re so much more advanced now that you’ve been getting knocked on your ass four weeks longer than me.”
“Four weeks is a long time in Tamji training. I am way more advanced than you now.”
“Well, if we’re taking into consideration the fact that I was born eighteen minutes before you, and I’m an inch taller, then maybe, maybe we’ll be even on the pit floor now.”
“Pssshhh!” Max shoves Callum roughly and tips his head back, laughing. “Even? I’ve been beating you for the past three years!”
“In your dreams, perhaps.” The sound of a new voice cuts into the conversation. I go very, very still, and it’s not just me. Ryka seems to have some sort of an effect on everyone, everywhere he goes. He’s standing a few inches behind me, and I can’t help but wonder if Blue Eyes is with him, too. What did Olivia call her? Simone?
“Thank you! Finally, someone who knows what they’re talking about!” Callum smiles, shooting a smug look at Max.
“You’d better watch yourself, Ryka,” Max says, rocking on his heels. “I might call you into the pit for that!” His teeth flash in a broad smile and everyone laughs. Well, Melody, Max, Callum, and even Ryka laughs―a strange, unexpected sound―but Olivia doesn’t. Neither do I. My cheeks flame, and my insides constrict until it feels like I’m going to throw up. All because Max joked about calling Ryka? It takes two seconds for Max to notice my expression, one I’m trying desperately to hide. He shifts uncomfortably and shrugs his shoulders.
“Oh, ah, sorry, ‘Livia. Kit. I was only playing. I’d never call Ryka.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.” Ryka finally steps forward into my field of vision. His hair is a burnished gold in the flickering light cast by the fire, fallen loose from his ponytail in places and tucked behind his ears. He’s grinning like a mad man. “You know better than to call someone who’d skin you alive in two seconds flat.” He looks at his sister. “You don’t need to apologise to Liv. She worries about everyone and everything. It would be abnormal if she wasn’t worried. As for Kit―” he looks me up and down. “She’s always stony faced. Yet to develop a sense of humour, aren’t you, Falin Kitsch?”
Falin Kitsch? What the hell? It feels like he’s slapped me. I have no idea why he’s being so hostile; the past few days have been great. No arguments, no fighting. Well, no fighting that wasn’t calculated training, anyway. After the prayer tree and the ruined city, I thought things were finally okay with us, if not admittedly a little confusing. Whatever the case, I feel like Ryka’s discovered the very name that will hurt me the most and used it. My mouth goes dry. I can feel eyes on me, yet I refuse to meet them. I stare at the floor, at my mud caked boots. “Yeah,” I reply. “You’re right. I find very little funny these days.”
Olivia’s hand finds mine and I draw in a deep breath. It’s the work of a second to force my head up, but it feels like there’s a colossal weight trying to push me back down. “The truth is, Ryka, I’ve no idea why, but I don’t think it’s funny that you’re Mashinji. That you can be called to
fight by anyone during the matches, or that you could be exhausted and beaten bloody and still have to fight another round for your right to live. It seems unfair to me that anyone should have to go through that. But occasionally, Ryka…Occasionally…”
I pivot on my heel and manage to slip free from Olivia’s grasp before she can stop me. Not ready. I’m not ready to deal with this, and Ryka’s the last person I want to follow after me. But he does.
“Ry, leave her alone!” Olivia calls after us, as I pace quickly into the darkened walkways. Hopefully they’ll lead me back to my tent, but honestly I have no idea where I’m going. The dark hides too many switchbacks and narrow paths for me to remember the way here. I don’t really care, though. So long as I get to where I really need to go: away.
“Kit!”
I consider breaking into a run but that seems too pathetic, even for me right now. The anger pumping around my veins won’t let me appear weak, so I keep stomping through the mud.
“Kit!” A hand grabs hold of my shoulder and I wheel around before he can pull me. Ryka’s facial expression is stunned when I growl at him.
“Do you like hurting people?” I snarl.
“I’m good at it,” he breathes, his eyes locked on mine. “But no. I don’t like it. It just…seems to happen.”
“Don’t give me that. This level of antagonism takes some real effort. Falin Kitsch? Why would you call me that? One minute you’re helping me, the next you’re trying to shove me back into a box that you,” I stab my finger into his chest, “wanted to drag me out of. Why?” Ryka’s hand, still on my shoulder, feels like it’s burning me. I shrug it off. He clenches his jaw and swipes his hair behind his ear. The jerk’s too shocked to say anything. Or at least I think he is, until he frowns.
“What happened to your hair?”
“What happened to my hair? You’re so annoying, you know that? Why can’t you just answer a simple question?”
Halo (Blood and Fire Series (A Young Adult Dystopian Series)) Page 17