Chapter 44
“You’re awake.”
The voice is a low, baritone rasp. It belongs to the man standing with his back to me, his gaze fixed out a small window with iron bars.
Blinking, I twist my head to examine my surroundings.
I’m in a cell with stone walls and a dirt floor.
I don’t know how I got here. The last thing I remember was passing out from the pain.
My leg is still throbbing, but it’s a dull ache now.
It hurts so badly that it’s basically gone numb at this point.
Finally, the man turns toward me. Commander Vásquez. I recognize him from the end of my scope.
Up close, he’s older than I first thought, late forties maybe. His skin is tanned and leathery, as if he spends a lot of time in the sun. He wears olive-green fatigues, his tight shirt revealing a muscular torso and broad shoulders, and though he’s not tall, he’s undeniably imposing.
I swallow. My mouth is so dry.
He’s unarmed but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous. His arms are enormous and so are his hands. He could snap my neck without breaking a sweat.
The commander’s eyes are sharp and calculating as they sweep over me, taking in my frayed nerves and broken leg. Then he surprises me by chuckling.
“Nobody is going to kill you, girl. I’m not interested in starting a war with the Continent over a lowly sniper. I was simply making a point.”
“What point?” I ask through my parched throat.
“That Tierra Fe is not to be trifled with or underestimated. That I could kill Adrienne and every one of her people if I wanted to. However, that would be expending a lot of energy that could be better utilized elsewhere.” He shrugs.
“We’ll arrange for a pickup after we make your leader sweat for a while. ”
I don’t relax, but I am a little less fearful about that neck-snapping likelihood.
“Adrienne broke the rules.” He sounds annoyed. “When we set parley terms, we expect the other party to abide by them. She brought unauthorized snipers onto our soil. We don’t tolerate that.”
“You can’t expect her not to protect herself,” I hedge, and hope he doesn’t rip my head off.
“I expect her to follow our rules. This is our land, and Adrienne and her Uprising are nothing but a nuisance. If she thinks she can manipulate us into cooperation…”
I come to Adrienne’s defense again. “She wasn’t manipulating. She just wanted a chance to speak her case.”
“She has no case.”
I search his harsh face, genuinely curious. “You truly believe that? That there’s absolutely no way to ever work together?”
The commander’s lips curl with disdain. “Girl,” he starts.
“My name is Wren.”
“All right. Wren. The people on the Continent…you are all corrupted,” he says sternly, and I know he doesn’t mean the Adrienne kind of corruption. “You were corrupted the moment you became blind to the very thing that makes you human.”
I wrinkle my forehead. “And what’s that?”
He stares at me, almost disappointed. “God.”
“Ah. I see.”
“You see, do you? You see that you have forsaken God, you see you have abandoned the very foundation of humanity—our morality, our purpose? You see this and yet you want us to do the same? Never. We will never bow to your false gods.”
Whoa. The people at the Dagger weren’t wrong.
The Tierrans I’ve met so far are…intense.
“I get that,” I say carefully. “I really do. But if we don’t work together, eventually General Redden and the Company will come for Tierra Fe, for your resources.”
“Let them. We have God on our side. They just have greed.”
“And bombs.”
Commander Vásquez chuckles. “We’re not scared of their bombs. We have our own.”
A sharp knock echoes on the cell door. “Commander?” A female voice.
“Enter,” he barks.
A slim young woman, not much older than me, walks into the cell. She has caramel-brown hair arranged in a side braid, and dark eyes that cautiously take me in. She’s holding a canteen. She glances at the commander, who nods, then hands it to me.
I look up gratefully. “Thank you.” The cold water feels like heaven as it slides down my parched throat.
Unbothered by the woman’s presence, Vásquez keeps talking. “The people on the Continent have been stripped of their humanity—”
“Why?” I cut in. “Because they don’t all believe in God, or because some of them have been Modified?”
“I don’t speak of the demons.”
I prickle with offense. “You don’t truly believe the Modified are demons.” I’m unable to stop a harsh laugh.
“They are demons. The old demons, those spawned from the devil himself, were doomed to hell from the moment the dark angel created them. But the ones you call Modified, they were born of a new devil. We believe they can be saved, but it’s not our responsibility to save them.”
“I don’t understand.” I shift my position and regret it instantly, the pain in my leg threatening my consciousness again. I blink, trying to concentrate on his voice.
