The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (2 page)

“Yosiah?” I edge
closer to the figure and it takes the definite shape of my
friend.

“Honour,” he says
without turning. His voice sounds how I feel.

I fold myself onto the
grassy floor, running my fingers through the sharp, slick blades,
and wait for Yosiah to join me. As Yosiah obliterates the grass
beneath his feet with agitated fingers, I look across the water to
the dark edge of the United Kingdom.

“Do you think we’re
safe here?” I ask.

“No.” I think that’s
all he’s going to reply, but then: “But we’re alive, and that’s a
lot to ask for right now.”

I rest my arms on my
knees and my head on my arms. “How’s Miya?”

It takes a few seconds
for him to answer. “Bad.”

“Sorry.”

He stops ripping up
grass abruptly. “I don’t know what to do.”

I don’t know what to
do either. I’ve nothing to suggest, to help, so I stay silent. He
clears his throat and drags a slow hand through his knotted
hair.

“Has Horatia spoken
yet?”

“No.” My voice is
stuck somewhere below my tonsils. “Not yet.”

“She needs time.”

My sigh is visible as
a cloud of fog cut through with moonlight. “So everyone keeps
saying.”

“Loss can destroy
anyone.” He glances at me. “How are you coping?”

I wish I knew. “I
can’t understand anything in my head.”

“It gets better with
time.” He heaves a deep breath, and then a gasp. “Look over there,
across the sea.”

There’s nothing but
the blackness of the land. “I can’t see anything.”

“Not the ground.” He
points, and I squint in the dark to follow his attention to the
sky.

“Stars?” I ask.

“Not stars. Do you see
where the lights shine brighter? Where they look slightly
blue?”

I do. There’s a patch
of sky where the spots of light are bigger and pale blue if I focus
on them. “Is it normally like that?”

“No. It’s an
aircraft—a plane. The lights you’re seeing are windows.”

I jerk to my feet, my
heart lurching with my body. “Can they see us?” I’m ready to grab
my sister and run. I don’t think I can outrun a plane but I can
try.

“No. The range of
their sight is limited. I’m pretty sure they don’t have night
vision.”

I
gawp at him as he struggles to his feet, unsteady on his right leg.
“
Pretty sure
?”

“Honour, calm down.
It’s leaving.” His jaw is set, his chin sharp in the severe light
of the moon.

I give him a weak
smile. “I’ll calm down when you do.”

“They’ll be doing
routine scans of the whole island for us. We’re okay here. They
won’t search these small islands.”

“What about the safe zones?” I search frantically for the
spot of brighter lights. It’s smaller than it was before. It
is
going away.
“Officials will find them.”

“The safe zones have
been set up for years. They know how to stay undetected.”

“But they’re all kids!
What if they—”

“Honour.” He lays his
hand on my shoulder. “They’ll be fine. Don’t you have enough to
worry about, anyway, without another hundred children?”

He’s right, I do. I
need to find a safe place for Tia where she can grieve, get better,
and live a happy life. I need to find a way to do what The Unnamed
asked me to—to unite The Forgotten Lands. I need to find John and
demand answers. I need to look after my friends. And I need, most
of all, to make sure this never happens again. To stop States from
killing more people.

All of those things
are impossible right now.

“How do you survive,
Honour? You worry so much I wonder why it hasn’t torn you
apart.”

“Are you sure it
hasn’t?”

“Yes.” His words are
so strong that I look up. “You’re still living, still fighting.” He
shakes his head. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Thanks. I think?” He
doesn’t reply, so I fix my tired eyes on the sky again. “Are you
sure it’s leaving?”

“I’m sure.”

I wait for my
breathing to stop sprinting and then say, “They wouldn’t be able to
land here anyway, would they? This island’s too small.”

He gives me a long
look. Then he says, “No. They wouldn’t be able to land.”

I
hear what he doesn’t say—
they wouldn’t
have to land to kill us
.

“I can’t see it
anymore.” I try to watch every inch of the sky but it’s impossible.
I don’t stop scanning the darkness, though. Every star is a plane.
Every plane is a hundred Officials coming to kill us.

