The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (26 page)

I force light into my
tone. “Seriously, it’s nothing. We’re okay here, remember? You said
that no one can get us.”

“That’s
one
group of people. There are other dangers here.”

I’m out of calming
things to say. I grab the last gun from the table and give it to
him. “Aren’t you meant to be showing me how much better you are at
everything?”

He weighs the gun in
his hand, a small glossy thing not much bigger than his hand, and
seems satisfied. “Come on, then,” he sighs. “I’ll show you how to
hold that thing properly.”

He strides over to a
space against the left wall, well out of the way of the squealing
kids. My attention drifts over them until I find Olive and Thomas
bickering about something or other.

“What’s wrong with how
I’m holding it?” I lean against the wall, gun hefted on my
shoulder. Everyone around us is demonstrating their best handle on
their guns, Anna wandering around to check they’re doing it
right.

“You need to use both
hands. And not put it on your shoulder.” He slips his own gun into
the waistband of his jeans, jamming it against his hip bone like
he’s done it a hundred times and it’s become second nature. I snap
my eyes forcefully away from the line of bare skin. Why does this
keep happening? And why more today than normal?

I gnash my teeth.

It doesn’t help when
he comes to stand behind me, adjusting my hands so I’m holding the
gun the right way. There’s heat coming off him, so warm he must be
boiling up, but his cheeks aren’t flushed.

Anna inspects my grip
on the gun and nods, approving Siah’s position as well when he
takes the thing out of his pants. She hesitates, clearly wanting to
say something, but thinks better of it. I know what she saw—he’s
obviously used to having a gun in his hand. I’m glad she didn’t
ask. Siah might be making an effort to be open with me—mostly—but
I’m not sure how forthcoming he’d be with a stranger. There’s no
need for him to feel even more wound up.

“
Alright!” Anna claps her hands. “We’re done for today. We’ll
meet again on the twenty eighth. Leave your firearms on this table
and
please
take
your children with you.”

Twenty eighth?
“Siah, what month is
it?”

“October.” He’s far
away, in some daydream or memory. He blinks himself free of it and
meets my eyes. “Why?”

“Do you know what day
it is today?”

“Wednesday.”

“No,
I mean the number. What
date
is it?”

He
can’t know because he waves Anna over and asks her. “It’s the
twenty sixth,” she says. “We meet again on Friday, two days’ time.
Is that alright?” She smiles with forced friendliness. It’s obvious
she wants rid of us. I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to train a
load of amateurs if I were a Guardian.
When
I’m a Guardian. Warmth sinks
into my gut. I’m excited for it, to be trained and
deadly.

At Siah’s nudge, I
come crashing back from my last train of thought. Today’s the
twenty sixth of October, which means tomorrow is the twenty
seventh.

“We should go,” I say.
I shout Tom and Livy over and they come bounding.

“Did you see us,
Leah?” Tom asks. “We were skidding and falling and hitting the
wall.”

“I saw.” I muss his
hair. “We’re leaving. Have you got all your shit?”

His forehead creases.
“I don’t have anything.”

“Yes you do, dumbass.”
Livy throws a hoodie at his head. “You left this.”

“Oh, yeah.” He gives
her a big lopsided smile, struggling to get his arms into the
hoodie as I steer them out the door.

“What was the date
thing about?” Yosiah asks.

We spill into the
bright afternoon through a gate marked ‘fire station’. It’s sunny
again, and dry. Tom takes off down the road, teasing Livy as she
tears after him. I don’t bother to catch up; they’ll circle back to
us eventually.

“It’s my birthday
tomorrow,” I answer. I pull on my jacket and set off down the road
at a stroll. “I didn’t realise what date it was.”

“I lost track too,” he
says. The ground is dusty underfoot, dirt mixed with small stones
on the tarmac. The sound of our shoes scuffing them is the only
sound for a peaceful minute but Siah must be thinking, his mind
ticking away, because he asks, “Do you want a present?”

“Where are you gonna
get it? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the town’s a wreck.”

“And yet you have some
shiny new trainers. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

I roll my eyes. “You
notice everything.”

