Tether (18 page)

But there was something besides wonder lurking on her end of the tether. Her memory of almost getting run over by the truck flashed through my brain, carried along by a current of panic. Selene put up a good front, but she was discovering by degrees just how little she understood about this world that was so unlike her own, and how much of a disadvantage it put her at. It reminded me of how I’d felt when I first came here, how I still felt most of the time.

“Yes, just like the train. It’s got an engine inside of it that makes the wheels turn,” I told her. That was pretty much the extent of what I knew about cars. “But it needs fuel. And electricity.”

“Which it doesn’t have,” Thomas said. He popped the hood of the car and bent forward to examine its guts. “Everything looks in order, but we definitely need a boost.”

“A boost?” Selene repeated. “What’s that?”

“A jolt to bring the battery back to life,” Thomas explained. “Usually you siphon energy off someone else’s battery, but …” He glanced around. “Not much in the way of that here.”

“So what exactly do you two plan to do about that?” Adele asked.

“You said it needs energy.” Everyone swiveled in Selene’s direction, but she hardly seemed to notice. She ran her hand over the car’s innards, sliding her fingertips across cords and cables, lingering on the dead battery.

“Well, she said electricity,” Navin pointed out. “But yeah.”

“We can do that. Give it the boost, I mean.”

“Huh?” Thomas scrubbed his fingers through his hair and stared at Selene. He reminded me so much of Grant in that moment I had to look away. It was too confusing, still, to look at one and see the other. Grant would have made it to California by now. He was already living an entirely different life.

“Sasha and I have a gift,” Selene said. “We can use it to … resuscitate this … vehicle.”

“You can?” Thomas glanced at me.

“Maybe,” I said. It was so hard to explain, what it felt like, what it
was.
“How much juice does it need? We don’t want to short it out. That can happen, right?”

“Yeah,” Thomas said. I wasn’t sure he believed us about the power, but he humored us. “Well, let’s give it a shot.”

I stepped aside to make room for Selene, but she shook her head. “It should be you,” she said.
You need the practice. The better you are, the more powerful we’ll both be, and we’ll need to be at full strength for what’s coming.

What
is
coming?
I asked, but she ignored the question and backed away from me. So did everyone else—it was just the car and me in a face-off. The power crackled in my fingertips, begging to be released, but I didn’t know what made Selene think I could do it. Accidentally making my hands glow wasn’t even in the ballpark of jump-starting a car.

“No way,” Thomas said. “Not a chance, Sasha. She thinks she can start this moto with—with—with her mind or whatever, that’s fine, but let
her
try it.”

“She’s right,” I told him. I was scared of the power, of what it could do and what it
was
doing to me. I felt as if I were sharing my body with a living creature, a dragon coiled up in my chest that raised its head every so often and roared, spitting sparks and fire that raced beneath my skin. But fear wasn’t going to get us anywhere, and it certainly wasn’t going to help us find Juliana. “I need to be able to control it. It’s important.”

“
Why
is it so important?” Thomas asked, lowering his voice.

“I don’t know. It just is.” I went back to the car, turning to Thomas for instructions. “Tell me where to put my hands.”

Thomas pointed. “That’s the battery, but honestly, I don’t know what you should do with your hands. You don’t have positive and negative charges.” He gazed at me with dark, troubled eyes. “This is a terrible idea. You could burn yourself—or worse, stop your own heart.”

“That won’t happen,” Selene assured him, although I couldn’t fathom how she was so certain. “Faith, Sasha.
Listen.
”

Adele scoffed. “Faith? Look, I don’t know who you think you are, but if you don’t cut this little act out right now—”

“It’s not an act,” Selene told her. “Sasha trusts me. That’s all that matters.”

“Both of you be quiet,” Thomas commanded. “If Sasha’s going to do this, then you shouldn’t distract her.” He gave me an encouraging smile, which was big of him, since he really did not want me to do this. “Take your time. And be careful, all right?”

I swallowed hard and leaned forward.
You don’t need to touch it,
Selene said, and I lowered my hands so that they hovered over the battery.

Let the power pour through you,
she instructed.
Don’t let it last too long; you don’t want to overdo it. A little bit will suffice.

I closed my eyes and focused on the power, the way it felt as it unfurled and snaked its way down my arms and into my palms. The dragon spread its wings and strained against its cage with so much force I thought the power might burst right through my skin. My whole body seemed to light up, but it was dark behind my eyelids, my vision blotted out by a blackness that roiled like storm clouds as my heartbeat sped up. Power coursed through my hands, and my head spun. I knew I was going to pass out, but right before I lost consciousness, a bright red flare went off at the back of my brain, exploding like a firework. I heard the car’s engine turn over and someone call my name, but then I tumbled into a wide, infinite nothing. Lights-out.

she and Callum escaped, but now it was full daylight, approaching noon. They’d been walking for what seemed like days. She hadn’t realized how much her time in that cell had weakened her. Every step felt like a stumble, every breath like a gasp. She didn’t remember how long it had been since Libertas last fed her, but she’d reached the point where she wasn’t even hungry anymore—just desperately, achingly tired.

As soon as they’d emerged from the tunnel and onto the street, she’d known exactly where they were, because towering over them like a sentinel was Thirteen Bells. It was the defining landmark of the Tattered City. An enormous campanile built by a long-ago mayor as a symbol of wealth and power, it was an expensive project that served precisely zero real purpose, so Thirteen Bells was widely regarded as a folly. But it was certainly one of a kind.

The flu was working its way through her body; she began to cough hard, and Callum put a hand on her waist, steadying her.

