CHAPTER 11 KORI #2
Caught somewhere between exhaustion and fear, I almost laugh again.
Sometimes I think I could disappear into the relentless sun and never return, and no one would notice.
Sometimes I think about vanishing with nothing but Aspect, a pack of supplies, and a cache of Morpheus spheres.
How long could I make it in the Passage, selling memories, making memories, being my own person until I fell victim to the elements? A valuable asset.
I close my eyes. “Depends on who you ask.”
“You committed a crime against the Daylands by leaving, but also against the Shadowlands by coming here. Your people might like to see you suffer. But your mother …”
“Oh, she’ll punish me, all right.”
“She needs an heir to her monarchy.”
“And who’s to say it has to be me?” I say, almost yelling now. “Maybe I’m not the perfect daughter her position demands. Maybe I’m not the heiress the Daylands deserve.” I shake my head. “Maybe they should pick someone else.”
“But she won’t,” Adria says, resolute. “If there’s one thing your people resent above all else, it’s change. It has to be you.” Her purple irises bolt me in place. “And she’ll pay to see it be so.”
All the oxygen whooshes out of me. “So you aren’t trying to kill me.”
“As a matter of fact,” Adria says, stepping close to the freezing wall between us, “I’m dedicated to keeping you alive.”
“What payment from the Daylands could you possibly want?”
“Why do you need to know?”
“Why shouldn’t you tell me?”
Adria snorts. The flame in her open palm wavers. “Because you’re set to inherit the only opposing power on our shared planet?”
“Right now, I’m caged like an animal, without my pistol or my mech,” I say, every syllable deliberate. “If I ever get out of this place, Adria, rest assured that no matter what I know of the Shadowlands, I’ll be terribly eager to forget it.”
“And profit off the memory? Return to my territory with a fresh Morpheus sphere, when my eyes are cast away?”
I should say, No, if you let me go, I’ll never come back. But spite is a hell of a thing, so instead I snarl, “Maybe.”
Adria laughs again. The freezing wall between us shimmers in the firelight, making her form flicker in bursts and starts, lending her whole body the unsteady half presence of a flame. “Frankly, Kori, I have no idea just what you’re worth yet.”
My throat clenches. “I don’t believe you.”
“Why would I lie? I could simply withhold information altogether. I still need to consult with my advisors, then communicate with your people.”
If only I could get out of this damned cell, surely I could shake free of nightfolk chains.
“You could send me back,” I venture, forcing confidence into my voice despite knowing that the mask will filter it regardless.
“Send me bound, broken, to kneel before my mother. Beg her to take me back. She’d give you whatever you wanted. ”
My stomach twists. My mother values me because of what I represent, because I hold the Daylands’ future in my hands, because I alone can rule when she passes on.
But the Daylands would never accept a criminal for a queen.
If I returned home in chains, I would be disgraced.
The people would riot. I doubt I’d be worth a ransom.
I doubt I’d be worth remembering at all. Maybe my mother would simply force all
recollections of me into a Morpheus sphere, see it buried deep in the scorched earth, and try to move forward with another heir, chosen based on skill instead of blood.
But Adria doesn’t know that. Her forehead creases as she considers my words. “You’re a bold one, heiress.” Her voice drips with contempt. “No doubt planning an escape. I will have you know, in no uncertain terms, that your mechanical friend will not survive if you evade my grasp.”
Despite being nearly pitch-black, the room nevertheless seems to spin on its axis. My voice bursts out of me, so loud that it emerges from the mask laced with static. “Aspect. No, they didn’t do anything, they’re only here because of me, they’re practically property—”
“Property,” Adria says. “And yet you gave it a name.”
“For ease of pronunciation. Aspect’s code is 45P3C7. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”
“You’re a practiced liar. I’ll give you that. But a lifetime spent in the Shadowlands teaches a woman to look more closely at what true intentions lurk in the dark.” Adria crosses her arms. “You won’t leave without your mech, and I won’t let you see it unless you comply.”
My gloved hands curl into fists. “Everything I’ve read about your people …
that you were cruel, heartless, hardly human at all anymore …
it wasn’t true.” I glare without blinking.
“You’re worse. Embracing mutation made you a thousand times worse.
Is there no compassion left beneath your wounds and wings? ”
Adria wheels, her back turned to me, her wings flaring wide as her false torch collapses into darkness.
