Halo (Blood and Fire Series (A Young Adult Dystopian Series)) (33 page)

I take a deep breath. I can’t…what the…? I can’t breathe. I drop my knives, panicking that Sam somehow managed to puncture one of
my
lungs without me noticing, but he hasn’t. I just…can’t…breathe…

I rest my hands on my knees, leaning forward in an attempt to get some air into my lungs, but my head won’t stop spinning. The roaring sound in my ears is my blood pounding, pounding, pounding. It’s also the voices of every single member of Freetown losing their minds.

RASHATTA
 

I’m floating. When the High Priestess approaches me, still leaning over Sam, I’ve totally checked out of my body. I’m somewhere above us, watching everything play out, and honestly I don’t really care what happens next. I’m just too spaced out by the reality of what just happened to locate any of my self-preservation instincts. The hunched figure places a hand on my shoulder, close to the painful gash Sam gave me, and I wince. The old lady has a powerful grip on her.

“
Rashatta!
” she screams. I can’t remember what that one means, but I’m glad it’s not freaking Raksha. If I never hear that word again, I’ll die happy. Unlike before, the crowd doesn’t respond immediately. Their objections over what I just did echo long after the High Priestess’ call fades in the night air. She calls it again, and this time there’s a demanding note to her tone. By increments, a cautious, unhappy silence develops.

“The sacrifice is satisfied. The blood debt is satisfied,” the old woman cries. Her hand tightens on my shoulder and I wince through the pain. She draws me upright and I can see the slow rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. It’s the only thing that makes this small pillar of red material a real person. That is, of course, until she starts lifting the veils back from her face.

A frightened whisper begins to run around the crowd. Whatever she is doing, I don’t think I want to stick around for it. The way people are reacting says a lot. They’re freaking out, and I probably should be too. “Can I go?”

“
Rashatta!
” she screams. I suddenly remember when she used the word before, back at the blood ceremony when she started calling the fighters to be ranked. It makes no sense that she’s calling it now, but maybe it’s a part of other ceremonies, too. Other ceremonies that hopefully don’t involve me killing any more people or dying myself.

In a slow brush backwards, the High Priestess removes her final veil to reveal the white porcelain mask that covers her face, just like the one that covers all the priestesses. Olivia, too, by now, I think. You can hear a pin drop as her watery blue eyes peer out at me from behind the smooth white mask, bordered by black counters. We stare at each other for what seems like forever before she reaches up quickly and rips the mask from her face.

A collective gasp goes up around us, so sharp that if it had happened indoors, all of the oxygen would have been sucked clean out of the room. I look up and no one
―
no one
―
not Jack, not Ryka, nor James or any other person, is looking at the High Priestess. Every single set of eyes are averted to the ground, some closed entirely. The women start crying again, but this time it’s not showy wailing. It’s gentle whimpers trapped behind bitten lips. They’re frightened.

I turn and face the woman before me, determined not to let the town’s reaction affect me. Tough, though, when the subject of their fear has a face like this woman’s. To say it is ruined would be a kindness. A maze of violent scars crosshatch her face, angry and purple. Some look like they could be really old, but it’s obvious none of them have been allowed to heal properly.

She lifts her hand high over her head and brings the mask down to the ground, hard. The impact is enough to shatter it into three jagged pieces. She doesn’t say anything, just produces a knife, showing me the blade. Her pale blue eyes are on me when she draws that over her head, too. Suddenly I know what’s happening. I have no time to figure out if I
want
it to happen. The knife slashes out like a cruel claw in the High Priestess’ hand, and it scores me along the already brutally painful injury on my arm. It’s inside me
―
a scream so great I feel like my teeth will work free if I let it out. I bite it back, but it’s not only for fear of losing my teeth. If I made a sound, if I so much as flinch…

The old woman weighs me the same way I weighed Sam just now as I sit on the waves of pain pulsing through my body, begging me to cry out. All it would take is one small grimace and she will cast me out of the pit. But I can’t. It’s just not in me to purposefully fail a test like this. The High Priestess nods, grinning when I refuse to react. What have I done? I know what this means, even before she opens her mouth to call out one last time. I’m one of them now. I’m a fighter.

Her lips peel back, revealing a row of blackened teeth, and the High Priestess smiles. “Tamji!” she hollers. The word rocks through me to my very boots. Tamji. She’s named me one of the higher-ranking fighters in Freetown. As the kickback of her announcement rides over the people still gathered by the pit, I feel faint. I must be mad. I escaped the Sanctuary and washed the blood from my hands only to find myself standing here, the death of another person on my conscience again.

“Who will stain your skin with the sacrifice of this man?” the High Priestess asks me. I stare at her gormlessly for a moment before I realise what she’s saying. She wants me tattooed. I look up and see the only person I can bare the thought of touching me.

“Ryka,” I say.

His eyes meet mine and the blood in my veins runs a little cold. He’s never looked at me like this before
―
sad, angry and confused. He bites down, his jaw clenching. “No,” he says quietly. “I won’t do it.”

