by Tess Sharpe
Tarin was sitting in the center of the hallway, alone, her eyes closed. Her ragged hair, long and matted to her head, was spilling down the back of her thin shift, her spindly arms and legs caked with dirt. And on the inside of her wrist was a patch of blue.
Hepzibah had gotten to her. She’d freed her. But where was Hepzibah—and the rest of her sisters?
“You came back.” Tarin stated it flatly, still not opening her eyes. Rhi rushed forward, kneeling down in the spread of flowers that surrounded Tarin like long-lost friends. She cupped the girl’s face, praying that when she opened her eyes…
But when Tarin finally did, her gaze slid away from Rhi’s, unfocused, fixed on a distant spot beyond her. As always, she was lost in the haze that had settled over her long ago, when the Keepers had deprived her of the plants that fed her heart and her power. Perhaps it had been silly to hope that just by freeing her power, Tarin would be freed from the pain that had stolen her sanity. But it didn’t matter, Rhi told herself. She was here. She was still Tarin.
“They came back to me, Rhi,” she said, trailing her fingers on the ground in a swirl. Flowers—daisies and violets—sprouted in their wake. “The Keepers said the flowers wouldn’t come, but look—they did.”
There was movement at her back through the vines blocking the hall from the rest of the Maiden House, and then a slicing sound—the wall of thorns tearing through flesh—followed by a guttural groan and a wet splash of blood. Rhi glanced over her shoulder, knowing it was only a matter of time before they broke—or burned—their way through Tarin’s barrier.
“I know they did,” Rhi said. “I told you they would, remember?”
Tarin nodded, her eyes sliding back to the riot of color blanketing the ground around her. She began to hum, the smell of violets and charred flesh blending in the air.
“Tarin, where’s Tynise?” Rhi asked, peering over her shoulder down the empty hall. “Where’s your sister?”
“Tynise,” Tarin echoed, a rose sprouting next to her foot. She plucked it, heedless of the razor-sharp thorns. “She’s with the skunk lady. But I wanted to come back here, so I snuck away. The thorns aren’t going to grow themselves.”
“Hepzibah,” Carol said, as Rhi gently took Tarin’s elbow and pulled her up. Tarin stood, holding the rose, still fingering the petals.
“Where’s the skunk lady, Tarin?”
A smile crept across Tarin’s face, her head tilted. She giggled, plucking a thorn off the rose. “Tables turned,” she sang out. “Now Miss Birdie’s going to learn a lesson.”
* * *
RHI DIDN’T wait for Carol. She didn’t wait for Tarin.
She bolted down the familiar hall turned strange and spooky with Tarin’s garden, a mix of plants she remembered from Attilan—ivy and blackberry brambles and flowers of all kinds— and Damarian monstrosities that snapped and twitched as she passed, their spiky tendrils reaching for her.
Several guards were slumped across the floor—just unconscious, but… at least two had come up against Alestra. They had blood trickling out of their ears.
Rhi didn’t hesitate. She ran, focused: the end of the hall. The red door.
Miss Egrit’s room. The only door without a heat sensor.
Rhi turned the knob and pushed open the door, slipped into the room, and closed it quickly behind her, afraid of what she might find.
“Rhi!”
She sagged against the door, relief knocking her knees together, stealing her breath, and filling her with the kind of joy that made her dizzy. They were all there: Alestra, her hands and dress spattered with blood. Tynise, towering over them all, her broad shoulders blocking Rhi’s view of Mazz, who rushed toward her, crying her name, and threw herself into her arms.
Rhi held her tightly, her hands cradling Mazz’s brown curls and trying not to break down. She hadn’t realized just how surprised she was to see them again, when something inside her had never expected she’d ever succeed. The rest of the girls rushed to her, embracing her tightly, as Hepzibah, Mantis, and Sona hung back, letting them enjoy their hard-earned reunion.
It was the best feeling in the world, being there with them. And the most frightening. Because this wasn’t over… and within minutes, they could be scattered in the wind again. Or dead.
After they’d come this far, she couldn’t—wouldn’t—let that happen. She had to get them onto that shuttle.
