I eyed her books. “Let’s just say I didn’t put nearly as much work into it as you.”
“See?” grumbled Rose. She flounced back into her chair, arms crossed.
I found my own chair between them and reflected upon my sketchy chances of passing this semester. “I think Lissa’s doing it the right way.”
At eighteen, Lissa was the youngest queen in the history of the Moroi, elected in the chaos following my aunt’s murder. No one would’ve faulted her for not going to college or for simply attempting to do it long distance. Lissa, however, had held true to her lifelong dreams of going to a big university and felt that as monarch, it was now doubly important for her to have a thorough education. She’d been attending Lehigh University, a few hours away, and had kept her GPA up while ruling a restless nation. She and Sydney would get on beautifully.
Lissa put her feet up on a coffee table, and I used spirit to briefly look at her aura. It was warm and content, as it should be, with the flashes of gold that marked another spirit user. “Then you’ll understand if I have to keep this short. I’ve got to memorize some dates and places before I go to bed tonight, and then we’re heading up to school early in the morning. We’re going to actually stay on campus for the rest of exam week.”
“I won’t keep you,” I said. “I just wanted to ask you about something.”
Lissa looked mildly surprised at that, and I realized she’d thought this was just a social call.
“Have you looked any more into what happened to Sydney Sage?”
Mild surprise turned to extreme surprise. “That again?” asked Lissa. It sounded unkinder than I knew she intended. No one outside of the Palm Springs circle knew what Sydney meant to me, and Lissa didn’t even have the connection of friendship to Sydney that someone like Rose did.
In fact, the mention of Sydney brought a frown to Rose’s face. “She’s still missing?”
Lissa glanced between us. “I don’t know anything more since you asked me a few months ago. I made inquiries. They said she’d been reassigned and that the information was classified.”
“That’s a lie,” I said hotly. “They kidnapped her and sent her to one of their goddamned re-education centers!”
“You told me that before, and unless things have changed, you also told me you don’t have any proof,” said Lissa calmly. “Without that, I can hardly accuse them of lying … and really, what right do I have to question what they do with their own people?”
“You have the right because what they’re doing goes against basic rules of decency and respect for others. They’re holding her and torturing her.”
Lissa shook her head. “Again, not something I can interfere with. Guardians often seize dhampirs who run away from training and then punish them. What if the Alchemists tried to dictate how we do that? We’d say what I’m saying now: It’s not in our jurisdiction. They have their people, we have ours. Now, if one of my own people were in danger from them, then yes, I’d have every right to throw my weight around with the Alchemists.”
“But you won’t—because she’s human,” I said flatly. All the high hopes I’d come here with were starting to teeter.
Rose, at least, looked more sympathetic. “Are they really torturing her?”
“Yes,” I said. “Well, I mean, I haven’t been in touch with her or anyone who’s talked to her to say exactly what they’re doing, but I know someone who knows about situations like hers.”
Sadness—for me—shone in Lissa’s light green eyes, so similar to Jill’s. “Adrian, do you realize how convoluted it sounds?”
Outrage and anger burned within me, both because of my helplessness and because the Alchemists had fooled Lissa with their lies. “But it’s the truth! Sydney got friendly with all of us. She stopped acting like an Alchemist who thought we were creatures of evil. She became our friend. Hell, she treated Jill like she was a sister—ironic, since Sydney’s own sister’s the one who betrayed her. Ask Eddie. He was there when she was taken.”
“But not for what happened afterward,” finished Lissa. “He didn’t see if she was taken to be tortured like you say. He didn’t see if maybe she was just reassigned somewhere else, somewhere far away from you guys. Maybe that’s the only ‘treatment’ the Alchemists are giving her if they think you interfered with their ideologies.”
“They’ve done more than that,” I growled. “I feel it in my gut.”
