Torn Sky (Rebel Wing Trilogy, Book 3) (Rebel Wing Series) (14 page)

Aris heaved into wakefulness on a wave of adrenaline. Musty darkness enveloped her. She couldn’t remember where she was, only aware of the tight box that pinned her in on all sides. She struggled to escape before her brain caught up. When it did, she froze, but her frantic movements had set the metal clanging, sending out dangerous echoes.

The air vent. The Safaran guards.

She was flat on her stomach in the prison’s ductwork. She’d hidden here and waited for what felt like hours while the soldiers searched for her, terrified of making the smallest sound. Somehow, she must have fallen asleep.

Milek
.

Memories tried to surface. Milek being dragged away, a fellow prisoner’s ominous prediction. Milek was
not
dead. He was too valuable to Ward Balias as a negotiating chip. He had to be alive. She couldn’t let herself believe otherwise.

And she had to find him.

For a long time, she waited to see if her movements had given her away. Silence pressed in on her from all sides, coating the darkness with an extra layer of claustrophobia. Faintly, far in the distance, a hiss indicated air was flowing through the system. Not much of the cool draft made it this far down, and her crusted, blood-stained uniform was damp with sweat. Her stomach clawed at itself with hunger and fear.

But no one shouted or grabbed at her. For another minute, she laid as still as stone, trying to decide her next move. If she went back out of the vent, she’d be in a hallway with rows of locked doors, and there was no way to tell what would be behind them. Going forward through the ductwork was risky, too, but it was her only shot.

As quietly as she could, she dragged herself forward with her elbows.

Minutes passed. Her body slid and caught, slid and caught. She reached a place where the air felt cooler and moved more freely around her head. She reached one hand up into the darkness, and her fingers kept going. Another duct, leading straight up. Aris carefully gathered her legs under her and stood up.

There were no handholds. Just smooth metal encasing her. She braced her arms and back against the walls and slowly brought her feet up, beginning to climb.

The maze swallowed her. Minutes turned into hours as she methodically burrowed her way through the airways of the building. Heading upward when she could, resting often, slinking along on her stomach. She passed over other vents. Most led to rooms full of prisoners or, once, a mess hall teeming with guards, but there was never any sign of Milek or a clear escape route.

She was starting to wonder if it would be better to drop into a cell and try her passcard on the door, when suddenly, the metal beneath her tore open with an ear-splitting shriek. Aris grappled for something to hold on to, but the slick ductwork gave her up as easily as a secret. She spilled down from the ceiling in a cloud of dust and debris, landing hard on her side, hands up to protect her head.

The clatter continued for a few seconds. Aris kept her face covered, knees to her chest, and tried to breathe. Her pulse raced fast enough to make her dizzy. She expected someone to yell or drag her up by her hair at any moment. But no one came.

Eventually, she drew her hands from her face and opened her eyes.

Directly in front of her, an overturned chair partially blocked her view of a boxy chrome desk. Sheets of paper, thinner and less durable than the silco Atalanta used, had blown across the chipped tile floor. Aris scrambled to her feet.

Her bed of crumpled ductwork lay between her and another group of chairs. There was no one else in the room.

And it wasn’t a cell.

Aris pumped her fist in the air in silent triumph. That meant she still had a chance; her fall hadn’t sealed her fate. Still, it wouldn’t take long for someone to come investigate.

She ran to the door. First, she held her ear against it, listening for footsteps, but the steel was so thick she wasn’t sure she could trust the silence. So she bent down to peek out the tiny gap beneath the door, just as a shadow shifted beyond. She shrank back into the room, searching hurriedly for another escape route.

She was too late.

The door slid open to reveal three Safaran soldiers, glowering. The one in the center, clearly the leader, stepped over the threshold. His eyes, the muddy green of a polluted lake, burned with hatred.

“We’ve been looking for you,” he said.

Aris backed away, knocking into the desk, a desperate scream locked in her throat. The soldier grabbed her shoulder with one hand, and punched her in the stomach with the other. She doubled over, gasping. There was no air left with which to scream.

He bent close and hissed, “Come on, doll. You’ve got a date.”

***

They took her back down into the bowels of the building, to the same door from which she’d made her play for freedom. All of that work, those hours in darkness, had been for nothing. This time she had no weapon, no way to stop them from heaving her into the room. The new space yawned before her, more open yet much darker than the hallway. A few lights hung from the low ceiling, swinging gently in the breeze from the open door. The floor was gouged and stained. Aris swallowed hard and tried not to think too much about what the stains might be.

In the center of the room, under the lights, Milek was tied between two columns, his arms spread wide. His shirt had been removed, and his bare chest ran with blood. His head drooped forward. She couldn’t tell if he was still alive.

Aris lunged toward him, her throat spilling an inarticulate sound that was half scream, half moan. Somehow she managed to rip herself free from the soldiers and run the few steps to Milek’s side. Her bound hands reached for his face, smoothed across his swollen skin.