“Zeke’s waiting for us,” Rhi said, and Alestra gave out a little sob of relief, leaning against Tynise, who hugged her tight. “You all need to go out front where the shuttle’s waiting before they send more strike teams.”
“We can handle the strike team now,” Tynise snarled, holding out her arm, the blue EMP patch blazing against her skin.
“Alestra needs to get away from here,” Rhi stressed. “The baby… all of you have to go.”
“We can’t,” Alestra said. “Not yet.”
Rhi frowned. “But—”
Then the group parted, revealing what the girls had been blocking… who they’d been blocking.
And Rhi stared at Miss Egrit, bound to her chair, with tears staining her face and a gag stuffed in her mouth. She went cold and then hot, like her body didn’t know what it wanted: to be still and frozen, or angry and heated.
“We waited for you,” Alestra said.
“We want you to decide,” Mazz added.
“What to do with her,” Tynise finished.
Rhi stared at Miss Egrit, at her crushed curls—messier than Rhi had ever seen them—and her crooked skirt, and the tear in the elbow of her sweater. She remembered viscerally for a moment that day she’d met them. The first day she’d tried to break them with the myth, the way Sona had been broken all those years ago. The way all Damarian girls, human and Inhuman, had been broken.
Then she looked at her friends—at the two women who had helped bring her here, and the woman who had been raised here.
Hepzibah moved to stand behind their captive, her arms crossed, her stance wide. “I have told your friends that I will not interfere,” she said. “Your captive, your choice. It is the only just way.”
“And I made myself perfectly clear how I feel about this sort of thing to Jella and Marson,” Mantis declared with a permissive nod.
Sona said nothing, and Rhi arched a brow. Was she going to be the judge?
Sona licked her lips, her breath hitching as she said, “Your move, Rhi.”
Miss Egrit whimpered, and the sound was so much like the sound Rhi made when she’d dropped the ember gel on her skin. That bit-back, oh-so-scared but oh-so-determined-to-hide-it sound you couldn’t stop from bubbling to your lips. In Rhi, the sound had meant strength. But here, in Miss Egrit, it was all weakness.
She heard footsteps—Carol bringing Tarin back to them. Her heart creaked in her chest like a door shutting on something good. To have Tarin watch this… to have Mazz participate… to show Carol who she really was…
Could she do it? Should she?
She hooked her finger on the rough cotton gag shoved in Miss Egrit’s mouth, pulling it free. The woman spat, her pink lipstick—almost the same color as her mouth—smeared across her skin.
“You could have been kind,” Rhi said. “You could’ve been drawn to this, to us, out of the goodness of your heart. But you weren’t, were you? You wanted power. And you didn’t care who you hurt to get your shred of it.”
“Why would I be kind to things like you?” Miss Egrit shrilled, but her voice cracked on the words, and Rhi noticed her lips were trembling.
“You’re scared now,” Rhi said. “You’re thinking it through— all the things you did to us. Do you even remember them all?”
Around her, her sisters stirred as they remembered. But she could see it, underneath the terror in Miss Egrit’s eyes: she didn’t. The horrors of the last ten years had blurred together, because they weren’t horrors to her. They were just a means to power, to the only kind of freedom a Damarian woman could get.
“You
should be very scared,” Rhi said. “We were.”
Tables turned, indeed. Tarin was right.
“The Council will burn you for this, just like the twins,” Miss Egrit snarled. “You’re no better than them, Number Five. You’re nothing.” The words, as always, were spoken to hurt her, to bring her low, to remind her.
They didn’t hurt her, but they did remind her. Of how she was smart. Of how she was strong.
There was an ember bomb in her jacket pocket. The one Hepzibah had slipped her. She pulled it out, tilting it back and forth, letting it catch the light. Miss Egrit went rigid, her terrified gaze fixed on the bomb, her chair rattling on the ground with the convulsions of fear wracking her body.
