Page 100 of Outcast Fae
Adaline considered us for a long moment. I could tell there were many thoughts whirling in the back of her mind, none of them good. Her blue eyes were like soiled windows to her equally soiled soul. I could see all her ill-intent inside of them.
At last, she seemed to settle on some sort of decision. She gestured toward the guard that held Arryn. “Take her to a cell.”
Arryn’s eyes shot to me. There was a silent cry in them.
“She’s scared. Let her stay with me… please.” I hated to add the last word. I hated that I couldn’t make it sound like a real plea.
Adaline ignored me, and the guard pulled a sobbing Arryn away. They disappeared through a metal door, and again, I felt my heart break for her.
They would pay for this. All of them.
The evil human turned her attention to Vaughn next. “I knew you would see reason and join us.”
Did Vaughn work for them now? Like Horace had?
“We had a deal. Where is she?!” Vaughn demanded.
Adaline smiled thinly. “Oh, she’s fine. Don’t worry.”
Everything clicked into place. They were talking about Vaughn’s cousin. So they had blackmailed him. That was why he had betrayed me. They were using his cousin against him.
Still, why did he have to drag us into this? Why couldn’t he let Arryn and I go? We could be miles away from here now, with no memory of this place. I wanted nothing more than to make Adaline and her brother pay.
Maybe Vaughn had thought that saving his cousin was a good reason to betray twofae bitches, to be Adaline and Alexander’s pet dog and do their bidding. But I could never trust him or forgive him for what he had done, regardless of his reason.
“Lock them up. Separate cells for the werewolf and fae or they’ll kill each other.” Adaline flicked a finger in the air, looking as if she’d gotten tired of us. “I’ll need them later, but for now, something else requires my attention.”
The guard rolled me away, ready to follow Adaline’s instructions. We exited the breakroom, and I was glad when they took Vaughn in a different direction.
I didn’t want to see his face ever again.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Two weeksafter the beginning of my incarceration in the dome, they aired New Starts’ graduation. After eating a lunch not much better than the MREs they provided on the outside, Arryn and I watched from our bunks as the little screen flickered to life. There stood Patricia, Gina, Henry, and Elon. It felt surreal to see them this way.
The TV in the corner hadn’t shown us much in the last fourteen days since we’d been held at this prison facility, a few instructional videos about how prison life was to go, when to eat, where to go, etc. There were a few propaganda videos that explained, in general terms, how great Adaline and Alexander Habermann were. The video offered no real details about who they were. It just talked about how they helped society by rehabilitating youths with their innovative program and their advancements in medical science. Everything was produced by the staff at the dome, according to the credits, and nothing showed us the outside world beyond our little ten-by-fourteen cell, so when the graduation showed the sandy beaches outside, painful longing filled my chest.
On the screen, Gina and Henry held hands, beaming as their parents walked up and pressed them into warm hugs. Patricia stood next to a stern-faced woman who had to be her mother, tall and lanky. Lastly, Elon stood with his parents. They were as finely dressed and snobbish-looking as Elon was.
I had to say I was glad for them. They were going free. They had their families around them. I had Arryn. The rest of my family was scattered like seeds in the wind.
As we watched, a man I’d never met read a list of their accomplishments over the month they’d been at New Starts. As he read on, however, my stomach soured.
Everything he was telling the parents was lies.
He explained how they did something called Trust Falls, and participated in team-building and group counseling workshops. He went on about how the four of them had been a great team from the start and how they persevered through hardships together. At this, the four of them smiled at each other, nodding along as if this was the truth about what had happened at New Starts.
No one mentioned Wally, Chan, or Daniella. It was like they’d never existed.
No one mentioned me, Sinasre, Arryn, or Vaughn, either, but that hardly surprised me.
When the camera panned to Alexander and Adaline standing on a platform and holding engraved plaques in their hands, all smiles and perfect teeth, I turned my back to the screen and stared at the concrete wall. I wished I could turn the program off, but we had no control over what they showed us or when.
My bunk dipped and Arryn’s form settled next to mine on the hard mattress. “Tally, were those people your friends?”
I shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. I guess not. They were with me for a while, but I would not call them my friends.”
Arryn seemed to think about this “Why do they get to go home and we don’t?”
