21. Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter twenty-one
I t’s not until a few steps down the hallway I truly get my bearings, my head still spinning from the events of last night … and this morning. My room is only two doors away. Belatedly, I register I’ve left the brass trolley outside his room, but that will be a problem for later.
I shower and prepare the tipples, only two of them, for Blossom and me while I wait for her to rise. But I sit on the couch in my towel, unable to bring myself to put on another concierge’s uniform. Idly, I muse at how quickly that change has taken place. As if a line in my capacity for serving my country was drawn the day I was supposed to be collected. The day I was supposed to go back to my own life and instead found myself trapped here.
And every day since then has been subtly testing the boundaries of how much more I can do. How much further I will go from following exactly what is expected of me, to questioning everything I can see.
Then there’s Quillian, a man who could talk to Traelen about ending my extension, or push through another recommendation. A man – Warden – who knows I am constantly putting those I care about above my duty, and my country, regardless of the rules. Knows I am actively engaging with a prisoner from Vana to break them out of another Zanteera prison – an act that more than warrants my own transfer to Vana. A man who’s just walked out on me after what was the most intimate night of my life. A man who literally holds the key to Nix and River’s last way off the island. Even if I have to force them to go without Cortane.
And I’ve just slept with him. Blowing the door wide open for everything to go wrong. Which it did.
Nice. Professional.
Smart.
‘Fuck,’ I mutter as I slump on my side and drop my face into a couch cushion.
‘Good morning to you, too,’ Blossom says sleepily as she wanders into the kitchen.
I stay where I am, plastered to the couch and wishing the day would never come. The back of the cushion depresses a bit where I can feel Blossom leaning on it and then she’s prying my eyelids open with her fingers.
‘Do I need to be worried?’ she asks.
I can only see part of her face with one eye open and the other pressed into the linen, but she’s walking the line of concern and mirth.
‘I slept with Quillian,’ I whisper, the gentle scratch of the couch fabric reminding me of the softness of his lips against mine.
I drag myself upright and cover my face with my hands. Slowly, I hear Blossom walk around the couch and sit on the low table in front of me.
‘You’re going to have to repeat that,’ she says gently. ‘For a moment I thought I heard you say you fucked Quillian.’
Her mouth has dropped open when I finally lift my face and look at her, my wet hair falling around my shoulders.
‘Oh,’ she breathes.
I let out an exasperated groan as I lean back again on the couch, sitting this time, and looking at the wet patch my hair has left on the other side.
‘Tell me everything,’ she says, her voice teetering between worry and reluctant happiness.
It’s the tiny sliver of happiness that calls the tears back and I let them creep down the sides of my face quietly. For one brief moment, I knew the rush of possibility. The ‘what if’ that came burning through our every breath, every touch. Just to have it snatched away, all the doors to a different future closed down. Along with the possibility of gently asking him about the portal in the Residence.
‘Luka?’ she prompts softly, concern lighting her features as she sees my tears. ‘Please tell me what happened.’ She takes my hand and threads her fingers in it.
‘I don’t know how—’ I say, the memory coming hot and fast with no way to adequately describe how he made me feel. ‘We were just … standing there and then he kissed me. And I kissed him back and … then I woke up there.’
I watch her face as I tell her my disjointed story, unable to voice how right it had felt. How, having someone who seems to see me – actually see me – touch my skin with his, who kissed me like he’d never kiss anyone else again, ignited a longing I’d ignored for so long. I don’t tell her I don’t know how to shut it off.
‘Did you enjoy it?’ she asks.
My skin flushes at the memory of just how much but I know Blossom means more than that and I nod, fresh tears warming a path on my skin.
‘But he didn’t,’ I whisper.
Blossom’s brow furrows and I take one of the brown curls that frames her face absently in my fingers. Absurdly, I think of the painting – the one of the woman draped across the lounge in the prison hallway. I was right, I think, that the image it portrays is ridiculous. At least for me to keep pondering her poise and beauty as I pass it by. Because this is my version – bedraggled and hurting.
