Tether (23 page)

“Did he have any other siblings?”

“I’m not sure. Like I said, we didn’t often discuss personal matters. But it’s possible.”

I had an aunt. Maybe, if she’d married and had kids, I had an uncle and cousins. An actual, honest-to-goodness family in Aurora. I promised myself that I would find them someday. When all of this was over, I was going to track them down and meet them face to face, and I was going to bring Thomas with me. Maybe the big issue in my life wasn’t choosing a universe to call home; maybe it was figuring out a way to balance them both.

“If Dad didn’t want to participate in Operation Looking Glass, why did he take the assignment?”

“He was young and brilliant, and his country was asking him to serve,” Dryden said. “What would you have done?”

Thomas entered the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. “Is that coffee?”

“Help yourself,” she said. “There are mugs in the cupboard next to the stove.”

Thomas leaned over the sink and splashed his face with cold water. “Everybody’s up,” he said, drying off with a dish towel. “We’re going to leave in about thirty minutes.”

“I’ll go get Selene,” I said, rising from my chair. Thomas looked out the window over the sink and stiffened. “What is it?”

“Motos coming up the drive,” he said. Dryden stood so quickly her chair clattered to the floor. “They look like KES.”

“How do they know you’re here?” Dryden demanded. “Who did you tell?”

“Nobody!”

“Your moto? Could it have a tracker on it?”

“I looked carefully before we left Warren’s Run. I didn’t find anything.”

“Amateurs,” Dryden muttered. “Okay, get all your people together and go out the back door. There will be a path to your left that goes into the woods—take it. There’s a van in a clearing half a mile from the house; the doors are unlocked, and the keys are under the driver’s seat. The path will take you through the woods and dump you on a country road that leads to the Interdominion Roadway. Go
now.
”

“What about you?” I asked. Thomas grabbed my hand, but I pulled away. “Come with us!”

Dryden shook her head. “I’ll only slow you down.”

“But they’ll—”

“I know what they’ll do,” she said. Horror dawned on me as Thomas dragged me out of the kitchen and down the hall. The KES weren’t coming for
us;
they were coming for
her.
Dryden had been hiding from them for ten years, and we’d led them straight to her.

“We have to help her, Thomas,” I protested as he shoved me out the back door. Adele thundered down a nearby staircase with Cora, Navin, Tim, and Selene in tow, while Sergei and Rocko burst out of the living room clutching black duffel bags and hard briefcases.

“I know,” he said, pulling out his gun. Adele did the same, but he shook his head. He repeated Dryden’s instructions word for word. “You’ve got to get everyone out of here.”

“We’re not leaving you behind, are you crazy?” Adele demanded. I clutched Thomas’s sleeve, but he stepped out of my reach. Panic flooded my body—this wasn’t what I meant!

“I’ll be right behind you,” he said. “I’m just going to give her some cover, that’s all.”

“You can’t do that alone, man,” Tim said, pulling out his gun. “I’ll help.”

Thomas nodded, and Adele puffed up as if she was going to explode. “What, you’re going to let him stay and you’re ordering
me
off?”

“You’re my second, Nguyen, and it’s your job to get stuff done,” Thomas snapped. “The most important thing is to protect the two of them”—he pointed to Selene and me—“so do it.”

Adele took a deep, angry breath into her lungs, then expelled it in a huff. “Come on,” she said, stepping through the back door. “Let’s move.”

I wanted to insist on staying with Thomas, but I knew I shouldn’t. I didn’t have a weapon or any sort of protection except the power, and a little energy wasn’t going to stop bullets. Besides, Selene was running down the path to the trees, and I couldn’t leave her alone with the KES agents. So I followed the group into the woods. We’d just reached the clearing and the van when we heard the loud report of a rifle echo through the still morning air.

“We have to go back,” I said, grabbing Adele by the arm. “We have to help him!”

“You heard my orders,” Adele said. “He wants us out of here.”

“You can’t just abandon them!” I started walking back in the direction of the house, but she motioned to Sergei and the team surrounded me. “Seriously? You’re going to keep me here?”

“No,” Adele said. “
Seriously,
I’m going to pile you and the rest of these people into that van and drive you to the Tattered City, because that is what I was told to do, and so help me, Sasha, if you get in my way—”

“You’ll what? Shoot me?” I stared her down. “I’m not leaving him behind!”

“It looks like you won’t have to,” Selene said, pointing over my shoulder. I turned and saw Thomas and Tim running toward us. I broke into a smile, but Thomas’s expression was grim, and when he reached us, he was all business.

“Let’s go,” he said, bustling Selene and me into the van. In seconds we had pulled out of the clearing and onto the small dirt path that wound through the woods. It was horribly quiet in the car; nobody said anything, but everyone was thinking the same thing. Everyone, maybe, except Selene, who stared out the window at the trees whipping by, lost in some kind of memory or dream of Taiga.

I couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “What happened back there? Where’s Agent Dryden?”

Thomas gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned a sickly shade of white. “They took her. She’s gone.”

two months, when Juliana woke up, there was sun streaming into the room. She’d always been kept underground, never had a window. She closed her eyes and pretended that she was back in her own bed at the Castle. It worked—for about three seconds, and then there was a knock at the door. It was a porter with a lunch tray; she hadn’t realized it until now, but it was after noon.
Bless you, Sophie,
Juliana thought as she shoved food into her mouth in a most unprincesslike way—not that she cared.

