Shadowlark (20 page)

I’d go alone into Central Processing if I had to, but if I wanted any chance of reaching Prometheus before the Eagles overwhelmed me, I was going to need help. I thought of Oren and the way he always stood when hissing orders at me in the wilderness—strong, tall, sure. Competent. I willed the Renewables in the room to see that in me. My plan was a good one, and that I was something new and different didn’t change that. If anything, it gave us the edge we’d need to win.

“Do you have anything else to add?” asked Parker. He sounded tired too. One of his hands was bandaged, but he seemed otherwise unhurt—on the outside, anyway. He was gazing at the table in front of me and not meeting my eyes.

I swallowed. “No.”

“Then Marco will escort you back to your quarters, where you will stay until we’ve made a decision about what to do with you.”

I expected Marco to complain, to show his distaste at being given this task—it was his way, the show of petulance that kept him aloof. Instead he went silently, his expression stony, his muscles tense. I could sense power gathered all around him, at the ready, and I was reminded abruptly of what Wesley said—that he was the strongest Renewable they had. They were using their best to keep watch on me.

He walked me back to my room in silence. I strained to listen as we walked away, but I could hear nothing from the War Room. Marco had mistrusted me—or at least doubted my abilities—from the very beginning, but I wasn’t reading any smug satisfaction at having been proven right. He walked just ahead of me, jaw clenched.

When we reached my room, he waited outside as I took the last few steps into the tiny space. I expected him to slam the door in my face, but instead he stood there silently for a long moment, his hand on the doorframe, white-knuckled.

Finally, he said shortly, “I volunteered for that mission, you know.”

I nodded. Wesley had told me.

“Do you know why?”

“No,” I whispered. “Why?”

He sucked in a lungful of air through his nose, bracing. “Because I wanted to believe you. I wanted you to be right, even though most of me was sure you weren’t.” His voice was tight and strained. “You were the girl in the journal. You were supposed to—you were supposed to be our salvation.” I couldn’t speak, the force of his emotion and his disappointment cutting me like a blade.

He struggled with himself for a long moment and then said, quietly, “At least with Prometheus, we know who our enemy is.” He grasped the door handle, stepping back. “I don’t know
what
you are.”

For hours, there was nothing. No word from Wesley or anyone else from the War Room, no food brought. I still hadn’t seen Oren or Olivia since coming back from the mission, and even Marco failed to return. I examined the lock as best I could by feel, with my second sight. It was solid iron, and for anyone else it’d be impossible to magic. I had no idea if they knew I could, but either way it made no difference. It’d take a lot more magic than what I had now for me to do anything at all to the iron lock.

Though I’d felt fine in my room just hours before, knowing it was now a prison cell made my skin itch, my mind shudder. I’d been locked up now more times than I could easily count, and I was tired of letting it happen. I wasn’t meek little Lark Ainsley anymore, the child who was content to wait for Kris to slip her a key in the Institute. Too much had happened since then for me to let them keep me here.

I ran my hands over the door. The lock might have been iron, but the rest of the door was some sort of copper alloy. The door—and more importantly, the hinges—were as susceptible to magic as anything else. If I wrenched the hinges free, the rest of the door would give way.

I could get out on my own, if I had to. If they decided I was too dangerous to have fighting alongside them, then I could fight my way through them.

I was resting my forehead against the door, exploring its structure with my mind and searching for invisible stress fractures in the metal, when something in the air beyond it shifted. The shadow in me recognized it before my thoughts did. The darkness was getting stronger. It recognized its own kind.

Oren.

The lock clanked open and the door swung inward. Oren looked as exhausted as I felt, but his head lifted a little as he saw me. He stepped inside and let the door thud closed after him.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice rough. His eyes raked over me, taking in the bandage visible at the collar of my shirt. I must’ve looked pretty ragged, because his face tightened.

“For now.”

“You didn’t tell them about me.” It wasn’t a question, though his voice sounded uncertain.

I smiled a little, sinking down on the edge of my bed. “No point in us both being locked up.”

He leaned against the wall in front of me, stepping finally into the light so I could get a good look at him. There were a number of new bruises visible on his arm below his sleeve, and on his jaw—and a cut on his cheekbone where a blow had split the skin.

“What happened to you?” I breathed, my heart tightening.

He blinked, then lifted a hand to his face as though he’d forgotten about his injuries. “Oh. Olivia happened.”

Olivia did this? To
Oren?

“I thought you said she couldn’t take you,” I said slowly.

“She’s—upset.” He glanced away from me, eyes flicking from the wall behind me to the door. “She and Nina are close.” There was something soft, painful, in his voice. Her pain was hurting him. Oren cared for her.

There was no end to the damage I’d done in that one, fleeting moment. A tiny part of me almost wished I’d just let the shadows overrun us all. I swallowed down the sick feeling in my stomach. “She’s taking it out on the wrong person.”

