Green Jack (33 page)

“You laughed at
them,” he corrected her.

“I guess.” She
was thrilled to see Killian again, but now that the glow was
fading, she felt discombobulated. Her skin prickled.

“Come on,”
Killian said. “We’re having a feast.”

“A feast?” she
echoed, following him to the end of the main platform. There were
platters of roasted squirrel meat, star anise tea, a salad of
herbs, protein paste cupcakes, and, incredibly, a bowl of tiny
strawberries drizzled with real cream. It was an unimaginable
luxury. Titus grinned at her over the table. “It’s tradition to
feast before you go into battle.”

“So you can at
least die with a full stomach?”

“It’s
something,” he shrugged.

The rebels were
welcoming after the first bottle of wine and downright cuddly after
the second. They kept trying to entice Anya to join them on the
saggy couches but she only snarled. She ate the strawberries
though, and the currant jam. Nobody drank the water. Livia had a
surprisingly sweet singing voice, even if her songs were filthy.
Nico tried to flirt with Shanti until she poked him in the ass with
her spear.

Saffron felt
better, full and sleepy and sparkly with wine. She wound her arm
through Killian’s. “I kind of love you, you know.”

His smile was
crooked. “Have another strawberry to soak up all that wine.”

Roarke watched
them over the rim of his glass. Someone offered a toast. Caradoc
and Titus were deep in conversation. Anya looked bored and sleepy.
More food was brought out, more wine, more strawberries.

Saffron decided
to go for a walk to clear her head. The lights were too bright and
there were too many voices. Someone grabbed her suddenly, dragging
her into a small alcove. It was the kind of dark niche that would
have been painted with gold dust and filled with oak leaves and
candles to honour the Green Jacks up on the streets. She pressed
her dagger to his throat, but Roarke only smiled down at her. He
looked as wild-eyed and wine-fuelled as she felt.

“Killian’s
going to win, isn’t he? You’re going to choose him.”

“I’m not a
prize,” she scoffed. “And neither are you.”

He kissed her
or she kissed him; mostly they collided like stars somewhere in the
middle. She thought of meteors and comets burning in the sky. Oona
had told her once that everyone was made up of star dust, but
Saffron only believed it when Roarke was touching her. The thought
alone would have embarrassed her, if she’d been capable of thought.
But maybe she didn’t want to be star dust after all, maybe she
wanted to be earth and roots and moss. Something she could feel in
her hands, not write poems about.

Roarke propped
his back against the wall and pulled her between his legs, his
hands stroking her spine. She arched into the touch, nipping at his
bottom lip. Finally, finally, they were using their mouths for
something other than talking around a point of strategy.

A while later,
they stumbled back to the platform, giggling. Saffron had never
felt quite to light, even after drinking greensap whiskey in the
Rings. Her head spun. Roarke steadied her, grinning foolishly.
“You’re drunk.”

“So are you.”
She pointed to the others, passed out in various awkward positions.
“So are they.”

Nico was
sliding off the couch. Saffron didn’t see Killian but Caradoc had
his head thrown back, mouth open. “I’ve never seen your uncle
actually---.”

Too late
Saffron remembered Jane’s cryptic warning.

She tasted the
strawberries on her tongue. The bowl was empty, except for a bit of
wine, dyed with crushed berries, like pink champagne.

“Shit, you said
they were all here,” someone said.

Roarke’s hand
tightened in hers, but when he turned towards her he was moving too
slowly, too strangely. She wanted to tell him to run but her brain
didn’t seem to be talking to the rest of her body. Her lips were
numb. The leaf mask tucked inside her jacket pressed burrs into her
skin, drawing blood. It wasn’t enough. And there was nothing down
in the concrete and tile tunnels to respond to her. She couldn’t
grow them a bridge to lead them out.

“Never mind,
they all ate the strawberries. Look, there she goes.”

Chapter
56

Jane

Jane woke up in
a house that was vaguely familiar. It itched at her memory while
she tried to sit up, her head spinning. The truth serum was
followed by a sedative and she couldn’t recall what she’d told
Cartimandua. The more she tried to remember, the more her head
hurt.