After she ate, she showered and dressed, and by the time Callum arrived, she was feeling almost human again.

“Hello,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb with his hands in his pockets and smiling at her. “How’d you sleep?”

She shrugged. “I had a hard time turning my brain off. I keep thinking about my father.”

Callum hung his head. “Me too. I know I only met him once, and he was already … ill. But I admired him.”

“You did?”

“Why do you have that look on your face, like you don’t believe me?”

“Because I don’t believe you.”

“Well, that explains it.” He laughed. “Juli, your father’s reign was not without its controversies, but underneath all the politics, I believe
he was a good man who cared about the people he was born to serve. You and I should consider ourselves lucky if we end up ruling with as much grace and character as he did.”

“If we end up ruling at all,” Juliana said. She still wasn’t sure that she wanted to. After all she’d gone through to get away from that life, was she really going to walk back into the Castle and take her place on the throne as if nothing had happened? Even her feelings for Callum didn’t seem like a good enough reason to spend the rest of her days doing something she hated.

“I’m willing to bet that we will,” Callum replied.

“You’re very optimistic, aren’t you?”

“You’ve said that to me before. I liked it when you called me Cal. How come you stopped?”

Juliana looked away, her face flushed. “Why do you know so much about my father’s reign?”

“I paid very close attention,” Callum said. “I’ve always been interested in history and politics. Probably because I knew I’d never get to do any governing. In Farnham, the heir is the one trained to run the country; the spare just gets to stand in the background during photo ops and sit pretty for an official portrait once every ten years.”

“Well, you are very pretty,” Juliana said. He stepped into the room, closing the distance between them, and took her gently by the chin.

“Juliana?” The low, sexy way he said her name made her heart glow.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Do you really think I’m pretty?”

She burst out laughing, and he silenced her with a kiss. It started off insistent, almost too demanding and intimate—you belong to me, it seemed to say, which was not something Juliana was used to—but as the kiss deepened, and all the thoughts in her brain began to slough off and blow away, the chains around her heart loosened, and she felt capable of all those things Callum saw in her: bravery, goodness,
strength. She wanted so badly to be the girl he thought she was. She wanted him to love her, the real her, and she wanted to be worthy of that love.

They pulled apart, breathless. He rested his forehead against hers. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

“Okay,” she said, pressing a kiss against his cheek. “Tell me.”

“Let’s go for a walk,” he suggested, taking her hand. “It’s such a nice day outside. We might as well enjoy it.”

Juliana and Callum strolled through the gardens of the congressional mansion hand in hand. At first they talked of inconsequential things. He told her funny stories about his brother, Sonny, who was an accomplished practical joker. Not wanting to be outdone, Juliana entertained him with a story of how she and Sophie escaped from their Lofton dorm and dodged all of her KES bodyguards to attend an underground concert in downtown Columbia City—only half of which was made up.

When they were far enough away from the house that Callum could be sure they weren’t going to be overheard, he stopped and gestured for her to take a seat on a nearby bench.

“What’s wrong, Cal?” she asked, giving the nickname a try. She almost didn’t want to call him that, knowing Sasha had, but it made him smile, and she figured it was worth the guilt and jealousy that tugged at her heart.

“I wanted to talk to you about what happened in Adastra,” he said, sitting down next to her. She took his hand. He seemed so worried, she almost didn’t want to hear what he had to say. It wasn’t possible that he knew what she and Lucas had done to Thomas, was it?

“Can I ask you a question first?” It was a pretty transparent attempt to change the subject, but she wasn’t quite ready to talk about Adastra.

He cocked his head inquisitively. “Sure.”

“When we were in those cells, why did you tell me your name was Peter?”

“I didn’t think it would be smart to tell a stranger who I was.”

“No, that I understand,” Juliana said. “I mean, why Peter?”

“Oh,” he said with a laugh. “It’s my middle name. After Peter Corbit, the founder of Farnham. Why did you tell me your name was Sasha?”

“Not sure. It was just the first thing I thought of.” Great, yet another line of questioning she was eager to avoid. “You were saying? About Adastra?”

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “I wanted you to know … I mean, I wanted to tell you that when my mother threw you into the Hole, I …” He squeezed his eyes shut, as if trying to push away the memory. “I worked so hard to get you out, Juli. You have to believe me, I did everything I could, but she refused, and you can’t make my mother do anything she doesn’t want to do. I tried bribing the guards, but they’re too afraid of her, and when she found out about it, she locked me in my bedroom and posted armed men outside my door.”

“Oh, Cal,” she said, rubbing his arm. “It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not!” He took a deep breath. “I couldn’t forgive myself for leaving you. And now that I know where you ended up, I feel even worse. Every time I think about you down there in the dark, afraid and alone, I just …”

“Callum,” she said, putting a firm hand on his shoulder. He hadn’t done anything to her, and she couldn’t let him keep beating himself up over it. He could apologize to Sasha someday if he wanted, although if Juliana had her way, he would never even know she existed. “We’re both okay. I think, when it comes to all this, we should let the past be the past.”

“You can do that?” he asked, as if he couldn’t believe she would ever forgive him. What had she done to deserve someone this good?

“I absolutely can.”

He smiled and kissed her. “I love you, Juli.”

“I—” she began, but at that moment, Sophie came rushing up, looking frantic.

“Juli,” she said, breathing hard, “you have company.”