Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One (13 page)

Then a second stuck to her hand, and a third to her cheek, each like a sharp pinprick. Xhea stood, water flowing from her in a wave—yet she was soaked, hair and pants and undershirt all glittering with bright magic. Magic that burned, each spark more painful than the last.

All through the water they flowed toward her, drawn like metal to a magnet. Drawn not to her, but the magic that hid beneath her skin, as constant and inexorable as a shadow. The sparks didn’t last long, dying at her touch, but long enough. Even as Xhea struggled back toward the fountain’s far edge and the dry ground beyond, she realized she was going numb. Her feet felt heavy as she sloshed through the water, and she slipped on the fountain’s tiles, falling beneath the water’s surface. Though she rolled to keep from choking, she couldn’t keep the water—or its magic—out of her eyes. Her vision shimmered, and she saw glimpses of blue and gold amidst the gray: the fountain’s swirling waters, aqua and pale cerulean, the sparks shining golden like pinpoints of sunlight.

She tried to struggle to her feet; slipped and stumbled and splashed back into the water.

“No,” she whispered, lightheaded and suddenly afraid. Against the onslaught, her magic faded, receding to the depths of her self where it had lived for so long. Where she had forced it with magic such as this. The world around her was reborn in color and shadow.

Xhea sank into the water, curling in upon herself until the level reached her chin. Water washed over her, perfect blue and glittering in the dark. Her face was so wet that she never felt the tears as they began to flow, only noticed their warmth against her cheeks.

At last she voiced the thought that had followed her since she had released her magic—since she had, with conscious intent, asked it to strip the life from the only person she dared think a friend.

“Oh gods, what am I?”

A killer. A murderer. A monster. A freak.

A lost and frightened girl with no way home.

Her chest ached, grief constricting her breathing, and she clung to the empty fabric of her shirt as if it could ease the ache in her chest where a tether had once joined. Voice tight, she asked the empty air, “What have I done?”

In darkness, she looked up at the heart of the great Tower around her—a single Tower, when she was used to seeing them all, a landscape of moving structures of power and grace—and never before had she felt so small. So inconsequential.

So wrong.

Lost in her tears, Xhea thought herself alone until strong hands grabbed her by the arms. Hands that did not recoil, but tightened. She screamed and tried to pull away, but the hands held her fast and hauled her aloft, dripping and insensible, her toes barely touching the bottom of the fountain.

Fight back
, instinct screamed.
Escape.
She kicked and twisted in her assailant’s grip—or tried to. The attempt only made the dizziness and nausea from the bright magic to crest and crash over her, while she fought with numb fists. She was easily restrained.

Hard-earned lessons kicked in fast: if she could not fight, act sick. Not that she needed to pretend, Xhea thought, gagging.

“Come on, kid, stop messing around,” a man’s voice said. “Stand up.” He shook her as if to punctuate the words, the movement making her head spin. Her foot slipped and she sunk back into the water until the man hauled her up once more.

Angrier now, he asked her questions: who was she, what was she doing here, why was she swimming half-naked in the fountain? Xhea whimpered. She stole a glance at his dark clothing, noting his muscled build, his gloved hands, and the unlikelihood of an escape from his grip. Security—but how?

Then she saw herself, covered with flaring, dying sparks of gold, and thought only:
oh
. A mental sigh. The Tower’s security sweeps would never miss renai in the shape of a person, regardless of whether the magic bore a clear signature.

Xhea stayed limp as the security guard hauled her from the fountain, and it didn’t take much to keep her earlier tears flowing. When he released her, muttering about the water soaking his shoes, she fell to her hands and knees, then let herself collapse between him and his partner.

“Come on.” The guard nudged her with the toe of his waterlogged shoe. “Get up.”

The partner swore, consulting a handheld device. “I’m not getting a signature. She’s nearly too weak to register.”

With those words, their attitude changed. The guard who had grabbed her now knelt at her side, supporting her head as he rolled her onto her back. Fingers felt her neck for a pulse and forehead for fever, the touch hot to her water-cooled skin.

“Hang in there, all right?” the guard murmured. “Help’s coming.”

