Page 51 of Veradel
I’m so close to the Wall, only one giant leap away.
But the sentries’ sudden silence makes me wheel around.
At the edge of the field, they surround me in an arc like they’ve got me well and truly cornered, their swords drawn and a gleeful gleam in their eyes as I press my back against the cold, veiny stone that sends those vague echoes of pain shooting through me.
Then Rosalyn’s simpering face sharpens across my vision as I home in on her grinning back at me.
“Saskia,” she says politely, as if we’re back in my housing unit with Malcolm, hiding threats behind pleasantries all over again. “So good to see you again.”
I scoff in her face. I won’t play this game any longer. “Sorry. I can’t say the same.”
Rosalyn flushes, but then her smile grows wider as her eyes rake over Claudia in my arms.
“So sad,” Rosalyn tuts, “to see a Chosen One go feral like that one did. I don’t know how she got into the tech room, but she was as wild as the Monster himself when we tried to stop her.” She sighs heavily, placing a hand against her heart as if the memory weighs on her, even though I can see the pleased gleam in her eyes from here.
So I give Claudia the only thing I can in death: glory.
“Seems to me that if she still got the truth out to all the citizens with you and four others trying to stop her, she wasn’t just wild. She was strong. Stronger than you.”
Now Rosalyn’s smile slips.
“Not strong enough to survive my blade through her throat, unfortunately. I do hate to give consequences, but the Guardians rewarded me for it. As they will when I do the same to you.”
She raises her sword as if she’s actually going to charge me, and I take a step back. Not because I’m worried about my own life, but because I don’t want Claudia to be mutilated any further.
But before she can, the other sentries suddenly sweep apart, parting down the middle, and an overwhelming presence fills the gap. The same presence I’ve felt during every Choosing, magnetizing in all the wrong ways.
Rosalyn stops abruptly, her hands slamming into her sides with doe-eyed obedience. Compared to who just arrived, she’s no more of a threat than a spider or snake.
Arad takes one lazy step toward me, the sentries fill the hole he left behind, and then it’s just me and him surrounded in a ring.
He crosses his arms over his chest, not threatened in the slightest, cocky even. But I swear, there’s the faintest hint of confusion and fear brimming beneath that expression.
“You survived that fall?” he asks, tracking his eyes down my body as if trying to see through the cloak and the shadow of my hood. “And without hurting yourself? What did the Monster do, throw you back over?” He laughs, the sound like nails scraping stone. “Evenhedidn’t want to mess with my scraps.”
Lucan responds by howling out loud, right on the other side of the Wall against my back, and Arad actually flinches. Especially as the cacophony of the rest of the pack continues on the other side of Xantera.
I clutch Claudia’s body tighter against me. “I’m nobody’s scraps. But Iama nightmare. Haunting you forever.”
Arad forces out another laugh, piercing through the heavy, hushed breathing of the sentries. “I don’t actually believe in monsters, Saskia. So, tell me, how did you get back in? And why? Feeling nostalgic for your old life? Did you realize how well I treated you in here? How much better it is than the real, cruel world? Wanted to see if I still have the city under my thumb after the stunt you and your friends tried to pull? Or were you coming back for this?”
From beneath his velvet cloak, he pulls out that same key I searched so long for, swinging it before me like the pendulum of a clock. Taunting me. Trying to bait me.
It doesn’t work. I know that if I get close enough to grab it, he’ll grabme, and then I won’t be able to get these supplies to Taika. So instead of lunging for it like he expects me to, I scoff.
“Do you ever actually wait to hear an answer after you ask a question, or do you just like to hear yourself talk?”
For a moment, Arad keeps dangling the key out in front of me, as if he hasn’t quite processed that I’m not falling for it. Then with a wrinkle of his nose, he tucks it away and waves his hand lazily. Like I’m a bug he’ll squash easily. One that isn’t even worth exerting his energy over. “Bring her to me.”
The sentries lunge.
Easily, I swing out a leg faster than humanly possible, knocking two into the rest until they all tumble backward. Only Rosalyn manages to sidestep the chaos, leaping through and swinging her rapier toward me, toward Claudia—
Until I grab a knife from my belt in a flash. I’ve never handled a weapon before, but even without training, my sharpened eyesight and agile movements send the blade whizzing right on target, sticking into her shoulder and jerking her sword backward.
A scream of pain tears out of her mouth. The sound floods me, but my usual healing propensity doesn’t so much as cringe with guilt. Becauseshekilled her. She killed Claudia.
The remaining sentries scramble to a stand, hesitating.
