Chapter 23
Alex slept fitfully, unable to shut his mind down.
Now that he’d finally gotten what he wanted out of Winston, he was scared to death. He was going to scout the den of a Nocuous, but he had no idea what he would find there or the dangers he might face. Would Winston require him to lead the mission? Surely the Marshall had no illusions that Alex was fit to take on such a responsibility. And what about the den itself? Would it be nothing more than an empty cave where the Nocuous slept, or something else entirely? Did Nocuous even sleep?
And then there was the issue of the sudden trust Winston had placed in him. Alex was glad he’d won the Marshall over, but now he was nervous that he wouldn’t live up to that trust. Never in Alex’s life had he concerned himself with anyone else’s problems but his own. He’d always been too absorbed in his own self-pity to pay attention to those around him. Alex knew that Winston’s hope wasn’t to have Alex simply turn over the suit, but to have Alex stay and continue the fight even after his father had been rescued.
What scared Alex more than anything else was that he was actually considering it.
Lying there, tossing and turning on the cold, stone floor, Alex never heard Tabitha come into his shelter.
“I am sorry that I kissed you.” Her soft voice startled him. “I have no reason to believe I could lay claim to your heart.”
Alex had turned around at the sound of her voice, elated that she had finally come, but his joy quickly turned sour when he saw the distraught look in her eyes. It was obvious that she was in deep emotional pain. He scrambled to his feet.
“Hey,” he put a hand out but Tabitha pulled away, careful not to let him touch her. How had it gotten to this point? All she had done was kiss him. Lay claim to his heart? They had never spoken of their feelings for one another, not once!
“Whoa, slow down,” Alex urged. “Is that why you haven’t come to see me in the past few days? Because you think you overstepped your bounds?”
Tabitha lowered her eyes guiltily. “You are not of Domus. You have come here for a specific purpose, and now that I know you, now that I know the depth of your dedication to your father, I know you will achieve your goal. Once you have done so, you will leave us forever.” She turned away. “It would be wrong of me to forge a bond.”
“Tabitha.” She didn’t meet his eyes. “It was nice.” He leaned in to force her to look back at him. “I like you too.” Maybe too much. “I like you a lot,” he clarified. “But you’re right. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, neither of us do. And I am going to find my father.” Putting his heart into his voice, he said, “So why don’t we take it slow? Why don’t we just be really good friends right now and see what happens?”
Alex reached out a tentative hand, but Tabitha was having none of his platitudes. She took two steps toward the door, but stopped and turned.
“You do not understand!” she cried out. “I am seventeen years old! In Domus, I am considered a spinster! Most women my age have been sworn to a life partner for years already, and yet here I stand never having caught any man’s eye with no expectation that I ever will!”
Alex was shocked. In his eyes, Tabitha was an extremely attractive person and he had a hard time believing anyone else would dispute it. “You’ve never had a boyfriend?” he asked incredulously and winced, immediately regretting the way he’d asked it.
Tabitha was silent. She took deep, shallow breaths, clearly upset.
“Why would you say something like that?” Alex asked. “Why would you think no one would ever want you? You’re beautiful, Tabitha. Absolutely gorgeous.”
He was way out of his league. Flattery had never been one of Alex’s strong suits, he just didn’t have that much experience. Truth be told, he didn’t have any experience. Ostracizing himself from his friends at school had included all the girls, too. The sad truth was, he’d never had a girlfriend either.
But he must have said the right thing, because Tabitha finally spun to face him, tears streaming down her cheeks, and threw herself into his arms. He was too shocked to do anything except awkwardly hug her back.
“You don’t know the half of it,” she sobbed into his shoulder. “No one wants to befriend me because they believe I’ll end up like my parents. They all say I’m the next Raven.”
She was so distraught Alex was having trouble understanding what she’d said. Her face was buried and she was speaking through heaving sobs. Still, Alex was pretty sure he’d gotten the gist.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “What do birds have to do with your parents?”