Xhea lay with her eyes unfocused, staring upward as the Tower’s heart shone like aurora, green and red and blue. Her mind raced: she didn’t want to know what a medical team would do to her. But she couldn’t escape while the guard held her; her only chance was to run while being transferred to the medics’ care.

Yet even this vague plan derailed upon the medics’ arrival. “Don’t move,” a woman said, and pressed something to Xhea’s neck. Suddenly, Xhea did not have to feign difficulty responding; the blast of energy knocked her all but senseless.

It was a long moment before she regained true consciousness.

That wasn’t renai
, Xhea realized, her mind swimming. Not money, raw or otherwise, but
magic
—pure bright magic, life force untainted and unshaped.

Sweetness and blight, she’d never be able to pay for that.

She felt as if she were floating, her body so strangely light she could barely feel it. She tried to wiggle her fingers and toes, and it was only when she forced her eyes open to see if they’d responded that she realized she was no longer by the fountain. She
was
floating, cushioned on a spell that followed the lead medic like a pet. They had already left the clearing, moving toward one of the elevator shafts that led up into the main part of the Tower.

“No,” Xhea tried to say, “let me down,” but what came from her mouth was a weak groan. The medic turned, then all Xhea could see were her eyes: eyes so green that they rivaled leaves; eyes so transfixing that she could spend hours just studying their shift from emerald to jade, their faint accents of amber.

Xhea realized that the medic was speaking. She blinked and tried to pull her scattered thoughts together, while the world spun and glowed, everything beautiful and unsteady.

“Come on, stay with me. Do you feel any pain?”

“Dizzy,” Xhea managed.

“Nothing hurts?”

She shook her head and shut her eyes, lost in euphoria and nausea.

“Vitals are strong,” the medic said. “But she’s barely absorbing the energy. Still no signature.” Xhea was jostled as they guided the spell holding her into the elevator shaft. Even with her eyes closed, the light beyond the garden was blinding.

“Someone’s drained the kid half-dry,” a man’s voice replied. “The paperwork on this one’s going to be something.” He sighed. “Give her another shot.”

Once more Xhea felt something cold press against her neck, and that was all she remembered.

Xhea drifted, lost in vertigo’s slow rock and turn. She floated bodiless in the clouds, the world drifting around her in a gentle wind, grays slipping lullaby-soft through the open hallways of her mind. Empty, she was content.

Forever later, she felt an edge of fear just sharp enough to pierce the haze: she didn’t know where she was. It smelled wrong here, strange—too sweet with a sharpness beneath like cleaning solution. All she could hear was the slow hiss of air. Still the world held her gently and rocked her back and forth, back and forth.

No
, she thought.
Focus. Focus.
As if mere repetition of the word could bring her scattered faculties into play or tame the bright magic that ran riot through her system. In silence she cursed magic, fountains, and the fools who thought it was pretty to combine the two.

Luck. As if.

She lay prone with her arms at her sides—that much she could tell. Something covered her—a sheet, she guessed, and blankets across her legs—though it wasn’t only her disorientation that made the clean, soft fabric difficult to identify. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept in a bed. Though she listened, she heard no scuff of feet or rustle of clothing, no breath but her own; and so slowly, cautiously, Xhea opened her eyes.

She recoiled from a blast of light and color. Blinking back tears, she tried again, glimpsing the room in snatches: the bed on which she lay, a door on the wall to her left, equipment beside and behind her. The walls were white—but, magic-dazzled, even the plainest stretch of wall was tinted: shadows edged with blue, touched with green; reflections casting shapes in pale cream and yellow and peach.

Hospital, she thought, or something like it. She’d never been in a medic’s ward that smelled so little of illness or old blood. It was frightening to think what a place like this must cost; more frightening still to think what they might do when they learned that she could never, ever pay.

It was only when she could see without pain that Xhea noticed the man standing against the far wall. His unkempt hair was more gray than blond, and his green, hospital-issued pajamas hung from his gaunt frame. He watched her, the shadows beneath his eyes deep enough to fall into.

“You’re in my bed,” he said in a voice like old paper.

Xhea let her eyes flutter closed.

