The Rise (26 page)

I lifted my head from his shoulder, something finally occurring to me when it already should have. I’d been too worried about my own situation to pay much attention to the positions the others were in, just like I hadn’t remembered Patterson’s relationship with my Mother until after she died. This made me feel like a crappy friend, but among everything else I was feeling, it was the slightest of the sorrows. “Tommy, what do you think is going to happen with your father when he finds out you left?”

Tommy’s shoulders lifted, and I could tell that this was a question he had been asking himself for a while. “I don’t know what he’ll do,” he said. “He’s loyal to King William. He always has been. I imagine he won’t be too pleased with me.”

I put my hand over his. “I’m so sorry, Tommy.”

He smirked, but there was no humor in it. “Don’t be. He’s always been radical, an elitist. He really does believe that Vampires are better than all the other races. He’s been trying to drill that into me since I was a child, and when I was younger, I actually believed him.” His head tilted, making his pale hair fall to the side. “Maybe I still kind of do, but I don’t realize it. That’s why I always walk around acting like I’m better than everyone else.”

I shook my head. “That’s not true. You don’t act like that.”

Tommy looked over at me for the first time since we’d sat down. The blue in his eyes was shimmering slightly with the hurt of a thousand years, though I knew Tommy was just eighteen. My age, just barely not a child. “Not to
you
, maybe,” he said. “But then, I’m different with you than I am with other people. Most people I meet don’t even enter my radar.”

“But Nelly did,” I said quietly.

At this Tommy smiled, a full smile, not the crooked smirk he always wore, but a real one. “Yeah, she did. Which is why I don’t want you to be sorry, and I don’t want you to beat yourself up about the decision you made back there. I know how special she is. I…I
get
it.” Tommy punched me playfully on the arm. “I would have been pissed if you’d decided otherwise.”

I stared at him. “What you said before, about loving Nelly, you meant it didn’t you?”

Tommy nodded once. “Yeah, as crazy as it sounds I think all of us that she touched love her. I don’t think it would be possible
not
to. We were all open to each other when she took us, and she was open to us as well. I could feel the power and strength and goodness in her, and I could see that the more she used it, the further she was slipping away. It…
hurt
, Alexa. It hurt worse than any kick to the ribs or stake to the heart. And I wanted to help her. We all did, but there was nothing we could do, and that hurt even more.”

I gripped Tommy’s hands then, staring desperately into his eyes, my chest rising and falling. “Just tell me that it’s okay, Tommy,” I said, and my voice cracked. “Tell me it’s okay to risk everything, everyone just for a chance at saving her. Tell me you can see the good in it, in me.
Please.
”

Tommy brushed his fingers along the side of my face, and I closed my eyes. “I can see the good, Alexa,” he said. “I always have.
You’re
the one that needs to see it.”

Alexa

Tommy walked me back to Silvia’s cottage after that. We didn’t say much else along the way, but I had to admit that I felt a little better, if only marginally. I noticed more people staring at me than I had on the walk to the lake, whispering in each other’s ears as I passed by, shooting glances at me and the silver that crawled up my right arm. I kept my chin up and pretended not to notice them, but I wondered if I would ever get used to be stared at everywhere I went. Probably not.

Tommy gave me a long hug before parting to go to his room, and I hesitated with my hand on the doorknob of the room Kayden and I were sharing, wondering if he was waiting for me on the other side. I pushed the door open and went inside.

He wasn’t here. I went over to the bed and sat down on the soft comforter. My hand touched something and I looked down to see that someone had washed my old clothes and left them in neat pile on the bed. Next to them was a small brown book with a blue satin ribbon tied in a bow around it. Tucked under the ribbon was a note. I lifted the book.

To occupy your mind. ~S

Great, now Sasha was leaving me gifts. I sighed and tossed the book aside, flopping back on the bed so that I was staring up at the painted flowers on the ceiling, feeling nothing. I wondered where Kayden was and considered the possibility that he might very well have had enough of me, that he may have decided that the cost of being close to me were too high, too hard. I thought about this and I just laid there and stared at the ceiling, blinking my dry eyes.

It doesn’t matter, does it? It doesn’t matter so much to you anymore, Warrior. That’s all. This feeling of emptiness in your gut is a trick of the mind, an illusion. We have a purpose. You’ve made a choice. Stick by it. Live with it. Make peace.

“And now you’re a guru or something? I have made peace. I’m not crying right now. I don’t even
want
to cry right now. And if there was ever to time to cry, it is
right now
. I’m fine. I’m starting to think that making peace and feeling nothing is the same thing.”

Silence, then:
Ah well, now that is one of the most depressing things that has ever passed through your mind, Warrior. Just sad.

I crawled up the bed and pulled back the covers, thinking that sleeping right now beat the shit out of arguing with the voice in my head. I was just pulling the covers up over my shoulders when a knock sounded on the door. I cursed and got up.

No rest for the weary.

