True North Page 14

  Something shifted between us over the course of the evening. I’d expected Jared to short-circuit all night. For him, social affairs are more to be endured than enjoyed—a test of security and wills. But he’d laughed at jokes, casually leaning against the wall and chatting with those who came near. He’d been friendly, open, gregarious, even when Turner had gotten tipsy and brushed my arm and hair. Jared had simply made an excuse to move me, his body coming between the weak but determined Turner and me. At one point I caught Marcus and Jared with their heads bent low together, but when I asked what was happening, Jared just laughed and tipped his head to the muscular man who was always just a few feet away from Turner.

  He pulled me into a dance. In the middle of the room, and blocked by two women who stroked each other’s hair as they waltzed, we were safe from interruption. But Turner’s gaze kept looking for me. And Marcus, though rolling his eyes, was on us, too.

  Jared just smiled and tucked me tighter against him as we spun and the ship spun with us. “He was thanking me for not killing his boss, which would have obligated him to fight me. He’s glad he doesn’t have to.”

  When Jared leads me out into the corridor, I don’t protest. I say nothing as he leans me back against the railing. He tips my chin back, examining my cheeks, my neck. He’s in shadows, his face dark with some fathomless expression. A couple walks by, interrupting us. Jared grabs my hand and tugs me back to the cabin like an impatient boy. Picks me up and tosses me on the bed. I’m still bouncing as he turns around and locks the door.

  The dangerous predator once more, Jared saunters over to the bed. His eyes burn into me, tracing the curves of my dress, my legs, my feet. He slips off my shoes and plants tiny kisses on my toes, the soles of my feet. He runs his hands up my legs, casually running under my floral skirt. He brushes the soft skin of my thighs with the lightest of touches.

  He kisses a path up my body to my neck. Hot breath stumbles across my skin, stutters in my ear. My heart knocks so loudly I can’t hear anything else. And then his mouth slants over mine and I’m lost. I pin my arms around Jared’s neck and let him press me gently down, where he runs his hands softly up and down my body.

  I’d never been one of those girls. I’d never been like one of the Lasters who gave herself away. Still, I know better than to think I’ll live the life my parents constructed for us: the carefully planned political marriage, the safe and passionless life that the Upper Circle girls are saved for.

  It’s too late for that life. Our parents are gone, my sister vanished. The world is being chewed up and twisted in the insatiable iron teeth of the Plague. But more: I want more. I want the man of my choosing, the one who lights me up and makes me feel whole even while the Plague gobbles everything. This man.

  These thoughts swirl and swim through my head as Jared wreaks havoc on my senses until I’m as wild as a True Born. Jared sits up, instantly alert, watching me with sleepy cat eyes. I reach behind my neck and pull the ends of the string of my halter dress until the knot gives. The halter falls down and away from my neck. Jared looks at my skin as though I’ve grown alien. Even though he’s slept against it night after night on this ship.

  Understanding heats his eyes. He murmurs, as though he’s forgotten how, “We can’t, Lu.”

  But I’m already running my hands up his shirt, unbuttoning each sunset on his orange shirt, pulling it away from his chest slowly, slowly, so I can run my fingers across the smoothness of his skin.

  Jared traps my hands against his flesh where it flares like the sun. “Lucy.” His eyes grow dark and serious. “You need to stop. I can’t.” He swallows and opens his mouth to try again.

  I shush him with a kiss, a deep, wild kiss. As wild as the Plague is terrifying, as deep as my sorrow for my missing sister.

  Which makes it hurt all the more when he pins my hands and pulls away from me. He’s breathing hard, his perfect, sculpted chest rising and falling.

  “Stop, gods, please stop, Lu.” I wince at the pleading in his voice. “We can’t.”

  “Oh,” I say, tugging my dress back up. My face flames with embarrassment. I sit up on the bed and think about flinging myself into the ocean. Jared lets out a frustrated noise and turns me to face him.

  “You don’t understand, Lu. I said I can’t. I didn’t say I didn’t want to.”

  Though I’m about three seconds from tears, I take a deep, shivery breath and screw up my courage to look at him.

