Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four (5 page)

“They’ll get one,” I said tightly, “after I find Ada.”

“Carl tells me he found no trace of Ada in the Passages, nor of any doorway you claim to have found.”

“They must have closed it, then.” Dammit. “The council have made statements on less evidence. Ada’s in danger, and so are the rest of us if we don’t stop them.”

“The most we can do is send out search patrols and put the word out within the Alliance.” Ms Weston went dangerously still. “I’m sure you can guess why we can’t allow word to spread about Ada beyond the Allied worlds.”

Ice slid down my spine. “Enzar.” Few people outside the Alliance knew who Ada was and where she’d really come from, but one of the first things her guardian had demanded when their shelter had been discovered was confirmation that nobody outside the Alliance would ever know about Ada, her magic, or her history. Even people close to her had taken advantage and almost got her killed. There were worlds outside the Alliance which would no doubt do anything to get their hands on a magic source.

“Enzar,” Ms Weston repeated. “I promised her guardian I would allow no harm to come to her under my watch.”

“Let me go after her. She’s alive,” I said, more to myself than anything. “They needed her for something. They didn’t hurt her.” Not that I’d seen, anyway—they’d dragged her after them while their brothers kicked me to death.
She’ll think I’m dead.

“And you saw fit to take her with you to the lower levels of the Passages without informing senior Alliance members first, knowing about the disturbance to the Balance after the stunt you pulled on Vey-Xanetha?”

My insides twisted. “You think I knew
that
would happen?”

“I think your reckless disregard for your own safety was bound to result in something like this. I warned Ada. I told her to stop you from going too far.” Her voice shook with fury.

I didn’t give a shit. “There’ll be time to apportion blame later, once she’s away from those bastards.”

“And what is your plan, pray tell?”

“I need a world-key. I have a tracker, I can pick up her trail. And she took her communicator. Maybe she’s out of range, but I have to do
something.
I can…” I fought the hopelessness with every word. Giving up now was out of the question. It might be my fault, but if I turned my back now, I’d be condemning her. The magic that had got us into this mess in the first place
must
have a solution.

“You’re not in a fit state to be trusted with a world-key,” said Ms Weston. “Going into that hidden Passage alone was enough of a transgression to get you on probation—bearing in mind your actions on Vey-Xanetha
and
a certain incident with a griffin, your profile moves closer to ‘unhinged’ by the second.”

Either she cared more about Ada than I’d thought, or I’d finally disobeyed the rules enough times to push her over the edge. Breathing heavily, ignoring the stabbing pain with every breath, I faced her. “I’m not unhinged,” I said. “I’m pissed off. You knew that Passage shouldn’t be there. Why not close it?”

“I will
not
be spoken to like that. The Passage is out of my department, and I assumed you’d have the sense to avoid it until we came to an agreement with the people who once used the escape tunnels.” Her eyes flashed. “I will take charge of this myself, and you’ll stay here until I can judge whether you’re capable of speaking sense to the council.”

“Seriously?”

“I have given you
more
than enough chances, Kay Walker,” said Ms Weston. “Saki?”

The nurse had moved without me realising, picking up a syringe. Warily, she approached me.

“Don’t you dare sedate me,” I snarled. “The more time we waste, the further they get from here. I need a communicator.”

“Ada’s is offline,” said Ms Weston.

“Damn.” I lapsed into every curse I could think of, in every language I knew. As my fist struck the wall, hands grabbed my arms.

“Calm down, Kay.”

“The
hell
I will—”

A sharp stab as a needle pierced my arm. “No,” I gasped, tugging at it with my other hand, my knees already buckling. “I have to find her—please—”

But fog rose in my head, and pulled me under.

CHAPTER THREE

ADA

I stared at Aric, unable to believe my eyes. What in the Multiverse was he doing out here? I’d thought he was dead, or on another universe. His family had betrayed the Alliance and tried to steal and use a magic source on Aglaia. The centaurs had killed all of them except Aric, who’d disappeared. None of us had known whether he’d got himself stranded in centaur territory or escaped through the Passages, nor did we particularly care. Kay, least of all.

The foul-mouthed idiot former Alliance guard still wore the uniform, though the faux-leather was more grey than black, his jacket was shredded, and the metal bar he’d put through his ear had been torn out, leaving a gaping hole in his ear lobe. Our eyes met, and there was no mistaking it: somehow, Aric freaking Conner was out here in the middle of nowhere. He pushed off the rock, walking towards me.
Oh crap.
Considering I’d kicked him in the crotch last time I’d seen him, I guessed he wasn’t coming over for a friendly chat.

I backed away from the others, closer to the rocks marking the division between us humans and the Stoneskin camp. He paused, a few feet away, staring at me like I was a ghost.

“You’re
here?” he said. “They got hold of
you?”

I readied myself to attack if necessary. Aric practically wore a sign that said ‘please punch me in the face’. Of course, it went alongside the one that read, ‘touch me and I’ll smash you to pieces’, but I wasn’t particularly fussed right now, seeing as he was one of the few creatures here who
couldn’t
literally take me to pieces. Besides, if I was supposedly important to the Stoneskins, surely someone would intervene if I was in trouble. Not that I wanted to depend on them to get me out of here.

“So this is where you’ve been hanging out,” I said.

Aric’s eyes narrowed. He looked tired, but otherwise not particularly diminished for having spent the past God-knew-how-long as a prisoner. It had only been a few weeks since Aglaia. The whole Multiverse had flipped upside-down since then.

“What were you doing?” asked Aric. “Escaping? You and your family finally attacked the Alliance?”

I squinted at him. “You what?”

“Wasn’t that why you joined?”

