I frown. I don’t know that name…but when he speaks it, I seem to see another image in my head, this time of a woman about my own age. She’s my height, my build, my everything in fact. She looks so much like me, I would think I was seeing a mirrored image were it not for her long black hair and the delicate scales around her cheekbones and jaw.
“No,” I say, firmly shoving that image down as well. “I’m not Nyxia…whoever that is. I’m Rosie.”
He gapes at me, open-mouthed. Then, very softly: “So it’s true. There really is another one.”
The last thing I need right now is to get muddled up in more questions and enigmas. Setting my jaw, I take hold of the boy’s shoulder. “Come on. We’re getting out of here. Now.”
To my relief, the boy allows me to lead him to the air shaft. It’s too far up for me to reach, but when I ask him to give me a leg up, he obliges. I manage to scramble inside and turn to offer my hand to help him, but he simply leaps from the floor, catches the lip, and hauls himself up with just a little clambering of his scrawny limbs. He’s a nimble blighter, despite his injuries.
“This way,” I say, and take the lead, crawling through thetunnel. I try very hard not to think too much about the view I’m giving the poor boy. What a great introduction to his own sister! When we come to the upward-leading shaft, I tell him to climb ahead of me, preferring not to have him looking up my skirts, even in this pitch dark. After all, his dragon sight might be much better than mine.
“Go slow and steady,” I tell him. “It’s a long climb.”
His panic simmers in the atmosphere, but I can tell he’s feeling stronger already, now that he’s out of thosemeoriseshackles. Though I cannot see his face, I sense when he looks at me, considering whether or not he could overpower me.
“Hey!” I say sharply and tap the top of his head. “None of that! I’m here to help you, but you’ve got to help me too, all right?”
His mind instantly subdues. I think I hear that name again:Nyxia, Nyxia, Nyxia.It’s unsettling. Who is this mysterious doppelgänger who inspires such terror in the poor boy’s heart?
At least he turns obediently and begins to climb the rungs. I start up after him, already exhausted at the prospect of this long ascent. But we’re out of the dungeon cell; that’s got to be a good thing, right?
No sooner has that thought crossed my mind than a deep-booming drone erupts in the air all around us. It ripples through the shafts and echoes in the palace chambers and passages, filling up the whole world with terrible, inescapable sound. The boy jolts, and one of his feet slips, kicking me in the face. I redouble my grip on the rungs, clinging with all I’ve got even as my head fills with sparks. “Blighted hell!” I snarl, my voice lost in that echoing dissonance. Because I know what that sound is: the palace alarm.
Alderin knows I’m missing.
34
Rosie
The din of the alarm is still rattling in my skull when voices begin to join with it, creating a calamitous chorus which threatens to shatter what’s left of my strained composure. I hear guards in the passages outside the shaft, their armor clattering, their shouts echoing against stone. And how long before they enter the shafts themselves in pursuit of us?
“Hurry!” I hiss, reaching up to pinch the boy’s ankles. “Keep climbing. We’re not there yet.”
I don’t know if he can hear me above the din, but he responds at once to my command, clambering as swiftly as his small limbs can carry him. The climb seems to last forever, and through it all, that unrelenting alarm blares on and on. It’s nearly enough to make me spring out of the shafts, throw up my hands, and say, “Fine, all right, you got me! I didn’t reallywantto escape anyway!” just in hope of reclaiming a little peace. But I set my teeth and keep on going, one handhold and foothold at a time.
It’s nearly impossible to tell in the dark, but by some instinct,I sense when we come to the intersection of our shaft with the one that leads toward the pulley lifts. “Here,” I say, reaching up to grab the boy’s ankle again. “Back down a bit. Careful now!” I slide into the sideways shaft, and the boy follows, once more at my heels. It’s not far to the grate which looks down into a passage with the stone chairs placed on either wall. This is the same spot from which I exited this shaft two nights ago. And, like two nights ago, it is, for the moment at least, empty.
I slot my fingers into the grooves, pulling the grate from its frame. “Wait here,” I tell the boy, and lower myself to the floor below, dropping the last several feet. I remain where I land, crouched, listening to voices ringing all around me. It’s difficult to tell through the din of the alarm, but I don’t think anyone is about to round the bend either before or behind me. I rise and beckon to the boy. “Get down here, quick!”
His little face tightens into a knot. Once again, I feel his resistance, his fear. And something else as well—rage. Pure rage, childish and young, but no less fierce. Not aimed at me exactly, but at this whole mad world in which he’s found himself so unfairly thrust. I hate that life has been so cruel to him at such a young age. But it’s only going to get worse for him if we don’t move fast. “Rhyo,” I say sternly, allowing a certain amount of force to ripple along that mind link we share. “Now.”
He shakes his head but otherwise makes no protest, slipping through the opening and dropping to the floor beside me. It’s frightening how easy it is to command him…even more frightening to realize how naturally I might begin asserting my will over another person when it’s convenient.
I shake this thought away for the moment and take the boy’s hand. He looks up at the open grate, brow wrinkled. I know what he’s thinking; anyone who comes this way will see that we exitedhere. But there’s nothing we can do about that now, and it would be a waste of precious minutes to try. “Come on,” I say, and lead him at a swift trot down thescintil-lit corridor.
The palace is both familiar and strangely nightmarish to my senses, with that awful alarm still pulsing. We reach the pulley lifts. One stands open. No guards lurk in the alcoves, and I refuse to consider the convenience of this, refuse to let myself doubt or dither. After all, there’s a chance I have been really clever all this time, isn’t there?
“Get inside,” I say, my voice a growl I scarcely recognize. The boy whimpers but obeys, stepping into the box beside me. I yank the lever, and the door slides shut. The next moment, the box begins to rise. The boy startles in his skin, and his fear shocks up the back of my mind, sharp enough to make me stagger and hit the wall. I gasp for breath, putting out a hand to steady myself. “It’s all right!” I say. “It’s all right, I promise. Just a little farther now.”
But of course, that isn’t true. The ride up has always seemed long, but now? It feels like an eternity. The boy crouches in the center of the box, rocking back and forth, his arms wrapped around his skeletal body. I wish I knew how to comfort him, but I’m hard at work protecting my mind from the assault of his fear. I think I’m getting better at it; with a little practice, it might even be possible to make the link between us one-way only, so that I might transfer information or commands while protecting myself from his reactions.
“Are you…are you going to take me back to her?”
I blink down at the boy. The singlescintilhanging from the ceiling illuminates his face in a harsh white glow, washing out his dark complexion and emphasizing the hollows around his eyes. An image appears in my head once more—that picture of the woman who looks like me. Nyxia.
“Don’t you want to return to your own kind?” I ask.
He shakes his head and remains silent for about twenty clicks of the pulley chain. Then he says softly, “Coming here…it is the first time my mind has been clear since the dracori took me from home. Mother’s voice is always in my head, and…and when it’s not her, it’s Nyxia.”
