Sovereign Hope (24 page)

Agatha looked
so absurdly small next to Daniel with her long, chestnut hair
trailing down her back. Her body hadn’t lost its rigidity, but she
said, “Okay.”

My mom had
worn Daniel’s meaningful look before, when she wanted to talk to
her friends about something she thought I was too young to hear. It
was a look that spoke volumes clearly not meant for my ears. It was
infuriating.

“
Hey, guys. You can stop with the signaling. I’m going to see
Aldan. You two can have your secret little conversation in private,
okay?”

“
Farley, wait!” Agatha called, but I’d already made it to the
corridor. I was tired of being excluded from conversations that
impacted on my life as much as theirs. What gave them the right the
drag me out of my world and hold me hostage in an underground
bunker and then not share anything with me? What made it okay for
them to demand I put my whole life on hold, for them to tell me I
was special or cursed or doomed depending on which day of the week
it was, and then not respect me enough to think I could handle the
rest?

Whatever their
reasoning, it was wrong. Yet I knew, with a sinking certainty, as I
stomped towards Aldan’s room, that I could have handled the
situation better myself. After all, when you wanted to demonstrate
your adulthood, the last thing you did was storm off like a little
child.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Confessions

The computer
monitor let out a hiss of black smoke, stinking of acrid burning
plastic, before it teetered and toppled to the floor. The screen
had already smashed before it hit the ground, but the noise of
breaking glass still filled the hangar. Agatha flinched and turned
to give me a tired look. “You know, this is why I can’t get
insurance anymore.”

“
Sorry.” I didn’t really sound sorry, but then I didn’t really
care. I
wasn’t
sorry. It was better I smoked a computer than went out
looking for Kayden again. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

Agatha
laughed. “Don’t apologize to me. That one was yours.”

It had been,
too. “Whatever,” I told her. I still didn’t care. I’d probably used
it twice in the last six months.

“
So are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

I raked my
hand through my hair and then scrubbed at my face, trying to rub
away all the anxiety and stress that was probably going to end up
permanently carved there. “It’s the Quorum. They’re concerned about
Farley being here. They think she should be with them.”

Agatha’s deep
brown eyes widened. “Daniel! Wouldn’t that be a good thing? I mean,
if she was with them, they could train her. They could—”

“
NO!” My voice rang around the hollow of the room, sounding
angrier with each repetition. My insides knotted, making me sick to
my stomach. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “You don’t understand. They
want to keep Farley under lock and key. They consider her a tool, a
means to an end, not a human being. They think the same thing that
we do—utilizing Farley as part of the prophecy will kill her. But
the difference between us and them is that they’re okay with that
outcome.”

The color
drained from Agatha’s face. She pulled at a loose thread on the
pocket of her jeans. It eventually snapped under the tension of her
delicate fingers. It was a while before she said anything, and I
was beginning to wonder what she was thinking. Her youthful
features usually gave her a clear, open way about her, but right
now she looked decidedly closed. She couldn’t be thinking that they
were right, surely?

After a
drawn-out moment with my heart palpitating in my chest, Agatha
finally looked up. “Are you sure Kayden’s not just trying to upset
you? If they really felt like that, then why wouldn’t they have
just taken her by now?”

I shook my
head. “For once, this isn’t Kayden being a jerk. He was just
passing on the message.”

“
How can you be sure?”

“
Because I am. Just trust me, okay? They think killing Farley
to combine the energy of her soul with the talisman would be a
justifiable sacrifice. Emissary Nevoi called her collateral
damage.”

“
That’s ridiculous! There’s no way she would say that. There’s
got to be some mistake. We should take Farley to see them and talk
this through.”

A chord pulled tight inside me, making it hard to breathe. I
didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want to tell any of them
anything, but she wasn’t leaving me any other choice. There was no
way she would believe the Quorum would act so radically unless I
told her the truth. I took a deep breath, rubbing my knuckles into
my eyes. “It
is
true. I know it is because I made a deal with
them.”

“
A deal? What do you mean, a deal? The Quorum doesn’t bargain
with people.”

