Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(52)

“You were about to tell me your theory of how you developed your telekinesis,” Reykin reminds me from the other side of the partition.

“No, I wasn’t,” I say under my breath. “I was?” I ask, loud enough for him to hear me as I tug the top over my head and smooth it into place.

“You said you were afraid?”

“I was afraid . . . I’d just woken up.”

“From the collective, err—from Spectrum?”

“No, I’d been awake—out of Spectrum’s control—for a couple of days. This was different.” I pull on the pants.

“How was it different?”

I pick up a military-issued boot, struggling with what to say. Inside the boot, the label bears the Salloway logo. It brings tears to my eyes. I force them back, tugging one boot on, then the other. I straighten, covering my face with my hands and wiping an errant tear on my sleeve.

“Roselle?” Reykin asks, and waits.

I choke back more tears.

I come to a decision. If he wants to know so badly, then he must hear everything. I won’t spare him any details. Just like when we trained together with fusionblades. It’ll be brutal and threaten to kill us both. Squaring my shoulders, I move around the partition. Reykin’s leaning against the shelf, staring at me, a handsome mask of concern.

I exhale slowly, my throat tight with emotion, and say, “I was dead. I’d just awakened after dying, for the second time.”

His brow wrinkles. “I don’t understand.”

“I died, Reykin.”

“You died? Like dead died?”

“Yes, I died twice.” I hold up two fingers. “And each time I came back to life.”

“How is that possible? Did they restart your heart?”

“No. I think I healed myself—my body regenerated in a way that’s not . . . normal.”

“Can you explain what happened?”

“I drowned, the first time. We were in the secret throne room of the Sword Palace. My mother and Crow were there. Hawthorne was there. Othala was involved in a plot with the Burtons and the Census High Council to murder Agent Crow. They planned to poison him, but she failed because she didn’t understand that he isn’t Agent Crow anymore. He’s much more than that. He knew what she was planning, and he made Hawthorne cut off her head. Then Crow turned on all his allies and announced that he planned to kill everyone on the Census High Council.

“I didn’t have a weapon that could kill him, but the ceiling of the secret throne room lies beneath the mall of the Sword Palace. The water feature there is the length of the cove’s beach at the Halo Palace—you remember it?”

Reykin nods.

“I realized that if I shattered the ceiling, the room would fill up before it could drain. So I borrowed a cannon from a cyborg, and I broke the ceiling.”

“And you drowned?”

“Yes. I killed Crow, too—his body anyway. But he’s a part of Spectrum, or maybe he is Spectrum now, I don’t know. All I know is that he reanimated himself in a new Kipson Crow clone he’d been growing.”

“What about Hawthorne?”

My chin wobbles. I can hardly speak, so I whisper, “He died, too, except he didn’t wake up.”

Reykin sets Rogue on the floor. The puppy prances over to the round window and watches the whale simulations, his black nose pressed to the glass. Reykin moves to me. He wraps his arms around my shoulders and pulls me to him. My arms glide around his waist. I lay my head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat thump wildly against my ear. Tears roll down my cheeks.

“You don’t have to tell me any more right now. I’m sorry I pushed you,” Reykin says softly before kissing the top of my head.

“No, you should know. We never lie to each other. I want you to hear everything so you understand.” I move away from his chest and wipe my cheeks with my sleeves again.

Reykin’s lips are set in a grim line. “Okay. What happened after you woke up?”

“I was in the morgue. Cherno was there, too. He was still alive because he has a dragon heart or something like that and he doesn’t need oxygen the same way we do. He and I tried to escape. That’s when Crow caught us. He was with Flannigan. They were about to leave for the Fate of Virtues to destroy the Census High Council. Cherno tried to defend me from Crow, but we were both recaptured. That’s when I saw Phoenix.”

“You told me Ransom was in the Sword Palace and that Census was dead.”

“You understood my message.”

“I received it. I didn’t understand it right away—Census wasn’t dead—but I realized that Ransom was there somewhere. I started looking for him, but nothing came up when I analyzed monikers in the area, because he changed his name and moniker to Calvin Star. Why would he do that?”

“He had to—to survive. If he hadn’t, Crow would’ve found his connection to you and used him against you.”

“Did Ransom know that?”

“No. Ransom changed his name for his own reasons. You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

“I knew they’d taken you to the detention center. I wanted to use Phoenix to get you out, but we had no way to extract you at the time. We were scrambling to assemble a unit that could go in from the beach. It took several hours just to transport the team. That’s when they restrained me. I was going to come get you.”