Текст книги "Return Once More"

Автор книги: Trisha Leigh

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-One

I struggled, elbowing my captor in the gut hard enough to knock the wind out of him and loosen his hold, then whirled around to find Oz rubbing his stomach.

“Are you following me?” I hissed, trying to remember that the sound-bouncing hallways worked both ways and the Elders hadn’t gone far.

“I’m pretty sure you were following me.”

“And you were following the Elders. Don’t let me stop you.” I turned and continued my trek, silent in my bare feet, but the pant of his breathing told me he followed. I ignored him, intent on my mission. Hoping he’d get annoyed and give up.

A few more turns led me past the Archives but still hadn’t brought me to the Elders. They had moved beyond the offices, into a place that I had always been told was reserved for storage of extra wardrobes and comps. Outside a final doorway, their voices became clear.

Oz’s hand pressed against the small of my back. His gray eyes darkened with worry as they flicked between the hushed tones filtering into the hallway and me. He jerked his head back the way we came, expression turning from pleading to frantic and finally to anger as I shook my head repeatedly, a finger pressed against my lips.

He gave up, throwing his hands in the air, and I turned my attention to the conversation he didn’t want me to overhear. One of the Gatlings spoke—their voices were indistinguishable even when they weren’t on the other side of a closed door, so I had no idea which one.

“… assignments for this week?”

There were a few beeps and shuffling noises, like the sound table comps made as they raced through a search request. I had no idea there were more research labs back here.

“Maude, you and Minnie try to figure out how to influence Cecil Beaton,” Zeke’s unmistakable voice rasped. “I’ll continue to scrub the references we decided on, and David has an assignment already.”

David Truman cleared his throat. “And Oz?”

Before I could hear the answer, footsteps approached us from behind. Oz’s hand tightened on my wrist, whipping me around to face him, and before I could protest he’d shoved open the door to the room across the hall and dragged me inside.

Then his lips were on mine, his hands shoving me against the wall as he kissed me hard.

My instincts begged me to scratch at his eyes, punch him in the nose, and scream bloody murder, but as the door across the hall flew open and twin exclamations of surprise rang out, I understood he was trying to give us some cover.

I felt his surprise as I relaxed and kissed him back, softening my lips against his to play my part. His arms tightened around me, pulling our bodies flush together.

We broke apart at the sound of a cleared throat. Dizziness tipped me off balance—shocked from being caught, disoriented from being kissed by Oz, of all people, and a little bit stunned by how quickly my life was spinning out of control.

Truman and Booth stood in the doorway, eyebrows raised.

My face heated with confusion and embarrassment, and for his part, Oz looked properly flushed and ashamed. To an outside eye, the two of us looked exactly like a couple of teenagers who’d been caught making out in an off-limits area, not people who spent their days threatening one another and the last ten minutes stalking the Elders in charge of their futures.

“What are the two of you doing here?” Booth demanded. His lanky, frail frame filled the doorway, and with his arms crossed, he was imposing enough to make me shrink closer to Oz.

I don’t know what instinct made him snake an arm around my back in support, but at the moment, it steadied me. It was even better when he spoke first.

“Do we really need to answer that? Because I’m pretty sure you just got an eyeful of the answer.”

Oh, stars, did he really just say that like a cocky asshole who’d gotten handsy in the back of a closet at a party? He really was well and good off his freaking nut.

Booth didn’t look amused by the smarmy answer. The lines of his face appeared stern even when he meant to be kind, and his dark eyes studied us with more disappointment than anything.

Before he could respond, Truman reached out and grabbed a fistful of his son’s shirt, dragging him away from me. “I expect these sort of infractions from Kaia, but not from you. We’ve all taken a great risk, believing that you’re ready, based on how responsible you’ve always been. This is unacceptable. You have a True Companion. This girl is not worth losing everything.” Truman let go of Oz’s shirt, shoving him a little harder than necessary so that he banged into me.

