The Wilds (Reign and Ruin 1) (29 page)

"How long has
it been since you've seen real sunlight?" I asked. I felt Cirrus
stir uncomfortably against me.

"It's been too
long to remember."

"That's so
amazingly sad," I murmured.

"I am so
amazingly sad," Cirrus replied. Cirrus was so absorbed with the
feel of skin, the warmth and the smell, that he failed to notice me
raise my hand to pull back the curtains. The morning sunlight
splashed into the room and illuminated the workshop in a vibrant
orange and red sheet of light.

Cirrus felt the
light before he saw it through the lids of his closed eyes. He
stumbled backwards with a cry and fell into a corner of the room.
My necklace lit up with an amber flare and his hands came up to
shield his face: the sun was searing into his brain and bringing
clarity to his senses. The smell of me faded from his nose as the
sun brought forth the fragrances of wood and dust, sweat and oil.
Unable to find a familiar shadow to hide in, Cirrus's pupils shrunk
down to accommodate the daylight's sudden explosion. The string
between us snapped painfully as the tables turned.

I stood in the
midst of the radiance and let the sun wash over me into the room.
Golden dust fell through the shafts of illumination, falling off
the old curtains in radiant waves. Cirrus moaned again and I turned
to see him shrinking in on himself, drawing his skin away from the
light as much as he could manage.

"I must be
dying," he breathed. "Maggie, you are letting me die."

The necklace
with fighting with me now, burning fiercely at my breast. And all I
needed to do was reach down and grab his watch. He gripped it
protectively but could barely look up through the glare. It should
have been like taking candy from a baby.

***

Lucan opened his eyes,
but snapped them quickly shut against the morning sun. It glared
straight into his face as bright as a searchlight. He groaned,
turning over and wincing as the scrapes and cuts under his torn
shirt brushed over the dry grass. His hands grabbed a bit of yellow
brush and used it to pull him up onto his knees.

Glass shone
bright silver, scattered around the yard like an exploded star, and
Lucan followed the line of wreckage upwards until he saw the broken
window, open to the air and the light. No sounds came from the
hole, but he expected the worst. He groaned and clutched his head.
Cirrus was right; Lucan wasn't a protector.
I'm just a failure
once again
, he thought.

Cassandra
rushed around the side of the house and skidded to a halt when she
saw Lucan kneeling in the grass.

"Lucan, what
are you doing?" she hissed, rushing forwards and pulling him up.
Lucan swerved and shoved her away, moving slower and feeling his
legs for any size of breakage. Cassandra watched him impatiently.
"Don't tell me you fell out of a window."

"I was
thrown
out of a window, thank you very much," Lucan said
through gritted teeth. He didn't quite know how he hadn't broken
his neck but here he was. He motioned up to the silent third floor.
Cassandra followed his eye line and shook her head.

"The Riders are
on their way. Maggie has more than enough time to grab the symbol
and if all the help we can give her is a little fresh air –"
Cassandra started to jog back around to the front of the house,
"she is better off by herself. We must prepare ourselves for the
raid. And I've left Martin by himself on the front steps."

Lucan grabbed
her arm and pulled her back.

"Maggie can't
resist on her own," he pleaded. "You need to go up there and get
her out."

Cassandra
yanked her arm from Lucan's grasp and stuck a finger an inch under
his nose.

"If you haven't
learned to trust the girl by now, you're a damn fool." She started
to move away again, throwing back over her shoulder, "Not everyone
is as malleable to temptation as you are."

Lucan took one
more look upwards before turning towards the sound of running
footsteps. The cavalry had arrived. The Riders were here.

Time to bring
the house down.

***

I stood over Cirrus as
he pushed himself further away into a corner, clutching the pocket
watch on his waistcoat. Watching him tremble should have made me
feel triumphant – after all, he had lorded over me like a performer
pulling the strings of a marionette. But somehow it wasn't as easy
I thought it was going to be to kneel down and push away his
scrambling hands. He quickly became pathetic and after a few
moments I sat back on my heels in frustration.

Cirrus grew
still on the floor.

