The little girl nodded. Why shouldn’t she believe? They’d gotten her out, hadn’t they? Lena turned to Hania and laid a hand upon the girl’s heavy black waves of hair, snarled with neglect.
“I’m going to make you better now, Hania.” Her voice trembled, and she cleared her throat as she knelt before Hania. When she spoke again, she was stronger. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save her. I’m sorry. But Lydie would have wanted you to be better.”
Chapter 23
Lena prowled from room to room, checking on the girls, pacing the hall to keep them safe. She couldn’t sleep, so she patrolled.
They’d put Marissa and Hania together. She’d spent much of her time looking in on the two girls. Marissa had climbed into bed with the older girl and curled into Hania’s side. She slept.
Hania did not. Each time Lena cracked the door to look in, Hania’s wide eyes turned to her in silent regard. Lena didn’t say anything. Her own loss had taught her there wasn’t anything to make it better, especially words. The twins had told her that Hania and Lydie had been there together longer than any of the rest of them, including Marin and Phoebe, who had been shipped in separately from other places. It was no wonder Hania was shell-shocked.
Finally, shortly after her fifth restless patrol in the hours before dawn, Lena peeked in, and Hania had fallen asleep. Her thick lashes curled down over the dark hollows under her eyes, emphasizing her poor health. Lena had asked about their condition. It made no sense—if the Council had use for them, why the starvation and abuse? Rose had taken the blame for that. She’d refused to eat. The other girls, especially the older girls, had followed her lead. The guards had tried to force feed them. When that didn’t stop the small rebellion, they’d resorted to abuse.
Lena stood for a long time in the dark and the silence, watching the two girls sleep. She had lost so much. It had never occurred to her she should consider herself lucky.
The Councilors who were responsible would pay for it all. They’d caused too much pain. The only way she could see to purge it was with blood.
The blood rage kept her up. Every time she settled her head on her pillow, images flooded her mind: her mother, Lydie’s chestnut hair blowing softly across her still little girl face, and a child who searched for her, calling out and running toward her, but getting lost in a mist too thick to see through. When she did manage to push them all away, other unwelcome thoughts came boiling up.
Why had she brought the girls back here? Yes, they would be protected from the Council, but she wasn’t na?ve enough to think Fort Nevada didn’t hold any dangers for them. They had tried to keep the arrival of the powered girls as quiet as possible, for the girls’ sakes. But Lena could feel the male energy she had learned to differentiate. It pulsed and curled expectantly, mimicking the excitement of the men and boys behind it as word of their arrival spread.
How could she keep them safe, even from the people who intended to provide the protection they all needed? How would she help them heal the wounds the Dust couldn’t knit back together?
She threw off the blankets and rose to dress, rubbing grit from burning eyes. Her mind refused to let go of the fears and images tumbling through it. She left her room thinking of the cafeteria and maple syrup.
“What do you think you’re doing?” The words were a low and menacing growl echoing down the hallway.
Lena jumped and spun. Alex? If it was, she’d never heard so much fury in his voice before. And that was saying something.
She strode down to the next intersection of corridors and looked both ways. Alex stood at the end of one hall. Between him and Lena in the junction, two teenaged boys were staring at him in frozen terror. From the guilt written plain on their faces, they were up to no good. Had they been sneaking toward the girls’ rooms? Lena’s vision flared red.
Enough.
Alex stalked toward the boys, chin down, eyes narrowed, and repeated his question, his normally husky voice grating and hard.
The boys exchanged a quick look. The shorter one told him, “We heard about girls, sir. Like us. We wanted to meet them….” He drifted off as Alex’s brows lowered further.
“Before dawn? Sneaking, like criminals? What, you were planning to break into their rooms?”
Another look passed between them. “It was a dare,” the taller one supplied.
“A dare? To harass little girls who were rescued from a prison where they were being tortured just yesterday?”
The boys exchanged another miserable look.
“Since you like choosing so much, I’ll give you a choice,” Alex continued. “You can come with me now, and we’ll go upstairs where you will wake the Councilor to tell him what you were doing and why. Or you can go with her right now and take whatever she chooses to dish out.” Alex pointed past them to Lena, standing silently in the hallway behind them, head lowered and lips compressed.