CHAPTER 14 RAYA
RAYA
If I ever doubted that Hues deserved the hand fate dealt them, I don’t anymore.
I always knew that their kind was dangerous, that their gifts were unpredictable and their blood was a poison to our world.
But with so few left, I’ve never really seen it.
Never felt it. Never imagined that I’d find myself at their mercy.
What mercy? If not for the fear and the anger, I’d have probably succumbed to the Gold’s torture and slumped into unconsciousness against the wall, let oblivion take me. But I refuse to give him that satisfaction. I refuse to give him my total surrender after everything else he took.
This’ll hurt less if you hold still.
Gods, what a fucking joke. Even now, my skin still burns with his magic, my whole body trembling like a leaf in autumn, the ache from the iron replaced by a pain that penetrates to the bone. There’s bile on my tongue, sweat in my hair, salt on my cheeks from when I begged him to stop.
And I did beg.
And beg.
And then I cried, screamed, and begged some more, without sparing a thought for how pathetic it made me look. Because his gift didn’t just feel like suffering, it felt like dying. Like having my very essence ripped apart by feral dogs.
This won’t kill you, he kept telling me, though when I finally get free of this pipe, I very much intend to kill him.
It would be no less than he deserves—no less than all of them deserve.
For a few blissful moments, that fantasy stokes the rage in my soul.
I picture my hand slipping out of the cuff and wrapping around the Gold’s throat; I picture the look on his face when he realizes that I’m not as weak as he and his half-breed friends first thought; I picture handing them over to the trackers and watching a Green stop their hearts in front of a triumphant court.
But then a shadow wisps through the door to my prison and despite myself, I recoil, flattening against the wall in an effort to disappear entirely.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” The Sapphire quickly retreats to the far side of the room, as if to prove that he means to keep that promise.
“Like you’d even have the stomach for it,” I spit, reaching for a few of his very own choice words. “I saw how you looked away right before the good part.” Hells, I saw the way his Bronze had to lead him out before he puked. “Don’t worry, half breed, I’m sure you’ll do better next time.”
“Ezzo.” He barely flinches as he sits. “My name is Ezzo.”
“Good for you.” I make it plenty clear that I won’t be sharing mine in return.
If these Hues are so willing to hurt me now, then I can’t imagine what they’d do if they found out who their prisoner truly is.
How important her parents are. I’ve absolutely zero doubt they’d try to use me as leverage. “Are you going to let me go?”
“We’re not going to kill you, if that’s what you’re asking. Killing is what your kind do.” It’s practically the same line his Gold fed me right before he violated my will. We’re not like you full-bloods; we don’t just kill everything we’re scared of.
“I just experienced first-hand what your kind do, Ezzo.” I glare at him until he blinks. “Or does torture not count in your opinion? Are you perfectly okay with hurting Shades so long as it suits your needs?”
“Not as okay as your Council is with it.” The shame in his voice turns to grit.
“Do you know what it’s like to have your bones broken by an Orange, or to have a Green heal you over and over so that they can keep pulling you apart limb from limb?
Because I do,” he says, absently clawing at his ribs.
“I also know what it’s like to be starved for days and beaten for hours.
So please, tell me all about how your kind doesn’t play with its food. ”
The memory of him in the court chamber—bruised black, swollen, and bleeding—assaults me unbidden, every bit as uncomfortable now as it felt when they were leading him in.
“It was the trackers’ job to—”
“Find me.” Ezzo doesn’t allow that flimsy excuse to pass my lips. “Their job was to find me and get me in front of the Council. The pain they inflicted was a choice.”
“Well, then . . . they must have had—”
“A good reason?” he asks, cutting me off again. “Because I didn’t run, or put up a fight, or try to escape.”
It’s getting harder and harder to contradict him.
“Then, I don’t know . . . you must have—”
“Right. I must have.” He rolls his eyes, bitter. “The problem couldn’t have possibly been on your side.”
“My side does what’s necessary to protect the Gray because your side is draining the shadows.” I don’t know why I’m even bothering to debate him on this when that’s what it comes down to in the end: the pursuit of the lesser evil.
“My side is a handful of Hues who barely make it to adolescence—hasn’t it ever occurred to you that we’re in no position to be draining anything?”
