Page 53 of The Infinite Glade
Sadina, concerned about her welfare, despite everything. Dearest Sadina.
“Always,” the Goddess whispered back, relieved to see the girl’s tear-stained face across from her.Dear Sadina, descended from the family of Dear Newt.The Evolution would continue.
“Stay quiet,” Minho growled.
Alexandra had no plans of being loud. She could be of no help to the Evolution if she were dead.Silence is power, Nicholas would say. She placed her hand inside her cloak and guarded theBook of Newt. With her palm against its pages, she could feel her own heartbeat. She hadn’t been this shrunken inside her own skin since that night back in Crank Palace—the night she met Nicholas. As the Goddess held tight to theBook of Newtand her Flaring Discipline, she curled into a ball against the corner of the cage.
34, 55, 89, 144 . . .
Eyes closed, Alexandra couldn’t help but see the arrows of fire. She hadn’t slept since the war started and the unprocessed events flashed across her mind. A hornless Mannus. The people running. Buildings crumbling. Flint’s knees hitting the ground, staring up at her as he faced the horrors of death. Mikhail be damned. A false Great Master and certainly never a Godhead. She breathed in for three seconds, held it for three seconds, and exhaled.
The blood slowed in her body.
Her shoulders relaxed.
She entered the Infinite Glade.
Soldiers needed to be stealthy.
Everything, including their emotions, needed to be well-hidden at all times. And Sadina’s crying would get her killed. “Orange? Orange?” Sadina wailed even louder as she nudged Orange’s limp body.
“Sadina…you’ve got to stay silent. Don’t say anything.” Despite whispering, he said it with as much conviction as possible. “Roxy…they’ll…” He didn’t want to say it.
“They already did.” Roxy looked back at Minho with as much shock in her face as when he’d first asked to drive her truck along the coast. He felt an invisible punch so deep inside his gut that he almost threw up again. He’d left the Remnant Nation with every intention tojointhe Godhead. But now, sitting in a prison with the so-called Goddess, all he could think about were the different ways he could kill her.
For Orange.
For Skinny.
For poor, half-beaten Kit, who might be alive or might be dead.
Minho’s fists tightened looking at Alexandra, with her eyes closed like the weak field rat she was. He imagined ending her life in two blows, one from each fist. Maybe two from each fist. But just as he agreed to follow his fate—the last Remnant soldiers entered the Berg and closed the hatch.
“Hurry up.” Two older soldiers pulled Dominic by his shirt’s collar, then quickly shoved him into the Berg and into the cage, right on top of Alexandra.
Minho relaxed his fists.
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
Something Much Worse
Las desgracias nunca vienen solas.
Misfortunes never come alone, something Ximena knew well but wished she didn’t have to learn from experience. She looked out the window of the Berg and shifted her weight below her. Within the next twelve hours, Carlos would likely arrive back at their Village in search of her, to yell at her for all of the damage she’d caused at the Villa and the risk she’d put her mother and Mariana in. But Carlos wouldn’t find her hiding under one of Abuela’s handmade blankets, and he’d still have no idea that his wife and the future he’d planned with her were already both dead. She cracked her knuckles thinking about how worried he’d make Abuela before she returned home, but she trusted her grandmother’s inner-knowing wouldn’t let Carlos spin her into unbearable sadness.
Ximena looked back at Isaac, leaning against the Berg in all his islander misery. She didn’t have the luxury the islanders had to fall apart as their world crumbled. Her whole life had been one loss after another, but she didn’t get to break down—she had to keep pushing forward, and from Ximena’s inner ears all the way down to her big toes, the skin holding her body together tingled. She’d never had such a physical reaction to an inner-knowing or second-sight before.
Something worse was coming.Algo mucho peor.
Ximena pushed all of her fingertips together to try to calm her body, but nothing helped the feeling subside. She wished she could have asked her Abuela about this type of knowing, an inner-knowing that brought such an intense explosion of feeling, but she couldn’t count on anyone right now. She closed her eyes as she walked up to Cian and Erros piloting the Berg and imagined what her grandmother might say to her if she were there.
When there is pain there is death.
And where there is death there is rebirth.
She looked out the pilot’s window but could barely see the colors of the aurora. Cloud cover from the smoke of war hung in the sky.The next island,her inner-knowing shouted louder than she’d ever heard it. It didn’t make any more sense than her earlier knowings, but it was the loudest knowing she’d ever felt in all her sixteen years.
“There. That one.” She pointed to a small inlet ahead, barely visible through the smoke. “That next island right there.”