"Would you
please . . . close the curtains?" he whispered.

I sighed and
stood up, walking back to the window and throwing the curtains
across the daylight. The room was immediately enveloped again in
shadow, even though I left a large slit across the middle. In the
silence that fell over the room, I could hear movement around the
house. Cirrus heard it too and rose to his feet. He looked over at
me seriously.

"They're coming
for me," he said.

"They are," I
replied.

Cirrus walked
down the shadows of the room. I kept to the other side of the line
of sun splitting the floor and found myself facing him in the
middle. He reached a hand in his pocket and pulled out his watch. I
ran a finger underneath the chain of the necklace and lifted the
dreamcatcher from my breast. The foot of sunlight between us sang
and the sounds outside grew louder.

"What was the
use of it all, Maggie?" Cirrus asked suddenly. "The running and the
fighting? The seduction and the dreaming? The Reign Walk wasn't
played between us, was it? It all went wrong."

We regarded
each other over our shaft of sun as suddenly the house began to
shake with the sound of people crashing through the downstairs,

"Shall we die
together, Maggie?" he asked.

The ground
trembled beneath me, but it was impossible to move. My necklace was
sending shivers down my body and as the tingling bled into my
veins, it became not only a feeling, but a noise. It sounded like
the rushing of a river made up of metal grains of sand and
thousands of silver sparks hitting each other in the smallest of
shocks.

Footsteps grew
louder as the sounds rushed further and further through the house.
The crashes of furniture and hammers through plaster thundered
across the floorboards. Cracks snacked across the walls
lightning-fast as plaster dust rained down from the rafters. Cirrus
stayed stock still, the watch swaying in his hand, and as the doors
to the third story workshop burst open to reveal a group of rebels,
led by Lucan, he didn't even bat an eyelid. His green eyes were
locked onto mine.

The men were
spreading powder along the walls and as quickly as I took it all in
I felt my body lift from the floor and move backwards. A pair of
strong arms was wrapped around my waist and the shock of the sudden
rise momentarily took away my breath. I reached my hand out towards
Cirrus with a shriek – that damned pocket watch! – but missed the
gold by a few inches. His hand drew out to mine and for a brief
moment my fingertips met his. A shock ran through my body and the
chain around my neck broke.

I screamed and
screamed as the air was suddenly filled with the sound of voices
shouting orders and moving around the room while I was dragged
backwards down the stairs. My last vision of Cirrus was him
standing behind the line of light, allowing the men to rush about
him like water in a stream, and smiling. Smiling because in his
hands was my necklace. Smiling because when I was pulled backwards
by Lucan, his hands had come away from my breast with the symbol. A
crack of lightening nearly split my ears and I smelled burning.

He had won.

And all I could
do was watch the backwards journey of my ascent – lit up now while
the rebels swarmed through broken windows and pulled down curtains
– as Lucan carted me out of the house and onto the lawn.

The grass was
teeming with men and woman dressed in dark greens and browns. The
Riders were indeed here. Their faces flashed before my eyes as
Lucan pulled me far away from the lawn. I passed Martin sitting by
himself away from the masses, staring at his hands. I was still
screaming as Lucan wrestled me onto the grass and grabbed my
face.

"Do not move,
Maggie."

"The necklace,
he has the symbol!" I yelled, trying desperately to stand up. Lucan
pushed me back on the ground and held me there.

"Maggie, be
still!" he yelled and we both looked over at the mansion, where the
soldiers were pouring out of the doors as rats flee a ship. When
they had cleared a shout rang out, echoing off the sudden quiet,
and I watched while a trail of fire sailed through the air and into
the first story window. The tinkle of glass sounded almost charming
before the house crashed around itsellf, imploding in on itself
like a failed attempt at a paper airplane and bringing everything
down with it.

"It doesn't
matter anymore," Lucan said as dust clouded the air with bits of
cement and patches of fabric. I couldn't comprehend; it all seemed
so far away. Somewhere in that house was Cirrus, buried in rubble
or blown into small bits. I shut my eyes and tried to push away the
images of smooth, gray suit fabric burning at the edges; ash blond
hair crinkling up against the heat; gold chain metal melting down
around the white, smooth skin of a gripped fist.

