Spark Rising (28 page)

Lena’s heart stuttered. Lucas and the Councilor had strapped her to the table. What was it Lucas had said? They wanted to know her limits?

They wanted to know if she was a match for Rose
.

The memories of that day in the room flooded back. Air on her naked skin. Pain and shame at her helplessness. The look on her mother’s face. The smell of the dust, thick in her nostrils.

They had been testing her, the same way they would have done if her parents hadn’t hidden her as a child. Lena’s stomach heaved, the spasms fighting against her tight throat. The same way they tested every high-powered girl Spark? The same way they’d tested all of these girls?

She gulped away the nausea. She looked at the girls, at Marin and Phoebe, holding hands without even seeming to be aware of the contact. The twins clutched at each other. She noticed Marissa, sitting alone, too. She shook her head to clear it of memories and fear.

“Look, Hania,” she told the thin girl before her, somehow even more desperate to make the girl let Lena help her, “Marissa doesn’t have a match, and she’s better now.”

Hania shook her head a third time. “She does. She got left behind.”

The bud of horror taking root inside of Lena bloomed, each petal unfolding, consuming the space in her chest her lungs needed to expand. She couldn’t catch her breath.

“What?”

“Jubilee got left behind.” Phoebe was too sadly matter-of-fact to be lying.

“What? No!” Lena shook her head at Marissa. “I counted. When you all came out, I counted!”

Marissa pulled her thumb out of her mouth. “She wasn’t with us. Her collar was breaking. They had to fix it.” The little girl’s eyes were too big, too wise in her toddler face. “She’s okay now. I can feel her still. She’s just sad to be alone on the boat.”

“Alex!” Lena whirled.

He had already lunged to his feet. His look of horror mirrored her own, but more than fury and desperation lurked behind his emotion. She could feel his regret.

“No, Alex!” She could hear her voice crack, but she didn’t care. “We have to go back. She’s a child!”

He held up his hands. “We can’t turn around. That’s not how the train works. But I can, and I will, send agents back to watch and wait as soon as we get back.”

“To watch and wait?” What was he saying? “For what? She’s a child. Being sent who knows where by monsters. If we don’t go back right now, she’ll be gone up that river, and we’ll never find her.”

Alex took a deep breath. He swept a glance over the girls. “If we go back to get her now, we’d have to take an army.”

“Then take a damn army.”

“We don’t have an army. Not yet. We’re moving forward using stealth, not force. We’re taking Zones from the top, not the bottom. And we’re spread out. We don’t have the men available at Fort Nevada. It looks like we do, I know. But we don’t.” He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “And they’ll be ready for a return force, anyway. We won’t accomplish anything. Until we have something, some way to fight that’s stronger than their bullets and numbers, we can’t.”

“We have me.”

“Until one sniper makes his mark. And then we don’t.” He nodded at the girls. “And neither do they.”

He was fighting dirty, and she could tell he knew it. They wanted her to train them all, and now they had her motivation.

“She’s a little girl. And she’s alone.” How could he not
see
?

“I know.” The thick emotion in his voice answered her own. He did see. The little boy who had refused to cry still lived behind Alex’s eyes. But the man he’d become could open up a compartment deep inside and put away the grief and rage and guilt. Once he closed the drawer, it was all gone. His face had simply emptied of it. In its place was Thomas’s perfect automaton agent, willing to do anything to further their cause.

When he spoke again, his voice reflected that brisk efficiency, and brooked no argument. “We cannot go back right now.”

All of the warmth Lena had felt moments before fled. It left behind a cold void in her chest.

Remember this, Lena. This is why you cannot develop feelings for him. He’s not capable of feeling them back. Remember this.

He waited for a moment, but she had nothing to say to him. It surprised her when he spoke again.

“We’ll watch.” He promised, his voice soothing but his single firm nod conveying the intensity behind the words. “As soon as an opportunity comes to follow those supply barges, we’ll track her. We will find her.”

Perhaps he wasn’t quite the automaton she’d thought? It would have to do. She didn’t have any choice.

