Ashes of Twilight (32 page)

“Can’t it wait?” Peggy says. “The fire? Shouldn’t we go below?”

Alcide comes in from the front. “Word is it’s under control, but that part of the dome is completely gone.”

“The fans?” James asks.

“I don’t know,” Alcide says. “I’m just picking up what they’re saying on the street.”

“It doesn’t matter if the fans are gone,” I say.

“What do you mean?” Adam asks.

I look at the group gathered in the kitchen. They’ve all risked so much this day. They all deserve to know what I know. “Can David be moved?” I ask. I only want to tell it once. I’m pretty certain I won’t last much longer.

“I think so,” Harry says. “He was sitting up.” He goes up the stairs to get David, Lucy, and Jilly. Peggy fixes me a bite to eat while Lucy and Harry help David down the stairs. He settles gingerly into a chair and Lucy pulls another one up close to him so he can lean against her. He’s pale but strong enough to sit. I am certain he will recover.

“Thank you for what you did,” he says. “You probably saved my life. I just wish I knew what hit me.”

“I can sort of answer that,” I say from the comfort of Pace’s arms. There aren’t enough chairs for everyone and I don’t want to move so I stay safely on his lap with his arms around my waist. I’m not so certain I could hold myself up without them there.

“Jon and I were captured by the filchers.” I leave out the details of my time with the filchers. There are things I’m not ready to share. The things that would have happened to me and the reason why they didn’t. “They tried to collect the reward but the bluecoats killed them. They took me to meet with Sir Meredith…”

“He’s over the enforcers,” Pace adds. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him, at least not close enough to talk to him.”

“He’s quite driven,” Jilly adds. “A real stickler, according to my father. There are rumors afoot that he killed his competition for the position, although it was all deemed an accident upon investigation.”

I am not surprised by Jilly’s statement. I had come away with the same impression after spending half an hour with him. He abandoned my mother and me and thought nothing more of me than to trade me off for some weapons. I fully believe him capable of murder.

I tell them what my father told me. About the world outside, about the others who are out there, about the weapons and the reasons why he won’t allow us out.

“What makes you think he’s telling the truth about all of this?” Adam asks.

“Because he’s my father.”

The ones who know me and my history fall silent, as they digest this morsel of information.

“Well, that certainly puts things in a different light,” Jilly says. “Meredith
does
have skeletons in his closet.” She looks at me. “No offense.”

I can’t help but smile. “None taken,” I say. “It was as big a shock to me as it is to everyone else.”

“He recognized you,” Lucy says. “Because you look like your mother.”

“You would have thought he’d seen her ghost,” I say. “But he recovered quickly enough.”

“So what happened?” Peggy asks.

“He said he was going to give me what I wanted when I refused to tell him where you were,” I say, turning to look at Pace. “He was going to put me outside. Jon and I were to be traded for more weapons. We were almost there when there was an explosion.”

James and Alcide grin widely and exchange a look that puzzles me.

“The bluecoats took off to see what was going on. Jon went out. I came back,” I say simply.

“Did you see anything?”

“What was it like?”

“I can’t believe you didn’t go.”

The questions fly but I hear only one thing.

“You came back,” Pace says quietly so that only I can hear him.

“Outside will still be there,” I say. “We’ll find another way to get there.”

“We can’t go that way?” Peggy says. “Why?”

“The fire,” I say. “It burned everything. I wonder how…”

“We did it,” James says. “Adam, Alcide, and I.”

Now it is my turn to be surprised. “What? How?”

“Alcide went back and got the charges,” Adam says. “They took you. We wanted to show them we could take something too.”

“I’m pretty sure the fans are gone,” I say. “And the furnaces.”

“Which means they’ve got to let us out now,” James says confidently. “Come on, Wren, you were the one who started this revolution. You didn’t think we were going to sit around and just bide our time and not put up a fight?”

“You just decided to do it? Without thinking it through?” Even though I am exhausted my anger rises as the full impact of James’s impetuous act sets in and my voice rises with it. I stand and lean across the table to face him. “They don’t need us now. They don’t have any use for our coal without the furnaces. You think they will just let us go?”