“Liss,” began Rose uneasily. “There must be something you can do. …”
Hope returned to me. If Rose was on board, maybe we could get others to help us behind the scenes. “Look,” I said. “What if we try a different approach? Instead of directly questioning the Alchemists again, you could maybe send a … I don’t know … strike team to investigate some possible locations for where she’s being held?” It seemed like a brilliant idea to me. Marcus had been tapped for resources to investigate his list, but maybe we could recruit the Moroi and other dhampirs.
Rose lit up. “I’d totally help with that. Sydney’s my friend, and I’ve got experience with—”
“No!” exclaimed Lissa, standing up. “No, both of you! Do you even hear what you’re saying? Asking me to send a ‘strike team’ to break into Alchemist facilities? That’s like an act of war! Can you even imagine how that would sound reversed? If they were sending teams of humans to investigate us?”
“Considering their ethics,” I said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already tried.”
“No,” Lissa repeated. “I can’t do any more with this, not if it doesn’t directly affect my own people. I wish I could help everyone in the world—yes, including Sydney. But right now, my responsibilities are to my own people. If I’m taking risks, it has to be for them.”
I stood up, full of anger and disappointment and a whole bunch of other emotions I couldn’t yet define. “I thought you were a different kind of leader. One championing what was right.”
“Yes, I am,” she said, forcing calm with what appeared to be a great deal of effort. “And I’m currently championing more freedom for dhampirs, supporting Moroi who want to defend themselves, and getting the age law amended so that my own sister can come out of hiding! Meanwhile, I’m doing all this while going to school and trying to ignore the very loud faction that keeps demanding my removal from power. And don’t even ask me what time I have left over for a personal life. Is that enough to satisfy you, Adrian?”
“At least you have a personal life,” I muttered. I headed for the door. “Sorry to have interrupted your studying. Good luck with exams.”
Rose tried to summon me back, and I think she might have even tried to follow me, but then Lissa called her name. No one came after me, and I let myself out of the royal apartments and back down through the winding halls of the palace. Fury and frustration simmered within me. I’d been so certain if I appealed to Lissa face-to-face—sober, even!—and explained my case, she’d do something for Sydney. I understood if the Alchemists were blocking Lissa’s official attempts, but surely she could have found a group of Rose Hathaways to do some snooping around! Lissa had let me down, claiming to be a crusader but ultimately proving as much a bureaucrat as any other politician.
Despair began winding its way through me, dark and insidious, telling me I’d been a fool to come here. How could I really believe anything would change? Rose had looked like she wanted to help, but could I get her to go behind her best friend’s back? Probably not. Rose was stuck in the system. I was stuck in my inability to help Sydney. I was useless to her, useless to everyone and everything—
“Adrian?”
I’d just been about to walk out of the palace’s front doors when I heard a voice behind me. I turned and saw a pretty Moroi girl with gray eyes and dark, curly hair hurrying up to me. For a moment, my earlier emotional storm clouded my recognition skills. Then it came back to me.
“Nina?”
Her face broke into a grin as she threw herself at me in an unexpected embrace. “It is you,” she said
happily. “I was worried you’d disappeared. You haven’t answered any messages or calls.”
“Don’t take it personally,” I assured her, holding the door open. “I’ve been neglecting everyone.” It was true. I’d dropped off the face of the earth when Sydney had been taken.
Those remarkable gray eyes watched me with worry. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, no. It’s complicated.”
“Well, I’ve got time,” she said as we stepped into the warm summer night. “We could get some food and talk.”
I hesitated, unsure if I wanted to unburden myself. I’d met Nina earlier this year, just after she’d helped her sister transform back from being a Strigoi. Nina was a spirit user like me and had helped a little when I’d fought to capture some of the power that went into restoring a Strigoi—power that we’d found could act as a vaccine to stop others from being forcibly turned against their will. Her sister, Olive, was also Neil’s object d’amour, if you could go that far. The two had only met a few times and maybe had a brief fling, though when she dropped out of communication, he pined for her as though they’d been together for years.
“I’m a good listener,” said Nina when I didn’t respond.
