***
“Hey!” James’s voice barked as I walked back to my cell with Illa and Janna later the next night, after dinner. His hand grasped my wrist roughly, and he began to pull me away, and I could not determine if it was part of our act, or if he truly was still angry with me. But once we were safely hidden in an alcove by the bathrooms, he spun me towards him and kissed me hard enough to convey the apology I knew would come when our lips broke apart.
“I’m sorry,” He said, right on cue, “I’m so sorry, baby. I was so out of line. I was so wrong.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” He said as I wrapped my arms around his neck, “It’s not okay, baby.”
“It is. I would be angrier if we were not here, and if things were not so precarious. I don’t want to be angry with you, not when every time I see you could be the last time.” I nestled my face in his neck and kissed him. His arms tightened around me, and his lips feverishly kissed me wherever they could find my bare skin, because he knew I was right. The tension on that ship was palpable, and because I felt it, James felt it, too.
“I know your temper makes you say things you don’t mean. You know my temper makes me slap you when I shouldn’t. So, I am sorry I hit you. It was wrong of me, and I am very sorry, James.”
“Stop. I don’t want you to apologize. If I hadn’t called you what I called you, you wouldn’t have slapped me…”
“Regardless of what you called me, I should not have slapped you. We are equally responsible in the ugliness from the other night. That is all I wish to say about it. I am sorry, you are sorry, now shut up and hold me.”
He smiled, kissed me again, and pulled me to him. I nestled my head under his and closed my eyes, and after a few minutes, I could almost forget where we were. I could almost drown out the sound of one thousand feet shuffling across the floor towards the dormitories. I could almost ignore the smell of cigars on James’s officer uniform, and I could almost forget the ache in my bones that came from working a full day in laundry. After a few moments of silence between us, he spoke.
“It’s happening soon, baby. I talked to Adam, and we’re putting the wheels in motion. We’re going to be out of here soon. I can’t believe I am going to say this, but Adam and I are going to take you away from him together. We’re going to take you far away from here, where he can’t hurt you anymore. I promise. And I love you, by the way. I haven’t said that yet, but I love you so much, and I’ve been dying of guilt since two nights ago, so I’m going to tell you again… I love you. Even when you get all scary and mean.”
“I love you.” I replied, “Even when you say vile things and are totally ignorant to my side of an argument.”
“Fair enough.” He replied with a grin.
“It’s over. It’s done. I’m sorry for the part I played in it, and I love you. I have to get back soon. Do you want to make out for a few minutes?”
Without hesitation, he reached out, took my arm, spun me towards him again, and dipped me backwards.
“Boy, do I.”
I giggled louder than perhaps was wise, considering there were many people strolling by, but luckily, none came to investigate the source of the sound. His mouth covered mine, and my tongue attacked his, and for a good long while, we kissed like two teenagers in the backseat of a car.
If I think about it, that might not be the best simile, considering that physically, at least, I was only a few years out of my teens, and he was many years passed his. But whatever. Both of us had the friskiness of teenagers, so sue us, as they say.
And on the subject of friskiness, I said to him:
“If you can be quick, then we can have a quickie, even though you know I hate that word.”
“But you don’t hate what the word means, and you know I can be quick.”
“Yes.” I replied, ‘I do.”
He laughed boisterously, in that typical raucous style that always made me laugh right along with him. I slapped his chest and said, “Shh!” as he said, “I walked right into that. Twenty-five years, and I still walk right into it.”
“Yes, well, walk right into me right now. We’re running out of time, James.”
“You got it, madam.”
Half-clothed and three feet from the moving populace of prison inmates, against the wall, we made love, and he made good on his promise to be quick, and I was quick, too. I buried my face in his neck to stifle my final moan, and then, I stood on my tiptoes, kissed him hard, and started to scamper off so I could lose myself in the massive group heading towards the cellblock. Before I rejoined the general population, though, I turned to face him.
“Will you come lay with me for a little bit tonight?”
“If I can, baby, and you know I’ll try my hardest.”
I nodded, but did not walk away. For a moment, I looked at him, smiling contentedly. The sight of him always made me feel so safe, because he had been a constant in my life for so long. Plus, of course, as I am sure you have realized, he was so unthinkably handsome. As he buckled his belt and then began to button up his shirt, his chest still heaving slightly, and his perfectly styled hair tousled wonderfully, he looked at me and grinned.
“What? Don’t feel bad about running off, baby. I know you gotta go.”
“If I felt badly, would I be smiling?”
“So, you’re happy to scamper off? God, was it that bad?”
“You could not be bad at love-making if you tried, James Maxwell, and no, I am not happy to scamper off. I’m just smiling because…” I stopped, shook my head, and laughed softly. “Never mind.”
“No.” He reached out and took my hand to stop me from walking away, “Tell me, baby.”
“I just…” I looked up at him, still smiling, “I love you. I love you to the end of time and back again, James Maxwell.”
He looked at me, seemingly taken aback, and certainly moved. He smiled, reached out, and tucked my hair behind my ear.
“And I love you to the end, as well.” He paused, wanting to say something else, but just like me, he stopped, unsure of whether he could say it. Gently, I encouraged him, and he said:
“You’re the best thing I’ve ever had in my life, Brynna.”
I grasped my heart with both hands, my cheeks flushed red, unable to fight my smile. We truly were like two teenagers, sneaking behind the bleachers of our school to kiss and fuck, but unlike teenagers, the consequences of being caught were far beyond just a slap on the wrist. The Lord of War would view James’s continued love affair with me as a betrayal, because he believed that James was loyal to him. Because it was a betrayal, he would kill James in the most brutal way imaginable. I had already betrayed him by telling Tyre what he had done to me, and if he found out that I also owned the heart and loyalty of one of his favorite men…
“Off with you, my saucy minx.” James told me, “I’ll come see you tonight, when the coast is clear. Now, move out, soldier. Move out.”
He said it in his raspy soldier’s voice, and I giggled, covering my mouth to stifle the sound.
“Okay.” I walked backwards and said, “I love you, baby.”
“I love you, too, beautiful. Now, go, before I whisk you off to my room.”
I left, beaming the entire way back to my cell and anxiously awaiting the moment I could see him again.
But he did not come that night. Because he did not come to me, I could not sleep. Because I felt the Lord of War’s rage boil over, I knew to expect the beating in of my door. My eyes were completely white when they grabbed Janna’s hair and pulled her out of bed beside me. Illa and Grace sat up, Illa infuriated and Grace terribly frightened, but I told them both to stay back as three guards began to drag Janna and me away.
Once we had passed through the intricately carved door of his quarters, the guards dragging us threw Janna to the floor, but they simply let go of me.
I would not look at James. I would not look at Adam. Even glancing at them would betray my love and concern for them, and t
hat could have been enough to tip him over the edge. In my peripheral vision, I could see that they were shackled to the walls on either side of the Warden’s office. Instead of looking at them, I looked right at him.
“Alright, my love.” He said with a smile, “I have given you many days to fear my retribution, and now, you shall finally suffer it. Let us play a game now.”
I saw that he was holding his knife… His famed knife, his serrated dagger with the two smaller blades on either side of the large one in the center. His miniature trident. Funny, right? That the man whose famed weapon looked like a miniature trident would rule over the sea? I am sure the humorless Old Spirits did not recognize the irony, but I did, and it had always made me laugh quite heartily.