“I could drop this, and that would be it,” Rhi said. “A few minutes of agony as it eats through your flesh and bone, and then you would be… gone. You would feel nothing.” She tucked the bomb back into her pocket. “I don’t want that,” she said, her words directed toward her sisters, not to Miss Egrit. “I want her to suffer for much longer,” she told them. “Every day. Every hour. Every breath that she takes, I want her to remember not only what she did, but also what she’s lost: her freedom, the only thing she actually values.” She leaned forward, her voice lowered, feeling Carol’s gaze blazing down her back. “Killing is too good for you. Punishment is much crueler. And unfortunately for you, I learned from the best. Because you may not remember all that you’ve done to us, but we do.”
Miss Egrit shuddered as Tynise’s hand clamped down on her head, forcing her to stare straight ahead as Alestra leaned forward and hummed a simple lullaby into her ear.
The woman’s head dropped, Alestra’s powerful voice sending her into slumber before the last note was sung. Relief bubbled inside Rhi like water boiling over, hissing and splashing through her body.
“An appropriate punishment,” Hepzibah told her, nodding in approval.
“A leader’s choice,” Carol added under her breath, for only Rhi to hear.
Mantis stiffened next to Hepzibah. “A ship is coming,” she said. “I can feel the people inside. We need to leave this place before another strike team arrives.”
“The shuttle,” Rhi said. “It’s parked out front. Zeke’s waiting.” She shared a special smile with Alestra and then turned to her friends, her heart thumping wildly in her ears. She looked in their faces and finally said the words she’d dreamed of saying for so long: “Are you ready to go?”
Tears glittered in Mazz’s eyes. “I’m scared,” she confessed as Alestra drew her tighter against her.
“I was, too,” Rhi told her, holding out her hand. “But I’m not scared anymore.”
But before Mazz could reach out and take it, an electronic shriek sounded throughout all floors of the Maiden House, and then a crackling voice echoed out of the speakers tucked in the corners of each room.
“Rhi, I know you’re in there.”
Ansel’s voice. All the triumph that had rushed through her just seconds before, all the relief and joy, snuffed out like a candle. Rhi’s eyes widened in horror, and her jaw dropped when she saw a smile on Carol’s face.
“You didn’t kill him?” she hissed. She hadn’t even thought to ask. She’d just assumed.
Carol shook her head.
Betrayal flashed through her, so deep and so wounding she could barely breathe around the hurt. I trusted you…
Then, Ansel’s voice boomed out again, “I have her right here, Rhi!”
Umbra. Rhi’s stomach churned as she staggered out of Miss Egrit’s room to the right, where the lone dingy window was cut into the brick. She was barely aware of Carol following her out and everyone else hanging back as she stared through the glass.
Ansel was standing in the center of the exercise yard, Umbra’s arm clutched in his. The sight of her in his grasp, head bowed… it broke Rhi’s heart.
“I knew he couldn’t resist,” Carol explained, looking apologetic as Rhi shuddered. “I knew if I let him go, he’d bring her here.”
It was smart. It was reckless.
It was what a leader would do.
“I’m offering you a deal, Rhi,” Ansel continued, his voice echoing through the halls of the Maiden House. “Quite a generous one, considering how much trouble you’ve caused today. I’ll give you Umbra… if you hand over the captain.”
32
“SEEMS LIKE a solid trade to me,” Carol drawled. “Let’s do it.”
Rhi stared at her. “I can’t just… go down there and trade you,” she protested. She hated that there was a small part of her that leaped with a horrible eagerness at Ansel’s proposal. The idea that he’d ever even suggest letting Umbra go…
“Well, of course not—it’s a trap,” Carol said. “He’s got Flame Keepers on each sand dune surrounding the place. Look.” She pointed, but Rhi couldn’t see what Carol saw even when she squinted. She guessed having super-vision did have its perks.
“I can’t see them.”
“They’re there,” Carol assured her. She ducked away from the window as Ansel’s head tilted toward it. “He’s gonna start a countdown soon,” she said. “Give you thirty seconds to come down or something. We need to make a plan fast.”
“We can help,” said a voice behind them.
Rhi hated that it was Mazz who said it. Hated that she was so willing to fight. Hated that she had to. She thought of Fern, tucked away in the caverns below the Field of Fire, oblivious to the kind of pain her sister Inhumans were going through. She was glad for Fern. She was jealous of Fern. She was terrified for her… for all of them.
