The Cage(54)

“Do not fear me,” he’d said. “I am not here to hurt you.”

He looked like the dazzling hero in the stories Anya used to tell her, but Mali knew better than to believe anything the Kindred said. She’d clawed his face when he’d reached into the cage, and hissed at him. It hadn’t been until his guards had tranquilized her, and she’d woken up in a medical unit with fresh clothes that she knew she really had been saved. When the medical officer had come to repair her wounds, she’d asked for the scars on her hands to stay, as a reminder. Cassian had come to check on her, and she’d climbed off the table and wrapped her arms around him. It was only later that she learned of Anya’s death. Despite the rescue, Anya had never recovered from the abuse. In another ten rotations, she was dead.

Anya had been very perceptive too.

Cassian set a card on the pile.

Mali squinted at the ocean, trying to imagine herself back on Earth. There was so little she remembered. Camels. Hot tea. A carpet laid out over sand. If she concentrated very hard, she could picture her mother’s light brown eyes.

“Cora should not be here,” Mali said. “The Warden is right. She does not have the correct temperament. She is determined to return to her previous life.”

“Did you tell her?” Cassian asked quietly.

“Tell her what.”

His boot scuffed on the boards. At his side, his fist was clenching and unclenching. “That there is no other life for her. For any of them.”

“No.” Mali set down the deck of cards. She was tired of games.

“Do not tell them, at least for now. It is too large a concept for their limited minds to comprehend. It will take time before they are ready to hear the truth about their home.”

Mali slid the sunglasses back over her eyes. She dismissed that wrinkle of annoyance she felt whenever he gave her orders. As long as they let her stay in this paradise where she could eat as much as she wanted and play games all day, she would do whatever the Caretaker asked her to do. She had found, long ago, around the time a Kindred had tried to cut off her fingers, that it was best not to question them. Ever.





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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27

Cora

CORA STOOD IN THE bedroom doorway, one hand still on the knob. Nok and Rolf were tangled in the bedsheets, more naked than not. They’d been giggling when she first entered, but that had ended abruptly.

“What are you doing?” Cora yelled.

“What does it look like we’re doing?” Rolf sputtered. “Give us some privacy! Wasn’t it enough to steal our breakfast?”

“I didn’t touch your food! Just—hold on. I’ve got to get something.” Cora wavered a second, then darted into the room, holding her breath like she was under water, snatched up the clinking pillowcase—it felt heavier—and dashed out. She slammed the door behind her, and only then gasped for breath.

If that wasn’t sex, it was pretty close.

She sank onto the bottom stair, the pillowcase of tokens sagging on the floor, and took the seashell out of her dress pocket. How long had it been? Two weeks? And everything was already going to hell. Nok and Rolf had clung to each other right from the start, so maybe she shouldn’t be so surprised, but seeing them tangled in the early-morning sunlight with a black window looming next to them stirred something ugly within her.

It wasn’t the sex—they were old enough to make their own decisions. It wasn’t even that they were obeying the Kindred’s rules, because she knew they were terrified of disobeying. It was because they had looked truly, blissfully, blindly happy.

They like it here.

The pillowcase slipped from her hands. Tokens avalanched to the floor, far more than she had collected. She must have grabbed the wrong pillowcase. Had Nok and Rolf been earning tokens on their own, or siphoning off the ones she’d earned?

Now that she looked around the living room, at the candy wrappers on the side table, and a fort they must have made from sofa cushions, and even a radio—the red one she thought the Kindred had stolen—she realized she’d been blind.

Rolf and Nok never had any intention of escaping.

Footsteps sounded on the porch, and Lucky stuck his head in, still sweat soaked from the desert. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” He leaned in the doorway, catching his breath. “I know that fight was stupid. Guys can be like that sometimes—I didn’t mean what I said. It’s this place. It makes my head ache so bad I can’t even think.” He squeezed a fist against his forehead and released it with an angry sigh. “It’s my fault. I let everyone drift apart.”