Running feet
surrounded me and I rose off the ground yet again. Lucan draped me
across his arms and held me tightly against his chest. Without the
necklace I felt strangely empty. A kiss whispered on the top of my
head and Lucan was walking us across the lawn, following the crowd
of rebels running in victory away from the house of Cirrus. The
smoke of the burnt away wreck lingered in my nostrils. Gunshots
pealed through the morning sky, accompanying the authorities' rush
to the scene and as we moved farther away and the sounds grew
fainter, I lay my head against Lucan's warm chest and listened to
his heartbeat.

And pulsing
along to my heartbeat was the faint remnants of the dreamcatcher, a
thin veil of remembered weight and the phantom memory of heat. It
was the only feeling that made me think again, dare me to hope that
it wasn't over yet. If the connection was there, so was Cirrus.

Chapter
25

Darkness and darkness and darkness. Swimming
lost in a sea of black tar was all that awaited me when I went to
sleep. I could forget the feeling of failure and the loss of a
birth right I never knew I had before a week ago. My lips wouldn't
remember Lucan's kisses or the uncontrollable yearning for Cirrus
that clenched my gut. I couldn't feel his fingers or my toes, the
emptiness the symbol had left behind or the conflicted feelings of
guilt and something else – something more dangerous that dawdled in
my recesses of my mind. I would only have the welcome darkness to
spirit me away from the fact that I was getting so emotionally
messed-up, Elliot Smith would probably have stabbed
me
in
the chest. Fuck me, right?

The moment
after I woke up on the forest ground, I desperately clung to those
treasured moments of ignorance. I pretended I was back on the
ground of my uncle's dirty apartment, where the wind blew in
through the open window and the mud and dust smeared across my
cheek was paint and crumbs. It worked for a few seconds and the
comfort of it all was totally worth the crash back to earth that
inevitably followed when the sounds of the camp began to focus.
Reality smashed over me in a thunderclap and I smelled the wet of
the forest floor and felt the heavy arm of Lucan thrown over my
stomach.

Night had
fallen. I must have slept through the entire day. I don't remember
much besides allowing Lucan to carry me across the estate lands and
back into the forest. At some points we paused and I drank or ate.
And at one point we stopped for a longer length of time because
here I was, spread out on the ground in the middle of a guerrilla
army.

I turned over
gently and studied the man still sleeping beside me. His face was
calm and untroubled. A dark shadow of a beard was beginning to form
up his cheek bones and across his chin, but besides from that I
could see how young he was. Asleep he wasn't so angry. He had a
leaf near his nose that made his face twitch every minute or so. He
didn't snore. He was warm. He was safe. And as the camp kept moving
around us, I felt scared to move myself for fear of waking him up
and seeing the wolf appear again in his eyes.

Twigs crunched
by my head. I looked up to see Cassandra standing above us. She
reached down and helped me to sit up, pushing Lucan's heavy arm off
my body. I half expected a hug or pat on the back – well done on
staying alive, Maggie – but I should have known Cassandra wasn't
one for fond reunions. That was fine with me, as I wasn't feeling
so keen on hugging it out, either. Plus, she was looking at me in
that serious way that made me feel like bad news was going to come
bitch slap me in the face.

Lucan grunted
and turned over on his back, rubbing his eyes with two large fists.
He blinked blearily and sat up. When he saw Cassandra he
immediately coughed and scooted a foot or two away, as if she
hadn't already seen him lying next to me.

"How are you
feeling, Maggie?" Cassandra asked. I shrugged self-consciously.

"Fine. Tired.
Hungry." I rubbed a place on my back where a root must have been
digging in. "Sore."

"Alive," Lucan
added. I chose to ignore him.

"Well, you're
all of those things, true enough," Cassandra said. She ran a hand
over her brow and looked around at her companions settling down for
the night. What had appeared to be a large operation looked rather
small scattered amongst the trees. Cassandra seemed nervous and
unsteady – two things that rang alarm bells in my mind. Lucan must
have noticed, too.