Fae (19 page)

And then I remember that
today is my day off from training. Of course they haven't mounted a
search. They must assume I'm off playing somewhere. But Cailen.
Hadn't he told anyone I'd run off towards the darkest, deepest
parts of the orchard?

My skin tingles with worry
and I start to run. I pass the broken fountain and speed through
the black courtyard without stopping. When I turn the corner into
the patio reserved for my family and our friends, I pull up short.
Galen and Cailen are standing with their backs to me. Of course,
that's not enough to surprise me. What does that is the young girl
standing with them.

Cailen isn't paying any
attention to her--he's far too busy playing with a flock of white
seeds that float above his head. He makes them dance in a
complicated pattern, and then tears them apart with a gust of
wind.

The girl is the only one
who's noticed me. She smiles slightly to say hello. I'm frozen. My
limbs refuse to work because I know without question that this girl
is Anna.

And then I realize that
Cailen must not be ignoring her, after all. He's showing off. And
why wouldn't he? With her long, red hair and clear ivory skin, the
girl is beautiful. She could rival any Watergatherer in
looks.

Suddenly, I'm queasy and I
don't know if I can stay standing. I run from the patio straight to
my room. I try to avoid the bulk of the palace by going through the
servants' hallways, but just moments after I throw myself onto my
bed, crying into my sheets, my bedroom door opens.

"Go away," I say to
whoever it could be.

Soft footsteps don't even
pause on their way to me. A hand rests on my head and I smell
roses. Mother. I turn over and try to smile.

She smiles back at me, but
her eyes—her gorgeous, ice blue eyes—are pinched with worry. My
mother is breathtaking. Her golden hair makes mine look like straw,
her peaches and cream skin a painful reminder that my pale features
will never be as beautiful. But then, she is a
Watergatherer.

Her presence is enough to
make my pulse slow down, my stomach untwist. When she's around, I
have a hard time even remembering what's bothering me.

"Why the tears?" she says
in her tinkling, watery voice. It's like music. I sigh,
content.

But then I remember,
despite her being right here with me, that Cailen is no longer
mine. I don't even try to stop the tears from pouring down my
cheeks. I need my mother's comfort. I need it because the more I
think about what I've lost, the more I lose the ability to
breathe.

She cradles me in her
arms. "Tell me, my love."

I snort back the tears to
get the words out. "Cailen is going to be bonded."

She laughs. It is so sweet
and so dismissive, I almost believe I must have misunderstood
everything. "What makes you think that?"

But I remember everything
that happened this morning as if it were just seconds ago and I
know that my mother is wrong to dismiss my words. "Cailen told me
and I just saw him with the girl he's to be bonded
with."

My mother's arms tighten
around me and she falls silent. Her presence is no longer sweet. I
can tell she wants to leave me, but she stays. After several more
minutes of this, I can't take the tension anymore, so I give her
the excuse she craves.

"I think I just want to be
alone right now." I rip myself from her grasp and move to the far
end of my bed. She leaves shortly after without a word.

***

Time passed and no
Soltakian came to even talk to me. All the weight I'd gained
since
Sho'ful
would be lost in no time. That alone made my eyes burn with
tears. Everything I'd gotten back, they were ripping from
me.

And my reacquired memories
did nothing to comfort me. Cailen must have lied, somehow. As I
thought about it, though, I realized it probably wasn't too hard
for him. Since he was the only other Auri I'd spent a lot of time
with, how was I to know how drilium affected us? And hadn't I felt
the energy coming off everyone I passed on Cailen's
ship?

I let my head drop between
my shoulders. I didn't want to do it anymore. Fight...love...fight
for love. None of it.

Though I didn't need to, I
closed my eyes. I didn't want to be reminded of the similarities
between this place and
Sho'ful
. And I really didn't want to
think about how this was much worse.

Like how on
Sho'ful
I at least got
food and water once in a while. Or clothes. That was the worst.
They couldn't even give me my dignity. So no, I couldn't dwell on
that stuff or I'd really end up hating them. And I couldn't help
them fight the Fae'ri and Mamood when they finally came to their
senses if I hated them.

Because I would get out of
this. Even though at the moment I just wanted it all to end, I knew
eventually even that would change. They couldn't break my
will.

And then I remembered that
they hadn't fed me and maybe they didn't care about breaking my
will. Not when starving someone was much easier.

Eventually, I dozed off.
When I woke again, it was only for a few minutes before I went back
to sleep. I was already getting back to the pattern I'd had
on
Sho'ful
. I
wondered if I'd forget everything before this point, too. All the
memories I'd gotten back, all the life I'd lived in these two short
months. Meir.

Oh, Meir. I couldn't save
him.

The sound of a door
sliding open jolted me out of sleep. I opened my eyes wide to see
the person entering, hoping the light from the corridor would shine
into my holding cell, but the darkness remained. The room hummed
with the sound of energy rifles and I wondered how they expected to
shoot me if they couldn't see me. They had to be just as blind in
this room as I was.

I was positive there was
more than one person. The humming was too loud to come from one
weapon and I was pretty sure I heard multiple pairs of feet enter.
Something soft and warm touched my lips. Spongy, moist. Food. I
opened my mouth wide to bite down and winced as the skin on my lips
cracked open. Blood trickled down to my chin.

