Page 111 of Xantera
“Mom,” I cry. “No, no, no. I’m so sorry.” I grip the edges of her statue, my fingers digging into the rubble. “I wanted to be Chosen sooner. I wanted to save you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I…”
Clinging to her, I sob into the rock of her shoulder, thick tears falling and soaking into the stone. I don’t know what to do to ease the pain forever engraved on her face. The woman who wasn’t required to love me, but did anyway. The woman who sang me lullabies to ease me out of the nightmares I’d wake up from in a cold sweat. The woman who must have rebelled against the system long before me, since she was Chosen and dragged away from the daughter she loved…
Now, I can’t even reach up and close her eyelids to give her peace.
But I can sing her to sleep, like she used to do for me.
“On and on the girl must march,” I sing against her fossilized stomach now, each syllable cracking in my throat, “starved for an end to the night. Beware the M-Monster in her heart, for even she can b-bite.”
“Touching,” a cool voice reaches me as my tears splatter at her feet.
I scramble to a stand and wipe the wetness from my cheeks with the back of my hand, unaware of how long he’s been standing there watching me. Backing up at the sight of Arad emerging onto this final terrace, I glance around wildly, searching for a door, an escape, anything that can help me.
Arad’s lips tilt up and he cocks his head at me, eyes bright as blood.
“Looking for this?”
Then, like a scene in a dream, he reaches into his collar and pulls out a chain that makes my heartbeat freeze, sure, suddenly, that he somehow stole Lucan from me.
But—I’m still here, baby, Lucan whispers, and when Arad pulls the rest of the necklace out, it isn’t a glistening red vial dangling from the end, but a…
“Key,” I whisper.
The key to the Wall. A small, simple, silver key, tarnished with age.
No, I zero in on it, realizing with a jolt that it’s laced with the same spiderwebbing veins as the Wall—almost like it was cut from the stone itself.
It was around the Third Guardian’s neck this whole time.
“We have cameras everywhere, you know,” Arad says, stepping toward me with the key clutched in his fist, “including in the north wing. I don’t know how you snuck in, but I saw you in the white drawing room. Looking under a very particular glass cloche that used to hide our way in and out of the city.”
I exhale, a sense of numbness crawling up my legs at the realization that the way out—and the way for Lucan to get in—isright in front of me. So close, the reflection of the sunset glints off the key and bounces right back into my eyes. That same silver chain I remember from Sylvia’s memories. That key was settled against Arad’s chest along with the blood of Lucan’s ancestors.
It’s okay, Saskia,Lucan breathes.You tried. You tried harder than I could have ever dreamed. Youarea dream, and I’m so sorry I woke you up.
The words tug at something in my bones, a kind of determination that has my hands closing into fists as Arad steps even closer. Because I’m awake. And I’m above the city that has imprisoned me now. And this is the end.
I’d better make it count.
“I’m sure all your fellow Guardians aresohappy about the fact that you’ve taken the one and only key,” I say. “Wasn’t it there, where everyone could access it, because you’re all equal? Or are you trying to become a dictator over them, too?”
If the cameras are everywhere, even in this graveyard, I hope Claudia is recording this very exchange, so that all of Xantera can hear every word.
Arad’s eyes narrow at my sudden change in tone, at the hardness in my gaze. His pupils sharpen into slits that slice into me like twin blades.
“I’m just protecting them, like I protect all of you. Ever since the Thirteenth Guardian tried to steal the key to let the Monster in—to destroy everyone—we’ve all agreed it’s safer in my hands.”
I blink at him, now certain he’s slipped far past all reason and logic… because he just confessed, without even realizing it, that the Thirteenth Guardian didn’t die in the war. The rest of the Guardians must have found out what he was planning to do with Lucan’s father and murdered him for it.
Arad tilts his head at me, oblivious of my thoughts. “What I can’t figure out is why? Why are you looking for the key? How did you know it was once there?” When I don’t answer, and I’m sure my eyes are gleaming with satisfaction, his jaw clenches. “I would never set the Monster on you, Saskia.”
I snort, the irony of those words resurrecting a manic kind of humor within me.
“I wish you would.”
He narrows his eyes. “And why is that?”
“I wouldloveto feel his teeth scrape against my neck. Yours are far too tiny for my taste.”