“Get up.” Asher
looked the same, snarling and growling and swaggering. But she
could tell he was afraid. She could practically smell it on him.
Strangely calm, she rose slowly. Waves of nausea roiled through
her. She was wearing a ritual blue chiton and gold leaves in her
hair. “We’re in the amphitheatre.”

“Congratulations, genius. Where else would we be?”

She ignored
him, moving gingerly to look out of the window. The sun was too
bright, too sharp. It gilded the sand on the ground, the glint of
soldier’s weapons, the rows and rows of Elysians crowded together.
The house trembled faintly with the force of the spectators
cheering and stomping their feet. The other houses stood on
identical platforms, decorated with green and gold, fluttering
fabrics and leaves made out of wire and tiny solar lights. The
Green Jack statues were draped with wreaths and garlands. Horses
galloped passed, manes braided with green ribbons. “It’s already
started,” she murmured, mostly to herself.

She realized
then that Asher was wearing a ceremonial tunic in cream-coloured
linen painstakingly embroidered with hundreds of oak leaves. They
matched the gold leaves wound around her head like a crown. They
dug into her scalp.

The solar lamps
flashed red. Asher clenched his jaw. “We have to go downstairs.
Now,” he insisted when the bulbs went red again. He was sweating.
“We have to go out the front door and wave and smile and act like
we’re in love.” Jane snorted. Asher snorted back. “Not my idea,
Highgate. We were matched, despite Kiri’s trick with the hydrangea
petals. She shouldn’t have messed with me. I was sick for days and
yet here you are again, the date that wouldn’t die. I don’t know
where you were,” he added, disgusted. “But you should have stayed
lost.”

“I had no
choice,” she said.

“You got
caught,” he corrected, shoving her down the first few steps.
“Figures. Can’t even run away properly.”

She stopped on
the landing, turning to stare at him. Something in the way he’d
said Kiri’s name sent a warning tingle across the back of her
neck.

“You gave Kiri
up to Cartimandua,” Jane realized. She’d never felt this kind of
rage before, so cold her insides might shatter. For a moment she
felt nothing, not the nausea or the pressure in her head or the
chafing of her numen against electricity.

“I had to,”
Asher replied. He didn’t sound sorry, but his hand clenched, and
unclenched. There were fresh scars on his arms, pink and puckered
with scabs. “I have friends to protect too.”

“I doubt
that.”

She didn’t have
time for his pain. And she’d lived with the Greencoats, her body
remembered her training, however brief it had been.

She turned
sideways at the last moment and his fist cracked into the wall
instead of her face. Power surged flashing faintly blue. She
smelled smoke and ozone and burning hair. Asher staggered
backwards, the shock enough to stop him, if not knock him out
completely. Jane hooked her foot around his ankle. His forehead
cracked against the wall. She stepped over him dispassionately.

“Come on,
Asher,” she said, descending into the glaringly bright foyer of the
ground floor. Glass glittered all around them, clear as a vid
screen. “Time to be famous, just like you’ve always wanted.”

Chapter
57

Saffron

Saffron wasn’t
entirely sure how she’d gone from the Core to the Spirit Forest to
the tunnels, only to end up in a room made of stone. The
amphitheatre curved around them, sunlight falling in blocks through
narrow barred windows. Saffron was in a cell with Roarke, Livia and
Nico. Caradoc was across the hall next to Anya and Shanti. She
couldn’t see the other Ferals. She couldn’t see Killian. Something
hot and raw tangled inside her.

She pressed
against the bars, trying to see into the other cells. She saw
Argent chained to a wall, inspecting his sword. Now she knew why
the soldiers had carted him off. She didn’t see anyone else though,
no one that mattered. “He’s not here,” Roarke said flatly, knowing
exactly who it was she was searching for.

“He has to be.”
Her eyes were so wide they hurt. “They wouldn’t have killed him.”
Couldn’t have killed him.

