Hotbloods 5: Traitors

“You are the one who couldn’t open a simple lock.” I could have sworn a tiny smirk lifted the corners of Kaido’s mouth. If he’d made it any more obvious, Sarrask would’ve lunged for him.

“So you didn’t find anything?” I repeated, distracting the brothers from an imminent brawl.

Again, Sarrask shook his head. “Nothing of value. Well, nothing that wasn’t shut away.”

I thought about mentioning the silver box device that Jareth had been using to contact Aurelius, to forge their plans for a coup, but I held my tongue. I doubted we’d find it again, and there probably wasn’t anything on it anymore. Besides, after what I’d seen today, I had no way of knowing how far I could trust Sarrask. His duty toward his queendom was overwhelming, and I couldn’t be sure he’d ever break free of its grasp. Until I could be convinced otherwise, I was going to keep things from him—things he might feed back to someone like Gianne.

Ronad padded down the hallway, rubbing the back of his neck. He’d wiped most of the blood away from his nose, but the bruises had deepened, forming a pattern of purplish camo across his face. He grimaced as he pressed the side of his jaw, evidently in some pain.

“What’re we talking about?” he asked.

“Blowing stuff up,” I replied. His eyes widened. “Jareth mentioned a lever as the soldiers were dragging him out. I know the one he means. It’s connected to a ton of rigged explosives, and we’re going to trigger them, to bring this whole place crashing down. No more evidence, no more secrets, nothing that Gianne can use against any of us.”

Ronad looked shaken. “Are you serious?”

“Very.”

“No way… We can’t just burn everything to the ground. Most of my life is in this place!” He shook his head, his voice cracking. “If we blow it up, we’re not just taking away Jareth’s lab evidence. We’re taking away our history. We’re taking away every game we ever played in these halls, and every story we ever told, and every prank we did. We’re destroying the way Naya and I began and the memories we shared. Her ghost goes with the house, if we burn it all down.”

I smiled sadly. “I know it’ll be hard, but we have to do this. If we leave anything, we give Gianne a way to punish this family. That doesn’t just mean the brothers you don’t like and the father you can’t forgive. That means Navan, Bashrik, Lorela—all of them.”

“What if I forget to pick up something of Naya’s? What if I leave something behind? I’ll never be able to get it back again,” he murmured.

I rested a hand on his arm. “You’ve got time, Ronad. Go to her old room, go to the places where Jareth put all of her things, and sift through it all until you have everything you need.”

“Many of her belongings are still in the cupboards. I did not need the space, so I did not move much,” Kaido chipped in. “I will need to gather my own things, but I would be happy to give you a few moments on your own, if that is what you want. I do not like watching sentimental behavior. It makes me uncomfortable.”

I smiled, shaking my head in amused despair. He’d almost managed to say something with real feeling. Regardless, it was as close to an emotional gesture as Kaido could manage, and Ronad seemed to respond in kind.

He patted Kaido on the shoulder. “Thank you.”

“You should probably take this, too,” Sarrask interjected, removing the bracelet from his wrist and handing it to Ronad. “She would’ve wanted you to have it.”

Ronad pulled Sarrask into an awkward hug. “Thank you. You’ve got no idea what this means to me.”

“Yeah, I think sentimental behavior makes me a bit uncomfortable, too,” Sarrask joked, though he hugged Ronad back.

A moment later, they broke apart, with Ronad heading off on his emotional excursion to Naya’s old room to retrieve anything he might want to save from impending doom. Kaido sprinted off toward his lab to save his supplies and experimental data, leaving me and Sarrask alone together. I wondered how many of the bioluminescent plants Kaido would be able to save; the thought of him having to give them up made me feel kind of sad.

“Come on, then. Let’s see what we can find,” I suggested, shrugging off my gloom. “We’ve got a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it.”

I led the way, with Sarrask following me as we headed down the hallway toward the basement. It was weird to think that this was the last time I’d be doing this, even though I’d only been in the Idrax house for a few weeks. I could only imagine how the others were feeling, considering they’d spent most of their lives here. I tried to picture what it would be like to watch Jean and Roger’s house burn to the ground, with every memory going with it. It was too sad to even contemplate.

Forcing all those thoughts away, I focused on the mission at hand. Gianne had backed us into a corner, and now we had no choice but to blow this place sky high.





Chapter Twenty-Two





“Where did all of this come from?” Sarrask asked, touching the chrome walls of the underground tunnels. It didn’t look like he knew anything about the secret passageway. I had to hand it to Jareth: he was a sneaky guy, building all of this right under everyone’s noses. Even now, I realized he must have been planning it for a long time, leading me to wonder just how long he’d had doubts about Gianne’s ability to rule.

I smiled. “I guess your father thought he might need an escape route from the house, in case one of his sons stupidly decided to betray him.”

“If it makes any difference, I wish I hadn’t done it.” His cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

I shrugged. “It makes a bit of a difference, but not to your father. He’s still on his way to life imprisonment. Even without a scrap of evidence to use against him, she’ll keep Jareth where she can see him. After all, he’ll be the only one who knows the truth about the elixir.”

“Well, unless we take something.”

His suggestion made me nervous, solidifying my previous fears that he would never truly be on our side. What if he was using this moment as an opportunity to take what he couldn’t get last time? I’d have to keep a close eye on him.

“Why else do you think we’re down here?” I asked, flashing him a grin over my shoulder.

We reached the steps leading up into Jareth’s alchemy lab. The red lever stuck out like a sore thumb, and though I knew what it would mean, a childish part of me was excited to pull it.

I went first, pulling myself up through the gap, brushing the dust off my legs as I stood in the now-familiar space. Nothing had changed since the last time I’d been here. Ducking down under the utensil tray, I yanked away the black box I’d put there, storing it for later. I really wished they’d made the pockets on Vysanthean pants bigger; I was starting to get bruises from all the waistband storage I was being forced to undertake.

“What was that?” Sarrask asked suspiciously.

“A comm device Navan gave me. Jareth confiscated it—I thought I’d take it back.”

Apparently satisfied by my explanation, Sarrask wandered over to the far corner of the room, while I stole the key from under the utensil tray and went to the cabinet drawers, unlocking them one by one and sifting through the contents. I made sure to snatch up the journal that Ronad had been so angry about, but it was bulkier than I’d expected. I’d need a bag of some kind. I pulled an apron down from one of the wall hooks and fashioned it into a canvas tote, piling my pilfered goods inside.

As I searched through the cabinets, I quickly realized there was nothing useful inside. All the notebooks and sheets of paper that I’d presumed were linked to the elixir were just old documents about bygone experiments, according to Sarrask. Everything was old.

“What’s that?” I asked, turning back to Sarrask. He was fiddling with a vault tucked away under one of the workbenches, behind the fa?ade of desk drawers. I could see how I’d missed it the first time I’d looked around; the painted panel was pretty convincing.

“A safe of some kind,” he replied, typing in a few codes.