And then I heard Sabara, offering me a name that no one else would recognize, one that hadn’t been used in decades . . . centuries. Maybe eons.
When it hit my tongue, it tasted bitter, but there was no going back. “Layla,” I said instead of my own name. “My name is Layla. And this is Brook.” I wanted the attention off me, and off the fact that I’d just given an entire room of people—children or not—permission to call me by the name Sabara had confessed was her original name. The name she’d been born with all those many, many years ago.
Before she’d taken possession of the first body that hadn’t been her own—her sister’s body.
Before she’d killed to stay alive time and time again.
I hate you, I silently told her, hoping my message was clear. Hoping she understood how badly I wished I could just be myself again. Alone inside my own head.
When there was no response, I thought maybe our connection wasn’t as strong as I’d thought it was, that maybe she couldn’t hear me as clearly as I could her. But then her response came, as slick as oil as it slithered up my spine.
I know you do . . . Layla. Hearing her call me by that name was as inciting as knowing what the chief had done to these poor kids in his work camp, and I could feel myself responding, my skin growing hotter.
I hoped Sabara wasn’t right, that I wasn’t walking into a trap.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Queen Elena and wondering what exactly she’d meant when she’d written, I’ll give you everything you want. Because I wanted too many things.
I wanted Xander to still be alive. I wanted peace for Ludania, once and for all.
And more important, and more selfishly, I wanted to believe she really did have a cure for me. That she really did know a way to banish Sabara’s Essence. Forever.
I considered that long after the children had settled down in their bunks, and long after Brook had given up keeping watch and had drifted to sleep, her back pressed against mine.
And long after I’d stopped worrying about Xander and Ludania, and whether Max would ever forgive me for keeping yet another secret from him.
sage
Bare feet were best for this kind of work, the kind of work for which she needed to be furtive. As quiet as a sigh.
No one could know what she was doing. If she were caught, even her title wouldn’t be able to save her head.
But it wasn’t unusual for her to be skulking about under the cover of darkness with no shoes. The calluses on her feet proved as much. She prided herself on her ability to become one with her surroundings—day or night. To blend and go unnoticed. To find things that others considered unfindable.
And to kill without a second thought.
Yet she’d need none of those skills this night. Tonight she knew exactly where her quarry was, and she had no intention of killing him. At least not yet.
“You,” he barely managed to croak out, a strangled sound caught somewhere between a moan and a whimper when he caught sight of her. He didn’t even bother to lift his head from the cold ground he was lying upon. A bad sign, she thought as she studied his motionless form.
She glanced all around, noting the fact that no one had heard his feeble attempt to voice his contempt for her. She couldn’t have cared less that he despised her. She had every intention of being his salvation, whether he wanted her help or not.
Noiselessly she removed the key from her front pocket and slipped it into the lock. Without a single creak or scrape, she slid open the door to his cell. Had he been stronger, he would have stormed her, mounting an attack to try to regain his freedom. She knew because she’d seen him fight before. But he’d been a different person then. As it was, he stayed down, unable to even lick his own swollen and bleeding lips.
“Here,” she said, ignoring the stink of his unwashed skin and the smell of human waste and rotting flesh that emanated from him as she twisted the cap from the water-filled flask that hung from her waist. She held the flask to his lips and let the water trickle into his mouth. She was careful not to choke him, since he barely seemed able to swallow. “We’ll try again later,” she finally told him, when she realized most of it was dribbling down his chin.
“Wh . . . ,” he tried, but the pathetic attempt to question her died on his cracked lips as if the effort were too much.
Why had she come? What did she want? Why him? It could’ve been any or all of those questions, and she half-wondered herself what the answers were. If her sister discovered what she’d done . . .
Well, she would discover it eventually, all right. The trick was not getting caught for it.
“I need you to get up,” she told him. “Just long enough so I can get you out of here. There’s a vehicle waiting for us. We’ll be safe until we reach the border, and then we’ll have to travel through forests. You’ll have to ride on horseback then.” She didn’t know why she was explaining all of this to him; she doubted he understood. She wasn’t even sure he’d heard her.
She slipped his arm around her shoulder, again trying to shut out the stench coming off him, but failing miserably. He cringed against the movement but didn’t resist her. Despite the pain he was in, and his weak physical state, she was surprised to see that he actually managed to help haul himself from the ground. He wobbled, and leaned heavily against her, but he allowed her to lead him toward the cell door.
“It’ll be okay,” she assured him in a voice so quiet, it was almost nonexistent. She didn’t want to risk being discovered.
They slipped through the passageways more noisily than she had on her way in, but because she’d timed it so perfectly, they managed to go unnoticed. As they emerged, with the vehicle still there, waiting for her, she let out a breath of gratitude.
She eased him inside and watched the way he clutched his arm, keeping it close to his chest. His skin was greasy and pale, and she noted the way the bandages surrounding his hand were saturated with a mixture of blood and pus. She wondered what kind of infection she’d find when she uncovered them. She wondered too if she’d have to take the entire arm.
With the last of his strength, he lifted his head. “Why . . . are . . . you . . . doing . . . this?” he rasped, right before he passed out again.
