9

Overcome with dark and anxious thoughts, I make my way to the doors leading to the gardens out back. A prickle runs up my neck. I’m being watched. The shaven-head mercs guarding the doors survey me with dull eyes but they don’t stop me, don’t say a word. I race through watery moonlight, panting, and get lost in a landscaped garden lit with paper lanterns. At least I’m blessedly alone. I tug at the flowing drape of my dress over my right shoulder and wish beyond anything that I could snap my fingers and bring back my former life. The minute I think of Margot, the dam of tears I’d been holding back so carefully breaks. I sob my way deeper into the garden.

I haven’t been there for more than a minute or two when a red handkerchief dotted with white polka dots appears before my blurry eyes. I halt mid-sob and hiccup. The arm attached to the hanky belongs to none other than Jared Price.

“Go away, Jared,” I snarl. But I take the handkerchief and dab at my eyes anyway. Surprisingly, the cloth is perfectly clean and in good condition, if a little wrinkled.

“You’re welcome,” Jared replies as I blow.

“I said go away.”

“Where my hanky goes, I go.” He sounds so cheerful I want to throttle him.

He’s painfully handsome by moonlight, his hair near silver. The planes of his face hollow out until he looks more like the sleek beast whose face he sometimes wears. Tonight he’s opted for a faded tuxedo T-shirt, complete with a red bow tie at the neck. Before we left Storm’s keep, he called it his “undercover Upper Circle” look, which had Torch laughing like a hyena.

It’s so easy for Jared to mock, I realize. He’s not trapped as I am. And at that, my anger explodes.

“Can you not follow me for five seconds?” I snap.

“’Fraid not. Kind of in the job description.” He looks down at my strappy emerald shoes as though appraising their value. I make a strangled sound and stomp away. I hear nothing, not a squeak or a whisper, but I can feel him ghosting me as I slip deeper into the garden.

When I’m as fed up as I can be, I turn to confront him. And stare at an empty garden path.

“You think this is funny?” I call to thin air. But I know he can hear me. I know he’ll not be far. “You enjoy watching girls cry?”

A few beats later, his voice floats out from the darkness and brushes my ears like a kiss. “Why are you crying, Lu?”

Even if I were inclined, I don’t have enough breath in me to tell him all the reasons I’m crying. “Does Storm know that you’re here?” I call out, surprising even myself.

There’s silence from the darkness. Then, a soft, “No.”

“I thought so. Does he know…?” I end with a dangling question, not even sure what I was going to say. Does Storm know that you’ve kissed me? Does he know we can’t seem to leave each other alone, even if we fight like cats and dogs?

A beat, and then another soft “No” reaches my ears.

I march deeper into the garden, knowing he’ll not be far. A small footbridge arches over a trickle of a stream and ends in a lovely, softly lit seating area. The evening is still fresh enough that the area remains undiscovered, so I sink down on one of the stone benches. It’s hard, in moments like these, to remember that we’re in Dominion. Less than a mile away, the drones record the lives of the rabble. People lay dying in their stacked cars, on the streets, in back alleys. Dying of the Plague or starvation or any number of the diseases that will kill you when you live hand-to-mouth with no help from anyone.

It makes me feel even sicker to think of the pettiness of my own problems, however cruel and large they seem.

A mosquito buzzes next to my ear. I swat at it and it flies away. Not a mosquito, I realize, but some type of miniature security drone. It circles back toward my ear with a high-pitched whirr when a small snap silences it forever. Jared’s closed fist hovers next to my ear. He climbs over the bench and sits next to me, tossing the tiny metallic body he’s crushed onto the ground.

“Leave me be,” I say, refusing to look at him. I shiver, the cold seeping through me. Sending Jared away might not be the brightest thing. There are no mercs here, no one to call for help should something unimaginable happen. And Jared has just crushed the security drone.

And lately—let’s face it—the unimaginable seems to happen all the time.

His hands grip the stone as though it might buck him off. “I can’t.”

“Pretty please?”

I don’t see his smile so much as hear it. “As much as it delights me when Your Majesty uses such fine language, I’m afraid I can’t fulfill your request.”