Siah shrugs, his face
turned up to the sun and a curve on his lips. He’s unconsciously
happy, his smile as infectious as a Strain.

I scan the main road
we emerge onto. There are shops blatantly for clothes, some I can’t
determine, but most have been looted beyond repair. One says
‘photo’ on the sign and another boasts coffee. There’s nothing
remotely close to a present.

“Alright, Siah,” I
say, “get me something I can wear.” That seems the only option this
gutted town offers.

“I can do that.”

Tom and Livy come
screeching around a corner. My reply scatters at the sight of my
brother covered head to toe in mud, dripping on the pavement.
“How?”

He swaggers up to me
without a care and in that moment he’s more like me than Olive is.
But then she opens her mouth and says, “This ass fell in the river.
You deal with him now, Leah. I’m going back to bed.” She walks off
without another word.

“Can we go get dinner
now?” Thomas asks, laughing.

“Dinner?
” I cross my arms over my
chest. “You’ve got to be kidding me. The only place you’re going is
the washroom.”

“But—”

“No.
”

“Ugh!” With a groan he
turns in the direction of the complex that houses the washroom,
food halls, and the place I scrubbed my hands raw doing laundry. I
stalk after my brother, my best friend at my side.

“I haven’t forgotten,
by the way,” Yosiah says. “You asked about my sister.”

I meet his eyes. “I
did.”

“I hadn’t seen her in
years,” he says. “Long before I met you. We lost each other and …
something happened that made me think she was gone. Dead.” He
stuffs his hands into his pockets. “But she wasn’t.”

“That’s good,
right?”

“Yeah. But she’s different. I don’t know.” He looks over at
me. “I shouldn’t be surprised that she’s changed.
I’ve
changed. It’s
obvious she’d be different but—”

“You miss her.” I
supply the words when he loses them. “You miss the sister you
knew.”

“Yeah.”

I grasp for something
to lighten the mood. “At least she’s not going to dive into a river
and turn up dripping mud.”

“No.” He shakes his
head at the road, chuckling. “At least she’ll never do that.”

***

Yosiah

07:33. 27.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Northlands, Manchester.

I’ve been sitting up
in bed staring at the scrawl of metal in my palm for at least half
an hour. Miya is asleep beside me, sprawled across the mattress
with half her face buried in a grey pillow. Thomas and Olive are
asleep too, on the other side of the cramped room. Every so often
my eyes sweep the tent, taking stock, making sure nobody has snuck
in or out while I’ve been preoccupied.

The light that filters
through the thin material of the ceiling is hazy and weak, dyed a
pale purple by the colour of the fabric. Miya’s skin is tinged a
rosy grey. I keep catching myself watching her, and even though I
tear my eyes away, they always find their way back. It’s like the
earth turning around the sun—night can come and steal the light but
my eyes always find their way back to her glow.

I sigh, frustrated at
myself. If I carry on this way Miya will notice how much I love
her, and then everything will become awkward and our friendship
will suffer. I don’t want to lose her, not over something I can
easily pretend not to feel.

I curl my fingers
around the necklace, wondering why I took it from the shop. I don’t
even know if she’ll want it. I don’t remember Miya ever wearing
jewellery. What makes me think she’ll wear it now?

The necklace is gold,
a knot of twisted metal on a thin chain. Why did I think this would
be a good present? Why did I offer to get her something in the
first place? I’ve never been good at gifts. I was just wandering in
and out of gutted shops and happened to find an old jewellery store
where this one pendant caught my attention. I don’t even know what
it is, just a knot. Does it have some kind of meaning I don’t know?
Is it symbolic?

Why do I care?

I said I’d get Miya
something she could wear, and I did. I don’t know why I’m so wound
up over whether Miya will like it—but that’s a lie. I’m wound up
because it means something, the effort of going out and choosing
something specifically for her. It won’t mean anything to Miya but
it does to me, and that has my stomach in a knot to match the
necklace.

