Blood Scion, page 34
“At least fourteen of them,” he says. “The Shadowlands beyond the front lines are constantly ravaged by dust storms, so none of us saw them coming. We were surrounded. If they’d wanted, they could easily have done worse. The prisoners were untrained and poorly equipped, and most would rather die than take down the Shadow Rebels. They weren’t like the rest of the child soldiers. They weren’t broken, hardened. So it came down to me to defend the unit. It was the first time in years I looked Death in the face and thought, it has come for me.”
“How did you escape?”
“A woman.” His voice is jagged, betraying his nerves. “She must have been their commander. Shaved head and golden-eyed. She said they were only there for the prisoners, and if I released them, no further harm would come to me. I’ve been a soldier for twelve years, and in all those years, I’ve only spared a life once.” He pauses long enough to give me a knowing look. “My duty is to kill. Eliminate all enemy targets. In that moment, knowing what the Rebels wanted, I should have shot the prisoners before they could get their hands on them. Even if it meant dying. It’s what the Force expects from me. Blood and valor to the very end.
“Yet, when I drew my rifle at all six of them, I knew I couldn’t pull the trigger. Not because I believed the woman when she said she’d spare my life. In fact, I was certain I was a dead man the second I lowered my weapon. But I couldn’t pull the trigger because when I looked at the faces staring back at me, I didn’t see the enemy. I saw terrified men and women, innocent boys and girls. I saw a shadow of who I was before I became this.”
“So you let them go.”
“They let me go.” He runs a hand over his face and releases a breath. “Those Rebels—they had every reason to kill me. The burns are nothing compared to what they could have done. Yet, once they got what they came for, they turned around and vanished into the storm. I don’t know why they did what they did. The devil knows I didn’t deserve their mercy.”
“Is that why you haven’t turned me in yet?” I finally ask the one question I’ve been too afraid to ask him. “They spared your life, and now you feel compelled to do the same?”
For a second, he peers at me, then back to the lines in the ground. “I never planned to turn you in,” he mumbles. “It’s why I deleted footage of that night from the training center’s security feed.”
His response isn’t at all what I expected. “You did what?”
“When your friends were captured inside the tunnels, I knew Faas would want to see the surveillance tapes. Once that happens, he’d figure out there’s a third recruit involved. Then it would only be a matter of time before you’re caught.” He leans back a little and his fatigues pull slightly, enough to reveal his bare torso. I swallow around the knot in my throat, realizing yet again, how horribly close I came to losing everything. “I took care of it, though,” Dane adds, “so you have nothing to worry about.”
Even when I know it’s the truth, part of me still refuses to believe.
By gods. If that footage had fallen into the commander’s hands, there’s a chance I’d be locked up in Cliff Row right now, awaiting execution alongside Jericho and Nazanin. But for whatever reason, Dane is sparing me from that terrible fate.
“Why?” I blurt out. “Why are you protecting me?”
“I could ask you the same.” His eyes narrow. “I’m the only one around here who knows who you are and what you did. Yet, that night inside the barracks, you chose to let me walk when you could have killed me.”
He doesn’t break his stare as he lets the words linger. Though he waits for a response, I remain quiet, remembering the night he caught me inside the tunnels, the heated exchange that followed after. The sight of him standing there, cruel and resolute in his attempt to justify the Lucis’ brutality, felt like the worst kind of betrayal. I could have killed him then if I’d wanted.
You never should have allowed him to leave that room.
Knowing what he was capable of, to let him walk away felt like a weakness. And perhaps, deep down, that’s what it was. Because somewhere along the way, whatever resentment I once felt toward the squad leader has morphed into something else, something different.
I should hate Dane Gray for all he is, but I don’t. I don’t.
I’m not foolish enough to admit as much to him, though. I know vulnerability in the hands of a soldier is a weapon easily exploited.
“I could still do it, you know?” A lie. But I drag my gaze over him anyway, the intent clear.
