“You didn’t have to do this,” I tell her.
“Oh, don’t be so overdramatic, Kalinda. They were only servants, and you must have known you were putting their lives at risk by involving them in your little escape plan.” She steps toward me. “I mean, where did you think you were going? And why? I never would have believed it if Annora hadn’t come to me with her suspicions.”
I look at Dr. Veragelen. She returns my look with a small smile. “We ran the possible scenarios through the algorithms, and they all came up with the same answer. You would run.”
“Kalinda,” my mother says, “you know what’s at stake here. I can’t believe you would jeopardize the future of the whole system. For what?”
“You told me my friends were safe. You lied—you sent out system-wide orders to execute them.”
The smallest of frowns forms between her eyes, and I can almost see her mind working. She clearly didn’t expect me to know that. “It was better in the long run. You would have come to realize that. They weren’t our sort of people. They were Inners. Scum.”
“What about my father?” I yell. “Was he Inner scum as well?”
Her eyes go icy cold. “We will not discuss your father.” Then she sighs. “Kali, I didn’t want it to come to this. But I suppose I must force your hand.”
She’s unbelievable. I turn my face away from her. But that only brings my gaze to rest on Arik. So, I turn back. “You can’t make me do anything. You have nothing to hold over me anymore.”
“Maybe not, but that won’t be needed. Apparently, Annora has been working on some drugs that will make you a little more…compliant. And that—hopefully—will not have any long-term side effects.”
I don’t like the sound of that. Not one little bit. I think of Beckett. She’s never talked about what went on in the labs on the Caelestis, but I know it was horrible.
“In the meantime, I think we’ll make sure you don’t wander away again. And give you a little time to consider your choices.” She turns to the guards. “Take her…somewhere safe.” Then she walks away from me. Dr. Veragelen follows, and they head off the rooftop and disappear from sight.
Hands take my arms, and I know it’s over.
Chapter 79
Kali
The guards drag me from the roof, my princess face forgotten as tears roll silently down my cheeks.
It’s over. Everything is over, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
I try to glance behind me, to get one last glimpse of Arik before they shove me through the door to the palace. But there are too many guards between him and me, and all I can see is a sea of black and gray.
What am I going to do? The thought haunts me as they drag me down the stairs and through the halls. What am I going to do? Lara is dead. Arik is dead. And my friends on the Starlight…if they aren’t dead already, they will be soon.
The pain of it drives me to my knees.
I hit the ground despite the hands propelling me forward, and sobs rack my body. I did this. With my selfish, reckless determination, I did all of this.
Beckett tried to warn me. Dark and confused as she is, she knew my mother was evil, and she tried to tell me. I didn’t believe her, and now it’s too late. My willful ignorance has doomed us all.
“Get up!” one of the guards holding me shouts.
I don’t move. I can’t. My legs have turned to water beneath me.
What did I do?
What did I do?
The words are a mantra in my head, guilt a pounding, burning devastation in my blood. I want to go back in time, want to change all of this. But I can’t. It’s done. Arik and Lara are dead, and there is nothing I can do about it.
“Get up!” the guard growls again, and this time he yanks me up so hard that I feel a wrenching in my shoulder.
I barely notice the physical pain through the emotional agony bearing down on me from all directions. My legs are still weak, my entire body trembling so badly that I can barely stay on my feet. Which only pisses the guards off more.
They start to drag me through the hallway, one of them on each side of me. Normally, I would fight them, but I have no fight left in me. All I can think about is Arik’s crumpled body and Lara’s broken one. All I can think of are their sightless stares. And then I can’t stop myself from imagining those same looks on Ian’s face. On Max’s face. On Rain’s and Merrick’s and Beckett’s and Gage’s faces.
No, no, no.
Please let them be okay.
Please don’t let them be dead.
I don’t even know who I’m pleading with. The universe? Rain’s nebulous higher power? Fate itself?
Please, please, please don’t let my mother have killed them.
The guards drag me down another flight of stairs and then down the hallway that leads to my room. I have one moment to wonder if my mother has changed her mind. But then they’re half pushing, half pulling me past my door, and I know that my mother hasn’t changed anything.
It’s a holding cell for me. Before today, I had no idea we even had holding cells within the palace.
We turn another corner and then another and another, and I’m crying so hard I can’t even see the floor beneath my feet. I have no idea where we are at this point, no idea what part of the palace they’ve dragged me to, and a tiny part of my brain—the part focused almost entirely on vengeance—urges me to pay attention. To figure out where I am so that I have a clue what to do if I escape.
But escape is such an impossible concept that I can barely wrap my head around it. Not when sorrow is crushing in on me from every side, weighing me down, turning my insides into a dark and endless void.
We’re only halfway there when a commotion sounds behind us. I don’t bother to even try to turn my head. Whatever it is, it won’t bring Lara and Arik back, and right now that’s all that matters to me.
All of a sudden, the guards holding me shove me face-first into the ground. Laser cannons fire all around me, their yellow streams bouncing off the walls and ceilings and even the floor a few centimeters in front of me.
Beside me, the guards are falling one after another. Whoever’s attacking them is smart—they waited until they were in the long, narrow corridor so there was no escape. And no chance for them to really fight back.
Another guard falls, dead, at my feet, and I smother a scream. A modicum of self-preservation squeaks through the grief, and I push myself up to my hands and knees, start crawling down the hallway, through the blood and the burned flesh littering the floor in all directions.
I don’t know what’s going on here, don’t have a clue who has found their way into the palace to take on my mother’s and Dr. Veragelen’s guards. And I don’t care, as long as they don’t kill me, too. Because I’m not going down unless I can destroy my mother and Dr. Veragelen in the process. They deserve to lose everything for what they’ve done.
But first, I have to escape. Laser fire and screams continue to fly around me, so I stay as low to the ground as I can, remembering what Ian taught me. There’s a corner up ahead, a hallway that leads away from this one, and it’s my present goal. Get there and get out of the line of fire. For now. Everything else can wait.