Gus wove on her feet, her vision darkening.
The last thing she saw before she slipped over the spine’s edge were vines sprouting from the ground to encase Caius in a living shield.
Gus went limp, falling backward just as several massive branches crashed into the ground.
Twelve
Ryan
Ryancontemplatedtheinterplayof light and shadow among the interwoven trunks of the tree.This was a setback.Though perhaps not an entirely unavoidable one.
All creatures had a tendency to bite when cornered.Gus, for all her abhorrence for conflict, was no different.
He winced as the roots holding him in place tightened.Nearly a hundred years on and she still managed to surprise him.
He hadn’t actually believed it when his informants brought news of her betrayal.It was obvious from the start that someone—likely one of their siblings—intended to take advantage of Gus’s position on the periphery to cast blame.
They failed to take into account that for her to betray something, she’d actually have to take an interest in it.And Gus had none.Her overall apathy to anything and everything that didn’t grow roots had made it increasingly challenging over the decades to get her to engage on even the most superficial level.There were days he worried they’d lose her.That she’d disappear into some forest never to be seen again.
It had happened before with others in the early days.With those who were unable to escape their nightmares.
Someone like that could care less about the power struggles affecting the forty-three.
Still, Ryan would have been remiss not to do his due diligence.Gus had already suffered from the stigma of favoritism once.Also, on the outside chance that he’d read her wrong, this would quell any doubts.
Her reaction to his testing took him by surprise though.
“Well done, Gus,” Ryan whispered.
He didn’t think he’d come that close to death since the camps.
It was a little bemusing, actually.How the supposed weakest among them had managed to topple the supposed strongest.
Ryan found himself intrigued.
No.
Enthralled.
He hadn’t expected that level of desperation.Or ingenuity.Pleading, maybe.Though he couldn’t ever remember her begging.Even when Esara was at his worst, Gus had always met their master’s violence with calm aplomb.
The rest of them quailed.They pleaded.They fought.
Gus submitted.
Ryan thought he might have hated her for that once.He’d wanted her to fight.To rage.Like he did.Like Kira had.Even though deep down he knew any appearance of resistance on her end would have resulted in a most painful death.
Instead, she persevered.
Kira had always been the inferno, consuming everything in her path.Pallas was a mountain, enduring and strong.He could take whatever was thrown at him and come out the other side, dented and bruised but in one piece.Gus was a river, flowing over and around all obstacles, wearing them away so gradually that no one ever noticed.
She was life.Even as Esara tried to remake her in the image of death.
Perhaps that was why so many of the forty-three had survived.
It took Ryan a long time to realize what Gus was doing with their masters’ favoritism.The risks she took.The seemingly random acts of luck sent their way.
All Gus.
