No, we can’t!The peace in me trembles, and with a great effort, I pull the world around us back together. The wind makes the leaves flutter in the trees. A cloud covers the sun overhead.
No, I say again, calmer.We can’t.
Talk to me, he insists.Talk to me when you’re awake, not when we’re dreaming. At least we can then have better control. Maybe our link is justaching for our connection. Maybe it’ll stop in our dreams if we just connect when we’re awake.
I shake my head. I’m too afraid to hurt them again.
We can’t win if we don’t help each other, he says, and through our bond, I can feel his heart breaking.Talin, please.
You can’t help me, I answer.
He reaches for me, then stops short. The street of my childhood finally fades around me. At my back, the dark tunnel yawns. The feeling of his lips against mine has become a faint memory. I’m suddenly unsure it ever happened.
I’m sorry, I tell him as I feel the dream pulling to an end. I’m not entirely sure what I’m sorry for. Everything, maybe.
Then he’s gone, and I’m back in my bed, lying on my side with my blankets sprawled around me. I can tell that the Premier is still asleep, lost in his own dream. My emotions must have calmed enough with the peaceful memory of my childhood home to keep from stirring him awake.
Red and Jeran are out there. They are on the move. I hang on to this belief, feverishly hoping it to be true.
I should tell them everything. I should keep reaching out to Red.
We can’t win if we don’t help each other, Red had said to me.
But how can we win if I am the tool Constantine uses to hurt everyone I love? How can I help them, even with Raina’s tonic weakening my link with the Premier? I have already put my friends in the arena and nearly gotten Red recaptured.
Next time, they may die. The only way I can help them is to keep my distance.
The image of Adena facing me in the arena hovers over my heart. How brave I’d been then, thinking I could turn Constantine’s owngame against him. And yet, here I am again, sick to my stomach about what that moment might do to my mother. What good am I to Red and Jeran now, anyway? Will I help them best by simply staying away?
Someday, maybe, I will be free too. Then I will show everyone what I’m capable of doing against this Federation.
But I may have to do it alone.
21
RED
If there’s one place in the capital thatno one is interested in tonight, it’s the National Museum.
As the celebrations go deep into the night, fireworks whistling and sparking through the evening air, Jeran and I head to the quiet paths around the museum.
There are no soldiers here. Why should there be? No one is thinking about the relics on display in these halls, and every guard is busy with the rowdy crowds swarming elsewhere in the capital. Only a single sentry is posted at the front and one at the back of the museum, watching halfheartedly for petty thieves. One look at their faces tells me that they’re just biding their time, grouchy for having to spend a solstice celebration night stuck at the museum’s steps.
I’m quiet, but my mind is a storm. I can’t stop thinking about the dream I’d had with Talin earlier in the night, that half kiss. I can still feel the heat of her touch, however phantom it might’ve been. I can still feel myself pleading with her not to go, to reach out to me when she wakes. I can still feel the agony of her pulling away again, her fear returning. Her pain had washed over me in waves.
Constantine is certainly pressuring her will at every turn, and Ican feel her cracking under the strain of it all. They are breaking her as surely as they’d wanted to break me, to turn her into the perfect Skyhunter—obedient, efficient, cruel.
If you don’t find a way to take this whole damn system down, they just might succeed.
My fists clench. No. No way I’m going to lose Talin too.
My focus turns back on the museum. If we can uncover what exactly the artifacts from Mara are—and why Constantine is so hell-bent on retrieving them—then maybe we can figure out how to use them against him. How to destroy them.
The benefits of Striker training never cease. Jeran moves so quietly within the shadows of the museum that even I lose him now and then as we go. I head to the opposite side of the building. We take note of each other at either end of the museum’s looming steps, above where a sentry stands guard. As we do, I remove some of the wristbands from my arm and untie the ceremonial sash around my sleeve. Then I make my way to the thickets that line the edge of the museum’s raised foundation.
There, I purse my lips and make a whistle that imitates one of the fireworks launching along the thoroughfares.
The sentry turns in my direction. He sighs, then heads down the steps while grumbling to himself. I press against the side of the rising stone stairs, melting into the shadows. He passes by without noticing me at all.
