Elemental Hunger (41 page)

The flames danced along the wooden floor, excited to be together. The papers on the desk smoked and burst into bright orange fire. I stepped through it and left the Enforcement Office, unable to endure Felix’s anguish, but entirely unwilling to stop it.

Davison met me
at the vehicle, beyond late. His mouth worked, but no sound came out. At least three dozen freed Elementals formed a tight group behind me, and together we faced Davison.

“I did what you wanted.” Smoke poured out of the office behind me. Concern didn’t register on my emotional scale.

“What in the blazes happened?” His eyes flicked from mine to the door of the Enforcement Office, to the swarm of Elementals, to the two people in the vehicle.

“I lured Alex out to the plains.” I still hadn’t looked fully into his eyes. I knew what I’d find there. Loathing. “Just like you asked.”

“She’s dead. I left my sentries to search for anyone alive.” Davison sounded beyond furious. “You burned a lot of acreage.”

“My Airmaster needs medical attention,” I said.

“Why is that building burning?”

I finally looked up, right into his fiery eyes. “Because I lit it on fire.”

“Are there people inside?”

The image of Felix’s cruel sneer rose in my mind. “Define ‘people.’”

Davison turned, already gesturing. “Susanna, Donella, Olivia—if you would, please. Search for survivors.”

None of the Watermaidens would look at me as they passed. I didn’t understand why Davison bothered. “He won’t survive.”

“This is not what Councilmen do,” he said.

“Oh, right,” I said. “I should’ve sent my Unmanifested or my sentries to kill all those people.” As soon as the words escaped, they floated in my ears, repeating and reorganizing into
I kill people.

Davison stepped toward the vehicle, toward Hanai, his mouth saying words I couldn’t hear. A white frame edged into my vision.

My stomach clenched, and I bent over. “I killed him. Hot blazes, I killed him,” I said over and over, thinking only of Hanai and how he wasn’t breathing. I retched, and then the square of whiteness covered everything.

Paperwork needed to be filed and finalized, meetings attended, motions approved, messages sent to the far cities. Davison had the support of every Councilman in the United Territories, and he was appointed the new Supreme Elemental. As busy as the twentieth floor in Gregorio had been, that activity was nothing compared to what Davison organized in Tarpulin.

The Earthmovers, including Isaiah, were commissioned to clear the Elemental school. Airmasters took over communications, sending messages through the air.

While things were being reorganized and reassigned, I took the liberty of drafting a new clause that would eliminate the marriage requirement for female Elementals.

I delivered the single sheet of paper to Davison, who took it with a heavy sigh and a small smile. He didn’t say he’d make it happen, but that didn’t matter.
I
would make it happen.

I retreated to a bedroom near a garden Hanai would’ve loved. Cat stayed close to me, and I was secretly glad, unsure if I could bear to be alone with myself. When Isaiah returned from his work excavating the school, he shared a room with Adam down the hall. I spent most of my days in their room, waiting for Adam to wake up.

Desperately praying and hoping that he
would
wake up.

Cat had taken on the public face of our Council—she attended all the meetings, she spoke to the right people, she filed the paperwork so we could attend diplomacy training.

I kept watch in a hard, straight chair next to Adam’s bed. Sometimes I talked, telling him about my work in the kitchens in Crylon. I told him about my friendship with Patches and then all about running through the forest with Jarvis. About Educator Graham. And how I wanted to see the sun reflect off the wide waters again.

I cried a lot. Mostly when I realized that Adam hadn’t moved for hours. Or when I thought about Hanai, the gentleness in his hands, the slow curve of his smile. After I let myself drift to those thoughts, I couldn’t breathe.

Isaiah brought food I didn’t touch. Cat brought paperwork I didn’t sign. Both of them watched me carefully, like I was a doll that might break at any moment. They were probably right.

Two days later, the paperwork merely needed my signature, sloppy and childlike as it was. I’d been enrolled in reading lessons, something I should’ve been eager to attend. But Hanai should’ve been sitting next to me in class, and he wouldn’t be. He’d never learn to read, and I found I didn’t want to either.

Isaiah settled on the edge of the bed, humming a tune I’d heard many times in my past life in Crylon. He lightly touched Adam’s hand. “Has he moved at all?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Gabbers, this isn’t healthy. You need to get out of this room. Come to the school and help.”

I swung my head harder. “No.”

Isaiah sighed and dropped both hands to my knees. “Gabby,” he said. I noted he hadn’t called me Gabbers. “He may not wake up.”

I’d thought of that, too many times. “He will.”

The patterning lines of the tattoo still washed over Adam’s face and neck, disappearing under his clothes. I traced the darkest one from his chin, over his jaw and cheek and up into his hair.

Alex’s words from the plains played over and over in my mind.
Adam is a silly boy. He doesn’t love you. He’ll abandon you.
I shoved the words away.

“He will wake up,” I repeated, more to assure myself than Isaiah.

“Cat insisted that you sign these documents.” Isaiah held out a folder stuffed with papers. “She told me not to leave until you agreed to do it.”

