The Almost Girl – ebook edition (30 page)

He doesn’t answer as I turn to follow Aurela. She stares at me with a knowing expression. “Don’t worry; we’re not far away. And he’ll be different in the morning. It’s a lot for him to have to take in; just give him some time.” I know that she’s right, but Caden’s aloofness hurts more than I ever thought it would.

The thought of Cale pops into my brain, and I shove him away. I can’t choose. I won’t. I’ll have to find some other way around all of this… some way to save them both. I’ll give myself up to my father if I have to, if there’s anything he can do to save Cale.

“This is where you are,” Aurela says. She points to an adjoining room. “My quarters are just over there.” Glancing around, I see that people are taking notice of where I’ve been placed – a room adjoining hers. Aurela reads my expression easily. “It’s because you’re the bigger threat,” she says smoothly.

But inside, I know there’s more to it than that. She could have left me in the cell we’d been detained in, surrounded by armed guards. Instead, I’m like some guest in her private quarters. It’s a message.

A message that I am important.

For some reason, I don’t like it. I’m not sure that I’ve forgiven her for everything between us, for everything that Shae knew… that I did not. For leaving me behind with
him
. My voice is bitter. “I’d rather stay in the first room.”

“Riven, that is a holding cell. None of them trust you as I do.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “Why? Why do you trust me? You know who I am. What I do. What I’ve done.”

“Yes, I know all of that. But I also know that you are my daughter, and there’s some of me still in there, no matter how much he’s tried to weed it out of you all those years.”

“What do you mean?” I snap.

Her voice is quiet. “Nothing.” Aurela stares at me for a second, her white-blonde hair curling around her shoulders. “Get some rest. Things will look better in the morning,” she says, and then, “Riven?”

“What?”

“I lo–”

“Don’t say it,” I snap back, cutting her off midsentence. “You don’t even know me.” I stare with dead calm into her silver eyes. “And you’re right. He did cut every last part of you out of me. Everything human, everything that should feel something. He made me emotionless just like him. And you know what? I like it.”

I am so proud of the strength and conviction of my voice, but her tiny smile is my undoing. She steps forward and I hold my ground. I don’t even blink when she takes a strand of hair that is stuck to my cheek and tucks it behind my ear, nor when her fingers trail over the tattoos on my neck to rest on my shoulder with a reassuring squeeze. “And yet you wouldn’t tell me this if you weren’t fighting it inside this very moment, would you? Sleep well, my little blackbird.”

And with that, she was gone.

I stare at the wooden door between our rooms for a long moment. She called me little blackbird. The thought draws me backward, and I’m sitting in my room, crying my eyes out.

“Why’d you name me Riven? It’s so horrible,” I was wailing. “It’s not even pretty. It’s ugly, like me.”

“You’re not ugly, darling,” my mother soothed. “Your name was supposed to be Raven, which is the name of a tiny blackbird that visits me from the gorge behind the house. It has the prettiest whistle. When you were born, you made that sound.”

“Really?” I asked, still sobbing but curious.

“Yes, but well, mistakes happen. And your name was recorded as Riven.” She kissed me on the nose then. “I have an idea. How about if I call you little blackbird, just you and me? It could be our little secret.”

And I nodded, thrilled with having a secret name that remained a secret between us until the day she died… I mean, until now. Even Shae didn’t know. If I had any doubt that she was who she said she was – my mother – I didn’t anymore. No one would have known about that name but the two of us. It was ours alone.

I glance around at my quarters. From force of habit, I’d already taken inventory of the small, square-shaped room the minute we’d walked in, but it looks the same as all the others – spartan, with the exception of a small table and chair on one side, next to a cot. Nothing, except its position next to Aurela’s, marks it as superior.

The flame of a small candle dances against the wall, illuminating the white quartz and onyx colors in the rock. I stare at the rock and tilt my head to one side. I don’t feel as claustrophobic or as unbalanced in this room. It’s odd how I feel more uncomfortable in some areas of the Outer underground than I do in others, almost as if the rock composition is tied to my ability to function, like the computers. I laugh – I must be more worn out than I think.