“
Well, they did with me. You have to see the flaw to the whole
prophecy, Agatha. You have to see the glaringly big hole in their
plan to destroy the Reavers?”

A blank look
formed on her face, and a little of the optimism she spoke with a
moment ago vanished. She didn’t speak.

“
Come on
, Agatha! The prophecy can
only work when the talisman and Farley’s soul are found in unity.
Aldan is the talisman, and he’s in a coma. Don’t you see the
problem that poses?”

Agatha’s lips
were deathly white. Her freckles looked like blood splatter across
her lovely, bleached face. “I thought… I just assumed that the
Quorum would grant him a recovery. They owe him…”

“
Now you’re dreaming! They don’t think they owe him anything.
You said the Quorum doesn’t bargain with people. Usually you’d be
right on that count, but in this case they’ve had to make an
exception. They
can’t
heal Aldan. There’s only one way to accomplish that. You know
what that is as well as I do.” I took another deep breath, but it
felt as though my lungs were riddled with holes and the air
wouldn’t fully inflate them. I sank down onto the sofa next to the
battered copy of Farley’s half-read, half-destroyed
book.

“
For the prophecy to be fulfilled, the talisman must be whole.
And right now Aldan only has half the talisman, because I…” I
couldn’t find the words to continue. I didn’t need to. Agatha said
them for me.

“
Because you have the other half.”

I stared down
at my hands. They were bridged together as though I were praying,
but I’d given up praying a long time ago. I couldn’t bear to look
at Agatha and see the terrible realization in her eyes. “Yes. I
have the other half. I made a bargain with them. They let Farley
stay here with us, and they promised they would research another
way around the prophecy. In return I had to swear I wouldn’t get
close to her. Kayden came last night to warn me that I was on the
brink of breaking that oath. They sent him to tell me to back off,
otherwise they would come and take her.”

“
That’s not all of it, though, is it?” she said. Her voice was
strained, with a tremulous waver to it. She was on the verge of
crying. She took my hands in her tiny ones and squeezed them
fiercely. I still couldn’t look at her. I shook my head. My hair
fell into my eyes, blocking out everything but her worn boots. It
was easier to just focus on her boots.

“
No. If they let her stay here, if they let her live, then I
swore I would let them have it. That I would persuade Aldan to take
it back. Make the talisman whole.”

Agatha choked
back a gasp. “I knew it! Ever since you got angry with me the night
Elliot went into Farley’s mind. You said I needn’t worry about you
acting recklessly because Aldan would be back up on his feet soon.
I knew what you were planning. I just didn’t know why.” She
crouched down in front of me, pushing my head up so she could look
me in the eye. “You’re not doing it. I won’t let you.”

I felt like a
monster saying it, after all the years she’d cared for me like a
mother, like my own blood, but I had to. “You will. You can’t stop
me.”

Agatha dropped
her hands from my face, shocked, but an instant later a look of
relief softened her pained expression. “That’s true,” she said, “I
can’t stop you. But you aren’t a Reaver, Daniel. You can’t just
give your life away. Aldan would have to take it, and I know that
old man. He would never do it. I’ll make him see how stupid all of
this is.”

I picked up
her hands again, trying to be steady. Trying to be strong. I gave
her a cracked, sorry smile. “It’s too late, Aggie,” I said. “He’s
already agreed.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Silly Romantic Notions

A week. A week was such an overreaction. Seven whole days had
passed by and both Agatha and Daniel had been cold towards me,
leaving me to trudge from room to room battling with the concept of
apologizing for being rude to them. I hadn’t been
this
rude, though. I was
lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to formulate the
perfect apology—one that wasn’t forgiving enough to let them think
they hadn’t been unfair, but sufficiently penitent—when Agatha
burst into my room. She had a plate of steaming blueberry bagels
and a mug of hot coffee with her, and she was smiling. Relief
swelled through me like a floodgate being opened. Living in a world
in which Agatha didn’t smile had felt alien and very, very
wrong.

“
Ugh. Bed-head is even worse than sofa-head,” she jibed,
poking at my limp body beneath my duvet. I groaned and threw a
pillow, missing Agatha entirely.

