Premier?I answer calmly.
Send in my captain of the arenas, he tells me.Tell him we’re moving up the next game to tomorrow.
My heart seizes at that.Tomorrow?
He has no patience for our teasing tonight.I know you heard me, Skyhunter, he says. His lip curls into a dark snarl.Tomorrow.
Adena and Aramin. I don’t have to say it aloud to know, without a doubt, that Constantine will unleash his rage on them tomorrow. By the end of the day, my Striker friends will be dead. He won’t be sparing any lives after an attempted assassination.
I bow my head.Yes, Premier, I say.
As I turn to leave, I see Constantine’s eyes roaming the abandonedchamber. I can sense the fear in him lingering in the air—it permeates everything.
Who are your friends, Premier? And who are your enemies?
Good. Let Constantine feel the unraveling of his own mind. Let Raina’s poisons course through his body. Let this city’s unrest and his people’s hatred for him eat him alive.
And as I sense this, I feel the resurgence of some part of me that I’d feared I’d lost. It’s the part of me that had flickered out when Constantine first captured me, the part that had let myself open my heart to others, to accept help, to trust my life to a Shield, to be a part of team willing to give their lives for one another. It’s the girl who had been brave enough to flee Basea with her mother. The girl who had lingered as a child near the Striker arena with grand dreams of joining the Strikers. It’s the girl who was willing to step into the woods at the warfront because she knew she had allies at her side. It’s the girl who could so easily distinguish right from wrong, who could make decisions she believed in even when they were hard.
It is the part of me that had once helped a boy prisoner in the Striker arena, for no reason other than I believed he deserved better. It is the part of me that wants so badly to open itself up to Red’s call through our link. The part of me that is like that young, would-be assassin willing to lay down her life for what is right.
I think back to the night when Constantine had leaned back against his pillow and told me,Everyone wants someone to believe them. How lonely he’d seemed in that moment, in spite of all his power. How I pitied him. Now I know why. I pitied him because I knew, even then, that I am not like him.
I am not alone. Not if I let myself reach out to the world beyond me. And perhaps I’m not protecting anyone by walling myself away like this.
We can’t win if we don’t help each other, Red told me in our dream.
Maybe he’s right, after all. Maybe I need to be braver.
As I step out of the room, I let down the walls of my emotions for the first time in a long time. Then I close my eyes and reach tentatively out for Red, seeking our bond.
If we’re going to take down this Federation, we’re going to use all the help we can get. And another Skyhunter might be exactly what we need.
24
RED
We don’t even need to hear about Constantine’s attempted assassination to know that something has happened at the solstice festival. No one tries to shoot the Premier and not cause a scene, you know?
From our vantage point near the lab complex, we can hear the commotion, see the guards rushing toward the Sun Dial building. I lower myself among the tree branches surrounding the lab complex and exchange a quiet stare with Jeran crouched in the next tree. We’d come here in the hopes of hearing some updates about the two victims that had arrived at the complex, but we’ve heard nothing.
Now, with the guards running through the streets, we’ll have to wait until later in the night to move securely away from the area.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t get to witness the spectacle caused by an attempted assassination. The shouts are everywhere in the streets. The news reaches us, fragmented and fleeting, from citizens hurrying by.
“—the Premier is shot!—”
“—a girl—”
“—taking him back to his estate—”
“—had collapsed on the steps of the dais—”
“—rebels right in the center of the city!—”
“—he’s weak—”
“—he’s injured—”
