Liquid Lies (36 page)

His legs wobbled. She lunged to catch him, but he collapsed before she could reach him. She stretched him out and pressed a hand to his neck. “She took a lot of your blood,” Gwen said. “It’s different, when you’re human. You’ll need to rest, to get some iron in you to help replenish it.”

Adine fell to her knees beside them, breathless in awe. “Your blood? It’s the fuel for the ship?”

At first Gwen was reluctant to translate, knowing Genesai’s weakness. But he looked at her expectantly, and she knew he was anxious to speak with Adine, too.

“She uses my blood as the catalyst to create her own fuel,” he answered.

Adine smiled. “Holy crap.”

Genesai rolled his head to Gwen. “Can we bring her to the surface? Can we leave now?”

“No. We have to wait. Everything depends on the slaves.” And Nora’s awful plan.

The women helped Genesai rise, but he gently pushed them away and stumbled over to the smooth wall. He stroked the surface, reminding Gwen of a groom combing down a horse after a hard ride. His lips moved silently; she wasn’t meant to hear what he said.

She nudged Adine. “Let’s wait in the passage.”

“Why? What’s going on?” Adine kept trying to peer over her shoulder as Gwen steered her backward.

Gwen smiled, but her heart twisted with jealousy. “They’ve earned a moment alone.”

Time slowed as they pushed back up through the water. Every
second seemed longer than the last. Genesai leaned against her, quietly singing, but she didn’t hear the words. She only thought of Reed.

The need to see him—to speak with him, to touch him—threw off her equilibrium. What exactly had happened inside the general store? What was Nora asking him? How was he answering?

After the submarine broke the surface, and Adine popped open the hatch, the three stepped out onto a nighttime dock. They’d been down below all afternoon and evening, and a new wave of panic rolled over Gwen. Anything could have happened.

“This way,” came a gruff voice from the end of the dock.

She looked up with hope, heart in her throat, but it was useless hope because the voice wasn’t Reed’s. It belonged to a hired Primary guard—not Frank, the fingerless one—and he held his rifle at the ready. Why was he there instead of Reed?

Gwen rushed down the dock, her footsteps loud and hollow on the wood.

Two figures stood on the lowest stone step leading up to the brightly lit house. Gwen pulled up, terror hardening in her bloodstream.

“So.” Nora’s diamond black eyes glittered. “Thought you would try to find a way behind my back, did you?”

Every single word Gwen ever knew in any language vanished.

“There are too many people on my side—too many
loyal
people—my dear, to ever accomplish anything outside of my awareness.”

What did that mean? That Reed had betrayed her? No. She couldn’t believe that.
Wouldn’t
believe that.

Xavier came down a step, to her level, wearing a strangely blank expression. So unlike him, not to wear his hate like a mask.

What did you do
? she wanted to scream.

She didn’t have to.

Xavier looked her right in the eye and lifted up the Tedran watch Reed had been wearing. “He’s dead.”

THIRTY-THREE

And there it was, plastered all over Gwen’s face: confirmation
. Proof of what Xavier had suspected had been going on between her and Muscle.

Gwen looked like she wanted to scream. She looked ready to lunge for Nora and wrap her hands around the Tedran leader’s throat. Withheld tears twisted Gwen’s mouth and nose. But she was nothing if not strong, and she just stood there, sturdy and tall as a robust tree refusing to fall amid the storm.

Calm as ever, Nora addressed Adine. “Take our guest up to the house. Get him settled in and see that he has something to eat.”

Adine stiffened, her dark eyes darting from her mother to Gwen and back. Like Xavier, Adine was beholden to Nora. Like him, Adine was beginning to believe that that wasn’t always a good thing.

Gwen went to Genesai and spoke to him in low tones. Xavier had no idea what she was saying, but her actions and intent were clear: she wanted to help Genesai. She wanted to see him off Earth. And if she wanted that, that meant she was on the Tedrans’ side, too.

After Gwen finished talking, Adine slid an arm around Genesai’s shoulders and started him up the steps.

“I should have known,” Nora sneered to Gwen after Adine had led Genesai out of earshot, “that you’d use a whore’s tricks to try to turn Reed. You’re arrogant. You’re beautiful. You tried to use it.”

