Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,22

the droids were leading to the block. It was Chatine’s sister, Azelle. And cradled in her arms was their little baby brother, Henri. His precious plump cheeks, tiny chin, and clear gray eyes were exactly as Chatine had last seen them.

The droids tried to grab Henri from Azelle. She screamed and attempted to fight them off, but her efforts were futile. The blanket slipped from around Henri’s tiny body, revealing the small, raindrop-shaped birthmark on the back of his right shoulder. The very birthmark Chatine used to kiss when he cried.

“Leave them alone! They’re innocent!” Chatine screamed again, but no one heard.

The droids wrenched baby Henri free and began to lead Azelle toward the Blade. She thrashed and kicked and cried as they forced her face down onto the platform, binding her wrists and ankles with metal clamps.

Henri wailed in the fists of a droid. Chatine fought to get to him, but the crowd was too thick. Her legs were useless. Paralyzed.

And his cries continued to pierce the sky.

The Blade turned on, drowning out all the noise with its high-pitched, screeching buzz. The droids held Azelle’s head down on the block. The thin beam of blue light, which stretched between the two columns of the contraption, began to descend. Crawling its way toward her slender, exposed neck.

“Stop it!” Chatine shouted. “Someone has to stop it! Someone please save her!”

But no one stopped it. And no one saved her.

A silent, choked sob escaped Chatine as the Blade continued to descend, crackling through the air. She heard a faint sizzle, the sound of fire on flesh. Then she smelled it. Burning. Decaying. Putrefying.

Azelle’s mouth opened, letting out a scream to end all screams.

Chatine jolted awake, gasping. She blinked and stared through the gloom at the sagging bunk above her, the dream coming back to her in grim fragments. Of course, it was about Henri and Azelle. All her dreams these days were about her lost siblings.

Ever since Chatine had learned that Henri hadn’t died as a baby—as she’d believed for the past twelve years—and that her parents had, instead, sold him off like a sac of turnips to pay a debt, Chatine had been plagued by nightmares of him.

In the glow of the small orange lights that shone down all night around the perimeter of the cell block, she could see the other bunks, stacked four beds high and crammed in a circle around the eleventh floor of the Trésor tower. She was still here. Still locked away on Bastille. Stuck in this stinking overcrowded cell.

Chatine turned onto her side, trying to get comfortable on the thin, drooping mattress, but it was near impossible. Chatine had quickly learned that everything about this prison—from the serving sizes of the food, to the conditions of the bunks, to the lengths of shifts in the exploits—was designed to keep the inmates just alive enough. Strong, healthy prisoners meant riots and escape attempts. But dead prisoners meant less zyttrium sent to Laterre. It was a delicate balance.

The nearest orange light shone straight into her face, searing her vision even when her lids were closed. She’d heard some of the inmates call them “the eyes” because, while they glowed, they also watched. Blinding and brutal, they were always observing, always scanning—an extension of the droids that patrolled Bastille.

Chatine shuddered and pulled the threadbare blanket over her head, shutting her eyes tight. But the dream immediately started to suck her back in, like a cruel and grasping joke. The faces of Azelle and Henri cycled in her mind, blurring into one distorted mess of eyes and mouths and wispy hair. Finally, she gave up and flipped onto her back, her eyes wide open.

“Can’t sleep?” a voice asked, and Chatine breathed out a sigh of relief. She never quite knew when Dead Azelle would speak to her, but she was always grateful when she did.

“That’s the third dream you’ve had about me this week. I would say I’m flattered, but I’m not exactly sure I like how I’m being portrayed. Why am I always so helpless?”

Chatine stared up at the bunk above her and listened to her own breathing. It was coarse and ragged. She hadn’t been able to take a deep breath since the droids had hauled Anaïs’s body to the morgue yesterday.

Chatine had warned herself not to look when the hulking creature pushed aside the rubble from the girl’s fragile, young face. She’d done everything in her power to turn away. But, in the end, she knew