“Why would I need one?”
I pivoted suddenly and Aeris nearly knocked into me. “Because Lyla is different. If I remove her gag, she could make you do any number of things and I only just met you. I’m not responsible for you.”
When I continued walking, she remained standing there, her already big eyes wide and fixed on me as I made my way to the iron cage. I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking and at the moment, I didn’t have time to care. I wanted answers.
The darkness surrounding Lyla’s confines seemed thicker than the rest of the camp. The light from the numerous campfires did not reach very far. They left her excluded in the shadows, alone and almost out of reach of the music playing merrily near the others. I stood in front of the covered cage for a moment, listening, and was slightly alarmed by the lack of a heartbeat coming from behind those bars. But when I finally heard the first thump of her slow, almost inaudible pulse, I knew she remained in her prison, alive.
It wasn’t unusual for sirens of the deep to have a heartbeat so slow, it almost seemed dead. The Naros sounded the same. But Lyla was Kroan. Or she was at some point, but she was raised in the trenches. In the cold darkness and solitude that was the home of the xhoth.
And others I did not want to believe still existed.
I reached out, taking the fabric with my fingertips and dragging it off the dome of the iron prison. There, in her little cage, sat Lyla, slumped against the back like a corpse, her knotted black hair hanging in her face. Her eyes slowly opened and peered up at me, dark and hollow like those of a drifting shark.
Fear gripped me for a beat long enough for me to feel its agonizing chill and then I swallowed it. Fear was useless. It was the chain holding me back and I needed to discover everything I could. I could not afford the limitations of fear.
I crouched by the cage and reached my arm inside. It felt like reaching into an eel’s den knowing that it could gnaw off my fingers, but I had a hunch Lyla was as curious as I was. Perhaps not about the same things, but her hesitations after Gus was killed raised plenty of questions.
I unbuckled the leather harness keeping the bit in her mouth and pulled it away, watching as she slowly moved her head and moved her jaw. There was an audible crack as she flexed and opened her mouth to stretch. She adjusted herself against the back of the cage and licked her cracked, drying lips with her dark, almost black tongue. For a while, I watched her. The way she moved. The way she breathed. The way she blinked. I wanted to know her and that required observations. Finding weaknesses.
“You people are loud,” she groaned softly, her eyes squeezing shut as if she was in pain.
Good.
I tilted my head to one side, wondering if her joints ached or if her throat was dry or if her skin was tight like mine had been for many weeks since I could not freely swim in the sea.
“Aren’t you going to ask a question?” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“Why are you here?”
“Because you locked me in here.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
Her eyes lit up, her head canting to one side as if to mirror mine. “That’s not what you want to ask.”
“Answer me.”
“Because I have to be here. Now ask what you truly want—”
“Do you want to kill me?”
“I want to kill everything.” She shrugged. “The itch, I suspect, will be hard to ignore.”
“You’re angry. I know you are.” I dropped onto my knees, sitting back on my heels and searching for a glint of life behind her black eyes. “Why?”
“I’m already bored of this, sister.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Ask. Your. Question,” she glared.
I paused, taking a deep breath. I knew what she was talking about. The fact that she knew exactly what I wanted to know was unnerving. I didn’t want to admit how obvious I’d been or that she knew me well enough to practically read my thoughts.
As if Lyla sensed I was about to give in, the corner of her pale lips curled upward with anticipation.
“Is he real?” I whispered.
The only other alternative was that I, along with countless other Kroans, really were the product of madness. We had imagined a deity to be the scapegoat for our wrongdoings. We were a disease, prone to a kind of psychosis that had gotten so many killed.
