The Girl Who Dared to Rise

  “Talk to me,” I urged him. “I’m sorry for how I reacted earlier, just… tell me what’s going on. We’ve been so wrapped up with… well… everything, that I am beginning to think we overlooked you.”

  Leo gave me a watery smile, uncertainty radiating like ripples across his mouth. “It’s not your fault,” he said quickly. He sighed then, and licked his lips, looking around the room. “This is very new to me,” he finally said. “A part of me wants to run away from you, because I’m not entirely sure how to explain.”

  “Try,” I said simply. “If I get confused, I’ll ask questions.”

  Leo started rubbing his forearms. “I’ve been having dreams. Well, not dreams. I think they might be nightmares. There’s two people beside me there, and they are screaming at me. I keep standing, but inside I feel like an ant that’s about to get crushed under someone’s boot. Helpless and filled with this indignant anger that makes me want to lash out and cry. It reminds me of how I felt when Lionel was murdered, but this is way worse. I wake up sweating, and feeling like my heart is a small bird trapped inside a large fist that’s slowly crushing down around me.”

  I bit my lip, a low thrum of excitement radiating through me. I knew exactly who those people were and what he was dreaming about. And I knew why he didn’t know who they were. Because they weren’t from his mind, but from Grey’s!

  “It has to be Grey’s parents,” I hurriedly told him. “They were very harsh with him once his ranking started to go down. Even though he tried as hard as he could to improve his number, they eventually disowned him and had him kicked out of the department.”

  Leo’s brows drew together, and his mouth dropped open. “That’s awful!” he exclaimed. A few seconds later, he added, “When you become the Champion, can you get rid of that stupid ranking system? It’s just… so offensive to Lionel’s memory.”

  “It’s among the top five things I’ll be looking at,” I informed him merrily. “Right after we save Scipio and get rid of those damned expulsion chambers.”

  We shared a smile, and then silence descended between us like a curtain made of iron, thick and definitely noticeable. I was starting to debate how to extricate myself from the conversation in the nicest way possible, when he spoke.

  “Liana, I do want to say I am sorry for the kiss this morning.” I started to tell him not to worry about it, but he continued. “But… is it wrong that I’m sorrier that I don’t remember it?”

  His eyes met mine, and I felt like I had just touched a livewire, and was now frozen to the spot, staring into those eyes that were Grey’s in origin, but had Leo’s light shining brightly through them. My heart throbbed. My breath caught. I saw in him an intense yearning coupled with a loneliness so deep and aching that my heart began to bleed for him.

  What was more, I could see echoes of my own loneliness reflected in his honey-colored, warm brown eyes. I wanted to reach out for him. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to provide him with comfort.

  Confusion ripped me right in half, and I immediately decided it was time to go. Now.

  I took a small step back and coughed, clearing my throat. “I need to work on my eulogy for Ambrose,” I said. Leo deserved something better than a feeble excuse, but being close to him right now was a bad idea. My gut said so. “When Quess is done with Mercury, maybe you two can start looking into how we can gain access to the armory.”

  And then I fled, stumbling past him and back into my bedroom before closing the door firmly between us.

  11

  Fingers lightly skimmed over my arms, and I sighed, leaning back into Grey’s warm chest. His silken lips grazed my ear, and a finely tuned shudder ran up my spine and then down it.

  “C’mon,” he breathed against my ear, turning my bones into jelly.

  More fingers stroked over my hips and up my sensitive sides, giving way to strong palms. My eyes fluttered open at the shock of another set of hands on me, and all the air in my lungs evaporated as I saw Leo—the real Leo. Dark, inky black hair with gleaming blue eyes; tall, muscular, and standing oh so deliciously close, only inches away, a deep, forbidden hunger reflected in the strong lines of his face.

  “C’mon,” he said, stepping closer to me and pinning me between him and Grey.

  “C’mon, Liana,” Grey said, his lips kissing a hot trail up the back of my neck. “Choose.”

