The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2) - Veronica Roth Page 0,3

currentgift keeps me from doing or saying things that I know will make people uncomfortable. Which means that, after my dad died, I couldn’t cry unless I was alone. I couldn’t say much of anything to my mom for months. So if I’d been able to destroy a kitchen, like Isae did, I probably would have.

I follow Isae out, quiet. We walk past Ori’s body. It has a sheet tucked nicely around it, so it’s just the slopes of her shoulders, the bump of her nose and chin. Just an impression of who she was. Isae stops there, draws a sharp breath. She feels even grittier now than she did before, like grains of sand against my skin. I know I can’t soothe her, but I’m too worried about her not to try.

I send airy feathergrass tufts, and hard, polished wood. I send warm oil and rounded metal. Nothing works. I chafe against her, frustrated. Why can’t I do anything to help her?

I think, for a tick, of asking for help. Akos and Cyra are right there on the nav deck. Mom’s somewhere below. Even Akos and Cyra’s renegade friend, Teka, is right there, stretched out on the bench seats with a sheet of white-blond hair sprawled across behind her. But I can’t call out to any of them. For one thing, I just can’t—can’t knowingly cause distress, thanks to my gift-curse—and for another, instinct tells me it’s better if I can earn Isae’s trust.

Isae leads us down below, where there are two storage rooms and a washroom. Mom’s in the washroom, I can tell by the sound of the recycled water splattering. In one storage room—the one with the window, I made sure of that—is my other brother, Eijeh. It hurt me to see him again, so long after his kidnapping, and so small compared to the pale pillar of Ryzek Noavek next to him. You think when people get older, they’re supposed to get stronger, fatter. Not Eijeh.

The other storage room—the one with all the cleaning supplies—holds Ryzek Noavek. Just knowing he’s that close, the man who ordered my brothers taken and my dad killed, makes me tremble. Isae pauses between the two doors, and it hits me, then, that she’s going in one of those rooms. And I don’t want her to go in Eijeh’s.

I know he’s the one who killed Ori, technically. That is, he was holding the knife that did it. But I know my brother. He could never kill anyone, especially not his best friend from childhood. There has to be some other explanation for what happened. It has to be Ryzek’s fault.

“Isae,” I say. “What are you—”

She touches three fingers to her lips, telling me to hush.

She’s right between the rooms. Deciding something, it seems like, judging by the faint buzz around her. She takes a key from her pocket—she must have lifted it off Teka, when she went out to make sure we were headed to Assembly Headquarters—and sticks it in the lock for Ryzek’s cell. I reach for her hand.

“He’s dangerous,” I say.

“I can handle it,” she replies. And then, softening around the eyes: “I won’t let him hurt you, I promise.”

I let her go. There’s a part of me that’s hungry to see him, to meet the monster at last.

She opens the door, and he’s sitting against the back wall, sleeves rolled up, feet outstretched. He has long, skinny toes, and narrow ankles. I blink at them. Are sadistic dictators supposed to have vulnerable-looking feet?

If Isae’s at all intimidated, she doesn’t let on. She stands with her hands clasped in front of her and her head high.

“My, my,” Ryzek says, running his tongue over his teeth. “Resemblance between twins never fails to shock me. You look just like Orieve Benesit. Except for those scars, of course. How old are they?”

“Two seasons,” Isae says, stiff.

She’s talking to him. She’s talking to Ryzek Noavek, my sworn enemy, kidnapper of her sister, with a long line of kills tattooed on the outside of his arm.

“They will fade still, then,” he says. “A shame. They made a lovely shape.”

“Yes, I’m a work of art,” she says. “The artist was a Shotet fleshworm who had just finished digging around in a pile of garbage.”

I stare at her. I’ve never heard her say something so hateful about the Shotet before. It’s not like her.

“Fleshworm” is what people call the Shotet when they’re reaching for the worst insult. Fleshworms are gray, wriggly things that feed on the