“We’re not opening our minds to your chaos.
That’s how the world was destroyed in the first place.
Because there was no order. Because human beings abandoned the one true source of strength.
” Vásquez’s voice takes on a deadly edge.
“We have order here, and we won’t jeopardize what we’ve built.
If Adrienne wants unity, she knows what she needs to do. ”
The entire time he speaks, the dark-haired woman stands at the window, doing her best impression of a statue as she watches our exchange. Digests it. There’s something about her that makes me nervous.
Taking advantage of my veins, I open a path into her mind, and maybe it’s a total coincidence, but she suddenly slaps the back of her neck with a strangled curse.
Commander Vásquez looks over sharply.
“Mosquito,” she says with a grimace, wiping her hand on her fatigues.
I eye her for a moment, retreating from her mind as Vásquez shifts his gaze back to me.
“It has been lovely chatting with you, Wren, but I’m afraid I must leave you now. You can spend some time here until we decide to contact your leader,” he says with a humorless smirk.
He nods at the woman, who follows him to the door. She glances over her shoulder at me, just briefly, before exiting the cell.
The metal door clangs shut. I hear what sounds like a padlock sliding into place. Not an electronic locking system, then. I know a lot of the sites on this continent are quite old, dating back centuries, and I wonder if this is an ancient dungeon, something that was used even before the Old Era.
But while the lock mechanism might be old, the security camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling is certainly not. I’m highly aware of that blinking red light.
I sit in the stifling humidity and try to ignore the relentless throbbing of my leg. I take small sips from the canteen they left me, trying to ration the water because I have no idea how long they’ll leave me in here. Then I set the canteen on the dirt and reach out to Adrienne.
“Darlington! Are you all right?”
“Sort of. I’m in a cell, but the commander just informed me he’s not going to kill me.”
“That’s noble of him.” She sounds amused.
“He says he wants to make you sweat, but they’ll release me eventually. Can you have a transport on standby? No idea when the asshole will decide he’s done toying with us.”
“Evlynne will stand by. I’d send Gray, but I don’t think he’s in the right state of mind.”
Guilt explodes inside me. “He’s angry?”
“I believe that’s what we call an understatement.”
Shit.
I wait. And wait. And wait some more.
Judging by the position of the sun beyond the window, about an hour has passed since the commander left me. The pain makes it difficult to concentrate, and it’s so damn hot in here. How do they live in this humidity?
I rest my back against the stone wall, letting out a tired breath as I look around the cell for the hundredth time.
On the hundred and first time, I notice the red light on the ceiling camera blink off.
Every muscle in my body coils tight.
Someone turned off the camera.
The dread rises when I hear footsteps beyond the door. It feels too soon for the commander’s mind games to be over, so I take a breath, expecting his scary ass to appear again.
Instead, it’s the dark-haired woman. She’s holding a small metal tray with a sandwich on it, and a pile of clothing under her arm.
“I thought you might be hungry,” she says.
I narrow my eyes. “I didn’t realize food delivery is in the captor job description.”
Leaving the clothes by the door, she crouches in front of me and holds out the tray. I catch a whiff of roast beef, and my stomach turns violently.
“No, sorry,” I say with a grimace. “I can’t eat. The pain in my leg is making me too nauseous.”
Nodding, she gets up and leaves the tray on the windowsill. A lot of good that’ll do me. Even if I got hungry, I wouldn’t be able to stand on this broken leg. I can barely even sit on it. I gave up on trying to find a comfortable position about an hour ago.
She’s about to duck out the door when I say, “You felt it.”
Her head turns slightly.
“You felt it when I tried to read your mind earlier,” I clarify.
It’s a wild guess. It honestly could’ve just been a mosquito biting her neck at the exact time I penetrated her mind.
But the look in her eyes tells me otherwise.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says stiffly.
She’s lying. “Does he know?” I push. “The commander?”
She doesn’t answer.
“The camera is off.” I gesture to the ceiling. “You did that?”
After a beat, her head dips in assent.
“That means he doesn’t know,” I say slowly. “You turned off the camera because you were afraid I might ask you, and you didn’t want him to hear that.”
No response.
“Are there other Mods in Tierra Fe?” I ask, my mind racing with possibilities. “Or are you the only one?”
A faint smile tugs on her mouth. “We both know I’m not going to answer that question.”
With a soft breath, she moves away from the door and walks toward me. She sinks onto her knees and settles at my feet, her gaze flicking to my injured leg.
