Sea of Stars (22 page)

Nerza’s blond bee’s nest that she calls hair bobbles as she asks, “Why is he obsessed with you? What have you done to him to make him this way?”

I slip on Charisma’s black jacket. “Who? Kyon?” I ask with a raise of my eyebrow. “Well, that’s simple, Nezra. I ran away from him and swore to him that I’d never do anything he says. You should try it sometime. It’s called ‘I hate you, leave me alone.’ It gets all the psychos foaming at the mouth for more. Add a little ‘I’ll never love you,’ and
bam
! Instant crazy.”

“You belong to him. He can do whatever he wants to you. You’ll find out.”

I point my finger at her. “That’s where you’re wrong. He can’t do whatever he wants to me, because I’m not going to let him.”

I go to the closet to get a messenger bag I’d seen there earlier. I stuff clothes into it as fast as I can. Back in the bedroom, I gather up the black box, sliding it into the bag. Slipping the bag over my shoulder, I look at Nezra standing by the chair.

“Why are you still here?” I ask. I’m halfway to the door.

“Falla wants me to ask you a question.”

I pause. “Who’s Falla?”

“She’s the priestess who likes you—although she cannot explain to me why she does with any clarity.” I wrinkle my brow at her in confusion, trying to remember which one was Falla—the Bird or the Flower? “The one who sensed your presence when we were tending to Kyon.”

The Bird
, I think, remembering her as being the one who helped Nezra force me out of their future. The Flower was the other one who healed Kyon with the freaky silver light.

“I’m not interested in answering her questions,” I reply, almost to the door.

“She just wants to know if you love the other one too.”

I stop where I am and look over my shoulder at her. “The other one? What other one?” I ask.

Her smile, I decide, is sinister as she says, “The one from Wurthem:
Vance Giffen.”

I flip her off as I leave the room.

C
HAPTER 12

K
EEP THEE TO ME

T
here’s a shickle load of them outside,” Wayra says to me, as I join him and Trey in the Great Room. Trey takes my hand, bringing me closer so that he can wrap his arm around my waist and pull me to his side.

“Everything’s ready,” Jax says as he joins us.

“Then it’s time to go,” Trey states. They all look at ease, like having the Alameeda outside is a normal, everyday thing.

“We’re going out there?” I ask, fear making my knees weak.

Trey whispers in my ear, “Did you lose the other priestess or is she still about?”

I search the interior of the room, but nothing out of the ordinary catches my eye. “I think she’s gone. I left her back in our room. She hasn’t followed me—I don’t know if she can.”

From somewhere outside, Kyon’s voice booms bullhorn-loud. “Kricket, do not make me come in to get you. I will kill everyone inside if you do.”

“Uhh,” I exhale, as if he hit me in the stomach. I cover my face with my hands, rubbing it involuntarily.
They’re gonna break down the doors.
“I have to go to him.”

Trey’s arm squeezes me tighter. “I don’t think so. You’re not going to him, Kricket. Today you’re a magician’s assistant and I’m going to make you disappear.”

I drop my hands from my face. “What do you mean?”

Trey leads me to the wall of falling water. He touches the jade and ivory tiles; it turns off the water and opens the descending steps. Handing me night-vision glasses, he says, “Now you see us.”

He leads me down the steps into a tunnel lined with a conduit of wires and pipes.

“Now you don’t,” I breathe.

“This is how we’ve been getting people out of the city. We’ve been patrolling the streets, saving the ones we can by funneling them through these passageways. I never filed any of the schematics for my tunnels to any of the Isle of Skye zoning authorities. They don’t exist in any databases. They’re sort of illegal.”

“Trey, you’re a doomsday planner.”

“Guilty,” Trey agrees. He leads us to his waiting hovercycle. “Unlace compartment,” he murmurs. The lid of the hovercycle opens for us. Trey mounts the seat, pulling me down behind him. He waits for me to wrap my arms around his waist. “Ready?” he asks as he starts the engine. I lean against him, my cheek resting upon his broad back. I nod so he can feel my answer. The compartment lid closes around us. The other Cavars are mounted on their hovercycles, moving ahead of us through the tunnel.

Our hoverbike rockets forward, away from Charisma’s sanctuary. I silently make a note to thank her for her generous hospitality, even though she had nothing to do with it. A few minutes later, the ground trembles as a
boom
shakes the walls around us. The tunnel behind us collapses, spewing out a volcano of rock dust. Wayra’s laughter comes through the hovercycle’s com-link; it sounds a little bit like a goat being strangled. When he catches his breath, he says, “What a bunch of knob knockers.”

“Do you think we got Kyon?” Jax asks from his hoverbike beside us.