  He’s gone wild. His eyes are that bright green, his face tight and twisting. “You’re killing me,” he grumbles. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  Jared groans and flips off the bed so fast I’m reeling. “Like that. Hurt and innocent and so beautiful you make me ache.” He rubs at his chest as though I’ve caused him physical injury.

  My mind trips over his words. Did Jared Price just call me beautiful?

  “Why are you doing this? Why are you playing games with me?”

  Jared barks out an unholy laugh. “You think this is fun for me? You think I enjoy this?”

  I let out a yowl. “Then why did you?”

  Jared tips his head in confusion. “Do what?”

  “Kiss me. Touch me. If it’s so distasteful to you, why do you?”

  “Oh, gods, Lu, is that what you think?” Jared kneels before me, pulling my face into his hands. “Don’t ever think that.” He shakes his head. “That’s not what I’m doing. That’s never, ever what I’m thinking.”

  The tears start to fall then, traitorous tears that I can’t hold back. “Why, then?” I sniffle.

  “Because… For a million reasons. Because I need to keep you safe. Because you’re so young and beautiful, with this bright future ahead of you. Because—”

  “Stop it. Just stop.” I try to pull my face from his fingers. “It’s better if you just shut up now, I think.”

  “Come on now, Prin—”

  The anger bubbles up and spills. “I get to decide my future, Jared. I make the choice. Not you.” Yanking myself from his reach, I stalk off to the bathroom. “And don’t call me Princess!” I shout over my shoulder.

  13

  I wake folded in a pool of warm sunlight. The sun sputters under a wisp of cloud but reappears to bathe my bare arms in the first sunlight I’ve seen in what seems like years.

  Jared nuzzles the back of my neck, his arms tight bands around my body. I can feel him breathing me in. His lips trace a path across my neck to my ear until he pulls back, remembering.

  I’m surprised to see him at all.

  I’d stayed in the bathroom for a long time after our fight, as long as it took to steel myself for round two. But by the time I was ready to face him, Jared had gone. So I’d lain down and cried myself to sleep.

  This morning my throat feels raw, my eyes puffy and swollen. And Jared is beside me. Pulling back. It causes me indescribable pain. Under the sunlight, his hair glows a brilliant orange and white, his skin turning to marble.

  “You all right?” He’s so beautiful it hurts my throat. I nod. I’m not, of course. Not all right. Not by a long mile. I don’t trust myself to speak, so I hold out my hand. Sunshine pools in my palm, instantly warming my skin. Regardless of what is happening with Jared, this presence of blue sky and sun is the kind of miracle I can’t ignore.

  I clear my throat. “When’s the last time you saw sun like this?”

  When Jared doesn’t answer, I drag my eyes away from the warm blue sky to him. There’s a stillness to him, a quiet I’ve never seen before. For a moment the sun falls on my face, bleaching my eyesight.

  “Just now,” he replies, so quiet I almost don’t hear him. He’s not looking at the sky. He’s looking at me.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, not letting the tears come again. When I open them the sun has slipped back under the endless gauze of cloud. I heave a sigh and try to ignore the overwhelming sense of betrayal I feel.

  It doesn’t work.

  “What are you going to tell Sto
rm, then?” I say, wrecking the beauty of the day as sure as a Flux storm.

  Jared stares at me like he doesn’t hear me before rolling over with a sigh. “I suppose I should have expected that.”

  “What are you going to tell him?” I repeat.

  “Don’t know yet.”

  “Are you going to let me keep going?”

  “Stop it, Lucy.”

  “Are you? I can’t let you stop me, Jared. Margot is out there somewhere. She needs me.”

  My bodyguard brushes a curl from his face. “Stop picking fights with me, Lu. Cut it out,” he growls.

  His reply—because he’s right, that little voice tells me, I am picking fights—only causes my own frustration to grow. “I reckon you have a choice to make, Jared. Are you going to make me your prisoner?”

  “Storm would never ask that of me.”

  “Are you sure? Because Storm lies, Jared. He lied to me. He said he’d help me but he didn’t. He used me.”

