Traitors

  “Anyway, we got to Brisha’s palace and took the blood to her,” Angie cut in, the two of them making a cute double act. “She was overwhelmed with war stuff, and us turning up with a useless vial of blood—one that would poison any coldblood that ingested it—pretty much pushed her over the edge.”

  Bashrik nodded. “She had us clapped in chains within about two seconds of telling her what had happened, but then Lauren came along and saved our skins,” he explained, gesturing to the woman of the hour.

  Lauren blushed. “It was nothing, really. I just suggested we trick Gianne’s spies into believing that Brisha had finally made a breakthrough with the immortality elixir,” she said with a shrug. “I thought we could make some poisonous pretend samples for the spies to steal. Nobody would be any farther along with the elixir itself, but Gianne would end up with a nasty surprise or two.”

  “Honestly, I had no idea our girl had such a deliciously devious streak!” Angie enthused, though Lauren didn’t seem too pleased by the accolade.

  “I just wanted to do something that might reduce the number of bombings—give Gianne something else to think about,” she mumbled.

  I couldn’t quite put into words how much I admired Lauren. Even with war already raging and lives being lost on both sides, she was thinking of ways to reduce the conflict. Yes, the poison samples might hurt a few people, but she was right about keeping the queens distracted. As long as their minds were on the elixir, they wouldn’t start trying to one-up each other with weapons instead.

  “What about you? What are your plans?” Navan cut in, his eyes sad. “Are you coming back to us, or do you want us to come to you?”

  My expression turned stern. “You can’t come here—none of you can. Gianne has pretty much lost her mind, and if she finds any of you on the wrong side of the barrier, she’ll kill you. Any promises she made before this war began can’t be trusted anymore,” I warned. “She has weekly, screened executions. It’s why we need to hurry now. We only have until the executions finish to get back to the house before someone notices we’re gone.”

  “What if she finds you?” Navan pressed.

  “She won’t,” Ronad assured him. “Your father is keeping us hidden, and he’s doing a nice job of it. Well, aside from us sneaking out, but that’s on us.”

  “For now, we need to do what we can, on both sides,” I insisted, feeling the pressure of time. “But there are two things I need to tell you before we go.”

  Navan frowned. “What?”

  “Bashrik, Navan—your mother is ill. She’s not well at all. It’s why Kaido kidnapped us, to lure you both back to the house. Your father wants you back here, too. He thinks it might help her. Obviously, I don’t want either of you to risk Gianne’s wrath to come back, but I can’t make that choice for you.”

  There was another choice I couldn’t make for Navan, either, but I was working up the courage to get the words out.

  “My mother has enough siblings to take care of her,” Navan said, with surprising coldness. “It pains me to hear that she’s unwell, but I doubt our presence would do anything to help her. Besides, I’m not exactly eager to do anything that pleases my father.”

  “You can’t forgive her?” Ronad asked.

  Navan flashed him a look. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Can you guys figure out a way to contact the Titans while we’re separated? We need to make some headway, especially since we’ve got no idea when we’re going to be together again,” I interjected. “In the meantime, we’ll try and come up with a way back.”

  “Actually, it might better if we did come to you—me and Bashrik,” Navan said suddenly, making my heart jolt in my chest. “Gianne will pardon me, as she promised. I’m sure of it. And I can always say that Bashrik was taken prisoner. Gianne won’t kill an Idrax.”

  I shook my head furiously. “You have no idea what’s going on over here. Everything has changed! Nobody is safe. Navan, you can’t come here. Just stay where you are and try and contact the Titans. If we’re going to get anywhere, we need to—”

  “I’m sure Queen Brisha would like to have her say in the matter, as you are her loyal subject,” Navan said loudly. His tone was weird, and I soon realized why. Queen Brisha reappeared behind the chair where my friends were gathered, though they dispersed as she arrived, with Navan offering up his seat. She refused it, allowing Navan to remain. I looked to my side, but Ronad had already dropped off the edge of the sofa.