Because you’re being used, she answered silently as she slammed the door, checking once more to make sure no one had spotted them, before she climbed into the front. And if I don’t get you out of here now, I run the risk that Niko will make good on his promise to keep my sister alive forever.
vii
Eden pulled us out of bed while it was still dark outside, but I knew it was close to dawn when we crept from the bunkhouse onto grass that was damp the way it was in the early morning hours just before daybreak. As we followed her, staying quiet and keeping close, I briefly wondered if she’d even managed to doze, since she didn’t appear to have changed out of the clothes she’d been wearing the night before, and she didn’t look nearly as rumpled as I felt after sleeping in mine.
Brook grumbled about the hour, about needing more sleep, about the cold, and about wanting food. What she got instead was coffee when we arrived at yet another cabin. It was a poor substitute for all that she wanted but was a substitute nonetheless.
I curled my fingers around the warm mug and sniffed the bitter contents as I sat down across from Eden and her brother, still marveling at the resemblance between the two of them. It was stronger now that Caspar, like all the children he was in charge of, had rinsed the muddied grime from his face. His strong brow and sharp jawline and black eyes were so similar to hers that if they’d been closer in age, I might have mistaken the two of them for twins. It was his size that gave him away as younger, but it was his hair that truly set him apart from his sister. It was almost too light to be called blond. A sharp contrast to Eden’s natural crow-black hair.
I lifted the coffee in front of me, which smelled nothing like the savory blends we’d become accustomed to at the palace, and I realized how spoiled I’d grown over the past m
onths. There was a time when I wouldn’t have dared turn my nose up at such an indulgence, despite the fact that I wasn’t a coffee drinker by nature. A hot drink was a hot drink, and hospitality—no matter its manifestation—was always hospitality.
“Thank you,” I told Caspar, keeping my face as straight as I could while I sipped the pungent beverage. It didn’t matter how it tasted, though. It went down hot and thawed my belly.
Eden didn’t have to pretend, nor did Brook, both of whom swigged the scalding liquid as if it were the sweetest elixir they’d ever tasted. Clearly they’d been accustomed to worse.
“So what’s the plan? How long are we staying here?” Brook asked. She shoved her empty mug toward our host, her way of requesting a refill, but she looked to Eden as she spoke, not Caspar. “I’m thinking we need to move on by daybreak or we’re begging for trouble. These kids are all alone here now, but they won’t be for long. Eventually someone’ll come to check on ’em, and we can’t be here when they do.” Caspar filled her mug and passed it back to her. She offered him a quick nod of appreciation in return.
He, like so many before him, grinned back at her, not invulnerable to Brook’s smoldering looks, even when her hair was matted from a night of restless sleep. She barely seemed aware he was watching her with such eager intensity.
But Eden noticed. She glared sideways at her younger brother, and I wondered how it was that he’d come to be here in a place like this without his sister. She kept her eyes trained on him the entire time she spoke to Brook. “We’ll stay for the day, gathering the food and supplies we’ll need. Then we’ll leave at dusk.”
Brook slammed her mug onto the table, barely aware she was spilling her coffee as she did so. “No! We can’t risk another nighttime ride. The first one was too treacherous. It’s difficult enough for the horses—every step they take is like walking through a minefield.” And then she shot a disapproving look in my direction, making it clear that my riding skills were in question as well.
She was right about riding in the dark, of course. It was dangerous, although less so with me along, shedding light wherever I went.
Once we’d gotten far enough from the palace that there was no chance we’d be seen, Eden had allowed me to shed my cloak, and we’d used the glow from my skin as a lantern of sorts, illuminating the trails and making it at least a little easier for the horses to see where they were stepping. It wasn’t until we’d entered the forests surrounding the work camp that she’d clamped down on us once more, warning us to remain quiet and keep close.
But it wasn’t just the darkness that put us in harm’s way. There were also nighttime predators, both animal and human, waiting for their chance to pounce on us.
Eden shook her head. “We’re not taking the horses,” she told Brook, and now I was the one who set my mug down.
“Then, what? How will we travel?”
Caspar grinned, not just at Brooklynn this time but at me as well. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
He pulled on his coat, which was patched and threadbare, with sleeves that were too short, as he led us back outdoors. The sun was just coming up on the horizon, bursting into the gunmetal sky with fingers of orange and pink and the oddest blooms of gold. It was spectacular, and I breathed deeply, trying to inhale its glory.
Keeping his head low, Caspar led us along an overgrown path that was so encroached upon on both sides by weeds and grasses that only the narrowest space of path was even visible at all. We followed him between and around more of the small cabinlike buildings, similar to the one where Brook and I had slept, and it soon became clear that the compound was massive and mazelike, and as unkempt as the pathways we walked on. It could have easily been regarded as abandoned by anyone looking at it from the outside.
It was no place for children. Especially those who were all alone in the world.
