Tether (13 page)

So she wasn’t actually dying. It just felt as if she were. This flu had been caught in her lungs for days, wracking her body with core-shaking coughs, fever, chills, and even a bit of vomiting, which, unfortunately, had happened when nobody was around to witness the splendor of her malady and consider that perhaps she might need some medical attention.

Maybe this was her cosmic punishment for all the wrong she’d done. Even her analogs had no interest in her welfare; from what she’d learned by carefully spying on them, all Selene and Sasha seemed to care about was using her to get what they wanted. Sasha, at least, she understood; if the roles were reversed, she doubted she’d have much compassion, either. But Juliana didn’t know what to make of Selene. Part of her found comfort in knowing they were looking for her, but
another part of her wanted nothing to do with them. At least Thomas was alive. Discovering that had been worth the exhaustion of living with three minds in her head.

It was a few days after the horrible incident in the Farnham prison when Juliana first found out about the third girl. Her nights had been mostly sleepless; she awoke multiple times from the same dream, one in which Thomas was shot and killed and she could do nothing to stop it. Her eyes would open, streaming with silent tears, and she would choke back a few guilty sobs before sinking back under and watching it all over again.

And then one night she had a different dream. Not a nightmare this time but instead like a film playing, a little scene that seemed like a blessing. It wasn’t until she’d had several of these dreams in a row that she understood, and even then she didn’t. But she knew they were coming from someplace other than her tired brain. She pushed them away as hard as she could, slamming her soul against them as if she were throwing her whole weight against a locked door. They stopped coming. But the door remained locked only if she wanted it to—she could control what she saw, and sometimes she chose to watch.

“I’m worried about that cough,” Peter said. Juliana peered at him through the small opening between their cells, but there wasn’t much to see, just one blue eye covered by dark curls.

A few weeks earlier, Juliana had awakened to the sound of scratching in the brick wall next to her cot. It kept happening, sometimes several times a day, for hours, and it made her skin crawl. She’d tried to move the cot, but it was bolted to the floor. She kept imagining rats scurrying inside the walls.

But then the wall began to move. Just one brick, rocking back and forth as if something were pushing it, trying to knock it free. Juliana tumbled out of bed and fled across the cell, getting as far away from the wall as possible. What kind of horrible, oversized vermin lived in
this godforsaken hellhole? As if being a prisoner of Libertas weren’t bad enough.

The brick slid out of the wall and fell onto her cot. “Is anyone there?” called a voice from the other side. “Can anyone hear me?”

His name was Peter, and she could tell from his faint accent that he was well educated, wealthy, and from Farnham. That wasn’t surprising; Libertas operated in both countries, and Juliana wasn’t even sure which one she was in. After what happened at Adastra Prison they’d taken her somewhere, but she’d been blindfolded the whole time. Peter claimed not to know why Libertas had taken him, but she guessed they were holding him for ransom. Every day she woke up thinking he would be gone, that someone would’ve paid Libertas for his safe return. But every day he remained, and soon she found herself dreading the morning when all that lay on the opposite side of the wall was an empty cell.

“They should bring you to a doctor,” Peter fumed. “How long are you supposed to suffer like that?”

“Until I shuffle off this mortal coil, I guess,” she said with a sigh, falling back against her pillow.

“At least you’re well enough to quote Shakespeare,” he teased. Juliana smiled.

“I used to hate Shakespeare, you know.”

“What changed?”

“I’m not sure. I guess I’m starting to relate to his tragedies.”

Peter laughed. “Me too. My brothers and I used to act out
Hamlet
in the garden when we were little. We had this one tutor who forced us to memorize it.”

“What part did you play?” she asked. So he’d grown up with a tutor. That was interesting. Even she had gone to school until her father pulled her out that last year.

“Yorick’s skull,” Peter replied, in perfect deadpan.

She giggled. “I’m sure you were amazing.”