I shot her a smile. “I’m sure you are. I just don’t want to drag you down.”
“Drag me down?” She gave a harsh laugh. “Good luck. First of all, spirit’s already doing a great job at that, so you’ve got tough competition. Ever since I restored Olive, that … I don’t know … do you get that? That kind of dark, dreary haze?”
“Yup,” I said. “Sure do.”
“Well, that seems to be a daily visitor now, which makes life delightful, as I’m sure you can imagine. Meanwhile, after going through all that for Olive, she’s run off on some vision quest because she decided she needed some ‘alone time’ to think about everything that’s happened! She somehow manages to keep ending our dreams before I get a chance to talk to her. I’d go try to look for her, but Sonya keeps insisting I stick around here to help with her spirit research. They put me up here in swanky accommodations, but I don’t have any other means to live off of, so I had to take a part-time secretarial job at the palace. Let me tell you, doing ‘customer service’ for a bunch of self-absorbed royals? Well, it’s like a new circle of hell.” She paused, remembering whom she was talking to. “No offense.”
I laughed, maybe the first time I’d genuinely done so in a while. “None taken, because I know exactly the types you’re talking about. If you do talk to your sister, by the way, you should let her know she’s breaking poor Neil’s heart.”
“Noted,” said Nina. “I think he’s one of the things she’s reflecting on.”
“Is that good or bad?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” she laughed.
I started laughing too, and suddenly, I decided to take her up on her offer. “Okay. Let’s get something to eat … though honestly, after the last twenty-four hours … I’d rather have a drink. I don’t suppose you’d be into that?” It was probably a terrible idea, but that hadn’t stopped me before.
Nina grabbed my hand and began leading me toward a building across the lawn. “Thank God,” she said. “I thought you’d never ask.”
CHAPTER 5
Sydney
FOR A MOMENT, WHEN I SAW Sheridan’s syringe, I thought she was opting for some extreme form of tattoo refreshing. Like, instead of injecting my skin with small amounts of charmed ink, she was going to shoot me up with a monster dose to make me toe the line.
It won’t matter, I tried to tell myself. Magic use protects me, no matter how strong the amount they use. The words sounded reasonable, but I just wasn’t sure if they were true.
As it turned out, however, Sheridan had something entirely different in mind.
“Things seemed so promising for you after we last spoke,” she told me after plunging the needle into my arm. “I can’t believe you didn’t last an hour on your own.”
I nearly said, “Old habits die hard,” but remembered I needed to act contrite if I wanted any sort of advancement. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It just slipped out. I’ll apologize to Harrison if that’ll—”
A strange feeling began to well up in my stomach, starting at first as just slight discomfort and then building and building until it was full-blown nausea, the kind that took over your whole body. My stomach felt like it had a tidal wave in it, and my head began to throb. I could sense my temperature rising as well and sweat breaking out everywhere.
“I’m going to be sick,” I said. I wanted to put my head down, but the chair kept me locked in place.
“No,” said Sheridan. “You won’t be. Not yet. Enjoy the show.”
Along with arm restraints, the chair’s headrest also made sure I couldn’t turn my head, thus forcing me to look straight ahead at the screen. It turned on, and I braced myself for horrific images. What I saw instead were … Moroi. Happy Moroi. Friendly Moroi. Moroi children. Moroi doing ordinary things, like sports and eating at restaurants.
I was too miserable to puzzle out these baffling pictures, though. All I could think about was how I wished I could throw up. It was that kind of sickness—the kind where you knew you’d feel better if you could just expel that poison. But somehow, Sheridan was right. I couldn’t get my body to throw up, no matter how much I might’ve longed to, and I instead had to sit there as that terrible, corrupting nausea twisted my insides. Waves of agony swept me. It didn’t seem possible that I could contain this much misery inside me. I groaned and closed my eyes, mostly to make my head feel better, but Sheridan read another motive into it.
“Don’t,” she said. “This is a pro tip: It’ll go a lot easier on you if you watch of your own free will. We have ways of keeping your eyes open. You won’t like them.”