I reached out to steady him, unsure whether I was playing the part of the insulted lover or simply being nice. “Hey. I’m standing right here. If you’re going to talk bad about me at least wait until you’re alone.”

“Sarah Beckwith is your friend, Kaia. Your roommate. What are you thinking?” Booth asked, his voice soft, filled with the concern that had been missing from Truman’s.

The question twisted my stomach, shame and guilt churning the sherbet punch into a soup of nausea. I hadn’t wanted to kiss Oz, but Booth didn’t know that. And Sarah wouldn’t, either, if she found out. She might not even believe me. I suddenly regretted not confiding everything to her and Analeigh at the same time because the thought of her believing I would ever do any such thing felt like a punch in the chest. Oz and I were … friends, I supposed. Classmates. Now, apparently, conspirators. But would she believe me?

“I don’t know, Elder Booth. I … we got carried away. It won’t happen again.”

“Please return to your dormitory. We’ll decide on your sanction and meet with you both tomorrow morning.” Truman dismissed me, his cold gaze trained on his son.

My feet refused to move, for some reason concerned about Oz. Only I had been dismissed, and the fury flashing in his father’s gaze almost made me worry for my classmate’s safety.

I didn’t need to feel responsible for Oz getting into hot water, and Truman wouldn’t hurt his own son. I had enough trouble managing my regrets over getting myself in trouble after my questionable decision making these past several days.

Booth stepped to one side of the doorway, beckoning me through with a pointed look, his patience clearly wearing thin. Oz nodded when I looked back at him, his eyes hiding whatever he was feeling. He reached up to wipe his lips, as though trying to smudge away the memory of mine.

With my emotions a jumbled mess, I hurried back toward my room. Sanctions were public record, so the hope of hiding what had happened tonight didn’t exist, and one question weighed on me heavier than all the others right now.

How in the System was I going to explain this to Sarah?

*

“What were you and Oz doing sneaking around the storage areas, anyway?” Sarah’s tan freckles stood out against her blanched cheeks.

It was impossible to tell if she was angry, hurt, or confused. Probably some mixture of all three, which pretty much described my feelings at the moment, too. Analeigh’s gaze burned the side of my face, saying she wanted me to come clean, to tell Sarah everything. It would hurt her even more to wonder whether or not she was betrothed to … whatever Oz was these days. That confused me as much as anything. I couldn’t pin him down.

In the end, her happiness meant too much for me to break her heart. If Oz was going to do that, he could damn well do it without my help. My pause must have been too long, because Sarah’s eyes filled with tears a moment later.

“If there’s something going on between the two of you, please tell me. I don’t want to be the dumb girl who’s the last one to know her own True doesn’t want to be with her.”

“Sarah, no. No.” If she weren’t so distraught I would have laughed at the ridiculous suggestion that someone who had the chance to actually be with their true love wouldn’t take it. “I wanted to go and watch holo-files of Caesarion, but I was too embarrassed to tell you guys, so I snuck out during the party. When I heard the Elders coming down the hall and acting all secretive, I just … well, you know how I am. I was curious and wanted to snoop.”

“But Oz left the party right when you did. How do you explain that?”

I couldn’t, but Oz could take care of his part of this mess on his own. “You’ll have to ask him. I didn’t see him until I snuck out of the Archive room to follow the Elders. He asked what I was doing, and then tried to talk me out of it—of course.” That coaxed the slightest smile out of her. “And when I ignored him, he followed me. Probably to try to keep me out of trouble, except we both got caught eavesdropping and now we have to go to a sanction in the morning.”

Sarah didn’t say anything for a long time. I closed my eyes and tried to stop my heart from pounding. Oz’s secret travels and clandestine assignments might be off-limits but I couldn’t lie to her about tonight. Not totally. It would hurt her worse to hear it from other people, and thinking that I tried to cover it up would all but solidify, in her mind, that there was something to cover up.