I glance at the cot, but I can’t sleep. Too much nervous energy is swirling inside of me. My mind still feels muddled, so I strip down to my underclothes, taking care to fold the suit over the chair. I sit cross-legged on the floor and pull energy into my center for a long period until my heartbeat is steady and my breathing full. I extend each arm forward, and then ease my legs out into a side-split, stretching my tight muscles. The sequence of calisthenics falls into place as I twist my torso over my left leg, and my mind goes blank, muscle memory kicking in.

Nearly an hour later, my body is dripping with sweat, but I haven’t felt so alive since being underground. I’m wired, energy coursing through me and filling my cells with vibrant life. Without missing a beat, I grab my ninjata blades and start swinging them in a graceful arc, my legs extending outward at the same pace.

The exercise starts out slow and then gradually builds in speed until I’m gasping for breath and whirling the blades with incredible swiftness. I’m moving so quickly that the glossy blades are a blur in the room, the flicker of candlelight on them almost making them look like liquid flame between my fingers.

The swords are moving faster than I am, and my body strives to keep up, moving faster and faster and faster, until something hot nicks the back of my leg. I jerk to a halt, staring at the watery crimson trail that is welling against my skin. The voice at the corner of the room takes me by surprise.

“Getting a little rusty?”

“What are you doing here?” I pant, wiping the sweat off my face with my forearm. “You should be sleeping.”

“Like you are?” Caden saunters into the room and pulls out one of the chairs at the table, straddling it with his legs on either side and his arms across the top. His dark hair is unruly as if he’s been running his hands through it one too many times in aggravation. He rests his chin across his crossed forearms staring at me through squinty eyes.

“I need the exercise,” I say.

“And I couldn’t sleep,” he tosses back. “You know, a boy doesn’t find out he’s a prince from the magical land of
Far Far Away
every day.” The sarcasm is heavy in his voice, and I bite back a smile at the reference to
Shrek
.

“At least you’re not an ogre, and it’s probably a lot less magical than the one you were in.”

His stare is assessing, a lock of hair curling into one eye. “So, tell me something. When you thought I was a clone, you were coming to get me to bring me back here, and Shae was protecting me from you?” I nod, uncertain of the direction of his thoughts, but continue my movements, albeit more carefully now. “So I was your target?”

“Yes.” I slow my pace further with the swords, lunging and stretching both my arms in an arc over my head before pulling them around to the front and twisting away from him.

“So am I still your target?” His voice is louder than it was, and I whirl around. But his voice isn’t louder, and Caden is no longer sitting. He’s right in front of me. His hands grasp my wrists, halting them mid-motion.

He’s so close that I can feel his warm breath feathering against my cheek. In a smooth motion, he removes the ninjata from my left hand, stepping back and swinging it in a slow circle. I take a slow breath.

“Don’t hold a weapon–”

“–that you’re not prepared to use,” Caden finishes. “Shae told me.”

“Cade…” I begin.

“What? Are you so afraid to fight me?” he asks softly. There’s something in his voice that I can’t identify, something painful and aching.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I say. “These are real swords, you know. Not fencing foils.”

“I know.”

And before I can think, all I see is the flash of a blade curving toward me. The clash of steel in the small room is like thunder as my blade meets his in a shower of sparks, but Caden is already sidestepping and striking from the underside.

In a few seconds, I’m aware that Caden is more than good. He’s
really
good.

Shae wasn’t joking about how easily he holds a sword. I sense that most of it is instinct, but he has the basics of what we are all taught in Neospes. He’s taken that a step further with his own fencing training. Despite the fact that I’ve spent the better part of two hours practicing, Caden has me on my toes. Even though my body wants to go into full attack mode, I restrain myself.

“Why are you holding back?” he taunts, reading my slowed movements accurately.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“We’ll see about that.”

I drop to a crouch and jerk upward, only to find the top end of my sword crashing into the bottom of his on its way down. His ability to read responses is uncanny, almost as uncanny as my own, and I grin widely at the unexpected challenge.

