Halo (Blood and Fire Series (A Young Adult Dystopian Series)) (28 page)

“You want me?”

Ryka’s smile is devastatingly sharp. “You own me, remember. And now, after the other night…I guess I kinda own you, too.”

This time I can’t prevent the choking. My face must be purple by the time I can catch a breath. Ryka just grins, enjoying my reaction.

“What can I do to convince you I’m a good person?” he asks.

“I already think you’re a good person.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Okay, I’m halfway there.”

“Tell me what I can do to get you the other fifty percent.” He laughs, but his words are quiet. Serious. The tone in his voice has my insides doing strange things again.
 

“I’m not sure. You could tell me one of your many secrets,” I say. No way is he telling me anything. The way his shoulders stiffen makes me think I’m right, but then he holds out his hand.

“Okay, come with me.”

A jolt of panic surges through my body as I look down at his outstretched hand. He waits patiently for me to take it, probably longer than most people would. His fingers close around mine when I finally find the nerve to accept, and he starts guiding us through the trees.

“It’s dark, we’re going to break our legs,” I tell him. I’m not really scared; I just need something to say.

“Not going far. My secret is down by the water.” His hand tightens around mine, his grip confident and strong. It takes less than a minute to get to the embankment, but Ryka walks us along a little ways, until we’re actually around the back of the tent he shares with Olivia and Jack.

“Here,” he says. He lets go of my hand and jumps down the five-foot drop, fluidly landing in a crouched position. He seems surprised when he turns to find me right behind him, having jumped down too.

“That’s right,” he says. “You’re not a normal girl.”

“What were you going to do?” I laugh. “Lift me down?”

Ryka runs his hand back through his hair and flashes his teeth in an easy smile. “Well, yeah.”

I suddenly wish I hadn’t been so hasty in jumping. “I saved you some back pain. What’s the big secret, then?”

Even though he doesn’t need to, Ryka takes my hand again and we walk down the water’s edge. The moonlight slides across the rippling water, making it look like twisting pale silk. I drop down to touch my fingertips to the surface of the water, feeling its cold kiss against my skin.

“Freezing?” Ryka asks.

“Freezing,” I agree.

“Great.” He starts unbuttoning his shirt.

“Wait, what are you doing? You don’t have three nipples do you? That’s not your secret?”

Ryka laughs so hard he snorts. The shirt falls off his shoulders and he lets it drop onto the pebbly shore by the river. “Not quite. I’m sure you and everyone else in Freetown would have noticed that when I train. I spend half the day without a shirt on.”

It’s true, he does. Although, right now is different to every other time I’ve seen him shirtless. This time I’m close. Really, really close. “So why are you getting undressed, then?” I pretend not to study the way his muscles contract and move underneath his skin. How broad and muscular he is. He tucks his hair behind his ears again, doing his own fair share of pretending– mainly that he doesn’t notice me studying him.

“Because I want at least one item of dry clothing for when I come out,” he says, smiling.
 

“Out?” Suddenly I realise he’s going in the water. I go to grab hold of him, but he dances out of my reach.

“I thought you wanted to know my secret?”

“I do, but you’re going to catch your death if you go in there right now!”

Ryka shrugs and backs away, not even flinching when his bare toes hit the water. “I’m a big boy. I’ll be fine.” With that he turns and dives into the river, making me gasp on his behalf. Shocking. Water that cold would be truly shocking. He comes up in the middle of the river, laughing.

“I hope you appreciate this!” he cries. I don’t get a chance to tell him that I do. He dives back into the water and he’s gone for what feels like forever. I’m trying to figure out if I’m brave enough to go in after him when he breaches the surface, gasping in a breath. His pale blond hair is plastered to his head as he hurries out of the water, carrying a fat, oblong rock in his hands. His teeth chatter as he rushes towards me, throwing the small boulder to the ground at his feet. The moonlight catches on the water beading across his chest, running down his arms, and his black pants stick to his legs, soaking wet. I collect his shirt from the ground just as he shakes his hair out, spraying me full in the face.

“Arrrghh! Thank…you…?”