  “You know there’s more to it than that. Why do you have to go and twist it up like that?”

  I take Jared’s palm and press it to my heart. “It never lies, Jared. Our connection—when I feel Margot? It never lies. Not like people. Never like people.”

  All his annoyance leaks away as he stares at me. “I’ve never lied to you, Lu.”

  “Maybe so,” I rasp, fighting tears. “But when you let Storm lie? When you let him use me, when you aid him in it? That’s as good as, if not worse.”

  Jared stares at me, slack-faced. “I don’t know how you can say that.”

  “Because it’s the truth.”

  “No,” he says gently, brushing a strand of hair from my eyes. “The truth is, you’re hurt and scared witless, so you’re pushing me away. I don’t blame you.” Jared lets out a huff of a laugh, but there’s little humor in it. “I haven’t exactly been handling this very well myself.”

  I’m about to roll away, unsure I want to hear any more. But Jared closes his fingers around my hand, stilling me. Those indigo eyes shutter and close as I watch his Adam’s apple bob with a swallow. And then he’s right there, watching me with inhuman intensity. I could drown in his eyes.

  “Lu, I’m scared, too.”

  This shocks me to my core. “What are you scared of?”

  A crooked, terrible grin takes over his face. “Of holding your lifeless body. Of—of never seeing you again. Worst is the thought that you’ll wake up one day and look at me and realize I’m nothing.”

  I gasp. “How can you say that?”

  “I’m a merc, Lucinda Fox. And a True Born.”

  I think I see where this is going. I take a deep breath and steel myself against the wave of disappointment. “And you have a job to do.”

  Jared nods, very slowly. “And I have a job to do.”

  And you always will, I think to myself.

  Turner’s Splice won’t do him for long. They say some just aren’t good Splicers, no matter how many times they go under. This is not something we talk about as I sit across from him, sipping a cocktail layered with orange and yellow and red and topped with a fake cherry.

  Marcus stands behind his boss, hovering. A faint crease of worry lines his light blue eyes. He’s strapped today. A shiny semiautomatic hangs from a special holster, and he stands guard from a few short paces away while the ship’s servants come and go all around our private rooftop sitting room.

  “Is there something I should be worrying about?” I nod briefly Marcus’s way. For his part, Marcus turns and smiles faintly as he folds his hands together. Perfectly charming, for a killing machine. Earlier that week I’d been told that Marcus had served in Dominion’s black ops. There’s no better man you want in a war, I’d heard Shane tell our father many times, than black ops. Trained to kill doesn’t begin to cover it.

  But here he is, a former black ops guarding the back of a single rich man. I’d wondered why a man of Turner’s standing didn’t have more mercs. Maybe, I speculate, that’s just a mark of how good Marcus is.

  Turner slumps over crossed knees and waves a finger at the merc behind him. “Marcus here likes to be ready for the unexpected. He’s always armed. You just might not see it.”

  As though hearing his name, Marcus turns and glowers at me. I sink back a little in the sofa cushion. A servant in a sailor suit pops his head in from behind a glass door and nods at Marcus. Marcus waves a hand, dismissing the man, and goes back to pretending he’s one of the exotic potted plants ringing the room. It’s glass walled on three sides, the fourth holding an oil painting of a ship tossing in a storm. Not the best of choices.

  “You think there might be preachers onboard?”

  “No.” Turner laughs, showing two rows of perfect white teeth. He sits up straighter on the wicker couch. “Too many rich people onboard who pay their bills and tip well. Besides.” Turner leans over conspiratorially. “Where would they go if their rabble turned against them, eh?”

  It was funny to hear that word in Turner’s mouth. Rabble. How many times had our parents said it, too? How many times had it passed our lips?

  I don’t say it any longer.

  “Did you see what the Lasters are painting all over Dominion?”

  “Evolve or die,” Turner says drolly. He leans back and sips a tiny cup of espresso. No alcohol for him, he’s told me. Doctor’s orders. The new Splices need to be clean to take.