  Leo’s eyes were on my mouth, his own lips parted in anticipation. They quirked up when he noticed me watching, and then he bent closer, his hair falling over his eyes.

  “Yes,” he breathed, inches from my mouth. “Choose.”

  “Choose.” Grey’s hands skimmed along my lower back.

  “Choose.” Leo’s mouth slowly took possession of mine.

  “Choose.”

  “NO!” I shouted, panic erupting down my spine. I pushed out from between the two men and stumbled away and onto my knees, panting heavily, focusing on the harshness of my own breathing.

  Something dropped in the darkness, and I looked over. I was kneeling inches away from Ambrose’s dead body, his blue eyes, open and vacant, watching me. His gaze held me captive, and I felt bile rise in my stomach as something white began to wriggle its way out of the corner of one eye, its meaty white body wriggling back and forth through the wet tissue.

  I started to turn away, but Ambrose’s hand reached out and snatched my arm, his head lifting up off the ground. His mouth opened. Blood spilled out of it onto his chin in thick, slimy chunks.

  “You’re next,” he said wetly.

  Then his hands were on my throat, and he was squeezing. I tried to fight him off, my arms beating feebly against his face and chest. His mouth opened, and more blood poured out and onto my face, getting into my eyes, my nose, my mouth, drowning me. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

  I sat up with a gasp, clutching my throat with one hand and trying to wipe Ambrose’s blood from my face with the other. It took me several panicked breaths—close to sobs—before I could even attempt to look at my arm, and then several more seconds for me to realize that there was no blood on my face.

  It had been a nightmare.

  Relief coursed through me, and I sagged back onto my pillows, taking a moment to catch my breath. I was drenched in sweat, but shivering as if caught in an icy breeze, and I burrowed deeper into my covers, trying to find warmth. I lay there for several moments, letting my heartbeat and pulse settle, debating whether I should try to go back to sleep.

  I checked the time on my indicator. It was three thirty. I didn’t have to get up for another three hours, but the thought of trying to sleep again filled me with anxiety, so I got up.

  I went for a shower first, taking pains to be quiet and not wake anyone on the way to the bathroom. The hot water did a great job of helping to clear away the deep chill that still lingered within my bones in the wake of that nightmare, and I used up four of my six allotted minutes to just stand and soak it in. Then I scrubbed myself down and rinsed, barely getting the last of the soap off of me before my shower credit ran out.

  I dried off, taking more time in the bathroom, primping, than I normally did—but what else did I have to do, other than try to finish my speech for Ambrose? Mercury hadn’t been able to jump on the search for the sentinel as fast as I had thought he would. He needed to research and find the frequency it was operating on first, he’d said, and that could take some time. Apparently, the Knights and IT had several projects they worked on together, but they didn’t always call them by the same name. Quess explained the anomaly as one born of a proprietary nature. IT didn’t build things—they wrote programs, and so they got to choose the name of each program. The Knights then named the actual creations for themselves. So while the Knights called these particular machines sentinels, the Eyes had likely called them something else, like Murderbots 3.0. Mercury just had to figure out that name, and then he could start the search.

  Which bought Quess and Leo a little more time to figure out how to steal one of the C
lass B weapons. I supposed I could take a crack at it myself, considering I had time in excess now that I had woken up so early, but honestly, I really wanted to focus on my eulogy for Ambrose. I wanted it to be perfect.

  It was an odd feeling, this drive to deliver something worthy. Ambrose and I hadn’t gotten along for most of the short time we’d known each other. It wasn’t until after the first challenge that something had finally shifted, and I’d gotten a glimpse of the real Ambrose underneath. He’d been arrogant, yes, but he’d also demonstrated a remarkable self-awareness, eventually, confessing that his attitude toward me had been based on his jealousy of my leadership skills. He wanted to be a leader, believed himself to be a great one, but hadn’t actually gotten a handle on the how yet, and when confronted with the fact that he wasn’t as great as he thought, had reacted poorly.

