But what the hell did Saska intend by coming here? I doubted one lone air witch could draw a strong enough storm to destroy the structure—not when it had been built to withstand whatever the elements threw at it during the wild weather years immediately after the war.
As the wind dropped me closer, I spotted Saska. She was standing close to the edge, where the gentle curve of the roof abruptly dropped away. She didn’t look up as I approached, though she surely had to be aware of my arrival.
The last fragments of the cloud disintegrated and the wind deposited me gently on the metal roof. Saska didn’t turn around, didn’t react. Didn’t acknowledge me in any way. She just stood on that edge, her arms crossed, her wrists hidden by the heavy sleeves of her gown, and her hair streaming behind her as she stared out over the wildly churning seas far below.
Weakness washed through me, and it was an effort to keep my knees locked, to keep upright. I swallowed heavily and said, my voice slightly hoarse, “Saska? Are you okay?”
“No,” she said softly. “I’m not, and never will be.”
I took a few, rather wobbly steps closer. She didn’t move, didn’t look at me, but the sudden tightening across her shoulders warned me to be careful.
“You need to come down from here—”
“You went away, sister,” she continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “You went away, and you took my strength with you. I couldn’t fight the queen’s will; she’s too strong for me alone. She’s always been too strong for me.”
“Not always,” I countered. “You escaped from her, remember.”
“But the price I paid for that foolishness was a heavy one.” Her voice was little more than a whisper, carried to me on the wind. But her pain was something I felt deep inside, and it was so sharp and real it might have been my own. “And in the end, it was all for naught.”
Again, the wind warned me to be gentle, but I had to know if what I suspected was the truth or not. “And what was that price, Saska?”
She closed her eyes, but it didn’t stop the tears. Didn’t stop the agony that stabbed through me. “I killed her you know. I stole her breath and watched the life leak from her eyes.”
Pain grew. Whether it was hers or mine, I couldn’t say, because they were so entwined. “Why? Did you fear the queen would use her to stop your escape?”
“She couldn’t. The child wasn’t wearing the bracelets, and without them, distance communication is somewhat fragmented,” Saska said. “There is only a finite number of those bracelets, and they are generally kept for when the stained go beyond the apiary or for those of us with a will of our own—which those born into that place do not have. Their only desire is to fulfill the queen’s wishes.”
Which explained why the children were wearing bracelets at Blacklake—the queen was communicating with them.
“Where are the bracelets kept when the children aren’t wearing them?”
“They are stored in the same place as the children.”
Stored. Treated as nothing more than items to be used and discarded however the queen might wish. Anger stirred, and this time it was all mine.
“Then why take the child?” I somehow managed to keep the anger from my voice. “And why would she even go with you in the first place?”
Saska’s lips twisted, though I wasn’t sure if it was bitterness or regret. “She had no choice. I was her mother, and that is a bond hard to break, even in that place.” She paused, the flow of tears getting stronger. “I needed her earth abilities to escape, but there was never any escape for her. She is better off dead. They’re all better off dead.”
“You can’t believe that,” I said softly. “Surely if they were rescued—”
“No.” She shivered. “They are the queen’s. They will always be hers. Those who show any sort of independence are immediately killed.”
I closed my eyes against the sting of tears. I was no mother, but I didn’t think you had to be to imagine the sheer and utter horror of having to watch children—be they yours or another’s—being murdered time and time again. And while she might have been teetering on the edge of insanity before she’d escaped, being personally responsible for the death of one of her own had surely sent her over it.
“Why was her hand severed if she wasn’t wearing a bracelet?”
“The Irkallan sent after us was aiming for me. He got the child instead.”
“So the queen intended to kill you both?”
“Originally, but she is nothing if not adaptable.” The smile that touched her lips held no warmth. “It felt good to kill him, even if the queen cares little about the life of one soldier. Not when there are so many more of them.”
“How many more?”
“Thousands and thousands more.” Her voice was bleak. “They’ve ramped up their breeding over the last two hundred years.”
That was not good news, but also not unexpected, given this plot had obviously been in development for many, many years. “How was the soldier buried, then? And how did you get out of the tunnel?”
Saska’s expression was bleak. “The rock fall was the earth’s response to me stealing the breath of the child.”
“Then how did you get back to the surface?”
“I directed the air to dig a shaft; once I had been pulled up onto the surface, the wind covered any trace of it.”
“An air witch can’t interact with the earth, Saska—”
“No, under normal circumstances, we certainly can’t.” She finally glanced at me. Her silvery gaze was haunted with pain, horror, and the shadows of death, but there was something else there, something I did not expect.
Kinship.
“Have you not guessed our secret yet?” she added.
A weird mix of uncertainty and elation raced through me. It felt like I was standing on that precipice, and any sense of security I might have had about my life was about to be pulled out from underneath me. “I know that we seemed to have formed some sort of connection, but I don’t understand the reason for it.”
“Nor did I, not initially. But it is the reason they fear you, and the reason they want you dead.”
I rubbed my arms, even though I wasn’t cold. “What’s that reason, Saska?”
“We’re twins, Neve. You were stained and unlit, and sent into state care, and therefore kept safe from them. I was raised by a mother whose allegiance already lay with the Irkallan queen, and who betrayed me by handing me over to the apiary once I’d come fully into my powers.”
I stared at her, unable to take it in but feeling the truth of it reverberating deep inside. She wasn’t only my sister, but my twin. And Hedra… I’d killed my own mother. Horror swirled, even if I couldn’t regret that action.
I closed my eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. The truth some small part of me had always wanted was now laid bare before me, and it was one that would bring more pain before this day was over. Because the shadows of death were drawing ever closer in Saska’s eyes and a sick feeling of helpless inevitability washed over me.
“It was the Adlin who attacked your train as it was coming back from the West Range outpost,” I said. “Not the Irkallan.”
“Those Adlin were under the control of one who is stained and in thrall to the queen. Destroy him, and you kill their allegiance to the queen.”
That was obviously the stained Adlin I’d seen but failed to kill. I scrubbed a hand across my aching eyes, but she wasn’t finished yet.
“Our kinship is the reason you’ve been able to control the air. My knowledge leaks through our connection to you, just as the stain on your skin allows us both to use the air in ways that shouldn’t be possible.”
Meaning she didn’t know about my ability to use earth? I opened my mouth to ask, and then closed it again. Right now, despite the information she was giving me, she somehow remained in thrall of the queen. Maybe it was her madness, and maybe it wasn’t, but either way, I wasn’t about to give them such information if they weren’t already aware of it.