The assertion is a little rich coming from the Hue who just had his golden friend drain me.
“That’s only because we’ve kept your numbers in check!” I grind the truth to a sharp point. “Before the purges were instituted, your kind almost collapsed the Gray! A few bad apples don’t change that.”
“How about twelve bad apples, then?” Ezzo’s expression hardens, his fingers drumming an agitated concerto against his knees.
“Is that number supposed to mean something to me?”
“Not particularly, no. It’s just the number of trackers they sent to kill my parents.
” His admission catches me entirely off-guard.
“I was only nine at the time and the village we lived in served as a night-port between two cities, so when I saw that many trails converge, I assumed it was a trading party, not a raid. Because why would the Council send twelve trackers to apprehend one Indigo and her typic husband? That wouldn’t make any sense. ”
And yet, I’m suddenly sure he’s about to tell me that’s exactly what they did.
“So that morning, when Mom sent me to pick berries from a nearby field, I didn’t understand what she was doing,” Ezzo continues, his voice clouding with grief.
“I didn’t realize that she and Dad had chosen not to run, not to fight, because it meant saving me, changing my future.
But I can tell you this much: the mess your trackers left of them .
. . that wasn’t justice, it was glee. They enjoyed it. ”
Despite the pain still coursing through my body, it’s impossible not to feel a pang of pity.
“Look, I know it may not seem fair, but they did break the law,” I say, softer than he deserves.
“Ah, well, I guess that explains why the trackers had to break so many of their bones, then.” His face fills with disgust, his eyes darkening to midnight.
“Though I do wonder what the justification was for cutting off their ring fingers and tossing their wedding bands in the hearth. Is that part of the training?” He doesn’t give me a chance to reply.
“Better yet, do you think there’s a reason they had to stab a typic and passive Shade so many times their blood ended up on the ceiling, or do you want to tell me again how those few bad apples are the exception to the rule? ”
My stomach twists, and clenches, and bucks. If he’s telling the truth, then what those Shades did to his parents is inexcusable. The trackers are supposed to deal in quick deaths, not torture. In punishment, not cruelty. In order as mandated by a trial.
Snap out of it, Raya, he’s a Hue; they lie. Hells, if he thought it might save him from execution, he’d probably say anything to solicit my sympathies. Invent any atrocity.
“Tell me what you know about the death of the Gray.” His change of subject is as unexpected as it is abrupt.
Oh . . . so that’s why he’s here. I should have realized he’d have an agenda, something he was hoping to learn from this conversation before it veered wildly off track.
“The Gold tried to use my magic, didn’t he?” That must be what all that urgent yelling was about, why Ezzo didn’t believe my claim before but is considering it now.
“Yes, he did—and that Gold is Chase, by the way. The girl is Cemmy.” He makes a point of sharing their names, as if to remind me that they’re more than just illegal colors.
“But the future wouldn’t answer his question.
Instead, it sent him an abstract vision of the shadows dying.
I take it that’s what you saw, too? What you were trying to say earlier? ”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Now that I’ve deduced what he’s really after, he’ll be getting nothing from me but snide remarks.
“What did you mean when you told Chase your magic doesn’t work?” Ezzo tries again, subtly changing tack.
“You should get your hearing checked, half breed. My magic works fine.”
“See, I don’t think it does.” His head shakes as he calls my bluff. “My mother was an Indigo, remember? And she never had a vision like that. She never used them the way you did in the tavern, either. So . . . fluidly. So seamlessly on the fly.”
“Maybe she wasn’t as good as I am.”
A muscle in his jaw twitches, the nerve I hit sharpening the hate in his eyes.
“No, if it was a matter of skill, you wouldn’t be sneaking around behind the trackers’ backs. If you’re seeing something they can’t, my guess is it’s because you’ve done something you shouldn’t. What I can’t figure out is why?”
Gods, of course he can’t. What could this Hue possibly know about following the rules or having to prove his power?
The best he can hope for, on a good day, is not getting caught, and sooner or later, his luck is going to run out—probably sooner, given how much he likes to drink.
And since he’s already embarrassed the Council so thoroughly, when they do finally catch him, I doubt they’ll risk another trial.
The moment the trackers find Ezzo, they’ll kill him.
Put an end to our mutually fated path.