“
Are you getting up today? I have something I want to talk to
you about.”

I checked
Agatha’s face to see if her expression hid bad news; there was
nothing, only the smile. “I suppose so. Does this mean I’m
forgiven?”

A confused
look passed over Agatha’s face. “Forgiven? You’re a strange child.
Come on. I’ll be waiting for you.” She marched out of the room,
leaving me where I lay with the plate and mug balanced precariously
on my stomach.

Ten minutes
later I strode into the hangar with half a bagel clamped between my
teeth, struggling to thread my arm into the sleeve of my zip-up
hoodie. Agatha was nowhere to be seen, but unfortunately—or
thankfully, depending on how I looked at it—Daniel was. I cursed my
conflicting emotions under my breath, nearly losing the bagel.

“
What’s up with you?”

Looked like he
was acknowledging my presence today. He was bent over the
half-assembled engine that still cluttered the entranceway,
studying it intently.

“
Nothing. Agatha was supposed to be here is all.”

He looked up,
no more than a cursory glance, but the split second our eyes met
was enough to make the blood sing in my veins. It was like fire and
ice all at once. I was back in his arms. He was staring down at
me…

“
She had to go up to the car for something. She’ll be back in
a minute.”

I cleared my
throat, swallowing back the warm rush of memories that made my
heart beat faster. I took a seat on the swivel chair at one of the
desks and noticed there were flecks of glass like glittering
diamonds scattered across its surface. “Did something break?” I
swiped my hand along the desk only to suck in a sharp breath when a
shard bit into my skin. “Ouch!”

“
What’s wrong?” Daniel was already at my side. He grabbed hold
of my hand before I could hide it from him. A pearl of blood
blossomed from my palm, shining like a ruby teardrop under the
glare of the strip lights. Daniel lifted my hand up to his face,
poking at the cut with his index finger, while I sat still, too
surprised to move.

“
It’s pretty deep.” He pinched the skin and I gasped, pulling
my hand back.

“
I said
Ouch!
What the hell?”

“
There might have been glass in it. I was just checking. Looks
fine, though. You’ll need a Band-Aid.” He held his hand out. I
couldn’t refuse to pass it back with him looking at me like that:
serious, gentle, concerned.

He looked it over once more and then disappeared over to the
other side of the room, producing a first aid kit from a metal
cabinet by his workstation. It was a serious first aid kit filled
with small glass vials of various drugs, most of which were
morphine. Accompanying the drugs were dozens of syringes, scalpels,
and all kinds of scary-looking shiny steel devices. It took him
ages to find a simple Band-Aid in amongst all the
hardcore
surgical equipment. When he did, he placed it
over the cut, frowning with concentration. He stepped back with a
flourish, his task complete. The air rushed back into my lungs. I
hadn’t even realized I was holding my breath.

“
Thanks.”

“
No problem. It was my fault, really.” When he registered my
confused look, he waved over to the car engine. “You could help me
with something in return?”

“
Uh… I have zero car-related knowledge. I doubt I’d be much
help.” My mom had taken care of everything with the truck. The only
thing I knew how to do was check the oil, and I was pretty sure
that Daniel’s half-deconstructed engine didn’t have any oil left in
it. Most of it seemed to be all over the floor and his ruined
clothes.

He gave me a
curt smile. “You just need to pass me things. I’m sure even you can
handle that.”

Ignoring his
remark, I followed him over to his wrecking ground. I ended up
watching him for half an hour, during which time he didn’t look at
me once. Agatha was obviously caught up in something, and it was
kind of cool watching Daniel work. Impressive, like watching
someone complete a Rubik’s Cube in under two minutes. All the while
I fought to keep the images of him out of my mind—his tattoo; his
smooth, bare skin bathed in pale blue light; the fierce expression
he’d worn the first time I saw him in his frock coat and top hat.
It was impossible not to feel that pull, too, the desire to feel
him close to me again. It was the way he moved, powerful and
strong. He was nothing like the guys at St. Jude’s. They were all
boys, and Daniel gave the distinct impression at times that he was
something more.