Gwen locked stares with Nora, sword striking sword. “Fuck. You. You don’t know how wrong you are.”

One thin, silver eyebrow arched high into Nora’s forehead. “Oh, really?” She clasped her hands at her waist. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Reed’s
gone
. I have Genesai. And I have you. Wearing a tighter leash.”

Xavier’s watch chimed the same moment as Nora’s. Adine up at the house:
Need some help with Genesai
.

Nora raised a hand to him. “I’ll go. I’ve said what I needed to say to
her
.”

Gwen watched Nora climb the steps. If Gwen’s expression were a weapon, Nora would be dead in an instant. A mighty warrior, this Gwen. A mighty
surprising
warrior.

As Nora’s little figure disappeared over the terrace, Gwen’s shoulders sagged and her head dropped. A weird feeling settled in Xavier’s chest. Sort of heavy and sour. He didn’t like it.

He moved closer, spoke low. “You two thought you hid it so well.” When Gwen tilted her face away, he knew he’d struck the right, tender spot. “And you did, from Nora, who’s so singularly focused, and from Adine, whose innocence baffles me. But you couldn’t hide it from me.”

She slowly straightened, pushed back her long hair. After days and days of denial, she wasn’t trying to hide it anymore. She knew she’d been discovered, and the bare emotion he witnessed on her face was too strong to be covered.

“You forget,” he said. “Sex was my life from the day I was able to get it up.”

“I didn’t forget. I will never forget.” She was trying to force strength into her voice, but it wasn’t working very well.

“I also know every emotion that goes with sex. Tenderness. Revulsion. Fear. Mindless desire. Frustration. Obsession. Love, even. I’ve owned every one—or
think
I’ve owned them—so many times I’ve lost count.” He scuffed a stone with his shoe. “Sometimes, when they were taking me in and out of the Circle, I’d peek into the other cells. When they saw that, they let me watch because they knew it would excite me. But when I watched, I also studied what I saw between men and women. I noticed who connected with who. I could see the signs, the emotions. See who was true and who was dead inside.”

She didn’t say a word, just lifted her chin. She wasn’t going to give him anything and that was okay; Xavier knew it all anyway.

“I had an inkling about you two even though I never said anything to Nora. But it was just a feeling so I kept watching. And watching. When I found out you’d lied about being able to talk to Genesai, I knew I was right. I knew you were going behind our backs with Reed, too.”

“Stop.” Her face was so blank it almost scared him, this woman who had never feared hiding her emotions before. “Just stop.”

He couldn’t stop now. “I bet you thought he was this total statue, completely devoid of emotion. And he was, to an extent. He played the dumb muscle role really well, especially when he was alone. But when he came around with you, I sensed it. He changed. Little things like the way he stood, the shift of his eyes. Even when he was pretending to ignore you, he was listening to every word you said, even though he couldn’t understand them all. I recognized his reactions. That building expectation of what could happen when you were alone. That sense of protection when you weren’t.”

He allowed himself to bend a little closer to her. “Even that scent, when you want someone so badly it comes off your skin. Sex is sex. It changes you, no matter the situation.”

She didn’t back away, and though their proximity was doing unwanted things to his body, despite his self-control, neither did he.

“I didn’t tell him anything about…all this.” She waved a hand at the house. “It was just sex.”

That brought up a new bubble of anger. He laughed, but there was zero humor behind it. “That was the difference, wasn’t it? He wanted you—truly wanted you—and you were just using him.”

That brought out the reaction in her he was looking for. “No! That’s not true.”

He still needed more from her. She still needed to convince him.

“He may have been a dumbass Primary,” he goaded, “but he was not a part of this. The only thing he was guilty of was fucking you.”

“Stop
.
”
Tears made her dark eyes shimmer, but she pressed her thumbs to her eyelids so they wouldn’t fall.

“You slept with him to win his sympathy. Then after you got Genesai, you were going to try to get him to help you escape.”

“No! I never used him. I just wanted…him. He and I had nothing to do with Tedrans or Ofarians or anything else like that. Those emotions you mentioned? I’ve felt all of them for him. I still do. And now…” She started to cry.

