Blood Scion, page 31
We scream.
Then we’re off, bolting down one of the unfamiliar pathways. I can only hope to gods this winds all the way back to the barracks. I can only hope there isn’t a dead end up ahead. The leopard’s menacing roar cuts a violent shiver down my spine.
I glance backward, expecting to find Jericho and Nazanin chasing my every step. Instead of my friends, the beast hurtles forward at a maddening pace, so close that I lose my footing and tumble to the ground.
Get up, get up, get up!
The leopard prowls low when it gets within an inch of me.
I only crawl backward with my hands.
It flicks a long, spiny tongue over yellowed fangs, readying to pounce.
The buzz of magic is still in me, eating at my senses. With the spiritual anchor now broken, àse streaks hungrily through my veins, fighting for release. This time, I reach for it, grasping with quick, desperate fervor.
The beast leaps through the air and lunges forward. Its razor-sharp claws scratch through my fatigues, carving ragged lines into my thighs. Hot flashing pain cracks through me like a whip. I cry out as a blast of fire shoots from my hands, wrapping itself around the beast in thick shrouds of flames. The leopard releases a terrifying howl, loud enough to make the earth shudder beneath me.
It speeds off in a burning frenzy, as if it can outrun the fire gorging away at its skin. My breath scalds in my throat, drowned by the heavy sounds of footfalls and screaming guards. The flaming beast has alerted them to my presence. Now their booted steps grow louder as they descend upon me.
Out of desperation, out of fear, I reach into my mind once more, latching onto the remnants of àse surging beneath my skin. The swell of magic overwhelms, but for the second time that night, I grip it like a bleeding lifeline. Every vein in my body thrums with heat, every bone and every fiber a kindled match.
The guards are close, too close.
With a feral scream, I let go. An inferno ignites in front of me, a wall of flames that twists upwards, licking at the cracked stones overhead. The beauty of a fire is that it knows no bounds, and neither does mine. It spills forward, racing down the tunnels at a frightening speed. On the other side of the blazing wall, the guards scream, their boots stomping the ground as they try to flee the chaos. But this is a fire they can’t outrun. The stench of cooked flesh wafts up my nostrils. Strangled screams ring in my ears. They are the wails of the dying.
For a moment, I remain on the floor, gasping as flashes of blinding pain writhe through me. It would be too easy to lie there in the dirt, wait for the guards or another snarling beast to find me. Wait for the earth to pull me under.
I’m tired.
Then two distant shouts blare out from a separate section of the tunnels, shrill and piercing and shockingly familiar. I jolt at the sound of Nazanin’s and Jericho’s cries, the horror caught in their voices, accompanied by the violent outburst of the guards’ assault.
“We’ve got them! We’ve got them!”
Terror rakes its icy claws over my skin as I stagger to my feet, trembling all over. Jericho’s and Nazanin’s faces burst into my mind, and even from this distance, I picture them tackled to the ground, bodies buried into the dirt. Two beaten shadows beneath the crushing weight of the guards’ boots.
Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods.
I should go back for them. Jericho and Nazanin returned for me earlier, and I should do the same for them. But as their screams fill every branch of the tunnels and more and more guards close in on my friends, I’m only seized by my own unwavering sense of survival.
It is the same selfishness that led me to kill Teo back inside the city dome, sacrificing the life of the boy I loved instead of my own. It is that same selfishness that drove me to commit multiple murders in one single day. The same one that cost Malachi his life and freed me from the clutches of Irúnmolè.
Time and time again, I choose to live in my own inhumanity, knowing what the cost will be.
Tonight is no different.
I can’t fight the tears coursing down my cheeks as I turn away from my friends and their broken cries, abandoning them to the full wrath of the guards and the commanders.
I’m no hero. I’m only doing what I have to do.
The sobs heave in my chest, and tightness chokes my throat as I edge down the bend. I still don’t know where this tunnel path leads. I plod along anyway.
There, tucked away in the darkness, a silhouetted figure looms, watching with familiar green eyes.