In that moment, though, I was not laughing. I was watching that famed dagger to make sure that it did not go flying through the air into James’s heart or Adam’s head, or that he did not slash it across Janna’s throat.
“Listen to me… Warden…” I started to say, but he pulled one of the smaller daggers from the side of the centered one and threw it hard at Adam. It stuck into the wall rather perfectly just beside his head. A trickle of blood ran down his cheek, but luckily, it had only grazed him.
“Next time, I will not miss, and next time, it is your James at whom I will be throwing. I will be talking, and you will be listening. Do you understand?”
I glared at him, so furious that I wanted to lunge forward and rip into his throat, but his guards were in the room, and they were armed to the teeth, as they say, with knives and nightsticks on their belts and large automatic guns in their hands. I wanted to fight him, but I would not. He wanted me to answer, but I very defiantly refused to do so. When I saw the Warden’s grip tighten on his knife, though, I finally nodded.
“You may answer me out loud.”
“Yes, I understand.” I said.
“Did you feel that almighty shudder pass through the ship? Well, that was your husband’s doing. He sent his minions to sabotage the gas tank so that we would have to return to shore. Apparently, there has been some plan in the works for quite a while that once we dock, you all will try to make your escape.”
I did not answer, though he did pause. He was baiting me, trying to get me to speak so he could hurt James. Or he was trying to get me to confess everything, because perhaps he was still unsure of whether it was all true. I did not know what he knew, and I would not speak until I did know.
“Now, I thought that Commander Maxwell had been sufficiently broken of his love for you all those years ago, but he has not, has he?”
I shook my head.
“Out loud, if you please.”
“No.” I said, because there was no point in lying anymore.
“He has been hidden amongst the ranks of my most loyal men, gaining insight for all these long years and reporting back to you. All this time, you have been plotting this escape. Yes?”
“Yes.” I answered, “It was my idea, Warden. I…”
He threw the knife, and despite myself, I cried out some indiscernible word, a mix of “no!” and “don’t!” Together, it just sounded like some primal sound of protest, which, I suppose, it was. The knife sunk into James’s upper arm, close to his head, and he bit his lip to keep from yelling out in pain. When the Warden strode over and ripped the knife out, he did give a grunt, but then, he angled his head up and spit right in the Warden’s face.
The Warden’s reaction was quick, a reflex. I am sure he swung his hand before the rage and indignation had even begun to well up. But within a second of the wad of spit landing on his face, he had slashed a deep cut across James’s cheek, and I began to rush forward. Again, in an unthinkably fast reaction to my movement, he reached down, grabbed a handful of James’s hair, ripped his head back, and held the knife to his throat.
“Shall I slash his throat now? Or would you like to go stand back where you were before?”
My eyes finally met James’s, and he nodded to me. Slowly, as though backing away from a rabid, hungry beast, I moved to the spot where I had been standing before. Once I was back, he smiled and released James.
“You are valiant, my love, and it is admirable, but it will not save them, and it will not save you. What might make me more likely to make this easy on you would be for you to simply keep your mouth closed until I ask for a response.”
I looked at Adam, and then at James. Janna was on her knees on the floor, both of her hands grasping one of mine, her entire body trembling terribly. A few of the men in the room were ones who had hurt her on that first night all those years ago. They were the surviving ones, the ones we had not been able to corner so we could stage an “accidental” death. She held my hand, and all the while, her mind cried that they were looking at her, they were remembering, they were going to hurt her again, they would hurt me, and the Warden would hurt her, and the Warden would hurt me, and the Warden would kill Adam and James…
“It is alright, Brynna.” Adam told me, “Just do as he says.”
“Listen to your husband.” He looked at Adam and then at me, grinning knowingly, “I heard you two had quite the afternoon together. Did you hear that, James?”
“I didn’t. But I know you’re going to tell me all about it.”
“Oh, I will! I heard all about how she rode him and came for him, and then, before their sweat had dried, how he held her to the door and fucked her again.”
“And then she and I fucked in the hallway ten feet from these stupid fuckers.” James spat, gesturing with his head towards the guards, “See, Adam and I have come to this understanding, shockingly enough.”
“Indeed.” Adam agreed, “We may not like each other.”
“Believe me, we don’t like each other.” James added, “But she loves us both, so she’ll have us both. I know all about them, and he knows all about her and me. So, nice try.”
“And the former Mrs. Elohimson. The current Mrs. Maxwell? What do you think, dear?” He asked, angling his head down to look at her.
“I know about them, and it is fine.” She replied quietly.
“You know that you two are going to show us later.” He said, still speaking softly and slowly to her, like he was speaking to a child, “You’re going to show us how you make love.”
“Can I please just talk, Warden?” I asked him delicately, “Please. Just let me say one thing.”
“Alright, Brynna.” He said cordially, “What would you like to say?”
“That all of this was my doing. I am being totally honest when I say that. I wanted to get away from you. I just didn’t want to have to keep… being with you… to protect my family. I just wanted to take my kids, and get them someplace safe. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Warden. It was me, and all I ask is if you ever felt anything for me at all, even the slightest sympathy or even pity, just please let me be the one who bears the punishment. Please… Please… I’m…” I stopped, because I could not believe that after twenty-three years of building up my fearsome image, I was going to dismantle it so quickly. It was so… disappointing. So sad. It all felt like such a waste. My eyes dissolved from white and black back to the old blue, but it was that deeper blue of fear, and my body was beginning to shake as all my old fears returned, and in my deep blue eyes, he saw my tears.
“I’m begging you, Warden.” I said, so softly, because I did not want James, Adam, and Janna to hear me beg.
“Say it louder.”
“I’m begging you, Warden.” I said, only a little louder.
“Louder, Brynna. And do you beg standing up, or do you beg on your knees? Decide very quickly.”
“Please look away.” I told James, Adam, and Janna without looking at them.
“Do not look away. If she will disgrace herself for your sakes, then you had better watch her do it. Really, that is only polite. Come now, Brynna. Get down on your knees and beg me.”
“Don’t you do it, Brynna!” James hissed at me, “Don’t you get down on your knees for him! Don’t you
give him the satisfaction! Brynna!” But I was already down, on my knees, reaching up, and grasping his hands as the tears rushed into my eyes but did not fall.
“Please, please don’t hurt them, Warden. Please! I love them all so much, and this has all been my fault. If you want to punish someone, punish me, but let them go. Please, I’m begging you, Warden.”
“Stand up, sweetheart.” Janna was whispering softly, pleadingly, from behind me, “Stand up.”
“Let them go. Please.” I said again.
“No, my love.” He whispered back, “Tonight, your soul will be mine. I will have you in every way Tyre has told me you dread to be had, and when the sun comes up, you will be a shattered woman, I promise you that, because tonight, you will leave here with just one of them. Tonight, you will finally make your choice.”