It’s about time to start creating my own choices.

“We’re going to find Jubilee, Marissa,” Lena said.

The little girl nodded. Why shouldn’t she believe? They’d gotten her out, hadn’t they? Lena turned to Hania and laid a hand upon the girl’s heavy black waves of hair, snarled with neglect.

“I’m going to make you better now, Hania.” Her voice trembled, and she cleared her throat as she knelt before Hania. When she spoke again, she was stronger. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save her. I’m sorry. But Lydie would have wanted you to be better.”

Chapter 23

Lena prowled from room to room, checking on the girls, pacing the hall to keep them safe. She couldn’t sleep, so she patrolled.

They’d put Marissa and Hania together. She’d spent much of her time looking in on the two girls. Marissa had climbed into bed with the older girl and curled into Hania’s side. She slept.

Hania did not. Each time Lena cracked the door to look in, Hania’s wide eyes turned to her in silent regard. Lena didn’t say anything. Her own loss had taught her there wasn’t anything to make it better, especially words. The twins had told her that Hania and Lydie had been there together longer than any of the rest of them, including Marin and Phoebe, who had been shipped in separately from other places. It was no wonder Hania was shell-shocked.

Finally, shortly after her fifth restless patrol in the hours before dawn, Lena peeked in, and Hania had fallen asleep. Her thick lashes curled down over the dark hollows under her eyes, emphasizing her poor health. Lena had asked about their condition. It made no sense—if the Council had use for them, why the starvation and abuse? Rose had taken the blame for that. She’d refused to eat. The other girls, especially the older girls, had followed her lead. The guards had tried to force feed them. When that didn’t stop the small rebellion, they’d resorted to abuse.

Lena stood for a long time in the dark and the silence, watching the two girls sleep. She had lost so much. It had never occurred to her she should consider herself lucky.

The Councilors who were responsible would pay for it all. They’d caused too much pain. The only way she could see to purge it was with blood.

The blood rage kept her up. Every time she settled her head on her pillow, images flooded her mind: her mother, Lydie’s chestnut hair blowing softly across her still little girl face, and a child who searched for her, calling out and running toward her, but getting lost in a mist too thick to see through. When she did manage to push them all away, other unwelcome thoughts came boiling up.

Why had she brought the girls back here? Yes, they would be protected from the Council, but she wasn’t naïve enough to think Fort Nevada didn’t hold any dangers for them. They had tried to keep the arrival of the powered girls as quiet as possible, for the girls’ sakes. But Lena could feel the male energy she had learned to differentiate. It pulsed and curled expectantly, mimicking the excitement of the men and boys behind it as word of their arrival spread.

How could she keep them safe, even from the people who intended to provide the protection they all needed? How would she help them heal the wounds the Dust couldn’t knit back together?

She threw off the blankets and rose to dress, rubbing grit from burning eyes. Her mind refused to let go of the fears and images tumbling through it. She left her room thinking of the cafeteria and maple syrup.

“What do you think you’re doing?” The words were a low and menacing growl echoing down the hallway.

Lena jumped and spun.
Alex?
If it was, she’d never heard so much fury in his voice before. And that was saying something.

She strode down to the next intersection of corridors and looked both ways. Alex stood at the end of one hall. Between him and Lena in the junction, two teenaged boys were staring at him in frozen terror. From the guilt written plain on their faces, they were up to no good. Had they been sneaking toward the girls’ rooms? Lena’s vision flared red.

Enough.

Alex stalked toward the boys, chin down, eyes narrowed, and repeated his question, his normally husky voice grating and hard.

The boys exchanged a quick look. The shorter one told him, “We heard about girls, sir. Like us. We wanted to meet them….” He drifted off as Alex’s brows lowered further.

“Before dawn? Sneaking, like criminals? What, you were planning to break into their rooms?”

Another look passed between them. “It was a dare,” the taller one supplied.

“A dare? To harass little girls who were rescued from a prison where they were being tortured just yesterday?”

