Page 102 of Xantera
Wasn’t it, though?I bite back, tears wetting my face now.
All of this has truly been for nothing. My mother is gone. Diggory is gone. Now Sylvia.
Instantly, the image of that body on a stretcher rolls through my mind. That person was stone, I’m sure of it now, and the servants put them somewhere in the north wing.
Claudia crosses the room and sits somberly in the wooden chair angled in the corner. Each of my breaths drag through my lungs like gravel, my face buried in my hands, until she speaks out of nowhere.
“About six months ago, I started waking up every morning exhausted. Like I hadn’t gotten a second of sleep despite a full eight hours passing. My partner, who is such a heavy sleeper, thought I was sleepwalking. So, I brought home a tiny camera out of the Repair Inventory and set it up in my bedroom. I rewired it to my screen to record one night, just to see. I thought it couldn’t hurt.” She takes several deep breaths that mirror the panic in mine. “But instead of finding out that I was in some drowsy trance, I watched a Guardian drink my own blood right from my neck as I slept.”
I gape at her, trying to process what she just said. A Guardian was sneaking into her housing unit? To drink from her while she slept? Before she was even Chosen?
Claudia nods at the disbelief on my face. “That was just the beginning of the end. I set up a few more stolen cameras between the complexes and caught more than one Guardian stalking in and out of doors in the alleyways. Always at night, never lingering too long in one part of the city. I don’t know how they were getting around…”
“The catacombs,” I say, horrified.
“What?”
“There are catacombs beneath our city.” I swallow. “Tunnels from the palace leading to the complexes. They must have been using those to…”
I can’t even finish the thought, but a young face swirls in my mind, a patient whose blood pressure was too low, who’d woken up dizzy even though we could never find out what was wrong with her. But I know now.Just the other night, I dreamed of something like that. A Guardian, actually… just stared down at me and told me to go back to sleep.
That had never been a dream. I grab my throat, as if that’ll help me breathe better, the enormity of how vile the Guardians actually are crashing into me. They aren’t just taking from us in a legal way. They’re taking from us in illegal ways, too.
They created the law,Lucan mutters angrily.Of course, they feel entitled to breaking it. They think they’re above it.
“What did you do when you found out?” I ask Claudia.
“Told my partner, thinking that he would help me figure out how to stop them.” Claudia shrugs noncommittally. “But it was like talking to the Wall. My partner didn’t want to hear it. He thought the Guardians must have a reason. That they needed extra strength to continue to protect us from the Monster. And what did it matter anyway if they took a little of my blood while I slept? It was an honor, he said. Told me to forget it.”
My gaze lands on Sylvia’s empty bed, and grief buries itself into my stomach all over again. Wouldeveryonethink this is an honor if they found out what happens to the Chosen Ones and what happens to the innocents while they sleep? Or would some stand with Claudia and me, knowing that it’s wrong, knowing that we can’t keep being complacent?
I lift my chin and wipe the tears clinging to my cheeks with the heels of my palms.
“You couldn’t forget it, could you? That’s why they Chose you?”
Claudia nods. “I tried to go back to normal, but the secret festered inside me. I couldn’t stop questioning everything about this city and life. But there’s nothing I can do in here.”
“Actually…” I muse, exhaling a shaky breath at the thought of that tech room in the north wing. At the thought of those servants delivering food to the housing complexes.
Claudia cocks an eyebrow. “What?”
Lucan’s presence stills, too.Yeah… what?
My fists curl in my lap, my nails digging into my palms. “The thing about stripping us of everything means now we have nothing to lose. And there’s one last thing we can try.”
“Are you sure she’ll even listen to us?” Claudia asks when we’re safely tucked away back in my bedroom, both of us sitting nervously on the edge of my bed.
Eleni is due to deliver my dinner at any moment, and I wring my hands in my lap.
“I’m sure she’ll listen for at least the first few seconds. After that…” I grimace.
Claudia snorts. “Maybe you’re making her do too much work. Have you even eaten a meal in the dining room yet?”
“Not except for that first night and the next morning, when they made us.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Usually, the newly Chosen Ones take all meals downstairs until they’re a few months in. The Third Guardian must be going out of his mind.”
I scrunch my nose. “I don’t really care. His obsession with me will be his downfall.”