Careful now, I took small
bites of the bread and moaned. Who knew how long I'd been in there,
but I was starving. After I'd eaten every last crumb, they placed
something cold and hard against my lips and nudged my chin up.
Something sticky and sweet spilled across my face, but most of it
got into my mouth. I lapped it up like a rabid animal. My dry
throat practically sang in relief for something,
anything.

But within moments, the
glass was gone.

"Please," my dry throat
rasped. "More."

There was silence. I could
feel the air grow thick with tension. And then someone
spoke.

"Since thousands of our
people have died of dehydration since your arrival, you can feel a
taste of it. And now that we know you can make water for us, you
won't get anything more until you produce enough for all the
soldiers in The Block."

I wanted to scream at
them. Tell them they had no idea what I'd had a taste of in my
life. But instead I sighed, dejected, and said, "At least turn the
lights on. I can't stand the darkness."

Silence, again. There was
some shuffling and scuffling.

"The lights
are
on."

Chapter Six

Prison

I blinked. I blinked
again.

What did he mean the
lights were on? What the hell did he mean?!

"You know what he meant,
Ella."

Shut up, Malik!

He chuckled.

I really hated him. But
that didn't matter right then. What mattered was that no matter how
many times I blinked or in how many different ways I squinted my
eyes, I still couldn't see.

They had to be lying. That
was the only plausible explanation. Of course the lights weren't
on. Because if they were, I'd be able to see. Unless...

No.

I didn't want to think
about it. Not about the way my skull had pounded from the
Mosandarian weapon and how something in my head had exploded before
everything went dark.

No. Please, no.

Tears ran down my face.
The pain in my arms long forgotten. I couldn't be...

I couldn't even think the
word.

"Blind,"
Malik said.
"There.
Don't you feel better?"

A new stream of tears
poured out of my...dead eyes.

Just then I realized I was
an idiot. I could fix them!

My shoulders burned with
the effort, sending shooting pain up and down my arms, but I
managed to make my wings slither out. I held my breath and
waited.

And waited.

Minutes passed and nothing
happened. More minutes, still nothing.

My eyes couldn't be saved.
Whatever they'd done to me, it was permanent.

I wanted...

I didn't know what I
wanted. Mostly I wanted to curl up on the floor and pretend I was
back on
Sho'ful
.
Explain the blindness away. But I couldn't. The restraints on my
wrists wouldn't give. And I didn't really feel like
trying.

Where was Cailen? Why
didn't he come?

It wasn't until I thought
about him that I realized the room was too silent. The Soltakians
had left me alone again. How long had they been gone? I didn't want
to be alone. Not anymore.

"I'm still
here."

Of course. Malik, the guy
I'd killed, the guy I could never seem to get rid of. He was here
with me. How comforting.

"I like to think
so."

I'm going to die here,
aren't I?

"That's up to
you."

Um, no, I think that's up
to my captors.

"Why do you always give
your power away? Why do you let others decide your fate for
you?"

I don't think I have many
options at this point.

"You've got at least three
options."

What are you talking
about?

I waited for his snarky
reply, but none came. I sighed and sank my weight against the
restraints, letting them burn. Pain was my only sense of reality at
that point. My only anchor to the world. Who knew what else I'd
lost? I'd stopped being able to feel my legs long ago, but that
could have been because of the angle in which I sat. Who
knew?

The Soltakians had
destroyed me more thoroughly than the Mamood ever had in the ten
years I was their prisoner. And Cailen. Where
was
he?

Gone, and not coming back.
Not when he had Anna.

Heat raged just beneath
the surface of my skin. How many times had I confronted him with
the truth and he'd just lied straight to my face?

Too many to count. And the
leaf. How stupid could I be, thinking it had been
my
leaf? He could have
picked one any time after he'd seen my wings and guessed the color
would be important to me.

Just thinking about it
brought the heat in my back, the agony to release my power. The
heat struggled with the numbness in my wings, warring with it,
overpowering it until something exploded inside me and red, blue,
and green points of light lit up my world.

I gasped.

The world glittered with
molecules. With my sight gone, the points of light jumped out at me
in crisp clarity. And as I stared, I could detect shapes and
movement I'd never seen before. Right in front of me, the air was
thick with all three different shades, but a few feet away and all
around me were solid blocks of black. The walls. They had to be.
But now I could see beyond the walls. Without the crutch of
traditional sight, I could for the first time ever truly appreciate
the edge my power gave me.

I extended my vision
outward and the twisting, unending corridors of The Block appeared
before me. Thousands of human-like shapes moved through the
corridors. Stripes of red pulsed from an orb in their chests and
flowed down their bodies forming limbs, heads, torsos, every bit of
them. Each human-shape had two blue bunches of light that moved
like waves, in and out, and also sent molecules throughout the rest
of the body. And the green. Who ever would have guessed there were
so many green molecules in the human body? I could see it all and,
like the Marid, I knew there was no distance beyond me. The
human-shapes all the way at the far end of The Block would submit
to my will just as quickly as the two shapes standing right beyond
the black wall in front of me.

A smile ticked at my lips.
A plan was forming and I almost laughed out loud for not having
thought of it before. I guess maybe I thought with my sight gone,
I'd lost the ability to see the points of light, too. And yet, I
had to concede to the fact I hadn't thought about my power much at
all.