As we rounded a corner, a girl joined us. She didn’t say anything, just nodded to Caspar, and then to Eden. She was younger than Brook and me, and I put her somewhere around her thirteenth or fourteenth year. Her skin was darker than mine—as was everyone’s, it seemed—but not from spending time outdoors. Hers was naturally browner, as if she’d inherited it from her parentage, the way Brook had. Her hair, too, was dark, almost black, and was long except around her face, where it looked as if it had been hacked and chopped with a dull-edged knife, likely to keep it away from her eyes. But that wasn’t what was most notable about her, nor was it the fact that her eyes themselves were the most unusual shade of blue. Not like Angelina’s or mine, pale and crystalline, but rather piercing . . . electric. Much like the sapphire I wore pressed against my heart.
No, the most startling thing was her bird. A stark black crow sat, unmoving, on her shoulder, like an inanimate prop. It wasn’t until the bird blinked that I realized it was truly alive.
I waited for someone to introduce the girl as she fell into step beside us, but no one did, as if her presence were just accepted, like an unexpected gust of wind.
We approached a crumbling circle of stacked stones that I recognized as a well. Around it there were several rusted buckets, most of which had succumbed to various forms of plant life that grew in and around them. It was a good indicator of just how long ago they’d been discarded.
As we neared the well, I wrinkled my nose at the odor coming up from the ground. “You don’t . . . drink from that, do you?” I probed, eyeing the corroded bucket that hung from a pulley above the well.
Caspar and the nameless girl exchanged a look as we passed the disintegrating stone structure. “Well went bad years ago. We get our water from upstream. Near the mouth of the river.”
I thought about the children I’d met the night before. Most of them were small, and I tried to imagine them toting heavy buckets of water to and from camp. “Is that far?”
Caspar grinned at me, clearly understanding my concern. “Never mind ’bout us. We’ll be just fine. From what Eden here tells me, you got enough on your minds without worryin’ about a buncha kids.”
I shot Eden a glance, wondering how much she’d told him. But she shook her head discreetly, her silent reassurance that my identity was still safe. I turned my attention back to Caspar. “How come you’re here? I mean, why aren’t you with your sister instead of being here, in the work camp?”
I could feel Eden’s irritation as surely as I saw her lips purse and her eyes narrow. Her glower made my toes curl, but I had no intention of letting her intimidate me. I had a little sister, and the idea of her in a place like this . . .
Well, it would never happen.
Caspar either didn’t notice Eden’s scowl or was accustomed to his sister’s irritation, and he laughed at my curiosity. “When Eden left, I was just a boy. I wasn’t old enough to go with her.”
Brook skidded to a halt. “Wait! Are you saying Eden was here too?” She nudged her way to the front of our group so she could be heard. She surveyed Eden, as if seeing her in a new light altogether. “You lived here? In the work camp? I never knew that.”
Eden kept walking. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me” was all she told Brook, and then she turned her attention to Caspar. “I told you I’d come back for you, and I did. You were the one who didn’t want to leave.” She didn’t sound disappointed, the way a sister might if she hadn’t been able to persuade her brother to come with her. She sounded bitter, as if this were a sore spot and Brook had just jabbed a stick into it.
“You can come with me now,” she maintained. Her eyes narrowed on him, and Brook and I stopped too.
Caspar sighed. “Look around, Eden,” he said, his voice and his face softening. Eden didn’t look, but I did.
We were standing on a hillside now, overlooking the encampment as it stretched in front of us—larger and more widespread than I’d first realized. Than I’d ever imagined. I tried to guess how many children it housed, how many orphans Caspar was responsible for. It was baffling that they’d done so well for so long on their own.
/> “I can’t leave here,” he went on. “You have your cause and I have mine.”
They stared at each other, neither blinking. Neither looking as if they had any intention of backing down. They shared that same determination, that same inflexibility.
It made me squirm to witness.
Just when I started to consider sneaking away, creeping back down the path to hide in the cramped barrack where Eden had deposited us last night, Eden reached out and punched Caspar playfully in the arm. “You’ve gone soft. I always knew you’d be the motherly type,” she taunted.
Caspar, refusing to let Eden see that her blow—or her words—had stung, did his best to hide his cringe. “And you’re about as lovable as a thorny shrew.” He scowled at her. “Only not half as cuddly.”
Eden grinned, and I couldn’t help thinking she’d taken his insult as a compliment. Caspar just shook his head and started walking again. We followed until he finally came to a halt in front of a large building that reminded me of one of the oversize storehouses in the warehouse district of the Capitol. Unlike the rest of the compound, this building wasn’t dilapidated at all. The outside was made from concrete and steel, with paint that wasn’t chipped or peeling. It was as tall as it was wide, and likely as deep. Even the ground we stood on here was smoothly laid asphalt, new and even and black.
“How is this possible?” I asked, staring at the building, which seemed so out of place here.
Eden chuckled, and I suddenly felt like I was the butt of the joke. “What? That the work camps were given resources for the commodities they were expected to manufacture, but not for the children they housed? Did you think Sabara would have expended anything more than she had to for the care of orphans?”
I closed my eyes and tried to remind myself that this was why Ludania needed me. That these were the kinds of changes I’d been working so hard to make.
“So what was it you were manufacturing here?” I asked Caspar.
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