The tears threaten to spill again. “Why?” I finally face him. But though he shrugs in that deadbeat way of his, his face is as serious as I’ve ever seen it.

“I have an obligation,” he starts.

I wave him off like just another mosquito. The panicky terror in my chest rolls over me in a wave, and all at once I’ve never been so miserable. And I can’t bear him seeing me like this. Helpless. Weak. A pawn. “I absolve you. Go. Away.” I push at him with one hand, hoping to shoo him. He grabs my fingers in return, threads them into his hands, warm and large and capable of doing any number of things, and pulls them into his lap.

“Let me finish. I have a job to do. I’m obliged to do the best job I can. Not just because I work for Storm but because that’s who I am. That job is to protect you, Lu.”

I turn my head, unable to bear even another second. I’ve had my fill of Jared’s merc routine. Gentle fingers coax me back again until I’m just inches from Jared’s glittering eyes. They look feral in the moonlight.

“But Lu.” He breathes my name like it’s a full sentence. “It’s a good thing that’s my job, because… Don’t you know I can’t even help myself?” He’s so close it’s as though the boundaries of our flesh have disappeared. And within one breath and the next, his lips are on mine. Soft, warm, molding me to his mouth. Then, hungrier, he pulls me closer, seeking more.

I’m dizzy with the taste of him on my lips, in my mouth. When my strength gives out, I slump onto his chest and he holds me tighter. I can barely react to the blazing warmth of his body full down the length of me, the scratchy feeling of his shirt decal under my fingers. There’s a fire in me, too, and with his sudden nip to my lip, it ignites. I’m feverish for him. Jared’s chest is molten rock under my hands. I’m struck with a desire to run kisses up his neck, to just behind his earlobe, just to hear the quick suck of his breath. I grab his hair and pull him tighter still. My lips sting from trying to get closer, closer, and rubbing too hard up against his teeth. Jared tries to hold them back but I can feel his incisors sharpen, the rumble in his throat deepen, his eyes flip to a luminescent green in the darkness of the garden as he drinks me in.

And just as suddenly as it started, he takes me by the shoulders and pulls me away. I sway on the patio bench like a rag doll, cold and dazed. The garden hums with some secret life, bugs and frogs, but it’s just Jared and me here.

Touching a finger to my swollen lips, I watch him. He pants as though he’s kicked the living tar out of someone, a glassy expression to his feline eyes. He doesn’t take his hands off me, but he isn’t going to bring me close again, either. And that’s what makes me explode.

“What kind of game are you playing with me, anyhow?” I scream at him, thankful that the garden is empty for my tirade.

Jared shakes his head as though I’ve just launched into Russian. “What?”

I break away from him and step back a pace, hands on hips. “What is this for you, Jared? I’m just your merc, Lucy. I can’t stop myself, Lucy,” I pantomime. Anger wells up inside me.

“Calm down, Lu. I don’t under—”

“And here I thought the Upper Circle had the corner on mind games. Or is this part of the plan? Teach me a few of the basics so I can land a good catch? How much commission will you be taking for this, I wonder?”

This catches him off guard. A rare moment indeed. Jared cocks his head as though he’s heard something strange. He puts his hands up as though to ward me off. “It would be helpful if you’d explain yourself so I know what the charges against me are.”

Not a hint of a smile. He’s dead serious. But so am I.

“I understand now.” Feeling sick, I clutch my stomach. “I reckon taking any further liberties isn’t part of the deal with you and Storm, is it? What if we lost our heads? Then what?” Sarcasm drips from me like venom. I rub at my chest, as if it can relieve the ache there, the throbbing emptiness in my chest.

Because it’s true. In a flash, it all tumbles into place and I realize what a dupe I’ve been. Lasters are free with their bodies and their love. A Laster’s life can be cut short in a moment. So they live each day for that day alone, taking pleasure and solace in each other’s flesh as they can. These are lessons they drilled into us.

Life is cheap and Lasters are cheaper, the chant goes.

But with the Upper Circle, alliances form and fall over less. Upper Circle girls do not share their flesh for free. Upper Circle girls guard their maidenhead for the marriage bed: This is the price of a good match with a man of fortune from a good family who can afford to buy a virgin bride.