“Leave them on the table. I’ll do it before I go to bed.”

“Cat’s already signed. So have I. We just need your signature…and Adam’s. And Davison wants to know who our Unmanifested is going to be.” The pain in Isaiah’s voice mirrored the hot stab running through my chest.

I couldn’t answer. Just like I couldn’t erase the image of Hanai, burning and not breathing, from my head.

“He suggested Liz,” Isaiah murmured.

“Liz?”

“She lost her Firemaker and her Watermaiden to Alex,” Isaiah whispered. “Davison is appointing the Earthmover and Airmaster to Elemental diplomacy divisions in Cornish and other Unmanifested villages. It’s part of his new integration program.” He cleared his throat. “Liz will be sent back to Crylon if we don’t take her on.”

Back to the laundry facility,
I heard in my head. A death sentence.

“Great, let’s take her on.”

Isaiah grunted his approval and paused in the doorway. “You’ve got to leave this room. Your reading teacher says she’s ready any time you are.”

“In a minute,” I said, curling into a ball in the chair, my gaze never leaving Adam’s face.

When I woke up, the late afternoon sunlight sent deep shadows scurrying across the floor. As I rubbed my stiff neck, I noticed something different about the room.

The bed lay empty.

My heart pounded in my throat. Before I could stand, someone stepped into the doorway, the sun not quite reaching his face. “You finally woke up,” he said.

A sob caught in my throat, blocking the air. I jumped up and flung myself into Adam’s waiting arms.

The thrill at
Adam’s awakening only lasted a few hours. His survival only served to remind me of Hanai’s death. So I existed in the same space with my Council, but we didn’t talk. We wordlessly prepared for our move into the newly excavated diplomacy wing of the school, barely looking at one another. I felt lost, adrift, inside my own head.

“I’ll meet you there,” Councilman Davison said, the words jolting me like an icy flame. I’d already nodded my agreement.

“Wait.” I looked around the guest bedroom blankly. “Where am I going?”

“The town square,” Davison answered, his voice fringed with frustration. “Your Council is waiting downstairs. We’ll be a few minutes behind you.”

“Who’s coming?”

“Only the whole city of Tarpulin.”

A fog lifted from my brain. “And I’ll be….”

“Announcing the new gender equality clauses,” he finished for me. “I’ve approved your motion to remove the marriage aspect of chartering Councils too. You agreed to announce it to the public.”

Every cell in my body flared to life. “I—I can’t. All those people.” I hadn’t felt this much panic since I fled from Adam and shredded my foot on the icy plains outside Cornish. Everything burned.

I tried to speak, but couldn’t. Davison’s voice boomed in my ears, dropping me to my knees. Shards of pain shot through my legs and up into my heart. Feeling so much—confusion, helplessness, desperation, betrayal—opened a dam inside that couldn’t be contained.

The calming scent of smoke helped. Of course Davison would know to light a fire in the hopes of comforting me.

Only when I heard the frantic shouting did I think there was something wrong. My skin itched. Something scorched my throat. The Elemental fire inside responded to the flames raging around me.

“Tornadoes! Gabby, knock it off!” Adam’s voice cut through the infernal pain. Through the hurt and anguish. His hands gripped my shoulders and pulled me through a barrier of heat and into someplace cool.

Frigid air rushed over my skin, calming the flames and driving the smoke away. I craved it. So I pushed Adam back and tried to find the ashy flavor again. He swore, this time picking me up.

Everything stayed dark. The smoke left, the voices fled, the fire retreated.

Only Adam remained.

“Stupid girl,” he said, his voice choked. “Trying to kill yourself?”

No,
I said inside my head because my voice wouldn’t work.

“Good to hear,” he said. “Why are you so upset?”

I don’t want to talk to thousands of people. What if they don’t believe me?
I wanted to open my eyes, but a veil of heavy darkness pressed against my lids.
I don’t even know who or what to believe.

Adam’s lips came softly against my cheek. “Believe me, Gabby. Please, you’ve got to believe me.”

“But Alex said—” My voice raked through my parched throat.

“I
know
what she said. The Adam Gillman Alex knows—
knew
—was a selfish jerk who took advantage of anyone, anywhere, anytime to get what he wanted. I’ve already told you all this. You’ve got to make your own decision about me, Gabriella. Who’s the Adam Gillman
you
know?”

I opened my eyes to find nothing but love shining in Adam’s eyes.

“Gabriella.” It came out as a plea as he set me on my feet. Adam cupped my face in his marked hands. “Will there always be this gulf between us?”

I traced the haunting lines of his tattoo with my eyes. The lines on his face reminded me of what he was, of who Alex had made him.

“I don’t know,” I whispered, thinking that there was more than just the sentry tattoo between us. There was Hanai, too.

I stood to leave, the sadness in his eyes eating away at my already raw emotions.

As I walked away, I heard, “I love you.”

Blazes, I thought I could’ve loved him too, but I also thought any love I was capable of feeling had died with Hanai.