Ryka chuckles, grabbing his shirt out of my hands. He lunges forward and wipes it across my face before I can object. “There. You’re welcome.”

He slips the now damp shirt on and does up a button halfway down, leaving the rest open. Having accomplished that, he looks down at the rock at our feet.

“What is it?” I ask.

He gives me a pained look. “What does it look like?”

“A rock.”

“Congratulations. Your powers of deduction are impressive.” I shoot him a withering glance, which wipes the smile off his face. “All right. Look at this.” He motions me down with him and we both crouch beside the rock. It’s slimy and covered in green algae, which smells really bad.
 
Hefting it over with the heel of his hand, Ryka points at a faint mark on the underside. He lets it go and the rock lands with a weighty grinding noise. On the underside are marks. Letters, in fact. The jagged engravings are two Ms, side by side. Beneath them, an O and an R are carved with careful precision.

“My dad did this,” Ryka says quietly, tracing his fingers over the marks. “We were little, but I remember.” He nods, as though reassuring himself that he actually does. “My dad was telling Liv and me about all the different kinds of rocks there are around Freetown. He tried to explain how they were all formed and which were good as building materials. We were too young to understand at the time, but we loved hearing him tell us anyway. He was a pretty smart man.”

“Sounds like it.” My voice is hushed, but it still feels too loud. Ryka’s eyes shine in the muted light, meeting mine.

“We wanted to know which one was the strongest of all the rocks. He told us it was marble, but there wasn’t any around here. Apparently, volcanic rock is pretty strong though.” He slaps the wet boulder and chews on his lip. “He explained that even though they’re really strong and difficult to mark, all rocks are eventually reduced to nothing. He said it would take millions of years, but it would happen one day. At the time we didn’t believe him. The buttress by the river, the stone of the Keep, all of it just seemed so solid and immoveable. My father took out his penknife and said he would prove it to us. All morning he spent carving our initials into this rock
―
his, my mother’s, mine and Liv’s. After that we kind of had to believe him, y’know?” Ryka falls silent for a minute, and I can tell the memories are painful for him. He presses his palm to the boulder, gently this time, the muscles in his neck working overtime.

“He said, ‘Son, there are many things in life that may seem indestructible. But remember, family is always stronger. Those are the only bonds that are truly unbreakable.’” Tracing his fingers over the markings one last time, Ryka picks up the rock and swings, launching it back into the river.

“What are you doing!”

The look he gives me is a hard one. “My family was worn away a long time ago. My father was wrong. That bond was broken when he left us, so I’m letting nature do what he said it would. One day that boulder will be nothing but sand and there’ll be no evidence that any of us ever even existed.”

“And that’s your secret? That you’re pissed off with your dad for lying to you because life isn’t perfect?” My head hurts. Hell, my chest, my eyes, my heart hurts. Ryka grins, at odds with how horribly I feel for him.

“No. Liv’s been looking for that rock for about five years now. That’s my secret. She’s never going to find it.” A look flashes over his face. “
She’s never going to find it
,” he says. “Okay?”

It’s painfully unfair that Ryka’s cynicism is robbing Olivia of something sweet their father did, but this is Ryka’s secret. He’s trusting me with it. “Fine,” I tell him. “I won’t say a word.”

******

“I’ve been waiting on you, Kit. Didn’t Ryka give you my message?” August’s thick mess of wavy hair kicks up in the breeze that teases the tents this morning, causing their canvas sides to undulate. It looks for all the world like they’re breathing, the soft movement a casual draw and pull of lungs.

“Yes, he did. I was going to come yesterday but Olivia was upset.”

Two tiny lines form between August’s eyebrows. “Yes, well, I heard about that. Callum explained what happened. Pass on my regards to her for me, will you?”

“Sure.” August’s regards probably aren’t going to do much to alleviate Olivia’s sudden absence of life. The crying has stopped this morning, but in its place is a distinct lack of everything
Olivia
. Her cheeks sunken in, she left after waking, not a word passing over her lips. Without her boisterous presence pulling me in one direction or another, I drifted towards the forge without even realising. August hands me a beaten metal mug of tea and a butter biscuit, and I can’t help it: I immediately think of Miranda’s words in the Colosseum before my match with Cai. I seethe at how unaffected I was by her cold, calculated demands back then
―
be nice to my hideous children, pretend that we love you. Smile
. I swear if I never see Miranda’s haughty face again, it’ll be too soon.

