Release (26 page)

Ariana squeezed her eyes shut. “Not something more elaborate. Something less elaborate. I’m sure you scoured the nets while I was gone. You read what they said was happening to me.”

“Well, we thought you were dead, darling,” said her father. “Your mother sobbed for days. She was inconsolable. Having you back alive, whole and unharmed, was the best news we’d ever received.”

“So, you decided to throw a dinner party?” Ariana realized she was furious. Her parents didn’t seem to care about her well-being one bit. If the nets were to be believed, she’d been through a horrific experience. And while the news stories didn’t have all the details right, Ariana had been through hell. The last thing she needed was for everyone to pretend it hadn’t happened and keep on as though things were normal.

Her mother’s lip trembled. “Oh, Ariana, they were saying horrible things about you. And then you were dead, and I thought...” She reached for her. “Of course, I’m glad to have you back, but how we’ll salvage any of it, I don’t know. When this all started, you were practically engaged to Risciter, the most eligible bachelor in the sector, and now, after everything, well, I simply don’t know what kind of life you’ll have. It’s not the life I would have wanted for you. I don’t want you dead, of course. I want you alive, but...”

Ariana’s jaw dropped, and she shook her head in disbelief. Her mother had actually been relieved to think she was dead. Her mother was so short-sighted, so entrenched in the society of the sector, that part of her thought dead was better than socially ruined. Ariana was appalled.

Her mother was still babbling. “So, I thought, a dinner party. I thought that I’d show everyone that you were all right, and they’d see that you were strong, and perhaps they’d forget about all the nonsense. Perhaps, if you could be charming enough, they’d find it all exciting, and it would actually help your chances. I see I was wrong. You’ve been warped by everything that’s happened. My poor little girl.” And then she got out of her chair and tried to put her arms around Ariana.

Ariana recoiled. “Don’t touch me.”

“Ariana!” scolded her father.

Her mother straightened. “No, it’s not her fault, dear. She’s been scarred by all this. I see it now. We can’t blame her for the way she’s acting.”

“The way
I’m
acting?” Ariana stood up. “Marrying Risciter would have been the most disastrous thing that ever happened to me. He was a horrible man. You have no idea how absolutely disturbed he was. And you have no idea what he did to me. Everything about this place is upside down. You only look at the surface. How things look to the outside world. Not how things really are.”

“You’re confused, darling,” said her mother. “It wasn’t Risciter who did those terrible things. It was that awful man Transman that they arrested. And he’s going to pay for what he did, don’t worry about that.”

“Keirth never hurt me,” said Ariana. “Keirth protected me.”

Her father put a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “I’ve heard about this before, actually. Sometimes victims begin to sympathize with their kidnappers. You’re right. She has been warped.”

“I’m not warped,” said Ariana. “Not because I want to show the truth instead of covering it all up in pretty lies.”

“Perhaps she needs some time to relax. She needs a little spell away,” her mother said to her father.

Ariana’s heart sank. Whenever people in the sector talked about having a “little spell away,” they almost always meant Winfield.

“Winfield
is
on Risciter,” said her father. “It’s quite convenient.”

Ariana swallowed. She sat back down in her chair. “I don’t need to go Winfield. I’m fine, really. I’m a little excited, but I’m sure that if you give me some time, I’ll be fine.” Winfield was a mental health hospital. It was worse than a jail. She’d never be able to help Keirth from inside there.

“It will only be for your own good,” said her mother. “I’ll call and make the arrangements immediately.”

They were going to do it. They were going to send her away. She couldn’t let this happen. Ariana leapt to her feet, gathering her skirts in one hand, and dashed for the door. She was out of the study and into the next room in seconds, paying no heed to her parents’ shouts from behind her.

She careened into the parlor and made a beeline through it for the foyer, dodging furniture as she ran. The front door was just beyond the foyer.

She skidded into the room, the front door in sight. Only a few feet left to go. She doubled her pace, clutching her skirts and pumping as hard as she could.

And a valet stepped into her path. “I’m afraid we can’t let you do this, miss,” he said.

She swerved to go around him, but another valet appeared.

Ariana screamed in frustration, determined to barrel through them anyway.