  “I have decided to allow Navan to travel to you on a rescue mission, though Bashrik and your Kryptonian friends will remain here, as collateral,” she announced. “You are my trusted subjects, and I wish to have you back in the North, where you belong.”

  “But—” A warning look from her pale eyes silenced me.

  “I will have you back,” she repeated, before vanishing from sight once more.

  If Navan was coming here, against my will, I knew that meant the time had come. I had to tell him about Seraphina. Perhaps we could figure out a way to spirit her away too, without inciting Gianne’s wrath. After all, if Brisha was planning to keep hold of Bashrik, Angie, and Lauren, then staying in the South wouldn’t be an option. We’d have to come up with something, now that the two queens had kindly wedged me between a rock and a hard place.

  “Navan, there’s one other thing I have to tell you,” I said frantically. “If I can’t stop you coming here, then you have to know that Seraphina—”

  The video feed cut off before I could say anything else. Navan’s face disappeared, and I could’ve sworn I felt my heart crack with the dimming of the screen. With Brisha’s blessing, he was about to risk everything, and there was nothing I could do to stop him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tears fell from my eyes as I watched the blank screen. I didn’t know whether Brisha had cut the feed, or something had gone wrong on their end, but Navan was gone and I had no time to sit around feeling sorry for myself. Wiping away the tears, I snatched up the black box and headed for the door, with Ronad following.

  We headed back out into the cold afternoon. Ronad locked up the cabin behind us, tucking the key beneath the fake rock. I didn’t know if we’d have a reason to come back here, or if anyone would ever visit this place again. There was something innately macabre about that, like seeing abandoned theme parks in the middle of nowhere. Maybe Ianthan’s cabin would become a similar artifact, forgotten in the woods.

  As we walked, I chucked the black box at Ronad. “I’ve got no idea how to turn this thing off,” I admitted, keeping my eyes on the road ahead.

  “See this symbol here?” he said, lifting the screen to show me three chevrons on the side of the device. “That’s the symbol for power. So, in this case, on and off.” He pressed it, and the screen turned completely black.

  “Good to know,” I said, as he folded the screen down and put the device away in his coat pocket.

  “How are you doing, anyway?” Ronad asked, as we fell into step beside each other.

  I shrugged. “How do you think I’m doing, knowing that Navan is ignoring everything I’ve said and coming anyway? It’s like he wants to put himself in danger, just to prove a point.”

  “Love makes us all act like idiots.” Ronad laughed. “He wants to prove himself to you.”

  I shot him a look. “Why? What does he need to prove? I love him, and I want to keep him safe. That should be enough.”

  “There’s something you’ve got to understand about Navan,” Ronad said solemnly. “He’s had to share affection his entire life. He’s never really had anything that’s entirely his. Then you come along, and bam! He has something he can call his own, and while that might seem like a beautiful thing, it also means he stands to lose something. He’s probably terrified you’re going to get taken away from him.”

  I pulled a face. “That’s ridiculous!”

  “That’s Navan.”

  “I can take care of myself—he knows that. He’s risking way too much, when he really does
n’t need to!” I insisted.

  The truth was, as long as Navan stayed in the North, Gianne couldn’t suddenly decide to make an example of him. But then there was the Seraphina situation, too. If Ronad was right, Navan and I shared the same fear, and if he stayed in the North, he couldn’t be taken away from me. I knew it was horrible and selfish, and I’d promised to put Seraphina’s feelings before my own, but my heart was a wild thing that wouldn’t listen to my brain’s reason.

  As soon as he gets here, you have to tell him, I repeated in my head. No matter what happened now, it was clear that Navan would be rescuing somebody—it just wasn’t necessarily going to be me.

  “It’s his way of showing you that he cares.” Ronad sighed. “Yes, it’s totally stupid and dangerous, but that’s just the way he is.”

  “Well, if Gianne doesn’t get to him first, I’m going to kick his ass for being a romantic idiot.” I forced a smile onto my face and pressed on, with Ronad leading the way.

