"Back off! I SAID BACK OFF!"
"You have no idea what you're doing! You aren't supposed to be here! ….the implications…you have no idea! The rules—"
"FUCK THE RULES, SHADE! This is HER! We can't leave her!"
The bellows echo back and forth, and I can't seem to make out who the voices belong to, but I also can't think straight. Searing through my abdomen is a blinding pain that consumes me from the inside out. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. It's all I can think about, but rather than the peace of this moment that I've experienced in the Bowl of Bones and the Queenstrial arenas, I am in a chaos of internal panic. What will Ptolemus and Evangeline do to everyone at the base? Who will they kill for sport? Cal would never go willingly—not with Maven on the throne to humiliate him further in front of the Kingdom. I wonder if Cal will find me before he burns the place down. Will he take my body with him if he runs? Would he stay with me? Would he save Kilorn?
He has to get Kilorn out.
"What? What did she say?"
The defiant, angrier voice of the two moves closer to me, and I want to open my eyes to see him, to gaze at the man who wants so badly to make this better that it breaks my heart to know he never will. "Who cares?! Are you going to help me or not?"
There's more silence, or maybe I've finally bit the bullet. I feel my heavy eyelids flutter so delicately it tickles. The absurdity of feeling a tickle when my entire body is shutting down is not lost on me, even as my head goes fuzzy and the mystery voices turn into strange noises. I want memories. I want flashes of my life and all the faces of the people I love before I disappear. Isn't that what you're supposed to get before you die? Where is my white light? Where is my serenity? I deserve that. I've earned peace, dammit. I'm going to die alone, with two strangers arguing the inevitable over me. My fingers twitch and desperately seek the warmth of someone's hand holding mine. I hope they notice before it's too late. I hope the voices aren't just in my head. Tears slip out of the out corners of my eyes to leave hot streaks to soothe my aching temples. They chill when they reach my hair and trickle into my ears, and I mentally follow their cold trails. I don't feel the gash in my back from Evangeline's blade. I don't feel the pumping of blood out of the hole it has left. I don't feel my abdominal muscles contracting painfully, fighting vainly to close a wound too deep. I don't feel my legs cramping with the tension I've stretched them in. Just hot tears cooling off in matters of seconds, milliseconds even. Time gets impossibly slower until it stops altogether.
"Wait, I know this." I stand with the Silent Stone between my hands, ignoring the dull ache in my head and the sharp twinge in my back. I look around the waterfall atrium in the underground tunnels Shade and I practice in in secret. It's then I notice Shade sitting across from me with his head between his legs and blood dripping from his face. I run to him and lift his head to find his nose bleeding relentlessly. I pull my red scarf from the Guard, something I always keep on me, and press it to his nose, all while barraging him with questions. He was just fine! Shade gently pushes me back and waves me away.
"Know what?" His voice is hoarse and comes between what sounds like wet coughs. I'm seriously concerned at this sudden turnaround, but after a moment he seems to shake it off and repeats his question.
I look around for anything that looks familiar, but it's all familiar. So what is it I'm searching for? "I feel like I've been here before."
"Well yeah, Mare, we've been here almost every night for three straight days."
I shake my head. That isn't it. It's almost as though I should know what's coming next. "I'm going to get frustrated with you—"
"You're always frustrated with me."
"—and you're going to tell me to take a deep breath and try again. I'll make a couple sparks, but…and then you leave, and there's a noise."
Shade rolls his eyes and sighs with exaggerated exasperation. "If you don't want to practice, just say so. I'm beat anyway." The nonchalance has a slight quiver to it, which just solidifies this whole strange feeling.
With a shuddering gasp I look down at my stomach to find my shirt dirty from a day's worth of sweat and dust. Whatever I was expecting to find is no longer there, but it's like an itch my brain cannot scratch. Something is off. I'm not supposed to be here.