But they grabbed her arms and pulled her back, and she simply wasn’t as strong as they were.

Chapter Sixteen

Keirth didn’t sleep that night. He was exhausted, bone-weary, and every part of his body hurt, from the ache of his muscles to the sting of the cuts and wounds the police had inflicted on him. But a man doesn’t sleep when he knows that this is his last night on earth. That he’s going to die in the morning.

Keirth wanted the night to stretch out long. He wanted it to drag by. But anticipation of bad things never works that way, and he felt each moment slipping away from him, going too quickly, gone.

He wished he could see Ariana. He didn’t know where they’d taken her. She’d been fighting the last time he saw her, and they’d been threatening to arrest her. If she were in custody somewhere, holed up in a cell like his, he wouldn’t be able to bear it. He had to hope that, given her station, she’d been taken back to her family. He knew that was the last thing she’d wanted, but it was better than jail. He wanted her to be free, to be unharmed. He couldn’t bear it if he brought her trouble.

Sitting up on his flimsy cot in the tiny room, resting his head against the stone wall, he decided he was glad he wasn’t dying a virgin. That was one thing to be grateful for, he supposed. Forcing himself to think along those lines, he decided he was glad that Risciter was gone as well. And he was glad that he’d been in love, and that he’d had a moment, only hours ago, really, when he thought that life was damned near perfect with Ariana in his arms, their bright future laid out in front of them.

But that was all he could manage in gratitude. He wasn’t glad. He wasn’t pleased. He’d been captured, forced through a sham trial, and they were going to execute him for crimes he hadn’t committed. To think that the rest of the galaxy would think he’d killed Lilla, the closest thing he’d had to a mother after his own mother had died. It was cruel. Twisted. Keirth found he hated the idea of his name being sullied in that way.

Deeply, most of all, he realized just how fiercely he wanted to live. His life could have been about so much more than revenge. But now...this was all he had. He bitterly considered that his plans, made when he was fifteen years old, had worked out exactly the way he’d imagined them. He’d killed Risciter, and now he would hang for it. Why had he ever dared to dream of anything more?

And when he thought about it, he wasn’t actually grateful that he’d loved Ariana. If he hadn’t, this would be easier. There’d be no ache for what he was giving up, and he wouldn’t have to worry about her. No, it had all been a brutal joke, experiencing any of it. He’d had hope for a life only to have it snatched away from him as soon as he got close to having it.

Keirth glared at the walls of his prison cell, and the night raced past him much too quickly.

* * *

Ariana groggily opened her eyes. Everything was dim in the room she was in. Where was she? The walls were gray. There was no furniture except the bed she lay on. The room was so small...

That was right. Winfield. She’d woken up in this room before. How many times? Two? Three? How long had she been here? And was it too late to save Keirth?

The last thing she remembered was being inside a doctor’s office. He’d had a kind voice, and he’d asked her to tell him what had happened to her. They had her so drugged. They were always forcing her to swallow pills, and the pills made everything so fuzzy. The doctor had seemed like a nice man. She’d hoped he might be able to help her. She wanted help, so she’d told him everything, the whole story. He’d been quiet, and when she was finished, she’d held her breath, hoping he’d tell her that there was some way to fix everything.

But instead, he’d told her she had delusions, asked her why she was clinging to this version of her memory. Told her he wanted to help her uncover reality.

She’d been angry. She remembered yelling. She remembered getting up out of her chair—

Now she was back in the gray room. She hardly had the energy to try to get out of bed. They must have sedated her again. How long had she been here? She remembered waking up a few times, but she hadn’t been awake for whole days, had she? And how long had she slept? She had no news of the rest of the world. No news of Keirth.

If the situations were reversed, Keirth would fight for her. He would rescue her from jail. He’d do it. She knew he would. She had to save him. She had to force herself to move. To think.

She lifted one of her arms. It was as heavy as lead. She let it drop back against the bed. What was she going to do?

The door to the gray room opened, and bright light streamed in. Ariana squinted, covering her eyes. Were they coming to give her more pills? She couldn’t take them, not this time. But they always looked inside her mouth, under her tongue. They always stroked her throat and forced her to swallow. What was she going to do?