  We reached the devastated lakeside once again, though instead of going around the shoreline, we moved past the rubble of the old concert hall and followed a wide road toward civilization. I imagined this was the usual means of getting in and out of the area, but it didn’t look like anyone had traveled along this path since the bombardment. A blanket of ash covered the ground, untouched by any footsteps but ours.

  “How are we getting back?” I asked, as the path branched out into a cluster of streets. There were shops and a few terraced houses, but they were all boarded up. Ash streaked the cream walls, leaving them zebra-striped.

  “Good old public transport,” Ronad enthused, gesturing toward another road that rolled away into the distance.

  There were no other houses or buildings along this stretch of road, but I could see across a plateau of barren field, catching a glimpse of towns in the distance. Behind the canopy of trees that ringed the lake, I could just make out the peaks of the mountain range that surrounded Regium. On the wind, I heard the whisper of music and the hazy drone of one bellowing voice.

  “She’s still going!” I said, while we jogged.

  “Vengeance is a dish best served in endless soliloquy—did nobody ever tell you that?” Ronad chuckled, kicking a stone up the road.

  I grinned, kicking it back to him. “I guess not.”

  At the top of the road, which sloped up a low hill, we paused, surveying the landscape below. There was a small village at the bottom, little more than a hamlet, with a few houses and what looked like a blood bank, but Ronad was suddenly animated by the sight of it.

  He pointed to an obelisk, larger than the one we’d used earlier, protruding from the ground. “You see that?” he asked, prompting a nod from me. “Well, that’s our ticket home!”

  “What is it?”

  He waggled his eyebrows at me. “You’ll see!”

  Pulled along by his enthusiasm, I raced down the slope of the hill beside him, coming to a breathless halt on the main street of the hamlet, where the obelisk stood. It had a glowing button on the side, but this one was red in color. Ronad pressed it with the glee of a kid in an elevator, and the two of us patiently waited. With the executions still going on, I figured it would be a while before any public transport got up and running again.

  My theory was shattered a short while later by the arrival of a long, silver, oblong ship. It sank out of the sky like a block of lead, wheezing and hissing as it descended to the ground, hitting the road with a bump. It seemed windowless, but there were two doors, one at either end, which opened with a mechanical whirr.

  “Are we supposed to get inside that thing?” I whispered, as though it could hear me.

  “No, you’re supposed to slap a saddle on it and ride it home,” Ronad teased. “Of course you’re supposed to get inside!”

  Frowning, I took a tentative step inside the weird vessel. There were rows of seats, and though it hadn’t looked like there were windows from the outside, I soon realized that the entire metal shell acted as a two-way mirror, so passengers could see out, but nobody could see in. My nose wrinkled; it smelled sour, like New York buses.

  “What now?”

  Ronad rolled his eyes. “Sit down. I’ll deal with the rest,” he said, moving over to a panel by the door. It lit up as he touched it. Intrigued, I stayed beside him, glancing over his shoulder to see what he was up to. He seemed to be scrolling down a list of some sort, before settling on a set of symbols. He pressed it, then waved the pay device over a circular scanner. The doors closed.

  “What did you do?” I asked, panicked, as the vehicle lurched upward.

  “Gave it a destination,” he explained. “It’ll take us to the stop nearest the Idrax house.”

  I frowned. “So, it’s a bus?”

  “We call them Shunters, but I guess that’s the closest human equivalent.”

  Trying not to fall over as the Shunter juddered upward, I slid into the first bench and leaned against the window, peering out. Ronad scooted in next to me, stretching out his legs. We were high up, the hamlet disappearing below us, the vehicle wheezing along at a leisurely pace.

  “How come this is working but the cabs aren’t?” I wondered aloud.

  “These start up again fifteen minutes before the end of big public events, so the elderly and infirm can leave the field before the crowds start swarming,” he explained. “I’ve never seen it happen with the executions, but it’s what used to happen before all of this, whenever there were festivals or concerts going on. Imagine all those people trying to get out at once—the sky is jammed with ships trying to get home, and the public transport is bursting at the seams. If they didn’t let people go early, it’d be a recipe for disaster.”