  Turner’s salt-and-pepper hair fans across the white collar of his shirt as he stares out over the endless vista of blank sky and choppy seas. “Such a funny phrase.” I wait, certain he’ll go on if I’m patient. Finally he does, taking another delicate sip of coffee.

  “On the one hand, it sounds like a threat. ‘Do it or else.’ One the other hand…” Turner continues. “Did you know that only two percent of the species survived the purge that killed the dinosaurs? Just two tiny percent.”

  “Maybe it’s a warning that change is always happening.” I shrug. “None can force evolution, can they?”

  Christopher E.J. Turner raises an eyebrow and regards me seriously. “Can’t they?”

  I swallow, uncertain where the conversation has gone. “Do you know who’s behind it?” It can’t hurt to ask. Besides, there must be a few things the Gilt knows that maybe Storm, with all his intelligence networks, won’t have gathered.

  “No,” he says playfully, “do you?” I shake my head, unsure how to deal with a man twice my age flirting with me. Lightning-fast, he changes the subject. “You’re going to meet up with your family, I understand.”

  “Yes,” I say, truthfully enough.

  “Where are they?”

  I pause, deliberating on the question. It will seem strange that I don’t know. As though sensing my unease, Turner says, “You’ve been staying with Nolan Storm.”

  I set down my glass, startled. “Yes.”

  “True Borns. I wouldn’t have expected it.”

  “Why?” But I stop in my tracks as I realize Turner has just given me an opening. “Oh. You know my father.”

  Turner nods. The wind whips up. He hands up his tiny cup, over his shoulder, where Marcus takes it and passes it off to a waiting servant. “Some interesting politics, your father’s.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Turner’s eyes grow sharp and daggered. “Don’t play nice with me, Lucinda Fox.” He smiles then, showing too many teeth, in an effort to take the sting from his sharpness. It’s too late, of course. And such a reversal from the standard request to keep quiet that I don’t know what to say. “Your father also has some interesting business interests.”

  But this is one area where I’m in the dark as much as anyone. Probably more so. Letting us girls in on the goings-on would create a vulnerability, according to our father. What if you were kidnapped, he’d said on more than one occasion as he made us leave the room.

  Then again, Margot was kidnapped. Only it wasn’t for what our father knew, as far as I can tell. She was kidnapped for the information growing inside her. Secrets bl
ooming upon secrets.

  Blooming inside me.

  I shrug again and look him squarely in the eye. “Our father didn’t trust us with his secrets.”

  Draping an arm across the long black sofa, Turner leans back and laughs. “Well, this is an interesting turn of events. Tell me, Lucinda, have you ever been to Russia?” There’s that gleam in his eyes again, the one that speaks of hope sprung anew. “No.”

  “There’s talk among the Gilt that a new, experimental cure is being developed in Russia.”

  I try to contain my shock. Heart tripping madly, I stutter, “Th-there’s always someone yapping about a cure. Sure as not it’s more snake oil. And anyway, what does the Gilt know?”

  “Maybe you’re right.” Turner cocks his head. Marcus leans over and whispers something in Turner’s ear before discreetly backing away. “But as I hear it—and I hear a lot of things, Lucinda—there’s more to this cure than snake oil. And one of the men behind it, they say, is a well-known power from Dominion.”

  I start to shake. Shoving my hands under my thighs, I swallow hard before I answer. “You think this man is my father.”

  “I do.” He nods solemnly.

  “And that’s where you’re heading. To where you’ve heard he is.”

  “That’s right. And where are you headed, Lucinda?” Turner puts his hand on my knee. Marcus comes forward, a troubled V creasing his forehead.

  “Time for Miss Fox to go, sir. You’re not to overextend yourself. Doctor’s orders.”

  Turner gives his Personal a foul look but pulls his hand back. Marcus stays where he is, looming over me with his wide shoulders.

  I stand and smile wide. Turner blinks as though he’s been blinded. “Where am I going? Same place as you, I reckon. Thanks for the drink.”

  I look my travel companion over: his mottled green trousers and dark button-up shirt. His hair flaps in the breeze like wings. I wonder if that’s what’s bothering him until he points to the sky. A line of thick green clouds settles over the horizon like a fist.