Caden’s bare foot catches my heel and I fall backward, only to catapult to my feet in a crouch, my sword at his back. He fends me off capably, and then we are spinning to the discordant tune of crashing metal, until I am against the wall with his sword upon my neck. Caden’s eyes are triumphant.

But so are mine.

I tap the point of my sword against the inside of his hip, and as he looks down, I grin. And then I’m laughing, and Caden is laughing, until his fingers slide against my cheek, and the laughter slips from my lips. His eyes are so green, it feels like I’m drowning in them. I want to move, but my body won’t listen. My arms drop to my sides, and my tongue slips out to moisten suddenly dry lips. I pull my lower lip between my teeth.

“Don’t do that.” The harsh whisper is Caden’s.

“Don’t do what?” I say chewing unconsciously on the corner of my bottom lip.

His eyes darken. A storm-tossed meadow. “That thing with your mouth.”

“I didn’t–” But his lips silence mine in mid-sentence, the soft warm pressure of them hugging the curves of mine like they’d known them forever. Our breaths mingle as we draw apart, and Caden is staring at me with those impossibly green eyes. I can’t help myself. I lean into him, parting my lips and slanting my mouth against his. His hands are on the back of my neck and around my back, drawing me against him so tightly I can barely breathe. But I clutch him tighter, lost.

The second kiss of my life.

Kissing is an anomaly in Neospes. Couples are paired by genetic compatibility, not by what they feel about each other. But humans are social creatures, and sometimes love blooms after the pairing, although that is incredibly rare. I remember one boy in my training group who developed an affinity for another trainee. It’d affected his performance so clearly that within a day, the girl had been transferred to another sector.

Love made us vulnerable, made us weak. Those were our rules.

But Caden’s kiss makes me weaker and stronger all at the same time. And the way it makes me feel – like I am flame on the outside and liquid on the inside. It makes me feel alive, as if I can take on anything. And the only time I ever feel like that is when I’m fighting, when the adrenaline takes over and I’m only fire and fight.

Now I’m fire and something else entirely.

My hands tangle in his hair, into the soft mess of it, and I draw him closer. Not even the clatter of the swords on the floor tears us apart. Eventually, we come up for air, and as we pull apart, my mind drifts to our first kiss in the bathroom at Horrow, so similar to this one but so intoxicatingly different. My fingers slide against the square line of his jaw and across the sharp rise of his cheekbone.

Caden presses his lips into my hair and stays there for what seems like an eternity. I can’t move, not even when he leans into me and rests his head on my shoulder, turning his face into my damp neck. In fact, every part of me is motionless as his lips find the curve of my collarbone, winding their way up to my ear, fanning the fire once more unfurling in my chest. My legs are unsteady.

“I love you.”

“I love…”

For a second, I imagine that’s what I started to say. And then I’m splintering into an abyss of darkness and cold and pain.

DECEPTION’S DAUGHTER

 

“Is she going to be OK?”

There are white, bright lights everywhere, flashing. They hurt my eyes, even closed. I try to move, but my arms are restrained. So are my legs. I’m lying on a cold, white surface in what appears to be an emergency medical bay. I crack open an eyelid, squinting at the wave of agony that threatens to send me back into an unconscious stupor.

A hologram of a human body is suspended in the middle of the room and surrounded by all kinds of shifting miscellaneous data. I blink. Everything is so white. Even the medical garments barely covering my torso are white. My lips are cracked and sore. My tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth, and when I try to talk, my voice crumbles like dust. I blink again, opening both eyes and trying to focus. Pain stabs through my head.

“Water,” I manage to gasp.

A shadow looms and the rim of a cold cup is held gently to my lips. The water is like ice, soothing the dryness inside my mouth. I want more, but the cup is gently taken away.

“WhereamI?” The words merge into one. I try to sit up, but forget that I am restrained. The panic is immediate. “Where am I?” I scream, my throat seared raw.

“Sector Seven,” a voice says. “You’re safe.”