Four shaking hands pushed at the hair hanging over her forehead and cheeks as she and Ace both attempted to help her see. Every breath rasped in her throat and her teeth ached. Ace helped her get back into her clothes. She wouldn’t win any awards for presentation, but she was clothed and shod.
The stars lit their way back. She blinked up at them. She loved the light they provided in the open desert. Starlight was never as bright in Azcon. Perhaps it was a factor of the taller buildings or the grounding platform for the city Sparks that rose above them, where lightning lit the sky every night, the jagged discharges visible from miles away from the city. Maybe the darkness of roads and buildings sucked the light from the sky. Here in the desert the sand reflected the light back to the stars like a lover returning a smile. The vastness between them should have felt lonely. Instead, it was healing.
They made it back to Gloria’s to gather her clothes and knitting, the only things left of the world she’d built that she could carry. Gloria wished her well, and Lena and Ace trudged back to his car. Lena looked back over her shoulder, her head turning with every step, as if to sear the memory of the village and the Kewa into her memory through sheer force of will.
Chapter 6
The frigid mountain air Alex sucked in as he jogged to Council headquarters cold-seared his lungs. He ran through darkness. He’d gotten back from Fort Nevada late—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say early. After he’d hiked back in through arroyos and tunnels, he’d fallen into the shower. Under the spray of the water, his mind woke and started working through the puzzle of Lena Gracey.
Finding her was a coup. Where there was one, they had to anticipate the possibility of others. Before he’d returned to Azcon, he’d left messages on three desks at Fort Nevada, to be seen whenever the others came in to make reports.
Believing Lena was not unique did not lessen her worth in Alex’s eyes. She wasn’t some abstract concept of the Spark’s Eve like she was to Thomas. She was a real woman, troublesome and smart and intriguing. He felt a little smug that he’d been the one to discover her. Unlike Thomas, he did question their ability to control and bend her to their will. He’d dealt with the maddening little thing. And the damnedest thing about it was he couldn’t wait to have the chance to do so again.
He tried to imagine what it must have been like for five-year-old Lena to suddenly be hidden from the world. He didn’t know the specifics, but she had to have lost contact with everything and everyone she knew except for her family. And as her taunt in the desert had reminded him, he understood that trauma all too well. He’d lost his family. She’d lost the world. Flip sides of the same scarring loss. He knew what made her so strong. He recognized it because it lived in him.
It had hardened him, that rage and grief, and his training had honed it into a weapon. He had survived the process, turned it against the people who had made him, due to the influence of Sam, one of his early instructors. Sam had seen something in him and had worked hard to bring back the humanity in little Alejandro. He hoped Lena had her own Sam. Was it Ace?
By the time he’d finished his shower, he’d decided to head back out and have a non-threatening conversation with her, to be honest and explain everything at stake. Surely, she had seen something of herself in him, too? It might explain why she’d stopped to speak with him outside Santo Domingo instead of merely running to safety.
He dressed, eager to start the day, regardless of the hour. He’d wait for Lucas to come in, coach him through a strategy session, have him collect Lena’s sister, and then head out while Lucas was distracted by his “interrogation.” He could be down to Santo Domingo, convincing her to cast her lot in with the men of Fort Nevada, by noon. If he could convince her, Lucas would be chasing a ghost.
A very well-protected ghost.
Alex jogged to work and took the stairs to his floor two at a time. He pulled open the door, sending it swinging behind him to bounce off the wall, then continued down the hall to the wide-open office space and crossed to Lucas’s desk, where he scrawled a note: “SEE ME. -Alex.” He left it on Lucas’s desk and went to unlock his office.
After lighting the candles on his desk, he pulled out the reports from last night. They were in need of changes now that he’d spoken to Thomas and knew what their goal would be. By the time he finished rewriting them, the candles near his head sputtered and popped. They were nearly burnt down. Sunlight had been flooding in through his window for the last few hours. He tamped the candles with his fingers and stretched.
Where the Dust was Lucas?
He rose and left the office, intending to march down to Lucas’s desk again. Before he got to the end of the hall, he heard his name behind him. Fernie Salas waved a wax-sealed folded paper at him as he came down the hall.
“Downstairs asked me to let you know—messenger dropped this for you. It’s urgent,” Salas said.