“I know.” He says nothing for some time, his fingers curled around the blades of grass stuck in a crevice in the ledge. “Look, I never wanted to be a soldier, Sloane,” he tells me as he yanks away at the weeds. “I never wanted to be responsible for the death of so many Scions and Yorubas. Years ago, I was forced to make a choice: survival or humanity. I chose survival, not just for myself, but for someone who mattered most to me. It was the only choice I thought could save her.”
“Who?”
The wind whispers around us as I await his reply. He breathes heavily, and veins branch out on his forehead, each one a hard web across his temple. When he stares up at me, his expression is carefully guarded, a mask to hide the truth that lies beneath.
“My sister,” he murmurs at last, letting his disguise fall. “Ara.”
He has a sister. The shock of that knowledge jolts through me. Before tonight, I never gave much thought to the squad leader or what life he’d led beyond the walls of Fort Regulus. To me, he was always a soldier, never a boy.
“What happened to her?” I ask him. “Where is she?”
“Imprisoned in Cliff Row.”
My eyes widen. It’s the last thing I ever thought he would say, and it only raises more questions in my mind. “Why?”
He looks over his shoulder, scanning the darkness until he’s certain we’re truly alone. Then he turns his attention back to me.
“You’ve heard about the Crown Conspiracy? How King Ascellus died?”
“He was assassinated by the Blades,” I reply, even as Theodus’s haunting words echo. It’s why I let Ascellus die.
Dane takes a deep breath. “Ascellus was murdered by my parents.”
“What?” I blink, taken aback.
“I was six at the time.” His words tumble out in a rush. “I had no idea my parents were involved with the Blades. Not until the night of the assassination. Somehow, Ara knew. She barely managed to push me down the escape tunnels before the soldiers arrived. They tortured her for hours until Olympia gave the order to burn down the house and take her to Cliff Row.”
With each detail, he peels back layers and layers of his painful past, breathing light into the darkness swirling around him. Now the longer I stare, the easier it becomes to imagine the life he lived before the attack, before his parents were killed and his sister was taken. He was a boy once, a child with a family to call his own. Until the Lucis ripped his world apart and turned him into a killer, a Reaper. I wonder now who Dane might have been if his parents were still alive and his sister far from Cliff Row. Whatever future he was destined to live is long gone, replaced with a life of endless war.
“How did you make it out of the tunnels alive?”
“The Blades found me a few days later and brought me underground. But with Ara stuck in prison, I knew I had to do something. So with the help of the Blades, my identity was erased from the Avalon database and I was enrolled in the Force. That was the day I became Dane Gray.”
A flood of emotion fills his eyes as his last words echo, a haunting buzz in my ears. My pulse races when I realize what he’s really trying to say.
“What is your real name?” I ask softly.
“Omari,” he whispers so low, I barely hear him. “Omari Wells.”
For a moment, I sit there, at a loss for words. Though slivers of moonlight cast his face into shadows, it’s the first time I’m seeing him for who he truly is: a lone boy aching for his lost family, searching, desperately, for an anchor to cling to in the maelstrom of a brutal world.
“So all of this . . . it’s all for your sister?”
“Ara’s only in that hellhole because she chose to save my life instead of her own.”
“What happened that night wasn’t your fault,” I murmur. “You were only a child. You both were.”
Even in the darkness, I glimpse the grief that weighs him down, a heavy stone propped against his tense shoulders. Before I can stop myself, I reach out with a hand, closing my palm around his clenched fist. He trembles beneath my touch, fingers splayed at the sudden gesture. But he doesn’t pull away.
“You’re not like them, you know?”
At that, Omari’s jaw tightens. “A few good deeds don’t unmake a monster, Sloane.”
“No, they don’t. But people like Faas and Olympia, they fight and kill for power, for greed. Their strength comes from keeping Nagea divided. Not like you. Not like so many others fighting for family, for hope and change and freedom. That is what separates a monster from a hero. You are no monster, Omari.”