“He kissed me.”

Sarah’s eyes flew to my face, and Analeigh sucked in a sharp breath. Before either of them could start yelling, I pushed on. “It was only so the Elders wouldn’t think we were snooping, and it didn’t mean anything, I swear.”

Tears rolled down Sarah’s cheeks. Each one burned my heart like acid, pain I deserved for being in the position to hurt one of my best friends, even if it had been unintentional. “Sarah, I’m sorry. I swear to you, nothing is going on between Oz and me. Wrong place, wrong time. That’s all.”

“So, the sanction is about being caught making out in a restricted area?” she choked out.

“Yes. His dad was one of the Elders who caught us, though, so I’m sure the penalty isn’t going to be terrible. A few weeks of mopping duty, maybe.”

Moppers, those with lower aptitudes that cleaned our Academy, normally changed the sheets, dusted the nooks and crannies, things like that. Taking over their duties for a week or two was a standard sanction for minor infractions. I’d done it a few times. It was kind of peaceful, actually, and a good way to let my mind wander over upcoming reflections when it wasn’t terribly disgusting. Cleaning the bathrooms in the boys’ dormitories nearly cured me of committing infractions ever again, though.

“That’s really all there is to it? You were snooping, he tried to get you to stop, and then you kissed him to cover up the real reason you were in the restricted storage area?”

I swallowed my protest that he had kissed me. Oz had saved my ass, so it wasn’t fair to throw him in front of the transport ship now. “That’s really all. I swear, Sarah.”

My insides, from my stomach to my heart to my throat, clenched painfully at the lie. Not because the kiss had knocked loose hidden feelings for Oz, other than more confusion. Because even though I knew Sarah was asking whether he and I were involved in some kind of illicit affair, it felt like a lie to omit the twisted battle of secrets in which Oz and I were mired.

They weren’t our secrets, but that wouldn’t matter when she learned that I had known he’d possibly been betraying us all and had kept it from her. She could hate me forever.

I would hate me forever, if I were in Sarah’s shoes.

Now, she took a deep, shuddering breath, climbed off my bed, and wandered into her own room. A series of squeaks and rustles said she’d burrowed under her covers, finished dealing with me for tonight. Analeigh and I looked at each other, and I read disappointment and sorrow in her reproachful gaze. She knew nothing was going on between Oz and me, but we both knew if I hadn’t snuck out tonight none of this would have happened.

“Should I have told her everything about Oz?”

The throat tats came in handy once in a while, and Sarah’s bedroom left her too far away to overhear our silent whispers, even if she was faking sleep.

Analeigh shrugged, then shook her head. “No. We can’t ruin her trust in him without proof.”

“The Elders definitely know he’s traveling alone, and they were talking about giving him some kind of assignment.”

“We don’t know that what he’s doing is bad. Maybe it’s good,” she replied, her tone doubtful.

I wanted so badly to believe that. That everything and everyone I’d believed in my entire life had humanity’s best interest at heart, that Oz cared about Sarah and wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize our lives or our future in Genesis.

“They’ve always told us it’s wrong, to mess with history. Deadly. And even Jonah said it’s dangerous.” Even though I trusted Caesarion, the truth of their warnings rang in my bones.

“Right, but Jonah is dangerous, according to the Elders and the Enforcers. It could be that we only want to believe he’s still good because we love him.” Analeigh’s cheeks turned pink as she reached out and squeezed my hand. The quiet reprimand in her expression earlier dissolved, making room for empathy and confusion. “I’m sorry for being harsh earlier.”

“When?”

“I was thinking it and you know it. But you didn’t mean to hurt Sarah, and I doubt Oz did, either. Maybe … do you think you could talk to him again? Get him to trust you?”

I shook my head, my fingers lifting to my mouth before I realized what was happening. I pinched my lower lip, trying to erase the memory of the kiss. “I don’t know. He’s scared.”

