Rey and I were still holding hands on Naja’s front lawn when another transport hovered through town. We scrambled to our feet. My knees flexed as I prepared to run if needed. But I spied a familiar silhouette through the darkened windows of the vehicle.
When the transport stopped, Loken emerged from the backseat. His face was implacable. Light winked off the metal threads on the side of his face as his jaw clenched and unclenched.
“Hey, honey!” I gave him a cheery smile. I could assume he knew all about our escapades at the Council today. That didn’t mean I’d give him the satisfaction of admitting I might have done something reckless.
Loken stomped toward us and locked eyes with Rey. “You broke into the Council building.” It was more of a statement than a question.
“Broke in is such an ugly term,” said Rey. “We didn’t break anything. We simply walked in and then out again—quickly and with evasive maneuvers.”
I lifted a hand to my mouth to muffle a giggle.
“And,” continued Loken, “you stole a transport.”
“Stole is such an ugly word,” I said, imitating Rey.
Loken silenced me with a glare. I cowered, ducking my head to stare at my sandals. He turned toward Rey. “Can you give us a minute?”
Rey nodded and sauntered toward the house.
Loken turned back toward me. “You kidnapped Elder Kohler.”
“That’s not entirely true,” I said. “We’d have to take him somewhere for it to be considered kidnapping. We left him in his office where we found him, so . . .” My explanation trailed off under Loken’s stare.
“What did you think you could possibly accomplish?” he asked, his voice low.
“I thought,” I said, folding my arms over my chest, “I could do something worthwhile instead of lying low until the end of time.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but I rushed ahead. “I thought I could make decisions on my own. Funny how I’m supposed to save the world—or destroy it—but you think I’m so weak that I have to go into hiding.”
Again he tried to speak. I cut him off before he could. “I thought I had a right to know why I’m in this ridiculous position.” I stabbed my index finger at his chest. It hurt, but it got my point across. “And you weren’t telling me what I needed to know. Plus, your computer was locked.”
“You tried to break into my computer?” His face reddened.
I waved a dismissive hand. “Break in—such an ugly term. But that’s not the point. How much did you know about my father and why I’m allegedly so powerful?”
Loken was silent for several seconds, then said, “I had my suspicions. Kohler wouldn’t confirm anything for me.” That telltale muscle in his jaw twitched.
“Exactly what did you suspect?” I stepped closer to him and tilted my chin upward, so he could see how serious I was.
His eyes darted to the left and then back to my face.
“Loken!”
He sighed and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. The lighter strands caught the sunlight. “I suspected Kohler had an ulterior motive for adding you to the task force. Since I knew he’d been friends with your father, and had no other connection to you, I figured your father had something to do with it.”
“Gods dammit, Loken!” I shouted. I pointed a finger at his face. “You should have told me that as soon as you found out.”
He shouted right back at me. “You shouldn’t have gone back to the Council after I rescued you the first time! How thoughtless and reckless could you be?”
“You shouldn’t have let them lock me up in the first place.”
“You shouldn’t have been snooping in my office,” he growled, stepping closer to me. The coolness of his skin brushed against me.
My breath caught, and not because of anger. “You shouldn’t . . . You shouldn’t . . .” I’d run of things to shout at him about.
We glared at each other. Loken’s chest rose and fell heavily. Mine did the same. He reached for me and locked his hands around my waist. I wanted to struggle, to continue yelling at him. He deserved it, after all.
But the feeling of his hands on me melted my rage. Despite the chill of his skin, warmth filled my body and tingled at my fingertips. He pressed his lips to mine. My will to fight drifted away with the softness of his mouth.
“I should get back to the Council before they wonder where I’ve gone,” he said.
I nodded, incapable of speech when he was this close to me.
“Be safe,” he said. He headed back to his transport.
I nodded, knowing it was a lie.
Rey was at my side again, and I hadn’t even seen him approach.
I rested my head on his shoulder. This day had been too long. I had to find Krin and get her to understand. I didn’t want her angry with me. And I had to keep her from saying anything to Loken, who was likely to hand me back over to the Council for further caging rather than let me die.
A rumble rolled through my stomach.
“Hungry?” Rey pulled away from me and patted my stomach.
“A bit. Let’s head over to the community kitchen. Do you know where it is?”
“I think I smell food that way.” He pointed.
Believers tended to be more community-oriented than we were, likely because they didn’t use the same technologies we used. It was less convenient for them to be independent. Most large Believer villages included communal kitchens where the people could eat at most any daylight hour in return for regular food contributions or labor.
Rey and I strolled along the side of the road. I kicked large bits of rock that had come loose from the dirt. Rey whistled a melancholy tune. The day had cooled now that it was evening. Though my skin itched from sweating earlier, the cool breeze brushing against it felt like heaven.
After a few minutes, we passed the fellowship area, filled with rows of benches for village meetings. Soon after that, smells of cooked meat wafted to my nose as we approached the kitchen at the center of the village. I breathed in deeply. My stomach growled louder.
No one stood in line outside the door, likely because the yellow sun now glowed orange at the horizon. Ra had already set. The kitchen would close soon.
Little food remained in the serving trays, having been picked over all evening. We scraped the last of it onto wooden plates and settled across from each other on benches in the dining room. I groaned as the first bite of stew touched my tongue. My mouth watered around the tender meat.
After I’d eaten enough that my stomach no longer ached, I asked, “Where do you think Krin ran off to?”
Rey put down his fork. “I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry I chased her away.” I shoved another bite of stew into my mouth.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Then whose fault is it?” I mumbled around the food.