‘He said he wished we hadn’t … and he left.’
She sits up, back straight, and the curl pops from my fingers.
‘Oh,’ she says quietly. ‘What does that mean for using the portal that’s reserved for—’
The sheer curtains blow inwards suddenly, the air swirling around us. Ice slides down my spine as Cortane appears in the living room, her hazel eyes running over every surface, and then Blossom and me. She strides in and I press myself further into the couch.
‘I’ve made up my mind,’ she says in greeting. There’s a strange buoyancy to her tone I haven’t heard before.
She’s much shorter than I’d realised, but her presence fills our whole apartment. The tight black pants she wears shine slightly in the sunlight that’s now streaming in behind her, the sleeveless shirt was probably once white, or some variation, and is now an assortment of stains I don’t want to identify.
She looks like the sort of person I would expect to carry a weapon, but I don’t see any. Not that I really know where to look, I suppose. Slowly, my heart rate comes down. Just enough for me to properly understand that Cortane, a prisoner from the other side, is standing in my living room.
And I’m crying on the couch dressed in nothing but a towel.
Blossom stands and puts herself between us.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she says.
Cortane cocks her head. ‘That’s true of just about everywhere I go. But not really the point right now, is it?’
‘What do you mean you’ve made up your mind?’ I ask. ‘That was quite clear the last time we met.’
She studies us each for a long moment, my skin tightening uncomfortably under her gaze.
‘You have an exit off the island, as long you don’t fuck up your recommendation,’ she says, pointing at me. ‘The soldiers do not. They do, however, have a job to do. When it’s done, I’ll get them home.’ She perches herself on the edge of the chair to my left, it’s back facing the entrance to my bedroom. But there’s nothing casual about the movement. She’s a tightly coiled spring.
‘There are preparations that will need to be made,’ she continues.
‘You can’t just pop everyone off the island today?’ Blossom asks. I can’t tell how much sarcasm there is supposed to be in her tone, but it’s dripping with it.
‘Not without us either being fried on the way, or setting off every alarm in Zanteera with the tracking magic we’d be branded with on the way through the wards.’
She looks between us, just like she did when we first met in the alcove.
‘A tea would be nice,’ she says, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other. The pose is relaxed but I don’t doubt she’d be able to murder us both in the blink of an eye.
Reluctantly, Blossom moves to the kitchen to prepare the tea and I take the opportunity to race to my bedroom and change into soft pants and a t-shirt, dumping the towel on my bed for the moment and ignoring my wet, knotty hair.
I feel compelled to not be killed while naked, but I don’t want to leave Blossom alone for long.
‘—know how to find them,’ Cortane is saying when I reappear in the living room.
She turns back to me, shrewd assessment running them down the length of my body.
‘Not sure that’s a huge improvement, Princess’ she says.
My teeth click shut, I have no idea how to respond to this woman. Blossom gives me an uncertain look before she pushes two cups across the kitchen bench. The steam curls out from the two of them and, trying to swallow away the trickle of fear that still grips the back of my neck, I take one in my hands. The warmth radiates through my palms where I hold the soft yellow cup, until it becomes a heat that’s too hot and I shift my grip to the handle.
Cortane studies hers, a pink floral with a gold handle, where it sits on the bench. Something like sadness flickering across her face. Raising it to her mouth, she takes a savouring sip and her lashes flutter closed briefly.
‘Right,’ she says, her eyes flying back open, the moment of gentleness gone. ‘If we’re going to do this, we do it right.’
She moves back to the sitting area and takes a seat on the couch. There’s no instruction to follow her but every move of her body suggests we need to obey her silent orders and join her.
‘Do you know why I am willing to help you?’ she asks.
‘Because … it’s nice of you?’ I ask, still trying to process that she’s here and committing to help.
Cortane’s eyes almost bulge out of her head as she stares at me. Then she laughs so hard tears dampen her cheeks and she clasps at her chest. The sound is hollow and raspy as if she’s entirely out of practice.
‘Claudius,’ she says, steadying her breath, ‘did not send you to me because he thought I was nice.’