“It’s a bad break,” she tells me.
“I know. I’m not sure how I’m still conscious,” I admit. “The pain is excruciating.”
She studies me like she’s piecing a puzzle together. Or like she’s trying to decide something. I suspect the latter, because she suddenly gives a brisk nod and extends her hands toward my leg.
“What—”
The protest dies when she places her palms directly on my broken bones. My leg screams in agony. I try to jerk away from her, but she makes a shushing sound.
“It’ll be over soon,” she murmurs.
The implication hangs thick in the cell, and I suck in a breath when I realize what’s happening. Warmth seeps into my ankle and spreads upward, the sensation eerie and familiar.
She’s healing me.
I stare at her in shock, but she’s not looking at me. She’s too absorbed with her task.
When I feel my bones begin to pulsate, it isn’t accompanied by pain. The heat of her touch surrounds my leg in a cocoon, even as her energy literally sets my bones and knits them back together. The pain ebbs. Bones shifting. Muscles stretching and pulling together.
It takes longer than it did for Ellis to heal my wrist, perhaps because of how severe this break was.
We sit in total silence. Her brow is furrowed as she works.
Beads of sweat gather on her temples, but I don’t know if it’s from the effort or the humidity clogging our pores.
She doesn’t move a muscle, just keeps her hands pressed to my lower leg, until finally, the pain disappears completely.
She removes her hand. “How’s the pain?”
“Gone,” I say gratefully.
“To answer your question…” She tips her head, shrugging. “No, my father doesn’t know.”
This woman seems determined to shock me into silence.
“Your father?” I finally say. “Commander Vásquez is your father?”
“My name is Valeria Vásquez.” She extends her hand in greeting.
“I’m Wren Darlington.” I start to clasp her wrist, but she grips my actual hand instead, giving it a firm shake.
When she notes my expression, she chuckles and says, “My province, my customs,” and I have to laugh, too.
I open a path again, but now that I know she’s a Mod, I don’t intrude and try to pound through her shield like an asshole. I invite her to use telepathy instead.
To my surprise, she accepts.
“I’ve never met a healer without a bloodmark,” I say in her mind. “How did you hide it from your father?”
Her brown eyes twinkle. Then she opens her mouth. For a second, I think she’s sticking her tongue out at me, but then she curls it upward, and I gasp.
Her bloodmark is underneath her tongue.
“Now, that’s luck,” I marvel. You don’t get to pick where your mark appears. Mine is on my thigh. Jayde Valence had hers right on her cheek. But under the tongue? I’m envious.
“There’s no such thing as luck. It is all God’s will.”
I arch a brow. “You still believe in God, after everything your father said before, calling us evil demons?”
“Yes,” Valeria says. “Because I know I’m neither evil nor a demon.”
I grin. “Fair.”
“And I know something else. Something that my father is too stubborn to accept.” She lowers her voice, growing serious.
“Soon it will be time to pick a side. Because your people aren’t the only ones with something to lose.
The Company has had us in their sights for a very long time.
We almost went to war with your Continent once before.
It was averted, but with General Redden gone and his son in charge, I fear that truce won’t last much longer. ”
“I think you’re right,” I say grimly. “Will you speak to your father? Convince him to work with us?”
“Nobody can convince him of something he doesn’t want to do. So, no, I won’t be able to talk him into picking a side. But…”
“But what?”
“He might be convinced to look the other way.”
“What do you mean?”
“My father isn’t stupid. He’s just stubborn.
He’ll refuse to fully join your cause, but I believe I can persuade him to…
perhaps…not be so protective of our airspace, our shipping routes.
Maybe sometimes it’s not a bad thing to let a plane or two pass…
” Her lips twitch as if she’s fighting a smile. “Little things like that.”
I smile back. “So you’ll help us.”
Rather than answer, Valeria rises to her feet and brushes dirt off her pants. She walks to the pile of fabric she’d left by the door, and I realize it’s not clothing. It’s a canvas wrap, which she uses to bind my lower leg.
“You’ll be released soon. You must pretend you’re still in pain,” she says, her voice firm as she stands at the door. “Nobody can know I healed you.”
“I won’t say a word,” I promise. Before she can leave the cell, I call out her name. “Valeria.”
She looks over, and I feel an unexpected, fragile alliance forming.
“Can you do me a favor?”