Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) (38 page)

The boy moaned, shifted a little, and Masyn ran her fingers through his hair. He calmed at her touch.

Masyn had never been one for tenderness—it was detrimental to survival, but Castor, in the last few days, had somehow brought it out in her. He had the same walls, all from the same source, and yet always reached out to her. She had seen it as an annoyance before, a sign of weakness, but now she wasn’t so sure. If she ever had the opportunity again, she wouldn’t push him away so quickly.

The cell rattled as someone landed on top of it. The impact was soft and muted, not the clumsy footfalls of a Menagerie, and Masyn frowned. There was only one person it could be.

An observation slit at the top of the cell slid open. As it did, the sounds of the roaring crowd somewhere above grew louder. A figure peered down from above and Masyn looked back. Avril’s look was a mixture of emotion. Masyn’s, she knew, was pure hostility.

“Come to gloat?” Masyn asked. “You can save your breath.”

Avril said nothing, just looked at Castor on the floor. “How is he?”

“You saw what they did. Twenty of them kicking and beating him while he was unarmed and already hurt. There’s no honor in that, your people have no understanding of the word.”

“They aren’t my people.” Avril’s voice was heated, but Masyn scoffed.

“Really? Then why aren’t you in this cell? You can’t even see how much you’ve changed, Gideon wouldn’t even recognize you.”

“Gideon’s gone, Masyn.”

“So that’s your reason to spit on everything he taught you? You must never really have believed it.”

Avril’s hand shook on the edge of the observation slit. “My father told me what Holt did.”

“So what? Holt told me too, why does that justify abandoning everything you used to stand for?”

Avril’s voice lost its edge. “If I had been here…”

“But you weren’t,” Masyn replied. “Your father told you what Holt did … but did he tell you
why
?”

Masyn educated Avril, telling her everything. What Archer had been about to do, what Holt had stopped from happening. As the words spilled out, Masyn could see the horror grow in Avril’s eyes.

“Brother or no brother, that wasn’t right,” Masyn said. “Holt stopped it. He sacrificed basically the same things you did in order to do so, and I would have done the same. What about you, Avril? What would
you
have done in that room?”

Avril was silent a long time. “Maybe I could have stopped him from becoming what he became. Maybe it’s my fault.”

“Gideon told me once that holding on to the past is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else,” Masyn said, her voice dropping. “In the end,
you’re
the one who gets burned.”

Avril studied Masyn quietly. “I can get you out of here, both of you. You can escape, before the match.”

Whatever sympathy Masyn had for Avril fell away, and she stared back with disdain. “You really have changed, haven’t you? I’m supposed to run away now, like some scared little Outlander?
No.
We’ll face what comes, we’ll show all of you what
real
strength is. Maybe then you’ll remember who you are.”

“You’re going to die, Masyn,” Avril simply said.

“When did
that
become more important than honor?” Masyn held Avril’s gaze a second more, then looked down. “Go away, Menagerie. No one knows you here. No one wants to.”

The observation panel slid closed and Avril was gone. Masyn sighed and looked back to Castor on the floor. He moaned again, and she took his hand in hers.

*   *   *

RAVAN SAT CROSS-LEGGED NEXT
to Holt, her stare fixed on the cell floor. She’d worked loose a rusted screw, but not to use for escape. Instead, she was carving pictures into the old, faded walls and floor of the cell, drawing the same thing, over and over: two mountains, trees in front of them, a body of water in front of that. It was crude, but Holt could make out what it was. Soon the only place that wasn’t full of the image would be the ceiling.

“Why are you drawing that?” Holt asked. He wasn’t sure she’d even noticed the cell being lowered and moved to the main lift for the Nonagon, or heard the muted roar of the crowd above.

“Keeps my mind off being in here.” Her voice was shaky. “I hate being locked up.”

It was her worst fear, being restrained, Holt knew, held in some tight, confined place, and this cell certainly qualified. “I meant why are you drawing
that
?”

“It’s the only thing I
can
draw,” she replied. “You remember that guy when we were kids? Taught you how to paint in that super-simple-looking method on TV?”