“Milek,” she whispered before the biggest of the soldiers yanked her away, wrenching her shoulder painfully.

But it was enough. With a groan, Milek shifted and slowly raised his head.

“Milek,” Aris said again, her voice thick.

His mouth moved, as if he were trying to reply, but no sound came out.

The soldiers restraining her forced her to her knees. She struggled, but they easily overpowered her. The leader removed a knife from a sheath at his waist. Fear washed over Aris in a dizzying wave. She’d been so worried about Milek, so afraid for
him
that she’d forgotten to fear for herself. But the narrow-nosed soldier brandished the weapon near her face and helped her remember.

She tried to keep her expression blank. But when Milek saw the knife, he threw himself against his bonds and screamed, “Don’t you bastards hurt her!” and his hoarse, hopeless voice broke her.

“Major Vadim has not answered our questions,” the soldier with the knife said. “When you escaped, we were especially persuasive, but it was still no use. So, now that you’ve come back to us, we’ll ask you.”

The two soldiers holding her in place tightened their grip on her shoulders. Aris bit back a whimper.

“We know you have invisible wingjets.”

Aris grimaced. Another secret Pallas had shared.

“How do they work? Tell me about the tech.” The man passed his knife from hand to hand. With a single question, Aris could tell he wasn’t nearly the interrogator Elom was. His face held a hint of revulsion, and his movements had the mechanical precision of someone doing his job. For Elom, torture had been a passion.

Instead of answering, Aris took a deep breath and braced herself for more pain. Her body was already so battered, what was one more wound?

The soldier whipped the knife through the air in a sudden, vicious arc, but he spun
away from her.
A thin line of blood erupted along Milek’s stomach.

Aris couldn’t hold back her sob. Milek hunched, grunting. Tied the way he was, his battered body had no defense.

“Answer my question,” the soldier said, glancing back at her.

“Don’t you dare touch him again,” she growled, wishing
she
was the one with the knife and he the one with the bonds.

The snake cut Milek again.

“Don’t say anything,” Milek told Aris, but even the words sagged, his breath coming in short gasps. Aris wanted to beg his forgiveness. She shouldn’t have tried to escape; she would have been here, with him, hours ago.

Tears streaming down her face, Aris whispered, “It’s some kind of tech the Ruslanans cooked up. That’s all I know, I swear. I don’t know how it works, or how to make it, or anything.”

The soldier brandished his knife. “How many invisible wingjets does Atalanta have?”

There’d be bruises on her shoulders where the others restrained her, but still she fought against their hold, forcing them to grip tighter. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know. Don’t hurt him, I’d tell you if I knew.”

The soldier cut Milek anyway, deep enough to make him scream.

Aris slammed her palms onto the hard floor, slick with Milek’s blood, and bowed her head. She sobbed. She begged. “If you’ve got to torture someone, torture me. Please.”

They were going to die. Long before a rescue mission, long before Alistar could find them, if he was even alive himself.

Every atom of Aris’s body wanted to reach for Milek, wanted to hold him in her arms, wanted to cry into his neck and feel his soft lips on her shoulder. All of her wanted to touch him, to be with him, for their end.

And her torturer knew it. He cut Milek again.

In Pyralis’s large luxury wingjet, the flight to Castalia only took five hours. Even so, for Galena, the time dragged. Before they’d left, Pyralis had updated her on the search for Milek and Aris—he believed their location had been pinpointed, and Alistar was en route—but her son remained, for now, in the hands of those who would do him harm.

He was still in danger.

Only Samira and Kori stayed awake. The five older children traveling with them had fallen asleep after availing themselves of the giant lemon and feta pastries Galena had offered. Samira’s daughter, Hazel, slept in her lap, while her son, Jaff, lay curled up in the cushioned chair beside her. He looked nothing like Milek had as a child, but still Galena watched his small, peaceful face with memories of long ago floating through her mind.

Kori stared out the window into the clouds. He didn’t ask her more about where they were going or what was expected of him. He seemed content in the knowledge that his story would be helpful. Somehow.

Galena hoped.

“What happened to your husband?” she asked Samira, her gaze drawn again to Jaff. Even as the words left her mouth, Galena could guess.

“He was killed in battle,” Samira said shortly, clearly unwilling to say more.

“I’m so sorry. I know it means little enough to you, but I truly am.” Galena sipped her mug of tea. “My husband was a victim of the war as well,” she added softly. “The world believes he had a heart attack, but he was murdered to further Ward Balias’s schemes.”

She carried a lot of guilt when it came to Josef. For how she’d resented him. For marrying him in the first place, when she knew she couldn’t give him her whole heart. But if she hadn’t, Milek wouldn’t be here. And that would have been a much greater tragedy.

Samira didn’t respond, but some of the tightness around her mouth eased.

