Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,108

long time ago.” Alouette’s voice fell to a cracked whisper. “I don’t even remember her.”

Marcellus glanced away as something sharp jabbed him from the inside. An old wound he’d thought he’d healed from. He couldn’t remember his mother either.

“I just wanted answers,” Alouette went on, sounding like she was being stabbed by that same sharp object. “I just wanted to know where I came from.”

“And?” Marcellus asked. “Did you find out?”

She shook her head. “Not really. I followed a clue to a bordel in Montfer, where my mother used to sell her blood when I was a baby. To try to make ends meet. I thought the madame would be helpful. But she just made everything more confusing. She seemed to be under the impression that I was …” Her voice trailed off, as though whatever was supposed to come next was too difficult to say aloud.

“That you were what?”

She let out a deep shudder. “Dead.”

Marcellus flinched. That was certainly not what he’d expected her to say. “Dead?”

“That’s what my mother told her.”

“Why would she do that?”

Alouette shook her head. “I don’t know. Then the madame turned on me, and the Policier came, and it was sort of a mess.” She reached down and rubbed at her wrist where Marcellus could see hints of dark purple bruises. “Anyway, the whole thing was just one big dead end. And now …” Alouette bit her lip as though her next words terrified her. “Now I’m starting to wonder if I ever should have left.”

“Why did you leave?” Marcellus asked. “My contact at the Vangarde said you were no longer with them.”

“I was never with them,” Alouette said, somewhat forcefully. Then she took a breath that seemed to calm her. “I mean, not that I knew about. They told me nothing.”

“And you never even suspected?”

“No,” she said. “Never. They were always just sisters to me. Teachers and scholars. They were never …”—she paused, hesitating—“revolutionaries. I guess that makes me the fool, doesn’t it?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Marcellus rushed to say.

Alouette’s face softened. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m still just trying to process it all. Twelve years of lies is a lot to sort through. I didn’t find out who they really were until that night I saw you in the Frets. After you showed me those images of Sister Jacqui and Sister Denise.”

Marcellus knew the moment she was referring to. He could still see the look in her eyes when they’d stood in that hallway of Fret 7 and he’d told her about the Vangarde operatives who had been captured breaking into the warden’s office. She’d looked at him like he was speaking in another language.

“Do you know where they are?” Alouette blurted out, the possibility clearly just occurring to her.

Marcellus shook his head, hating to disappoint her. “I’m sorry. I don’t. My grandfather has a detention facility hidden somewhere. It’s where he takes prisoners to …”

He didn’t dare finish that sentence. But the darkness that passed over her eyes told him without a doubt that she knew. She understood exactly what happened at a facility like that.

“And you have no idea where this”—Alouette swallowed—“facility might be?”

“No. My grandfather never told me. I’m pretty sure there are only two people on the planet who know where it is: the general and Limier. At least Limier did know, at one point. His circuitry was pretty fried from the rayonette pulse. And it damaged his memory chip.”

Alouette nodded, her fingers fidgeting absentmindedly with something inside her sac. Marcellus glanced down to see a glint of silver from her string of metal beads. He stared at them, remembering the night he’d stood in that same dark and dingy hallway of Fret 7 and that necklace had somehow triggered a strange message to appear on the screen of his TéléCom.

“You never told me what it said.” Marcellus’s voice was quiet and hesitant.

Alouette looked at him, confused.

“The message that Denise sent you through my TéléCom.”

At first, Alouette didn’t respond. She just continued to thread her fingers pensively through the beads. And Marcellus worried that she still wouldn’t tell him. Even after everything that had just happened. But then, in a distant, trance-like voice, she whispered, “When the Lark flies home, the Regime will fall.”

Marcellus stood stunned and silent for a long moment, trying to make sense of these peculiar words.

When the Lark flies home, the Regime will fall?

“What does that mean?”

Alouette shrugged. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know what to think about anything anymore. Fly home?