He grinned, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s your fault.”
The two other groups of people sitting in the dining room left their plates on their tables and exited. The suns had set. In the darkened room, the fireplaces cast long, flickering shadows across the table.
A call came from the front of the kitchen: “That’s it for the night. We’re closed.”
Two small children grabbed my plate and Rey’s. When I ate my forkful, one of them snatched the fork from my hand as well.
“I wasn’t done!” I shouted. The kids moved on to other tables. They cleared the plates, cups, and forks, tossing them all onto large bins. “Hey!” I shouted, with no response.
With a sigh, I pushed my bench back from the table and stood. “I guess we should find Krin.”
Rey brightened immediately and strode toward the door, walking fast. I hid a smile.
With the exception of light from generously spaced lampposts, darkness now blanketed the village. In silence, we walked back to Naja’s place. The house was dark too, and quiet. I peered through the archway into the interior. No sounds or movement inside.
“Not here,” I said. “Where else would she be?”
Rey motioned for me to follow him. We turned a corner between two houses. Not far away, firelight flickered and voices floated toward us. Because of the low light, I couldn’t see what was going on until we crept closer. We hid at the side of a house, where we could peek around to the front to spy.
A gathering of about thirty people stood in a cluster on the front lawn of the house that hid us. Their voices carried. From their tones, I could tell they were having a heated debate.
“We should go now!” said a deep baritone. I inched to the edge of the house and peeked around the corner. That guy was big.
“Agreed,” came a softer male voice attached to a leaner silhouette. “Even if their Vision is false, they defy the gods. It’s our duty to stop it.”
Approving murmurs trickled through the crowd.
“My brother is with them,” said a familiar voice—Naja’s voice. “I don’t want him hurt.”
I clutched Rey’s shoulder and whispered, “What are they talking about?”
“Shh,” he hissed.
“If he’s with them,” the big man growled, “then he’s not with us. His safety’s not our problem.”
“It’s my problem!” Naja’s voice rose. “What if it was your family?”
A deep laugh vibrated from the man. A cruel laugh. “My family wouldn’t choose them over us.”
“We don’t need to act,” Naja said. “We can trust our man inside to do his job.”
“We can’t rely on that. He could be caught, or change his mind. We have to go now.”
“A fellowship! I call for a fellowship. A vote of the villagers. This decision is too important to make at night, when half of you have alcohol on your breaths.”
Again, there were murmurs of agreement, this time in Naja’s favor.
“Fine. We’ll wait until morning,” said the softer male voice. “A fellowship. Just after sunrise.” His voice dropped to a lower pitch. “And Jin be damned if the vote goes in our favor.”
The group dispersed, but Naja stayed, as did the large man. She gestured wildly as they discussed something in hushed tones. Rey tugged my arm to the back of the house, and we left the area out of view of the main road.
When I was sure we’d escaped earshot of the villagers, I said, “What do you think that was about?” I had a sinking feeling in my gut. I hoped Rey had interpreted the situation differently.
“They’re going to attack the Council,” he said.
“I was afraid you’d say that.” I kicked a rock from our path. I needed an outlet for all this nervous energy. “We have to tell Loken.” I hesitated to say the next part, because I had nothing against these people. But it had to be said. It had to be done. “We have to go back and warn the Council.”
Rey grimaced and shook his head. “We’re fugitives. If we go back there, they’ll lock us up before we can say three words.”
“We can’t just let these people die fighting each other. What makes the Believers think they can beat the Council anyway?”
“If I had to guess?”
I nodded.
“I’d guess,” Rey continued, “the Believers can put up a damn good fight. A few of their practitioners can do amazing things that folks at the Council will tell you are impossible.”
“But the Believers will still lose!” And in the process, they’d likely kill people I cared about—like Loken. Or people I’d recently grown quite fond of—like Jin and Mauryn.
“Maybe. But they’ll weaken the Council, which might be good enough to stop them from changing the course of the future.”
“Then we have to keep the two groups apart.”
Rey nodded but didn’t answer. He stared into space for the rest of our walk, his face devoid of any discernible expression.
I grabbed his arm just outside Naja’s house and made him look at me. “What are you thinking?”
He finally faced me. “This isn’t what I signed on for. I was supposed to be defending the world against some unknown thing. A science experiment gone wrong. A natural disaster. And then, this timeline, we’re tasked to fight Mages—and that’s fine too. I hardly feel empathy for energy-hungry killers. But this . . .” His voice trailed off.
He moved to enter the house. I grabbed his arm again. “We don’t have to kill anyone. Just stop them from killing each other.”
“Right.” He eased his arm from my grasp, his expression skeptical. “That sounds simple.”
I led him to the back room where I’d slept the night before. In the bedroom, a lamp glowed on the bedside table. Krin was lying on the floor wrapped in a blanket, her mouth hanging open.
Rey pulled his shirt over his head, revealing a tanned chest and abdomen, and lay down beside her. He wrapped an arm around Krin and pulled her close to him. I kissed the top of her head and then lay down on my back at her other side. Krin mumbled something I couldn’t understand and snuggled closer to Rey.
I hoped she’d forgive me tomorrow. It seemed she’d already forgiven Rey, so I couldn’t be too far behind. I hoped.
My eyes traced the wooden boards over my head. Tomorrow, I’d have to be in top form if I was to use my elemental ability to protect people. So far, all I’d done with it was perform uncontrolled acts of desperation. Tomorrow, I had to be in complete control.
I let my eyes flutter shut and, against my better judgment, said a quick prayer to Ra and Solaris.