Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,98

voice broke off. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

“I don’t know,” Marcellus said hastily, once again trying to push that dreadful memory of Mabelle’s face from his mind. “I’m sorry. All I know is that”—he dragged the toe of his boot anxiously through the mud—“I haven’t been able to make contact with the Vangarde since.”

A small sound escaped Alouette’s lips, almost like a hiccup. And for a long time, she just stood there, unblinking and unseeing, her eyes locked on the mist, her mind somewhere far, far away from here.

“What does that mean?” she managed to say at last, her voice a cracked whisper.

Marcellus shook his head. He didn’t want to say it. Up until now, he hadn’t said it. He’d barely managed to think it. But he had a feeling he needed to say it. For Alouette. For himself. For Laterre.

He shuddered out a breath. “I think it means that I’m on my own.”

He closed his eyes, letting the truth sink in like heavy fog in his bones. He felt something slip into his hand, and he was certain it was the mist. But when he opened his eyes, he saw Alouette’s fingers interlaced with his own.

“No, you’re not.” Her eyes blazed with a familiar, fierce determination. Familiar because he’d seen it on his own face. Every time he looked in the mirror. It was a sensation he knew all too well. A determination he was confident would either save Laterre from certain death or plunge them all straight into it. “I’m coming with you.”

- CHAPTER 28 - CHATINE

“NO.” CHATINE STARED IN HORROR at the desolate, frozen landscape that stretched out for kilomètres around Etienne’s ship. “No way. Take me back to Vallonay. Or Montfer. Or the Southern Peninsula. Anywhere. I am not going to a Défecteur camp.”

“Uh, I don’t think you have a choice. And besides, that leg of yours needs immediate attention. It’s not going to stay warm and tingly like that forever. The shrapnel dug itself in there pretty bad. If you don’t get it taken care of, you’re looking at a one-legged future.”

“Oh, so not only do you live in the Terrain Perdu, you have a med center out here too?” Chatine asked skeptically.

Etienne scoffed at this. “Med centers are useless. We have something better.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“Healers.”

Chatine scowled. “What is a healer?”

“A healer treats the body as a whole, instead of relying solely on médicaments and invasive procedures to fix the individual parts. And my maman happens to the best healer in our community.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Chatine glanced at Etienne’s sober expression. “You’re not kidding.”

Etienne eased on the contrôleur until the ship glided to a halt just above the ground. Lakes of ice, blankets of rigid grass, spindly bushes, and jagged, misshapen rocks stretched out in front of them for kilomètres. The same monotonous and unchanging pattern as far as Chatine could see.

“Here we are!” he said, making a sweeping gesture toward the front window. “Home sweet home.”

Chatine glanced out again. All she saw was deserted, frozen wilderness.

“I don’t see anything.”

Etienne turned to her with panicked eyes. “You don’t?! Are you sure?! It’s right there!”

Anxiety trickled through Chatine’s stomach. She turned back and stared out the cockpit window. She blinked a few times, but still saw nothing.

“No!” she said. “I don’t see anything! Did that stupide goldenroot you gave me do something to my vision? I knew I shouldn’t have trusted a dropout Defect—”

Etienne laughed. “Relax, I’m kidding. Do you honestly think we’d be able to survive out here for this long by living in plain sight? But on the bright side, looks like I found your panic button.”

Chatine jabbed a fist out to punch him in the side, but he was too quick, ducking just out of her reach.

Etienne dipped the ship’s contrôleur, and Chatine was thrust forward in her harness as they careened down a sharp incline. Suddenly, a cluster of metallic structures seemed to emerge from the frozen nothingness. The small, flat-roofed buildings were connected by crisscrossing walkways, each shielded by a similar flat roof that was held up by narrow stilts.

They reached the bottom of the slope, and Chatine gazed in astonishment at the scattering of buildings. Invisible one second and there the next.

“Stealth technology isn’t just for ships,” Etienne said, reading her expression.

He steered them into a wide open-mouthed hangar that was cut into the side of the slope and flipped a single switch on the console. Slowly the engines grew still and quiet. Then he jabbed