I take a slow, deep
breath, conscious of being quiet, and look at the gift again. With
a last huff of irritation, I put it in my pocket and swear not to
take it out again. If she likes it, great, if she hates it, I’m in
no worse a place than I was yesterday.

“You’re gonna burst a
vein.”

I start, turning
around like a spooked animal.

Miya is smirking, her
black hair sticking up on one side. “If you keep thinking that
hard, you’ll hurt yourself.”

“Shut up.” I shove her
shoulder, far from rough. Even if I wanted to hurt her—something I
could never imagine—there’s something far down in me, right at the
core of my soul, that would never allow me to cause her a single
moment’s pain. She’s barely jostled, her olive eyes still bleary.
The little breath of laughter that comes from her makes my heart
flip in my chest, and I decide right there and then that I’m
delirious. I must be coming down with a Strain. It’s the only
logical reason for the heat rushing through me.

Her fingers dance
through the air to tap my right cheek. “You’re blushing,” she
says.

I draw back, out of
her reach, ruffled. “I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.” She
props herself on her elbows, looks at me steadily now. I dig the
necklace from my pocket for something to distract her with. As I
suspected, her attention snags on the shiny pendant as I dangle it
in front of her face. She reaches for it, swift as any Official,
but I anticipated that. “You want me to fight you for it?” She
pulls herself up with all the languid poise of a cat.

The
way she’s stalking me, the dark, predatory look in her eye, the way
I can see her calculating how to take me down—it has an unwanted
effect on me, arousal pooling in my gut.
Not here
, I think
desperately,
not with her so
close
. If I’m not careful I won’t just
imagine my fantasies, I’ll act on them. I pull a breath through my
nose, hoping it’ll bring calm. It doesn’t.

I lose any hope of
finding control when I see that Miya’s noticed the effect she’s
having on me. It must be painfully clear because she pushes me onto
my back and crawls up my body, smirking again. Now there’s a very
physical ache in my body and something in the back of my mind is
saying “She knows what she’s doing to you, and she’s encouraging
it. She’s not shying away from the idea. She’s not repulsed.”

I swallow, breathing
harder. Miya hovers over me and easily plucks the chain from my
fingers, that tiny point of contact searing into my skin. I’m done
for.

“Thank you,” she says. She sits back to fasten the necklace
around her throat, her knees on either side of my waist. “I like
it. Don’t know what it
is
, but I like it.”

“I’m glad,” I manage
to say.

“You’re hard.”

“I know.”

She laughs, leaning
down to kiss my cheek. “Thank you for the present. I mean it—I like
it.” She strokes the pad of her thumb over my cheekbone and climbs
off me, slipping off the bed to pull jeans over the shorts she
sleeps in.

I feel like I just
went through every emotion known to man. I watch her yank a jacket
over a faded black T-shirt, confused. Does she know how I feel?
That I love her? Or does she think I’m just like every other guy,
turned on at a breath of air? I’ve never been like that, never been
able to find attraction in casual places. I’ve only ever wanted to
be sexual with Miya, and that’s because I have feelings for her. I
wish I could tell her that, that I don’t just want her because
she’s the only girl here but because she’s the only girl I love.
But that would mean admitting my feelings and every part of me
flinches away from that confession.

Miya looks over me,
pulling the pendant from under her shirt so it’s visible, and
smiles. It’s one of her rare warm ones, without amusement or malice
or derision. Just a simple, honest smile. There’s a wistful sigh
trapped somewhere inside me, just waiting to explode as soon as
she’s left the tent.

“I’m gonna get some
food,” she says. “I know they’ll try to stop me bringing it back
here but I’m invoking my birthday rights.”

“Birthday rights?”

“Yes, those
exist.”

“Right.
”

“They do!” she
insists. The deep V of her eyebrows startles a laugh out of me.
She’s so serious.

“I believe you,” I
say, rolling onto my back. “I’ll wait for you to come back,
then.”

“Like always.”

I look up to say
something, I don’t know what, but the tent doors are swaying and
there’s nothing but air where Miya stood. She’s right though. I’ll
always wait for her. Even if she’s the most frustrating woman in
all the Forgotten Lands.