I shook my head, totally perplexed. “You’ve got the wrong idea. By a mile. I joined to help my homeworld. Like I was doing before. I never planned to attack the Alliance. These asshats took me from the Passages.”

“Huh,” he said. “I thought you and Walker were planning to…”

“Did someone hit you on the head?” I said, ignoring the painful hand that clenched around my heart at the sound of Kay’s surname. “I’ve never plotted against the Alliance.”

“Oh.”

Despite everything, wild laughter bubbled in my throat. I pressed a hand to my mouth to stifle the unexpected fit of giggles. It was too much—far too many emotions crashing over me at once and the single stupid “oh” from Aric was enough to push me over the edge. Tears pricked my eyes, and I swallowed a couple of times.

“Don’t you laugh at me,” he snapped. “You and Walker both acted suspicious.”

“Who turned out to be the traitor?” I asked. “Who sneaked off to Aglaia? Whose family almost destroyed the Multiverse?”

Aric’s brows pulled inwards. “You stopped them.”

“No thanks to you.” I let my hand fall to my side, no longer feeling like laughing. “You’re a magic-wielder, an enhanced one. You weren’t born one, were you?”

A pause. “Yeah, all right,” he muttered. “So I volunteered. Walker got a promotion out of being a magic-wielder and my sister had the magic implant without any bad effects, so I figured it couldn’t hurt. They call it an upgrade on Klathica. It’s wicked.”

“Yeah, must be, now you’re a prisoner,” I shot at him. Childish, but I had to take it out on someone. And he was asking for it. He’d actually volunteered to be
upgraded
, enhanced, whatever they called it
.
I didn’t know a whole lot about Klathica, only that it was one of the founding Alliance worlds and had a thing for idiotic human enhancements.

“Shut it,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Wynn said—”

“Your sister,” I said. “Suppose you know what happened to her? And your family?”

Aric shook his head, jaw set. “I guessed. You Alliance bastards killed them.” His fists clenched so hard they shook, and I took a step back. A small part of me wanted to feel sorry for him. Evil or not, he’d lost his whole family, who, judging by the way he’d acted at Central, had probably been his only friends, too. Not that he’d done anything to deserve admiration. For all his posturing, he was a follower. He probably didn’t mind being a prisoner. We stood apart from the others, but I sensed them watching us curiously.

“The centaurs killed them,” I countered, omitting to mention how Kay had, in fact, killed Aric’s sister, and had nearly died in the process. “Because your family tried to blow up all of Aglaia.”

“Huh.” Aric glared. “So you say.”

“Just because they didn’t tell you anything—”

He lunged for my throat, and I moved swiftly. He caught himself in time to stop from face-planting, feet apart, fists curled.

“We’ve played this game before, Aric,” I said, circling him. Unlike the Stoneskins, he wasn’t invincible, and God knew I had a whole lot of pent-up anger to take out on a walking target. He was asking for it.

“Your people killed my whole family,” he said, through clenched teeth. “The Alliance are fucking hypocrites. Did they offer my dad a fair trial? No, they had him killed. Justice, my ass.”

“The centaurs were the ones who killed them,” I said. “Because they were violating laws on Aglaia. You know those laws. Well, you should, but you’re not very bright, are you, Aric?”

“Shut the hell up, you offworlder scum.”

That did it. I launched into a flying kick and caught him in the face, sending him flat on his back. Aric rolled over, but I landed on top of him, using his surprise to pin down his arms with mine. Magic rose to the surface at long last. Aric yelped as I sent the second level charge into his body, and shook all over, limbs jerking. Swearing, he clenched his hands and magic sparked from his knuckles, red and purple, but I grabbed his hands, absorbing the magic before he fired it at me. His eyes bulged as he watched his own magic join mine.
Didn’t know I could do that, did you?

“It’s not the Stoneskins you should be afraid of, Aric,” I said. “You should be scared of
me.”

“You fucking freak show,” spat Aric, and I zapped him again until his head fell back on the ground.

“That’s not very smart of you, seeing as I have the upper hand,” I said, unable to resist goading him. I hated feeling powerless, and the Stoneskins had leached away any freedom I’d had.

Except… this world was low-magic. No, I wasn’t pulling it from the atmosphere. I did have magic living inside me. And I’d pulled it from him, too. That might come in handy.

Aric’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Get off me,” he snarled. “I’m not having those Stoneskin bastards think I’m their next target.”

“I’m not moving until you promise not to attack me,” I said testily. “I don’t trust you.”

“Huh. Fine. I won’t attack you. You think I want to die out here?”

“Sensible thinking,” I said, but I did shift off him, letting him sit up. “So. What kind of magic implant did you get, anyway?”

The two I knew of were lustre, which Kay had been injected with in the Alliance’s experiments run by his own father—and adamantine. It wouldn’t have been antimagic, though, because Kay had taken him down easily enough on Aglaia.

“I don’t know, do I? It’s just a boost. Obsidiate.”

I relaxed slightly. Obsidiate was flashy but hardly the most dangerous, though it gave Alliance stunners a hell of a kick.

“Any other… talents?” I asked. It was a long shot, but despite the urgency of the situation, I couldn’t help the tiniest stirring of curiosity. What other magic-based substances could be injected into human beings? If it was normal on Klathica, they’d presumably pronounced it safe for public use. I vaguely remembered Kay saying some people illegally used magic as a boost—to fly, or punch through walls.

Wait. Punch through walls? It suggested super-strength… if Kay had actually said that. I was already forgetting the details.

My throat closed, and my hands trembled.
Not now,
I told myself.

“Talents? I can sense the magic level. But when those bastards grabbed me, it stopped. I couldn’t sense anything. I reckon they’re blocking it.”

“You can’t use it here? Not even this boost of yours?”