Halo (Blood and Fire Series (A Young Adult Dystopian Series)) (44 page)

“What did you do this morning?” the technician asks. Her fingers wait over the screen of her tablet, ready to mark down my answer. I pull myself out of the Pit and respond, because I’m supposed to. Because I have to.

“I rose with my alarm. I helped…I helped…” I’m struggling to focus. The pulsing in my head is too distracting, my memories too fluid to grasp hold of.

“Who did you help?” the technician presses.

I shake my head and stare down at my hands. There are two neat black lines tattooed into the backs of my wrists.

The Pit forces its way back in, and for a moment I am breathless. All I can see, hear, smell is Sam’s death, the life that I took from him. It takes a while to regain myself, but when I do everything thankfully seems a little clearer.

“I—I helped my brother. I helped Luca. He’s been injured.”

The technician nods and taps away on the tablet. A small, bright blue rectangle is reflected in her dark eyes from the screen. “Does that make you sad?” She doesn’t look up, just waits for me to answer.

“Yes, I’m worried about him. He might die.”

She records this, too, frowning. I shift awkwardly on the gurney and the technician fiddles with the electrodes placed on the insides of my wrists, over my temples, over my heart. She clucks her tongue and reconnects the wires, and suddenly the alarms on the equipment they’re connected to start screaming. She snaps her head up and narrows her eyes at me.

“Oh, come on, Kit. It’s okay, remember. You have no reason to be afraid.”

But I
am
afraid. I’m paralysed by fear as the technician goes and collects a folded black piece of material off an otherwise empty shelf on the opposite side of the room. I know the material immediately; it’s one of Ryka’s shirts. She begins to unfold it carefully, and I shrink away.

“That’s not possible. I threw it in the water! It’s gone. He said I’d never have to wear it again!”

The technician carries on slowly laying out the shirt, but she looks up at me and smiles. It’s not a friendly smile; it is cold and calculating. “You wanted this,” she says. “You wanted it.”

She lifts an object out of the shirt, but it’s not what I was expecting. In place of my halo is a ceramic mask. It is black as tar and rimmed with a line of white counters, just like the one the priestesses’ assassin wore when he tried to kill me.

“That’s not mine,” I breathe.

The look on the technician’s face is almost pitying. “Of course it is, Kit. You fought for this. There’s no stopping it now.” She stalks forward, holding out the mask, and I go to get up off the gurney but my legs won’t work. Nothing works. The pulsing in my head returns, this time slamming so hard I can barely think.

The mask descends, and I can do nothing but lie there as she presses it over my face. My breathing is frantic as it rushes in and out, in and out, the exercise made that much harder by the fact that there is no mouth hole. There
are
eyeholes, however. Through them, the technician smiles, happy with a job well done.

“There. Now you’re ready, girl. You’re ready to be Claimed.”

******

I wake to the sounds of Luca’s rattling breathing. Ella still sits on the edge of my bed, watching over him carefully. She’s been doing that for days, ever since we returned to find Freetown lit up like a burning torch. The fires have been put out, but half the tent city is now a tattered, burnt-out nightmare. The people have bounced back remarkably, but they are angry. Angry with the devastation the Sanctuary have brought down on their heads, and angry at us for being the cause.

“Bad dreams, child?” Ella whispers, wiping a cloth across Luca’s brow. My brother chose that name for himself in one of his rare moments of lucidity.

“Terrifying,” I tell her.

She nods her head but says nothing more. My body is stiff when I stand, and I note my arm is still throbbing. I re-opened the wound the High Priestess gave me on the journey back to Freetown, and it doesn’t appear to be healing very quickly. The knife wound in my thigh is just as bad, and the pain is something I’m slowly becoming accustomed to. Guess that’s part of not wearing the halo anymore. I take just as long to mend as everyone else now.

“He’s outside,” Ella says softly, tilting her head to wards to the open doorway of my tent. It’s both thrilling and worrying that she knows he would be on my mind as soon as I woke. I give her a rueful nod, place my hand briefly on my brother’s head to check his temperature—still raging hot—and then go outside to find the
he
that she was referring to.

Ryka’s blond hair is the first thing I see, the individual strands that have escaped his messy ponytail floating on the breeze. He looks up at me when I approach, smiling softly.

“Hey, little Kit. Been waiting on you.”

I take in the tight pull of his shirt, the soft smile in his deep brown eyes, the way he flicks his throwing dagger over and over in his hand the same way I do when I’m edgy. He seems relaxed but I can read every line of him by now, and I know something’s bothering him.

“Are you going to tell me, or are you gonna make me wait?”

He wrinkles his nose and reaches out for my hand, pulling me down into the long grasses beside him. I slump to the ground and wait for him to spit it out. He strokes a finger up and down my arm in a way that makes my skin tingle. I’m only just getting used to people touching me, but this is something different entirely. It’s not the brief squeeze of a hug from someone. It’s like he’s telling me something with the way he traces his finger up and down my skin. I shiver, not because I’m cold or because it’s uncomfortable. Because it’s the most delicious sensation I’ve ever experienced. It stops all too soon.

“It’s James,” Ryka says softly, still staring down at my arm.