“Girl, don’t pretend, I saw you’re awake. You’re not fooling anyone, hey?”

After a moment of strained silence, Xhea opened her eyes and attempted to shrug. Of everything in the room, she could look at the man without squinting. It didn’t hurt to let her gaze rest on his wrinkled face, or study his jutting collarbones, his skin too thin over the bones.

“Sorry,” she managed, the word slurred by her clumsy tongue. “I’d give it back, but I can’t move.”

“Heh. Figures.” He dropped into the chair in the corner, studying her irritably. “Least you’re talking to me,” he said. “You know how many people just ignore me?”

Oh, sweetness save me
, Xhea thought. But sure enough, she could just see it: an almost-invisible tether joining her visitor to the bed on which she lay.

“Figures,” she muttered, echoing the man’s sentiments.

More carefully now, Xhea looked around. To the right of her bed was a blank pane of glass, standing like a window to nowhere. It lit as she turned her head, graphs and diagrams springing to life across its surface. On a small table at the bedside rested a lamp, a touch panel that she guessed was a call button, and a glass of ice water. This last caught her attention, and she was suddenly aware of her raging thirst. She forced numb fingers to reach out, close around the glass, and pull it toward her. Her mouth quested for the straw.

Climbing into a fountain, Xhea decided, was a faster way to get drenched, but dumping glasses of water on her chest also worked nicely. She was grateful for the few mouthfuls she was able to swallow.

Okay
, she thought, sagging back into her now-sodden sheets.
Escape. That shouldn’t cause any problems.

She turned to the medical equipment behind her. There was a small control panel from which a canopy of slender metal tines arced over her like the ribs of an antique umbrella. She watched as spells traveled along their lengths and the thin wires that ran between them, magic dancing over the strands. Most of the connecting wires led to a socket on the wall, yet one length curled down toward her. She followed the thin, plastic-wrapped strand, her numb fingers fumbling along its length until she found its end attached to her neck.

Her stomach roiled as she clutched the thin thing, tugging desperately to free it; but whatever held it to her skin—
oh please
, she thought, let it just be
on
her skin rather than
in
it—held fast.

“It’s just for the monitor,” Xhea whispered. Heartbeat and brain waves, blood pressure and the like—that was all. Or maybe it was an IV line like Lower City medics used—saline solution, pain meds, something. The thought of that line snaking through her veins was enough to make her pull at the wire until the skin on her neck burned.

Oh, how she hated feeling helpless.

“Say,” she said to the old man, trying to sound calm. “You’ve been here a bit, right? Did you see where they put my clothes? Maybe my jacket?” A jacket that she sincerely hoped still held a knife in one of its many pockets.

“Sure,” he said, gesturing to a boxlike storage compartment beneath the bedside table. She had to twist to see its front, the tiny latch and small touch panel. “Standard lock. If it’s your stuff it’ll open, hey?”

“Right,” Xhea said. “Of course.”

It was only a matter of reaching the panel. She glanced at her sodden pajama shirt and bedding, then down to her barely responsive hands.
Tough
, she told herself, and tried awkwardly to shift toward the edge of the bed.

A slight beep from above was the only warning. There was a flash as pure magical energy ran down the wire to her neck and into her body.

Ah
, she thought as the world exploded in color and light.
This again.

Dazzled and euphoric, Xhea slipped back into darkness.

“You’re in my bed.”

Xhea groaned. “I was unconscious,” she protested—or tried to, the words slurred into incomprehensibility.

“Ah, I see you’re awake.” Another voice—a woman’s voice—made Xhea force her eyes open, then wince at the assault of color. Her stomach churned—again. Still.
If this were a payment
, she thought,
I’d be loving this
. It wasn’t much consolation.

The woman stood near the end of the bed, wearing neat scrubs and a look of professional concern. From the way the light seemed to glitter and dance around her, Xhea was fairly certain that this visitor was alive, though she checked for a tether just in case. The old man’s ghost sat in his chair in the corner, sulking at the interruption.

“Are you feeling well enough to answer some questions?” the doctor asked. “The police would like to talk to you about what happened.”