Tears sprang to my eyes. Some part of me had wanted him to deny it, to tell me Lucas Scott would prove to be an asset, that he’d never hurt us. But of course he didn’t say that. It wasn’t true.
However, if Lucas could deliver Tekqua back to me, I’d suffer any amount of betrayal. I’d suffer his hands. His body. His brutality. Anything.
I wanted her back.
“I miss Tekqua,” I said.
His voice roughened. “I know.”
“Have you ever considered raiding the House of the Rising Sun, Theo? We could save them.”
He shook his head. “They guard the House as well as they guard their headquarters. I’ve looked into it.”
I swallowed to stifle the tears. She hadn’t been publicly executed, and her body hadn’t been recovered in the field, so she had to be a prisoner.
A slave.
She was at the House. I was certain.
His face softened. “It’s a scare tactic. They’re sowing uncertainty and panic through extreme cruelty, just like whenthey stopped using guns for their executions and started choosing their own weapons instead.”
The image slipped through the cracks in my memory vault of Colonel Jack Miller standing at the podium in Unity Square, where they performed all their public executions.
“To conserve ammunition for the Security Restoration Campaign in our northern territory, capital punishments will no longer be served by firing squad. Instead, executioners will choose how the sentence is carried out. In accordance with Executive Order 16389, in an effort to maintain unity and stop the corrosion of peace in our great nation, convicted traitors of the Unified States of America are sentenced to execution by the hand of the National Stability Force. Let this act serve as a reminder that unity prevails. All hail the Commander!”
That was the day we started calling them Blood Colonels.
It was a mockery. A humiliation. A deep wound to our pride. They wanted us to suffer in full view of the entire country. The entire world.
This is what happens when you defy us.
“But if they make us fear them, then they control us,” Theo said now.
I nodded, not trusting my voice. My fear definitely controlled me. It dictated my every action. It influenced each thought.
“Is there any more information?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“You can go then. I need to think.”
Standing to leave, I made it to the door before he murmured my name. When I glanced at his face, a rare mask of grief had settled over it. “I miss them, too.”
Right. Didn’t seem like it.
I wandered downstairs, trailing through rooms full of people without stopping to speak to any of them. After meanderingaimlessly, I made my way to the café for a snack, choosing a seat alone at the back of the room to wallow in my darkness.
Devon spotted me and took the place across the table. “You doing okay, Soph?”
“Of course.” I faked a smile and lifted my dried apple slices. “Remember the beginning, when we had those food expeditions?”
He pulled a face as he sat, drumming his fingers on the table. “I hated slaughtering the cows.”
“Better than slaughtering humans,” I muttered.
Solutions to the food shortage had developed over time, primarily through vegetable gardens and hunting, but those early days of hunger still haunted us.
“Where’s Isaac?” I asked, referring to his boyfriend, one of our lieutenants.
