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I faltered at the entrance. This was probably the worst time to disturb him, but I was to meet Margg’s contact the next day. I had no time to waste. Gathering courage, I knocked and opened the door without waiting for an answer.
Valek’s lantern flickered. He stopped grinding. The wheel spun in silence, reflecting pinpricks of light that whirled along the walls and ceiling.
He asked, “What is it?”
“I’ve had an offer. Someone wants to pay me for information about the Commander.”
He spun around. His face was half hidden in shadows, but it was as rigid as the stone he held. “Why tell me?”
“I thought you might want to follow along. This might be the one who has been leaking information about me.”
He stared at me.
I wished then that I held a heavy rock, because I had the sudden desire to bash it on his head. “Espionage is illegal. You might want to make an arrest, or maybe even feed this leak some misinformation. You know, spy stuff. Remember? Or have you become bored with that, too?” Anger fueled my words.
I took a breath to launch into an attack, but it slid unvoiced past my clenched teeth. There was a slight softening in Valek’s face. Renewed interest emanated from him, as if he had been holding every muscle taut and had just relaxed.
“Who?” he asked finally. “And when?”
“Margg approached me, and she mentioned a contact. We’re meeting tomorrow night.” I studied his expression. Was he surprised or hurt by Margg’s treachery? I couldn’t tell. Reading Valek’s true mood was like trying to decipher a foreign language.
“All right, proceed as planned. I’ll tail you to the rendezvous, and see who we’re dealing with. We’ll start by feeding this contact some accurate information to make you look reliable. Perhaps the Commander’s change of successor would work. It’s harmless information that will be made public anyway. Then we’ll go from there.”
We outlined the details. Even though I was placing my life in danger, I felt cheerful. I had my old Valek back. But for how long? I wondered as wariness crept back in.
When we were through, I turned to go.
“Yelena.”
I halted in the doorway, looking back over my shoulder.
“You once said I wasn’t ready to believe your reason for killing Reyad. I’ll believe you now.”
“But I’m not ready to tell you,” I said and left the room.
20
DAMN VALEK! DAMN, DAMN, damn him! Gave me the cold shoulder for four days and then expected me to trust him? I’d admitted to murder. They’d arrested the right person. That was all he should care about.
Walking down the stairs in the darkness, I headed toward my room. I have to get out of this place, I thought with sudden intensity. The overwhelming desire to take off and damn the antidote was strong. Run away, run away, run away sang in my mind. A familiar tune. I had heard it before when I was with Reyad. Memories I had thought were tightly locked away now threatened to push free, seeping through the cracks. Damn Valek! It was his fault I couldn’t suppress my memories any longer.
In my room, I locked the door. When I turned around, I spied Reyad’s ghost lounging on my bed. The wound in his neck hung open, and blood stained his nightshirt black. In contrast, his blond hair was combed in the latest style, his mustache groomed to perfection, and his light blue eyes glowed.
“Get out,” I said. He was, I reminded myself, an intangible ghost and not, absolutely not, to be feared.
“What kind of greeting is that for an old friend?” Reyad asked. He lifted a book on poisons off my nightstand, and flipped through the pages.
I stared at him in shock. He spoke in my mind. He held a book. A ghost, a ghost, I kept repeating. Reyad was unaffected. He laughed.
“You’re dead,” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to be burning in eternal damnation?”
Reyad wasn’t banished so easily. “Teacher’s pet,” he said, waving the book in the air. “If only you had worked this hard for me, everything would have been different.”
“I like the way it turned out.”
“Poisoned, pursued and living with a psychopath. Not what I would consider the good life. Death has its perks.” He sniffed. “I get to watch your miserable existence. You should have chosen the noose, Yelena. It would have saved you some time.”
“Get out,” I said again, trying to ignore the touch of hysteria in my voice and the trickle of sweat down my back.