Jared runs a hand through his tousled blond curls and stares at me as though I’ve grown a set of antlers to rival Nolan Storm’s. “What in Holy Plague fire are you talking about, Princess?”

“Don’t you dare call me that!” I try to ignore the ragged quality of my voice. “And stop pretending that you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“Lu.” Jared steps forward, genuine concern lining his face. “I honestly don’t know what’s just happened here…”

I take a step back. “Which suitor is at the top of the list? Teddy Nash, maybe, so Storm can get his hands on the outer territories? Please tell me it’s not Robbie Deakins. I think I’d rather catch Plague.”

Jared turns quiet. “Is that what’s got you spooked? You think you’re going to be married off?”

“It’s true. Storm all but admitted it. They’re brokering the deal in there.” I nod to the ballroom. “And I’m the real estate.” I give a jagged laugh, but there’s no humor in this for me.

Jared turns his head and curses a wild blue streak under his breath. He runs his hands through his hair with a look one inch shy of tortured. “Lu, I swear. I haven’t heard anything about this marriage business. There must be some misunderstanding. We…I would never do that to you.”

There is such gravity in his expression. I give him the slightest of nods, showing I’ve heard him. But it’s not enough. Not by far. Jared looks up at the sky. The clouds have swallowed the silvery moon.

“It’s going to rain in a minute,” he tells me. “We’ll have to go back inside.”

I straighten my back and begin smoothing my hair and dress the best I can. I’m nothing if not poised.

“Lu.” Jared stops me. He reaches out a hand as though to caress my cheek. But he pulls it back at the last minute. “Storm doesn’t know about this. About—us.”

With that, my red-hot anger fades to a dull, throbbing resentment. I wonder how he can be so dumb and blind. Of course Storm knows. Storm is likely using this, as with everything else, to his political advantage. Just because he hasn’t tugged the strings doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

But all I say is, “I can see how you might think so,” before sweeping back up the garden path, my head held high as royalty.

The minute we’re back at Storm’s keep, I say a quiet good night and make my way into my bedroom. It’s as different from my former bedroom as something can get—and yet, curiously, the same. This is a room for an adult: no frilly canopy bed with gauzy drapes, as Margot and I both had at home. No girlish china dolls or dollhouses on exquisite display. And yet, just like the room of my childhood, this, too, is a room for display. Over the small fireplace hangs a portrait I’ve long wondered about. A figure kneels just outside the silver-treed woods. You can’t see his face—all you see are the antlers rising up from his head like a crown.

And just like at home, you need to read into the subtle language of clues that spells out what everyone’s agenda is. Storm’s is clear enough: through alliances, threats, intimidation, and raw power, I reckon he will be the true ruler of Dominion before too long.

No wonder our father couldn’t stand him.

I sink down on the bed in my finery, but other than taking off my sandals, I don’t move to undress. There’s too much going on, too many crosscurrents, for me to properly get my bearings. But if I believe Storm, soon we’ll all be in trouble.

Father Wes and his followers are stockpiling weapons. Storm had mentioned this almost nonchalantly on our drive home.

Expressionless, Jared had tracked my gaze through the rearview mirror. My stomach curled into a perfect knot. So much for the preacher men being safely tucked in bed, never to get up again.

“How do you know?”

“Senator Gillis has some resources on it. Our sources have corroborated this.”

I thought very carefully about what I said next. “What does Senator Gillis think the preacher men will do with weapons?”

Storm looked at me, deadpan and dangerous. The cresting curls rising from his head flared briefly, reminding me why I couldn’t afford to relax my guard around him. “Destroy everyone they can, I assume.”

“Do you believe that?” I asked.

To his credit, Storm took a moment before lacing his fingers together over his knee, leaning closer to me. Raw power shone from his face, and for a moment, the outlandish thought ran through my head: Behold, the power of a true god.

“I believe my intel is correct. Father Wes is up to something. I’ve got resources tracking where those weapons came from, because they didn’t come from here.”

I blinked, surprised at the sudden turn of the conversation. “How would you know that?”

“I’ve had teams…let’s just say, liberating Dominion’s finest gangs of their weapons for the past several years.”