That
was what he needed to hear. It matched what Reed had told them once Nora had confronted him: that he’d met Gwen by chance before he’d been hired. That they’d become lovers while here, but that she’d kept quiet on the reasons behind her kidnapping.

Xavier tried to convince himself that was the only reason why he needed to hear her confession, but it wasn’t really working.

Gwen sank to the step, her legs cast out messily in front of her. “If I tell the truth to my enemy,” she murmured, “does it matter if I tell the truth at all?”

Xavier surprised himself by sitting next to her. “No. I think it makes it even more true.”

A few of her tears dripped onto the stone between her legs. In the distance, the lake slapped against the side of the submarine still tethered to the dock. Water everywhere. The sign of his enemy. Yet here he was, talking to one of them.

She looked absolutely desolate. More hurt and lost than the day he’d taken her through the Plant. More terrified than the night of her kidnapping.

“Do you know why I’m doing this?” he asked, pushing his hair away from his face.

Red-rimmed eyes turned up to him and she snapped, “Because you don’t want to be a slave anymore?”

“No.” He pursed his lips. “None of this is for me. It’s all for them. For the women who were forced to be with me. The mothers of my kids. The children themselves. I think about them constantly. In there, in the Plant, we didn’t know the meaning of family. Now that I’m out, I know they should have that family. And I want to give it to them. Maybe I could do that, back on Tedra. I deserve that. So do they.”

“There are other ways to get that, Xavier. Other, easier ways that don’t risk shoving Ofarians—and Tedrans—under a giant microscope. We can figure out how to let all Secondaries live here in secrecy. Give me a chance—”

“I did—”

“No, you didn’t!”

“—and look how you screwed it up. Now we have you and Genesai. Are you going to disappoint him?”

She jumped to her feet and growled in frustration. “Look at you. You’re acting like you’ve just won some great battle.”

“I haven’t?”

“Don’t all wars come with prices? Rarely is one side one hundred percent pure in their desires or their tactics. And it’s never just the soldiers who get wounded.”

He rose, ordering himself to remain calm. “You’re talking about the Tedrans.”

“Of course I am. You claim to want them all back on Tedra, holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya,’ but you’re not even sure you can get them all on the ship!”

His blood pressure started to rise. “We’ve covered this. We’re taking steps to make sure every single one of them has the chance to escape.”

She was shaking her head. “Chances aren’t good enough. Not in my book. Given what you’ve just told me, I’m surprised they are in yours.”

Every retort he thought of died on his tongue.

“Unless,” she pressed on, “you’ve been forced to swallow whatever Nora says and believes like I’ve been forced to swallow
nelicoda
.”

Anger broke through his blockade. “She got me out of there. I have no reason to believe she won’t be able to do the same for all the others.”

Her inspection of him was blatant and nerve-wracking. “I see you trying to believe it. I’m not sure you’re entirely sold.”

“I am.” Was he?

“You can step away from me now.”

He looked down, noticing for the first time that he’d backed her almost into the bushes. Blindly, he shuffled to the other side of the staircase. A cold wind came off the lake, but he discovered he liked it and turned his face into it.

Was Gwen right? He knew he was like a child, with twenty-plus years of experiences to make up for. Had Nora taken advantage of that? She claimed to have chosen him because he was the fiercest, the strongest of heart. Did she truly want to see him safe and free like she claimed, or had she plucked him out of the Plant to help her because he seemed the most damaged? The most malleable?

That
made him shiver. Not the winds of coming winter.

Gwen brushed past him to head up to the house.

“He may not be dead,” he said to her back.

She froze. Swiveled around.
“What?”

Above, the terrace was dark and quiet, but he lowered his voice anyway. “Reed. There’s a chance he survived.”

She raced back down the stairs. He wondered if any of the women he’d procreated with would react the same if they’d thought him dead. Probably not.

“What are you talking about? Tell me what happened.”

Oddly enough, it felt good to say. “In the car on the way back with Genesai, I contacted Nora and told her I suspected Reed wasn’t one hundred percent on our side. She threatened to tell this guy—Tracker, I think she said his name was—Reed’s real name if he didn’t admit he was involved with you. So he did. But that’s all he’d admit to.”