He had frightened me, then pissed me off, and that had taken precedence over any concern for his well-being. Maybe he’d climbed in way over his head. I could try talking to him. For all of his bluster in the air lock yesterday, he’d gone out of his way tonight to help me when he could have easily shoved me into his father’s arms and told Zeke everything he knew about me traveling with Jonah’s cuff. And he wouldn’t have been wrong to do it.

“What are we going to do, Kaia?”

I squeezed her hand harder, holding on for dear life. I don’t know.”

She pressed her lips into a thin line, worry wrinkling her brow and erasing her instinctive disapproval of my antics as she glanced toward Sarah’s doorway. We were in this together, no matter how hard she wished I had just followed the rules, had never grabbed Jonah’s cuff or found out Oz was up to something.

Another memory from tonight surfaced. “Do you know anything about someone named Cecil Beaton? The Elders were talking about influencing him.”

She paused, chewing her lip, then shook her head. “I know I should. It sounds familiar. We could look it up.”

I put out my hand, stopping her as she went for her personal comp. “No. After earlier, I’m not sure what we can research without arousing more suspicion. Let’s just think about it for a few days, and if we don’t come up with anything, ask Sarah to help us get around the system security.”

“If she forgives you by then.”

For all of her meek exterior, Analeigh was always on my side. Perhaps not where Caesarion was concerned, but as far as things went with the goings-on at the Academy. And Oz.

Since he and I had yet another “date” first thing in the morning, I might as well give talking to him a shot.

It couldn’t be a worse idea than kissing him.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The next morning dawned far too early, and since Oz and I were summoned to the private sanction before breakfast, sleeping in qualified as a pipe dream.

I rose twenty minutes before the alarm, deciding to take Analeigh’s advice to try again to talk the truth out of Oz. I brushed my teeth and threw my long hair into a crooked bun on top of my head, then slid into my familiar apprentice uniform. An attack of chills led me to grab my warm brown sweater at the last minute.

The halls were empty because all sane people were snoozing the morning away. The door to the room Oz shared with Levi opened before I’d had the chance to work out what to say, or knock, and Oz stepped into the hallway. I watched him before he saw me standing off to one side, my heart stopping at the sight of a light bruise blooming across his jaw. He stretched his arms above his head, groaning a little as his joints popped and sleep-stiff muscles worked loose. His black hair was wet from a shower and curled around his ears, and the rings around his eyes suggested he hadn’t slept much better than I did.

“Good morning,” I said, loud enough to startle him. Unable to tear my eyes away from his marred face.

“Kaia,” he said, recovering quickly. “I didn’t know you were capable of getting up before the last possible second.”

It took me a minute to react to the unexpected, good-natured teasing. “Have you been body snatched by someone with a sense of humor? Because I need to talk to the old Oz about why he changed James Puckle’s trajectory.” I watched him carefully for any nonverbal response, but the only one I got was a quick flicker of determination in his eyes.

“There’s no reason for you to worry.”

“Oz. That’s not what you said last night. You said there were things I didn’t understand, that I should leave it alone.” I paused, watching him seriously. “And that bruise on your jaw? That makes me worry.”

“You don’t need to worry about me.” He glared, but fear lurked behind his eyes. “I did a lot of things last night I shouldn’t have done.”

The reminder of our kiss heated my cheeks and made it easier to ignore the proof that things with his father had gotten out of hand. Easier to stop wondering if it was the first time, knowing it couldn’t be. It was stupid to be so embarrassed about that kiss anyway, to let it affect me. It hadn’t meant anything, and it wasn’t like I’d never been kissed before, and by much more effective lips.

“You shouldn’t have kissed me, but—”

“I didn’t enjoy it, I promise you.”

I glared at him. It was better than kicking him in his balls, which was my first inclination. “I was going to say, before the new smartass version of Oz came out to play, that I appreciate the bailout. Also, you should know that I told Sarah.”