“Yeah,” Yosiah says.
“It’s gone.”

For a long while we
don’t speak. We just stare at the marsh and the land in the
distance, the water around the island brushing against our boots.
My nostrils fill with the tang of the sea. Standing up for so long,
just staring in silence, I find a way to be tired again. I think
maybe I could sleep now.

“Yosiah!
”

I jump out of my skin,
turning my head at the same time Yosiah stumbles forward a step. My
body coils against the threat, my hand itching for a weapon. I sigh
in exasperation. This paranoia is getting out of hand. It’s only
Miya, her hands in fists and her eyes blazing. Yosiah gives me an
apologetic glance and then he’s walking away with Miya cutting a
tense shadow beside him.

I settle down in the
damp grass and watch the sky for aircrafts until I finally reunite
with sleep.

***

Miya

00:13. 10.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Southlands, Northey Island.

When I was first on my
own after my mum kicked me out, I had nightmares every night. They
were always about losing Tom and Livy, and usually a shadowy figure
snatched them away from me. I know that must have been a
subconscious image of my mum, and that losing my brother and sister
was less about them being taken from me than me being taken from
them, but at the time I couldn’t make any sense of them. The
loneliness and the cold and the hunger of being homeless messed
with my head. All I knew was that something evil had taken my
siblings and I had to get them back no matter what it cost me. I
tried so hard in those dreams to get to them but no matter what I
did, they’d pass right through my fingers. Every night I woke up
shivering, sweating, and crying on whatever floor I’d slept on that
night. Gripped by a terror that bit deeper than any other fear.

This nightmare was
nothing like the old ones.

This nightmare was
worse. Now I have more to lose.

After my heart has
given up hammering at my ribs, I sit up and take stock of the
people around me. Olive sleeps on her side, one of her hands curled
into a fist under her chin and her eyebrows lowered into a scowl. I
don’t know what creature is haunting her dreams but she looks ready
to kill it. I pull my jacket closer around my sister’s shoulders to
keep out the cold and glance at Tom. He’s flat on his back, his
limbs thrown so far out that he takes up three times as much room
as Livy. The jacket that’s meant to be covering him is rumpled
beneath him and the thought of Siah wearing a very creased jacket
tomorrow makes me smile.

And that’s when I
realise he’s gone. Yosiah.

He should be beside
me, laid on his side with his long legs sprawled over the grass,
but he’s nowhere near. The long grass is flattened and rumpled so
he must have lain here at some point, but not anymore. My gut
squirms, something like acid clogging the back of my throat. Has he
run away again?

I shove up from the
floor on clenched fists, my joints creaking from all the walking of
the past few days. With a glance to confirm that Livy and Tom are
still sleeping, I set off walking in a random direction. The circle
of land is small enough that I have to run into Siah at some point.
I think about swinging my fist into his face. It makes me feel
better at first, but as I trample the wild grasses, my thoughts
seep in their poison.

What if he’s gone for
good this time?

What if he’s found a
better offer?

I
stomp faster and faster, gritting my teeth as I follow the edge of
the water. Eventually, I spot two dark shapes on the ground. One of
them must be Siah, out for a nice walk and a chat with whoever the
hell that is. Nails bite into my palms as I clench my hands
tighter. I thought I’d lost him when Forgotten London was
destroyed. I thought he had
died
. He must know what this
disappearing act would do to me, what it would make me
think.

I snarl his name, not
bothering to hide how pissed I am. Siah leans heavily on his right
leg, clearly unsteady, which lessens the heat of my glare a little.
With the sharp tip of my fury gone, I’m floored by relief that he’s
still here. Alive.

“Have a nice stroll?”
I snap. It’s as calm as I’m going to get.

Yosiah sighs under his
breath but the empty silence of the island gives nothing to cover
it up. I aim a sharp look at him as he changes our direction,
leading us back to the camp site.

“It’s too exposed
here,” he mumbles. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Missing the
Guardians’ base?”