My mouth gaped open.

“What on earth do you do with them?”

Storm smiled. “Bury them.”

“Do you think…?”

But he shook his head. “No. They’re secure.”

“Where?” I didn’t expect an answer. Storm’s flat iron eyes raked over me, accusing me of asking the wrong question.

I stared out the window at the dark streets to gather my thoughts when Storm surprised me again.

“Back there, with the Driscolls… You don’t have to worry.” I arched a perfect eyebrow at my so-called guardian. Storm laughed. “I won’t sell you to the highest bidder, Lucy, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Jared’s eyes found mine again, locked. Some tacit understanding passed between us. Jared isn’t part of this, whatever it is. The thought relieved me. Still, it didn’t answer why he ran so hot and cold with me.

Storm continued, apparently not noticing the silent conversation taking place between Jared and me. “But this new situation with Father Wes and the Lasters… It has to take priority over everything else. If they’re planning an offensive, we need to be ready. We need everyone on this.”

I gazed over at the flat, hollow angles of my guardian’s face. That sinking burn in my stomach intensified. I prayed he couldn’t read my thoughts. The bitter thought flashed through me like a knife: hadn’t I known something would prevent Storm from helping me find my sister?

And so I sit on Storm’s guest bed in my borrowed finery, clutching Margot’s letter as though it’s a Plague talisman. I’ve reread it more than a dozen times, so that now it’s wrinkled and worn at the creases. All I am is a hollow shell with aching feet. I need to do something. I need to do it now. No more waiting. No more holding out for help.

A chopper buzzes by Storm’s tower building, closer than I’ve heard in a while. I should check the streets to see if something has happened, but I can’t muster the energy. There’s a light knock on the door. I contemplate not answering. Then there’s a second knock, a third. I utter a very soft, “Come in.”

I know it’s Jared even before the curl of his hair, glinting like gold, appears. He closes and locks the door behind him with a gentle snick. He walks over to the chair and slinks down like a jungle cat, eyes never leaving me.

“You’re still awake.”

“You knew I was,” I accuse, heartsick and exhausted. My eyes sting with tears I refuse to shed. Beneath my hands, the bed feels like a rock.

Jared nods. “I could hear you.”

This catches me by surprise. “I was just sitting here. I didn’t move.”

He tilts his head to regard me. That perfect mouth opens, revealing a row of white teeth and his long, graceful neck. I’m reminded of the jungle cats I’ve seen in zoo archives. I watch him sink back in the chair and stretch out two lazy hands. Don’t be fooled by appearances, my mind screams. Jared may look relaxed, but I can see the thin wire of tension running through his shoulders and arms.

Instead of answering my unspoken question, he drinks me in with eyes that begin to marble, indigo blue to bright jade green and back again. “You haven’t even undressed,” he murmurs.

“And you have.” Jared has traded in his tuxedo shirt and dress trousers for a faded pair of pants that mold his legs like a perfectly broken-in shoe. He’s thrown on a T-shirt from his collection with a picture of a schoolboy at a desk.

“Do you need help?” he purrs. Electric sparks flare painfully to life inside my body.

“Don’t you dare,” I whisper, staring down at my naked toes. Silence stretches between us as he stares at me, filled only by the tinny tick of the clock beside the bed.

“I’m sorry.” He sighs, and suddenly he’s out of the chair and beside me on the bed. Breathing in my hair. I am surrounded on all sides by his heat, his flesh, that peculiar smell of his that makes me feel instantly at peace. “I couldn’t leave things like that. Too messy for sleep.”

I grip the bedspread harder. “Maybe—maybe you were right about Storm. About the marriage thing. And he says Father Wes is gathering another army. Weapons, he said.”

Jared nods into my hair. “I know.”

“You believe this?” I look at him square so I’ll know for sure he’s telling me the truth.

Jared nods again reluctantly. “Storm has had Carl and Serena on it, Kira and Penny in shifts. They’ve seen some crates loaded with assault rifles and launchers, mostly. Some plastics for explosives.”

