False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(75)

“You really thought I didn’t know exactly what you were trying to do?” Ensi asks.

He shoots the first person.

I flinch.

“You really thought that, in my own house, I wouldn’t sniff a rat?”

He shoots the next person.

“This is my house. You are mine.”

Another shot. Another fall.

“You should have learned this long ago. Most of you have.”

Bang.

“You cannot cross me and hope to live.”

Bang.

“Reward me with loyalty, and I will reward you.”

Bang.

“Cross me, and reap the consequences.”

All the men and women are dead, to join the other corpses on the ground.

“It’s simple, really.” He smiles at us all.

I look at all the bodies on the floor, numb. It feels like a warning. He’ll find out about me. And he’ll kill me. He’s walking toward me. Is he about to shoot me in the head?

He aims the gun. I squeeze my eyes shut. Better not to see it coming.

The gunshot is so loud my ears ring.

I’m not dead.

I open my eyes. Ensi has shot the man I captured. The blood spreads across the floor, a slow red tide. A woman’s crying, screaming, and I wish she’d shut up. More lines from the poem return to me. The paradise of Xanadu is ruined.

Then reached the caverns measureless to man

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean.

And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

Nazarin has a spray of blood on the left side of his face. He stands straight, at attention, his expression blank as a soldier’s.

Ensi stops in front of him. “Thank you,” he says. “Skel, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“You saved a lot of lives tonight. You’ll be rewarded. Speak to Malka about it.”

“Thank you, sir.” I almost wonder if Nazarin will salute.

Ensi looks around at the silent party. “Let this be a lesson to you all.”

Does his gaze flick to me? A shiver runs down my spine. He comes toward me, the gun still in his hand, and I steel myself. He’s going to kill me. Shoot me in the head. Even if I wasn’t involved with this uprising, if he knew about that, he must know about me.

He looks down at me with something very like tenderness. “You didn’t stay.”

“I couldn’t.”

He stares at the man I captured. The man that’s now a corpse, though not by my hand. “Good job.”

“Thank you.”

For a moment, I wonder if he’s going to hold out his hand, and lead me back upstairs. The blood has washed the last vestiges of the drug from my system, and I’ve scanned the notebook. I have no desire to go back up there. Then Ensi turns, his head down.

“Malka,” he says.

She comes forward, to his side. I can’t tell if they’re romantically linked, but their bond, whatever it is, is deep. The King and the Queen walk away from the ballroom, side by side, leaving the carnage behind them.





TWENTY

TAEMA

I dream that I went with Ensi, and I awaken in a silken bed.

The sun streams through the window. Ensi lies next to me, fast asleep, his arm thrown over his eyes against the light. His face is clean of blood, like the events of the night before never happened. But they did. And this, right here, is the man who did them.

His other arm is around me and, trapped in his embrace, I can’t stop thinking about all the dead bodies. The fact that I had taken a gun and gone down there, something I never thought I’d do. I still feel like I’m changing and morphing. I’m becoming more like Tila, but I’m turning into someone else I don’t recognize, either, and perhaps someone I don’t like.

I turn and watch him, sleeping peacefully. I look at his torso, chiseled by modern medicine. What would he look like now if he couldn’t alter himself? Would that taut skin sag against a growing paunch? Would I recognize his face, with its lines that show the type of life he chose to live?

He opens his eyes, and his eyes are black pits. His mouth stretches wide, and deep within his throat is a glowing, pulsing light.

“Are you strong enough to kill me?” he asks, his voice crackling like a flame. “Do you really have what it takes?”

*

I jerk awake, for real this time.

I’m in the room in the safe house where I store my things, but where I hardly ever sleep. It’s my first brainload-free night in over a week.

I ease out of the bed, my sore muscles stretching. I have a bruise on my side, where a bullet grazed the Kalar suit. If I hadn’t been wearing it, the bullet would have killed me. I rub my sore muscles and stagger into the shower to wash off the sweat and the imaginary scent of blood that still clings to my nostrils.

After I’ve scalded myself, I go down to the kitchen, ordering strong, real coffee from the replicator despite its warning that caffeine is bad for me. I load it with cream and sugar, to boot.

Nazarin isn’t here. He’s gone to report in to the Ratel, receive his reward for helping with the fight. I want to ask him if that was his plan all along. I thought he wanted to foster unrest. So why, when unrest presented itself in a very real way, did he decide to help Ensi instead?