34. The Ultimate Betrayal
The Ultimate Betrayal
People are descending the stairs en masse, and Drake and I, pressed together, end up in a pushing, shoving throng that isn’t moving.
“Why are we even evacuating?” I shout over the clamouring of soldiers, while being jostled.
“Unclear. I still don’t have a radio.”
I barely take a step onto Deck 3 before Drake grabs me and hauls me off to the side, knocking the breath out of me. It takes me a moment to work out why he did that, but then I see it. A brawl has broken out directly in front of us.
It lasts only seconds. A tangle of limbs, before the pilot who had been attacked is knocked unconscious with a punch to the face. The two soldiers swipe the key to his ship from around his neck, and scarper.
“I don’t understand,” I mutter, still in Drake’s arms and breathing his air – I think I’m too overwhelmed by the situation to shove him off.
His legs are pressed between mine, and I’m trying not to think about it.
“We all have our own emergency stations. Ours is starboard on this deck, like Riss said.”
“Planning goes out the window when people panic.”
And they are. Panicking.
More and more people are pushing past us. Scrambling to get to the nearest docking pods. I don’t think anyone is evacuating to the area they’re supposed to.
Drake seems to realise what we’re up against at the same time I do, and he grasps my shoulders, his body still tight against mine and his heat still smothering me.
His voice is a command. “Wait here. I will use my magic to get us on a ship. It will be less intimidating if they only see one of us, and they know me now.”
His legs slide out from between mine, his hands slip from my shoulders and he takes off. I stare at his retreating back, feeling cold suddenly, and somehow – and this is the part that makes no sense to me – like I just lost a part of me.
I don’t want to be here, in this chaos, alone.
“Ara!” someone yells. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Rike.
Someone who can help me.
I run to him. He meets me halfway.
“Rike, what’s happening?”
“Dezeeves sent me to get you and bring you to The Bridge. All the FIs are going there now.”
“What? Why?”
But as soon as I say it, I know why.
Dinner is getting cold.
And the Queen is ready to serve it.
“Come on,” Rike says, steering me around.
“No,” I say, bursting out of his arms. “I’m not going there.”
“You FI’d,” he states, sounding nothing like my old friend, who was always so mild. “It’s time.”
I try to run. Manage to surge through the faceless bodies around me.
But with a violence I never knew he had in him, he chases me down.
Grabs me, despite my thrashing and attempt to defend myself, and throws me over his shoulder like I’m nothing but a burlap sack.
Something to be used and discarded. My oxygen cannister slips off my back.
I hear it clunking onto the wooden floor. See it rolling away from me.
Rike’s Commander father would be so proud of him.
I beat at his strong back with my fists. “Put me down! Put me—”
Smack.
Rike yelps. We go flying. One second I’m on his back, the next I’m on the floor, my body screaming in pain. Rike is curled around me, clutching his knee. A plank of wood is broken and splintered around him.
And then a body collides with mine. A body I’d know just from its scent, from its hard, slender shape, and from its warmth, alone.
I let him pull me up, in this hug we can’t break from – that I don’t ever want to break from.
“Cosmer,” I say, into his hair, which feels dank. I don’t care. I still want to run my hands through it.
He releases me. Stares into my eyes.
His are bloodshot. But he sees me. It’s enough.
“Are you okay?” he asks me, desperately, like telling him no would torture him.
“Yes,” I promise him. “But this is Dezeeves’ plan. He’s evacuating the ship for his own reasons. We need to find Ephraine—”
“Ara,” Drake’s voice says. “I found us a ship—”
I turn to face him, twining Cosmer’s fingers with mine as I do. “So did I,” I say, lifting our joined hands.
Drake looks at Cosmer’s face like it carries his ghosts.
Rike, still holding his knee, sits up. “Drake. Ara. You need to go The Bridge—”
“We’re not going there. Unless Ephraine is there—”
Dezeeves’ voice sounds out through the radio at Rike’s waist, stopping my words. “Rike? Did you find them?”
Rike pulls out the radio. “They’re down on Deck 3,” he says, into it. “But…”
“But what?”
“I think Cosmer broke my knee.”
Dezeeves sounds grossly unimpressed. “We need them. At once. When the enemy ships arrive—”
My heart sinks. I squeeze Cosmer’s hand. “Rhavnan ships are coming?”
The radio crackles out.
Rike looks at me mournfully. “No, Ara. Hevallan ships are. Someone here must have told them about… us.”
No.
No.
No.
I let go of Cosmer’s hand.
The deck is still frenzied. But my mind is chillingly still. I snatch the radio from Rike’s hand.
Bearing down on him, I spit, “How do I get hold of Ephraine?”
“He tends to sit on the same frequency. The telescope.”
“Why do you want to speak to Ephraine so much?” Cosmer asks.
I ignore him, flicking to the frequency. Turning my back on them all, I yell, “Ephraine? Where are you?”
At first, there’s nothing. But then his sickening voice feeds through. It’s as arrogant and awful as it always was.