He’s quiet for some time, long enough for me to sense what thoughts are plaguing his silence. After many years of being raised to kill, maim, and destroy, the boy he sees in the mirror is no hero, but a creation of the Force’s savagery. Real monsters are not born, he told me once. We are made.
I understand now what he meant by those words, why the squad leader is the way he is.
Without thought, he winds his fingers between mine, his thumb pressed gently enough against the back of my hand. A rush of warmth spreads through me. Then it’s my turn to flex my fingers, nerves twitching ever so slightly. A small, unexpected comfort, that is all. After all, we’ve both lost our hearts to the Lucis, and we both bear the pain of that loss every day. An open wound that never stops bleeding.
When he angles his body toward me, I’m keenly aware of how close we’ve gotten, the hairbreadth of space that separates us now.
“Why can’t the Blades help Ara?” I unclasp my hand from his own and draw back a little.
Something seems to register on his face, and he does the same, pulling himself back into place.
“They are,” he says with a strained voice. “But Ara wasn’t the only one who was taken after the Crown Conspiracy. Many members of the Blades lost their families that night. They want retribution, and they think assassinating the bloodlines is the only way. Except every attempt they’ve made since Ascellus has failed.”
I keep still as he speaks, trying to make sense of it all. The first time I heard about the Blades was weeks ago, when the attack on Olympia and the royals was broadcasted. Back then, I had no idea how far the monarchy’s hatred spread, how many of our lives had been crushed under their oppressive feet. If the Blades are determined to bring down the bloodlines, then perhaps they only need the right opportunity to strike again.
A plan unfurls in my head. I puzzle over it, running through the details of my original mission. Though the strategy in place is a solid one, an alliance with the underground rebel group would ensure that every aspect of the attack is well executed. With more highly trained soldiers at my disposal, I wouldn’t have to fight the monarchy and her army on my own. An advantage, one that could possibly lead to an even greater victory.
You can free us all, Theodus said hours ago. I wonder if the seer saw this, too, the tentative path my mission would take and to whom it would lead me.
In the starlight, Omari’s eyes gleam. I glance up at him, searching his face for anything that might reveal where his loyalties lie. Before tonight, I’d always considered the squad leader an enemy, a soldier who would easily kill me if he discovered who I was. Yet, despite what he knows, Omari is choosing to keep me alive. Because while the squad leader may fight for the Force, his true allegiance remains with the Blades—and even more so, his sister.
Now more than ever, I want to believe he’ll do anything to free her from Cliff Row. Even if it means committing treason.
I draw a breath and choose my next words carefully. “What if there was another attempt?”
Omari’s face falls on me, a furrow in his brows. “What are you talking about?”
“The night I broke into Archives Hall . . .” My voice wavers as the picture of Mama standing next to the queen and the rest of their unit comes to mind. “That was the night I learned the truth about my mother and why Olympia had her killed.”
“Who was she?”
“A lieutenant—here in Avalon. She went by the name Margery North.” This sends a flash of recognition across his face, and a low breath gusts out of him. “Did you know her?”
He nods in return. “We studied her back at the institution. They called her the Scythe of Nagea.”
An image of the file I found in Archives Hall materializes in my head, every piece of Mama’s—no, Margery North’s—personal records spilling before my eyes. Her birth certificate, medical records, military service forms—all proof of a life she lived here before. The life of a soldier she was forced into.
Bile climbs up the back of my throat. I force it down as I wrap my arms around my legs, hugging both knees close to my chest. Though I keep my eyes straight ahead, I can feel the weight of Omari’s gaze on me.
“It’s strange,” I mutter, “to know my mother once fought for the same people I was raised to fear.”
Next to me, Omari shakes his head. “Margery North was one of the greatest lieutenants to ever walk these grounds, and yes, she fought for a cause, but it was never to protect the crown or the bloodlines. Even when she was locked away in Cliff Row, there were rumors—”
“What kind of rumors?” I ask, turning to him.