That is a truth we both know and I am all out of smart-ass replies, so I stay quiet.
‘He trusted me to make an assessment – one I have made – and now we move forward,’ she says, glancing up at the sky out the large doors to the balcony. ‘There is a lot that will need to wait until another time. First, we need to know we can actually get off. You two already have a mechanism. Luka, your extension will be up soon and you’ll be collected. Blossom, your duty ends in what, two years, right?’
She waits for Blossom’s confirmation before she continues. ‘That timing isn’t ideal. When I’m back on the mainland, I will organise for your duty to be shortened.’
‘Hold on,’ I say against the flaring hope that starts in my stomach. ‘How can it be shortened?’
‘You’ll be stationed in Parliament – you will help me.’
Blossom and I stare at her.
‘Like I said, much to be worked out when we’re off the island,’ she says.
There’s a soft puffing sound that takes me a moment to place as Blossom’s loud exhale. ‘So, how do we do it right?’ she asks.
‘The wards around the island are legendary,’ Cortane says. ‘We won’t be the first to try and portal out, but we’ll be the first to succeed if we do. At least without being tracked and found in less than a day.’
I let my head drop on the back of the couch as the weight of what she’s saying starts to settle.
‘I just need to know how to portal through the wards, without being tracked.’
I watch her as she looks between us.
‘If we’re marked with trackers,’ she continues, ‘we’re as good as dead and the soldiers would be better off in Vana.’
Little bumps breakout on my skin and I rub at the cold that’s started to attach to my limbs. I start to wonder if this is such a good idea. I’ve never so audaciously broken the rules before, and these ones are here for a reason – to keep prisoners separate from Zanteera. To stop them hurting people. And now I want to send three of them back. One of whom I know is a murderer.
And I could be condemning both Blossom and myself to a lifetime of Vana in the process if we’re found to be assisting the breakout.
Cortane watches my hesitation and she softens slightly, her body losing the tiniest amount of its rigidity. ‘ I know this is a big deal,’ she says. ‘Just keep being discreet in what you’re doing. Traelen is the primary link between Zanteera prison and the Nuntainia mainland – keep him in the dark, and you’ll be fine.’
‘That might be a small problem,’ I say, my voice thick with the sickness in my throat. ‘Quil—the new Warden … I told him you wanted information on him, and that I refused to give it.’ I draw a long breath. ‘He knows I’m searching for a way off the island and for who.’
The look Cortane gives me is almost enough to turn me to stone.
But I don’t tell her I know Quillian is far more than Warden of this prison. That I know he is connected to Nix and River and, at least by association, to her. How much he questions what he sees up here and how much it sits so badly with him. Cortane might be helping us now – and I have been so truthful with her in the past it hurts. But none of that means I can actually trust her.
‘I’ll deal with him,’ she says, and my stomach turns over. ‘But you tell no one else. Understand?’
I stare at her.
‘Why do you need us?’ Blossom asks, but I can barely hear her through the screaming in my head. ‘Why not just leave on your own?’
Cortane’s face is virtually unreadable as she looks between us, but her voice drips with condescension. ‘I might not have a ‘duty’ the same as the two of you, but there is a creed I live by. As for you two, Claudius wanted my views – something I never got to give him – and I need information on the wards from the Warden’s office,’ she says. ‘It’s warded against my portals so I need you to get it.’
She looks back at me. ‘You obviously have a relationship with the new one, use it to get the specifications on bringing the wards from that office. I need them to work out how to go through without being marked.’
I think of Nix and River and how badly they need to be done. The pain in Nix’s face when he talks of his duty. The way his letters started to warp. And how here, even when he should be focused and precise, his turbulent emotions are clearly running so closely to the surface.
‘Also,’ she says, ‘it’s clear you’re on your own … journey here, Luka. You need to work out how far down that road you’re prepared to go.’
‘I’ll get the information.’ I raise my gaze to Cortane’s. ‘But if you hurt him, I will spend my last breath getting you back into Vana.’