Lara
The shock that coursed through me would surely stop my heart, or so I thought when my long lost oldest daughter appeared in the doorway. I had been in my mental space, trying to disconnect my lower body from the centers of my brain responsible for feeling, when Tyre had startled behind me and jumped back. It had surprised me, his sudden movement, the premature removal of him from inside of me, and at first, I believed that I had so thoroughly disconnected myself that I had not felt him finish, but then, I saw a flicker of her, for just one moment, followed by the image of two furiously apologetic guards who were tripping over themselves to get out of the room before Tyre reached them. She was there and gone so quickly that I feared I had merely hallucinated her for the thousandth time, but my heart was throbbing, hard and alive, pumping a sudden energy through me, erasing the full-body exhaustion through which I had been suffering for nearly two days.
My mind cast out, grasped her, and pulled her back into the room. A part of my heart and mind begged me to keep her away, as I did not want her to see me in such a state—with my hands bound above my head, as I practically choked on the impossibly thick cloth tied in my mouth, with my shirt torn open down the middle, and naked from the waist down—but the larger parts of my heart and mind begged to see her, and my evil curse inflicted upon me by the Lord of All Darkness, which I had heard she shared, reached out, dulled her mind to everything but my influence, and pulled her back to me.
God, the sight of her… To see her after so long… After twenty-five long years, there she was. You know her as the First Queen, and I know her as that now, too. But I also knew her as my daughter. The one I had lost long before I had to lose her. My little girl.
It is so trite to say, but she was not my little girl anymore. Physically, she was as I remembered, with her long, auburn hair so perfectly styled, her electric blue eyes (which matched her father’s) ringed by black makeup, creating a contrast that gave them the look of shined sapphires held up to pure sunlight. Except they were blue for mere seconds, and then the colors of each dissolved, one to harsh white, like she had been blinded on her entry into the room, and one darker than black, like someone had injected ink into her corneas. Those strange eyes fell on me, looked me up and down, and slowly drifted away, casual, cool, and careless.
I just stared. My eyes were held to their farthest reaches, positively bulging. My entire body was shaking. I was scarcely breathing. It had been twenty-five years. Twenty-five years of thinking about this child and the terrible history we shared from our Earthean days. Twenty-five years of remembering the last time I had spoken to her, when I had gone to her apartment. Due to my fear of death, which was inevitable in my sad state (cancer in both breasts, in my lymph nodes, possibly spread to my lungs, and early stage liver disease, complete with cirrhosis) and due to my fear of eternal damnation for the hurt I had caused her, I went to ask for her forgiveness, and she had told me in plain terms that she wished I were dead. My rightfully vindictive little girl, with her cocktail of arctic-cold and hellfire-heat, with her chill of apathy and calculated insults spoken so coolly and calmly, interspersed with her fiery fits of pure rage…
I had been told for three years leading up to the Fall and mine and John’s escape that she was a Satanic heathen who commanded the love of the Lord of All Darkness’s Right-Hand, Adam Elohimson. That was followed by six years of being told that she was lost to me forever, and then, once I was back with Tyre, seventeen years of being told that she was imprisoned, married against her will, and fighting every day for her life onboard their legendarily brutal prison ship. So many half-truths or out-and-out lies had been told that I knew I would never know the whole story until I saw her, and then there she was, and the story was there on her face. Right there for me to read.
She sat down, so close to me that I could smell the soap she used, the perfume on her skin, but also, very faintly (and perhaps I was imagining it), the warm smell of her apartment on Earth that still clung to her just barely. Lavender and this strange incense called champa that she had insisted on burning constantly, according to Maura, God rest her soul.
Did she recognize me? Did she know her mother? Most people did not know me because she had erased me, but was I truly lost to my own daughter? At first, I thought that perhaps she was ignoring me because she did know who I was, and she was still punishing me, which was her right, after all I had done. But when I said her name, and she looked at me with those eyes and nothing flickered, I knew that I had been lost. And I could not help it. I did exactly what I had prayed I would never do when I saw her again, because I knew how it would make her internally squirm in discomfort: I began to cry. As I cried, her name fell from my lips over and over again. It did not stop until Tyre returned. I wanted to say her name over and over until something registered in her mind, but I knew better than to talk without Tyre’s permission by then. I knew of his typical response, the one that made me so angry and yet imbued me even more with such an uncompromising helplessness: If I wanted you to hear you talk, I would untie your mouth, Lara, spoken like a gentle chide, masking the warning that if I continued, there would be consequences.
Tyre lied so many times to her, and she did not know that they were lies, or if she did know, she simply did not care. He lied about me, who I really was. He lied about the “spies” he had around her, because there was really only one, and that one would be damning enough when she knew… When he triggered one of her episodes, every part of me was seized by that old, primitive urge to shout, to pull her back, to tell her that it was her inability to stay cognizant that had resulted in Lucien’s death, but more so than that, I was seized by the urge to hold her, to comfort her, to have my voice be a beckon, a lighthouse in the stormy seas, pulling her back to reality. The two sides of my maternity, already fighting it out in regards to her: The mother who had lost her son, who viewed this strange, sad, tragic child as the cause of her grief, and the mother who knew that it was her own fault, that she had failed two of her children, and who didn’t deserve a fraction of kindness from her daughter despite how badly—how desperately—she wanted it. She asked Tyre if I was her mother, and he lied again. So when we were left alone, and she helped me when I was in pain, I could not help wondering if she would do the same if she had known.
I’m your mother. I’m your mother. I’m your mother. My mind cried as she and I talked, but I could not bring myself to say the words. I just wanted to talk to her. I wanted to hear her voice for a few moments, but more than that, I just wanted to pretend, however briefly, that she did know, that she was helping me because despite all I had done to earn her hate, she still loved me, even if it were simply out of obligation. “You’re so kind,” I had told her, because she was. Regardless of what she said, she was kind. If she had not been kind, she never would have batted an eye when she had seen me in pain. She never would have given me water. Regardless of what Brynna has said and will say, she is kind all the way down to her core. “I’m your mother. I’m your mother. I’m your mother. Don’t you recognize me, Brynnie?” God, if only I had just said it.
She asked my name, and I didn’t tell her. Did she remember my name? If I answered “Lara,”
would that make the many circuits in that massive brain of hers ignite and connect? But he had said my name was Lara, and there had been nothing. I wanted to scream it, to cry it out, I’m your mother! I’m your mother! But the fear of hearing her say, “I know,” was too great. That fear roiled about in my belly, draining my heart of the hope I had felt at seeing her, when I pictured those cold, mismatched eyes looking into mine, and that cold voice saying, “I know.”
When Tyre told her to gag me, I knew that I would not get this chance again. He had arranged that meeting because he was curious to see what would happen when Brynna saw me again. I tried to say it, but it was too late; all she heard were some muffled words followed by my howls of grief, of helplessness, of hopelessness… My faultlessly ignorant little girl.
Nothing Tyre ever did to me, before that night or after, was as cruel. To dangle her in front of me, to rub my face in the fact that she did not know who I was, that showed how truly sadistic he was. When I awoke from my drugged sleep, looking all around for her, crying out her name, he crept up behind me, ran his hands up my bare thighs, up my stomach, over my breasts, to my chin, and pulled my head back.