"I don't feel well either." I take a seat one on of the rocks the juts into a makeshift bench against the wall nearest the spray from the waterfall. I'm getting soaked but I don't really notice it because the itch in my brain? It's now consuming my body in a tingle I can't ignore. "What's happening to me? I was here, but then I wasn't, and now I am again. And you look really, really worse for wear, Shade. I feel like we're missing something big."
"You're tired, Mare. I'm tired. Besides, you need to head back before someone comes looking for you."
"Kilorn, probably." I say it almost an afterthought. That jolts my head up as another vague flickering memory ghosts into my head, but just as suddenly it's gone. I repeat myself, hoping for the same reaction, but nothing comes.
"Yeah, sis, you're beat. Come on, you need to get back to base and catch some shut eye. I have something to take care of anyway."
I look at him curiously, but of course he says nothing. He never does. He sets me off into the tunnel back to the base and promises to see me soon.
"At the Choke, right?" Again, the itch consumes my body like a tidal wave. Wait, how did I know that?
Shade gives me a wary look, one that makes me think I should be seriously concerned for my mental health, before nudging me toward the tunnel. "Mare, of course I'd see you at the Choke. I wouldn't miss the big day." I feel like there's an unfinished joke there that Shade isn't telling, and boy, do I really desperately need sleep.
Shade gets to his feet rather unsteadily, as do I. With another glance toward him and his bloody nose, I leave Shade and stumble through the tunnel, dead weight dragging along lead feet. I can feel the Silent Stone surrounding me and a niggling becomes an urge to find something I'm supposed to remember in here. Suddenly, I'm skimming my fingers over every stone within reach, waiting for a memory flash. I can't help but feel there should be something here. Nothing. This is crazy. "I am going crazy."
"Yeah you are. It's 4 in the morning. Why are you awake and why are you out here?"
Kilorn's voice shocks the hell out of me, and in turn, I nearly shock the hell out of him. The Silent Stone prevents anything from coming to the surface, though I still feel the sizzling beneath my skin. I knew it! I knew he was coming to find me. How did I freaking know that? I groan partly in frustration and party annoyed at Kilorn's presence. "Kilorn, spare me the interrogation for the night, I'm begging you. I'm so tired and feel like I've been to hell and back."
"You know, Mare, you could always sleep on the couch if you wanted to get away from Cal. You don't need to hide all the way in here," he chuckles. He motions to pat me on the back, but as soon as his hand touches my shoulder, he withdraws quickly. "Woah, did you shower in here, too? Why are you wet?"
Instead of answering, I skirt around him and head back for the base. At this point, I'm ready to strip naked and climb into bed next to Cal just to get warm again, but I wouldn't mind heating up in other ways, too.
Because Kilorn has no sense of when to stop, he keeps teasing. "Are you going to become one of those weirdos who lives underground? You've already got the gross smell down. Seriously, Mare, if you're trying to punish Cal, skip the shower before you get into bed." I use the last of my strength to shove him playfully into the wall, to which he responds in kind. It's nothing forceful by any means, but I'm surprised when I push back from the wall and feel a trickle down my nose. My hands cannot wipe frantically enough at the warm trail of blood before Kilorn turns around; fortunately, he doesn't and continues to stroll ahead, whistling even, which unnerves me for some unknown reason.
"Shh! Kilorn, keep it down." It's a paranoid hiss, and one that he ignores.
"Mare there's no one in here. You're the only freak who chooses to hang out in some dark musty caves in the middle of the night, and I'm the heroic and brave best friend who walks around the entire base before figuring you're here. Though truth be told, this place gives me the creeps, and if you weren't where I thought you'd be, I'd have definitely pissed myself getting back to the Web. That's the kids' new cool nickname for the base by the way. It's the Web, because it reminds them of a spider's web I guess, so if you want to fit in with the cool kids—not that you ever have—you gotta learn their lingo."
I laugh heartily at his expense, but I feel more comfortable in the tunnels now that I've spent so much time in here with Shade. I also feel like I've been here before, in a weird otherworldly way, and from what Shade has told me about the memory stones, I don't think it's too far off to say that I have, or will, spend more time down here in the future.