When we left the Sanctuary, James and the others were supposed to wait for us. They left before we reached them, fuelling Ryka’s suspicions that the highest-ranked fighter in Freetown, the man who killed Ryka’s father, was indeed trying to make sure Ryka didn’t pose a threat to his chances of becoming the next leader of Freetown. When we returned to find the tent city on fire, Callum, Raff, Penny and fifteen others from inside the Sanctuary’s walls had already made it back safe and sound. Callum’s twin brother, Max, had been killed, and James was nowhere to be seen.

“He’s come back, hasn’t he?” I ask.

Ryka nods. “Says he was leading off some of the guards. Wasn’t exactly pleased to see me.”

I clear my throat, still tickly from all the smoke I breathed in when we helped put the flames out. “Fantastic.” There was a moment—a brief, hopeful moment—where the two of us believed he might not come back at all.

“There’s something else, I’m afraid.”

A sinking feeling takes hold in my gut. “What kind of something else?”

Ryka shakes his head. “I don’t wanna tell you. I want to kiss you.”

A hot flush prickles at my cheeks and Ryka laughs, skating his fingers across my collarbone where I’ve turned an unfortunate shade of pink. He seems as fascinated by my reactions to being touched there as I am, myself. My whole life, my halo has taken up residency at the base of my neck, and touching another person in that area was definitely considered taboo. Now, I’m addicted to the way it feels when Ryka’s fingers graze my skin there.

It’s sensitive. Secret. Intensely personal.

“You can kiss me, but then you have to tell me,” I whisper.

A lop-sided grin develops on his face. “Fair,” he says, leaning into me. I melt into him, and for a moment I get to forget everything. Forget my dangerously ill brother lying in my bed, the Sanctuary and their attacks on my new home, the fact that the people of Freetown love to hate me, the priestesses want me dead, and that I’ve landed myself back in the fighting pits. There’s nothing but Ryka and the way he tastes like he’s been eating oranges. His lips on mine, his breath quickening over my flushed skin, his hands buried deep in my short hair.

“If the world were ending,” he says quietly, when he pulls away, “and we were the only people left, I think I’d be the happiest man alive.” He cups my face in his hands and kisses me lightly one last time.

“You’d be the
only
man alive,” I point out.

“True. Hadn’t thought about that.” Ryka laughs but the sound of it is melancholy. He finally looks away. “Unfortunately, in the absence of the end of the world, we still have a bunch of people to deal with.”

The buzz from his kiss begins to wear off when a frown forms between his eyebrows. “Come on, then. Out with it,” I say.

“It’s the High Priestess. She wants to see you. I’m supposed to take you up to the Keep.”

They say that if you look upon a priestess’ face, even by accident, then you’re cursed. And you looked upon the High Priestess’ face. That’s got to be, like, the mother of all curses.

“Why would she want to see me?”

Ryka shrugs and gets to his feet. He offers me his hand, looking down on me with poorly concealed concern. “Apparently she’s had a vision. A vision that involves you.”

Wonderful. All I can think of, as I take his hand and let him pull me up, is the dream I just had. I don’t tell him about it, but the lingering claustrophobia I’d felt wearing that mask is magnified a hundred fold. Once again, it feels like I’m being suffocated. The technician’s words ring ominously in my head:
You fought for this, Kit. There’s no stopping it now.

Frankie Rose lives in Sydney, Australia, her borrowed homeland. She writes in the paranormal romance, dystopian and contemporary romance genres, and hopes to dip her toes in many more. She is an avid reader, skier and snowboarder, and also loves to climb and hike in the outdoors. You can reach Frankie at
[email protected]
or visit her website at
www.frankierosewrites.com
for further details of her upcoming projects.

I have a lot of people to thank this time around. The Halo journey was a bit of a roller coaster, and a whole squadron of people encouraged me and kept hassling me for a finished draft. You guys really got me through!

Let’s see, let’s see…

My beta readers, you guys were awesome. There were quite a few of you for this project. Carmen, Jessica, Makena, Stacie, Jo-Anne, Jordan, Vicky, and Christina, thank you all so much for taking the time to read through my humble novel in its varying stages. You gals are pretty darned kick-ass! My editor, Julia Park-Tracey, thank you for being super speedy and having such keen eyes! All the Indie-Visible girls, your limitless kindness and steadfast support has been and always will be invaluable.

Chelsea Starling, thank you for being the sweetest, most generous person, with your time, your compliments and with yourself. I love ya girlie, and I can’t wait to meet you for real.

Sarah Benelli of Typo Killer, awesome must run in your family. Your hawk eye proofreading caught my typos with unbelievable precision. You are a godsend.
 

To Nick, without you I wouldn’t be able to write. Thank you for supporting me and always, always, always having the faith in me that I usually don’t. Having you as my husband, my best friend, is such an overwhelming blessing.

My last thanks goes to you, my readers, who have invested in my work by purchasing this book. I am so very grateful to you all for your continued support. It really does mean the world to me. If you have enjoyed Raksha, I would love for you to leave a review on the site you purchased it from. Reviews really do mean a lot to us authors, and I love reading every single one.

Your experiences when reading this book have been uniquely your own. No one else will ever imagine the fighting, the roar of the crowds, the hollow calls of
Raksha! Raksha! Raksha!
quite like you just did. More than anything as a writer, I love when people tell me what they thought of my work and how they experienced the world I dreamed into existence.

The human imagination is an incredible thing. Share what your mind created from Kit and Ryka’s story!