“You what? Why would you do that?” He turned green, like he might heave all over my sneakers any second.

At least we hadn’t eaten yet.

“She and Analeigh knew something happened. She saw me run after you like some kind of lovesick stalker, and it’s not like the rumor mill isn’t going to be churning with the news of our sanction this morning, anyway. Would you rather we lied about it like there’s something to hide?”

His face fell and I almost felt sorry for him. Whatever else was going on, Oz clearly cared about Sarah and their relationship. After meeting Caesarion, I understood. The thought of disappointing him or making him hurt, even unintentionally, twisted my heart into a knot. It softened me toward this boy whose secrets were an infuriating source of dangerous intrigue.

“I had to tell her, Oz. I mean, maybe you and I each have something to hide, but we don’t have anything to hide. And that’s what she would have thought.”

He nodded, eyes downcast. “Thank you for telling me.”

We moved down the hall toward the wing that held the Elders’ offices. The space where judicial panels were held sprang off Zeke’s office, the rooms sort of modeled after a courtroom or judges’ chambers on Earth Before.

“I didn’t enjoy kissing you either, you know,” I added, even though it sounded defensive. I just couldn’t let him think I’d been all weak in the knees over his dorky lips.

Oz shot me a wry smile. “Noted.”

“What did they say to you after I left?”

That one question changed the air between us, folded it up and sucked it into a black hole until we might as well be standing on opposite sides of the System. Oz’s face shuttered, all of the openness of a few minutes ago wiped away, replaced by a blank slate. He rubbed his jaw, winced.

“Oz. Please. I know something’s going on. We might only be apprentices but we’re still Historians. We protect the past. Ensure the future.”

“Since when do you take duty and oaths seriously, Kaia?”

The stinging insult flung hard into my gut. The hours spent with Caesarion tried to hammer me with guilt, but those impulsive visits didn’t negate my belief in this institution. “I may not always follow the rules, Oz, but I wouldn’t put the future of humanity at stake.”

“But I would?” he challenged.

“I don’t know. Would you?”

Oz shook his head, refusing to look at me. “You don’t know anything.”

“If you’re not putting us in danger, then you must be able to predict trajectories. To know for sure the effects you are creating. How?” I tried hard to keep the desperation from my voice, but the flicker in his gaze said he’d heard it.

“That’s impossible. Your imagination is getting the best of you. Again.”

He was lying. Like calls to like, in science and in life. To my untruthful brain, untruths sang loud and clear.

“Jonah said something dangerous is going on at the Academy. I think you know what it is.”

“I thought you hadn’t spoken to him since he left?”

“You’re determined that I’m not special enough to be privy to your secrets, so why should you be privy to mine?”

“Your brother is a delinquent and a criminal. If anyone is a danger to the continued validity of the System, it’s him.”

This was going nowhere. He wouldn’t admit he knew anything about a project that was a secret from the apprentices. Jonah had insinuated that the Elders—well, at least Zeke—were behind it. So, how did Oz, not even a full Historian yet, fit in?

In a last-ditch effort, I reached out and wrapped my fingers around his strong, pale forearm, dragging him to a stop. His skin pricked under my palm before he pulled away as though my touch pained him.

“Oz. If you need help, you can trust me.”

His rain-cloud eyes grew heavy, as though holding tight to a storm of confessions that begged to break free. I hoped my own dark brown gaze urged him to give in, said I could be his friend, because it was true. If for no other reason than to help Sarah, I would be Oz’s friend in this—whatever that meant.

I found that, after everything, I did care about him and not just because of how his fate intertwined with my friend’s. Our history did indeed count for something.

After what seemed like an eternity, but probably lasted only a minute or less, he shook his head. Black chunks of hair flopped in front of his glasses, and he raked it back with his long fingers. “I can’t trust anyone,” he said softly, before turning and walking the last few steps to the judgment chamber alone.

