J.R. Ward - The Shadows

“Pardon the outfit,” he muttered from under the gray hood of his farshi dress. “But I figured it’s worked for you for how long?”

She was out of breath even though she had not run any distance at all. “Whate’er is happening?”

“It’s not safe for you. There are guards everywhere, searching. Your mother knows you’ve left not just the palace, but the Territory, and she’s ordered a public cleansing for you.”

Catra closed her eyes. She had seen that horrific torture, a special acid introduced into the blood such that the “treated” writhed in pain and vomited for nights until they had rid themselves of whate’er impurities they had supposedly been contaminated with.

“You will not survive it,” s’Ex said grimly. “Your only hope is to go back to Caldwell. We can find a place for you to stay—”

“No,” she barked.

“Do not try to be a hero here. You’re only going to lose.”

“If I run, they’re just going to make Trez mate someone else. The Queen will try for more young, and eventually she will have one. It doesn’t save him.”

s’Ex shook his head. “You don’t need to worry about that male right now. Your life is over if you go anywhere near that palace. At least if you run, you’ve got a shot.”

“But they’ll find me. They’ll never stop looking for me, you know that.” She squared her shoulders. “There has to be another solution.”

“No, there doesn’t. Look, I’ll help you. I’ll do what I can—”

“Do not be a fool. You told those guards that the Queen sent you out looking for me. That was a lie. Sooner or later she finds out everything in the palace—she’ll know that you were away from the Territory on the very night I disappeared. Even if you try to lie and say you weren’t involved with my escape, she’ll know. She’ll have you tortured and killed for the treason of aiding and abetting me, and she’ll dishonor your name.”

s’Ex started talking, but Catra didn’t hear anything of it.

Her mind was churning, churning . . . churning.

Without warning, like something surfacing from the depths of dark waters, she remembered something the Queen had said:

I can have another of you if I wish. You are as replaceable as anything else in this world of mine. Never forget that I am the sun around which this galaxy spins, and I can alter your destiny with the blink of an eye.

Alter. Destiny.

A sudden horror grabbed her around the throat. “s’Ex . . . you must take me to the astrology room.”

“ What? Are you out of your mind? The idea is to stay away from AnsLai and the Chief Astrologer, not head directly for them.”

She shook her head slowly. “No, they’ll be in mourning with her. It’s the last night. They’ve got to be with her to complete the rituals.” She looked up at him. “I would go alone, but I might need to defend myself—I need your help to do that.”

“What the hell do you think you’re going to find in there?”

“Just take me there. Please .”

He cursed under his breath. “The palace is full of guards.”

“Yes.”

“It’s not like we can just wander right into the most sacred part of your mother’s compound.”

“If it takes a minute or an hour or the rest of the night, it does not matter—so long as you get me there.”

An eternity passed as he stared down at her. “You’re going to get us killed.”

She met his eyes through the mesh that covered her face. Shaking her head, she said, “We’re already dead. And you know it.”

SEVENTY-SEVEN

When Trez came awake, his face and his pillow were wet. Wiping his cheeks, he splayed his fingers out and looked at them glistening in the lamplight.

So.

This was the other side of it all.

Letting his arms flop back to the bed, he stared up at the ceiling. On some level, he couldn’t believe he was still here. Physically and mentally.

Had his room always been so quiet?

Jesus, every time he took a deep breath, his chest hurt like he’d broken all his ribs. Twice apiece.

And then there was the movie reel of torture: With each blink of his lids, another part of the loss played across his retinas—and he had to wonder if maybe this was what had been going on in his sleep and why he’d woken up as he had.

Part of him wanted the incessant processing to stop. Another part was terrified that if it did, it would mean that that forgetting thing he was so worried about was already starting.

How long had he been asleep?

He stayed where he was for a minute or two—or maybe it was hours? Or nights?—and then he threw out an arm and patted around for his phone. When he called up the screen to read the time, there were tons of notifications about texts and missed calls and voice mails, but he didn’t have the strength to go through them all.

Putting the cell back down, he realized the second he let go of the thing that the time hadn’t registered.

Where was Selena? he wondered.

Addressing the ceiling, he said, “Are you up there?”

What had she seen? Was there a Fade?

Funny, he hadn’t anticipated the fear he had now, but he probably should have. The idea that he didn’t know whether she was okay or not after death was something he was going to have to live with.

Until he passed himself, he guessed. And then if it was just a big black void? Well, then he wouldn’t exist to care.

Happy thought.

When he finally went to sit up, he gasped as pain exploded all over his body—sure as if the emotional agony in his soul had manifested itself in his flesh, his muscles stiff, his bones aching.

It was from the preparation ritual.

Maybe it would fade in a day or two.

He got up and used the bathroom. Brushed his teeth. Checked in with his stomach.

No, food was not a priority.

Drink might be good.

Yet even as those internal thoughts registered, it was from a distance, as if they were being yelled at him from across a football field.

Heading back out into his bedroom, he went over to the closet and opened the double doors. As the lights came on, he recoiled.

He could still smell her.

And two of her robes hung among his clothes.

Walking forward, he reached out to them, but ultimately hesitated to touch the folds of white fabric, especially as the raw wound behind his sternum flared up in pain again.

It was, he decided, kind of like a cut on your finger, one that didn’t hurt until you flexed your thumb—and then the thing really stung. Except on a much grander scale, of course.

Was this what it was going to be like? Him going through his nights and days bumping into random things and getting jolted back into the depths of his grief?

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said to her clothes, “without you.”

And he wasn’t just talking about getting dressed.

When there was no reply—but come on, like he expected her ghost to answer?—he took the nearest pants and shirt that he got to, threw them on his body, and walked out. For a good ten minutes, he stood in the center of the room and entertained the temptation to trash everything around him. But his body didn’t have the strength or the coordination, and his emotions couldn’t sustain the boil of the anger he felt.

He looked over at the window Selena had broken. She had been magnificent in her fury, so alive, so . . .

Holy shit, he was going to drive himself insane.

On his way to the door, he picked up his cell phone out of habit and then stopped in front of the exit to his room. He was pretty sure he wasn’t ready for pitying looks or prying questions. But he thought he’d seen that the shutters were still down?

Yup.

So hopefully the whole Last Meal thing would have been long cleaned up and the doggen retired for their brief rest before the daytime cleaning started up.