Lili St Crow - Defiance

Almost.

I was just telling him about Anna’s little note with the earring inside when she cleared her throat, a small but definite call for attention. “That wasn’t me.”

I flinched a little. She sounded like she was a ways away, maybe on the other side of the room. But that was no safety—I knew how scary fast djamphir truly were, and even though I’d toasted Anna’s cheese once in a gym at the Prima, I wasn’t anywhere near fighting form now.

“It sure as hell smelled like you.” The bitterness I was tasting wasn’t just the words. “You. You betrayed my mother. You came down to the gym to beat the shit out of me. You shot me. You—”

She actually laughed . A sour, clear little sound, like a wrongly tuned bell. “I’m not a nice person, Dru. You can take some comfort in the fact that I am, now, suffering for my sins.”

Graves’s voice rumbled in his chest. “Let’s just figure out who to blame later. Right now we’ve got bigger problems.”

His bare skin was against my naked arms; my hoodie was gone, but I still had my T-shirt and jeans. I had my sneakers, too; I could feel them. I wanted to ask if Graves was at least wearing underwear, decided not to. “Where are we?”

Anna laughed. She did really sound exhausted, not nearly as nasty as usual. “Can’t you guess? He has us, little one, and with both of us here . . . well, the odds aren’t good.”

He. Sergej. The name twisted inside my head like a fish made of broken glass. “You’ve been feeding him information. Traitor.” I blinked a couple more times. Things were rapidly getting clearer, at least in my eyesight.

The rest of me was confused as all get-out. I held on to Graves, my arms aching.

I heard cloth moving, as if she’d shrugged. “And now that you’re cresting through the secondary bits of the change, he’ll use me as a hostage and drain you dry. Or the opposite, since I’m more danger to him than you. You won’t need to kill me, Dru. He’ll do it quite handily.” She actually sniffed. “You should worry less about what I’ve done and concentrate on what we should all do to get the hell out of here.”

“Word.” Graves actually agreed with her. He didn’t move, thought I might’ve been hurting him by clutching so hard. “As soon as we’re out of here, we’ll sort out everything else. But I really don’t like it here. I’d prefer to fight it out somewhere else.”

“What happened to you?” I grabbed at him again, like he might get away. “Was it Christophe? I saw something, did he—”

“He was there.” Graves moved slightly, but not away. He moved closer to me; I could almost see the bitter little face he pulled. “That night. But all he did was . . . we just had words, him and me. That’s all. I went out for a run to calm myself down, and the instant I was off the Schola property, they snatched me.”

“Wait. What?” Cold disbelief warred with uneasy relief inside me. I couldn’t tell which would win, but at least the light got a little brighter. Graves was a shadow now, his hair standing up wildly and making his head into a monster-shape.

“He was there. Had a couple other djamphir with him—some I didn’t know, and that kid Leon. Said he wanted to know what my intentions were, if I thought I could do any good hanging around you all the time, stuff like that. I almost hauled off and coldcocked him. They had to hold me back. They dragged me away, and—”

“Wait. Leon was there?” The world actually rocked out from under me, and I grabbed at Graves again. He took a sharp breath, stroked my hair. “He was . . . oh, my God.”

“Ah.” Anna breathed out, a long exhalation of comprehension. “Now that makes sense.”

Says you. “What? What makes sense?”

For once, Anna didn’t sound like she was enjoying herself by spreading bad news. “Leontus had a svetocha once. He was bonded, and . . . well, an ephialtes killed her. I suppose they thought he would guard you all the more fiercely; I could have told them the very sight of you would make him far more dangerous than he usually is.”

Bonded? Well, I could guess what that meant. The rest of it, though . . . “Why?” If I’d been able to stand up, I would’ve hopped from foot to foot impatiently. Nobody ever gave me answers fast enough. “Why would he . . . Jesus.”

And I wasn’t sure I could trust Anna’s answers, either. The list of things I could trust was shrinking rapidly.

Anna gave a chilling little half-snorting laugh, and I could just tell she was tossing her head. “Because the ephialtes who killed his lady Eleanor was none other than one of Sergej’s many traitors, trained by his oh-so-helpful son.” More fabric moving. “It’s close to dawn.”

Not Leon. I’d actually liked him, too. And he’d been so helpful and all.

I held on to Graves. Well, Jesus, Dru. Now get yourself out of this one.

A couple of minuteslater, nausea hit me hard. I swallowed against it, blinked. The world came slowly into focus as the seasick feeling retreated, colors sharpening and outlines no longer fuzzy. It was as if a film had been peeled away from my eyeballs, and I looked up.

Graves was a mess. His dark hair stood up curling-wild, dirty and greasy, the undyed roots so full of crud it looked just like the dyed-black bits. Bruises, new and red-purple and older blue and even older yellow-green, spread over his face and down his bare chest. You could barely see the even caramel of his skin tone, he was so bruised all over. He was scrawny-thin, and there were weals and little cuts all over his torso. He had a pair of jeans, but they were flayed around the knees and dark with gunk. He had sneakers, oddly clean but terribly worn, the laces broken and reknotted.

We looked at each other. I let out a hurt little sound. “Oh. You look awful .”

“Yeah.” He shrugged, green eyes burning. Same green eyes, their depths oddly shadowed now, same half-pained curl of his lips passing for a smile. It was like seeing him for the first time, the landscape of his face shifted just a few millimeters so that instead of just looking like a really handsome half-Asian boy he looked . . . well, more like a wulfen. The eerie almost-similarity of bone structure I shared with Christophe and Benjamin and all of them was shared between Graves and Shanks and Dibs and even Nat.

“I’m sorry.” The words spilled out. “I didn’t know. They told me they were looking for you. They . . . if I’d known, if I’d—”

He moved a little, restless but careful. “If you’d known, you would’ve run off the Schola grounds and got caught too. He’s been watching you pretty close, Dru. I’m okay; I’m just wishing you hadn’t got caught. I . . .” He swallowed, hard, and I realized I was probably grinding on his bruises bigtime. “It got me through, knowing they’d take care of you. Two days ago—I think , time gets funny—they dragged me up here and put me with her . It’s been interesting.”

“Hardly. He’s such a loyal little boy. No fun at all.” Anna laughed, and my head whipped around.

The room was dim, only one wrought-iron lamp with a dusty rose-satin shade propped up next to the bed, on my left. Heavy wood paneling, a cobwebbed chandelier dangling lopsided from the ceiling, and a ceiling that looked like concrete. Graves and I were on a four-poster done in heavy pink velvet that probably dated from the Civil War. Other furniture was scattered around under moth-eaten dust cloths, and the door was a monster of iron and dark heavy wood.