*

The sanction meeting had gone about as well as expected, except they’d declared mopper duty for a month, not two weeks. And not together, of course, given their assumption that the two of us couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

Ugh.

Elder Truman refused to even look at Oz, his eyes hard, lips set in a grim line. Oz’s mother had died giving birth to him, but aside from his gray eyes, all of his physical traits must have come from her. Truman definitely seemed like the type who would never get wrapped up in a relationship, True or not. That his supposedly perfect son had made such a cosmic error in judgment probably embarrassed him half to death, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that emotion came out of him as anger. A brief stab of worry sliced through me and I glanced again at the bruise on Oz’s cheek.

Oz probably had quite the time explaining his tryst with me, given that he’d been gifted with the rarest of loves. Boys were weird, though. Maybe he blamed it on cold feet or sewing wild oats or some other such nonsense.

Caesarion had sown his own wild oats—probably wilder ones than Oz could dream up—and it wasn’t like I’d never had a crush, or butterflies, or been kissed before now, but even so. If I’d gotten to keep what Caesarion and I had—if we had been as lucky as Oz and Sarah—I would never even look at another guy again.

I’d gone to the infirmary after our sanction meeting and complained of a headache. The medic pulled my recent bio data and recorded the spikes of pain that had recurred in the previous days, ran a few tests to make sure they weren’t something to be concerned about, then typed in an excuse that let me out of my assignments for the remainder of the day.

The medics only had access to the medical readouts, not what had been happening when the headaches spiked, so there was no way for her to know that I’d brought the headaches on myself by disobeying the culture prods from my brain stem tattoo by rolling around in the ancient Egyptian sand with a boy.

I used my wrist comm to send Analeigh a message, letting her know I was fine, but not to worry if she couldn’t find me for a few hours. It was as vague as possible, and if anyone read it, it could very well be a poorly worded message about my planning to nap off my headache.

She was going to be pissed.

The Elders were too smart to not double-check on me in the coming days, and to be honest, I was scared the tech Jonah had given me wouldn’t hold up if they dug too deep.

This would be my last trip to see Caesarion. To say good-bye. As hard as I’d been hanging onto the idea that I could save him, I hadn’t been able to find a shred of information that led me to believe it would be okay. I had run out of time.

My anxiety eased the moment I’d accepted my True’s fate. Caesarion could never have turned his people over to Octavian without a fight, would never have been content living the quiet life of a commoner. It would have felt like abandonment, like cowardice. I should have known the day I watched him risk his life to save a little boy he’d never met, a boy who shouldn’t have mattered to someone as important and high-born as Pharoh, but I hadn’t wanted to see.

The Kaia who had snuck off to Egypt to meet him believed her desire trumped the rules, but the girl he’d helped me understand I needed to be was different. I had gone to Egypt for selfish reasons—to have my moments. I’d had them, but now I understood that I’d been lucky they had not come at a cost. My role as a Historian, the mantle entrusted to me by the Elders and my family and the people of Genesis, had to take precedence. Caesarion would die as he was meant to. And I would let him, as I was meant to.

It was our destiny. If he could be brave enough to face it, so would I.

Running around the ancient world seemed childish now, among other things, while everything I’d ever believed crumbled in my present. But one more visit couldn’t make anything worse. It was kind of like dying twice or saying something was overly wet. You were either dead, or wet. And if they discovered I had technology that shorted out my location tracking, I was royally screwed as it was. If I was going down, it might as well be in a big, splashy way.

The creamy tunic and skirt fit comfortably now, and the emerald green sash contrasted prettily with my bronzed skin. My hair wasn’t in the style of the time, but I was getting better at setting the cuff, and since Caesarion would still be in the south of Egypt, I wouldn’t startle anyone but the guards again.

I set the cuff for a specific latitude and longitude that I’d researched—it should land me on an undeveloped section of the Red Sea coast—and set the year for what would most likely be the last time. A moment later, I was there.