Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(13)
“You’re the future, Roselle,” he whispers in my ear, “and it’s time for you to awaken.”
I feel a pop sensation in my head—the world becomes as shiny as a star, and I’m falling from the sky.
Chapter 3
Altered
I open my eyes to dawning sunlight filtering into the bedroom.
The long, golden rays grow sharp like knives on the wooden floor beneath the windows. The linen sheets covering me are impossibly soft. My fingertips smooth over the fabric. I close my eyes again, and I lie on my side, savoring its silkiness. Smiling, I stretch my legs. The toes of one foot slip from the rumpled folds. My other foot shifts in the opposite direction until it meets the warmth of a hairy, masculine shin. I press my heel flat against his leg and curl my toes around the muscular calf. A quick gasp of air sounds from the pillow behind me. A large hand slides over my side to rest on my hip. Soft, rumbling laughter vibrates. He snuggles into me, his bare chest against my back—his lips press against my hair. Delicious warmth spreads through me. He inhales. His stubbly cheek shifts and brushes the sensitive skin of my neck. Desire for him kindles an inextinguishable fire.
“Your foot is freezing,” Hawthorne complains in a whisper while he moves my hair to nuzzle the sensitive skin of my nape. I shift my exposed foot back beneath the sheets, letting it join the other in pressing against his fuzzy leg. His grip on me tightens. “Okay! I’m awake and at your mercy.”
I giggle and turn over on the mattress to see him. For a moment, I’m caught off guard. Reykin! I stare at the face of the man who wants to change the world, and feel the kind of painful relief that comes only when you realize someone you love is safe. Staggering disorientation quickly follows—a mixture of hope and renewed fear—but why? I’m awash in loneliness and misery; it’s like the ache to go home. My mind drifts, slow to process.
Reaching out, I touch the dark stubble on his cheek and trace it to his lips. He’s a little over a handful of years older than me, but that doesn’t matter. Responsibility, and the fact that I’m secondborn, compels me to feel older and more mature than most firstborns I know—except for him. Reykin’s different. Intense. He makes me feel as if I don’t understand the world like he does. Aquamarine eyes, with their predacious tilt, study my face. His arm snakes around my waist to draw me even closer. Our bare legs entwine. His hand takes mine. He kisses the backs of each of my fingers. I lean my forehead against his.
“I need you to do something for me.” His soft tone holds a note of urgency.
“What do you need?” I ask, but a flicker of light distracts me. The rays of golden sunlight in the bedroom shift, dancing. The windows sizzle—glass pops and melts. Thick smoke creeps through the cracks in the broken panes, darkening Reykin’s bedroom. Ashes drift down and land like snowflakes on our cheeks and hair. It stains the sheets. The elegant wooden wainscot that encircles the room catches fire. Smoke chokes me. My throat grows raw.
“Fire!” I gasp between coughs. I clutch him, tears wetting my cheeks.
Reykin seems unconcerned with his burning bedroom. He reaches out and cups my cheeks with both his hands, forcing me to look at him. “Lead your army.”
“What?” I gasp. The flames grow higher. I remember what happened—the fire, his estate in the Fate of Stars burned to the ground. I stifle a sob. “Mags is dead, Reykin!” Panic overwhelms me. I can’t breathe!
Reykin hugs me to him and whispers in my ear, “Life is lost without love.”
I blink. The bedroom is gone. I’m awake—alone. Shrouded darkness replaces the smoldering room—lit only by an eerie red glow of filtered light. A cavernous airship’s hold lies before me now. I’m suspended in an upright position by compressed air and some form of antigravity device, and I’m staring through the glass of a transparent, cylindrical capsule. My dark hair blows upward, tickling my face with occasional errant wisps. Unable to stifle my urge to cough, I bend forward, hacking as if I just emerged from a burning room. The small space traps the sound, but it’s muffled by the force of air surrounding me. My hand presses against the wall of the glass cylinder, leaving a smudge of fingerprints on it.
Disoriented, I turn my head. Cold, stiff neck muscles protest with aching pain, and my brain feels on fire, as if it’s still in the burning room. I wince. My fingertips go to my forehead and rub it gingerly. Through a haze of soreness, I peek to the left, then to the right. More capsules like the one I’m in smolder with rose-colored light. Inside each capsule, a soldier stands—unconscious—unmoving except for respiration and the upsweep of hair caused by compressed air. Metallic catwalks line rows and tiers of capsules that go on for as far as I can make out. The containers curve around a bend. The high steel walls of the airship form the perimeter of the immense hold.
I try to swallow, but my throat constricts around a tube inserted into my esophagus. The cold, tinny taste of it against my tongue is enough to make me retch. I grip the segmented hose and yank it urgently. I drool a slimy residue when it slides free. It triggers my gag reflex, and I retch uncontrollably, but nothing but mucus emerges. The gunk blows upward in the compressed air and spirits away through a vent in the ceiling of my glass pod. The tubing retracts and disappears behind me through holes in the iron spine of the capsule.
Tears run from my eyes while I take deep breaths. I wipe them away with the back of my hand. My palms move to my bare upper arms and clutch them to try to still my trembling body. Smaller tubes, intravenously attached to my left arm, ache dully at the insertion points. I straighten my arm, grasp the IVs with my right hand, and snatch the needles from my wrist as I grit my teeth. My wounds sting. The tubing retracts and disappears through holes into the spine of the capsule, just as the other had. Small droplets of my blood, blown by the compressed air that holds me aloft, crawl up my arm. I bend my elbow so they don’t spatter everywhere.