The Never King, page 13
part #1 of Lost Lands Series
“Shut up,” she replies coldly.
She refuses to look at me.
I miss Gall.
When Bastian is safely locked up again, they leave us with our dinner, the lights turned off, darkness creeping in. I try to sleep but when I close my eyes, I see Gable in the water. Only it’s not always him. Sometimes it’s Dad. Or Iris. Clare.
It’s never my mother.
I mention it to Bastian when the first gray light of morning creeps into the room.
“Maybe it’s an omen,” he croaks tiredly.
“I think it’s guilt.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Have you had any nightmares?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Ria.”
I nod like I know, but I’m surprised by his adamant response. My fingers curl around each other restlessly in my lap. “What do you think we’re having for breakfast?”
He sits up unwillingly. His hair is a disheveled mess, his eyes heavy. He looks sexy. There’s no other way to describe it, and I’m angry as I look at him. It’s not fair. I definitely don’t look half as good.
“I’d kill for a coffee,” he groans.
“God, yes. With all the sugar.”
He snickers. “I forgot you drink it like a heathen.”
“Don’t be mean. I’m not in the mood.”
“I don’t cater my personality to your moods.”
“Imagine what a wonderful world it would be if you did.”
They bring us breakfast an hour later. They’re different people than last time. Another man and woman, both carrying guns. I’m escorted to the bathroom again, and this time I pass Brymer in the hallway. She’s leaving, a leather satchel slung over her shoulder, her eyes focused forward. I smile but she doesn’t acknowledge me.
When we’re alone, Bastian drills me on Brûlé. He asks every question imaginable until I’m sick of the sound of his voice and mine.
No, they do not have Work Houses. They don’t need them. Crime is almost non-existent.
Yes, they have power and running water just about everywhere.
No, I will not tell you where their wind farms are.
Because if you knew, you’d burn them to the ground.
“Do they have an Armée?”
“Not like we do,” I answer mechanically. I’m on my back on my cot staring up at the ceiling. I’ve watched the day drift across it, lazy and unhurried in a shaft of light that gets long as evening comes. I haven’t done anything all day except for talk, but for some reason I feel impossibly tired.
“How then?” Bastian asks.
“They have some career soldiers but mostly it’s a volunteer thing. If they need to fight, people step up.”
“How many?”
“As many as they need to squash the threat,” I answer, gesturing vaguely to him.
“I meant how many people are volunteers? What are their reserves?”
“Everyone.”
“Everyone,” he repeats in disbelief.
“Everyone.” I sit up, my head spinning slightly. I’ve been laying down too long. I feel off kilter. “Everyone is a member of the Armée because everyone is a member of the tribe. There are age restrictions but other than that everyone gets involved. There’s probably not an adult in Brûlé who hasn’t fought France at least once. Probably more, considering how often His Serene Majesty attacks them.”
“Then what—"
“Can we stop with the inquisition for the day?” My hands grip the edge of my cot tightly. “My head hurts.”
Bastian studies me, frowning. “You look pale.”
“I don’t feel very well.”
“Are you going to—”
I throw up. It splashes on my bare feet, spattering the bottom of my pants. The smell hits me like a blow to the stomach. I’m gagging, dry heaving over my own sick.
Bastian comes to the bars between us. “Breathe. Nice and slow.”
“The smell.”
“Breathe through your mouth, not your nose. Come away from it.”
I slide toward him, my head hung low.
“What’s wrong with me?” I growl in annoyance.
“You’re concussed.”
“I was doing better.”
“You’re under a lot of stress. I asked too many questions. I should have let you rest.”
“So this is your fault.”
“To an extent,” he admits carefully.
“Bring your leg closer. I’m going to punch it.”
He laughs low and deep, kneeling next to me. He’s careful to keep his injured leg out of reach. “I understand the sentiment, but I’m not doing that.”
“Coward.”
“Careful,” he warns quietly.
I breathe slow and even until my stomach starts to settle.
“Are you going to throw up again?” Bastian asks.
“I don’t think so.” I lean against the bars. He’s so close I can smell him, hear him breathing. He’s there in my peripheral, a blur of muscle and brown hair that feels safe in ways it shouldn’t. “I just want to be better.”
“I forgot how much you hate being sick.”
“Not as much as you do. Remember when you went horseback riding with a broken clavicle?”
“Remember when you had the flu and passed out on Santa’s lap?”
I smile. “He needed to hear my demands.”
“Did you get everything you wanted?”
“I asked for a dog and a gun.”
“No, then.”
“No. Mother gave me a basket of ribbons for my hair. I tied them into a leash to walk my imaginary dog to try to make her feel bad.”
“I remember that,” he says.
“How? We weren’t friends anymore by then.”
“I still had eyes.”
So did I. I saw you every day. I missed you more than I could bear.
“I saw you too,” I whisper.
Bastian hesitates. Slowly, he reaches through the bars to put his hand on my back. It makes slow, soothing circles between my shoulders. “Things were complicated.”