I rolled my eyes and strode over to the door. I could feel a little anger rising in me at whoever was disturbing me. I just wanted to go to sleep. And if it was Kayden, he wouldn’t have knocked. So whoever else it could be was almost certainly someone whom I didn’t wish to speak with or even see. I threw the door open, my hand going to my hip.

Then it dropped back down to my side, and a small smile found my lips. A real smile. It was Soraya. Catherine stood behind her with her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “I hope we aren’t disturbing you,” Catherine said. “Soraya kept insisting on seeing you though, so do you have a minute?”

I stepped back, letting them into the room. “Of course I have a minute. I always have a minute for Soraya.”

This made a huge smile set slightly crooked by a harelip light up Soraya’s adorable little face. Her hair was pulled up into two dark curly pigtails, and she wore a yellow sundress printed with white flowers and white sandals on her little feet. She looked like an entirely different girl now, and I realized with a twist in my calloused heart that she had never had her basic needs taken care of so completely in her life. She’d showered, combed out her hair, had a few full meals, and she was just as beautiful as ever, only less feral-looking. But, these things couldn’t have so easily wiped away all of the evidence of Soraya’s past. The deep blue bruises on the tops of her hands and in the crooks of her elbows, where the King had slowly been milking her of all her blood, stood out like black eyes.

Now I felt something. Now I felt like shit. I hoped my Monster was happy. Catherine took a seat in the chair over by the window and Soraya came and sat next to me on the bed. I ran my hand over her hair. “You look beautiful,” I said. “Like a little princess.”

Soraya’s nose scrunched up. “I know. I didn’t pick this dress, that girl Sasha gave it to me. I don’t know what she was thinking.”

I couldn’t help a laugh. “But it really is very pretty on you.”

She smiled again. “Thanks, but I don’t see you walking around in that silver thing I saw she picked out for you.”

It felt strange to be having such a normal conversation with someone; nice, even if that someone was a seven-year-old little girl. I shrugged. “I don’t think that it’s ugly. Just not my style. I’m not big on dresses. They make me feel stupid.”

Soraya gave me a very adult look, like I was dense. “My point exactly.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Too smart for your own good you know that?”

She nodded, her pigtails swinging about her face. “Yes, but it’s better than being too
stupid
for my own good.”

I laughed at that, and I could tell that Catherine was hiding a smile too, but she said, “Alexa is probably tired right now, sweetheart. Tell her what you came to tell her.”

Soraya nodded, and then she bit her bottom lip and looked down at her hands, her dark brows pulled tight over her golden eyes, and I could tell she was trying to work up the nerve or find the words to say something. I waited. After a long moment she took a deep breath and let it out. She looked up at me, the only person on earth that I knew of that had the exact same eye color as Kayden. Her voice was years beyond a child’s when she spoke, still sweet and childlike, but serious in a way that was most common to adults.

“I had to tell you that I’m happy about the decision you made today,” she said. “I wanted you to know that I would have done the same thing if it had been left up to me, that I don’t blame you for waiting to go after the King.” She paused, her shoulders lifting a fraction. “I just thought it would mean more from me, since I was a prisoner in the village, since I know how horrible that life is.”

I felt as though all the air had been sucked out of the room and I couldn’t breathe. It was too much hearing these words coming from her little mouth. But Soraya continued on undeterred. “I know it must be awful for you. I can see your pain as clearly as firelight in a dark sky. I want you to know that I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for your sister.” Tears were streaking down Soraya’s face now, but the girl made no attempt to hide them. I guess crying was a thing you got used to doing when you’d lived a life like hers.

“If it weren’t for Nelly,” Soraya said. “I wouldn’t be sitting here wearing this stupid dress and chasing Pixies and smiling so damn much.” Soraya cast a quick glance at her mother, but Catherine said nothing about the curse word. She continued on. “I want you to do whatever it is you have to do to save her, even if that means other people have to die in the process.”

My mouth fell open. The gesture was enormously touching, but the words coming from the mouth of such a little girl were horrifying as well. “You-you can’t mean that, Soraya,” I said.

Soraya’s teeth clenched. She shook her head, frustrated. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I felt her
soul
, Alexa. I felt all the things that make Nelly who she is. I’m half Searcher myself you know, so I’d thought I’d had at least a basic understanding of Searching. But Nelly showed me
true
Soul Searching
. She rescued me from that terrible place and opened my
eyes.
I got to see the world how she sees it, and I just don’t know the words to describe that to you, to make you
understand.
I’m not even sure there are words that can describe it. She’s special, Alexa. To all of us that she’s touched. I’m telling you that we don’t blame you. That saving Nelly is the greater good. And that we won’t betray her to the cause.”

I couldn’t for the life of me think of a single thing to say to all of that. I wasn’t sure I had ever sat through such a speech. It was one of the sweetest, most thoughtful things anyone had ever said to me. It broke my heart and lifted my spirits at the same time. I opened my arms to the little girl after I’d opened my mouth and realized that nothing was going to come out. Soraya came forward and hugged me tight, the scent of strawberry shampoo floating up from her hair. My eyes burned, but no salt water fell from them.