CHAPTER 22
THAT NIGHT, SLIPPERY, fleeting dreams suck me down like a hungry wave. Dizzy and disorienting, soulless eyes and faces from my past, and darkness, always darkness. From that blackness come monsters, clawing fingers and bloody teeth lunging for my throat—
I fly awake, every nerve tight. But there are no monsters here. At least, not in this cage.
My panic fades a little at the sight of the three people staring at me. The two men, both at least ten years older than me, and the girl. Her blue eyes gleam, set in a sunken, pale face, and she studies me like she can see my whole life story written across my forehead.
“I’m Nessa,” she says, and points over her shoulder. “Conall and Garrigan, my brothers.”
Garrigan nods but Conall keeps his eyes level with mine. His expression is a vibrant contrast to Nessa’s—she is open and willing, he is closed and decided. Decided, from the look of it, that I am just as much a danger as the Spring soldiers moving around our cage.
It’s morning.
I jump up, back scraping along the rough wall. Will Angra send for me? Will he let Herod torture me into submission, until everything about the past sixteen years comes tumbling out of my mouth? My chest fills with lead-hot pressure, pinching off air.
“I’m Meira,” I manage around a tongue that feels more sand than anything, my eyes darting between Nessa and the door, waiting for soldiers to burst inside and drag me out.
“If they were going to take you so soon, they never would have brought you here to begin with,” Garrigan offers. He holds some of Conall’s distrust, but his face softens, offering me the smallest bit of kindness.
“How can you know that?” Conall snaps, watching the door.
“The same way I do,” Nessa declares proudly, taking my hand. “She’s here for a reason.”
Conall turns a glare to me, like I’m the one who made her say that. I don’t have the strength to pull away from her hand, though, needing her small bit of comfort, and I just stare at him until he swings his gaze back to the door.
“Where did you come from?” Nessa asks, the question popping out of her mouth like she’s been holding it in since I got here. “Winter? No, of course not—they say no one lives there anymore. One of the other Seasons?”
“I was in Cordell before I came here,” I say. Conall’s glare makes me feel guilty for talking to her, like any word I say will only strengthen her slowly growing hope. Nessa still looks at me with a hint of caution, but the brightness in her eyes is . . . beautiful. It’s hard not to want to make her happy, and just that word lights up her whole face.
“Cordell,” she echoes, and releases my hand to face Garrigan. “That’s a Rhythm, right?”
Garrigan’s mouth twitches in a smile, cracking his face like he doesn’t do it often. “Our Nessa’s going to be a world traveler one day,” he says, and I can’t miss the pride that swells in him. Pride in his little sister, in her ability to still dream beyond these bars.
“Or a seamstress,” she amends, her face flushing red. Whatever blip of happiness she managed to hold on to vanishes, and she looks at me with a sad shrug. “Like our mother.”
“Quiet,” Conall growls, a bite of warning as keys rattle in our door.
I pin my body to the back wall. No matter how Nessa and Garrigan tried to reassure me, or how uncaring I was last night at the thought of Angra coming for me, dread still churns in my stomach, a flicker of survival that’s impossible to snuff out entirely. They can’t take me. Not until I figure out . . . something. Some way to escape a long, slow death at Angra’s hands, a way to help the others around me escape the same fate.
The door swings open. Conall and Garrigan march into the sun and Nessa grabs my arm. “Don’t worry,” she whispers, and guides me forward. “It’ll be all right. It’ll be—”
“You.” A soldier turns from shouting at Conall and Garrigan to watch me emerge from the cage, his eyes a dark sort of greedy, and my stomach turns.
But the soldier nods toward the end of the road where the uncaged Winterians have gathered. “With the rest for now.”
Relief surges through me. Angra hasn’t called for me today.
Nessa pulls me forward and shock fills me up like it’d been waiting outside the cage for me all night.
This is the first time I’ve seen the Winterians of the Abril work camp. Of any work camp.
More Winterians join us from the second layer of cages, gathering into a haphazard cluster to march down the road, dust swirling around our shuffling feet. Dozens of people crowd around, frail bodies in tattered rags, clothing brown from years of sweat and dirt. Children too. If Angra had wanted to simply slaughter all Winterians, he would have done so long ago—it would have been a kinder fate. But instead he keeps them locked up, letting families grow and generations spawn in captivity. It’s a cruel victory to show dominance over another by destroying them—but it’s crueler still to do so by destroying their families.