The boys exchanged another miserable look.

“Since you like choosing so much, I’ll give you a choice,” Alex continued. “You can come with me now, and we’ll go upstairs where
you
will wake the Councilor to tell him what you were doing and why. Or you can go with
her
right now and take whatever she chooses to dish out.” Alex pointed past them to Lena, standing silently in the hallway behind them, head lowered and lips compressed.

The boys turned and stared, wide-eyed. One of them swallowed. “Sir,” the shorter whispered hoarsely. “She’s—”

“Glowing.” Alex’s own attention was glued to her now, though he spoke to the boys. “Yes. She does that when she’s very, very angry. Right around the time the energy she can channel blows things into tiny pieces.”

Well, the truth was a little different. But it might happen this time.

“We’d like to talk to the Councilor, sir.”

Alex held out his arm for the boys to walk past him to the elevators. They scurried up the hall, heads down. He came forward another few steps to ask her in a low voice, “Are you okay?”

She stared into the backs of the fleeing young men. She liked angry Alex. She even liked intimidating Alex. She couldn’t deal with compassionate Alex right now. She shrugged.

“You haven’t slept,” he said. It wasn’t a question, and the words were laced with concern.

“No. I’ve been…patrolling.”

He cocked his head at her. “You should have known I’d have it covered. They’ve been through enough. They don’t need to be harassed, even if it is in curiosity and not—”

“It doesn’t matter why.” Her words were quick and cutting.

He nodded his agreement. Those dark eyes were still filled with concern. One hand lifted to touch her cheek, but she flinched away. She didn’t know what his game was, but Jackson’s rejection had hurt more than she’d let on. And she’d let on quite a bit. She didn’t need another tall, dark, handsome asshole, even if he did kiss like lightning. And even if he looked like Alex.

Remember. He won’t ever feel anything back. Not really.

But he wasn’t accepting her rejection. He waited, hand still lifted, until she turned her face back to him. And then he slowly and gently brought his hand to her cheek until his long fingers curved around it, feather light and comforting. She tried to fight the calm spreading through her, although she didn’t know why.

“Lena,” his voice became husky again, and not hard at all, “it will be okay. We’ll figure it all out.”

She stepped back, two quick steps, breaking the contact between his hand and her cheek. “Tell that to Jubilee,” she whispered, holding onto her anger and disappointment. “Tell that to Hania.”

He nodded to himself and stepped away to go. He’d probably report the glow to Thomas as soon as the boys had been dismissed. Maybe before.

All of her worries and nightmares coalesced. She had to do it now. “Alex.”

He turned back.

“Is there a space big enough for everyone to gather? Guardians and Wards?”

He nodded. “Yes, of course. The north gymnasium, where we have convocations.”

“Please tell the Councilor I’d like everyone gathered there this morning at eight. There are some things that need to be cleared up.”

His brows rose. “I—okay. If you want a general address, we should probably have a conversation about it first. Maybe later in the morn—”

“I’m not Jackson. I don’t clear everything I do with either of you.” She lifted her chin. “Eight will be fine. You can tell Thomas I said so when you report I’m glowing again.” She held his gaze for a moment longer, then turned on her heel and marched back down to her hallway. After a moment, she could hear the sound of his brisk footsteps moving away down the hall to the waiting boys.

She made it halfway up her own corridor before a door opened behind her. She looked over her shoulder, ready with a word of comfort, but it was Rose. She didn’t want comforting.

Rose joined her. Awake and alert, she inspected Lena minutely.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Lena asked her. She wasn’t going to bring up the glow herself. What would she say? She had no idea why or how it worked.

Rose shrugged. “We have long days back home. They start early.”

“The Kewa are the same.” Lena told her with a nod. “My days started earlier when I lived on my own outside the city, too.”

Rose’s brows rose. “You lived with Natives? And on your own?”

Amused and flattered by the newly appreciative light in Rose’s eyes, Lena lifted her chin with pride. “After I decided to leave Azcon, I found an old gas station on the edge of Kewa lands. I cleaned it up, converted it, and built a life for myself out there. Spent time with the Kewa.”