“He’s
your
father,
you
tell me,” James yells back.

“’Tis done now,” Jilly says. “Right or wrong, there is no going back.”

“Fighting amongst ourselves isn’t going to help anything,” Lucy adds.

They are both right and I am too exhausted to think.

“Tomorrow,” I say. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.” The only problem is, I’m not certain if there will be a tomorrow for any of us.

29

We part ways
with Peggy, Adam, James, and Alcide once we are back in the mine. At this point I’m not sure if it matters if they know where we are hiding. At this point I’m not sure of anything. Pace has the benefit of the lamp, but he still needs me to show him the way. I don’t care if James follows us. I don’t care if James falls into the pit. I just want to get back to our cave.

We finally arrive to the sound of the rushing river. The sound that means home. Pace keeps a tight hold on me as we walk down the narrow ledge. It’s a good thing he does. I am so exhausted I am dizzy. I concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other so hard that I don’t even know we’ve arrived until Pace puts his arm around my waist. When we get to the bottom he picks me up and carries me, gracefully navigating the rocks and pools until we are before our cave. If only we could crawl into our cave and never come out again. If only we could leave all of this behind us and wake up in a new and peaceful world.

I need to get the remnants of this day off of me. I’m covered with blood and dirt and soot and the smell of the sewers. My skin feels crawly and I don’t think my clothes will ever come clean. “Put me down,” I say. “I need to bathe.”

“Shouldn’t we go to the glow fish?”

“No, here is fine.” I’m too weary to go on. I just want to wash the day away. I don’t care that the water is cold. Maybe cold will make me feel normal again instead of like a monster.

“I’ll be right back,” Pace says. He climbs into the cave to put Pip back into his cage. While he is gone I strip everything off down to my underclothes and make my way out to a cluster of rocks that form a pool alongside the river. The water pours over and through but there is no danger of washing downstream because of the boulders that block the way. I sink into the water and let it pound against my back before I go completely under.

It would be so easy just to slip out into the river and let the water carry me away. To not have to think about anything. Just to let go and not have to fight anymore. To not have to tell Pace that my father is planning to trade his mother for him. To not have to admit to him or myself that I actually killed a man.

All I have to do is let go. It would be so very easy. Let go … I see myself floating beneath the water, pale against the darkness, with my hair spread out around me, at peace before I disappear beneath the cave wall. So very easy …

Pace won’t let me. He splashes into the pool and pulls me against his chest. The heat of his bare skin against my chilled body jolts my insides. “Don’t,” he says.

“Don’t what?” I gasp. I’m shivering now. The cold and the wet finally registering in my shocked and exhausted body.

“Don’t leave me.”

I open my mouth to respond, to tell him I’m not going anywhere, but one look into his eyes makes me realize he knew what I was thinking. How is it that he knows me so well in the small time we’ve spent together? Better than anyone who has known me my entire life.

“I killed a man,” I finally say. “A filcher. He tried to…” I can’t say the words. To speak them out loud would make it closer, scarier, more real, if that was possible. The thought of what could have happened is enough to send me over the edge.

I would very gladly go, if not for Pace. He pushes the wet and wrecked mess of my hair back from my face. The lamp sits on a rock beside us and he turns me so he can examine each cut and bruise on my face. He touches them gently and tenderly, almost as if he could heal them with his fingertips. He does the same with my hands, kissing each finger and finally the palms that are raw from my tumble in the street.

“You did what you had to do to survive.” His voice is hoarse with emotion and his eyes narrow as his face turns deadly. “I would gladly kill anyone who tried to hurt you.”

“Your mother…” I begin. I feel the need to confess all my sins. I feel so unworthy of his love, after what I did today.

“They expect to trade her for me,” he says. “I know. It’s the only reason to take her. It is not your fault that they have her. You can’t be responsible for everything and everyone.”

I nod in affirmation. Now that I’ve confessed I haven’t got the energy to speak.

“We’ll figure it out tomorrow,” he adds. “For now let’s just be.”