  “Do you think Gianne really cares about the elderly or infirm?”

  “Well, if she doesn’t, she must’ve forgotten to take the Shunters off their old event programming,” Ronad said. “Either way, as long as no soldiers get on, we’ll be back at the house before anyone else.”

  The idea that we might’ve gotten away with it comforted me. My gaze turned back to the passing landscape. Though my muscles relaxed, my mind insisted on drifting back to the image of Navan’s face staring through the monitor. The swell of emotion that I’d been battling with, forcing it back down each time it threatened to come up, wouldn’t be ignored anymore. Tears welled in my eyes, cascading down my cheeks, the sobs coming in ugly wheezes that wracked my entire body.

  Ronad put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me to him in a brotherly squeeze. “Hey, hey, what are these tears for?” he murmured.

  “I’m scared he’s going to die… and I feel awful because… I want to see him so bad… but if he comes here, then… Gianne will find him, and just go back on her word… and he’ll be taken away forever,” I sobbed, unable to control myself. “I just want him to hold me… and tell me it’s all… going to be okay. I just… want to get in a ship… and go… back home with him.”

  “One day you will, Riley,” Ronad promised, hugging me tight. “One day, all of this will just be a nightmare from your past, and it’ll never bother you again.”

  I shook my head. “It won’t ever… end. We should… never have met you.”

  Ronad sighed. “There’s a reason the two of you found each other, against all odds—which were pretty freaking slim, by the way—and that same impossible force will keep you together. I know it will.”

  “I just want to see him,” I whispered miserably, burying my head in Ronad’s shoulder.

  “You’ll see him again soon, and everything will be okay,” he reassured me. “I remember when Jareth found out about me and Naya, he locked her in her room, punched me in the face, and kicked me out into the street. I was sure he’d keep her from me forever.” A strange expression passed across his features. I guessed, in the worst way possible, Jareth really had done that, even though he hadn’t intended to kill his daughter.

  “Anyway, Navan slipped out the back of the house while Jareth and Lorela were laying into Naya
, and he snuck me the key to his cabin. They were demanding she refuse to see me again. I could hear them yelling from outside,” he continued. “They threatened to send her away to some aunt, and I could hear her crying. I just wanted to scale the wall and pull her into my arms, but I knew I had to wait. Navan promised he’d tell Naya where I was and help get her out of the house. I wasn’t exactly optimistic, but I was a fool in love—anything was possible!” He flashed me a sad smile.

  “What happened next?” I pressed. There was something about his stories that soothed me.

  “I got to the cabin and paced around for the next six hours, wondering if I’d ever see her again.” He laughed. “Then, I heard a knock at the door. I opened it, and—”

  “Naya was standing there!” I gasped at the romance of it all.

  Ronad shook his head, clutching his stomach as laughter erupted from the back of his throat. “No, it was Navan, standing there in a blond wig, a full face of makeup, a pair of glasses, and one of Lorela’s sundresses. He’d called at the house, pretending to be the psychiatrist that had come to survey Naya’s mental wellbeing! Somehow—and I will never know how he pulled it off—he managed to convince Jareth to let him take her away for an assessment!”

  His laughter was infectious, and a giggle bubbled up inside me. “That has to be the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard!” I laughed, shoving him in the arm. “You made that up!”

  “I swear it happened!” Ronad insisted, lifting his hands in surrender. “Naya was standing right behind him, safe and sound. We only had the two hours that Navan had managed to get, but it was enough just to be together again. Plus, it’s easy to forget you’re sad when your best friend is dressed in drag.”

  “Did that really happen?” I chuckled, still doubtful.

  “I promise, I’m not lying!”

  I had no idea whether he was telling the truth or not, but he’d managed to lift me out of my pit of despair. I tried to keep that lightness with me as we flew closer and closer to the Idrax mansion. Our prison beckoned.