Her voice hisses down my spine in the dark.
“I could scrap your friend for parts, but I haven’t.
I could deliver you to your mother minus your rebellious tongue, but I won’t.
Tell me what’s more monstrous, heiress: Giving a trespasser a second chance at returning to the light?
Or creeping like a spirit through the shadows, confusing my people with memories never meant for them?
” Her snarl shudders through the floor. “I could’ve slit your armor and watched the
planet take you, turn you, make you like me. You’d see there’s not so much difference between us, once you peel away your armor.”
My mouth tastes like salt. “I’m nothing like you.”
“If you want to return to the Daylands in one piece,” Adria says, “I sincerely hope you’re wrong.”
I blink hard, half against tears, half in a vain attempt to adjust my eyesight to the darkness. But the blackness is total, this place like the planet’s stomach, soon to digest me down to bones.
Somehow, I find my voice. “I’ll prove it.”
Adria says nothing, but wind rushes as her wings clench, coiling like fists against her shoulder blades.
“My Morpheus spheres,” I say. “The one I brought, and the one I traded for. You took them both, didn’t you?”
“What of it?”
“You can’t open them. No matter what sick energies you unleash, no matter how you scrape and scrabble, they won’t open for you.
” I lift my chin, squaring my jaw, hoping my posture can communicate even beyond my mask.
“You intercepted the transfer of permissions. So, the one I brought, only I can open. The one I traded for, only my trading partner can open.”
“Who’s to say I didn’t capture her, as well?”
“Maybe you did. Maybe you didn’t. I don’t care. At the very least, the sphere I brought? I’m the only one who can open it. And you’ll have to tear my shoulder out of socket all over again before I do anything for you.”
Adria laughs in the dark. “And why should I care what contraband you were carrying?”
This is my only opportunity for real leverage. My legs tremble, threatening to give out from under me, but I press my minimal advantage and take a careful step forward, closer to the freezing wall between us.
“You don’t wonder what it’s like?” I ask.
“A pocketed memory?” Adria huffs a heavy breath through half-bared teeth. “I have greater concerns.”
“No, I mean the sun.”
Blue flame ignites like spikes along Adria’s spine, an unnatural luminescence.
The planes of her face are stark, that sweep of perfect jaw quivering, her powerful posture undone.
At last she turns to face me. Her eyes, a violent shade of violet, pin me where I stand.
She lifts one hand, fingers splayed, palm open, and for an instant, I think she’s going to slash my armor open, let the planet make me a monster, too.
Instead, she extends an open hand like an invitation, her long, slender fingers just barely avoiding the freezing wall between us.
Her voice emerges, hoarse. “And what do you want in return?”
“That’s the difference between you and me,” I say.
I lift one hand, palm open, fingertips hovering a hair’s breadth from my cell’s freezing gate. Her hand is so much bigger than mine. She could crush my face like a melon if she wanted to; she could break me with an idle shove.
“The sun doesn’t ask what the planet offers in return,” I breathe. “It simply shines, time after time after time, until time doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s the way of things. It’s the way of my people.”
I force myself to stare into the fathomless purple eyes.
Adria blows out another frustrated breath, a burst of white in the Shadowlands’ cold. I feel its heat even through the wall of freezeshot between us. She lowers her hand. “You do realize I cut off oxygen to your brain?”
“I’m in my right mind. I know what I said. You think I’m a monster like you. I may be a disaster of an heiress, but I’m still a daughter of the sun,” I say, pleading. “So let me show you.”
Adria’s mouth lifts at the corners. A sun serpent’s warning before a strike? An involuntary shudder of power? No, it’s a smirk if ever I’ve seen one. I don’t know what to make of her laugh, which rattles the floor with its ferocity.
“Get some rest, Kori of the Daylands. When I visit you again, we’ll see what some time in the shadows has done to your promises.”
The flames licking at her spine go out. I’m blown back into darkness.
I jerk despite myself from the suddenness of it, involuntarily colliding with the freezeshot wall again.
Its sheer ice spears through the marrow of my bones.
I stagger, too pained even to scream, my body trying to shrink into itself.
My mouth tastes like rust, my teeth stinging from the force of clamping them together.
“Adria?” I gasp, when I’ve recovered myself.
But there’s only the silent stone beneath my feet.