“That she’d gotten really close to a fellow prisoner,” he tells me. “Someone even the bloodlines were afraid of.”
“Who?”
“Lord General Elijah Sol.”
I frown at that. “Theodus’s—I mean, Lord Sol’s father?”
Earlier, when the seer told me of his past, I vaguely recall him mentioning something about his father as well. A Lucis lord who was imprisoned for marrying a Scion woman. The man’s betrayal had not only left Theodus without a mother; it cost him his freedom too. If what Omari tells me is true, what possible alliance could Mama have forged with Theodus’s father?
Omari is quick to explain what he learned at the institution. “Both Margery North and Elijah Sol were set to be executed on the same day. But the night before their execution, a fire burned through half of the cellblocks in Cliff Row, and both were presumed dead among the casualties. At first, Olympia wasn’t convinced. She believed it was all a ruse orchestrated by the two of them in an attempt to escape. Following the investigation, though, there was enough evidence to conclude that the bodies found in the fire were those of the lieutenant and the general. That was until two years ago, when Olympia received intelligence that Margery North had been sighted in a village in Nagea, and—”
“The queen finally had her executed.” A bitter ache throbs in my chest, made worse by the realization that despite all Mama did to escape this wretched life, somehow, it still caught up to her. Against Olympia, she never stood a chance.
When the tears start to collect, I dig nails into flesh, letting the pain overwhelm instead. I will not weep for my loss tonight. Not while the bloodlines are still alive, tucked away in the safety of their precious island.
“I’m sorry,” Omari whispers.
“Don’t be.” I harden my heart against the grief, replacing it with a spark of dark, seething anger. It claws at the àse in my blood, and a rush of heat ripples beneath my skin as I bring myself to face Omari. “I’m going to avenge her.” My voice is sharp and steely. “I’m going to kill the royals. And I think the Blades would be very interested in my plan.”
He gives me a look of deep concern. “Sloane, listen. I’ve sat through many assassination plots against the bloodlines. None of them ever worked out as planned because Olympia always sees them coming. The monarchy is heavily protected. It’s just going to be another suicide mission.”
I can’t help but bristle. “You don’t know that.”
“I know Faas, and that bastard will defend Olympia to his last breath.”
“Then I’ll kill him too.” I level him with a glare. “I’m not afraid of Faas. Not anymore.”
“Even if it means losing your life?”
Omari watches me a minute longer, searching for a flicker of uncertainty, of doubt. But after all I’ve been through in the past month, I feel everything but. I am greater than my fears. Now more than ever, I clutch those words tightly to my heart. It’s all I need to destroy the royal bloodlines in a few days.
“You know, my grandfather used to say only the dead have truly earned the right to do nothing. As long as you live and walk this earth, you must make a mark. The bloodlines have taken so much from me and my people. Enough is enough. Those monsters are not invincible, Omari. They can be hurt. They can be killed. All I ask is you bring me to the Blades, and everything we’ve fought and killed for can finally be ours. Ara can finally be free.”
At that, a cloud of emotion sweeps across his face, a desperation born of our shared pain.
“If we were to do this,” he says after a long moment, “if we were to assassinate them, how exactly do you plan to get to King’s Isle?”
“It’s simple.” I tap a finger on the white-tipped bullet, remembering the day he draped the chain over my neck. His focus drops to the ammunition resting against my collarbone, and in that instant, he seems to understand what I’m trying to say.
“The recruits’ visit to Castlemore.” His eyes shine as he stares up at me.
“It’s the perfect opportunity to strike.”
He brushes a hand along his jawline, mulling over the plan. “And the bullets? You’ve only got a week of training left, and two more rounds to earn. You’re running out of time.”
In the dark, his words echo, the question in them lingering between us. After a month spent training with the squad leader, I know what he’s really asking me. How far am I willing to go? How much of myself am I ready to sacrifice for this mission?