“They still are.”
“More than ever.” He inhales like he’s going to say something. I hang suspended in the silence, the uncertainty, but then he exhales and I know he won’t say it, whatever it was.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asks.
“I’m always okay.”
“Don’t be tough. I need to know. I think you should see the doctor if they have one.”
“They have doctors,” I tell him tiredly, annoyed. He can see for himself that they aren’t as backwards as his dad tried to say they are.
“Then you’re seeing him.”
“I will if you will.”
“Don’t be a pain, Ria.”
“You should stop calling me that,” I tell him. “Gable never called me that.”
“How would these people know?”
“Brymer said there are aristocrats here somewhere. If they knew us as kids, they heard you call me that nickname.”
“You’re right,” he admits. “What do I call you instead?”
“Gable called me Relia, like my dad.”
“Intimate.”
I frown at the floor. “We weren’t like that.”
“What were you like?”
“It’s none of your business,” I answer too sharply.
His hand comes off my back. “Actually, it is now that I’m him. I need to know.”
“You don’t. No one else knew.”
“You were seeing him, weren’t you?”
I exhale slowly.
Why can’t I bring myself to look at him?
It might be because he looks just like Gable. Or because this is the most private part of my life and I want to keep it for me. Or it could be because he’s Bastian, I’m Aurelia, and I thought we’d always be close, but we’re not and he hurts like a hole in my chest.
“Yeah,” I admit.
“For how long?”
“Basically, since the day of The Strain.”
The day you tried to kill him. The day I finally accepted that you weren’t you anymore.
“When did it get serious?” he asks.
“I don’t know. It was new. I don’t know where it was going.”
“And no one else knew? You’re sure about that?”
“I don’t think anyone did but the castle has a lot of eyes,” I admit. “Someone might have seen us.”
“When was the last time you were with him?”
“The morning of the festival.”
“Where?”
“The orchard. We left presents for each other in the garden sometimes. I baked for him and he wrote me stories. But that night it was the orchard.”
“What did you do in the orchard?”
I scowl at him. “Not what you’re thinking.”
He’s impatient. “Don’t be your mother right now. I can’t stand it.”
“That’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“I need to know,” he presses. “If someone saw you, if they’re here, I need to know the details in case they say anything to me.”
“That’s a lot of ‘if’s.”
“We’re in a dangerous situation, Ria—”
“Relia.”
Bastian grunts unhappily. “We don’t know when we’ll be alone like this again. This is our one chance to get our stories straight. We need to be honest with each other or we’ll screw it up and we’re both dead.”
I bury my face in my hands. They feel cold. Shaky.
“We kissed,” I whisper. “The night before and that morning. Those were the only times and it was all we did.”
“Did he say he loved you?”
“No.”
“Did you—”
The door to the outside opens. A woman and a man we haven’t seen before come in, trays in hand, a sack of clothing on the man’s shoulder.
I stand, stepping away from my pool of vomit. Away from Bastian and his questions and the answers I can’t give. Not to him or anyone.
Not even Gable.
chapitre trente-cinq
They bring in a doctor. He’s young, barely older than Bastian, but very sure of himself. A little arrogant, even.
Bastian hates him.
I can see it in his eyes as Neil examines me. Bastian is scowling on the other side of the bars, his arms crossed over his chest in a defensive, judgmental stance. It’s territorial in a way that makes my heart swell painfully.
Neil tells me that I need to rest. That’s all I can do. Eat, sleep, and stay hydrated. Bastian gets four stitches in his leg and a small purse of pills that he needs to take with every meal to make sure the infection in his leg doesn’t get worse. Neil puts an acrid smelling salve on the wound that makes Bastian hiss through clenched teeth, his face balled up in pain.
Neil doesn’t look the least bit sorry about it.
We’re told ‘good luck’.
We’re left alone, but not really.
Brymer is in the back of the building. Other people come and go, though no one talks to us. I ask a man going in to see Brymer if we can have something to read, anything to pass the time. He doesn’t answer but when he comes back from the hallway he has cards. He gives them to me through the bars, his eyes on my hands. On my ring.
I wait breathlessly for him to say something, but he turns and leaves without a word.
“Do you want to play poker?” Bastian asks.
“No. You cheat.”
“What if I promised not to.”
“You’d be lying.”
“You’re right,” he admits with a smile, “but let’s play anyway.”
We sit on the ground facing each other, passing cards back and forth between the bars. I keep track of our winnings with a piece of plaster Bastian chisels out of the wall. I use it like chalk, marking our scores under my bed. He lets me win a few hands before he gets vicious, but he never cheats. Not that I can tell.
That evening my nightmare is back, but it’s different. I see a gun pointed at my face. I see Renot and his eyes and the way he looked at Bastian like he’s every evil thing that ever slithered the earth. I feel pressure in my chest. A ringing in my ears. I hear a deafening BANG!, a flash of light, and a wall of water carries me away into the darkness.