“Bob Ross?” Holt asked, surprised he remembered the answer.

“Yeah. Him. I got it from his show, my mom watched it all the time, not that I know why. She never painted a damn thing. Anyway, it was either this or play tic-tac-toe with myself.”

“You know, not long from now, you might actually miss being locked up.”

Ravan shook her head. “No way. We aren’t getting out of this, but at least I get to go down being free, not caged up like some animal. The Nonagon, far as I’m concerned, is a much better option.”

Holt watched her carve the final squiggly lines on the water, then shuffle back and start again on one of the floor’s remaining blank spots. He understood the desire to not die in here, rather outside where she had some measure of control over her fate. The problem was, Holt wasn’t completely convinced they were done.

Now that he was coming back, now that he was feeling again, he wasn’t so eager to just throw in the towel. As bad as the Nonagon was, he’d survived worse. The battle at the Severed Tower came to mind, the onslaught of the Mas’Erinhah, the huge Spider walker falling and crushing him. He’d died there, but he’d come back. If he could make it out of that, he wasn’t going to just resign himself to death now. Of course, none of that was to say it would be easy.

“How many Nonagon matches have you seen?” he asked, starting to think of possibilities. Only one stood out, an impossibly insane one.

“Dozens, I guess,” Ravan replied, concentrating on her mountains. “Why?”

“How many teams have you seen
beat
it?”

She stopped carving and brushed back the long lengths of black hair out of her face so she could stare at him dubiously. “No one’s beaten the Nonagon in three years.”

“That just means someone’s due up,” Holt replied. “Beating the Nonagon is the only way out of this.”

“How do you figure?”

“Surviving it doesn’t help us, Tiberius will just keep throwing us into it over and over until we’re dead. He wants a show. But if we
beat
it … we get the Boon.”

The Nonagon had two victory conditions: surviving it and
beating
it. The Boon was only given out to those teams who beat it, and it functioned a lot like a Menagerie Solid. If it was within the power of Tiberius to grant, he had to do so. Of course, no winner had ever used it for anything other than sparing their own lives and being let free, which was sort of the genius of the design. You only really had one option when it came to the Boon, but Holt could think of another. Maybe the one loophole that could get them out of this mess.

“You really think Tiberius is going to let that happen?” Ravan asked.

“He doesn’t have a choice; they’re his rules, and rules are everything here. Whoever beats the Nonagon gets the Boon, and the Boon trumps it all.” The next part, Holt said pointedly. “Even the rule that says only Consuls can challenge him for leadership.”

He could see Ravan understood what he was implying, and she seemed even more skeptical. “We get the Boon, I challenge Tiberius, kill him, and take his place?
That’s
your plan?”

“Who’s better set up to pull it off than us? We have our experience, we know the arena. Not to mention two White Helix. Even without their rings, they’re unbelievably agile.”

Ravan’s hard look began to soften as she thought it through. “We give them the high parts,” she mused, thinking, “the combination unlocks.”

“Exactly. You said it yourself, you wanted to go out with your fate in your own hands.”

The sounds of the crowd above them seemed to be growing louder, more violent. Ravan shook her head and looked back down to the floor. “Well, it’s not like there’s anything left for us to lose. Is there?”

Holt could see defeat in the way she held herself. She had no real hope of any of this working, no real faith. He didn’t blame her, it seemed crazy even to him, but something about how distinctly she had gotten to this hopeless place bothered him. Ravan had always been, if nothing else, full of confidence. Even in the face of death, she laughed and shrugged and waded into the conflict. It was something he’d always found attractive about her: her vitality, how alive she was. Now it was gone, that vibrancy, and it was his fault. His actions had led to her losing everything she ever wanted or achieved, had led to her being in this cell with him right now. It was a tough pill to swallow.

“I’m sorry I got you into this, Rae,” Holt said, his voice soft. “I really am.”

Ravan didn’t react the way he expected. She smiled, exhaled a short, sarcastic breath. “Been thinking about the past a lot,” she said, without looking up. “I told you about my father.”