Winterian children watch me as they stand stoically beside their parents. Their faces say they’ve learned not to show weakness. Weaknesses get used until all you can do is scream at the unfairness of a life like this, a life of living in cages stacked atop one another, of growing up in a place where you aren’t even seen as a person. A life of waiting in torment for the twenty-five mythical survivors to set everyone free.
I meet a woman’s eyes. She’s Dendera’s age, her top lip curling at me, and I flinch back. A man beside her echoes her grimace, and another beside them, so many looks of derision that I feel no safer here than in Angra’s palace.
Misery wraps around me, hot waves of disgust at myself, at their lives, at everything that happened to our kingdom. How long did it take them to stop hoping we’d free them? How quickly did Angra beat the hope of escape from their minds?
How quickly will he beat the same hope from me?
Looking at the faces around me, at their sixteen-year-long suffering . . . what could I possibly do to stop any of this? What could any of us have done—Sir or Alysson or Mather or anyone? It’s too big, the wounds too deep.
A soldier cracks his whip into the crowd, throwing a few slower Winterians to their knees. One elderly woman, two old men. Red welts line their arms but we hurry on, pulled by the current of fear. We should fight against the soldiers who whipped them to the ground, stand up for our countrymen and the injustice Spring did to them.
We should have done a lot of things.
Nessa squeezes my hand between both of hers. She hasn’t stopped hoping, and any wariness she feels pales next to her faith. I almost prefer the glares, the lingering snarls of the others. Their anger is understandable, something I can accept. But Nessa—
Did I look at Sir like that?
The question flies through my mind, a string of words that wraps around my throat and squeezes off air. All the refugees looked at Sir like that, didn’t we? He was our source of hope. He was the beacon that would lead us to freeing our people, to getting our kingdom back.
And he died. Just like that. Our hope snuffed out in one swift and careless moment.
I tremble under thoughts of him, his shadows in my mind making every part of me ache and writhe. I can’t be Nessa’s hope. I can’t let her think I’m any more capable than anyone else, because I can die just as easily. I can’t do to her what Sir did to me.
We stop when we reach a crowded gate. Soldiers sort through us at the front, marching groups off to various areas of the city for work.
“My brothers and I will be back in the palace grounds,” Nessa whispers, her hand tightening on mine. “I don’t know where you’ll be. I don’t know if—”
I force a smile. “It’s all right.”
Nessa’s lips twitch and she nods.
Minutes later we’re at the front of the line. Conall and Garrigan grunt numbers to a soldier by the entrance. 1-3219 and 1-3218. No names here. Angra stripped them of everything—country, home, life. Why not their names too?
The soldier orders them to the group bound for the palace. Nessa, unwilling to let go of my hand, approaches the same soldier.
“1-2072,” she says, and the soldier consults a list.
“Palace grounds.” He glances at me and squints, sizing up my appearance next to Nessa. I’m too healthy, too well fed. He checks the list and cocks one eyebrow.
“Angra has something special for you,” he says. “To the wall, R-19.”
R-19. R—Refugee? Refugee 19. Because I’m the nineteenth Winterian refugee who Angra will kill. Herod probably saw Sir die in Bithai, so he was the eighteenth. Gregg and Crystalla, seventeen and sixteen.
Nessa leads me past the soldier into the groups of sectioned-off Winterians. When a few people stand between the soldiers and us, she pulls my ear to her mouth. “The wall is where they send those they wish to push beyond their limit,” she whispers, her fingers digging into my hand. “Work but don’t strain yourself—just make it look like you’re working hard. Maybe you can get through without—”
“Nessa.” I shush her. Her concern hurts, a heavy expectation I don’t know if I can fulfill.
“You didn’t come here just to die,” she exhales, half a question, half a promise.
I close my eyes. Why did I come here?
Conall puts a hand on Nessa’s shoulder. “We’re leaving.”
Nessa pulls away and marches to join Garrigan. I suck in a breath when Conall’s shadow shifts, his tall frame looming over me.
He narrows his eyes when Nessa gets out of earshot. “We’ve tried escaping,” he growls. “Climbing the fences, fighting off guards, digging under the walls. All it results in is more death. The last ones who came promised rescue but vanished before they could do anything; they acted like we hadn’t already tried everything. Nessa wept for weeks when our hope left with them. I won’t see her go through that again.”
Gregg and Crystalla. My jaw tightens. “I don’t want her to go through that either.”
“What you want doesn’t matter here. The sooner you realize that, the better.”
“I know.”
Conall’s eyebrow lifts sardonically. “Good luck, R-19.”