Oren shook his head. “She just needed an outlet. She met Nina when her brother was taken by Prometheus—Nina was the one who helped her through it.”

I remembered the quiet warmth in Nina’s touch, and understood. “I wish I could talk to her. Apologize, somehow. But I doubt they’d let me out of here.”

“That’s actually why I came,” Oren said, gaze finding mine again. I was struck anew with how much he’d changed since we’d been in Lethe. It was like the animal side of him had been . . . not tamed, exactly. Harnessed. He was still strength and confidence and sharp intelligence, but he was in control of himself. He didn’t jump anymore at sudden noises or tense whenever anyone new walked into the room.

Distracted, I almost missed what he said next.

“They’re going ahead with the mission.”

My breath caught and my hands curled around the edge of the mattress, my muscles suddenly going tense. “My mission?”

He nodded. “They asked me what I thought, since I’d be the one facing a death sentence if something goes wrong—for the Eagle’s murder. I told them it was a good plan.”

I listened in silence, caught between the way my heart swelled at Oren’s confidence and the way my own uncertainty flared, knowing that lives would be at stake because of me. Again.

“I think Wesley argued for it, too. And Dorian told them what you did for the Iron Wood. At any rate, they’re going to go through with it, but they’re all going to be armed with these.”

He pulled something small and round out of his pocket and tossed it to me. I caught it and felt an odd tug at the everpresent web of magic in the air. It looked like a crude iron sphere with no distinguishing characteristics. I glanced up at Oren dubiously.

“Parker rigged them up using the Eagles’ talons. You throw them at the ground, and if it’s enough of an impact, they go off like an explosion. But instead they banish all the inorganic magic within a certain radius.”

I recognized Parker’s turn of phrase and knew Oren was repeating him word for word. Another time, I would’ve smiled to hear him using words like
inorganic
and
radius
. Instead, I asked, “So what’s the point of them?”

“Parker’s theory is that you’re like a machine, and that the magic in you is like the magic in the machines. Stolen, not generated. The idea is that these won’t have any effect on a real Renewable. But they’ll knock out any machines in the area. And—”

I breathed out slowly. “And they’ll take me out, too.”

Oren nodded. “I’m supposed to be carrying that one. But I think you should have it, for tomorrow.”

It wasn’t much use to him—he was safe from me. The shadow in me didn’t want anything from him. There was no hunger to steal what little magic he had inside, keeping him human. But why give it to me? When I started to ask the question aloud, he just pushed away from the wall and folded my fingers gently around the sphere, holding my hands between his.

“If there was a way to switch me off when the darkness comes,” he said softly, “I’d never go anywhere without it.”

His face was close, his eyes meeting mine. For the first time, I realized that it wasn’t about hating him the way I hated myself, for being what we were. For the first time, I realized that Oren understood me. He was the only one in the world who could. He was giving me a way to take myself out, rather than let the hunger take over again.

Oren let go of me and stepped back, shoving his hands into his pockets. “So, you’ll get your chance to face Prometheus. And if Tansy and Nix are in there, you’ll get your chance to find them, too.”

I took a deep breath, feeling dizzy.

“But—here’s the thing. They’re going tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” I burst out, staring. “So soon?”

Oren shrugged. “They didn’t tell me why, but I suspect it’s to do with you. The less time you’re here, the less opportunity there is for you to . . .”

He trailed off, but I knew what he meant. “Less opportunity for me to hurt someone.”

Oren grimaced. “They don’t know you, Lark.”

I shook my head. “No. The problem is they
do
know me now. The real me.”

Oren was silent for a long moment, gazing at me with those pale, unreadable eyes. I knew was he was thinking about, knew with utter certainty that at any moment he’d give me another speech about strength and power and only being a weapon when I choose to be. Just as surely, I knew I couldn’t stand to hear it, not now. Not while Nina still lay unconscious, while Tansy might be being tortured at that very moment, while Olivia was pounding the life out of anyone who came near.

So instead I stood abruptly. “Is that all?”

Oren opened his mouth, but stopped, hesitating.

“Try to get some sleep,” he suggested, his voice rough. Then he turned his back, and was gone.

I let myself sink back down with a creak of the mattress. I knew I should do as he said—that I should do as I was ordered by the Renewables here. But I was buzzing with nerves, and with energy, and I knew I wasn’t going to sleep. There was a good chance I wasn’t coming back from the mission tomorrow. I paced the confines of my room, fingers tracing the curves of the blackout device in my pocket. What do you do when it might be your last night alive?

• • •

I waited in the muggy heat of my shut-in room, letting the hours tick by, until the sounds of feet moving past and machines being used and switched off again faded. I’d come to know the rhythms of this place, and I could tell as the world grew quieter that the rebels were all settling down to sleep, that they weren’t plagued by the same restlessness as I was, the night before we faced Prometheus.

