Hotbloods 5: Traitors

I didn’t want to remind him that my room wasn’t exactly on the way to the kitchen. In fact, it was nowhere near the route to the ground floor, but he seemed embarrassed enough as it was, and I didn’t feel like dredging up something that would only mortify us both.

“Is someone with her?”

“Yeah, Kaido and Ronad are with her right now,” Sarrask replied. “I think she’s going to need more one-on-one sessions with the doctor. Kaido thinks she just needs stronger medicine, but I think she’ll be fine without it. Her body will fight the sickness—that’s why Vysanthean immune systems are so strong. We can recover from most things.”

I realized he was avoiding using the word “therapy,” or anything that related to the ups and downs of mental health. He wasn’t even referring to it as a mental illness, but something that could be cured by sheer willpower and natural antibodies alone. The stigma surrounding it really was a big deal here. I only had to look at the way Kaido was treated to know coldbloods didn’t appreciate things they couldn’t see or understand.

“Did you ask the doctor to come back?” I asked, not knowing what had gone on between my disappearance through the passageway and my encounter with Mort in the lab.

Sarrask grimaced. “Yeah, we asked him to come back as soon as he was available.” He paused uncertainly. “Although, I have to say, I’m not much of a fan of Doctor Ulani.”

I smiled. “I imagine he grows on you.”





Chapter Seventeen





“Are you insane?!” Ronad hissed. “What if Jareth notices it’s missing?”

“We’re going to have to hope he doesn’t,” I said.

Ronad paced around the bedroom. “He’ll probably notice the minute he goes back into his lab. As soon as he sees that it’s gone, he’ll kill us both on sight!” He ran a hand through his hair. “No, we have to take this back now, before he gets home!”

“How about we just read whatever’s on it and get it back to the lab as soon as we’re done? If we do that now, we can return it before Jareth notices it’s gone.” I leaned back against my headboard. “With what’s happened to Lorela today, I’m sure he’ll be too distracted to hide away in his lab tonight. I know it was a big risk, but we need to know what’s on it. Otherwise, what was the point?”

After kicking Sarrask out, unable to bear the awkwardness a moment longer, I’d retrieved the device from under my pillow. Ronad had found me sitting on the edge of the bed, turning the silver box over in my hands. He’d spent the time since Doctor Ulani’s departure sitting at Lorela’s bedside, feeding her ice cubes.

I’d gotten him up to speed on what had happened after my quick dive under the bed—the alchemy lab, and the unexpected entrance of Doctor Ulani himself, who turned out to be Mort, the shapeshifter. Now, we were both coming to terms with the secret device I held in my hands.

“I just can’t believe you stole something from him!” Ronad muttered.

“For the last time, I didn’t have a choice!” I insisted. “We heard footsteps outside the lab, and I made a split-second decision. It might not have been the best one, but I can’t take it back now.”

“And you trust this shifter?” He sounded doubtful.

“I trust him as much as I can trust anyone who used to work for Orion.”

“As long as you’re approaching this with some caution,” he murmured, his tone anxious.

“Of course I am!” I sighed. “I took an opportunity to gain some information. We haven’t exactly been rolling in intel since landing back on Vysanthe.”

Ronad frowned. “He really promised to get in touch with Navan?”

“He said he would, as proof of loyalty. I guess we’ll have to find out how trustworthy he is when he comes back tomorrow.”

“If he comes back tomorrow,” Ronad corrected me.

“Look, can we just find out what’s on this thing?” I asked, feeling frustrated. “If I’d left it in there, we’d never have been able to unlock it again. Mort had something with him that hacks into devices, but he wouldn’t give it to me. If we don’t read this now, we’ll never have the chance again.”

Ronad stopped pacing and moved over to where I sat. “Fine, but let’s make it snappy.”

“You’re going to have to read it out to me. I can’t understand Vysanthean writing,” I said, handing him the silver box. He took it anxiously, his mouth set in a grim line. I leaned in, glancing over his shoulder at the jumble of symbols on the screen.

His fingertips danced across the controls as he shifted things around, opening and closing files and folders, until he found something interesting. It took longer than I’d expected, but at last Ronad froze on one particular page. None of it made any sense to me, but Ronad looked surprised.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“It’s a list of incoming and outgoing transmissions,” he replied. “They’re pretty much all to and from the same comms device.”

“So, he’s contacting someone he shouldn’t be?” I mused. It was the only reason I assumed someone would stick a comms device under a workbench in a hidden lab.

Ronad frowned. “I think you might be right.”

“What else is on there? Are there any messages?”

“Yeah, there are a few… but they don’t make any sense.”

“What do you mean?” I leaned closer, hating the language barrier in the writing. It made me glad that Navan had that nano-chip in his head, so he could understand me, and I could understand him. Yes, he’d made a point of learning some English the old-fashioned way, but I was glad the chip was there to do the extra work for us. This was infuriating.

“One says: ‘The warring snake with two heads will fight in the water, drowning itself, and the battle songs will be sung. A step toward the future, without a single step back,’” Ronad said, his brow furrowed in confusion. “There’s another one, which says: ‘The fighters come together in a clash of twin blades, in the shadow of the mountain where the poles repel. Eyes turned forward, no turning around.’”

I huffed out a deep breath. “Well, I’ve got no clue what any of that means. Do you?”

Ronad shook his head. I let the words sink in. No matter which way I looked at the messages, I couldn’t get them to make sense. Closing my eyes, I let everything slow down, urging my mind to focus on the words. If someone was trying to hide a device, it made sense that they were trying to hide the contents, too. So, the words were intended to be cryptic. But what would be that important, that someone would need to go to all this effort?

“You used to live here—do those words mean anything to you? What images do they conjure up in your mind, if you think about them?” I coaxed.

He closed his eyes, his lips moving silently as he mouthed the words. “Warring water snakes… Battle songs being sung… Water… Song… Songs by the water?” His eyes flew open. “The concert hall by the lake! Water and song—it makes sense! These are locations!”

I nodded excitedly. “The fighters in the shadow of the mountain, where poles repel—that’s talking about the fighting pits! Why would Jareth need to go to the lake, or the fighting pits?”

“Maybe they’re drop-off points, for… information, or some sort of trade. They might have something Jareth wants, or vice versa.”

“Is there anything more comprehensible in there?” The cryptic nature of the messages was almost more infuriating than the language barrier, but I supposed that was the point of secret communication.

Ronad sifted through the files and folders again. I supposed we could go to those locations and figure out why Jareth might have met someone there, but any evidence would probably be long gone. Plus, with Sarrask still watching us and Jareth as suspicious as ever, we could never get out of the house for long enough to check it out.

“There’s one more message, but it’s just as cryptic as the others.”

“What does it say?” I urged.

“‘Blood spills across the land in a billow of silk, while silver glints in sunlight. A delicious sight awaits the hungry warrior, who watches from on high. Lesser evil is an untruth; metamorphosis is honesty.’”

A flicker of something registered in my mind. “What date was it sent? Does it say?”