He shoves his hands in
his jean pockets. “Missing our shed.”

That draws wistfulness
from me. It might have had more leaks than I have fingers and been
falling apart but the shed that we lived in for more than four
months will always be home. It’s the only shelter we’ve had for
longer than a few days. “It was a great shed,” I say, softening. My
forgiveness is plain in my voice.

He’s silent for the
rest of the walk but I think I see a smile playing about his mouth
in the hazy light.

I weave around the
sleeping bodies of Guardians, scanning them until I find my brother
and sister. I lie quietly beside Livy as Siah half-falls to the
ground. I’m not gonna point it out to him, but his limp has gotten
worse since he jumped off that train back in F.L. The urge to touch
Yosiah slams into me, my stomach flopping. I press my palms
together to keep them from reaching out. I might desperately need
to know he’s still here but I haven’t stopped fuming at him for
walking off without telling me.

Honour wandered off
earlier tonight as well but I heard him tell his sister he was
leaving, even though she’d never speak back. Siah should have done
that too, told me. I need to know exactly where he is. I need to
know he’s not running off on some suicidal mission. I need—

I need him to get
better. I need his leg to heal. I need him to stay alive, here,
with me.

“I thought—” I can’t
get the rest of that sentence out. It feels like a giant lump of
emotion is stuck beneath my voice box.

I take a slow breath
and shut my eyes. If I can’t see Siah’s face I won’t know when the
guilt crosses it. I don’t want to say this, to make him feel worse
about everything, but he has to know. He can’t keep walking away
without telling me. And I can’t keep having a heart attack every
time he’s more than a metre away. “You left—and you didn’t say
anything. And I thought—”

Heat pushes into my
skin from where his hand has sought my wrist but I roll out of his
reach. I can’t let him touch me. I won’t be able to hold the tears
back if he does.

“I’m sorry.” His
whisper barely disguises the way his voice cracks.

“You left me on that
train and I can’t … I can’t forget that.”

He repeats his apology
and he sounds so wrecked that I open my eyes to look at him. I
needn’t have been so worried about seeing his guilt; I can’t see
his face at all in this darkness. I can only place where he’s laid
because he obliterates a cluster of stars. But the clouds must
shift because moonlight falls through the night, quick and without
warning. It highlights the intense expression that’s taken up
residence on Yosiah’s face.

For a second I mistake
it for anger, but I know what anger looks like on Yosiah. His jaw
clenches, his eyebrows cut deep black lines of disapproval, and his
eyes—his eyes burn hotter than a solar flare. But now? None of
those signs. Just this steady, fixed stare that has my heart
jumping. I frown at him for what must be half a minute, and then I
realise I’ve seen him look this way before.

I skitter away from
him, pulling my knees to my chest as a barrier.

Yosiah chews his lip,
then says, “I’m not leaving you. Ever. Just so you know.”

I bite down on my
tongue because the words that want to pass my lips are something
neither of us wants to hear.

“Shut up,” I say
instead. Siah’s exhale sounds like relief. I chance a look at him
and find the intense look gone. My body deflates. My ribs give a
half-hearted ache as I sink back into the grass, facing away from
Siah just in case he gets that look again. He doesn’t touch me or
move any closer but I know he wants to. I see his heated expression
behind my eyelids and have to make an effort to keep my breathing
regular.

Siah asks, “Are you
still angry?”

“Very.”

“Still scared?”

My face automatically
shifts into a glare even though he can’t see me. He’s overstepped
and he knows it. I am, though—still scared that I’ll lose him.
“Yes,” I surrender.

“Can I hug you?”

I snort. “If you want
to lose your arms.”

He mutters a harmless
curse. The grass whispers as he shuffles closer. My body relaxes,
Siah’s proximity a comfort blanket, even as my mind flares with
alertness. If he puts his arms around me I might give him a black
eye.

“Do you think the
Officials are looking for us?” I ask to distract him.

“Yes.”

“Do you think they’ll
find us?”

“Yes.”

My inhale is sharp.
“And then what?”