“You are dead to her, Lara.” He snarled in my ear, and I did not want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how his words cut me, how his trick had worked, but the soft, bitter, devastated sobs began to flow from me then, and they would not stop. They would never stop, not after I had seen how my girl did not know me, how I had been erased from her life, and not while I was thinking how I so deserved it. Of course she had forgotten me. No one can wound quite like a mother can wound, and God, I had wounded her. Of course she would erase me from her consciousness. From every person’s consciousness. I was a blotch on her mind, a cancer that slowed the efficacy and efficiency of that epic brain, of that prized power. I did not deserve, in her mind, to be remembered by anyone, and Brynna was ruthless against that which she deemed a danger to her mind and that which she deemed undeserving of life, of remembrance.
Tyre’s hand brushed my hair away from my ear. His other ran up and down my side, as though he were trying to comfort me.
“Who do you have in this world now?” Tyre whispered in that voice tinged with his typical fake sadness, his fake compassion, “John and Eli will never find you, and your girls do not recognize your face. You are so utterly alone that I would pity you except,” His voice hardened as he tightened his fingers around my throat, “…You have angered the One God with all the destruction you brought to your old world, certainly, but more so than that, you have angered Him by neglecting the child he put in your belly, the life that he gifted to you. I am your punishment, Lara Olivier. I am God’s Right Hand, his Sanctum, his son. And I will make sure that before you die for good this time, you know with your entire being the extent of your sins. I will put you two together again, you and that child you just saw, that child you were unworthy to carry in the same body as that pathetic, festering heart of yours, and the next time she sees you, it will be so she can crush your skull. You know that is what she will do, once she knows the truth of your identity? Don’t you?”
I nodded miserably, the tears raining down my cheeks, pattering against the hardwood floor in large drops. I would deserve it, when she killed me, when she rid herself and everyone else of me forever.
But Allie told me that when Paul tempted her, she fought for me. She wanted to get me back.
Yes, for Eli and Violet’s sake, not for hers, and not for Penny’s.
I’ll explain myself. I’ll apologize. I’ll beg for her forgiveness.
And it won’t matter. You hurt her, so she will hate you until the day she dies. There is nothing you can do to change that now. Nothing.
I closed my eyes when he released my throat, and focused on her beautiful face. I cast my mind backwards, to times that had long since passed, when I had grasped her little hands as she took her first steps, clapped wildly when she had said her first word (“Li-ja,” for her brother), when she had brought home her first real report card, how she had been so proud, how I had been beaming with pride for days and days at all of her teacher’s comments, at her perfect marks, how I had shamelessly bragged to everyone on Capitol Hill… And then I lost her. The typical memories a mother has of her child were so sadly limited for Brynna and me, because just after that memory of her first real report card, there was Michael, and from Michael, there was Lucien. But no, I just had to focus. It didn’t matter that the good memories came to such a sudden stop, I would simply focus on the love I had in my heart for her. That abundance of love. I would call out to her. I would try to make contact. I had done it before, and I needed to do it again, but she was closed off to me. It was rare that I connected with her, and that night, it was impossible.
“Brynna.” I cried, as Tyre sat back behind his desk and began to fill out paperwork. “Brynna! Brynna!”
“Lara, I am very tired from our night last night.” He said, without looking up, “Do not make me discipline you now.”
But I persisted. Because he was right. Everything he had ever done to me was my punishment, and it still was not enough. Nineteen years total as his prisoner, three in the beginning, followed by six years of peace, and then sixteen more years of imprisonment, and I deserved every moment of his cruelty, and worse. So I persisted, until I stoked that infamous temper of his and got twenty lashings. He beat me until I bled, but I did not feel the pain. He had already hurt me more with his trick than he could ever hurt me with his hands or his whips or his words.
It would be a long time before I saw her again, I knew that, the way I always just knew things. But when I saw her again, I would tell her that it was me, regardless of how she would react, just so she would know. I would tell her, but not before I told her that I loved her. I loved her still, despite all that had happened, regardless of what she believed, or what I had believed once. I loved her with that violent, awesome, terrible, beautiful, deadly love of a mother still, despite everything.
We were an utter tragedy. All of us. We were a shattered family, each of us a puzzle with all the pieces scattered and missing. With every tiny piece of me, with the pieces of me I still held, and with the ones I had lost, and with the ones that had been taken from me, I loved her. To my dying breath, I loved her. My sweet daughter.
Your First Queen, my little girl.
James
It’s going to sound cheesy, but I will say it, and I will say it a million times. I will shout it from the rooftops, I will write it in the sky, I will swear it to the One God, the old God, and all the others: Brynna Olivier is the love of my life. Okay? She was twenty-two when I met her, I was forty-five, and yeah, it shouldn’t have happened. I remember the jokes, the sneers, and the insults. I didn’t give a flying fuck what they said about me. I didn’t care when they said I was prowling on an innocent girl, or that I was old enough to be her father, and what would we even talk about? Would I ramble on about the price of crops while she gabbed about her nail polish? What could a man my age possibly talk about with a girl her age?
In one of our many conversations on the ship (which I almost called mundane, except they weren’t, not to me, because it was during those conversations that I learned so much about her), she had told me about a trend in books she read where girls her age were portrayed as stupid and immature almost always. They said “like” in all their sentences, obsessed over social media, went out clubbing every night, and were clingy, sex-crazed, vapid, self-centered, and overly emotional. “No one believes that girls like me exist,” She had said, and the words had come off of my tongue before I could stop them, before I could stop myself from saying too much, too soon: “I barely believe you exist.”
It could have been taken in so many bad ways. “You’re faking.” “You’re putting on an act.” “You’re a lie, Brynna Olivier.” God, can you imagine what she would have said to that? But she was starting to trust me then. Just a little bit, of course, but it was blooming within her, and when I said that, she looked at
me, and she pulled this look that I immediately thought was fucking gorgeous and adorable and so alluring in this indescribable, mysterious way, where she smiled and turned her head on the side, looking at me first, and then up at the ceiling, as though contemplating. Then, she looked back at me, and with this very discreet note of disbelief in her voice, she had said, “That is very sweet, James.” Now, just like she did not take what I had said the wrong way, I did not take that note of disbelief in her voice the wrong way, either. She was not surprised that I had complimented her; she was surprised at being complimented at all. We were already starting to get each other then.
She was surprised because of her past, and that’s another charge Tyre held against me in one of my many reprimanding sessions. On the fourth or fifth day of them torturing us, she had thrown up when they had pulled the needle out of her spine. She lost everything in her stomach, and while I had been shouting (screaming, really) at them to get her some water, Tyre was just watching me with this expression of pity that made me want to rip his fucking jaw off. She threw up, moaned my name, and then her head fell forward, and if you knew the feeling that went through me in that moment… It was terror, but it was more than that. It felt old, older than any civilized human, older than most lands, most worlds. People say that their worst fear is for someone they love to die, but it was more than that, too. It was always more than that for me. She deserved to live. More than anyone else, she deserved to be happy and safe after what she went through growing up. I had brought her there, I had “saved” her, supposedly. Except I hadn’t. In that moment, I thought, ‘I brought her here so she could die like this. In a fucking cell, surrounded by fucking sadistic psychopaths, in pain beyond what anyone could ever possibly fathom in an eternity of fathoming pain. So she could die in the fucking dark.’ But she was breathing still. Of course she was! I laughed. I cried. The relief was indescribable. But she was out for a couple hours, and they left us alone. Her head was tilted forward, her chin on her chest, and I sat just watching her breathe. A miracle, my mind kept thinking, She’s a fucking miracle. There’s a fucking miracle sitting right in front of me.
