Beyond the Red (26 page)

My gaze flashes to Iro and finds a patch of matted, bloody fur on his side. I drop beside him and my stomach twists and sinks. The wound is deep and has penetrated his rib cage—maybe even his lung—and a swath of fur as long as my arm is drenched in blood. This isn’t the burn wound of a phaser; Iro was stabbed, probably as we were trying to escape from my room. And I ran him for half the night and much of the morning as he lost blood and exacerbated the wound. Now, alone in the middle of the desert, there’s nothing I can do to help him. I can’t even ease his pain.

The sobs come suddenly as I cling to his neck and weep into his fur. He looks up and licks my cheek a couple times before resting his head in the sand.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper into his neck. “I love you, my friend. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for everything.”

I run my fingers through his fur, scratch behind his ears, and pet under his chin as his eyes droop closed. I listen to his slowing heart and run my fingers through his fur, matting his coat with my tears. And I hold him, whispering the gentlest lies and singing to him softly until his breaths come slowly, then not at all.

I stay like that with Iro long after his spirit has faded and crossed the veil, until I manage to push onto my shaking legs and rub the tears from my eyes. If I’m going to survive, I have to orient myself, then keep moving. Alone. As much as I want to stay with my only remaining friend, lying here with Iro will make me prey for vicious scavengers.

I spin in a slow circle, and something hot gnaws at the back of my throat. I am surrounded on all sides by waves of beautiful red sand. By a cloudless violet sky, and blazing orange and red suns, four ghostly moons, and not a single differentiating marker in any direction—not even a patch of rocks or a group of plants. I have no idea where I am, or how far I rode, or where the nearest city is. How far from Vejla did we travel? In which direction was I even riding?

I panicked and rode without thinking and now I’m lost.

Kala
help me, I don’t have anything on hand. With the surge of adrenaline gone, the emptiness in my stomach and dryness of my tongue has never been more apparent. The average Sepharon can last nearly a term and a half without food—or about eighty sunsets—but we won’t live to see eight sunrises without water.

I don’t have water. I don’t have anything but my ripped dress and the pins barely holding up my hair.

I close my eyes. I need to clear my head and think. I can’t panic; I can’t make careless decisions, not when any decision could be my last. Not when I’m alone, with only the company of my twin shadows, in a desert I don’t know. But something Eros said before I ran echoes in my mind:
Run
toward the setting suns. They’ll find you.

The suns set in the west. We rode for half the set at maximum speed, so we must have covered well over a thousand leagues. The suns are directly above my head, but they were rising behind me, so I suppose all this time I’ve been running where he told me to. But there’s nothing here, not even the smallest of settlements, and certainly no one ready to find me. Where am I supposed to be running to?

I’m going to die. And I don’t even have a knife to ease my passage.

So I do the only thing I can—I walk true west. I take step after step, and my toes sink into the sand, and I try not to think about my chances of survival. I try not to think about Eros, or Serek, or Iro, or about the untamed
kazim
and poisonous creatures that wander these lands, or how I’ll likely be dead in eight sunsets.

I walk through the scarlet sands with my head held high and my eyes facing west.

Ice-cold water.

My body starts and I jerk against the restraints that bind me to the cold metal wall in this blinding white bare bones room. My eyelids flutter open, then close. I just need some rest. I just need to close my eyes and—

The wall is burning. My eyes wrench open and I arch off the searing metal, but my wrists, my ankles—something is burning and it’s my skin and I’m gasping for air—

Cold water drips off my eyelashes. Down my cheeks. Frozen air blasts over me and my teeth chatter and my whole body shudders uncontrollably. I’m staring into horrible white lights. Not a sound interrupts the silence—I cough just to break the quiet. Stare into the lights. As long as I keep my eyes open, as long as I don’t sleep, I am safe.

I don’t know how long I’ve been down here. No one has visited me since they stripped off my clothes, bound me to this wall, and slammed the door shut.

At first I thought myself lucky. I’d expected some kinduv torture, questions, demands. I’d expected knives and blood and something horrific, something out of the stories we heard as kids about the bloodthirsty Sepharon. I was ready for that. I was ready to sew my mouth shut and take whatever they put me through.