Tabitha stopped sobbing for nearly a full second to give him a scathing look. “Not a bird! A person! She is…” Her mouth twisted into a quivering frown. “It doesn’t matter. She’s myth, a story we tell the children of a woman who lost her mind and roams the tunnels alone.” She sniffed. “We tell them if they do not behave they will be sent away to live like Raven.”
Alex chuckled. “That’s terrible,” he chided.
“Maybe,” Tabitha said. “But it is not far from the truth. Plenty of Domus citizens have been exiled.”
Alex blinked. They exile their own people? To where? There was nowhere to go!
“Why would you ever do that to anyone?” he asked. “How could you do that knowing what’s in the tunnels?” He paused. “Wait a minute.” He stood up, already angry. “Is that what happened with your parents? They were exiled?”
“What?” Tabitha asked. “No!” She turned away again.
He was getting nowhere. Everything he said seemed wrong somehow, and he had no idea why.
“Tabitha,” Alex carefully placed both hands on her shoulders and gently spun her to face him. Using one finger, he lifted her chin. “You can talk to me. It doesn’t matter what your parents did, not to me. I know you, and that’s all I need to know.”
Although her tears kept coming, Tabitha finally managed a weak smile.
“You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to,” Alex offered. “I can see how upset you are.”
Tabitha smiled then. A real smile, full of gratitude. “No,” she said. “I want to. I did not realize until now how badly I have wanted to talk to someone about them.”
Alex picked up his blanket and spread it on the floor. They settled onto it, sitting side by side, shoulders touching.
“It was three years ago,” Tabitha began. “Sarah was hardly more than a baby then, not old enough to understand what was happening. She still does not. She is so innocent, so sweet. I do everything I can to protect her from the truth.”
Alex just listened, knowing that this was a story Tabitha had to tell at her own pace, in her own way.
“Everyone liked them,” Tabitha smiled at the memory. “They were kind people with kind souls. They were not extraordinary, not in any way, but they were good.” She sniffed long and loudly. “Good, kind people.”
Alex cautiously put one arm around her shoulders. She didn’t object.
“They were both warriors. They had been on more tours than most people could boast of in a lifetime. Like most tours, nothing ever happened when they went, not once. They would go, sit in that damnable Antechamber for sixteen hours, and they would return. Over and over again. Sometimes they would even volunteer to go in another’s place, even if their rotation was not due again for days.”
Tabitha shook her head sadly, her eyes focused somewhere in the distant past.
“The day they did not return from their tour, I first believed that it was likely they had accepted a double tour for someone who was sick or fatigued.” She looked up but she wasn’t seeing anything. Alex could see that she was right back there at the day she was describing. “But that did not make any sense, because if they had accepted another tour, there would be six others who returned. But there was no one!” Now she focused on him, looking him directly in the eyes. “No one came back, Alex!”
Tabitha was back to taking quick, shallow breaths and Alex was surprised to fi
nd that he was too. “What happened?” he asked breathlessly. “Were they attacked? Were they attacked like we were?”
“No,” Tabitha said, her voice cracking. “It was them. It was my parents. They went to the Core.” Alex closed his eyes and bowed his head, knowing what she was going to say next. “They must have succumbed quickly. They killed everyone. Not just the guards that were there with them, but the six who had arrived to relieve them as well.”
Before he realized he’d done it, he gathered her into his arms and held her as she sobbed. Rubbing her back with one hand as her body shook, everything suddenly clicked. He knew now why no one congratulated her on the day of their ascension. He knew why none of the others had wanted her along on that first tour at the Core.
And he now knew why she came to his shelter every day to train with him even when she was no longer required. She had no one else. She and her sister were as much outsiders in Domus as he was, and for nearly the same reason. Only she was trapped here, with no possibility of ever escaping the condemnation of the people around her.
“I never saw them again,” she cried. “No one ever saw them again. They were just gone. Gone forever.”
“Oh, Tabitha,” he said softly, rocking her gently in his arms. “We’ll figure this out, I promise you. You don’t have to be alone anymore.”
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