Summer Ruins

SUMMER RUINS

The Last Year, Book Four

By Trisha Leigh

Copyright 2013 by Trisha Leigh

Cover art and design by Nathalia Suellen

Developmental Editing: Danielle Poiesz

Copy Editing: Lauren Hougen

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used factiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

Trisha Leigh

For my readers, who have made every step of this process not only bearable, but exciting. I have loved sharing this journey with you - thank you for coming along
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Chapter 1

It’s my destiny to be alone. It’s time I accept it.

Besides the last six or so months, when I’ve had Lucas and Pax, solitude has been the single most constant aspect of my life. That should make it easier; I should be used to it, but now that I’ve felt friendship and companionship and love this isolation threatens to unhinge me.

I’m not sure how many days have passed since Deshi left me in the darkness of this underground prison. My stomach went from rumbling to cramping to hollow a long time ago. My face no longer hurts from smacking into the dirt wall, though it’s still sensitive to the touch. The back of my throat is raw—from screaming, originally, but now because I’m thirsty. No amount of swallowing will wet it, and my tongue feels swollen.

Deshi left a pitcher of water when he brought the salve, but I finished it a few days ago.

I’ve gotten good at controlling little balls of fire in my hands, which gave me something else to focus on for a while. The light gave the illusion of company, even though it revealed my new quarters are less than five feet deep and five feet wide, made of dirt and marble. I threw a few flickering spheres of flame in each direction down the corridors outside the bars, but there was nothing to see.

Dirt-packed tunnels of endless cells. Silence. Darkness.

My parched eyes constantly blur, and I blink rapidly at the sound of shuffling footsteps but don’t get up or creep over to the bars to try to see who’s coming. It’s too far, my limbs too weak. The figure stops outside the cell, arms laden with a pitcher and some sort of package.

“You alive?”

It’s Deshi again, his voice a rough whisper as though he’s afraid of disturbing the total quiet of the dungeon. Despite the fatigue brought on by days of no food or water, my mind wants to snap at him. Unfortunately, my tongue is three sizes too big and there isn’t enough spit in my mouth to swallow, so I don’t say anything.

“Althea, I’ve got some water and crackers for you.” He sounds more annoyed than anything, but the small stream of worry trickling through his impatience seizes my heart with the kind of hope I had no idea was still possible. He doesn’t want me to be dead.

Some instinct tells me to sit still. All I have is the element of surprise, and I’m going to need more than that. Maybe I can coax Deshi into saying or doing something that will at least give me some information. Or even just get him to come closer.

The decision pays off a minute later when he tucks the package under his arm and waves a hand in front of the bars, making them disappear the same way they did on his cage upstairs when we tried to rescue him, then replaces them once he’s entered. Had he trapped us himself or merely allowed Zakej and his sister to do it? The specifics don’t matter much now, seeing as how I’m locked in here and he’s not on my side.

He stands over me, so close I can distinguish his scent of freshly turned earth over the dry packed dirt of the floor. The scent of rain on grass, of lilacs in bloom, rolls over me until I can’t help but breathe deep and enjoy it. When he sticks out a tentative toe to nudge my foot, I slide it out of his way, giving up my ruse.

“I’m awake. Alive. Whatever,” I croak, my own voice unrecognizable.

Deshi doesn’t respond, just sets the box of crackers and pitcher of water on the ground, then fishes a plastic cup out of his pocket and sets it down, too. I whip up a small flame, raising it with shaking arms until it reveals his face.

He’s so like I remember from the autumn in Danbury, even though it wasn’t him then at all. He’s shorter than either Pax or Lucas, who are a similar height and at least six inches taller than me. If memory serves and Zakej’s mimicry is as good as I believe, Deshi stands only an inch or so taller than my five foot six. The flickering firelight bounces off his skin, which I originally described as yellow but is more the brownish-tan color of a bottle of honey.

Those eyes, slanted up at the outer edges and bright blue—save the black veins cracking the white—train on the fire floating just above the soft skin of my palm. The black threads in his eyes seem wider than the last time I saw him, as though they’re trying to consume the whites, leaving his eyes as black as the Others’.

For the first time, curiosity lights his face instead of the blank mask he’s favored, and I take advantage of his distraction. “Why do your eyes have black veins and mine don’t?”

The question peels his eyes from the fire in my control. In them I glimpse hesitation and fear, maybe even contempt. “You’ve only accessed your Elemental power, but we possess a full spectrum of Other abilities, too. The veins are the result of tapping those.”

I don’t know what to say, or what potential Other power he might have called upon that blackened his eyes. They have abilities. Of course they do. But the ones I’ve seen are pretty horrible.

“How do you do that?” he asks, backing a few steps away and to the edges of the light.

I get the feeling he doesn’t want me looking at him.

I shrug, unwilling to let it flicker out and plunge us back into darkness. Even if he is a traitor, I don’t want him to go. It’s better than being alone, for one thing. For another, I need him to talk to me, about anything at all, so I can convince him to change his mind about choosing the Others over us. Somehow remind him that we’re not Other. We’re Dissidents, the only four on the planet, and we need to stick together. “Tell me how you make the bars disappear and I’ll tell you how I make fire.”

“I’m not stupid, you know. No matter what Pax told you.”

“He never said that.” I want to say more, like how Pax never said anything bad at all and how we spent weeks and months trying to find him because he’s one of us, but instinct says not to push.

Deshi spent those weeks and months being told something completely different. That we left him, that we don’t care, that we’re the ones who’ve turned against our families.

He’s not going to believe me right away, even if maybe he wants to. The best I can do is let him get to know me enough to plant seeds of doubt. I gulp down a cupful of water while I try to figure out how to accomplish such a thing.

The cool liquid coats my mouth and throat, and it’s refreshing until a slightly tangy aftertaste stays behind on my tongue. It’s familiar but I’m not sure why. I look down into the cup and realize it was stupid of me not to think that it could be poisoned.

Before my panic grows out of control, Deshi backs up toward the bars that will allow him to escape the hole he’s cast me into, and desperation seizes my chest.

“It’s like putting your power into a pocket instead of letting it fly around everywhere,” I say quickly.

He pauses, raising a wary gaze to meet mine. “What?”

“Making a little bit of fire. When I first started to realize I could use it, the only way it would work was to let all of my emotions build inside until they burst out through my hands or wherever. This is different. Like…” My sluggish mind searches for the right comparison, or at least for one that he’ll understand. “Like pinching off one berry instead of ripping the whole bush out of the ground.”

His eyes grow wide. “You’ve picked berries off a bush?”

Despite my worry over the liquid being some kind of poison, I can’t resist another couple of swallows. The damage is done either way, and my throat begs for more moisture. “Yes. In the Wilds. Not berries we didn’t recognize, but we found a couple of blueberry bushes and a blackberry patch.”

“They didn’t kill you.”

“Obviously.” I try a smile.

He looks slightly startled, as though he doesn’t comprehend the joke.

This time when he waves a hand, steps into the corridor, and replaces the bars, I don’t stop him. We’ve started an information swap of some kind, and perhaps the subtle discussion will lead him to naturally question the Others the way Lucas and I did last autumn.

The sound of Deshi’s feet disappears into the blackness, and I let the sphere of light go out so I can use my hands to swallow the rest of the slightly metallic water and stuff crackers into my face. An hour or so later I feel almost 100 percent better—better than I have any right to, really. I feel strong.

Then I remember where I’ve tasted that water before, and the last time strength filled me with such unexpected force. It was that autumn day the Wardens brought the offering to the Terminal class. When they crushed up the pink blocks and mixed them into punch.

The first day my human classmates began to disappear.

Chapter 2.