“I was wondering when I might hear from you.”
And suddenly, I understand him completely.
Can assess him, the way I was taught to assess my opponents when I lived in the Palace.
He’s self-absorbed – just his physique tells me that.
Maybe he doesn’t even need the metal eye, but wears it for decoration, and to add threat to his appearance.
He’s risen to a station he doesn’t deserve too young, while he’s still selfish and foolish, and it’s made him think the deities owe him something.
I move away from the others completely. “Where are you?”
“The Mantis.”
I lean back against a wall. “Another hive ship.”
“Correct.”
“You…”
You didn’t just betray Dezeeves.
You betrayed us all.
“What do you want? I’m busy.”
“Busy doing what?” I snap. “Overseeing the fleets on their way to us?” I take his silence as a resounding yes. “You were supposed to put Dezeeves on trial!” I shriek, my whole body crumpling in on itself. “You were supposed to do things right. Go to The Assembly—”
“Traitors are vermin, Ara,” he says, tauntingly. “They breed. Who knows how many people Dezeeves has been whispering to? The ship will be overrun with them. It needs burning down. And the captain always goes down with his ship, after all.”
I sink down to the floor, my head resting against the wall.
He’s an evil man.
He loves violence – he’d shown that, many times.
The ship going up in flames… This will be a sight he’ll relish.
Why hadn’t I believed my own eyes? My own instincts?
His actions will kill us all.
My hand becomes a fist around the radio.
Cosmer, Drake and Rike are all looking over at me.
But I ignore them.
Because the only thing that matters is the light I can feel wrapping itself around me.
Except it’s more like darkness.
I can’t make him directly kill himself, I remember.
But, maybe…
In my mind’s eye, I can even see him. He’s smirking, standing by a telescope in The Bridge of a hive which is travelling towards us. Its ships are already out in the sky, leading the way. They will have descended on us – destroyed us – within the hour.
I speak softly into the radio, like I’m speaking to him from a dream.
“I want you to go down to your ship’s osimidite chamber. I want you to defeat any engineers who may be there – I know you can. Then I want you to sit there. Soak in the fumes and just enjoy yourself.” Cooler, I say, “For a long, long, long time.”
I feel the silent click. The magic fizzles.
The radio goes dead.
Cosmer is approaching me. He reaches out for me.
“What did he say?” he asks me, with love in his eyes.
And I turn cold as granite.
I take his hand, shakily, knowing I will never tell him about this moment. What I just did to a man.
I don’t think he would understand it.
“Nothing of note,” I lie.
I feel pain for that.
But no regret.
No regret at all.
Cosmer walks me back to Drake and Rike, his hand on the small of my back.
I take one look at Drake and know he knows exactly what I did. His eyes judge me a thousand times. But his face tells me nothing.
I stare right back at him. Why didn’t you stop me that time? I think to him. You must have agreed with me. You must have thought he deserved to die, too.
“Ara,” Rike says. He’s now on his feet, Drake helping to support his weight. “You really do need to come with us—”
“Us?” I swivel to Drake again. “You’ve changed your tune. What happened to finding a ship so we could get away?”
Drake nods at Rike. “I was not aware of what I know now. And I believe we should go with Rike to The Bridge and the other FIs. We can protect them.” He gestures to the deck, where pilots and soldiers are still trying to locate ships.
Hatches clank and slam as they open and shut.
“All of them. And then we will be taken home.”
Home. Home in Rhavna.
Not Hevalla.
Cosmer’s grip around my waist tightens. “No. Ara is coming with me, on my ship. We’re going to go to our home. Away from all of this.”
Drake’s body hardens, like that’s rattled him. He barely looks at him as he says, “Are you currently even safe to pilot?”
Cosmer tenses up. “I’m fine,” he blurts, going red in the face.
“Shall we ask you how many fingers we’re all holding up?”
“Sure. And then you can tell me how many I am.” He holds up his middle finger at him.
I cut in, putting Cosmer’s hand down with my own. “We don’t have time for this.” I turn to Drake. “If you want to go with Rike and be a pawn in Dezeeves’ game, that’s fine. But I’m going with Cosmer. And that’s the end of it.”
Drake takes the smallest of steps forwards. “Even though it would be completely the wrong thing to do?” Lower, he says, “Even though it would endanger every single person on this ship?”
I glower at him. “You can block my magic, Drake. But you can’t stop my choices.”
The radio, still in my hand, sounds out again.
“Rike,” Dezeeves says, through it. “I must insist—”
Rike yanks his radio from me. “I’ve got Drake. But, Ara…”
“We need them both.”
Rike looks at me pleadingly.
I look at him pleadingly.
Please, I beg him silently. For the friendship we once had.
For love, which you always believed in.
Rike holds the radio closer to his mouth. “Is there no other way we can stop the fleets, Dezeeves? What about the weapon?”
Dezeeves’ words penetrate a hole through any hope I had left.
Of me. Of Cosmer.
Of the future we should have, but can’t.
“Ara and Drake are the weapon. They have always been it.”