“How are they getting away with it? How can they even?” I ask, and then find myself pressing my forehead against his chest as he breathes deeper and trails fingers down my back. But I know the answer. What do the dead have to answer for, after all? What wouldn’t they do?

But the real question itching at the bottom of this pile is, What do they hope to accomplish?

I think about the tall, imposing figure of Nolan Storm. What does he really want from me? What is his endgame? I seem to know only one thing for certain. “He’s not going to help me get Margot.”

Jared winces, his fingers still on the sensitive skin at the nape of my neck. I shiver and realize that all those times I felt Margot’s more amorous adventures, they were the palest ghost of this pleasure as his breath tickles the shell of my ear. “Not right now, at any rate. Not when there’s a possibility of civil war. I’m sorry.”

Jared’s face pleads understanding. His fingernails curl up my forearm and I let slip a tiny breath of pleasure. His eyes are deep and heavy as they stare into me. It almost hurts, to be this close to him. But there’s nothing in me with the power to resist. I gaze back at him, shuddering every few seconds until something inside me cracks. The tears start to fall, hot and wet and thick.

“Tell me what I can do.” He holds my face close to his with the lightest of touches. It’s a strange thing to know a man like him could be so tender when he could just as easily rip a man to bits. “I hate fighting with you, Lu. I hate feeling like we’re clawing to get closer but just end up scratching each other.”

I want to look away. I want to hide from the brilliant, glittering sheen of his eyes. They would follow me into the dark, I know. There is no place I can hide from this man.

And with a sudden jolt of pain, I realize what I’m going to do.

I take a few shallow breaths. “Everything is different now,” I say quietly.

An unhappy crease mars his forehead. “What do you mean?”

I close my eyes against that fierce and protective something inside him when it comes to me. When I open my eyes again, he’s still there, waiting for me. Always watching and waiting, the perfect guardian.

But is he my protector—or my jailer?

I stroke a hand through his curls, soft and fair in the dim light of the room. This might be our last night, if I manage to pull off what I must. I want to set the record straight.

“Sometimes I’m still terrified of you, you know. I’ve seen you do…remarkable things to people,” I end diplomatically. And when he looks about to protest, I run a finger over his full lips, silencing him. “And then other times,” I say softly, trying to memorize every line, every pore, every glint of light in his eyes, his smell, the thousand and one things that are him. Things I think I hate most times, and other times burn me to the quick. “I want to kick you in the shins quite a lot, you know. And then there are times like this, Jared Price. Sometimes I want to crawl out of my skin and into yours.”

“Lu,” he mumbles against my finger.

I stall him with a look. “You and I, we’ve had our ups and downs. And since I came here to live with Nolan, it seems like we’ve been stuck at a low point. Just like everything else in my life right now.” He opens his mouth to object, but I shake my head. “Listen, I know you’re just doing your job…and I wasn’t ever safe until you… At least, that’s how it feels.” But how do I put into words the way he’s turned everything upside down? I shake my head and try to clear the knot in my throat. “Sometimes it feels like a dream, do you understand? All electric and vivid in the way that real life isn’t. Real life is people shaking and falling down dead on the streets. Real life is Upper Circle parties filled with sharks, and not of the True Born variety. Real life isn’t this.”

My hand fits across his chest. I can feel his heartbeat, a perfect clock against my fingers. I kiss his lips, the softest butterfly kiss, and my own skin ignites as his hands slide over the flesh of my collarbone. When I pull back, I can gather in the perfect symmetry of his face. The dark and light planes of his face. I hold a blond curl off his forehead so I can stare at him.

“I may hate you some days, but I’ll never forget you, Jared. Not as long as I live.”

I’ve rendered him speechless, I see as he stares down at me with a mixture of dread and something like amusement. “Why are you saying all this? Just what do you think is going to happen?”

I sit up, pushing my hair out of my eyes. “No reason. I—I just wanted you to know.”

“Where do you think you’re going, Princess?”

“Nowhere,” I reply with false heat, hoping he can’t smell lies, too.

“Good. Because if you did get any funny notions into that peculiar head of yours, know this.” Jared stretches out beside me and gets comfortable. The relaxed position is a lie as he turns dark, intense eyes on me. “I’d come and find you.”