“You have to get to the shuttle,” Rhi repeated. “Zeke can take you away. Get you out. Just like we planned.”
“Rhi, this is nothing like we planned,” Alestra said gently, her hand resting on her belly, just barely showing a slight curve. “It’s time for a new plan. One where we work together—all for all.”
“I agree,” Sona said.
“We have talked before about needing a strong team at your back,” Hepzibah added solemnly. “We are that team, Rhi.”
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Rhi said, hating how weak her words sounded, how pitiful the excuse. They were already hurt.
“Too bad,” Tynise said bluntly. “We’re willing to get hurt to help each other. That is what family is.”
“We need to take out the Keepers on the dunes,” Sona said. “That’ll reduce the threat to only Ansel. I can load us in my transport and head over there, pick them off one by one.”
“Do you think you can take them?” Carol asked—not just Sona, but the women behind her.
“Absolutely,” Alestra said, and Rhi felt an involuntary frisson at the conviction in her voice. Could a united front really work?
“Then go,” Carol said. “Hepzibah?”
“I will accompany them.”
“Mantis?”
“I’m staying here,” Mantis said. “You need backup. And firepower that isn’t flashy.”
“Fair enough,” Carol said.
Rhi knew there was no time for goodbyes, but she slipped the chain carrying the ID tags off of her neck and placed it in Alestra’s palm. Alestra looked down at the tags as Rhi curled her fingers closed around them, making her grasp them tight. “To remember, in case I don’t come back.”
Alestra didn’t protest. She didn’t tell Rhi she’d come back. She kissed Rhi’s cheek. “You are strong,” she whispered. She kissed her other cheek. “And you are smart.” She pulled back, her eyes blazing. “Now go show him that.”
* * *
RHI WALKED onto the exercise yard flanked by Carol and Mantis like a leader with her army. She felt no fear—she couldn’t afford it. This was a battle she had to win.
Ansel’s fingers dug into the nape of Umbra’s neck as the three women emerged from the Maiden House, wisps of smoke curling all around them as they strode across the gravel walk.
“Just like old times,” he called. “Do you remember, Rhi? We met in a place much like this.”
“I could blast him right now,” Carol muttered, but Rhi shook her head. She might hit Umbra. Or Ansel might light her on fire and burn her to a crisp before Rhi could even cross the yard to stop him.
They had to get her out of his grip—and put an EMP patch on her arm. They each had one. It was just a matter of getting close enough.
“One wrong move,” Ansel warned, “and they’ll fire.” He jerked his head backward at the Keepers positioned above them on the dunes.
“You might want to look again,” Mantis said.
He cast a glance over his shoulder. Thick red smoke was rising off two of the dunes. Then a third.
Four to go.
“Isn’t that their distress signal?” Mantis asked, head cocked in mock puzzlement. “Oh dear. Should’ve brought more backup.”
“My contingency plans are way better than his,” Carol commented. “Mine involved a notorious space pirate.”
“Agreed,” Mantis sighed.
Their needling was purposeful, if ridiculous to Rhi’s ears in that tense moment. And it was getting to Ansel. He didn’t like being ridiculed to his face—who did? She knew she didn’t—she’d endured ten years of it. He could survive a few minutes.
Not that he’d be surviving much longer than that.
She looked at Umbra, whose eyes were glassy with panic, staring at Rhi as if to say, Run! Why aren’t you running?
Because you taught me there was more to life than just helping me and my own… that it must be more, Rhi responded, if only in her mind.
“Any closer, and I’ll kill her.”
“You’d never.” It wasn’t Rhi or Carol who said it—it was Mantis.
The empath’s shoulders squared as Ansel’s gaze fell to her. “You know, deep down, that she’s more powerful than you. I can feel it. In those dark places even you don’t go.”
“Silence!”
A ball of fire shot toward Mantis, and Carol darted forward, shielding her by taking the brunt of the blow, letting the ball smash against her shoulder, the flames dancing along her exposed skin.