Page 44

Keahi

The night before

I wake up on my hardwood floor with a terrible headache.

The events leading up to this come rushing back to me, and with them comes a suffocating cloud of worry.

I don’t know how long I’ve been out, but Malia is gone. I don’t need to search the house to know that.

I shouldn’t have kissed her.

I shouldn’t have pushed her.

Not when she made it clear how she felt about me. I just saw that look on her face, the same one she gave me that night in the library before she kissed me, and I forgot myself. Forgot that her sudden change of heart about me could be a side-effect of my “training” on her.

I get to my feet and try to think of what to do.

I don’t know where Malia possibly could have gone, so I seek advice at Kaz’ place instead.

Maybe he can help. When he opens the door, I ignore the fact that he looks like I just woke him from the best sleep of his life and hastily tell him that Malia ran away.

"Oh, Keahi.

I told you not to trust her.

I know you don’t want to hear this, but she probably went back to her camp," he tells me. She wouldn’t have gone back, though, would she? After everything that happened, she just couldn’t have. But maybe they found her, wherever she went, and captured her again. "They’ll do a lot worse than that," she’d told me. Worse than kill her.

"She wouldn’t do that, Kaz.

She risked everything to get information from them to help us.

She wants to protect the kids. She even taught me a new way of fighting like them," I try to convince him. It is no use though; he is so sure Malia is part of the Dark Fraction and won’t believe anything else.

I tell him goodnight and leave.

The fresh autumn breeze whips against my face as I make my way through the city, looking for clues about where Malia might be.

When the sun starts rising and I’m still no closer to finding her, I abandon that plan.

The plan, definitely not her. Not again.

I head to the forest close to my apartment and sneak through it.

I find myself at the place I once met her coincidentally.

It must be close to the camp if she happened to be there in the middle of the night, right? I should have asked her where the camp was when I had the chance.

Once I’m at the stream, I stop and listen for any clues.

I’ll find it, even if I have to burn down the whole forest to do so.

I wander around for what feels like an eternity until I finally hear voices.

I watch my steps and sneak toward them.

I nearly gasp when I see their camp.

I’ve always imagined them staying in tents, but I am looking at a whole village here, nestled in the privacy of crumbled remains of an old town, it seems.

If I see it correctly, there is a market and tables where people eat. They don’t live in tents but in mud houses. Some quite large ones too with windows and everything.

How am I supposed to find her here? I decide to stay behind the bushes and hope to hear something about Malia.

The longer I wait, the more people start their day, and the camp soon becomes busy.

The more enemies I see, the more my heart involuntarily starts racing. I tell the organ to calm the fuck down. I knew the risks I’d face by coming here, I can’t get distracted now.

"I heard that she had something to do with the disappearance of the Coal boy.

They think they ran off together," a tall man says to another, finally talking about the girl I’m looking for, I assume.

I let them walk a little closer to the bushes I’m in before trying my new trick on them.

They both fall limp to the ground, and I pull one of them into the woods.

I make sure to tie him to a tree before evening his nitrogen levels out.

"Where is she?" I demand as soon as he stirs against the tree trunk.

He takes in his surroundings before his eyes narrow on me.

"Arcanian." The man spits on the ground at my feet.

"Tell me where she is," I repeat dangerously.

"I have no idea who you are talking about."

"Malia." My patience is wearing thin.

"I don’t know anyone with that name." The stranger grins nastily at me, and it’s like gasoline to my fire.

"I heard you talking about her just now," I grind out.

Understanding flashes behind his eyes.

"Ah, that traitorous bitch.

She apparently ran away." A flash of hope runs through me.

They never caught her. She is fine.

Getting distracted was a mistake because the stranger in front of me screams loudly.

While I did pull him away from the camp, it wasn’t that far.

I decide to cut my losses and make a run for it.

Malia isn’t here.

Before I can make it far, I hear steps approach from behind. Many steps. I turn around, ready to face a fight rather than lead a group of enemies to my home, but before I can so much as complete my one-eighty, I’m tackled to the ground by a sturdy man. I struggle against his headlock, shooting bursts of flames over my shoulder to no avail, and soon, white spots dot my vision, making me lose consciousness.

Drip, drip.

My eyelids are heavy, and I want nothing more than to give into the darkness again.

Drip, drip.

I go to rub my gritty eyes but find my hands are restrained.

At that revelation, my eyes snap open and I’m wide awake.

It’s my first mistake. My view instantly turns blurry with tears as the bright light pointing at my face blinds me.

"What is your name?" a deep voice demands, though I can’t see anything other than the white light even through closed eyes.

I don’t answer and keep struggling against my restraints.

"What do you know about Malia?" a female voice asks.

I turn my head, desperate to see who wants to know about Malia, but it’s to no avail.

Frustration burns up within me, feeding off my panic, and I try to gather flames in the palms of my hands, needing a fight.

I come up empty, unable to gather my own fire for the first time in too many years to count.

"Don’t worry, you’ll talk soon enough," the man says, his dark promise sending a shiver down my spine.

"What do you guess his element is?" the female speculates eagerly.

What on earth is going on?

"Who are you?" I finally ask.

"Oh, how impolite of us.

My name is Arno, and this is my wife, Sereia."

"What do you want with Malia?" I ask next.

I can hear one of them chuckle before I get an answer.

"We just want our family to be together." Of course.

I had a hunch that these might be Malia’s parents based on the familiarity of her name on their lips, but I hoped otherwise.

"Now, tell us where she is, and we will let you go." Her mother’s voice is gentle.

Fake.

Like hell, I will. They take my silence as an answer, for her voice is cold when she speaks again.

"We will get it out of you, one way or another.

You’ll just make it worse for yourself."

"Don’t be stupid, boy! Trust me, she isn’t worth it," Arno grips my short hair and yanks on it.

I hiss in surprise and pain, and he chuckles.

"This won’t be hard," he concludes. Then, the two of them leave without another word. It takes me a few minutes to calm down and another few to realize the steadily falling drop is actually landing on my wrist. I sigh in relief.

If they’ll leave me alone, I will be fine.

The chair is weirdly prickly at my back, as if it wasn’t made of any smooth material, and the restraints dig into my flesh uncomfortably.

I can take it.

If this is everything I have to content myself with, I’ll be fine.

I was wrong.

I lost my sense of time somewhere along the way and all my senses are now focused on that single drop of liquid that is steadily falling on my wrist.

It’s just a drop. I repeat and repeat it, but the pain I get from it is unreal. It doesn’t make sense, but it somehow feels as if my bones were being shattered by a hammer. Repeatedly

The worst part about this might still be how natural this seemed to Malia’s parents.

They must have had this room all set up before they knew I was here.

The thought that they did something similar to Malia has acid burning in my stomach so aggressively it nearly overshadows the agony in my hand.