My whole body freezes as he steps out of the shadows.
Dane.
Thirty-Two
Back in the barracks, Dane paces up and down a cold, unfamiliar room, his long limbs only taking him so far each time. His black fatigues cling to his sweat-soaked skin, and a layer of soot smears the right side of his face.
I blink at him, still shaken from what happened inside the tunnels tonight. My fatigues are worse than his, ragged and torn, barely hanging on by a thread. Blood drips from the long gash in my thigh, staining the ground at my feet. I should bandage my wounds, wash the grime off my skin, but Dane’s presence keeps me rooted in place—a silent threat.
He hasn’t spoken a word to me since he led me away from the tunnels and the guards pressing in. Not since he watched me command an inferno and discovered my Scion identity. The memory of him standing there, stone-faced and deathly still, flashes through my mind. A feverish heat spreads through my body, both from the fresh bruises on my skin and the remnants of àse searing beneath. Without an anchor to keep my magic in place, the burn stabs like a needle threading through the patchwork of my veins. Yet, despite the pain, I set my jaw and glance at Dane, waiting for him to speak.
Instead, silence hangs over us, a large boulder pressing down on me until I can no longer withstand another second of it.
“Say something.” I can’t hide the quiver in my voice.
He stops pacing and spins around to face me. The same hard expression he wore in the shadows returns to his eyes. “You’re a Scion.”
He can barely force the words out, stumbling over them with pained effort. I doubt Dane’s ever spoken to a Scion a day in his life. Soldiers like him are trained to let their guns do the talking.
“Is this the part where you take me to Faas? Or do you just kill me here?”
I look around the room he’s locked us into, an empty prison on the building’s highest floor. There are no bunks in sight, no worn-down dressers stuffed with army fatigues and the recruits’ charcoal uniforms. He’s chosen to keep me away from my quarters on purpose, away from the other recruits and their curious, prying eyes.
In that moment, I can’t help but think that if Dane were to kill me now, this would certainly be the place to do it. No one would think to look for me up here.
The same instinct that drove me to my feet in the tunnels returns. I glance at the door, imagining all the possible ways I could escape, save myself from this cage. But one look back at Dane and I know there is no way out.
He remains quiet, muscles twitching in his hard-set jaw. My heart gallops in my chest the longer I hold his gaze, wondering if Dane is about to doom me to the same fate as Jericho and Nazanin.
My friends were captured tonight, and it’s all my fault. I’m the one who chose to remain in the Archives far longer than I should have. I compromised the entire mission and endangered their lives. And yet, they returned for me when they could have fled to safety. They came back, and I failed to save them when they needed me most. No, I abandoned them. Ignored their desperate pleas and left them to suffer the guards alone.
What kind of person does that?
A selfish wretch, that’s who.
My stomach plummets at the bitter truth. Now that the guards have them, it won’t be long now before they’re interrogated, subjected to worse torture than I can even imagine. The commander will blame them for the Archives Hall fire. He’ll want to know how they got into the tunnels, how many others were involved. He’ll torment them for answers, and when the bastard’s finally had enough, he’ll toss them into Cliff Row to be tried and executed later.
Will Jericho and Nazanin talk? Will they give me away to Faas? Perhaps they already have, and the guards are well on their way to me. Perhaps I’m moments away from being locked in a prison cell of my own. For all of my betrayal, Olodumarè knows I don’t deserve their silence and protection.
Certainly not after tonight.
An image of the two of them suffering behind bars flashes through my mind, bringing with it a swell of pain and guilt. I’m not sure how much time Nazanin and Jericho have left, but now, with my own survival teetering on a knife’s edge, it’s all I can do to glance up at the squad leader again.
Even if my friends don’t expose me, Dane could.
Once, the squad leader had me nearly whipped to death when he thought I was a Scion Sympathizer. Now that he knows what I am, will he have me killed the way he’s killed others before me?
“If you needed a way inside Archives Hall, you should have come to me.” His voice is so small, I almost don’t hear him. “You should have told me.”
