Healers. Probably Sara herself. I thank her a thousand times silently inside my heart. Slowly, I stand, pulling the army jacket tight around me. It has bullet holes. Dad eyes them, still a soldier.
“You can hug me. I won’t fall over,” he says.
Liar. He almost topples when I wrap my arms around his middle, but Kilorn keeps him upright. We embrace in a way we haven’t been able to since I was a little girl.
Mom’s soft hands brush my hair away from my face, and she settles her head next to mine. They keep me between them, sheltered and safe. And for that moment, I forget. There is no Maven, no manacles, no brand, no scars. No war, no rebellion.
No Shade.
I wasn’t the only one missing from our family. Nothing can change that.
He isn’t here, and never will be again. My brother is alone on an abandoned island.
I refuse to let another Barrow share his fate.
TWENTY-ONE
Mare
The bathwater swirls brown and red. Dirt and blood. Mom drains the water twice, and still she keeps finding more in my hair. At least the healer on the jet took care of my fresh wounds, so I can enjoy the soapy heat without any more pain. Gisa perches on a stool by the edge of the tub, her spine straight in the stiff posture she perfected over the years. Either she’s gotten prettier or six months dulled my memory of her face. Straight nose, full lips, and sparkling, dark eyes. Mom’s eyes, my eyes. The eyes all the Barrows have, except Shade. He was the only one of us with eyes like honey or gold. From my dad’s mother. Those eyes are gone forever.
I turn from thoughts of my brother and stare at Gisa’s hand. The one I broke with my foolish mistakes.
The skin is smooth now, the bones reset. No evidence of her mangled body part, shattered by the butt of a Security officer’s gun.
“Sara,” Gisa explains gently, flexing her fingers.
“She did a good job,” I tell her. “With Dad too.”
“That took a whole week, you know. Regrowing everything from the thigh down. And he’s still getting used to it. But it didn’t hurt as much as this.” She flexes her fingers, grinning. “You know she had to rebreak these two?” Her index and middle finger wiggle. “Used a hammer. Hurt like hell.”
“Gisa Barrow, your language is appalling.” I splash a little water at her feet. She swears again, drawing her toes away.
“Blame the Scarlet Guard. Seems they spend all their time cursing and asking for more flags.” Sounds about right. Not one to be outdone, Gisa reaches into the tub and flicks water at me.
Mom tuts at both of us. She tries to look stern, and fails horribly. “None of that, you two.”
A fuzzy white towel snaps between her hands, held out. As much as I want to spend another hour soaking in soothing hot water, I want to get back downstairs much more.
The water sloshes around me as I stand up and step out of the bath, curling into the towel. Gisa’s smile falters a little. My scars are plain as day, pearly bits of white flesh against darker skin. Even Mom glances away, giving me a second to wrap the towel a bit better, hiding the brand on my collarbone.
I focus on the bathroom instead of their shamed faces. It isn’t as fine as the one I had in Archeon, but the lack of Silent Stone more than makes up for it. Whatever officer lived here had very bright taste. The walls are garish orange trimmed in white to match the porcelain fixings, including a fluted sink, the deep bathtub, and a shower hidden behind a lime-green curtain. My reflection stares back from the mirror over the sink. I look like a drowned rat, albeit a very clean one. Next to my mother, I see our resemblance more closely. She’s small-boned as I am, our skin the same golden shade. Though hers is more careworn and wrinkled, carved with the years.
Gisa leads us out and into the hall, while Mom follows, drying my hair with another soft towel. They show me into a powder-blue bedroom with two fluffy beds. It’s small but more than suitable. I’d take a dirt floor over the most sumptuous chamber in Maven’s palace. Mom is quick to pull me into a pair of cotton pajamas, not to mention socks and a soft shawl.
“Mom, I’m going to boil,” I protest kindly, unwinding the shawl from my neck.
She takes it back with a smile. Then she kisses me again, swooping to brush both my cheeks. “Just making you comfortable.”
“Trust me, I am,” I tell her, giving her arm a squeeze.
In the corner, I notice my jeweled gown from the wedding, now reduced to scraps. Gisa follows my gaze and blushes.
“Thought I could save a bit of it,” my sister admits, looking almost sheepish. “Those are rubies. I’m not going to waste rubies.”
It seems she has more of my thief’s instincts than I realized.
And, apparently, so does my mother.
She speaks before I even take a step toward the bedroom door.
“If you think I’m going to let you stay up to all hours talking war, you are absolutely incorrect.” To cement her point, she folds her arms and settles directly in my path. My mother is shorter, like me, but she’s a laborer of many years. She is far from weak. I’ve seen her manhandle all three of my brothers, and I know firsthand she’ll wrestle me into bed if she needs to.
“Mom, there are things I need to say—”
“Your debriefing is at eight a.m. tomorrow. Say it then.”
“—and I want to know what I missed—”
“The Guard overthrew Corvium. They’re working on Piedmont. That’s all anyone downstairs knows.” She speaks rapid-fire, herding me toward the bed.
I look to Gisa for help, but she backs away, hands raised.
“I haven’t spoken to Kilorn—”
“He understands.”
“Cal—”
“Is absolutely fine with your father and brothers. He can storm the capital; he can handle them.”
With a smirk, I imagine Cal sandwiched between Bree and Tramy.
“Besides, he did everything he could to bring you back to us,” she adds with a wink. “They won’t give him any trouble, not tonight at least. Now get in that bed and shut your eyes, or I’ll shut them for you.”
The lights hiss in their bulbs; the wiring in the room snakes along electric lines of light. None of it compares to the strength of my mother’s voice. I do as she says, clambering under the blankets of the closest bed. To my surprise, she gets in next to me, hugging me close.
For the thousandth time tonight, she kisses my cheek. “You’re not going anywhere.”
In my heart, I know that’s not true.
This war is far from won.
But at least it can be true for tonight.
Birds in Piedmont make a horrible racket. They chirp and trill outside the windows, and I imagine droves of them perched in the trees. It’s the only explanation for such noise. They are good for one thing, though: I never heard birds in Archeon. Even before I open my eyes, I know yesterday was not a dream. I know where I’m waking up, and what I’m waking up to.
Mom is an early riser by habit. Gisa isn’t here either, but I’m not alone. I poke out the bedroom door to find a lanky boy sitting at the top of the stairs, his legs stretched out over the steps.
Kilorn gets to his feet with a grin, his arms spread wide. There’s a decent chance I’ll fall apart from all the hugging.
“Took you long enough,” he says. Even after six months of capture and torment, he won’t treat me with kid gloves. We fall back into our old ways with blinding speed.
I nudge him in the ribs. “No thanks to you.”
“Yeah, military raids and tactical strikes aren’t exactly my specialty.”
“You have a specialty?”
“Well, besides being a nuisance?” he laughs, walking me downstairs. Pots and pans clatter somewhere, and I follow the smell of frying bacon. In the daylight, the row house seems friendly, and out of place for a military base. Butter-yellow walls and florid purple rugs warm the central hallway, but it is suspiciously bare of decorations. Nail holes dot the wallpaper. Maybe a dozen paintings have been removed. The rooms we pass—a salon and a study—are also sparsely furnished. Either the officer who lived here emptied his home, or someone else did it for him.