“I wish I knew,” I murmur. My breath becomes an icy coil before my eyes. The world around me melts away.

Seabirds fly overhead; their cries are mocking laughter on the ocean breeze. Kyon’s eyes, the bluest of blue, stare down at me. He reaches for the nape of my neck, tying a red flower around my throat. It’s a black-ribboned choker adorned with the rarest bud. His elegant black dress uniform seems out of place in the fading light of the setting sun upon the water. With sand between my toes, I stare at the lapping waves on the beach. Gold and silver shine in the tide along the shoreline, a seaside with all the stars of the heavens captured within it. The thin veil covering my eyes parts, his eyes lean to me, bringing with them havoc within my bones. I stifle my instinct to recoil. “With this flower,” Kyon says, smiling down upon me, “I keep thee to me . . . always. Welcome home, Kricket.”

“Kricket . . . Kricket,” Trey rubs my arms that have gone slack around his waist. “Answer me. Are you okay?”

I lift my head from his back. We’re still moving stealthily through the underground tunnels on his hovercycle. I’m disoriented, but I manage to say, “I’m fine.” I hear the thickness in my own voice that makes my statement sound like a lie.

“Did you faint? Were you unconscious?” he asks, trying to discern the problem.

“No. I don’t think so. I wasn’t unconscious.”

“You had a vision, didn’t you?” Trey asks, continuing to rub life back into my dead hands.

“I don’t know.”

“You went limp against me—your skin is like ice—you were unresponsive.” He lists the facts.

I worry my bottom lip between my teeth. We’re both quiet for a second with only the sound of the hovercycle’s hum as we weave through the tunnels. “Something happened.”

“Did you see the future?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it was, it just turned on, playing like a scene from a movie with me starring in it.”

“Was it similar to what happened to you in my apartment before the Brigadets arrested us?”

“Yes,” I admit.

“What was it about, Kricket?”

“What I saw when we were in your apartment together hasn’t happened, so maybe this one won’t either.” I tell him quickly, attempting to minimize the impact of what I saw.

“Please explain what you mean by that.”

“I mean that I know who the man is from my first vision. It’s Giffen, but when I met him, the incident I saw didn’t resemble what actually happened. So maybe this one won’t either.”

“Okay. Back up. You think Giffen is the man who struck you in your vision?”

“I know he is,” I reply with certainty.

“But he didn’t hit you when you met?”

“Well, he hit me, but not with his hand. He hit me with a metal crate that he moved with his mind. Oh, and he twisted my arm when we were in the overup. And he pushed me out of a moving overup. And he hung me on the wall when I tried to get away from him, but he never hit me in the face.”

The muscles of Trey’s abdomen and back stiffen. After I tell him everything I know about Giffen, he says, “Tell me about the vision you just had.”

I feel myself growing pale as I stammer, “I think . . . I . . . I think Kyon and I—Kyon was in it.”

“Do you think he lived through the explosion back there?”

“I know he did.”

“How do you know?” Trey asks.

“I’d feel it if he died.”

“Why do you say that?” he asks.

“Because our lives are so tightly wound together that I’d know,” I reply, trying to explain the unexplainable.

Trey doesn’t argue with what I just said. He accepts it. “What was Kyon doing in your vision?” he asks.

“He . . . he tied a ribbon around my throat—it had an exotic-looking flower on it—I’d never seen a more beautiful bud—”

“It’s a copperclaw,” Trey says in a low tone. “The Brotherhood uses it in their ceremonies when a Brother commits to his priestess. It’s symbolic of the binding.”

I’m having trouble at the moment being inside my skin. I want to escape from it—let my skeleton spill out of me. I need to tell Trey everything. It feels like a confession when I whisper, “Then he said, ‘With this flower, I keep thee to me—
’
”

“
‘—always,
’
” Trey finishes for me. His tone is grim.

“Yeah,” I whisper. Neither one of us says anything. The silence makes me feel smaller and smaller. After a while, I straighten, finding my spine. “We don’t know if it’ll happen. Like I said, Giffen didn’t slap me when we met. He forced me to meet the future, but he never slapped me to get me to do it.” I sound desperate. When Trey still says nothing, I blurt out, “I’ll change it—I’ve done it before—I can do it again—I can change it.”

Trey lifts my hand to his lips, kissing the back of it tenderly. I feel it tremble against his mouth. “You’re not alone, Kricket. I’ll help you change it. We’ll do it together. Now, tell me everything that’s happened to you from the time that I was separated from you until this moment.”