But nothing happened. I stood naked against this metal wall with my arms outstretched and stared into the cold white lights and waited. Sure, I was freezing, but I could manage that. I could withstand cold air. I counted the seconds, the strips of light on the ceiling. I counted the polished stone tiles of the floor—sixteen long by fourteen across. I searched for cracks in the walls and floor, and I tapped my fingers against the wall, and I thought if they intended to kill me with boredom, they may very well succeed. Then my eyes drifted closed and pain shot through my wrists and ankles so quickly, for a split second I thought they were broken. Burning energy raced through my arms, slamming into my chest and jolting my entire body. My eyes raced open—it stopped.

The second time I closed my eyes, a scream shattered my eardrums and slammed my heart against my ribcage.

Their intent is clear: I can’t sleep. I’m not sure what the end purpose is, to break me I guess, and I wish I could say it’s not working. My legs ache with a dull fire, my shoulders and wrists burn, and a persistent throb has spread behind my eyes, wrapping around my skull with vice-like fingers. Every second that passes feels like ages. I keep my eyes moving and try to keep my mind alert—try to distract myself with meaningless trivia, with stupid stories I remember from childhood about disobedient children and bloodthirsty
kazim
, with facts about bikes and how much pressure it takes to crack Sepharon bone—something I can do that no one else at camp ever could. Half-blood.

I don’t allow myself to think about Kora. I won’t fill my mind with statistics about how long you can survive in the desert without food or water, or think about the poisonous animals that can kill you with a single bite, or the scavengers that travel in packs to rip you apart, and criminals that search the sands for lost travelers to take advantage of. Not her, not her, I won’t think of her.

I shift my weight from left to right and push onto my toes to try to take the pressure off my shoulders. I whisper songs and hum tunes I don’t even like and bounce on my toes when I can manage it.

Anything to keep my eyes open. Anything to stay awake.

The scream sounds like my mother:
Open your eyes
. I don’t remember closing them, but my ears are ringing and the following vacuum of silence weighs on my shoulders like a blanket:
Keep your eyes open
. Small commands are easy to follow. Stare at the floor. Count your toes. Wiggle your fingers until you can feel them again. Stare at the ceiling, into the lights until tears blur your vision. My stomach aches, my mouth is sand.

Keep your eyes open.

How long have I stood here?

I can’t feel my legs anymore. I can’t feel my arms either, or my fingers or my toes. I can’t feel anything, which is good, probably. Feeling hurts. Feeling rages through my body and makes me want to sleep. Feeling rips me in two when Kora and Serek kiss and Day and Nol and Esta die, over and over, and Day’s eyes are leaking blood and Aren asks me where his father is.

Numb. Numb is good. Empty is good.

Darkness is good—ice water jerks me to white and I lick my lips. Try to lick the water off my shoulder, but I can’t reach. Next will be the heat. The burning skin. Then the screaming, then the pain. Or maybe the pain, then the screaming? I don’t remember. I don’t remember.

Where am I? Why am I here? Why am I fucken naked and why is it so blazing cold? My eyes start drifting closed, but I force them open. Not sure why. What’s so wrong with sleep? Stars, sleep sounds wonderful. I’m so heavy. My brain is a boulder and my neck is too tired to support it. Just a quick nap. Just a second, less than a second, just a mo to close my eyes—

The door slams open. I jerk up and blink and blink. Two guys are stepping toward me. One of them I know. Maybe. They’re very tall, very muscular, very dressed in white and red and they don’t seem happy to see me. I’m not sure if I’m happy to see them, either. But I haven’t seen anyone in a very long time, I think, so maybe this is good.

Or maybe this is very bad.

A third guy enters the room and I should recognize him. It’s his eyes, maybe, that part of me remembers—the endlessly dark centers and piercing cold edges. I know him. I know him.

I don’t know how I know him.

“I’m going to make this very easy, half-blood,” the guy with the strange eyes says. He calls me half-blood, but I don’t think that’s my name. Eros. Eros is my name. I have more than half of my blood, but people call me half-blood, I remember that. I remember people.