The Ward

29


10:00 A.M., SUNDAY

Emergency. Rooftop, 39 Rough Block. ASAP.

Send.

Then, realizing Derek won’t recognize Callum’s unlisted comm ID number, I type: “—Ren” and hit SEND again.

“What are you doing?” Callum asks.

“You know what I’m doing,” I answer, because he’s smarter than that question.

His expression seesaws into warning. “Ren, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Meeting one of the Tètai so close to the lab . . . You could be inviting trouble in by the front door.”

“Look. I’ll get there before him, and then I’ll watch him leave. Make sure he doesn’t stick around. Plus, I’ll be up on a different rooftop, and out of sight—Bouncers never check there. Besides,” I say softly, thinking back to the sanctuary. The kisses. If he does care about me, if that’s what that meant . . . “I don’t think he’d hurt me.”

I might want to hurt him, but that’s an entirely different story.

I reach into one of my cargo pockets for the horse, but I don’t feel it. “Would you pass me the statue?” I ask, gesturing to table. “I can give it to him when I see him.”

Callum nods, about to hand it to me, then stops. Examines it. “You’ve never seen this before?”

I say no for the second time, and he reaches for his datapad. Enters something into it, and waits.

“I should go, if I want to get up there first—”

Holding up his hand, “Just a moment. I think I know what . . .” Then, “Aha, look—see?” he says, passing me the screen, pointing to an image.

Front and center, our horse statue. Only it wasn’t just a statue.

Big as a building, wooden, wheeled, and with a secret hideout in the belly—it was a war tactic. “The Trojan horse,” I say aloud, reading the caption next to the image. “Used by the Greeks for a surprise attack. They put an army in the belly chamber and called the horse a gift. . . . When the other guys accepted it, the Greeks jumped out and they battled them to bits.”

Callum exchanges the horse for his datapad. “That’s the story. I knew the statue looked familiar. Basically, any strategy where the target unknowingly invites its enemy into its territory.”

I hold the horse in my palm, and walk to the front door. “What does it mean, do you think?” I ask Callum, unable to piece it together.

He shakes his head. “No idea.”

I’m about to leave—one hand on the knob—when Callum calls me back. I turn to face him.

“Be careful,” he says. “During my research, the guardians . . . the Tètai, they’re not known to leave people alive who’ve found the spring. If Derek is one of them, he won’t be happy to hear you asking for the very thing he’s sworn to keep hidden. The fact that you’re still standing at all might be testament to how much he cares for you. Don’t be surprised if he refuses you.”

The double-edged blade of Callum’s words is not lost on me—that Derek might care enough to let me live, but not enough to want to help my sister. Not enough to want to help me.


I wait on the rooftop, my eyes toward Mad Ave so I can spot Derek before he comes. Up here, pigeons bob across the filtration system, gray, pecking for food or seeds that might’ve spilled from a recent airdrop.

Watching them warble in the sun as they claw the bridge’s rope, I squint to see a figure approaching. But ain’t him—no coppery hair, no tall, broad shoulders.

It’s a she. Short. Dark-haired.

I don’t need to know more than that. . . . But what the hell is she doing here? How did she know?

She must’ve seen the comm somehow. Derek might not even know I contacted him. Adrenaline surges, angry, all the way to my head—I need Derek right now, not Kitaneh. Kitaneh didn’t kiss me, Kitaneh doesn’t care about me. I have absolutely no leverage at all.

Trying to seem unfazed, I rise from my perch at the building’s edge. She knows I’ve seen her . . . but she’s not slowing.

Kitaneh moves, brisk, across the suspension bridge. Balanced. Poised. Arrow eyed, watching me. The birds scatter. And the closer she gets, the louder the warning bells sound in my head.

“Where’s Derek?” I ask, shielding my eyes from the sun, but my voice wavers. She’s moving too fast. . . .

Something drops down from her sleeve. Falls into her palm. It catches the morning glare, as sharp as any metal. “I know what you want to ask him,” she says, five feet away. “He left his cuffcomm on the table while he was in the shower. I did him a favor, deleting your message.”

Four—I stick with an utterly ambiguous reply. Three—”Okay . . .” I say, stepping back until there’s no place to go. Two—My heels bump up against the edge of the roof. One—

Zero. A blade, tight against my jugular.

I stretch my neck away . . . but she’s got me cornered—a fifty-foot drop behind, a slice to my artery in front. My blood rushes everywhere too fast; I can hear it howling against my eardrums.

“And I cannot risk his answer. Derek . . .” Kitaneh pauses, and I think I see her flinch. Hurt somehow. It passes. Granite hardness takes its place. “He cares for you,” she says, finally, and pushes the metal farther into my skin. I can see how much she didn’t want to say that.

“Stop, please . . .” I whisper, not even breathing, not wanting to move my throat muscles even a millimeter.

A sharp wind whips against us both—Kitaneh’s hair sweeps across her face, blood-colored from a shock of sun.

I see it. . . . Only inches from my face, the tattoo. The same faded black circle, just below her earlobe.

“Forget what you found. You have not yet lived long enough for me to want this blade to single you out. But it will. If it must.”

She pulls back on the blade. I swallow air by the mouthful, gulping it down before dropping onto the ledge below. The rooftop spins in front of me, and I watch Kitaneh’s feet move farther and farther away, like watching a TV hologram that’s accidentally projecting its image sideways.

“Wait—” I croak, just as she’s about to step onto the planked bridge. At my hip, the horse statue digs into bone, a blunt-edged reminder. But she doesn’t hear me. Louder this time, I call her name. “Kitaneh!”

She stops. Tilts her head my way, barely. “What is it?”

“This.”

I push myself to my feet. Force the rooftop to even itself beneath me. I walk to her, holding out the wooden carving. “Does it mean anything to you?”

Kitaneh steps backward onto the roof. Turning to face me, she takes the statue. Holds it in her palm. “No,” she answers, and I can tell she’s not lying. She’s about to hand it back to me but, spotting the compartment, looks again. Opens it. Peers inside.

Her mouth opens, her brows go high, her nostrils push out air, and her cheeks redden. She’s reading something. . . .

“Bellum exter—did you write this in here?” Frantic, she points inside the carving.

I shake my head. “I didn’t even know something was written.”

When she looks at me again, it’s with a rage I’m glad I didn’t see before—she would’ve killed me, I’m sure of it.

“I—I . . .” I stammer, suddenly afraid that she’ll confuse the message with the messenger. “The governor, it’s from him. He said to tell you this is your chance. To fix things. I don’t know why, I swear.”

Still looking at the horse, Kitaneh says, “You are in far too deep. I don’t know how, or why, you’ve become involved in this. But I hope, for your sake, you have the mind to stay out of it.” With that, she pulls the blade from her sleeve and begins to take slices at the wood. The wheels fall off, then the hooves, all the way up to the stomach. “You may give this back to him, if he contacts you again,” she says, and she hands me back the legless beast.

I take it from her. Wait for her to leave. When Kitaneh is halfway across the bridge, I look inside the compartment and find the writing. I’m not surprised I missed it before in the darkness of Callum’s lab—the letters are small, and in a language I’ve never seen before.

Bellum Exterminii.

The words mean nothing to me. I don’t know what I expected. . . .

My whole body deflates. Wilts. I sprawl along my spot on the ledge as a bone-shaking exhaustion sets in.

I’m left feeling like a cyclone has come and vacuumed away the last of me, physically incapable of understanding how I could be this close, with the end in sight, and find myself out of options.