But instead a voice said, “You have a visitor.”

And Ariana recognized the silhouette in the doorway as Aunt Tildy.

Ariana did her best to sit up in bed. She managed to prop herself into a half-reclining, half-lying-down pose with some effort.

The door closed behind Aunt Tildy and the two of them were alone. Aunt Tildy pulled up a gray chair and set it next to the bed. The she settled down in it. She rummaged through her purse for a flask. Unscrewing it, she offered it to Ariana. “Nip?”

Ariana shook her head. What was Aunt Tildy doing here?

Aunt Tildy shrugged. She took a long swig from her flask, considered it, took another swig, and then capped it and put it away. “You know that my maid Tira was having a fling with Risciter’s valet earlier this season, don’t you?”

Ariana furrowed her brow. Aunt Tildy had come to gossip about the maids’ love lives? She felt muddled and confused. “No.”

“Well, she was. She was really put out when you and Risciter disappeared, because we all had to leave Hallon, and she couldn’t see the valet again, and I think she fancied him quite a bit.”

Ariana managed to roll her eyes. “I’m sorry that I put such a crimp in your maid’s lifestyle.”

“No,” said Aunt Tildy. “That’s not important.”

Wonderful. So what was the important part, then? It wasn’t that Ariana wasn’t grateful that Aunt Tildy was visiting. After all, no one else in her family had stopped by. But this was classic Aunt Tildy. She was half-drunk and talking about things that really had no bearing on the situation.

“I didn’t say anything about it when you and Risciter were courting,” said Aunt Tildy. “You seemed quite taken with him, and you can’t really put stock in what the servants say anyway, you know? But Tira did tell me all kinds of things when she was doing my hair or helping me get dressed. Tira is quite a talker, let me tell you. I know that girl’s entire life story, from the moment she was born, I could swear it.”

“Say anything about what?” Ariana sat up a little further on the bed.

“Well, Tira said that Risciter’s valet... I can’t be sure of his name. I think it might be Herry or Henric or something. It’s definitely an ‘H’ name. I’m sure of that. Maybe Harild?”

“Does it matter?” Ariana sat up completely.

“We’ll call him Henric. I think that’s right. Henric told Tira about all of the strange things that Risciter did. He reported all kinds of sordid activity in Rilla Alley. Risciter apparently liked to visit prostitutes a good deal. Naturally, dear, you can see why I wouldn’t have wanted to bring that up to you. You seemed so happy, and your father thought it was such a good match, and no one listens to me anyway, because they think I’m bitter about not having a husband when the truth is that I simply never wanted one. Men are always hiding things, that’s what I say. And a good, honest man of noble birth in the sector? Why, you’ll never find one.”

Ariana had to smile. She’d missed Aunt Tildy, she realized. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“I’m not finished.”

“Sorry.” Ariana tried to force her smile into a more serious expression.

“Henric also told Tira that on more than one occasion, Risciter had come back from these trips to prostitutes with blood on his clothing. Not a lot, mind you, but some. Risciter would have Henric take the bloody clothes and incinerate them.” Aunt Tildy bit her lip. “I really should have told you about that. But honestly, Ariana, how would I have known that she wasn’t making it up for a little spot of entertainment? And it wasn’t as if Henric had seen him actually hurt anybody, you know? Tira can stretch the truth sometimes, and she babbles on about all kinds of nonsense.” Aunt Tildy put her hand on Ariana’s. “I’m sorry I never said anything. Maybe if I had you would have questioned him about it or broken it off with him. Maybe you wouldn’t have ended up following that bastard across the galaxy.”

“It’s okay, Aunt Tildy. You couldn’t have known.” Ariana’s head was still full of drugs, so she realized that she was grasping the full meaning of this little confession a bit slowly, but it was coming to her. “You believe me. You don’t think Keirth did those things. You think it was Risciter.”

Aunt Tildy nodded. “It all fits, doesn’t it? Going to see prostitutes, coming back covered in blood? And then a whole brothel dead? It’s a buzz amongst the servants, Ariana. All of them believe you too. And the whole sector’s been talking about what you said. It’s all over the nets. People are asking questions.”