  But he had made his mistakes and learned from them—something that marked a truly great person.

  I wished he were still alive. I wished. I wished. I wished.

  But nothing changed the fact that he was dead. And his funeral was today.

  Finishing up in the bathroom, I headed into the kitchen to make a quick cup of black tea, needing the caffeine. Leo was asleep on the couch, and while there was a hammock strung from hooks in the ceiling, it was conspicuously devoid of Quess.

  He was sleeping in Maddox’s room again. A part of me wondered if I should be concerned about that, but I quickly dismissed the idea. Maddox had almost been killed, and her surrogate sister was still missing. Her mother had been murdered by her father, and then her father had been killed by Leo before she had even known who he was. If anyone needed comfort, it was her, and I was wrong to even consider that there was anything more to it than that.

  Still, my eyes lingered on Doxy’s closed door as I made my way back to my room—right up until I shut the door.

  I sat down at my desk and checked the Knights’ server first, looking for an update on the status of the Tourney, and finding one that had been uploaded at around midnight. I clicked on it and sat back to read. Most of it was stuff that Astrid had told us: the candidates from teams who had been infiltrated would be randomly assigned to other teams. It added that my team specifically would also receive a random candidate, but that we had the right to veto the first one, if we chose to.

  A small blessing, I supposed, but only just.

  I briefly considered asking Leo if he could hack into the server and pre-select someone, but dismissed it for a few reasons. Ultimately, the only person I could think of that I could possibly trust was my mother, but that trust was very fragile. Not to mention the fact that she wasn’t available, anyway. Their team hadn’t been infiltrated.

  And if I was going to be the next Champion, then I had to prove that I could do it on my own, without any assistance from my parents.

  But first… Ambrose’s eulogy.

  I still wasn’t satisfied, but when Maddox’s knock came a few hours later, I saved the file on my pad and tucked it into my uniform.

  Maddox was standing on the other side of the door, waiting for me. Her face was still bruised, but much of the swelling had gone down. The patch for her broken nose was gone, as well as, presumably, the rest of her bone patches.

  “Hey,” I said, well aware that we hadn’t been alone since before her attack. I gave her a look. “How are you holding up?”

  Her green eyes slid to one side, growing distant. “I’m here,” she said after a moment. I waited for her to say more, but when she didn’t, I placed a careful hand on her shoulder. Her body went ramrod stiff, and her eyes snapped back to me.

  “Doxy, you can still drop out if you want to,” I told her quietly. “We can tell the officials, find someone else. If you need time.”

  “I don’t need time,” she said hastily, jerking away from me. “I’m fine.”

  A lie, but given the wild look in her eyes, I chose not to press her. “Okay,” I said gently. “Thank you.”

  She shook her head, her face tight behind the mottled bruises. “Leo’s waiting,” she announced. “We should go.”

  I studied her, unconvinced that she was all right. She’d suffered extensive mental, emotional, and physical trauma, and needed rest and time to cope with what she had gone through. I knew she was strong, much stronger than I was, but even still, she needed help. I just wasn’t entirely sure how to give it to her, let alone breach the topic. So I decided to let it go, at least for now.

  Leo was indeed waiting in the living room, and together the three of us left, heading for the largest cafeteria in the Citadel, only two floors under the arena. None of us spoke much, which was understandable, all things considered. Things between Leo and me were so awkward that I purposefully put Maddox between us as we walked—a physical barrier he would have to talk over if he wanted to talk.

  Thank Scipio he did not.

  The cafeteria had been cleared of the long tables that normally ran the length of the room, and chairs had been set up in rows, with an aisle running through them after ten chairs or so. The room was already filled to the brim with people, who were talking with each other in soft voices that created a cacophony of indistinguishable noises.

  A Knight scanned us in one by one, performing a quick pat-down to confirm we weren’t carrying any additional weapons. It saddened me to think that Ambrose’s death had caused that action, and on the heels of that sadness came an icy sliver of anger. The people who had done this to him didn’t care what they had stolen from the Tower. Ambrose hadn’t been perfect, but he deserved to be alive right now.