He’s carried out the soap and towels. He bids me to sit before him and I do, wrapping my arms around my knees and leaning against the warm skin of his legs as he washes my hair, my back and arms, quickly, as he can feel my chill. When he’s done he wraps my hair up in a towel and puts the other one around me and once more carries me to the cave while I hold the lamp up so he can find solid footing on the rocks.

He puts me on the ledge into our cave and I slide back so he can leverage himself in. Then we both crawl back into the cavern. Cat lies on the quilts and meows sleepily, as if to say, where have you been?

“Do you want to eat?” Pace asks.

I shake my head. “I just want to sleep.” I’m still shivering and need to get warm.

“Good, because we don’t have much.”

“I’ll go get some in the morning,” I say, with a yawn. I want to lie down but Pace won’t let me. Not until he wraps me in a blanket and brushes out my hair as I lean against him, gathering his warmth while listening to the sound of Cat’s rumbling purr as he lies next to me. I fall asleep as Pace cares for me and do not realize it until I wake from a dream with a start and find myself wrapped safely in his arms.

If only I could stay this way forever.

*   *   *

“Wren!” I fight my way through the many layers of my dreams. Fire and blood and filchers chasing me and through it all I hear the sound of rushing water and know that escape is so close.

“Wren, wake up.”

I open my eyes to find Pace sitting before me and Hans and his son standing over us. Pace clenches his fists and the muscles in his arms and across his back tighten. I touch his shoulder, gently, and rise up to my knees behind him, his body shielding mine from the wandering eyes of Hans’s son.

We have been found.

“We need you at the council, gel,” Hans says. He looks down at Pace. “Both of you.”

“We’ll be there,” I say because I know we have no choice. They know where we are now, so they know how to stop us if we try to leave. Not that we have anywhere else to go. Hans nods and leaves while his son looks around curiously before following him.

Pace does not relax until they are gone. “What does it mean?” he asks.

I drop down to sit. My heart is racing and my mind is trying to find the path between my dreams and reality. “They want to talk to us. About what, I don’t know.”

“I wonder how bad it is,” Pace says as he dresses. “If things above have gotten worse.”

“Without the fire it was already bad enough,” I admit when my brain finally focuses on the here and now. “It could be the bluecoats have sent word about your mother. Or it could be they found out about our involvement in what happened last night.”

“Do you think they’ll be angry when they find out what James, Alicide, and Adam did?”

“Yes.” I don’t even have to think about that response. I rise and put on the only clean clothes I have left besides the blue dress. “No one is allowed to put the rest of us in jeopardy. I got away with what I did because they didn’t know you were below and they were trying to protect me, but now that they know you’ve been here the entire time they will be angry.”

Pace looks up from pulling on his boots. “What will they do?”

“Banish me at the worst. But if they do, that means we have no place to go.” My mind races as I try to conceive of a safe place for us to hide. The only one I can come up with is beneath David and Lucy’s, and that is no way to live. It would be like living in a grave, like the dead people from the time before the dome.

My boots sit right by the entrance. Sometime in the night Pace had retrieved my clothes and cleaned them the best he could. I pick up my boots and pull them on.

“We can’t hide forever, Wren. And whatever happens, as long as we’re together in it, we’ll figure it out.” As soon as I stand Pace puts his hands on my shoulders and tilts my chin so I have to look into his eyes. “I mean it, Wren. No more taking off on your own. From now on it’s the two of us, facing this together. Both of us deciding, not just you.” His blue eyes search my face. “Understand?”

His soul is right there shining in his beautiful blue eyes and bared for me to see. It is made up of sweetness and strength, resolve and fortitude. I don’t understand why fate threw us together but I will not question it. Instead I will be grateful for it. For knowing he is there to help me and to protect me, even if it is from myself.

“I understand,” I promise him. He smiles, puts his hands on either side of my face, and bends to kiss me. It starts tender and sweet but we are suddenly hit with the realization that this might be the last time we have a moment like this and it turns desperate once more, hot and demanding until I can do nothing but cling to him as he cannot seem to stop.