I blinked back tears and focused back on the screen. Through my suffering, my brain tried to figure out why she’d care if I was watching pictures of happy Moroi or not. What did that matter when my body felt like it was being turned inside out?
“You’re trying to …” I gagged, and for a moment, I thought I might get that relief after all. I didn’t. “… create some sort of Pavlovian response.”
It was a classic conditioning technique. Show me the image and make me feel terrible while I look at it, with the goal being that I’d eventually come to associate the Moroi—harmless, happy Moroi—with extreme discomfort and suffering. There was just one problem.
“Y-you need repeat sessions for this to take effect,” I realized aloud. One time wasn’t going to make me instantaneously feel revulsion to images of Moroi.
The look Sheridan gave me spoke legions about what I could expect in the future.
My heart sank. Or maybe it was my stomach. Honestly, with the way my insides felt just then, I couldn’t distinguish one part from another. I don’t know how long they kept me in that state. Maybe an hour. I couldn’t really focus on counting time when my goal was just surviving each rollicking wave of sickness. After what seemed like an eternity, Sheridan gave me another injection, and the screen went dark. Her henchmen undid the restraints, and someone handed me a bucket.
For a few seconds, I didn’t understand. Then, whatever had been holding my body back from finding release no longer held. Everything from that meager lunch came back up, and even afterward, my stomach still kept trying. I was reduced to dry heaves and finally just gagging before I stopped altogether. It was a long, painful process, and I was beyond the point of caring that I’d just thrown up—excessively—in front of others. And yet, as awful as it had been, I still felt better, now that I’d finally managed to purge whatever had caused that nausea to churn and churn within me. One of the lackeys discreetly took the bucket from me, and Sheridan gave me the courtesy of a cup of water, as well as the chance to brush my teeth at a small sink on the room’s side. It was next to a cabinet full of medical supplies, as well as a mirror that let me see how miserable I looked.
“Well, then,” Sheridan said cheeri
ly. “Looks like you’re ready for art class.”
Art class? I was ready to curl into a ball and fall asleep. My whole body was weak and shaky, and my stomach felt as though it had been turned inside out. No one seemed to notice or care about my debilitated state, however, and the henchmen escorted me out of the room. Sheridan waved goodbye and said she’d see me soon.
My escort took me upstairs to the classroom level, to what served as the detainee art studio. Addison, the stern and androgynous matron from the lunchroom, was just getting class started, issuing instructions on today’s assignment, which appeared to be the continuation of painting a bowl of fruit. It figured an Alchemist art class would have the most boring project ever. Despite her speaking, all eyes swiveled toward me as I entered. Most of the expressions that met me were cold. Some were a little smug. Everyone knew what had happened to me.
One nice thing I’d picked up on in this class and the previous one was that in re-education, the prized seats were closest to the teachers, unlike at Amberwood. This allowed me to slink to an empty easel in the back of the room. Most of the eyes couldn’t follow me there unless they blatantly turned and ignored Addison. No one was willing to do that. Most of my effort was focused on remaining standing, and I only listened to her speak with half an ear.
“Some of you made good progress yesterday. Emma, yours in particular is coming along nicely. Lacey, Stuart, you’ll need to start over.”
I peered around, trying to match the people to their easels, which I had a full view of from the back. I thought maybe my recent purging had addled my brain, because Addison’s comments made no sense. But no, I was certain I had the people right. That was Emma, my alleged roommate, a girl who looked to be of Asian American heritage who wore her black hair in a bun so tight, I swore it stretched her skin. Her painting seemed like nothing special to me and was barely discernible as fruit. Stuart was one of the people who’d pushed their desks away from me in Harrison’s class. He actually appeared to have some artistic talent, and I thought his painting was one of the best. It took me a moment to learn who Lacey was, and I figured it out when she swapped out her canvas for a blank one. Her painting wasn’t as good as Stuart’s, but it was leagues better than Emma’s.