I still think that.
So Tyre came in before she came back around. He stuck a needle in her arm and started to fill her back up with water.
“Only one of you gets one,” He says, “I hope I made the right choice.”
“You did. Give her my food, too.” I hissed, and just the sight of his face made my whole body start trembling, made my fists ball up so that my nails drew blood on my palms. I wanted to crush his face. I wanted to burn out his eyes. I wanted to rip out that tongue that had given the order to hurt her.
“She is a child, James.” He snapped at me. The room had been quiet, but he broke it with that. With exactly what he had always wanted to tell me.
“She is a young girl, not even a quarter of a century old. Over twenty years your junior. And you bed her! That is despicable beyond anything I could have expected of you.”
I found myself grinning, because it was so fucking hilarious that this asshole would seek to tell me what was morally wrong, when he had my girl tied to a chair and was pumping her nonstop with a drug whose sole purpose was to cause absolute, unfathomable pain, simply because she loved me.
“Yes,” I shot back, “I do bed her. Oh, but Tyre, she beds me, too.”
“She is confused.”
“Have you spent more than a minute around that brain? It doesn’t get confused.”
“She was terribly abused as a child, by her father and her father’s best friend. It bred some unnatural attraction in her. It made her want what she did not have from her father. That is what she wants from you. It is a very unnatural attraction from which she suffers. It is an unnatural, immoral disease, but it can be cured. It can be cured if you simply leave her be.”
“And it can be cured by marrying her to Adam?”
“He will treat her as he treated his other wife, and as he treats his whores. You will leave her, he will scorn her, and she will be cured. I am sure of it.”
“Well, thank God you people think betting is a sin, because you’d be out of some money if you bet on that, Tyre. She loves me, I love her. I’d die for her, she’d die for me. You know that’s what it’s going to come to, don’t you? You’re going to keep this up, and one or both of us is going to die.”
“I will not let her die!” He shouted, and when he raised his voice, she gave a tiny jump that made us both look at her in concern. “I will not let her die. She will live a happy and fulfilled life. She must learn first, but she will learn, and then, she will be happy and fulfilled with a young man who is suited to her, who deserves her.”
“Oh, God…” I sighed heavily and laughed so hysterically, it hurt my stiff facial muscles that had been held permanently in either a scowl or a look of concern over the previous days, “You don’t know who you’re dealing with. ‘Stubborn-as-a-mule’ just doesn’t do her justice. There are no little clichés that will do her justice. She is stubbornness. She is bull-headed. You’ll never have her, Tyre.”
“I do not want her. Not as you and Adam do. Not in the sick way that you both want her.”
“You won’t have her in any sense.”
“She is a child. Let her go.”
“I will not.” I said. I was angry again, furious; I already could barely remember laughing like I had a moment earlier, “The only person who tells me to let her go is her. The only person who can tell me to leave is her.”
“And she will. When I make it so the touch of your disgusting hands makes her vomit, and scream, and convulse in pain, she will tell you to leave, and you will, or I will kill you, James Maxwell. Regardless of how it will hurt me to kill you, I will do it.”
“Well, you will kill me, and you’ll kill her, too, because we won’t break. Ever.”
But I had pretended to break, even though it had made me sick to do it. It killed me because it gave him the satisfaction of thinking he had won, of course. But more than that, it killed me because it forced me to abandon her, at least to her knowledge. It was to save her life, but she didn’t know that. I had spent three years allowing Tyre to think that he had won. Actually, it was three years that Brynna thought Tyre had won. Tyre thought he won until his brother informed him that Brynna had been seeing me for twenty years behind his back. It was brutal to let him think he had won for all that time, but man, that victory was sweet. Knowing he knew pulled me through. Not only was his precious little charity case in love with the man who he had thrust upon her as punishment, but she was still in love with me, even after twenty-five years of hearing that I would just be a phase.
I never feared I was just a phase, because I knew her love was not only hard-earned but final, once it was earned. Brynna Olivier does not love lightly.
I don’t know what the Lord of War did to her those nights he kept us imprisoned in his quarters. She muddled our brains with her power so we wouldn’t know. Mine and Janna’s, anyway. She couldn’t tap into Adam’s, because he was resisting her influence. She did not want him to know what the Lord of War did, but he held on, because he wanted it right there for when he got his chance to slaughter the bastard. I know at one point, the Warden came out, dragged Janna into the room (which got both me and Adam bellowing at him), and I heard Brynna beg. “Please don’t, Warden. Please don’t. NO! NO! NO! Don’t touch her, please! Please don’t touch her! Please stop!” Janna had been crying, but her cries turned to wails, and we thought the worst, except she was gasping out, “Brynna, no! Brynna, no! No. No.” I want to know what he did, so when I kill every person he has ever loved, I can make sure he knows why.
I scooped her off of his bed. He had left. I had gotten free, unchained one of Adam’s hands, left him the keys, and stumbled in to her. She was bleeding, but my eyes wouldn’t focus long enough on her to see what he had done. She wouldn’t let me. She turned away from me, and she started apologizing. She reached out, put one hand on my chest, but kept her hea
d turned away from me, and she just started crying, and apologizing, and telling me she loved me, asking me to take her to Penny, to take her home. “I want to go home, James. I want to go home.”
“Look at me, sweetheart.” I had said to her, “Baby, please.” My voice was soft, and it had broken on that word. “Look at me.”
She cried harder, and her hand came up to rest on my face. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Her chest rose up first, pulling the rest of her with it. Her whole body was trembling. Not a single part of her was stable. She was freezing and scared and starved and sick and ashamed, and it broke my heart. She wanted to get up, she wanted off of his bed, but she couldn’t move. She was freezing and scared and starved and sick and ashamed and in pain. Every time she tried to move, she moaned and grasped between her legs, and I tried to touch her, but she thought it was him, and she cried and pushed my chest weakly. “I can’t anymore.” She cried softly, “Please, it hurts. I can’t.”
“Hey, baby. You gotta look at me, sweetheart.” I was telling her gently, “You gotta listen to my voice, sweetheart. Listen to my voice. It’s me. Come back to me, baby.”
She didn’t look at me, but she whispered my name, and reached out for me.
When I took her in my arms, my tears started again, and this time, they were unstoppable. She was like a fragile little bird. My strong, unbreakable champion woman was skin and bones and trembling. Inexplicably, I thought back to the first time I had made love to her. I had never “made love” to a woman in my life, not even when I was in love with my wife. I mean, I don’t think I ever really loved her, but I cared about her. In my own way, I cared about all of them. Every woman I ever took home. Every woman who ever took me home. But that was all it was. Sex. I’d get hot, I’d go out with the guys from work, and we’d say, “Fuck our wives (or rather, don’t fuck our wives), we just want easy, foreign pussy,” and by foreign, I just mean unknown. The unknown terrain of what was between a strange woman’s thighs. Sick, right? Misogynistic? Yeah. I was an asshole. Through and through, I was an asshole. I let myself off the hook because of my past, because what kid puts a bullet through his own “father” (several bullets, actually), and comes out whole? What kid spends years in juvenile detention, and comes out squeaky-clean and wholesome? My past took the burden of responsibility off of me; it was my crutch, my prop, and my pardon. I might be an asshole, but I had not always been an asshole. I had not become an asshole by choice. But we were talking about Brynna. About when she came to find me in the woods.