“By yourself?”

“Yes.” She laughed, but the sound she heard coming from her throat was more than a little sad. Why did it seem so long ago? “It was good.”

“You should come with me when I go,” Rose blurted. Her lips turned up. “You belong with us, not here. There’s nothing to challenge you or hold you here, not if you have it in you to carve your own place out there.”

“I would have believed that not so long ago.” She would have, before her mother, and Lydie, and a little girl named Jubilee, alone and haunting her dreams. Before the girls sleeping behind the doors of the hallway. “I don’t anymore.”

Rose made a small noise somewhere between frustration and understanding. “You’re going to teach them, too?” From the way Rose voiced the word ‘them,’ she referenced the men of Fort Nevada.

“Maybe.” Lena lowered her head, thinking of the meeting she’d called for a few hours from now. “Depends on how the, um, convocation I just demanded goes.”

“What are you going to say to them?”

Lena rubbed her hands together. She reached up and tucked her hair behind her ears. “I don’t know yet.”

“But it’s about us?”

“About all of us, yes. You, the girls, me. The rules have changed now. I won’t have them do to you all what they’ve done to me.”

Rose’s face went cold and her lips curled back.

“No, no. They haven’t abused me. It’s…an issue of access. No.” She shook her head. That wasn’t it, either. “An issue of expectations.”

“If they’ve treated you badly, then why stay? Why not come back with me?”

Lena took her time answering. “Because they’re right,” she finally said with a sigh. “They’re right. The Council has to pay. And this place is…they…
we
are the best bet.”

“Am I allowed to ask about that?” Apparently deciding to move on, she eyed the light Lena’s skin gave off.

Lena shrugged and huffed a laugh. “You can ask anything you like. In this case, I don’t happen to have an answer. Don’t know what it is. Don’t know why it happens.”

“Don’t know if it’ll happen to the rest of us?”

She shook her head. “Nope.”

“It seems like it’d be a distinct disadvantage outside, especially at night.” She stopped and turned in front of Lena. “But it is arresting. Beautiful. Terrifying.” She grinned. “How long does it last?”

“Little more than a couple of hours?” Lena wanted it to fade before she had to walk in front of the collected men of Fort Nevada.

“Hmmm. Should be long enough.” It seemed Rose had a different idea. “If I were you, I’d use it to my advantage. A big meeting requires a big impression. We, men and women both, have ceremonial gowns we wear to address our people. Do you have anything like that?”

She didn’t, and it took them some time to agree on what she should wear. Ultimately, Lena was out-voted. After the girls woke, they’d brought them back to her room. Eventually, all of them were gathered there.

She looked around at the girls in their borrowed clothes. Thomas had provided Ward uniforms for the girls after their baths the night before. They were all so thin that their bodies were swallowed up in folds of material. They’d belted and folded where they could. The girls would need clothes made to fit them, Lena told Thomas before he’d left for the night, and soon: just the first of her demands on behalf of the girls.

She hoped she wasn’t making a huge mistake. She stood before the girls, the glow emanating from her skin magnified by the buff-colored clothing she wore. Rose had wrapped her in a long length of natural linen and tied it around Lena’s hips. She’d then wound a long shawl of pale, raw wool around Lena, crisscrossing it behind her to knot at her waist.

The girls looked at her in awed silence, the light of her reflected in their wide eyes.

She felt ridiculous. She moved her shoulders restlessly.

“Stop fidgeting,” Rose told her. She made a final adjustment to the crisscrossing section over Lena’s breasts and stepped back. She wore a satisfied smirk. “Now, you
glow.
You’re a vision. Intimidating from the moment you walk in.”

Lena took a deep breath. “Thanks.” She hoped she could pull it off. She looked at the ring of expectant faces. She had to make it work. “Before we go, you have to prepare yourselves. There’s going to be…a lot of energy in there. And it will all be directed at us. It’s going to be—”