Page 104 of The Garnet Daughter
We stay close to the other side of the wall, skirting it as we shuffle past, avoiding his outstretched legs. A large cloud of fog rolls across the interior of the glass doors he braces against, the movement setting us both on alert.
“Cold storage?” Ferren whispers.
The thick white fog undulates again, gently swirling around the closed-off room. Long metal boxes are stacked inside, as if part of the walls. One side of each has a window lit from within in a golden glow. The faux clouds part just enough to see the undeniable features of a woman within the horizontal pods.
“What is that?” I step forward, curiosity taking me over.
Ferren does the same, waiting for the next rolling cloud to pass as we stare hard at the glowing window on each narrow box, ones that seem eerily similar to a resting place or coffin.
“Cryosleep,” Ferren whispers. “99 thinks the rest of the soldiers put themselves in cryosleep. That is why they cannot read them on their scans.”
“What about that one?” I gesture back at the dead soldier.
“Perhaps someone had to go last. The controls seem to be on the outside.”
The situation is uncomfortably human. Someone had to sacrifice themselves in order for the others to live, and there aredozens inside. I can’t help but think how easily any of the four of us would volunteer for the others.
We walk hand in hand the rest of the way through the passages as 99 and August guide us, putting what we saw behind us as quickly as possible. Holding onto her makes the ward I have between us more obvious. She is open and searching through the tether, listening for directions, and every few steps, I can sense a rogue tendril test the walls I’ve placed.
“I wish you would fully come back,” she says, so low I think for a moment I’ve imagined it. “You have had that ward up for so long.”
She has no idea what I am keeping from her, that I am doing it to protect her from the unfiltered guilt swirling around because of what I have done. But I am exhausted from maintaining it. She deserves to know everything, what it has cost her, and what Omnesis told me.
“We saw Omnesis in its temple,” I start and she squeezes my hand in surprise. “It spoke to me again.”
Her expression is one of terrified intrigue as she does her best to listen and watch her steps through the dim ship. “What did it say?”
“Something I knew to be true before I left for the birthlands.” I let go of her hand, halting our steps. The pain of blocking her pleading tether seeking a comforting latch is too much. “Ferren, Omnesis was not freed from the belly of the Estate because of the tremor or because Crixa’s ward could no longer hold it. It had many captors.”
The green shine of her light reflects in the water lining her eyes. Has she been suffering with guilt that when she killed Crixa, not only did the ward around the city fail, but so did the one around the monster’s cell? That she is the one who freed it and killed Thea? How did I not realize this until now?
“Omnesis was freed because of the ritual. When the first failed . . . I tried another, the one the priestesses did in times of old to try and wake First Mother, but it failed too, partially.”
Ferren nods, blinking away the moisture and uncomfortably shifting on her feet.
“Do you understand?” I wait for her to speak, to confirm in any way that selfishly relieves me of saying the words aloud, but it does not come. “Ferren, it was my fault. Thea died because . . . It was my fault. And then the monster spoke, called you . . . what it did, and I thought I could stop it to somehow make up for my horrible mistake. I’m so sorry.”
She is silent, staring through me in a way I’ve seen her do before, when she is paralyzed by emotions she was not allowed to have until she left the priestess order.
“You should have told me sooner. It was cruel not to,” she finally says.
“I know.”
“The way she died . . .” She worries her lip. “I grieved Thea.”
“I’m so sorry for keeping it from you.”
“I can only go so deep when there are walls between us, blocking secrets. The times we should have become closer, you have pushed away from the three of us.”
I absorb the sting of her words. I wish she would lash out or scream at me instead, as that’s what I have been expecting, bracing for even. But not this. This is a different kind of honesty that I am not used to facing.
“Does August know?”
“No.”
“That is a strong wall.” She shakes her head in disbelief.
It sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. I’ve kept so much from my friends at the cost of loving them deeper.