The impulses in me fought back and forth the second I realized it was her under me and not one of Adam’s thugs. I had never felt anything like the joy or relief that flooded through me, that led me to kiss her and hold her and want her right there. But the voices of all the people who thought she and I were sick and wrong were in my head, telling me that kissing her in the hallway on the ship was bad enough. Kissing her when we landed was enough. But having sex with her? That was worthy of a spot in hell, of a spot in what Tyre’s people call “the Land of Eternal Darkness,” a place I had visited before and never wanted to visit again. But I felt her legs coming up to wrap around me, felt the way her hips rose to meet mine, how she thrust and rubbed against me, her breathing deepening all the while. She told me later that she didn’t know what was happening. She had never felt that before for a man. There in the moment, I asked her if she was sure, and she was; I could feel in her that she was.
I remember everything about that first time, believe me. It was as new for me as it was for her. I remember everything fondly, but I remember one part sadly: when she asked me if it would hurt. That was all she remembered. Pain. It made me so sad, and so angry on her behalf, so murderous. It wasn’t “save the damsel in distress” “nobility.” It was “how dare they do that to her?” “How dare they hurt her that way?” “How dare they make her think that that was how it was, how it would always be?” It was always an act of violence. It would always hurt. It would always be something to be feared. It shattered me, man. “No,” I told her, “I won’t let it.”
Now, I had never pictured having sex with her. It just wasn’t there for me yet when we were on the ship, and it certainly wasn’t there for her, either. So all I had to think of while I was in my self-imposed exile in the woods was all of my former conquests, when it had been cold and meant nothing. But that night (and for many, many nights after that with her), I was gentle, but more than that, I was right there. I wasn’t thinking about how I would sneak away. I wasn’t thinking about what I had eaten for lunch. I wasn’t thinking about anything or anyone but her. I was wrapped in her, lost in her, wanting her and needing her, and all of that stuff that you’re supposed to feel when you’re being intimate with someone. Because that’s what it was. It was intimacy. Intimacy like I had never had in my life. With anyone. Ever. She was everything to me after that night. The sun rose and set with her. I was in love. In the same way that I filled some empty spot in her heart, she filled an empty spot in mine after that night, and I loved her. I carried her into the tent afterwards, and she seemed hesitant about trying to cuddle up with me, and I knew it was because she had heard men didn’t like it. And normally, I didn’t. I was a, “We’re done here,” kind of guy before her. I tried to be respectful, but once it was done, I wanted to leave. Feel fulfilled for five minutes til I needed the next foreign stranger woman. But with her, I wanted to hold her, so when she laid against me, I held onto her, and truly, had never felt happier.
So why did this all pop into my mind when I was picking her up off of the Warden’s bed after he had obviously violated her body in the worst possible way? Because I had made love to her a million times. I had wanted to make her my wife. I loved that woman until the end of time, and it had all started that day, when she had opened herself to me like that even though it scared her, when she had given me her trust and her love, and I had sworn I would never do anything to make her sorry for it. I had hurt her a million times, and she had forgiven me, but this… For me to let this happen was unforgivable. I wanted her to tell me she hated me, that it was all my fault, that I had failed her, and yet I knew that when she said that, I would want to die. Truly. But my mind kept replaying her asking me, “James, will it hurt?” and I was seeing the bruises on her thighs, knowing the bruises inside her were worse, knowing her mind was so confused, jumping time, going back to when she was nine years old and some sick motherfucker held her down and raped her while a woman who was supposed to protect her watched, and from there, she remembered how they had blamed her for her brother’s death to avoid having to take responsibility, how they had called her a liar. But most of all, it was the idea of unfathomable pain again. Of how she had suffered it all those years ago, repeatedly, and how she had just suffered it again, repeatedly.
Later, once we were hidden away in our Hollow (an unused, totally hidden room on the ship that I’ll explain more later), and we knew it was safe, Adam and I took her into the corridor and walked her up and down, because at night, she couldn’t sleep and wanted to pace. She held onto us both, but she tried to support herself on her own. She limped, biting her lip because it hurt, but Adam and I did not try to convince her to go back into the Hollow and rest. We knew better. She’s stubbornness, remember? We walked her up and down, up and down, up and down. I got this sick thought in my mind that she was walking specifically so she would feel the pain. Like it was her own Walk of Shame. Like it was a punishment. I got that thought, and it kept me up at night. I couldn’t shake it.
This is too much. I can’t talk about this anymore. Okay? I can’t.
There in the office, I handed her to Adam so I could unbutton and shed my shirt. We both had to pull her arms from around his neck and carefully maneuver her into it, and then, he handed her back to me but kept her hand in his.
“We must get her to the boats.” Adam said, “We must leave here now.”
“No.” I had said, “We need to hijack the ship, steer it to land, and take he
r then.”
“We have no time, and neither my people nor your people are equipped for that kind of uprising, James.”
“I am not putting her and Penny on a boat with a week’s worth of food when we have no idea how close we are to land.”
“Boys, stop it!” Janna snapped, and I saw that she was standing beside me, stroking Brynna’s hair. “We need to hide. Let’s get Idan, Penny, Illa, Grace, and Tony, and let’s go to the Hollow. We’ll wait until we feel the ship stop moving, and then, we will fight our way out, but until then, we must hide.”
The Hollow was the most secure location on the ship. The Warden didn’t know it was there, and neither did his men. In fact, I had checked every blueprint for the ship, and it was not on any of them. At the far end of the hallway in the base of the ship where the engines chugged away, there was a thin corridor that led back to what looked like a solid wall. Except at the bottom, Brynna and I had discovered a loose cinder block, and when she had pulled it out, it had revealed a tunnel. Of course, she had immediately crawled inside of it, which had prompted me to practically squeal her name at her, because who the hell knew what was in there? But what we had found was a huge, cavernous room, with two small windows at the top to let the light in. The room had probably been built to have some purpose but then had been neglected, for whatever reason. I know that she had to have talked about our ‘Hollow Parties,’ but I don’t know if she described the logistics of the room.
For the parties, we had been storing up food for years. All of it was shelf-stable and required little preparation. Brynna had insisted on stashing water, too, because, as she would admit later, she knew we would need it someday. It was a solid plan that Janna had. So I gave her to Janna, hid them both inside, and then Adam and I went off to round up the others.
And so we escaped him. For a minute in time. One night, after everyone had fallen asleep, I was sitting awake alone. She didn’t have much to say over those days, not to anyone except Penny and Idan, who clung to her every second of every day. She didn’t sleep much, either. No coaxing or reasoning or gentle prodding from Janna, Adam, or me could get her to sleep, but that night, she walked over to where I was sitting by the lantern and sat down beside me. Her hands wrapped around my upper arm and squeezed gently. She’d been doing that since we had first gotten together all those years ago. Sometimes it was to feel my muscles, which I knew she loved. But sometimes, it was just to touch me. Just to know I was there. Her head came down to rest on my shoulder, and as I always did (because I couldn’t stop myself, when she was cuddling up to me like that), I kissed her forehead over and over and over.
