The Hunt - Megan Shepherd Page 0,64

burned harder, and then she couldn’t even feel it anymore. She knew she was crying because she could taste the tears. She might have been screaming, if her throat still worked. Her ears had gone dead too.

Then two hands grabbed her.

She looked at them as though from the far end of binoculars, small brown hands, nails as chewed up and torn as her own. Fingers pinched her arms and shook her, though she couldn’t feel it. A face that was familiar. Stringy black hair and brown eyes that always looked angry, except for now. A mouth that was moving, though she couldn’t hear anything. The girl took something out of her pocket. A smell, sharp and citrusy and peppery all at once, choked Cora’s mouth and made her gasp.

Her sense of sound snapped back into her head at the same time as her reason. Mali. Mali was shaking her, waving her hand in front of her face. Cora heard her own breath coming ragged, half choked with blood that she leaned over to spit up. Feeling was returning to her limbs, and with it, a roar of pain. More footsteps came down the stairs. Leon appeared, looking from her to Roshian on the ground. He kicked at the body to turn it over, and gagged at the gaping eye socket wound.

“Christ, sweetheart! What did you do?” He dry-heaved into the bushes, and then wiped his mouth. “Sorry we didn’t get here sooner. Cassian said the traps in the shipping tunnels would slow us down. We had to take the hallways.”

Cassian was with them?

More footsteps. Heavier ones.

Cassian came thundering down the stairs. He went directly to Roshian’s body and pressed his shoulder to the ground with one booted foot, as though Roshian might try to get up, and then inspected the body to make certain he was dead. Cassian’s head cocked at the sight of the too-red blood.

“I had no choice,” Cora choked, as her voice returned. “He tried to kill me.”

Cassian climbed the stairs to where Cora was doubled over, and gently tilted her chin up to look at the blood trickling from her nose.

“You killed him.”

“He kept coming. He was human—he didn’t care about the moral code.”

She could tell from the lack of surprise on Cassian’s face that he already knew. He ran a thumb gently along the sides of her face, brushing away the blood. He was dressed in his formal Warden’s uniform; he must have been on duty before coming here. “You did this with your mind. You pushed yourself too far.”

“I had to. The bullet . . . I couldn’t move.”

His eyes shifted to her exposed shin, where blood was still flowing from the bullet wound. “This is beyond my abilities to heal. I must take you to Serassi before you lose too much blood.”

She leaned forward, wincing in pain, one strap of the torn gold dress slipping from her shoulder. A few steps off, Mali picked up a Kindred-made pistol Roshian had dropped. She inspected it closely, then aimed at the ground and squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened.

“What about the Council?” Cora said. “When Arrowal finds out about this, he’ll investigate even more closely and figure out I killed him with my mind. He’ll know I’m the agitator they’re looking for. He won’t let me run the Gauntlet—he’ll probably throw me in prison.”

“Let me worry about Arrowal,” Cassian said.

Cora’s eyes shifted to Cassian, and a new fear entered her mind.

His eyes were entirely black.

He was cloaked.

Which meant he could see into their minds. Hers was already masked with enough pain to shield her thoughts, but Mali’s and Leon’s weren’t. Mali had enough training to be able to prevent him from reading her mind, but Leon didn’t.

Cassian had to know that they could get out of their cells. That, for weeks, Leon had been hiding out with the Mosca. That they were negotiating with Bonebreak for a safe room for Nok and Rolf to raise their baby in. That all her training sessions with Cassian were only a lie, and that she had never once intended to actually run the Gauntlet.

Not helping him, but humiliating him.

She searched his eyes, but there was nothing but blackness. Did he know? Or had Leon somehow—miraculously—kept his thoughts private?

“You can’t turn Leon in,” she blurted out.

Cassian didn’t take his eyes away from her face. “We have more pressing matters,” he said, and stood. He took out the temporary removal pass from his pocket, then bent down to pick her