“So, do you want it?” August says. Thankfully his voice brings me back, sweeps Miranda’s blank, pitiless expression from my mind.

“Yes,” I tell him.

Five seconds later, the thing is in August’s hands
―
my halo. Last time I saw it, it was battered and twisted out of shape, and now, to be honest, it doesn’t look much better. The once smooth, shining silver surface is scarred from where August used his tools to pry it from around my neck. At least it’s circular again, though. Kind of. It was never going to be perfect. He offers it out to me and I take it, immediately noticing that he hasn’t soldered it together. A small gap exists, breaking the circle.

“Have you thought about whether you want to put it back on yet?”

I shake my head, turning over the piece of metal in my hands. Its weight is so familiar. “I’m not ready. I just need to know
―
will it work? If I do decide to put it back on?”

August’s mouth pulls down, a grim, unhappy expression. “Yes. I fought with myself as to whether I ought to give it back to you, you know. The inner mechanisms were well beyond my ken, but there are others here who have first-hand experience with these things. They were able to assist in the repairs.”

There are other people in Freetown who know about the halos
―
how they work and what literally makes them tick? I make a mental note to question Jack about them later. “And the drugs? It’ll still produce the drugs?”

“It’s probably capable of producing around another year’s worth of the toxin. After that, I don’t know. I suppose we could try and work out how it’s formulated in the first place. Once we know how, it’s possible that we might be able to reproduce it.”

Toxin.
 

I say drug, August says
toxin
. That’s how everyone here sees the halo and what it does to a person. Before, I thought of it exactly how the administrators in the Sanctuary wanted me to
―
as a medication. I slip the halo into my leather bag and clasp it close to my body. It’s scary having it so close to me again, but also comforting. I wish there was some half measure between being affected by the halo and still being able to experience my own emotions. A dulled down, manageable kind of ache would be preferable over the loud roar of guilt I feel most days. Maybe I can just wear it at night. If there’s a chance it would hold back the nightmares
―
Cai’s bleached out, lifeless face
―
then I’d even think it might be worth it. But, of course, there is no half measure. It’s either off or it’s on, because I’m not stupid enough to believe that I’ll be strong enough to remove it once I’m blissfully numb to the world again.

“Thanks for this, August.” I give him a bleak smile and we part ways, but not before he gives me a firm hug. I’m slowly getting used to them.

Halfway back to my tent, I catch sight of Ryka running in the distance. He looks like he’s heading towards the Holy Walk, probably to train, and I have to dismiss the immediate urge to go after him. He doesn’t need me distracting him. Freetown’s matches are two days away now, and the whole place is buzzing with a static hum I’m more than used to. It was the same back in the Sanctuary, only this time I’m
awake
and I can feel the anticipation, the electricity in the air. It’s not a pleasant sensation for me, now that I’ve associated it with death and blood.

I take my halo home and hide it under my bed. The day is my own after that, and I sneak through the stalls of August’s market, careful to make eye contact with no one as I survey all the glinting hardware. It’s not just Freetown’s smith’s work that is showcased; a whole armoury of blades in all shapes and sizes are displayed, each exhibiting the signature of its creator. Short squat men with stubby fingers demonstrate the benefits of small handled throwing knives, whilst others, men with too much flair to have ever been fighters themselves, flaunt flashy folding blades, twirling the silver in the air to appreciative gasps from the crowds. Even Callum has his own stall. A small selection of slender pieces are arranged carefully on a folded cloth when I find him on the outskirts of the market place.

“Hi, Kit,” he greets, the ghost of a smile on his lips.

“These are beautiful,” I tell him, running a hand over the nearest knife, a six-inch stiletto blade. They really are impressive. I gesture to the table, asking if I can touch. Callum grins and tosses the stiletto at me so I have to catch it out of the air. My hand snaps out and I flip the knife over quickly, testing the balance and the weight.