“You need to get under a blanket, sweetheart.” I whispered, “It’s cold in here.”
She didn’t say anything. She just lifted my arm, burrowed her face against my chest, and curled up against me. Rael tossed me a blanket for her, and I covered us both up. She looked up at me, but didn’t say anything. In the dark, her eyes were still so light, they burned. Not with rage. That wasn’t there yet. They just lit up. She kissed me, hard, holding her lips there for a long time. Then she said the first words that she had said to me in days. “It’s not your fault.”
Of course she had heard me thinking that. It never left my mind.
“I love you, James.”
I put both of my hands on her face and kissed her. I kissed her with everything in me, with every bit of love I had ever felt for her in those twenty-five years of being with her, with even more gentleness than I had used the night we made love for the first time.
“I love you, too, baby.” I paused, because something about her telling me that so randomly had unnerved me. “You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded, kissed me gently, and then burrowed back against my chest.
“Love you so much.” She whispered, “So much, James. It’s not your fault.”
She slept, finally, and there in the darkness, in the silence, I cried.
Unfathomable pain. From watching her suffer it, I knew it almost as well as she did.
Quinn
“Alright.” John was telling Eli gently, “Alright, son. Alright. They’re here to take her away.”
Alice was beside them, holding Melinda’s hand, stroking Eli’s hair. Melinda was alive, but barely; the skin of her face was so badly burned on one side that it was charred black. She was missing one arm, and the other arm was mangled to pieces from when she had skidded across the floor after the blast from the initial explosion. Everyone else in our medical building was dead—all the already mutilated patients who had held on after the first bomb, all the doctors who would have treated them.
“How many doctors are still out there?” Eli asked hysterically, “Do we have any Elixir stored? Elixir will bring her back. It will, I know it will. Just get me some Elixir.”
“No one else is alive in here.” Alice told me, and I had been so sickly transfixed by the sight of the carnage around me, I hadn’t realized that Alice had come to stand beside me.
“Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“Well, there’s that health stand out in the Unallied territory. About six miles from here to the east. Could you run there and barter with them, and if they won’t barter, could you fucking kill them and take the Elixir? Please?”
Her eyes were red, and I knew that she was not angry just at the Old Spirits for their attack on us. She was mad at me. She was mad at my inactivity, at how I was so shocked, so frozen in place, so inefficient. She was angry at me because I had suggested that we stay home, and because I was a coward.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I said, despite how angry she was, and despite how my reasoning would only make her angrier, “We attack the Unallied, we’ll have them here next. Our people can’t take another hit, Allie.”
“Then go barter, Quinn.” She snapped at me condescendingly, “That’s what you’ve always wanted to do, right? Don’t attack, just reason. Don’t fight, just barter. Don’t kill, just fucking beg.”
I wanted to snap back. My nerves were shot after what we had gone through that day, and I had no energy in me to defend my honor, to remind her that my way was the moral way, and that she was becoming a monster. I had never said those words out loud to her, because even when I wanted to say them with the best intentions, I knew that they would never come out sounding even remotely alright. I had no energy to fight, so I didn’t say anything at all. I just walked away.
Big mistake.
“Don’t you walk away from me!” She snapped venomously as I stormed back out onto the street. I continued to walk away from her, still saying nothing.
“Quinn!” She shouted from the rubble of the infirmary. “Quinn!”
I just kept walking, thinking that this was really going to make my point, it was really going to teach her a lesson. I would not be bullied for wanting to do the right thing. I would not be bullied for wanting to stay at home and recuperate a little bit. I thought, “Don’t say anything. Don’t give in to her. It will make her see that you’re right.”
But then she hit me with:
“Fine, I want to take some time apart, anyway, so this is a good start, you stupid son of a bitch!”
She turned to storm back into the rubble, but I had rounded around and zoomed back to her. Though I tried to do so gently, I grabbed her arm and pulled, and she gasped, perhaps because my sudden return had surprised her, or perhaps because I had hurt her. I would have been sorry for both, had the rage not welled up in me so fast.
“What did you just say?!” I spat at her.
“I said ‘I want to take some time apart.’ Are you deaf?! Did the Light-Bomb fuck up your hearing?! Fine, I’ll say it again. ‘I want to take some time apart.’ Do you need me to say it louder? ‘I want to take some time apart!’”
“You choose to do this here?! Right now?! After what just happened?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“When else am I going to say it?! Things aren’t slowing down, Quinn. They’re get
ting worse! They’re worse than they’ve ever been! When would you prefer I tell you?! When you’re here, sitting at home, eating fucking Lizard Berry Pie, and I’m out there, fighting for our freedom, and our right to keep living the way we do, and…”
“That was so fucking redundant, it’s not even funny.”
“Oh, yeah, correct my grammar while we’re in the middle of a fight. Really makes your point, you pompous asshole! Really makes you seem mature!”
“And calling me a son of a bitch and a pompous asshole makes you seem mature?!”
“Whatever! You stay here, I’m shipping out tomorrow with the team and hunting down the bastards who did this, and I’ll be back only when I’ve got their fucking heads in my hands. You stay here, and please, for the sake of the appearance of our marriage, make yourself useful. Clean up the debris. Help bury the dead. Attend all the funerals. Don’t just sit at home burying your head in the sand, acting like everything is hunky-dory while there are bodies stacked to the ceiling, half the town is in ruins, and Don is dead!”
“Excuse me…” A voice said beside us, but we ignored it.
“Oh, believe me, I’ll make myself useful, going to the fucking lawyer’s office and putting divorce papers in.”
“What?!”
“Yeah! You want to play this shit with me, then it’s over. There’s no ‘taking time apart.’ There’s no break.”
“Quinn, Alice…” The voice—a male voice—said beside us again.
“It’s either we’re together, or we’re not!” I said, “So if you want to pull this shit, then it’s over! And I’m going to put the papers in!”
“First of all, you stupid dick, there are no papers! This isn’t Earth! If you want a divorce, you just separate, and that’s the end of it, so nice try! Second of all, you ignorant fuck, if you want to threaten me with this, then you’re right, maybe we should just get divorced, because no matter what manipulative, emotional shit you pull, I never thought you would threaten me with that. So you’re right, let’s get divorced. Move your shit out of the house!”
“I’m not moving my shit out of the house. You’re moving out.”
“No! I get paid more than you do, so I bought that house, which means that you are moving out!” She shouted, and she was right, but I was certainly not going to admit it.
“Quinn! Alice!” The voice shouted.
“WHAT?!” We bellowed simultaneously, and when we looked, we saw him.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, and now you’re not dead!” Alice screamed, “Jesus, I can’t win today!”
“That is so sweet.” Don said sarcastically, and he actually did look a little scorned, though why he thought she had any fond feelings for him, I didn’t know. She had never led him to think that.
“I hate to interrupt your divorce proceedings, but I just wanted to inform you that I am alive, and any orders for shipping out will come directly from me.”
“Oh, really?” Alice snapped, “So, what, Don, should we sit on our asses, waiting for them to hit us again?”
“Clearly, someone led them back here. We need to find that person.”
