flames and smoke. Or our kiss in the abandoned cabin, stolen, as if we were illicit lovers instead of engaged to be married.
Part of me wished it could still work out somehow, and it was more than just missing the comforts of the capital or training with the other girls who had been chosen. I wished it could work out with him, that Damien and I could be together. Some part of me appreciated the symbiosis of it all: he needed my blood to survive, and the elixir in his made me strong enough to match him.
But there were too many humans: a drop a week for the compounds, and it had been enough, at the time. But now that I’d tasted more, each day without elixir I felt empty, drained and weak. The aches and pains came back, including the leg that I was sure had snapped during my harrowing escape from the citadel. My thoughts were sluggish, my mouth dry, and my skin itched constantly.
Jacob said these were just normal effects of the thirst, and they would fade. But then what – I’d just be a regular human, meant to live and die underground, feeding on the pale vegetables grown in the UV light, and always worried about the elite tracking us down and forcing us out into the poisoned ash?
We were all killing time, waiting for April to try and reverse-engineer the cure from the fragmented research we found in the chest. Jacob got tired of me pacing and kicked me out of the lab; he said it could be days, or even weeks before she figured it out. Besides keeping myself busy exploring, Jazmine, Camina and I practiced sparring like we used to in Master Svboda’s class.
Sometimes the other inhabitants of Havoc joined in with the training – we taught them what we could. It might be useful someday, though even with a fair share of elixir, I knew they’d never be a match for even a single elite, and probably not even one of the king’s dosed-up guards.
Others were less happy to have us there. We could hear the men grumble as we passed, and the women watched us suspiciously. It was worse than how they treated the new recruits or people who had escaped the compounds. We were chosen. We’d lived in the citadel. We symbolized everything they hated about the elites, everything they’d taken from us. Everything that we’d freely given.
It didn’t matter than I’d never actually slept with Damien. I didn’t ask the others. I was still treated as a whore or a prostitute, which in a way I guess the chosen always were. Brides to pay for the deal that had been struck by our forefathers; or as I’d found out, a system completely fabricated by King Richard himself, a bargain struck with children who were too young to understand what they were committing to. The myth I’d learned about the covenant being signed by the survivors of the war, given shelter and peace in exchange for blood, was a lie. Children were caught and educated, implanted with a false history and a reverence for their captors.
The second night back, Marcus returned with a warrant for my capture. My heart nearly stopped when I saw the picture. It looked like one of the portraits from Damien’s study. Is that why he’d been drawing me, for my wanted poster?
“Dead or alive,” Jazmine read, “for crimes against the crown.”
“That’s crazy,” I said. “I didn’t plant those bombs. I didn’t go after the wedding. It was the rebels. I didn’t even know it was going to happen, until too late.”
All I did was clear the platform and save lives.
“Nobody will believe that, now. You were seen at the event just before the bombs went off, but even if you hadn’t been, you make a convenient scapegoat.”
“He’s also trying to confront the sympathy.”
“With what, me?”
“To some, you’re a rousing story. The rebel princess, beautiful enough to get chosen, to infiltrate Richard’s kingdom and then sabotage the trials by trying to assassinate the king.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“It’s pretty close,” Trevor said.
I bit my lip. I wanted to argue, but the others didn’t know that I’d tried to stop it, in order to save Damien. Guilt twisted in my stomach.
“It doesn’t matter what really happened, people love stories, and this one in particular has a fierce grip. People are talking about it everywhere. Some girls are even painting their hands, like yours.”
My stomach turned. My birthmarks had