The Hunt - Megan Shepherd Page 0,67

room.” She glanced at Cassian. “Listen, don’t get your hopes up, but we found a clue that someone might have tampered with the algorithm that claimed Earth was gone. We’re trying to get real proof.”

Nok’s heart thundered. “We could go home?”

But Cassian and Serassi had stopped speaking, and Nok squeezed Cora’s hand hard, a signal not to answer in case they were listening. Serassi turned to one of the cabinets, where she traced a pattern and took out the repair tool. She worked efficiently, healing Cora’s wound slowly and methodically until the skin was entirely patched. If it hadn’t been for the dried blood crusting Cora’s foot, Nok would never have known she’d been wounded.

Cassian turned to Cora. “We must go.”

Nok threw her arms around Cora again, breathing in the scent of mud on her clothes, with only a trace of ozone. “Don’t leave.”

“Just hold on a few more days.” Cora squeezed her hand.

It was the same quick, tight squeeze Cora had given to her the first day they had woken in the cage, with no idea where they were. At the time, Nok had been so crippled by fear that she’d barely been able to string words together. Now, she could feel how much she had changed. Instead of balling up and rocking back and forth, she could fold the fear into herself, tuck it away carefully behind a mask of indifference, just like the Kindred. There, it could grow, and fester, and give her a steady stream of anger that she could twist into strength.

Serassi ripped Cora out of Nok’s arms before she could say good-bye, and shoved her toward the open doorway. The door slid closed.

Nok was again alone with Serassi.

On the glowing surface, the projected image had changed again, this time to Sparrow as she truly was, a barely developed fetus, tiny arms visible when the image wasn’t flickering.

Nok’s fear folded itself into a knot again, tighter and tighter.

Serassi reached out toward the projection, fingers brushing against the formless shape tenderly. “Sugary,” she cooed. “Such a sugary little thing.”

28

Cora

THE LAST TIME CORA had been in Cassian’s quarters, everything she’d known about him had been a lie. He wasn’t the low-level Caretaker he claimed to be, powerless in the face of the Warden—he was the Warden. So when the door to his room slid open, she expected to find chambers befitting his rank.

But there was only the same lonely chair, the same hard bed, the lone square drinking glass.

She turned to him in confusion. “I thought this room was just part of the act.”

“I told you that not everything was a lie.” He crossed to a cabinet and handed her a thin towel. There was no mirror in his quarters, only the dull reflection of the black panel. In it, she saw that almost every inch of her skin was caked in sand or blood or sweat.

I killed a man, she thought, and her hands started to shake. But at least it hadn’t been for nothing. Lucky was eighteen now, not nineteen. Safe.

She scrubbed the towel over her face. As thin as it was, it absorbed dirt almost magnetically, and when she was done, there was no sign of her fight with Roshian except the torn dress. She couldn’t possibly return to the stage in that condition, but maybe that was just as well. There were some things you couldn’t come back from.

Cassian disappeared into the bedroom; the sounds of cabinets opening and closing followed. Cora sank into the single chair, staring at the empty square glass. It felt like years ago since they had sat here, drinking and sharing stories about each other’s worlds. That night had been the start of something forbidden but undeniable between them, that had come crashing down when he’d betrayed her. And now here she was, her life and her future in his hands once more—but this time she was the one doing the lying.

He returned to the main room. He had cleaned up and was tying knots along the side of a fresh uniform. A triangle of copper-colored skin flashed from the unknotted top of his shirt, showing a deep scar there that, if extended, would match the smaller one on the side of his neck.

“You’ve never told me how you got that scar.”

He still didn’t look at her, though his mouth twitched darkly, like the memory either pained or amused him. “Perhaps I will tell you one day. Or perhaps Mali will.”

“Mali was there?”

“Mali gave it to me. There