“Yeah,” he answered. She’d told him all the details, and Holt knew he was the only person she had ever shared that truth with. He hated that man almost as much as Ravan did, for what he’d done.

“I left home when I was twelve,” she continued. “Stole some money, bought a bus ticket. Right clothes, right mind-set, it’s amazing how much older you can seem. No one even questioned me. I don’t know if I ever told you, but I had a little sister, about two years younger. I could see him looking at her the same way, you know? But while I was there, he never laid a hand on her. I knew when I left that would change, but I left anyway. Left her there, with him. Invasion happened pretty quick after that, don’t know if she made it or not.”

She looked up at him, and he could see in her eyes just how haunted she was.

“Out of all the things I’ve done, all the choices I’ve made, you know what’s funny?” she asked in a hoarse voice. “I don’t regret any of it. Even leaving her with him, I don’t regret it at all. What does that say about me? About who I am?”

“You were twelve years old, Ravan.”

“So the hell what? That doesn’t matter.”

“It
does.
” He tried to be firm, to get through to her. “If you could go back, right now, as you are, what would you do?”

She didn’t hesitate to answer. “Save her.”

“
Exactly,
” Holt replied. “The reason you don’t regret it is that you know there’s no call for regretting things you had to do, and in all the time I’ve known you, I never once saw you do something you didn’t have to. Except … when it came to me.” The last bit stung more than he expected.

“No.” Ravan shook her head, kept staring at him. “That I had to do too.”

Holt held her gaze. He knew she meant it, wished he could repay her somehow, but really what else was there at this point, besides words?

“I’m sorry I never said thank you,” he said.

Ravan studied him back evenly, though he was unsure what exactly she was thinking or what she felt. He’d hurt her a lot recently, but he was glad she was here.

“What about you?” she asked. “What do you regret?”

Holt felt uneasy. “I have to play too?”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing? Dining on ashes?”

Holt was unsure how to respond. Not because he didn’t know the answer, but because he wasn’t sure how it would be received. Ravan could see his conflict, and her stare turned curious about what he would say.

Then the cell shook as it began to slowly move. They could hear the hydraulics of the giant lift begin to slowly push them toward the Nonagon.

It was time, apparently. They were being moved into position.

“Great…” Ravan said as she stood up, staring at the small door to the cell. “Now that I think about it, maybe I do have a few regrets.”

Holt turned to Ravan, and for the first time in a long while really saw her, this person who had sacrificed more for him than anyone he’d ever known. He thought of all he’d done to her, all the pain he’d caused, and for no other reason than that her feelings had always come second to his. She was beautiful, standing there, and he found it a tragedy it was only now, at the end, that he really saw it.

“Hurting you,” Holt told her. She looked at him, confused at what he meant. “My biggest regret. I do it over and over, I know that, and it kills me every time. You said before, you didn’t think that I see you, but I do, Ravan. No one has ever felt … more like home to me. No one’s ever given up as much for me. I
see
you.” She stared at him, almost stunned. Clearly these were words she never expected to hear. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now, or what’s waiting for us outside, but I promise you this. We’re going to beat this thing, we’re going to get to the other side, and after we do … I will never,
ever
hurt you again.”

Ravan’s eyes glistened, she stared at him more intently than she ever had. “Never’s a long time.”

“Yes, it is.”

She studied him a moment more, her eyes moving over every part of him … then she stepped forward, grabbed him by the shirt, and pulled him to her roughly. The kiss was deep and long, and the reality of what they were about to face faded out for a moment. It was unlike any other kiss he’d had with her. She had always been passionate, and there was an intensity to it, but there was something else too. Something deeper, as if she had finally surrendered the walls around herself that blocked such things, and the release that came from finally expressing it was powerful. He felt her emotions for him in that kiss, and it stirred things, warming him, bringing him back, and the same feelings flowed from him to her.

Ravan pulled away and stared into his eyes. “See you on the other side then.”

31.
NONAGON

HOLT WINCED AS HE STEPPED
into the bright sun. The lift had brought them up in the back center of the arena, near where the dirt ground encroached onto the metallic floor that covered the place’s giant collection of hydraulics and parts.