The Cage(62)

She felt like that rat. Running endlessly, going nowhere.

She shoved the sled down the mountain. “I’m not playing your games!”

The hair on her arms started to tingle. The pressure in the air crackled. She balled herself tight, pressing her back against a tree, not daring to look up. She knew, if she did, Cassian would be there. She clenched her jaw in anger. Well, if he really could read her mind, good. She focused on how much she hated him.

But when she did look up, and saw his two boots, and then him standing so stoic in the snowfall, the anger vanished. This was the person who had rescued Mali. Who had saved Cora’s own life from the Warden. Could she truly hate someone who would do that? Did he deserve her fear—or her admiration?

Cassian’s boots crunched softly as he approached. He crouched so they were eye to eye. He wasn’t wearing a coat, but he didn’t shiver. His head tilted to study the goose bumps on her bare arms.

“You should return to the house, where there is warmth, and try to sleep.”

A snowflake landed on his cheek and melted quickly. The metallic sheen to his skin had a way of absorbing the low light so that he almost glowed in the darkness—a man made of starlight. A man from her dreams. She leaned her head against the tree and squeezed her eyes shut. She had never noticed before, but snow made a sound when it fell, like rustling leaves.

“I have brought you something,” he said.

Cora opened one eye, begrudgingly curious.

He removed a small object from his uniform pocket and held it an inch from her palm. It took Cora a moment to recognize the delicate gold chain tarnished around the clasp, the golf club charm and the theater mask and the airplane. Her necklace. She had thought it destroyed forever, like Lucky’s watch and their clothes and every trace of their previous lives.

There was a new charm attached to the chain.

A dog.

“Dogs are rare here.” His expression was perfectly flat, and yet his voice fluctuated with the barest hint of emotion. “I searched hard for one, but they are considered low value, so they are not kept in this sector. I submitted a travel request to get you one, but the Warden denied it.”

The charm was old, with a dent on one of the dog’s legs. She couldn’t imagine where he had found such a thing. It did a strange thing to her to see all she truly cared about in sixteen years of life reduced to such trinkets. Her family and her dog.

It wasn’t much to hold on to.

A cold breeze blew, and she shivered. He noticed and moved to the left, blocking the wind, but it didn’t help. It was hard to imagine this otherworldly creature having a life. Did he live in a city? Did he go shopping and cook supper and spend his evenings listening to songs on the radio? And what happened in private with all that pent-up emotion he kept so tightly stored away?

He reached the necklace around her neck, but he wore no gloves. His bare fingers brushed the delicate skin of her neck, along with the sizzle of electricity. She jerked away.

“Don’t touch me.”

He regarded her like a puzzle he couldn’t solve. “I wish only to give you this present.”

When she didn’t recoil again, he reached gently to brush the hair off her neck, so he could fasten the necklace. She closed her eyes, anticipating his touch. His finger barely brushed her skin. There. That spark. It was such a foreign feeling, just short of painful. She wanted to feel it again and again. She felt the weight of the charms around her neck, so familiar and missed. When he let her go, she almost grabbed his hands back to feel that spark again. It was an addiction she didn’t want to have.

She pressed her hand against the charm. “What does it feel like, when you touch me?”

“Very soft,” he said. “You are very soft. Cora.”

Her fingers started throbbing over the charm, along with her heart. Unfreezing, piece by piece, but she fought against it. She curled a fist around the charms. “You think a necklace will help me sleep? I don’t want a piece of home. I want all of it.”

“Be careful, Cora. Defiance is not a desirable human value. The Warden believes that your attempt to kill me, naive though you were, betrayed a defiant spirit. He was not pleased.”

“You think?” Cora rubbed her throat. “He nearly strangled me.”

“He was attempting to strangle you. It would have rid him of an unpredictable human subject. I was able to convince him your actions came from fear, not defiance, and that your other traits—resilience to captivity, extensive knowledge of Earth, even the rare coloring of your hair—made up for the difference. I told him it would not happen again.” Cassian leaned closer. “It cannot happen again.”