We're nearing the Web's entrance, and I couldn't be more grateful that my room with Cal is right off the hall from this door. Technically I'm supposed to meet with Farley in less than two hours, but we leave tonight, and if I don't at least get some sleep, I'm going to be even crankier and temperamental than usual. Maybe I'll skip the meetings and get Cal's notes after. Or if we're still not talking, I can get them from Ada since she remembers everything anyway.
"Hey, do you think Farley would—" My own scream cuts me off but its sound is drowned by a second massive boom immediately following. Around us, the tunnels shake and rocks start falling from dangerous heights. I yank Kilorn away from one and barely sidestep another in time. In the near distance, I can hear the piling of rocks and I wonder if all the tunnels are going to collapse in on us and crush us. The thought aches me. I have memories in here that I've been wanting to explore, and the fear that I could lose them all keeps my feet stuck to the ground. It's Kilorn who shouts for me to move, and pulls my arm forward to close the rest of the distance until we're safely ensconced in the fortunately unharmed base. With the heavily reinforced door and thick military-grade walls and ceiling, you can just barely hear the last of the rocks falling from whatever just happened. I would bet no one in here even so much as stirred in their sleep at the sound of the explosion happening just a few miles from them.
"What was that?!" Kilorn whispers to me in the dark hallway. I shake my head, at a loss for words, but he can't see me.
"I don't know. An explosion? Or, maybe a natural coincidence? I mean we're underground. Who's to say that doesn't happen regularly?"
"I don't think so. The tunnels wouldn't still be intact if that happened regularly. That sounded like a bomb detonating."
"What, so you think someone caused that? Kilorn, no one knows these tunnels exist except us. And even then, it's impossible to navigate them without any guide. We wouldn't have found the base entrance if it wasn't for Farley, and the tunnels are filled with Silent Stone. No Silver would willfully walk through them, and they'd be powerless if they did. We're fine." I say it more to convince myself, but I will myself to believe it all the same. Kilorn seems satisfied because after a soft nudge to my shoulder, he tells me to get some sleep, but not before another jab at needing a shower.
When I quietly turn the door handle to our room, Cal is slack-jawed and asleep with his notebook face down on his chest and his glasses sitting oddly low on his nose. I want to take them from him and tuck him in properly, but that would be affectionate and I'm not feeling rather affectionate toward him. The sting of my defeat during our training today has long since dissipated, but in its void sits embarrassment. I hate losing to him because I hate conceding power to the cocky prince who cares too much for his own good and not enough to make a world-changing difference.
(/CAL)
The sounds of the shower lull me in and out of sleep while I listen for the breaks in the water where Mare must be moving around. The steady stream, the quick taps of the water on the tile floor, will rain in succession for 10 or 15 minutes, then just as sleep takes me, the water breaks and becomes louder and disjointed. I wonder if she's washing her hair, or if she's stepping out of the stream when the water gets too hot. Lucky for her, she's taking her shower in the dead of night, so neither of us need worry about a sudden cold turn when all the hot water's gone. That always results in a sudden yelp from her, followed by her scrambling around for her towels. She always leaves them on the opposite side of the bathroom and also trails puddles of water on the floor from where she walks right out of the shower to get them. I don't know whether it's annoying or endearing, but I suppose it depends on the kind of day we're having.
The shower goes back to a steady stream and this time I wait to see how long before she moves again. She has to be finishing up soon. Mare cites showers as her luxury, once explaining that water is heavily regulated and rationed in the Stilts.