“Tell you?” I glare up at him. “Tell you what, exactly? That I’m a Scion? That the only reason I’m here is to find out the truth about my missing mother?” An ache flares deep in my chest at the mention of her. The memory of the file inside Archives Hall is still too fresh. But I don’t want to be reminded of any of it, not right now. I dig blood-crusted nails into my palms, allowing the pain to overwhelm instead. “In case you’ve forgotten, you’re a soldier, Dane. One whose duty is to kill people like me.”
He shakes his head, as though those words are too painful for him to hear. “You burned down an entire building. Do you have any idea how many soldiers died tonight?”
“How dare you stand there and talk about the dead.” My lips curl into a bitter sneer. “How many Shadow Rebels have you gunned down? A hundred? A thousand? How much of my people’s blood stains your bleeding hands?”
When he leans forward, a shiver creeps down my spine, but I force myself to remain still.
“Do you even have any idea what it’s like on the Sahl?” His voice is ice, his face a brewing storm. “The terror of watching your friends speared to death, tumbling through bodies cut open with machetes, and praying your next breath won’t be your last. The Shadow Rebels have maimed countless child soldiers who—”
“Child soldiers your queen forced onto the front lines! Children your commanders armed with assault rifles instead of books!”
A rush of anger explodes inside me. It coaxes my àse to the surface, and a current of heat ripples in the small space between us. The intensity of the warmth settles over us like a hot breath. It constricts at my lungs, just as a sheen of sweat breaks out across Dane’s brow. I inhale quickly, sucking in enough air to steady myself. When I’m finally able to speak again, my words come out in a hoarse whisper.
“My people didn’t start this war. Yours did. They took our lands, massacred us, destroyed our culture and our identity. If the Shadow Rebels are fighting today, it is to reclaim what the Lucis stole centuries ago.”
“There would be no war if Scions hadn’t drowned Nero Regulus’s parents,” Dane manages, and I sense the unease in him.
I force out a little laugh, though his false beliefs hold no humor. “Is that what the colonizers taught you at your stupid institution?”
He straightens before me, his broad shoulders firmly set. “It’s our world’s history, Sloane.”
I almost slap him across his face. Instead, I ball my hands into fists, clenching them at my sides.
“History and myths are two very different things,” I hiss low. “Let’s not confuse them.”
My feet move of their own accord as I back away slowly, fighting off the sting under my skin. A bitter distance grows between us, and I let it. If I have to stand so close to Dane, I fear what I might do to him. I was wrong to think I could let my guard down around this boy, wrong to even consider befriending a soldier like him. Avalon made Dane, and the Force raised him. I see it so clearly now.
“Was the massacre of the first settlers a myth too?” He pushes on. “Hundreds of thousands of old-world survivors, all of them wiped out by a deadly plague.”
Like Faas, like that viper bitch of a queen, Dane spews his own twisted history, reciting the same ignorance he’s been taught. Of course, he won’t tell the whole story. They never do.
He shifts, as if wanting to move a little closer. But then he thinks better of it and draws back an inch, returning to his previous position with solemn eyes.
“I’ve witnessed the bloodlines’ cruelty,” he mutters, almost to himself. “I know they rule with oppressive hands. I’ve also seen what Scions are capable of, how much destruction they can wield. How do you defend yourself against that kind of magic when you have none? How do you fight absolute power?”
“Ask your queen,” I snarl between my teeth. “She’s the one responsible for this genocide.”
My lips tremble when I think about Mama and the days she spent as a soldier inside these walls, fighting alongside Olympia, forced to serve a monarchy that thrives on oppressing our people, burying us in the earth one bullet at a time. They’d sooner destroy you for fear of what they do not understand.
“Gods, you people—you hate us so much, but we didn’t ask to be born with magic. The gods blessed us with it. You fear us for what we cannot change, fear us because we are different and powerful. Yet, we are the ones dying by the thousands every day. The ones living in hiding, forced to suppress our magic, even as it destroys us from the inside. Do you know what it’s like to push that much power down?”
