Sovereign Hope (29 page)

Agatha met my
gaze and waved me off before I could say anything. “Don’t worry.
Just go….”

I didn’t know
what else to do, so I took Daniel’s hand, then paused in the
hallway, not sure where he would want to go. The decision was made
for me when he pulled me in the direction of my room. I followed
after him, closing the door quietly behind us. When I turned to
face him, he was staring blankly at all the books that he’d found
for me, a million miles away.

I reached out,
allowing my hand to rest on the top of his arm. As soon as I felt
his warm skin under my fingertips I panicked and pulled my hand
back. He turned and caught it in his own.

At any other
time I would have been rejoicing inside but his grief was nothing
to celebrate. He held onto my hand until his grip began to hurt,
but I let him clutch hold of it, anyway. Something smashed down the
hallway. I cringed, wondering if I should go and see how Agatha
was.

“
She must blame me,” he said emptily.

“
She doesn’t blame you. How could she? She loves you so much.
She’s just sad.” There was nothing else I could say to him. That
terrible, wrecked look in his eye was overwhelming. “If anyone’s to
blame, then it’s me. If it weren’t for me, all three of you would
be somewhere far away. I forced your hand.” I lowered my eyes to
the floor. The words I’d been too afraid to even voice inside my
own head tumbled out in a rush. The pressure on my hand
slackened.

“
Farley…you’re so wrong.” Daniel slouched, searching for my
eyes. “Aldan vowed a long time ago that he would never take another
life, especially for his own benefit. I should have known he would
never take mine. It’s not your fault that you were dragged into
this. It was lucky Agatha and I realized who you were before
they
found you. At least
now there’s a better chance of you coming through this
alive.”

This side of him was alien. He had just lost the closest
thing he’d ever had to a father, and he was trying to
console
me.
I
suddenly thought I was going to
throw up.

“
Are you okay?” I whispered. Of course he wasn’t. It was a
stupid question; I knew that. But what else was I supposed to
say?

He didn’t
reply. He let go of my hand and stepped over to the bed,
considering it briefly before collapsing onto it in a heap. His
body twitched and trembled with pent-up energy but his face
betrayed how exhausted he was. When he spoke, he crushed me all
over again.

“
Do you think you could just be here with me for a
while?”

Words wouldn’t
come. I could only nod. I climbed onto the bed to lie beside him.
He closed his eyes and let out a pained sigh, rolling onto his side
so we were facing each other. I studied the shattered expression on
his face while he breathed deeply, trying to calm his body. Each
spasm rolled into another, more violent one.

“
Can I do anything?”

He shook his
head without opening his eyes, reaching out with his hand to find
mine. “There’s just so much…” His thumb traced light circles over
the back of my hand. “So much... I can feel it inside me. There are
hundreds…” He trailed off, his voice heavy. After a few minutes his
body settled and the tremors lessened until they mercifully stopped
altogether.

The grief slid
from his face like a mask as he sank into unconsciousness. I lay
there beside him, watching him dream, and it wasn’t long before I
drifted, too. When I woke, he was sitting with his back against the
wall, his legs pulled up, resting his elbows on his knees as he
watched me. I sat up, embarrassed.

“
Sorry.”

He looked down
at his hands and smiled sadly. “What for?” His voice was a
whisper.

I didn’t know where to start.
For
your brother. For that box they used to lock you in. For all the
pain. For Aldan…
.

“
There’s no point in being sorry for anything, Farley. You
didn’t ask for any of this. I’m the one who’s sorry. I haven’t been
very kind. There are reasons why…reasons why I’ve behaved the way I
have toward you.” He looked awkward, impossibly shy. “I want to
apologize.”

“
Don’t even think about it,” I groaned. “I can’t bear you
saying sorry for something so unimportant when Aldan has just
died.”

“
Unimportant?” Daniel whispered, studying his hands. “It’s not
unimportant. It’s the most important thing there is. Or ever will
be.”