I wake up screaming.
At least I think I do. When my eyes adjust to the dark, the room is quiet. Bastian is sound asleep. The white walls glow with cold moonlight pouring in from the window. The room feels otherworldly and for one wild second I wonder if I’m actually dead. If I died in the flood and this is where I landed – some sort of purgatory.
I want to talk to Bastian about it but I can’t bring myself to wake him. He has a hard time getting to sleep. I think it’s one of the reasons he drinks so much, though I know there are others.
In the morning they bring us coffee. We savor it like it’s the elixir of life.
In the afternoon I beat Bastian three hands in a row and retire from poker, an eternal champion.
In the evening we’re given new clothes and a chance to wash again.
The next morning there’s more coffee.
Brymer brings us three books. They’re written in Italian. Neither of us can read them.
Bastian tells me dirty jokes that make me blush.
I tell him weird, made up stories that make him laugh.
We pass three days together in the cells of Brûlé. It feels like an eternity. Like the past wrapped in the future, confusing and unfamiliar but also everything I remember.
On the fourth morning there’s no coffee, but we get a visitor. This one actually wants to talk to us.
“This is Fennel,” Brymer announces without fanfare. She says it like we’re meeting the boy who delivers the milk, not the chief of Brûlé.
Bastian and I stand slowly, unsure how to react. We can’t bow or curtsy. He’ll hate that. We should be gracious, though. They’ve taken good care of us. We’re taking up their resources, though they are holding us against our will.
It’s an awkward greeting, to say the least.
“I’ve heard a lot about you from my grandfather,” I tell him. “He likes you very much.”
Fennel smiles, his mouth overfull of teeth. He’s too wide, too short, too tan. His skin looks dry as sand, his eyes thin slits under the drooping folds of his forehead. His hand is shockingly hot when he reaches for mine.
“You look just like your mother,” he tells me.
“You’ve met her?”
“Once or twice. I’ve met you too, but you were too young to remember.”
“I’ll definitely remember this time,” I chuckle.
He smiles. “I don’t doubt you will.”
“Is she alive? Are my dad and my sister?”
Fennel pauses, studying me before he waves to Brymer. He goes to the chair at the farthest desk – the same one Brymer sat in the other night. I wonder if it’s significant. “Unlock the cells. We’ll sit and talk a while.”
Brymer moves quickly. She unlocks our cages and finds another chair in the blink of an eye. She disappears just as fast. Faster than I would have thought possible, back down the hall to leave Bastian and I alone with Fennel in the stark white room. It’s raining outside. I hear it pelting against the window, pinging off the roof. I wish I could go out and be soaked by it. I was sick of being wet when Bastian and I were walking through it for days, but after being kept inside this long, I’m dying for fresh air and the sight of the sky.
“I’m sorry you’ve had to wait so long,” Fennel begins. “I was in Fontainebleau when you were found.”
“You were in France?” Bastian asks.
His tone is hard to read. It’s like a white page with white writing. There’s something there but you have no idea what it means. I can’t imagine he’s happy to hear that the chief the Brûlén tribe walked right into his country.
“Yes,” Fennel answers.
“How bad is the damage to Loire?”
“They aren’t sure yet. The water has just started to lower but a lot of people are missing or dead.”
“How many?”
“A hundred thousand, at least.”
I gape at him. “That’s impossible.”
“I wish it was.”
“That’s half the population of Loire,” Bastian says numbly.
“Henry thinks a fair share of that are people who came to the city for the festival. It won’t just be citizens.”
“Not of Loire, but they’re citizens of France. It’s still an ugly number.”
“Yes. It is.”
“Is my family alive?” I blurt out desperately. I can’t contain the question. I’ve already asked him once and he brushed me off. I won’t be ignored again.
Fennel frowns apologetically. “Your mom and sister are alive. Your dad is dead.”
“My dad?” I whisper.
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
My heart explodes inside my chest. I feel my blood run down into my stomach, hot and thick.
“No.” I fall forward against the desk, my arms wrapped around my gut. “No. He can’t.”
Out of all of them, why did it have to be him?
I would have saved him over everyone. I thought it was a tough choice between him and Iris, but now that it’s happened…
Bastian is wrong. I am a terrible, terrible person.
Bastian reaches for my hand. He uncurls my reluctant fingers, lacing them with his until our palms are pressed tightly together. I close my eyes. I let Bastian hold me down as my soul tries to float up through the sky and the rain to disappear into the cold, empty void. He won’t be there – my dad. I want it anyway. I want the nothing because anything would feel better than this.
“I’m going to ask some questions,” Fennel barrels forward. “You’re not going to like them, either of you, but you’re going to answer. Except for you, Aurelia. If you can’t keep quiet, you’ll leave.”
I blink, confused. I can’t keep up. “What?”
“I’ll send you to the back with Brymer.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
“What are the questions?” Bastian asks readily.
“What is your relationship to Aurelia?”
“We’re friends.”
