What just happened
Gasping, I realize not everyone in the crowd is running away. Not all of them are afraid, or even confused by the outburst of violence. They move differently, with purpose, motive, a mission. Black pistols gleam, flashing as they dig into a guard’s back or stomach. Knives glint in the growing dark. The screams of fear become screams of pain. Bodies fall, slumping against the tile of the square.
I remember the riots in Summerton. Reds hunted down and tortured. A mob turning on the weakest among them. It was disorganized, chaotic, without any order. This is the opposite. What looks like wild panic is the careful work of a few dozen assassins in a crowd of hundreds. With a grin, I realize they all have something in common. As the hysteria grows, each one dons a red scarf.
The Scarlet Guard is here.
Cal, Kilorn, Farley, Cameron, Bree, Tramy, the Colonel.
They’re here.
With everything I have, I butt my head back and crack my skull against Clover’s nose. She howls, and silver blood spurts down her face. In an instant her grip on me breaks, leaving only Kitten. I drive an elbow into her gut, hoping to throw her off. She lets go of my shoulder, only to wrap her arm around my neck and squeeze.
I twist, trying to get enough room to bend my neck and bite. No chance. She increases the pressure, threatening to crush my windpipe. My vision spots, and I feel myself being pulled backward. Away from the Treasury, Maven, his Sentinels. Through the lethal crowd. I trip backward as we reach the steps. I kick weakly, trying to catch on to anything. The Security officers dodge my poor efforts. Some drop to their knees, guns raised, covering the retreat. Clover looms over me, the bottom half of her face painted with mirrored blood.
“Double back through Whitefire. We have to keep
Let's go Free them
She’s holding the pistol wrong. Even I know that. It’s too big for her, made of shimmering black metal, with a barrel nearly a foot long. Better suited to a trained soldier rather than a shivering, slight teenage girl. A soldier, I realize with cold clarity. A Silver. It’s the same kind of gun a Sentinel shot me with, so long ago in the cells deep beneath the Hall of the Sun. The bullet felt like a blow from a hammer and went straight through my spine. I would’ve died if not for Julian and a blood healer under his control. In spite of my ability, I raise my hands, palms open in surrender. I’m the lightning girl, but I’m not bulletproof. But she takes this as a threat instead of submission, and tenses, her finger itching too close to the trigger.
“Don’t move,” she hisses, daring to take another step toward me. Her skin, the dark, rich color of blackwood bark, offers her perfect camouflage in the forest. And yet, I see the red bloom beneath, and the tiny scarlet veins webbing the whites of each eye. I gasp to myself. She’s Red. “Don’t bleeding think about it.”
“I won’t,” I tell her, tipping my head. “But I can’t speak for him.”
Her brows furrow in confusion. She doesn’t have time to be afraid. Shade appears behind her, solidifying out of thin air, and wraps her up in an expert military hold. The gun falls from her grasp, and I snatch it before it can hit the rocky ground. She fights, snarling, but with Shade’s arms firmly locked behind her head, she can’t do much more than sink to her knees. He follows, keeping her firmly in hand, his mouth set in a grim line. A scrawny girl is no match for him.
The gun feels foreign in my hand. It’s not my chosen form of weapon—I’ve never even shot one before. I almost laugh at that. To come so far without even firing a gun.
“Get
Sayfa 291
Reklam
He can't let her go
The world has gone gray.
I have gone numb.
And Auren has gone still.
My hands stroke her face, though she no longer feels my touch. My
lips press against her eyes, though she no longer cries. My arms cradle her
body against mine, though she no longer trembles with cold.
I bury my face against her neck, my tears soaking against her pulse
that no longer thrums. Inhaling her scent that’s now tinged with the sharp
pull of blood. Wrap my fingers around her ribbons that no longer twist.
But I hold her.
Gently. Desperately. Wretchedly.
I thought I knew what it meant to be torn apart when my two sides
separated. But no.
No.
This is what it feels like.
To have your soul ripped in half.
My päyur bond has been cut. Like scissors to thread, both pieces left
to float in a colorless sea. Drifting further and further away from one
another, every wave and gentle lap separating us even more.
I don’t know how long I kneel upon the ground with her. I hear
nothing but the silence of her body, see nothing but her motionless form.
My mother speaks no more, but I didn’t expect her to. That one word
seems to be the only thing she’s ever able to tell me. The first time, it was
my divined promise.
This time, it’s my fatal devastation.
She’s clutching the wound at her stomach, but then her hand moves
to my back. My mother’s touch is the only thing that makes me aware of
anything else other than Auren. Her tense fingers alert me a second before
Wick and a group of Vulmin appear in the courtyard.
“Auren?” Wick calls out. The heavy silence that follows turns his
She is stronger than the dark
“Yes,” she repeats. “Never fear. I am very good at what I do. I will
get you there.”
She scoots her stool even closer and lifts her hands. I tense. “No,
please—”
Ignoring me, her palms clasp over my ears, making me shudder,
while something inside of me shudders too. My back stiffens, muscles
locked up. Nearly paralyzed.
“Repeat after me.”
My eyes get caught in the net of her gazing stripes.
“I was a traitor.”
My lips follow hers.
The digging goes deeper, and in those holes, I see myself. See
myself falling at the king’s feet, begging for mercy, telling him I was wrong
as lightning streaked across the lavender sky.
No…not lightning. It was a crack. In a ceiling. In a wall. A house
breaking…
There was thunder, but it ripped out like a scream.
I close my eyes, feeling something squirming within the dark,
emptied depths of my mind, trying to shove up through the hollows.
“Focus,” Una snaps.
Her voice pulls me in, while something else oozes out.
“Repeat after me,” she commands again, her voice droning.
My mind flashes, the squirming stops, and I see myself bowing for
the king. The memory shoves in, presses down, trying to fit into the gaps.
“I was a traitor.”
My voice melts with hers, eyes opening.
“I turned myself in.”
Her fingernails dig deeper against the sides of my head.
“King Carrick is merciful. He will let me live if I atone.”
My lips lash out every word. Monotone. Filling up every available
Song of Myself (II)
40
Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask—lie over!
You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.
Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,
Say, old top-knot, what do you want?
Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days.
Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,
When I give I give myself.
You there, impotent, loose in the knees,
Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit within you,
Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,
I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare,
And any thing I have I bestow.
I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,
You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.
To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean,
On his right cheek I put the family kiss,
And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.
Song of Myself (I)
1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,