I wasn’t really sure what he was talking about anymore, but
the intensity in his eyes when he looked up made all of my thoughts
disintegrate, scattered to the distant boundaries of my mind. It
was all I could to stare back at him. I thought I knew what he
meant, but it was too perilous to hope. Yet there it was, clear as
day in his eyes.
You are the most
important thing there is. Or ever will be.

The silence
between us was loaded with meaning. We studied one another, his
jade eyes fixed on my steel ones. Usually it would have been
confrontational to look at one another in such a way, but this was
different. This look held everything we both needed to say and I
wasn’t going to miss it. After a long moment, Daniel broke the
silence.

“
I have to go.”

Instant panic
hit me. “What? When are you coming back?” He stared at me, and I
knew. “We aren’t going to be together, are we?”

His face
wilted, filled with sadness. “I’m so sorry, Farley.” He raised a
trembling hand and traced it softly down my mascara-stained cheek,
causing my skin to smolder in a low burn. I closed my eyes tight. I
wanted to capture the moment, to remember the heat that spread
through my body.

“
Why can’t you just say we’ll have all the time in the world
to be together when this is all over?” I asked him. He brushed back
the hair from my face as I sat there with my eyes closed, wishing
that he would say those words. But he didn’t.

Instead, he
pulled himself away from the wall to sit beside me on the edge of
the bed. He tentatively reached out and slipped his arm around my
waist, drawing me closer. The heat of his body pressed against
mine, his warm breath on the back of my neck.

“
Because I’m not coming back. I’ve got to kill them. The power
it will take to destroy them is going to rip me apart, Farley.
There’s no optimistic way to spin that.”

My eyes began to sting. “Then just don’t go. Stay here with
Agatha and with
me…
”

“
I can’t,” he whispered.

“
Why?” I was too heartbroken to care about the tears streaming
down my face.

He didn’t
reply. He kissed me instead.

His forehead was an inch away from mine. He cupped my face
lightly in his hands, and gravity seemed to draw us together like
light towards a black hole. His breath was hot and sweet, mixing
with mine as our bodies pressed closer. When our lips met, we
melted together, a falling sensation so weightless and dramatic
that I had to hold onto him to steady myself, and suddenly I
couldn’t remember how to breathe. It wasn’t a kiss filled with joy
or happiness. It was the saddest thing I’d ever felt, filled with a
heavy longing and laced with grief. And yet, right then, it was
perfect.
He
was
perfect. It felt like coming home.

The moment
continued, languorous, until the thumping of my heart couldn’t be
contained anymore. I let it race away, each beat echoed by Daniel’s
own, which I could feel hammering in the pressure of his
fingertips. He gently drew my mouth open a fraction wider. His
tongue found mine, causing my body to tremble and quake beneath
him.

I reached up
and took hold of his t-shirt, bunching it up into my fists,
desperate to cling onto him and never let him go. He seemed to
sense the change in my emotion and answered my feverish kiss with
an intensity of his own, making the insides of my head implode
under the tension.

He moved his
hands to my waist and pulled me to him, somehow finding his way
under my t-shirt. His hands rested lightly on the bare skin above
my hipbones, making me shiver. I wrapped my hands around the back
of his neck, feeling his heartbeat there, too, burying my fingers
into his hair. He let out a low moan, his breathing turning ragged
against my lips.

And suddenly
he pulled back. My head swam, too affected by the tension of the
moment to understand what had happened. I didn’t want to open my
eyes. If I did, the moment would end. But for that second, his
hands were still scalding hot against me. His breathing was still
labored and thick. He was still so close.

His weight
shifted on the bed. His lips were feather light this time,
controlled, barely brushing mine. That little kiss seemed so sad
and final, especially when he raised his lips to rest them softly
against each one of my eyelids in turn…and then he was gone.

I had never
felt so cold or alone as in that moment.

