30. The End of an Alliance #3
And as much as I hate it, I need Drake on my side, still. I might need his magic for my plan for Cosmer’s trial. And I do need to pass these final tests. It’s what my mother wants. And if I’m FI’d, I can actually be with Cosmer when I do save him.
The baths are filling up with people and steam, and a fully dressed soldier has moved to stand across from us. Of course Dezeeves wouldn’t have left us completely unattended.
“Come on,” I say, indicating a smaller tub on the outskirts of the masses.
His voice, when he speaks again, is soft. “I don’t mind failing this test, Ara.”
“Why? We’re so close to Integration. We don’t have to keep living with it over our heads.”
“Things are different,” he states. “Today’s corrective instruction—”
“You were right,” I’m assuming I know what he’s about to say. “It’s a sham.”
“Converting us is a sham. But what he was trying to do earlier was something else.”
“Tell me in the bath. I’m not missing my chance for one.”
Turning my back on him, I slip out of my clothes as quickly as possible, then climb up the rungs of the tub.
But for all the confidence I had felt getting in, now I can feel myself bracing, and my heart is jolting.
The tub is small, smaller than I’d first thought – a radius only extending out a couple of metres at its widest. I’m going to be so close to Drake.
Cosmer would hate this.
I remind myself there’s nothing intimate about this. The lights are on. The space is loud and echoing. We’re surrounded by sweaty soldiers and pilots talking and laughing, and we’re being scrutinised by a guard. I can see at least three people’s behinds.
No one cares about nakedness here. I shouldn’t, either.
It’s just a bath.
I hear the gentle splash that must be him sinking in beside me. I gravitate away from him – and for some reason my mind flashes back to last night, when I thought I was about to get him killed. The way I’d screamed his name in my dream.
It’s embarrassing. I’m glad he’ll never know.
Taking a breath, I look over at him. He’s splashing his face, washing off the powder on it and revealing the bruise.
I can’t see anything I shouldn’t, but I find myself staring at his chest. I’d seen it partially when I’d ripped open his shirt to resuscitate him. But never fully, like this.
Every muscle is defined. Even his arms are wide, strong – and he’s scarred.
Lines from lashes claw outwards, from his back.
His stomach is scorched with rounded burn marks, like something hot has repeatedly been pressed against him.
I can finally see, understand, the training – and torture – he must have gone through in the military compound much of his life.
I force myself to look away. I shouldn’t be staring at him. Even if to feel pity for him.
“What did you want to tell me?” I ask.
His hands drop to his sides as he looks at me properly for the first time. I suddenly feel small. Like he’s seeing more of me than I want him to – and I don’t mean of my body.
“You first. Tell me what you thought of that corrective instruction.”
“Just seemed the same to me. More pointless questions and philosophising. A show, for the officers.”
“No. He was trying to do something. Perhaps, something he was trying to do all along.”
I stare at him blankly.
“Think about it, Ara. Why get us together, at all, for a corrective instruction session? Why let us be alone together, now?” He’s squinting, like he’s thinking. “We have been able to have far too many conversations.”
I force myself to grasp what he’s saying. Is there truth to that? Has Dezeeves been letting us communicate?
“The Captain’s Dinner,” I say. “We were seated beside each other.”
“Yet guests of honour would be seated on either side of their hosts, in tradition. At one point he even left the table, if you remember.”
“Do you think he—”
“Do I believe he knows about the fortune that was read to the Queen?” Drake nods, firmly. “It would appear that way. He knew my name when we met, and implied he knew my identity. He can only be one of two things. A spy for Hevalla, or—”
“A traitor. Like we said.”
For a second, I don’t know which option would be worse.
But then I pull the strands together, and I do. “Let’s hope he’s a traitor. If Hevalla – The Assembly – knew who we are—”
“Ara. There is something else we need to discuss. Something you promised we would speak about last night. It was the condition of me helping you.”
I shake my head. “I can’t help you, Drake. I know the magic isn’t working as it should, but—”
“It will never work,” he states. “If you won’t give it a chance.”
“How can I?” I retort, voice lifting higher. “It’s doomed. You’ll have to find a way to get your magic to work without me. Overthrow your mother without me.” I add, “We’re not soulmates. I love Cosmer.”
“I don’t believe it,” he says simply.
I rage so hard and fast it’s a wonder the water doesn’t simmer.
“It’s not for you to believe.”
“We did powerful things last night. We ran circles around guards. Communicated through your dream. Powerful things. Did you not enjoy them?”
“N-no,” I say, then mentally kick myself, looking up at the metallic ceiling. Why, Sisters, did you let me stammer?
“You want what I want. You want what was promised to you. Otherwise the pain, the suffering, for years, will have meant nothing.”
“I don’t want power.”
“I believe – I have reason to believe – you have always wanted it. And a poor, magicless boy from your village won’t give you that.”
“No,” I say again, firmer this time – the way I should have said it before. And then a new wave of understanding hits me. “This is Meg’s influence, isn’t it? She told you to get in my head. And that’s what you’re doing.”
I actually laugh. It’s a crazed sound.
But it gives me strength.
This man in front of me, this man I had thought was my friend…
He’s just like everyone else.
Just like fate.
He’s trying to take everything from me.
A voice that sounds distantly like mine calls out to me like a siren’s song from the back of my mind.
You’re stronger than him right now.
You could look into his eyes. Ask him, sweetly, to slip under the water and stay there. Even while his lungs fill.
Drake is rigid. His face is composed as always, but his eyes tell me a different story. They’re caving. Like he’s only now realised I wasn’t a castle in the distance.
I was a ruin.
And my ghosts will smother him.
I can feel my magic wrapping around me. Darkening me.
“Do it.” He encourages me, softly. His eyes are more black than deepest brown right now. They’re perfectly level with mine.