"5 minutes max for each of us, each day. Most of the time it was cold water, but some of the wealthier Reds had a few minutes of hot water a day. One by one when my brothers left, I thought we'd get to increase our time. Between the three of them, that was 15 extra minutes. But Governor Welle declared it a waste of resources. I bet he was never short of hot water," she had finished with contempt. There's nothing I could say at the time, no offering I could give that would seem genuine or empathetic. I grew up in a different lifestyle, one that I feel like she expects me to apologize for each time she tells me about an injustice she faced as a little Red girl from the Stilts. I must have known all my life they had it worse than us, of course I'd known, but I never took in all the misery of it. I would watch Reds stumble out of taverns and small shops, gossiping about their townfolk and grumbling about their work, but rarely heard complaints on their states of living. Now, I understand why. When you all live in the same hole, there's no comfort in complaining about the hold together.
So it's one of the reasons I never rush her or scold her for running late because of her long showers. It seems to genuinely cleanse her of her bad moods and stress, and she always walks out a little brighter. I love that about her; that she never takes the little things for granted. Not food, not a bed—not even pillows and blankets. She's grateful and enchanted by it all.
When my thoughts start to quiet, I realize I haven't heard any stirring from Mare for about 20 minutes. We leave tonight, and she can't leave on no sleep. Who knows when we'll be able to stop later, or if we'll be able to stop at all. I pull myself from the bed, body aching from the stiff position I've lain in, and gently knock on the bathroom door as to not startle her. A few more knocks and I open the door to find her sitting on the shower floor, head between her knees, quietly sobbing. I can tell by the tremble of her shoulders and the slight rock her body does in her curled position. Bruises mar her skin, a sallow mix of yellows and blacks, with stripes of red from gashes she's sustained recently. She could have Sara heal these instantly, but unlike the pride that keeps me from seeking out Sara Skonos for my wounds, Mare has been used to cuts and bruises all her life. It's survival.
I do feel like I'm invading her privacy, but I cannot look away or leave her here. What to say to her, what to do now, I don't know. If I go to her, I may frighten her. If I push her to talk to me, she may shut down completely. Like a dying fish, my mouth gapes and closes with unspoken jumbles of concern and curiosity. But Mare is observant and she knows I'm here before I can figure out how to make myself known.
"Could you grab a towel, please?"
She sounds hoarse, like she's been crying for some time, and I curse myself for not coming in sooner. I have to smile when she stands and turns her back to me while her arms cover her chest. I have watched her in throes of passion, have felt her body beneath mine, have committed to memory all her exquisite curves, and yet she turns from me to protect her modesty. Though I suspect it's to hide her vulnerability from me more than anything.
Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, a testament to her in-shower breakdown, but I couldn't find her any more beautiful with her wet hair dripping from its greyed ends, her eyelashes dark and full, heavy atop her deep brown, amber-flecked irises. She just does it for me. She's infuriating, she's selfish, and she can even sometimes be cruel, but no matter how much I try to deny myself of her, I will never be able to follow through. I will always want her. She's the spark to my flame, and even if we burn each other out, I will wait for her to bring us back to life again.
In bed, she tucks her body against mine and pulls my hand across her stomach. My other arm rests under her head, and she entwines our fingers and brings them to her chest, laying my palm flat against her heart.
"Happy birthday, Cal," she mumbles sweetly to me. I pull her impossibly closer to me, and when I close my eyes, for once, I don't dream of the tragedy surrounding us. I see my father smiling kindly at me, proud of the son I have become. And my mother is by his side with eyes brimming with joy and wonder. And sweet Mare holds me to her, the pink of her blush bright on her cheeks and effervescent humanity glowing on her skin. And Maven, my tenderhearted soft-spoken little brother, my best friend, he's there too, with a huge playful grin and warm, loving eyes having never known the taste of bitterness and the sting of hate.
It's an impossible birthday present, but then Mare flips over to nuzzle against my chest in her sleep. It's the first time she's slept like this, with her head directly above my heart and her arm circling my waist. The intimacy of this moment, the ease at which she recalled my birthday like old lovers submerges the sadness in me. I fall asleep to the sound of her loud hums of breath and a whispered "I love you" on my lips.
A/N - Head on over to my Twitter to see a deleted scene from this chapter!