“You do know you’ll never get to Sitia alive? You’re a failure. Always were. Always will be. Face it. Accept it.” Reyad rose from the bed. “You failed all our efforts to mold you. Do you remember? Remember when Daddy finally gave up on you? When he let me have you?”
I remembered. It had been the week of the fire festival, and Reyad had been so preoccupied with General Tesso’s visiting retinue, especially Tesso’s daughter, Kanna, that he hadn’t bothered to check on me. Since I’d been meekly obeying his every command to gain some trust, he was smug in the assumption that he’d cowed me into submission. As a result, it was more than a month since he’d locked me into my tiny room that was next to his suite.
But the festival had once again tempted me into disobeying Reyad’s instructions to stay away. The beatings and humiliations of the year before were insufficient to deter me this year. In fact, I felt a stubborn pride in refusing to be intimidated by him. I was terrified of getting caught, knew deep down in a small corner of my mind that I would get caught, but I threw all caution to fate. The fire festival was a part of me. The only time I tasted true freedom. Even though it was for but a few moments, it was worth the consequences.
My defiance added an edge to my acrobatic routines, making me bold and reckless. I sailed through the first five rounds with aplomb, dismounts steady, flips tight, energy level unlimited. I advanced to the final round of competition, which was scheduled for the last day of the festival.
I scrambled to put the finishing touches on my costume for the competition, while Reyad guided Kanna and a group of friends on a hunting party in the countryside.
I had scrounged around the manor for the preceding two weeks to acquire the necessary supplies for my attire. Now I stitched scarlet silk feathers onto a black leotard, and then outlined them with silver sequins. Wings tied to a harness completed the outfit, but I folded them small and flat so they wouldn’t impede my motion. Braiding my hair into one long rope, I wound it tightly around my head and secured two flaming red feathers in the back. Pleased with the results, I arrived early at the acrobatics tent to practice.
When the competition started, the tent bulged with people. The crowd’s cheers soon dimmed to a dull roar in my ears as I performed my routines. The only sounds reaching me were the thump of my hands and feet on the trampoline, the creaking of the tightrope as I launched myself in midair to execute a two-and-a-half twist and the crack of the slender rope when I landed on it without falling.
The floor routine was my last event. I stood on the balls of my feet at the edge of the mat, breathing deeply. The heavy earthy smell of sweat and the dry scratch of chalk dust filled my lungs. This was my place. This was where I belonged. The air vibrated like a thunderstorm poised to blow in. Energized as lightning, I started my first tumbling run.
I flew that night. Spinning and diving through the air, my feet hardly touched the ground. My spirit soared. I felt like a bird performing aerial tricks for sheer delight. At the end of my last run, I grabbed my wings with both hands. Pulling them open, I raised them over my head as I somersaulted and landed on my feet. The bright scarlet fabric of the wings billowed out behind me. The crowd’s thunderous cheers vibrated deep in my chest. My soul floated with crimson wings on the updraft of the audience’s jubilant praise.
I won the competition. Pure uncomplicated joy consumed me, and I grinned for the first time in two years. Face muscles aching from smiling, I stood on the platform to receive the prize from the Master of Ceremonies. He settled a bloodred amulet, shaped like flames and
engraved with the year and event, on my chest. It was the greatest moment of my entire life—followed by the worst, as I spotted Reyad and Kanna watching me from the crowd. Kanna was beaming, but Reyad’s expression was hard and unforgiving as suppressed rage leaked from his twitching lips.
I lingered inside the changing room until everyone had gone. There were two exits to the tent, but Reyad had positioned his guards at both. Knowing Reyad would take my amulet and destroy it, I buried it deep under the earthen floor of the room.
As I expected, Reyad grabbed me as soon as I stepped from the tent. He dragged me back to the manor. General Brazell was consulted. He agreed that I would never be “one of his group.” Too independent, too stubborn and too willful, Brazell said, and gave me over to his son. No more experiments. I had failed. That night, Reyad just managed to control his temper until we were alone in his room, but once the door was closed and locked, he vented his full anger with his fists and feet.