I pressed my cheek to the door. Oren hadn’t locked it on his way out. If it were anyone else, I would think they had simply forgotten, but Oren didn’t miss details like that. He left it unlocked on purpose, giving me the option to escape. He was worried about me.

Beyond the door, I could sense the telltale glow of the guard’s energy. A Renewable—they weren’t taking any chances with me. I didn’t recognize the signature, but whoever it was, I didn’t want him or her tagging along when I went to find Olivia. I didn’t even know what I was going to say to her, but I knew I didn’t want an audience.

Burying the thread of guilt warning me against what I was doing, I reached out with agonizing slowness until I could just tap into the edge of the man’s aura. I didn’t need to take a lot of his power, just enough to make him drowsy. The darkness inside me stirred sluggishly, and I fought to keep it down. If I let it wake, there was no telling what it might do.

You don’t
have
to do anything,
whispered my guilt.
Just do as you’re told and wait.

But I kept at it, knowing that if I paced inside my room all night, I’d go mad. Gradually, I could feel the man’s consciousness waning, his power flickering and dulling all around him. I eased the door open as silently as I could and found him leaning back against the wall. He twitched as one of the door hinges squealed, but didn’t wake.

I slipped down the hallway in the opposite direction from the guard, my senses buzzing and tingling with the extra magic in my system. The air was only slightly cooler out here than in my tiny room. Though there were giant air-circulation vents all over the place, the air was still close and warm. It made me long for wind, the same wind that had so frightened me the first time I’d heard it howling through the ruins. Still, the farther I got from my tiny room, the better I felt.

I’d been to the infirmary only once, right after the mission. But I remembered where it was, and my feet brought me there without hesitation. There were no guards on that door—after all, they believed the monster was contained, safe in her room. I let my mind trickle out carefully, enough to sense one presence in the room. Nina? Had they left her alone?

But when I eased the door open a fraction, I saw a healer sitting at the foot of one of the beds, head drooping onto his chest. His was the life force I’d sensed. There was a form in the bed, but I felt nothing from it. My throat closed. Nina’s body was as inert to my senses as the bed she rested in.

They had connected her to a number of machines, one of which I could tell from here was trying to artificially restore her magic. I could hear their mechanisms whirring and clicking, a gentle cacophony echoing through the silent night. Though the healer seemed to be asleep, I stayed where I was. I told myself that it was because I couldn’t risk waking the healer watching over Nina, but I knew the truth. From here, I could just glimpse Nina’s face, ashy and drawn. I didn’t want to see more.

I stood there on the threshold for what felt like an hour, unable to enter, unable to leave. My handiwork, lying there at the edge of life.

When I finally turned away, I knew where I was going. I had a good idea of where Olivia would be if she wasn’t in the infirmary with her friend. I headed for the roof, pausing at the door that opened up onto the nighttime Lethe air. I couldn’t sense anything beyond it, but Olivia wasn’t a Renewable. She had the same magic all normal people did, untapped—but it was quiet and hard to detect this far away. I took a deep breath and swung the door silently outward.

She was there, sitting on the edge of the roof, legs dangling over empty space. She didn’t look back as I entered, but I saw her stiffen and I knew she’d guessed it was me. I hesitated, hanging onto the edge of the door, unwilling to let it swing closed. Now that I was here, I had no idea what I wanted to say. I wanted to confess, but she already knew what I’d done. I wanted to take it back somehow, but it was impossible.

“Olivia—” I began, my voice emerging as a whisper. “I’m so sorr—”

“Don’t.” Her voice was quiet but sharp, cutting through mine like a knife. No bubbly enthusiasm, no friendly warmth. She sounded tired. Angry. “If what Oren tells me is true, then you didn’t mean to hurt anyone, and you have nothing to apologize for. And if he’s wrong, and you did it on purpose— then I don’t want to hear you lie about feeling regret.”

I took a step back, half-intending to leave her alone. But before I could act on the impulse, she turned, glancing over her shoulder me. “You’re thinking about tomorrow, aren’t you?” she asked. “About the fact that you might not come back.”

I nodded, and she tilted her head to the side. A silent summons.

When I settled down beside her, she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “I always come up here the night before a mission. I don’t know why, but it helps.”

The ground was a dizzying distance below us, but Olivia seemed unconcerned. I tried to ignore the drop, focusing instead on the city and the phosphorescent glow of the fungus on the cavern walls. For a while we sat in silence, me staring upward and Olivia looking down at her feet as she swung them gently side to side.

I wanted to speak, but I had nothing to say. At least, nothing I could put into words. She was the closest thing I’d made to a friend here, but now it was like we didn’t even know each other. Maybe I was just torturing myself, sitting beside this walking, talking reminder of what I’d done to Nina, the people I’d hurt by hurting her.