“You have been nominated, boy,” the High Priestess tells him. He glowers at me, still careful not to look at the High Priestess, and all the while the muscles in his body twitch, like he’s considering turning on his heel and walking away. He doesn’t, though. Jack nudges him in the back and Ryka reluctantly drops down into the pit. All the while, I’m sinking. Sinking into the pit floor, growing smaller and smaller under the furious heat emanating from him. I don’t really notice when he reaches me. Don’t notice him grabbing my hands in turn and firmly drumming the sharp point of a blackened blade into the hard bone underneath my wrists. It all happens in a blur, because my brain is still frozen on the moment when Ryka said no. The moment when he wanted to turn his back and walk away.

CHOOSE

A fever the likes of which I have never experienced before rips through me for the next six days. For the most part I’m unconscious, although occasionally I sense another presence in the tent with me. Funny how I can discern who stands over my bed just by the quality of their silence. Jack is pensive and paces, and August sits on a chair by my side, so incredibly quiet. From the complete lack of worry in the air whilst he is with me, I get the feeling he’s asleep most of the time.

Ryka, on the other hand, hovers on the peripheries. The powerful tension that accompanies him whenever he visits puts me on edge, filling my restless dreams with shadows, drowning and ghosts of the dead.
 
He never stays long.

The first time I wake properly a familiar woman is washing a cool cloth down my arms. It takes me a while but I eventually remember that I saw her once with Jack and James when I first arrived here. I can’t recall her name, but her presence is soothing. She smiles at me when she sees my eyes are open. Doesn’t say anything, but she draws the damp cloth over my forehead and I almost die from how good it feels. I drift back into unconsciousness on a peaceful cloud after that.

The second time I wake, things seem more real. The hazy edge that surrounded everything in my tent is gone, replaced with a crisp contrast that makes my eyes hurt. The sounds of Freetown are a soft hum, and somewhere I can hear the slow, rhythmic thwack and splinter of wood being chopped. I lay there in my bed for a good hour before the first strains of a panic attack start to develop inside me. Regardless of my wishes, my brain insists on playing out my fight with Sam, of his head cleaved neatly from his body. Ryka’s face, over and over again, as he finished tattooing me and threw down the blade into the dirt, refusing to look at me as he hurdled out of the pit and disappeared into the night.

It feels like Sam’s weight is still pressing down on my chest, and there’s very little chance it’s ever going to let up. A coward to the end, I swing my uncooperative body up in the bed and take my time in reaching underneath, trying to find the answer to this problem. My hand doesn’t find anything.

Panic bolts through me as I pat my hand around, trying to locate it. Maybe it got kicked back out of reach. But when I find the strength to lower myself to my knees, swallowing down the dizziness that threatens to help me to the ground more permanently, it isn’t there. My halo is gone.

Pacing is out of the question, so instead I drink the full tin mug of water I find by my bed, forcing it to stay down, and think. Where is it? Or, more importantly, who has it? I reach a conclusion pretty quickly
―
one that makes my hands hurt with how hard I clench them. It takes me a good ten minutes to slowly walk my way over to Jack’s tent, and when I get there I don’t hesitate. I’ve had time to get angry, and now I want answers. No one has the right to take my property from me, but it’s more than that. He’s taking a decision, my free will from me, too. I don’t take the time to survey the huge camouflage tent I find myself in. I just move from room to room until I stumble upon Jack, sitting in a high-backed chair, reading.

He opens his mouth to speak but thinks better of it. Completely unsurprised, he points over his shoulder and turns back to his book, sending me in the right direction. Down a partitioned hallway, I find a canvas door tied loosely across an opening. I yank the tie open and stomp into the room. Ryka jumps, dropping the water canister he was trying to stuff into a leather bag onto the bed.

“What?” he snaps, lowering his gaze.

“You know what. What are you doing?” I look at the bag in his hands and the answer seems obvious. “You’re going back out into the forest, aren’t you?”

He stays silent for a second, but then scowls. “What of it?”

“You’re running away.”

“I just need some space.” He thrusts the water canister inside his bag and a light sweater follows after it.

“Give me back my halo, Ryka.”

“I don’t have it.”

“Don’t lie to me!” I stalk across his room, my legs threatening to bail on me with every step, and snatch the bag away from him. “It’s not yours to take.”

“I told you, I don’t have it.”

“Ryka!” I’m on the verge of screaming.

He tucks his hair behind his ears and then drags his hand back through it so it needs fixing again. The muscles in his jaw jump as he bites down and releases. “Why do you want it?”
 

“I don’t want it. I
need
it.”

“That’s utter crap and you know it. You’ve been doing fine the past few weeks. Things don’t change now.”

My mouth falls open. “How can you say that? You were there. You saw what happened. I decapitated Sam, for crying out loud!”

“You had to. And besides, that’s a good death in the pit.”

“You can’t possibly be defending what I did.” My sheer disbelief doesn’t make it into my voice, and I am completely monotone. “You were angry with me, Ryka. You couldn’t even look at me!”

“That’s because I was petrified! I didn’t know how to react. You fell in the damned pit. You fell in the
―
” He drags his hands through his hair again, and then grips his hands together behind his head, shielding himself with his elbows. “I’ve never had a reason to be that that scared before, okay? And then you went and killed Sam. You’re a Tamji now. You know what that means? Every single match, you can be called to fight, and I’m going to be standing up there on the pit wall feeling exactly how I did the second your back hit sacred ground. So, yeah, I couldn’t look at you.” He catches me off guard and snatches back the bag. “And now I need some space.”