“That person is probably dead. They probably blew themselves up, or they were probably right up close, right in the blast zone, listening to you ramble on with your philosophical bullshit so they could look like they were blending in with us.”
“Right. The Old Spirits send in a Two-Face who is clearly crafty enough to stay hidden all this time, who is clearly skilled enough to sneak out, find his way through the Moors, and find his way back, to lead others back here, and they’re going to let that person get blown up. No, he is here. Or she is here. We need to find that person, and once we do, he or she will lead us to them, and then you can have at them. Until then, just go home. Or, Alice, you go home, Quinn, you go the inn, or vice versa. Whatever you two decide.”
“Oh, fuck you, Don.” Alice snapped, and she finally went stomping off.
A shadow loomed over Don, and when we both looked, we saw it was John. Don came up to the top of his chest just barely, and whenever John loomed over him, Don’s huge eyes would widen to their farthest reaches, and he would take a step back out of reflex, though he tried his best to keep his chin up and his posture straight. Playing the fearsome leader, even when he was full to the brim with fear.
“You watch your fucking mouth.” John told him, closing the space between him and Don. Their chests were level—or rather, Don’s face was level with John’s chest—and Don had his head tilted all the way back to look up at John, who was looking down at him.
“What did I say that offended you so, John?” Don asked flippantly. Trying to act like his brains were more intimidating than John’s brawn. Typical.
“Your little quip just there about them fighting. But really, that’s just another item on the long list of reasons why I should kick your ass. The biggest reason right now? The item at the top of the list? You being alive, when every person on your Council who stood with you on that stage is dead. How did that happen, I wonder?”
“A terrible tragedy. I can’t talk about it.” He actually sounded choked up. His frog eyes swam in tears. “I ran and then threw myself onto the ground before the Cord could get me. I ran, and I’m sorry that they didn’t. I just… Reflexes.”
“Hmm…” John shrugged, “And wasn’t Allie supposed to be on that stage with you?”
Don’s back stiffened even more, and his chest swelled with indignation.
“What exactly is it that you are suggesting, John!?”
“Nothing, Don.” John replied with a grin, “Nothing at all.”
The fear started in my chest and spread all through me, churning and smacking against my insides like waves against the shore during a storm. The terror cut through like a riptide, changing the currents of my heart and mind. I still thought Alice and I should stay at home, but no longer was that because I thought we needed time to recuperate. John was right. Every instinct I had—the weak, old Earthean ones, and the strong, animalistic Pangaean ones—told me that the wolves were at home, walking among the sheep. I was staring at one, I knew it.
I remembered a conversation that John, Lara, Eli, and I had had many years earlier. We were sitting on the back porch around the fire-pit. Lara was cuddled up against John, her back to his side, her legs stretched out on the loveseat and covered with a blanket. She was still very weak and having trouble walking. Alice had been out that night, assessing the candidates who would later become part of our unit, and Lara would never go to sleep until she got home, because she worried.
“I don’t like her around that man.” She had told us, “I don’t like it.”
“Which man, Mama?” Eli asked her.
“Don.” She said emphatically, “I know you said that he has been your leader since the beginning, but I don’t like him. I don’t trust him.”
“We don’t like him, and we don’t trust him, either, Lara, so you’re not alone.” I had told her, and I had almost started in on some of the stories about how Brynna had used to step to Don, how she had used to challenge everything he said and did, and how at times, she was the only one who could talk sense into him, how he had been so afraid of her. But I stopped myself, because I did not want to upset her. Some days, she would ask for stories about her girls, and though she would always cry, she would otherwise handle it perfectly well. But other days—and especially when the stories were about Brynna—it would shatter her. She wouldn’t just cry, she would sob, and if it was really bad, she’d disassociate, and start fighting us and screaming, thinking we were Tyre, that we were keeping her daughters away from her, that we had been the ones to hurt them.
“I’m alright today, Quinn.” She had assured me gently, “I promise. You can tell me.”
“Oh, you damn Athenes.” I had said jokingly, “You hear everything.”
“I just have a filter on in my mind. I can’t turn it off, and I don’t want to.” She replied, “Whenever they cross people’s minds, it flags, and I
hear it. Brynna was very hard on him?”
“Oh, yeah.” Eli answered before I could, “I swear, every time she crossed his path, he peed a little.”
John and I laughed at that, and Lara smiled brightly.
“I can imagine that.”
“One time, she was looking for him.” I said, “She was stomping through Shadow Village, hunting him down, because he and his people on the Council were going to propose raising the tax, and she was pissed. We were on the Pangaean money system by then, but Don still wanted people to forfeit over their crops and whatnot, and Brynna was storming around, searching high and low for him. James and I, and… Eli, you were there, too, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, I was there.” Eli replied, chuckling at the memory, “We were working on Ezra’s farm that day.”
“That’s right,” I said, because I remembered, “We were watching her look for him, when we saw him come around the corner, see her, startle so badly that there is no way he didn’t pee his pants, and then literally jump into a dumpster. The best part? She picked up his thoughts and found him there. And when she opened the lid, she said, “Oh, look, the wild Don Abba, in his natural habitat,’ and we all clapped, man. We were dying.”
John laughed even harder at that, having to double over to hold his stomach, and Lara laughed harder than I had ever seen her laugh.
“So, anyway, I told you that story not only to give you a laugh, but also to show you that she didn’t like him or trust him, either.”
“In his defense, though, Brynn didn’t really like or trust anyone.” Eli said, “Well, she liked the people in our village. She was a really, really good leader. And people loved her because she was the antithesis of Don. Don had been the one to ask her to be his Second, but I know he regretted it, because he had been Adam’s second, and once Brynna came along, she became Adam’s second.”
“He respected the hell out of her, though.” I added, “He was terrified of her, and they had their many disagreements, but he was there for her the night of the First Siege, when they…” I stopped, not knowing if she was ready to hear more about the night when Brynna had tried to bargain for her life. “Well, during the First Siege, he was with her. And they, Eli, and Savannah held them off.”
“Still.” She had said, and she was suddenly very tense, “He would switch sides in a second if there was a siege, and we lost control, and the other side offered to let him live. Everyone he has sworn to protect would die, but he would live, and that would not be easy for him, but it would not stop him. That man will do anything to stay alive.”
“Won’t we all, though, Mom?” Eli had asked, “I’m not defending him. Believe me, I’m not. But you can say that about all of us.”
“You can.” She replied, “But your sister and Adam were leaders of these people. I am sure they were given a choice. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah.” Eli replied.
“And they chose not to give in. They are imprisoned wherever they are because they chose not to change their allegiance. He would have no misgivings about it. He would do it in a heartbeat. We all have a choice, and he would choose to save himself before anyone else, and he will make that choice. I know he will. I’ve seen it.”
In the present, as I watched Don walk away from us, I remembered Lara’s words crystal-clear. I remembered how Brynna had been able to keep Don in check by intimidating him, and I suddenly missed her more than I had in a while. I missed them both, with their knowledge, wisdom, foresight, and in Brynna’s case, terrifying authority over the man we were meant to call “Leader.”
“You thinking about her? About Lara?” John asked me, “Remembering what she said?”
“Yup.” I replied, “He’s about to make his choice, isn’t he?”
“Quinn,” He said, “He’s already made it.”