The vast ocean gave way to the verdant green of Castalia long before their flyer eased them slowly out of the sky toward the capital city, Liliani. Galena straightened her pale yellow dress, smoothing out the wrinkles. Samira’s children woke as the wingjet bounced onto the landing pad.

Kori and the five other former child soldiers were the first to disembark. Galena studied them closely as a uniformed driver shuttled them into a large terran, watching for signs of anxiety or fear. All six boys kept their gazes pinned to the glass as they rode toward the capitol. Where Panthea climbed to the sky with tall skyscrapers in chrome and glass, Liliani sprawled, immense, in browns and reds, all sturdy wood and brick. There were few tall buildings; the dominion suffered from frequent earthquakes so the structures were built to cling to the ground, to withstand.

Galena had only been to Castalia once before, and she found herself peering out the window, as fascinated as her Safaran companions. Only Samira had no time for sightseeing. She was busy with Jaff and Hazel, who were weary of travel and inclined to fuss.

Liliani’s Capitol made up for its lack of height by taking up four city blocks, its creamy stone facade punctuated by wide, golden columns. The terran pulled smoothly to a stop in front of its tall iron gates, and the driver gave his credentials to the guard. After a quick search, they proceeded through the gate and up a curved drive.

Sera Rossum, the Ward of Castalia, waited for them at the far end of an ornate receiving hall. Galena kept her head high as she walked along the echoey marble floor, her footsteps creating a syncopated rhythm with those of Samira and the boys. The room was designed to impress, intimidate even, but she refused to be cowed. Kori led the way, everyone else walking slowly to accommodate his limp.

“Ward Vadim, you’ve come a long way,” Sera said when they reached her. She stood on a small dais, dressed in mint green, her thick gray hair strung through with ropes of gold. Fine wrinkles like spiderwebs fanned out from the corners of her eyes and around her pursed lips. She didn’t look particularly happy to see them.

Galena inclined her head. “I have, Ward Rossum, and for good cause.”

In the pause that followed, Hazel babbled and screeched. Samira hushed her, drawing her close to her shoulder and whispering in her ear.

Sera’s gaze lingered on the mother and her small child. Galena caught the tiny flash of tenderness before the woman looked away. Sera had older children of her own, but, like Galena, she would remember those days. The sweet pillowy cheeks and pudgy arms wrapped so tightly around her neck. The sweet innocence.

Galena was counting on it.

“My companions come to you as refugees from Safara,” she said, gesturing to Kori, who leaned heavily on this crutch, and Gideon, who was missing his left hand. The four others didn’t carry their war days so obviously, but the wariness in their eyes hinted at the horrors they’d endured. “These boys all share a similar story. They were stolen from their families, thrust into Safara’s Military, abused, and forced to fight. They’ve come all this way to tell you of their experiences, in the hope that you’ll help us put an end to this war.”

Sera cocked her head. She held onto her polite smile, but something shifted in her eyes as she observed the boys. Before she could respond, Kori stepped forward, away from the rest of the group.

“I haven’t seen my mother in eight months,” he said, his chin up. “But every night, in my dreams, I hear her screams when they beat her the night the soldiers dragged me away. I don’t know if she’s even alive.” He rubbed a hand along the scars that crisscrossed his arms. “I told them I wouldn’t fight, so they tortured me until I would. I’ll live with the things I’ve done forever.” He paused, his eyes never leaving Sera’s face. “Someday, your people are going to find out what Ward Balias did to us, and they’re going to wonder why you sat back and did nothing. Why
are
you doing nothing?”

Even though the words weren’t directed to her, Galena felt them like a punch to the gut. Sera took a tiny step backward.

Gideon went next. He held up his left arm. “I was a foot soldier. They gave me a gun but didn’t bother to teach me how to use it. I was just a body to fill the ranks. I am thirteen years old.”

One by one, the rest of the boys spoke.

“They beat my father because he refused to fight. He died, so they took me instead.”

“My village had no water, no food. Ward Balias’s soldiers came and promised grain and clean water if every boy and man from ten to sixty would join the military. So we all did. Even my little brother. He didn’t make it.”

Galena and Samira stood to the side as the boys pummeled Sera with their pain. Galena fought against the burn of tears. Samira stared straight ahead, face stony, watching Sera’s reaction. Even the soldiers against the wall started to shift and glance at each other from the corners of their eyes. What
would
the Castalian people do if they knew what was really going on in Safara? Would they still prefer to remain uninvolved?

When the boys finished their stories, Sera nodded gravely. “Thank you for sharing this information with me,” she said, with an almost imperceptible tremor in her voice. “I’m sure it was difficult to speak of such things, and it was a long journey besides. Please accept my offer of hospitality while I . . .
consider
. . . this new information.” She cut her eyes to Galena and said more sharply, “Ward Vadim, perhaps you and I could speak privately, while your companions eat?”

“Of course, Ward Rossum.” Sera’s face gave away nothing, but Galena couldn’t suppress a sudden, fierce flare of hope.