“Sasha,” Peter said after a long stretch of silence. It was strange to hear him call her that, but it was the name she’d given him. Her recent experiences had taught her to be cautious, knowing how big a bargaining chip her own identity had become, and Sasha’s name was the first that sprang to mind. “If you could go anywhere right now, where would it be?”

It took her a long time to come up with an answer, and she wasn’t even sure that the one she gave was true. “To my mother’s house, I guess. It’s the only place I think I would feel safe. What about you?”

“I’d go as far away from my mother as possible. Maybe somewhere with a beach. I like the ocean.”

She didn’t know what to say, so she just slipped her fingers through the small rectangular opening, reaching for Peter’s in the darkness. It was a new sensation for her, this aching want in her chest, a desire to be close to someone. She’d spent her whole life pushing people away, even those who wanted to help her—even Thomas. There was a brief period when she thought she might be able to fall in love with him, but that was only because he was so obviously besotted with her, and spending time with him made her feel a tiny bit less lonely. It was different with Peter. Maybe their circumstances had created a false intimacy, but maybe what was developing between them was real.

Not that it mattered. She had no idea what was going to happen to her, but he would get out soon, go back to the fiancée he’d mentioned once, though she noticed he hadn’t brought the girl up since their first conversation. And Juliana
—
well, she still hadn’t given up hope that someday she would be free. But for the moment, what they had was enough.

She heard footsteps in the hallway outside her cell and the jangling of keys. “They’re coming,” she whispered, pushing the brick back into the wall and turning over in her cot, feigning sleep. She was terrified Libertas would find out that the two of them were communicating
and take Peter away from her. She wasn’t sure she would be able to put up with this much longer without his company.

The door to her cell slid open, and a dark figure stepped into the room. Light bathed the whole room in a sick white glow, but she kept her eyes shut.

“Wake up,” a stern voice commanded. When she didn’t move, the guard shook her. “Wake up. The Shepherd wants to see you. Now.”

“What?” She sat up, yawning.

“Come on,” the guard said, grabbing her arm and tugging her so hard she tumbled out of bed onto the cold concrete floor.

“Don’t you dare touch me,” she growled, ripping her arm out of his grip.

“I don’t take orders from you,” he spat, hauling her to her feet.

“I said don’t touch me!” she shouted, planting her palms on his chest and giving him a hard shove. A great burst of light shot out of her hands, and the guard went flying across the room. He slammed into the wall and slumped to the ground; his head flopped over like a flower with a broken stem, and he fell still.

“Oh my God,” Juliana whispered. She hurried over and felt for a pulse; he was still alive, for now. She stared at her hands in shock; they were glowing. What was happening to her?

A thought cut through the panic in her head:
This is my chance.
She rifled through the guard’s pockets and found his keys; there was a gun tucked into the waistband of his pants, and she took that, too. She knew how to use a gun—Thomas had taught her. He was the only bodyguard who was willing to show her how to defend herself in case she got into the kind of trouble the KES couldn’t get her out of. It was one of the reasons she’d decided to trust him; he didn’t think he was a god, incapable of failure, despite the fact that he made her feel safer than all the rest of them put together.

She fumbled with the keys, testing them on the lock to find the one that opened the door. When one turned, she slid the door open as
quietly as she could; someone had probably heard the commotion, and it was only chance that no one had come yet. Once she was out, she went to Peter’s cell. If she was getting out of this place, she was taking him with her.

He was near the door when she yanked it open, but all she could make out at first was the shape of him: medium height, lean build, and long, elegant fingers, the only part of him she’d ever touched. She glanced at her own hands; they weren’t glowing anymore, and she wondered if she’d imagined it. But the unconscious Libertas guard in her cell—him she had not imagined.

“
Peter, come on, we have to
—”
The words died in her throat when she got her first real look at him.

“Juli?”