  “Liana!”

  I looked up, quickly scanning the room for the person who had called my name, and saw Astrid pushing through a group of people crowding the mouth of the aisle, Lewis and the other Knight hot on her heels. She looked tired, but she smiled kindly as she took in me and my team.

  “I’m glad you’re here, kid. We’re just about to begin, and you should be by the podium. Are your friends going to be okay?”

  I looked at Maddox and Leo questioningly. Maddox nodded first, but Leo took a fraction of a second longer to agree, his eyes searching my face to make sure I was okay.

  I wasn’t—and his scrutiny wasn’t helping. As soon as he nodded, I managed a small smile for Astrid. “They’ll be all right,” I said. “Lead the way.”

  Astrid shook her head, regret shining in her eyes. “I’m leading the memorial service, and there are a few more things I have to do if we want to get started on time,” she said. “Just go up there and wait. We’ll be starting very soon. Anywhere will do.”

  I nodded, and began pushing through the crowds, heading for the podium that had been set up on the three-foot-high stage toward the front of the room. Several people were already there waiting, but I only recognized two. One was my instructor from my days at the Academy, Knight Commander (Ret.) John Deveraux. He’d lost his arm during his service, and now taught history.

  The other was Dylan Chase.

  I hadn’t officially met Dylan, but I’d had Lacey investigate her, to see if she had any legacy connections. She and Frederick Hamilton were two of the strongest contenders in the Tourney, and I had been concerned about their connections. Surprisingly, Lacey’s search concluded that Frederick was actually a descendent of Ezekial Pine. The Pines were the legacy family that had started it all, when Ezekial murdered Lionel, and then turned around and tried to do the same to Leo.

  But Dylan’s background had revealed nothing, save that she took care of her aunt, and was an exceptional Knight.

  She was leaning her upper back against the wall, her attention fully on the pad in her hands. She was tall and curvaceous, with wide hips and an ample chest. Her white-blond hair was cut in an asymmetrical bob, the longest bit of which curled under her chin.

  I cautiously slipped into a spot a few feet away from her, and then slid out my pad, determined to go over my eulogy one more time.

  “Liana?” Dylan said in a dusky voice, and I looked up to see her regarding me with w
arm brown eyes. A smile grew on her lips, and she took a step closer, holding out her hand. “I’m Dylan Chase.”

  “I know,” I said, accepting her hand. “I’ve seen some of your drone footage. Impressive.”

  Dylan’s smile deepened, forcing indentations into her cheeks in the form of dimples. “Thank you. I’ve watched yours as well. Very efficient.”

  That could be praise or an insult. Everyone knew that getting screen time through drone footage was critical to becoming Champion. Popularity within the Knights was paramount to success, which meant long, drawn-out fights and ridiculous stunts during the course of the Tourney in order to garner attention.

  By being efficient, I was costing myself the position. And Dylan knew it.

  But the kind look in her eyes never faltered, and I conceded that it was probably a compliment. “Thank you.”

  She nodded, and looked around the room. “There’s too many people in here,” she announced after a moment. “Most of them didn’t even know him.”

  Her mouth twisted, as if she had bitten into something sour. I stared out at the crowd for a second, and then asked, “How did you know Ambrose?”

  “We attended Academy together,” she replied, lowering her pad to her side and brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes. “He was…” She trailed off and shook her head, looking down. “I still can’t believe he’s gone.”

  Me neither, I thought. I opened my mouth to tell her that, but the lights in the room dimmed. Only the stage remained well lit, and from my position, I could see Astrid slowly climbing the stairs, heading for the podium. Behind her, the wall lit up, and filled with images of Ambrose.

  Astrid cleared her throat into the microphone. “My fellow Knights,” Astrid began. “We are here today to remember Knight Elite Ambrose Klein.”