Tansy said nothing. This time she didn’t look at me, but I knew. A burning cold spread through my body, an icy weight settling in the pit of my stomach.
The man tossed the bag aside and reached for a key on his belt, unlocking the door. “Prometheus wants a word with you. We’ve got a great many uses for someone with your . . . talents.”
As he grabbed for Tansy’s arm, she jerked it away, whirling to look at me. Her eyes were anguished, hot with guilt.
“Lark, please—please, it’s not what you think.”
I could only stand there, pinned to the stone with shock. “You were—spying on me.” The bag of messenger machines lay forgotten on the floor behind the men. Suddenly I remembered her scouting forays, how she’d race through her meals so she could go off alone. To signal Dorian our location. Now I understood her desperation when her pack was lost.
“No!” She struggled as the man grabbed her more firmly this time and dragged her back. “The barrier you made, it’s starting to fall apart, and Dorian asked me to—I can’t refuse him, no one can refuse him. I really was worried about you.”
I swallowed, trying to push the bile back down where it was threatening to rise in my throat. Dorian was no better than Gloriette or the other architects in my city. All anyone saw in me was something unique to be studied. To be used.
“Lark, I’m sorry. Please.” The man was dragging her away—the cell door slammed shut, and she wound her fingers in the bars, trying to stay long enough to make me understand. “I never would’ve let him do anything, he only wanted to know where you were going.”
Her eyes met mine. I felt sick, nauseous, barely able to stand. Her fingers were white-knuckled, clutching at the bars. I didn’t know who Prometheus was or what these people wanted with Tansy, but the only uses I knew for a Renewable were tantamount to torture. I thought of the captive Renewable powering my own city, in perpetual agony, constantly harvested of her magic, again and again.
Tansy was crying. “Lark, forgive me.”
All I could think of was her bitterness in the alley at having been fooled by the shadow family, the anger I recognized now for shame. I said the only words I could think of. “There’s no forgiveness for betrayal.”
CHAPTER 7
When the outer door slammed closed, it was all I could do not to drop to the ground like a stone. I couldn’t think through the roaring in my ears, couldn’t begin to pull myself together with my stomach knotting itself over and over.
Kris, Dorian, Tansy, Nix, even Oren himself—I was tired of the people around me taking advantage of this awful power I didn’t even want. Tired of them taking advantage of me.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Oren stalking from one edge of the cell to the other, long strides eating up the distance and pale gaze sweeping the shadows beyond the bars. More than ever he reminded me of an animal, some untamed beast raging at its captivity. For a long time there was no sound but the scrape of his shoes on the stone and his harsh breathing.
Then he abruptly whirled toward me with a snarl. “We’re running out of time, Lark. You have to do it.” There was a faint sheen of sweat on his brow.“Do what?”
“Kill me.” He indicated the knife in my hand with a jerk of his chin.
I took a step back, staring. “What?”
“You couldn’t do it at the Iron Wood, fine. You could shove me off into the wilderness and forget me. Here you don’t have that luxury. It’s now, or it’s later when I come at you in your sleep.”
I gritted my teeth. “It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t trying to forget anything.”
“But you wouldn’t have to watch me fall,” he hissed. “You said to me—before, you told me that we weren’t a team anymore. Fine, we’re not. But Tansy’s gone now, and you’ve got no source of power. When you run out, that’s it. I’m a shadow again, and you’re dead.”
I could see the betrayal in his gaze—but why was it such a crime not to want him dead? “You’re afraid,” I retorted. “Because we’re in here, because you don’t like not being under the sky.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “So? That doesn’t change the facts.”
I shook my head, shoving the knife back into its sheath in my waistband. “Panicking won’t help. We’ll figure something out.”
“By standing there sulking about Tansy?” Oren started pacing again, making two circuits of the cell before halting again and turning toward me slowly. “You’ll have to defend yourself.”
I met his gaze, watching as his eyes narrowed and he took a few steps to the side, circling me. “If you change.”
“When I change. So I might as well speed up the process. Make you defend yourself now.”
I could feel my heart starting to race, wondered whether he could hear it, whether any of his shadow-self traits lingered when he was in human form. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
The tension drew out between us as he circled, and I could feel it stretching thin. Without warning he feinted a lunge at me, making me fight to hold my ground.
“You don’t want to hurt me,” I said, forcing my voice to stay even. If Oren decided to take matters into his own hands, I wasn’t sure I could hold my own.
“That’s right,” he burst out. “That’s why—” He let out his breath, dropping out of that deadly hunter’s stance. “That’s why I need you to act. I can’t do it. I’ve tried.”
My blood roared in my ears. “What do you mean?” I whispered.
“I mean I tried. After I found out, after you sent me away.” Oren turned to look through the bars of the cell, so all I could see was his profile, the tension in his body. “Animals don’t kill themselves, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t do it. Every instinct fought against it, and I wasn’t strong enough. I’m not stronger than the thing inside me.”
For a moment my mind tried to picture it, tried to imagine what awful thing Oren tried to do to himself, to rid the world of one more shadow.
“Not killing yourself isn’t weakness,” I said finally. “It’s not cowardice.”
Oren just shook his head, moving forward until he could press his forehead against the bars, a plaintive gesture. His long fingers wound around the iron. “It’s certainly not bravery.”
I had no answer to that. Not when I didn’t know what I was myself—perhaps we were both no more than things, echoes of who we once were. Maybe we both deserved death. The silence thickened the air.
“That girl,” Oren said finally, still gazing out at the darkness beyond our cell. “She was your friend?”
“I thought she was.” The words tasted sour, and I swallowed hard. “I can’t forgive what she did.”
“You thought I was your friend, too, and look where we are now.”
“You only follow me because you can’t help it, the monster can’t let me go. You said yourself that I shine in the darkness.”
With a weary groan, Oren straightened and turned so he could look at me again. He tilted his head back, looking up at the ceiling. “You’re the only thing that keeps me human,” he said after a silence. “But if I woke tomorrow completely cured and whole, I would still follow you anywhere.”
My throat closed. I couldn’t look at Oren, couldn’t listen to his voice, without my mind replaying the night we parted. The sweet softness of his mouth cut by the metallic tang of blood, the wave of longing mixed with revulsion. The hopelessness in his eyes when I told him not to touch me. His bitterness now as I kept him at arm’s length, too confused to know what to do with him.