“Prince Callum.” She managed to get his name out, but that was it. Let it never be said that the universe didn’t have a sense of humor. The boy she’d spent the last few weeks getting to know, the one she’d foolishly believed she was falling for against all her better instincts—he wasn’t just some wealthy kid from Farnham who’d had the bad luck to be caught up in Libertas’s web. He was a prince of Farnham, her own fiancé.

Or he had been. Who knew what they were to each other now?

“God, Juli!” He drew her in for a tight hug. She stiffened, but he did not let her go, and she relaxed in his arms, wrapping her own around his waist and burying her face in his shoulder. It felt so good to be held. Even in her long-ago life it hadn’t happened very often.
Don’t let go,
she thought, but she was too proud to say the words out loud.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured into her hair, her ugly hair with its bad dye job and grown-out roots. “I should have known it was you. I should’ve recognized your voice, but I—”

“It’s okay,” she said. Tears pricked the back of her eyes. It wasn’t her he thought he was reuniting with; it was Sasha. She felt an
overwhelming desire to tell him everything. It was the right thing to do. But she couldn’t even begin to formulate an explanation.

And then he kissed her. A real, true, slow, deep kiss that at first only served as a painful reminder that he’d done this before, with a girl who looked just like her but wasn’t. But she sank into it, letting everything she’d felt for him as Peter guide her forward. It wasn’t as though she’d never been kissed before. She’d even kissed Thomas once, just to see how it would feel. But nothing compared to this. Peter or Callum, it didn’t matter. She was kissing the boy who made her happy. Thinking about anything else seemed like a waste of time.

Callum smiled. “Since when are you a blonde?”

“Uh, they dyed it when I got here,” Juliana said. “I don’t know why.” It might not matter to
her
what
his
name was, but it would certainly matter to him that she wasn’t the same girl he’d met at the Castle. She wasn’t going to let the General’s games be the reason she lost him. She was going to have to pretend to be Sasha pretending to be her.

“What happened?” Callum asked. “How did you escape your cell?”

“I’ll tell you later. First we have to find a way out of here.” She took the gun out of her waistband.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Same guard I took the keys from. Come on.” She took his hand and tugged him forward. She didn’t want to waste another second in this hopeless, haunted place.

They crept down the dim, cold stone hallway, trying to make as little noise as possible. She heard footsteps and shoved Callum back against the wall. An unfamiliar young guard strolled by, whistling as he made his rounds. Juliana pressed the muzzle of the gun against his temple before he could react. Callum tensed beside her, but she knew what she was doing. Thomas had trained her well.

“Put your hands up,” Juliana commanded. She could see his fingers
inching their way toward the radio at his belt. “You’re going to show us the way out of here.”

“Be careful with the gun, princess,” the guard said. There was a tremor in his voice that told her he was new and unhardened. It was her lucky day.

“I won’t hurt you,” she told him. “If you help us.”

The guard pointed straight ahead. “This way.”

He led them down a series of empty passageways; it was still the middle of the night, and nobody was around. It wasn’t the patrols that worried her; it was whomever the Shepherd would send when she didn’t show up as he’d commanded. But they met no one. Finally, the guard stopped in front of a metal door that boasted the ten stars of the Libertas insignia. He pressed the stars in a specific order, and the door swung open, revealing a dark hall.

“Great,” Juliana said. “Thanks.” Then she swung the handle of the gun at his head, hitting him just hard enough to knock him unconscious. He dropped to the floor. She looked down at him and sighed.

“Juli,” Callum said in disbelief. “You just coldcocked that guy.”

“Yeah,” she said, stepping over the man’s limp body. “I think that’s what my deportment instructor would call ‘behavior unbecoming of a lady.’ ”

He let out a strangled laugh. “No doubt.”

“What was I supposed to do? We skipped the ‘What to Do If You’re Being Held Against Your Will and Get the Chance to Escape’ chapter of the princess manual.” She hazarded a smile. “Do you think I’m terrible?”

“No,” he said, running his fingers through his hair and staring down at the unconscious guard. “I’m impressed. And a little embarrassed.”