When the storm of emotion breaks, my voice cracks. Tears prick at my eyes. I blink them away, biting the insides of my cheeks to keep from crying. Not here. Not in front of him. I will not put my strength on display for a weak boy. Instead, I roll up the sleeves of my uniform and stretch out my arms, revealing the rows of fresh blisters and old scars.
“These are my burns.” I thrust my arms in his face. “This is the pain every Scion must suffer in order to survive in your world. So tell me, how do we defend ourselves against your fear? How do we fight your absolute ignorance?”
His gaze lingers on the bruises, tracking every blister with a tick of his jaw. When he glances up at me, something strange glints behind his eyes. Sadness, pity—whatever it is, I don’t care.
“I’m so stupid,” I tell him, “stupid to think you could be different from Faas and Caspian and every other bleeding machine trapped behind these godsforsaken walls. But I know now you’re just like them. People like you could never understand what it feels like to be forced to hide who you are.”
The words scorch as they leave my mouth, and a charred taste lingers on my tongue. Despite the tremor pulsing through my body, I push my limbs forward, bridging the chasm I built between us moments ago. My heart thrums in my ears as I peer up at him, searching his familiar face.
“You’ve seen what I am,” I murmur. “Are you afraid of me, Dane? Am I the scum your commanders say I am? If you believe this, then arrest me now. Take me to Faas. Or better yet, do your job, Reaper, and kill me yourself.”
The next moments pass, with the two of us standing there, hearts beating at a fevered rhythm, fighting the urge to do what we know must be done.
With a single word, Dane could wrap me in chains, drag me off to his commander, and take away my freedom.
With a single flame, I could set him on fire, reduce him to ash, and keep my freedom a little longer.
Killing him should be easy. After all, the boy means nothing to me. Yet, I find myself reining back my àse, yanking on it even as it begs to be freed.
It seems Dane also keeps himself on a tight leash.
My whole body is braced for his killing blow.
Instead, he leaves me there, wide-eyed and staring, as he turns and stalks out of the room.
His muttered response barely reaches my ears. “I can’t.”
Thirty-Three
For one week, Dane avoids me. For one week, I remain alive.
Despite all the horrible things he said, his last words linger, a growing echo in my head. After days spent mulling over them, I’ve yet to decipher what they truly mean.
Is Dane sparing me? Why?
Time and time again, I ask myself the same question, unable to make sense of it. The thought of him choosing to keep me alive, saving me from the commander’s wrath, is an impossible wish. After all, Dane is a soldier, a boy with too many of my people’s blood on his hands. He won’t risk his duty to protect a Scion like me. He has no reason to.
Yet every day, I wait for an arrest that never comes. By the sixth day, I start to wonder what kind of mind games the squad leader is playing. If this is a trick, I never get a chance to ask because there is no sign of him anywhere. Strange that I find myself hoping to catch a glimpse of him, listening for his voice, but no matter how much I will him to appear, it seems Dane’s somehow vanished into thin air.
“Officer Gray has been sent on a mission to the Sahl,” Lieutenant Caspian tells us the next morning during Culture and Theory. The rifle across his back sways as he marches up and down the classroom aisle, spreading more propaganda about the Shadow Rebels’ ambush beyond the front lines.
Though I try not to think about why Dane’s gone to the desert front, or what he might be doing out there, his sudden absence coaxes an unfamiliar emotion out of me. Whatever it is flits away too quickly. I hate it all the same, and I hate Dane even more for it.
Hours after my afternoon session with the new combat instructor, I make my way up to the rooftop, where Amiyah already waits for me along the terrace’s ledge. She keeps her gaze steady on the horizon, her warm face glowing as it catches the golden light of the sunset. It’s getting late now, and I imagine she has been here a little while. But with the new strict measures the commander imposed following the Archives Hall fire, the entire base has been under constant surveillance. At least a dozen guards patrol the hallways of the barracks at every hour, with hordes more crawling about the grounds like ants. Even the security cameras track us everywhere we go, forcing me and Amiyah to find new ways to maneuver around them.