“I don’t think
they did.”

“Then he has to
be here. There has to be an explanation.”

“There is,” he
agreed. “Your friend is one of them.”

Saffron punched
him in the face before she even registered her own reaction. He
didn’t say anything, didn’t make a move to retaliate which
infuriated Saffron further. She wanted blood on her knuckles; she
wanted to make the world bleed until it made sense.

She hadn’t
trusted the rebels, but she didn’t trust anyone. She blamed the
leaf mask for her uncharacteristic faith in Jane and the
Greencoats. It didn’t make things any easier, only sharpened the
weapon growing in her gut.

“I knew you
couldn’t resist, little brother.” Cartimandua strode down the
walkway, trailing soldiers.

Caradoc stepped
forward, cursing under his breath. “Cartimandua.”

Saffron had
never seen her this close before, only propaganda posters and the
statue in the Rings. She had the same presence as that statue:
cold, beautiful, and unmovable. “It’s been too long,” she said
pleasantly.

“The rebels are
yours,” Caradoc stated.

“Of course they
are. Everyone is mine.”

“All this
time?”

“Mostly. Titus
has been very useful. We need someone to fight and the people need
a thread of hope. And to be shown how impossible it is for anyone
else to do what we do.”

Saffron felt
both hot and cold all at once. Killian would never have given
himself to Cartimandua, not for anything. The only other option was
that he was gone. Hurt. Dea---. No. No.

“It doesn’t
have to be this way.” Caradoc’s hands curled around the bars.

“I agree. So
isn’t it time you gave up your annoying quest to coddle the Jacks
and come home?”

“You know I
can’t do that. Someone has to protect them.”

“Then, I can’t
imagine why you’d think I could give up Elysium either. I owe this
City better than that.”

“As if you care
about the City,” Roarke spat. Saffron, who knew the catharsis of
mouthing off to the people who tried to hold you down too well,
didn’t know how to get him to stop talking. But she was suddenly
very certain that no one was allowed to punch him but her.

Cartimandua’s
smile widened, as she turned around. She motioned a soldier back,
when he aimed his taser at Roarke. “No need. He’s family.”

“You’re not my
family,” Roarke said. “You killed my mother.”

Her eyebrows
rose. “More lies, Caradoc?” she asked her brother. “Really, I
thought you were the people’s hero and above all of that.”

“It’s not a lie
though, is it?” Caradoc said. “You forced our sister to wear the
leaf mask.”

“Only because
you refused.”

Caradoc
flinched. It was the first time Saffron had seen him betray a
moment of pain. Even when the land mine tossed him into the trees,
he’d been less affected. “I didn’t know you’d turn on her. We were
so young. You were supposed to look out for her. She was only
sixteen!”

“I suppose it
doesn’t matter anymore,” she said.

“It matters,”
Roarke ground out.

She shook her
head. “Nothing matters, you stupid boy. The Green Jacks are dying,
quicker and quicker.”

“Listen to me.
We know the Jacks better than you do. They don’t get used up in the
forest, not the way they do here.”

Cartimandua
narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not. How
do you think we manage to send so much food out of the forest?
You’ll never keep them alive in labs and chains.”

“Then join me.
Because the satellites are falling. And after that, the power will
go. We’ve always known it was coming, and now we’re out of time.
The grid is teetering. Without the Jacks, there’s not enough food.
People are already hungry.” She turned slightly, meeting Caradoc’s
eyes. “And I don’t need to tell you how desperate hungry people
get.”

“Oh, so you
turned megalomaniac because you needed a snack?” Saffron asked
loudly. She'd been hungry, hungrier than Cartimandua ever would be.
But mostly she said it because Roarke had opened his mouth to say
much worse. She shoved his swollen face into the bars and the pain
momentarily stole his voice. Behind her Nico sighed, “Shit,
Saffron.”

Cartimandua
raised a dismissive eyebrow. “Core rat,” she said. “I’d know one
anywhere. One of yours?” she asked Caradoc.