When I managed
to force my eyes open, he was standing with his back to me in the
doorway. His voice was nothing more than a whisper, filled with
sorrow.

“
It’s a beautiful dream, love. But some dreams just cost too
much.”

He melted into
the darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Your Highness

It was
surprising how fast a month could fly by when your days were filled
with the endless comings and goings of strangers, the most
prominent of which were Beatty and his small family. He and his
brothers, Otis and Brynn, along with Beatty’s wife, Nyla, and their
son, Scout, turned up one morning, scaring the life out of all of
us.

Otis and Brynn
were mirror images of each other, identical twins that could only
be told apart by the faint, inch-long scar that ran along Brynn’s
temple. They were tall and stocky and full of noise. Their presence
was only dwarfed by that of Beatty himself, who gave the impression
that he could have taken down a grizzly if he wanted to. The three
men were all dark haired and wore scruffy facial hair that made
them look much older than they truly were. They were hard men from
the Third Quarter, the south. Agatha said the Third Quarter was
renowned for the unparalleled fighting skills of its people. I was
inclined to believe her.

Nyla on the
other hand, was a slight woman who looked as though she might fall
down in a stiff breeze. From the First Quarter, northern, like
Agatha, she came from the Intellectuals. Her auburn hair fell to
her waist like a waterfall of soft, exotic silk. Her almond-shaped
eyes were quizzical, and she was remarkably quiet in comparison to
the men’s bluff and bravado.

Her son was
five and had the same coloring as his father, but had inherited his
mother’s slim frame and gentle nature. I barely noticed his
presence most of the time. When I did, it was only because I’d
nearly tripped over him as he appeared from a dark corridor to flit
across the hangar.

Agatha had
snapped out of her melancholic haze a week after they buried Aldan.
Since then she had been the epitome of optimism, so much so that it
had really began to grate on my nerves. Her phone never stopped
buzzing. It was as though everyone who knew Agatha and Daniel had
heard the call to arms and come running. All kinds of new people
appeared overnight.

Each morning
revealed piles of unfamiliar bodies passed out on various roll mats
in the corridors and underneath the tables. It felt like Agatha was
attempting to amass an army of people simply in order to annoy me,
but Tess loved it. The planning, the organizing. The only thing she
wanted no part of was the fighting. That was all on me.

My sling had been off for three weeks, and my arm was as
strong as it had been before. There was no getting out of it. I’d
resented having to participate in a glorified
self-defense
class at first, but my interest picked up when we
moved from defending to attacking.

Tess watched
from the sidelines and smiled proudly when I managed to land a
strike on Beatty, who demanded it should be he, himself, that
trained me in hand to hand combat. She also pretended to look
elsewhere when he managed to put me on my backside, which was more
often than not.

I had tried to
get Tess to go home, but she’d refused to leave Oliver. Her mom had
lost the plot when Tess called and told her Oliver had surprised
her with a two-week holiday. When Mrs. Kennedy told her to end
their relationship and come home immediately, Tess refused
point-blank. Mrs. Kennedy told her that if she wouldn’t do as she
was told, she was no longer welcome in her house. It had been like
that for the past month. Tess refused to call her mom, and Mrs.
Kennedy refused to call her daughter; they were both as stubborn as
each other. I couldn’t help but feel it was all my fault, but Tess
was immoveable.

After a lot of
arguing, Agatha agreed it would probably be safer for Tess if she
were with us, and I was outvoted. St Jude’s had lost another
promising student. As for Oliver, he was still unsure about
everything Agatha told him. There was one thing he was sure about:
no one was going to hurt Tess, and that definitely made him on our
side. For the moment.

Aside from
Beatty, who demanded my attendance to his class every day, Cliff,
another of Agatha’s friends, was also helping train me. He was the
first person to put a knife in my hand. He’d been showing me
increasingly interesting ways to relieve an opponent of his
internal organs since then.