“Juli, stop,” he said. “You have to rest.”

“No,” she said once the fit had passed. “We have to get to Sophie. She’ll help us.”

Sophie Halliday was the daughter of the congressman who represented the Illinois Dominion, and thus the Tattered City. She and Sophie had attended Lofton together, but the girls hadn’t spoken much
since Juliana left school. It had been a strange year, and she’d been busy with other things
—
specifically, planning a wedding to the boy who was now holding her upright. Guilt stung her heart; if she’d just stayed at the Castle, none of this would have happened. She would’ve married Callum and started building a life with him. They’d both be safe, and they wouldn’t be here in the Tattered City, fleeing in terror from people who wanted to use them.

But she knew that wasn’t true. As grateful as she was for Callum now, and as deeply as she’d grown to care for him these past few weeks, she’d been a different person two months ago. She would’ve loathed him on sight—in a way, she’d loathed him all her life, or at least the idea of him. She would’ve made him miserable, and vice versa. So perhaps this was the tiny sliver of hope she kept searching for. Everything she’d suffered—everything she’d done—had led her to him.

She wanted to talk to him about it. She wanted to confess, to stop pretending and be real with him, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She didn’t want to see the look of pain and disgust in his eyes when he found out he’d been betrayed by her and duped by Sasha. She couldn’t stand to watch him walk away. Callum was the only good thing in her life at the moment—him and the possibility of sanctuary Sophie provided.

First, though, Juliana had to remember where Sophie lived. She hadn’t been to the Tattered City in years; the KES had deemed it not safe enough for official state visits. But now that she was there, Juliana was starting to see how bad the damage was. Everything was dilapidated and crumbling, even in the North End, once a wealthy and thriving sector. Buildings were plastered with pro-Libertas propaganda, doors and windows tagged with antiloyalist graffiti. She’d lost count of how many times she’d seen the Libertas rallying cry
—We Serve No Government—
on handmade signs displayed in windows. In their ragged state, she thought she and Callum might stand out, but everyone they passed seemed as fatigued and hopeless
as she felt. Their lives had been stripped bare by revolution and war and their leaders’ indifference, and it wasn’t as though it had happened overnight.

Thankfully, the congressional mansion in the Tattered City was a local landmark. Juliana and Callum followed the signs meant for tourists—back when people came to the Tattered City on purpose—to Sophie’s doorstep.

Juliana had been to so many of these official residences, they all started to blend together. Artificially aged to lend an air of historical gravitas and overstuffed with antiques for a whiff of old money, the houses themselves had always seemed like imposters. They were nothing like the Castle, with its refined elegance and tech upgrades, and she was almost embarrassed by them. But when they turned the corner onto Sophie’s block, she stopped in surprise. The house was barely visible behind a ten-foot-tall metal wall, and the private security guards stationed outside the gate had submachine guns propped on their shoulders. She’d never seen a civilian house this well defended. If things in the Tattered City were this bad, Sophie might not even be there.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Callum put his arm around her shoulders, perhaps as much for his own comfort as for hers. Being in the Tattered City made Callum understandably nervous. He’d been raised to hate and fear the UCC, and there was a reason for that. The last thing he wanted to do was step willingly into the house of an enemy.

“I’m sure,” she said, taking his hand and squeezing it. “Sophie and her parents will help us. They’re loyal to the crown, not the General. And Sophie’s one of my closest friends.”

Not that Juliana ever really had any close friends. She’d been popular in school because of who she was, but she would not have said she was well liked. Sophie was one of the nicest girls she’d hung around with at Lofton, and Juliana did believe she would help, but after only a few weeks spent on the opposite side of a wall from Callum, he was
her best and most trusted friend. Ironically, it had been the lies they’d told each other that had helped form their connection. Without the assumptions and the expectations that came with their real identities, they had been able to get to know each other as themselves instead of their titles. That had made all the difference.

“I don’t like the look of this place,” Callum said. “But if you’re sure.”

“I am.” Truthfully, she didn’t like the look of the place, either. But Juliana wasn’t going to be put off by a little security. Before Callum could protest, she marched up to the guards, who immediately pointed their weapons at her head.

“State your name and purpose here,” one of the guards commanded.

Juliana pushed the hair out of her face and stared at him in the imperious way her mother had taught her. “My name is Princess Juliana Rowan, but you can call me Your Highness. I’m here to see Sophie Halliday.”

“Oh my God, Juli!” Sophie cried, throwing her arms around Juliana’s neck. Juliana had never been good with physical displays of affection, but she let herself relax in the embrace of her old friend. “Where have you been? The reports on the box have all been saying you were kidnapped by …”

She stopped and Juliana turned to follow her line of sight
—
straight to Callum.
“Him,”
Sophie finished with venom. “What’s he doing here?”

“Sophie, listen to me,” Juliana said. She grabbed Callum’s hand. She wasn’t going to let anyone talk about him like that, not to her. “Callum didn’t kidnap me—we were both being held captive by Libertas.”

“Libertas?” Sophie’s expression morphed into one of horror. “But—”

“Can we stay here?” Juliana asked. “Just for a little while, until I can … I don’t know. I’ll think of something.” She closed her eyes
and took a deep breath, doing the mental calculations on who was left in her life she could trust. Once she would’ve said Thomas, but after what she’d done, there was no way he would ever help her.

“Of course,” Sophie said. “My dad’s not here. He was called away to Columbia City this morning. And Mother’s at our house outside Jamestown. You know how she hates the Tattered City.”

Juliana nodded. “What are you doing here? It doesn’t seem safe.”