When Trey’s tunnel ends, we move into the drainage line leading out of the city that they had shut down a couple of rotations ago. Not long after, Trey cuts the engine to the hovercycle and lifts the lid to the compartment when we arrive at the end of the pipe. There’s a service tunnel with connecting drains that leads outside. The sun is still up, streaming light into the grate that covers the hole to the outside world, the opening of which is hidden in a drainage ditch. Beyond it, a large pasture spreads out for as far as the eye can see.

All of the Cavars dismount from their hoverbikes, stretching their arms and legs after being slouched in the same position for so long. “We’re going to rest here until the sun goes down, Kricket,” Trey explains.

I scan the cement tunnel that leads to the drainage cover. It’s only wide enough to fit one of us at a time. The hovercycles won’t squeeze through it. Turning to Trey, I ask, “Are we leaving the hovercycles?”

Trey nods his head. “We can’t take them, Kricket. They have a heat signature that’s easily detected.”

“We’re mammals. We all have a heat signature,” I point out.

“What’s a man-imal?” Wayra asks, wrinkling his nose. “I’m no man-imal.”

Jax looks puzzled. “Sounds like she called us half man, half animal in her Earthling.”

“It’s English,” I say with a grin.

“That’s what I said,” Jax replies, deadpan. “Earthling.”

“Kricket.” Wayra insists upon my attention, like he’s trying to teach me something, “We’re not human or animal. Jax—” he points at him menacingly “—weren’t you supposed to teach her about anatomy? This is getting ridiculous.”

Trey ignores Wayra, saying, “We have something to combat their sensors, Kricket. You don’t have to worry.” He comes to me and leads me to a quiet place to rest while we wait until dark.

Nestling against Trey’s side, I fall into an exhausted sleep. I awake with my head resting on Trey’s thigh. He’s stroking my hair, watching the other Cavars move around the tunnel. As I sit up, I hear a soft nicker outside. Curious, I rise to my feet, walking stiffly over to the mouth of the smaller tunnel. I duck my head, crouching as I walk nearer to the grate covering the opening. Outside in the field, hundreds of spixes roam the meadow grazing on the lush, thick grass that is the type of green one sees in pictures of Ireland, but that don’t exist in Chicago.

“Have you named any of them yet?” Trey teases as he crouches down behind me.

“That one”—I point to a huge beast of a spix—“I’m calling Flea. And that one”—I point to the white spix with brown socks—“will henceforth be known as Compost. And that little one over there—”

“The plump one?” he asks.

“No, the really little one next to Scoundrel; the one with the short horns.”

“I see it—the docile one,” he whispers in my ear. His nearness is causing my insides to do backflips.

“That one is Raging Bull.”

Trey chuckles. “I love you.” He presses his lips to my cheek. “And to prove it . . .” He pulls out the gifts that I was given at our engagement announcement.

“You brought the venish!” I say with delight. We sit down opposite each other with our backs to the circular walls as Trey unwraps the meat pie and hands it to me. I take a bite, finding it delicious. Breaking off a piece, I hold it up to Trey’s lips for him to eat. He looks at me for a moment, surprised by the offering, but then he leans forward. Opening his mouth, he allows me to feed him.

“Yum. Venish,” I coo, chewing greedily. “Wayra’s the best when it comes to food.” I break off another piece, feeding it to Trey as he watches me hungrily.

The next time I feed him, my fingertip slips into his mouth along with the morsel. He sucks it softly. Immediately, my insides riot as my abdomen clenches tightly. I stop chewing and swallow. Setting aside the nearly empty tin, I lean forward; Trey meets me halfway. The next thing I know, I’m straddling his thighs with my arms wrapped around him. His hands are running over my back, while his tongue strokes and teases mine.

“Ahem.” A clearing of a throat at the other end of the narrow tunnel makes us break apart abruptly. Glancing in that direction, I see Drex and Hollis with their backs to us. Drex says over his shoulder, “We need to get in there and cut the grate off or we’ll fall behind schedule, Gennet.”

“Of course,” Trey says absently, while running a hand through his mussed-up hair to try to straighten it. “We’ll move.”

With as much dignity as we can muster, we put our little feast back in Trey’s pack and move out of the way of the soldiers. After they enter the smaller tunnel and begin cutting the iron tie bars away, Trey leans near my ear. “We might have a problem. I can’t seem to keep my hands off of you.”

“That’s a problem?” I ask, biting my lip and trying not to laugh.

“That question shouldn’t make me as happy as it does,” he replies.

“Shouldn’t it?” I tease him.

“Stop distracting me,” he admonishes with a sensual smile and a quick kiss. “I have to help unload the supplies from the hovercycles. Stay here and try not to get into any trouble.”

“Leave the venish.” I smile, bouncing a little bit as I suck in my bottom lip so that I won’t grin like a total fool. He hands me the small pack with yet another kiss. I watch him move away.