Page 81 of The Stone Survival
His gaze flicked between us. “I…I…Is this a trick question?”
“No,” Serath said. “We just want to understand what might have happened to you. Do you remember who we are?”
He shook his head. “But I might. If you can help me.”
Had he not noticed we were in a cell too?
“You look strong,” he continued. “When they come with food, you can overpower them. You can get out, then get me out too.” A dull light filled his eyes. “Then you can carry me. You, the big guy.” He smiled wide, showcasing yellowing teeth. “There’ll be a reward if you save me.”
This was all wrong. He was too frail to have been here for only one night, and the way he spoke…his mannerisms… “Who are you? Who are you really?”
He squeezed his eyes shut for a beat. “Blake Anthony Yarrow. Born December the twenty-third to Marie and Byron Yarrow.” He offered me that awful smile of his. “See, I remember. I still remember.”
“Blake…” Serath said, his tone gentle. “How long have you been here? In your cell?”
“Oh…Um…Well. Let’s see…” He dipped into the shadows for several minutes. “That’s five and five and ten, and then another ten…” His voice dropped to a mumble.
I moved closer to Serath. “What’s he doing?”
“I think he’s counting.”
“Two and a half…and a few…” Yarrow said finally.
“Two and a half days?” Serath asked.
Yarrow’s chuckle morphed into a raspy laugh that dissolved into a coughing fit.
“Hey, you okay?” I stepped toward the bars. Serath grabbed my elbow and pulled me back.
“Careful,” he warned.
Oh shit, I’d forgotten about the charge on our bars.
“Are you all right?” Serath called out to Yarrow.
“Fine, I’m fine…just…two and a half days? If only…only it was that…No. I’ve been here for two and a half years and…thirty-two days.”
What the fuck? “That can’t be.” But none of this made sense and maybe… “Serath, I don’t think that’s Yarrow.”
“Yes, I am,” the man in the cell opposite said. “I’m Yarrow. I am Blake Anthony Yarrow. Me. Me! Not him. Neverhim.”
“That’s right.” A figure appeared to our left. “You are.” Blake Yarrow, as we remembered him—tall and strong—fell to a crouch beside the gaunt Yarrow’s cell. “You can sleep now, Blake. I’ll wake you when it’s time to go home.”
The Blake in the cell shrank away from the bars, biting back a sob. “Please…please give it back…give me back my face.”
“Soon,” the Yarrow outside our cells said. “Very soon.” He stood slowly and the face that we’d come to know rippled and shifted, his nose sharpening, jaw broadening before snapping back to Yarrow’s face. “Cameron. Serath. It’s time we had a chat.”
“You’re not Blake Yarrow, are you?” Serath said.
“I’m the Yarrow you know, but I amnotthe real Blake Yarrow. I stole his identity and his place at the academy.”
I exhaled sharply, gaze flicking from him to the man in the cell, merely a lumpy shadow now.
“And Flora?” Serath asked.
“She’s mine,” Yarrow said. “It wasn’t hard to convince the academy that a mistake had been made and that they’d hired not only me but my twin sister. The real Blake has no siblings. Nofamily to come looking for him. He’s perfect.” A soft sob drifted out from the shadows of the real Blake’s cell.
“I said sleep,” Yarrow snapped, his voice tailing off in an echo.
