Alight (The Generations Trilogy #2)(95)

Just as I will be used.

Matilda delicately reaches for my face. I thrash my head away, lurch at my restraints, but there is no escape. When her hand comes close enough, I bite at it.

She pauses, her fingertips just out of reach.

“Biting, again?”

Matilda walks to the platform, grabs something there, brings it back. She’s holding a thin red cane. She shows it to me.

“Remember when Grampa used one of these on us if we cursed? You know what he always said—Spare the rod, spoil the child.”

A flick of her wrist raises it, another flick brings it down on my stomach.

Agony engulfs me. My body convulses: my muscles tighten so suddenly and completely that wrists and ankles and hips smash against the bars holding them down. I burn, I’m burning up I’m going to die I don’t want to die I—

She lifts the rod and the pain stops.

My breath comes rushing back. I taste blood.

“Silly girl,” Matilda says. “You bit through your lip. I suppose that serves you right, but don’t damage yourself any further.”



The withered hand reaches for my face. I don’t want that pain again, so I close my eyes and stay still.

Rough, dry fingers on my forehead, sliding across my skin.

“Look what you’ve done to my pretty hair,” she says. “I can’t wait to feel a brush slide through it once again. It’s been so long.”

This dead thing is petting me. I’m terrified and disgusted. I’m hateful and alone.

She makes a tsk-tsk sound. I feel her pull something out of my hair.

I force myself to open my eyes and look at my killer. If I am to die, I will die facing my enemy.

She’s holding a bit of twig.

“As soon as the transfer is done, I’m going to take a long bath,” she says. “I’m going to clean up this filth you’ve caked on yourself. This is no way for an empress to look.”

“Brewer said he was on our side,” I say. “Why did he lie about the shuttle being the only way down here?”

“He didn’t lie. There used to be five shuttles. During the rebellion, Brewer’s people destroyed all but one—then he locked us out of the hangar. When you made me take you to the hangar, I didn’t think it would be open, but Brewer unlocked it for you. That was the first time I’d laid eyes on a shuttle in two centuries.”

“Then what about Bello’s ship?”

“We built it,” Matilda says. “We thought we might need a way down to Omeyocan someday, and two hundred years is a lot of time to make contingency plans. Brewer ruined the shuttle fleet, but there is so much of the Xolotl he doesn’t control, where he can’t see what’s happening. The ship we made isn’t as elegant as the one you stole, but it was good enough to get thirteen of us safely down to the surface. While you dealt with Bello, the rest of us came here and prepared.”



I look her up and down, take in her old, ruined body. How could she have reached the top of the Observatory in order to get down here?

She keeps petting me. I have to clench my teeth together to resist biting her again.

“I’m sure you’re wondering about all those steps,” she says. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember how unimaginative I was at your age. There are other entrances to this place, pretty girl. Do you think I wanted to spend my next life trudging up and down three thousand steps? If you and your Bishop had walked around the temple and looked carefully, you would have found a normal entrance that leads right to this very spot. No symbol required, no steps involved.”

She called it a temple. Just like Aramovsky did.

My head hurts so bad…it feels like my brain has been crushed and smashed, and this sense of failure is making it worse.

“Coyotl and Beckett were overwritten,” I say. “Is Muller still alive?”

“You sending those three out was a wonderful break for us. And with a functioning pentapod, no less. Little Victor Muller is locked up in an Observatory prison cell, where he’ll stay until we retake the shuttle. We will take the shuttle up to the Xolotl instead of the awful ship we came down in. Aramovsky said you didn’t take any joy rides, fortunately, so there should be enough fuel for the return trip.”

The taller of the two Grownups on the pedestal platform calls out: “We are ready.”

That’s the woman. Her voice, so old, yet so familiar…

Please, don’t let it be her…please don’t let it be her…

“Is that Spingate?”



Matilda laughs. “Spingate was on Brewer’s side. I had Bishop cave in her skull with one of those silly tools she liked so much. Don’t worry, pretty girl—Aramovsky will make sure your Spingate is armed and in the first wave he sends against the vermin.”

“No! You can’t make her fight—she’s pregnant!”

“Amazing,” Matilda says. “You hormone-engorged little brats didn’t waste any time, did you? Rutting around like animals. How about you, Em?” She spits my name like it’s a curse word. “Were you a sinful slut like Theresa? Did you steal my virginity from me?”

“I didn’t do anything. I don’t know about anyone else, just Spingate and Gaston.”

“What?”