“Alternatives to what exactly?”
I could see the anger in his face, but I didn’t care.
“What do you think?” I said. “To the
war
, of course.”
“Emma, there are no alternatives,” Dresden said.
The words exited his mouth slowly as if to penetrate the thick skull he obviously thought sat on my shoulders.
“Dresden, there is always an alternative,” I said in the same manner. “And I think you know that. You don’t want to admit it.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because you came looking for me,” I said.
He stared at me so I continued.
“If you truly believed war was the only answer you wouldn’t have followed us. You would have called in the troops and started the war now that you had good incentive to do it.”
My certainty faded away when I saw a smile creep over his face—even more so when he started to chuckle. His chuckles turned into an all-out laugh. He sat on the ground and held his stomach with his arms, trying to control the laughter.
“Wh—why are you laughing?” I said.
I obviously had missed something. I watched Dresden start to dry heave in his attempts to stop his laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
His laughter was reduced to small giggles. He wiped tears from his eyes.
“What’s funny,” he said. “Is the fact that … that’s exactly what I did.”
I could feel my heart tighten and plummet to the bottom of my stomach.
“You … you did what?”
His laughing ceased entirely and he got off the floor.
“I told the troops to start the war,” he said, dusting himself off. He looked into my eyes. “You know, since I had
good incentive
.”
“You didn’t,” I said.
My eyes watered for a very different reason than his. I walked to the bars of Star Stone that separated our cells and gripped them with my hands.
“Please tell me you didn’t really do that.”
“I’m afraid I did,” he said, walking to the bars, too. “Guess you know me better than you’d like to.”
I put my forehead between two of the bars and felt the tears run down my cheeks.
“Of course, I probably wouldn’t have acted so rashly if I’d known you’d left voluntarily.”
I shook my head. “War’s been raging for a month and all I’ve been doing is lying in a hospital bed.”
“Now you’re feeling what I’ve been feeling,” he said.
“Why did you come after me?” I said, looking at him.
My eyes met his and he took a couple of steps back. I could only assume he saw something he didn’t like.
“Wh—what do you mean?”
My tears seemed to evaporate off my eyes.
“If you were so anxious to start the war,” I said, my voice rising with anger, “then why didn’t you stay with the troops and start fighting?”
I watched him juggle answers in his head.
“Why did you come after me?” I said again.
“I—I guess it was a hastily made decision on my part,” he said. “When you weren’t in your tent and we couldn’t find you anywhere I panicked. I was so sure they had kidnapped you, maybe even hurt you that all I could think was at least to try to catch up to them. Now that I think about it, I had no clue what I would do if I did catch up.”
A realization struck me. “You were the fourth horseman that joined the group.”
Dresden nodded. “I followed your group as best I could in the dark. It was extremely difficult considering you had a Silencer. After a while I thought I’d lost you guys until I saw a flash of light. I knew the flash had to be an Illuminator in your group so I rode toward it. I had just reached you guys when another horse joined in front of me and everyone disappeared.”
I remembered the night as he explained what he had seen.
“I could only keep up for a little while,” he said. “I couldn’t see the group nor did I know what direction they were heading. Eventually I began to hear my horse’s hoofs hit the ground and realized I’d lost all of you.”
“How did you find the cabin the next day?”
“In the morning I was able to find the trail you guys left. It didn’t snow that night so the hoof prints were pretty fresh when I searched for them in the light. I followed them southeast out of the forest. Then the trail continued when I got to the Eastern Plains. I followed it for a while and realized they continued into the mountains.
“I figured if I was heading into an ambush they would more easily see and hear me if I approached on horseback so I took to the air and searched from the sky. Sure enough, just over the southeastern slopes there was a cabin standing alone. I didn’t expect to see a bunch of kids running around the lawn in front of it. Nor did I expect to see a jet of water shot at me from one of them. All I remember was the water puncturing a hole in my wing, me falling, and then blacking out.”
I smile. “For what it’s worth I tried to stop him from shooting you out of the sky.”
“What’s worth more is that they tell me you tried to save me.”
I feel my cheeks flush. “Yeah, that’s where I went wrong, unfortunately.”
“Why’d you try and help me? I’m sure they knew I wasn’t one of them. And you had to know that being Winged, I would have survived the fall.”
“Somewhere in my mind I knew that you’d survive it and really didn’t need my intervention, what little I provided. But to tell the truth, those facts didn’t enter my thoughts at all when I saw you falling. All I thought was that somehow I had to help you. I couldn’t let you hurl to the earth the way you did.”
“Yes, well thanks for the help. I only broke both my legs and arms and had a huge crater on the back of my skull.”
“Yeah, well if you weren’t so heavy I could have stayed airborne better. I only broke
every
bone in my body and either impaled or ruptured various vital organs—”
“Unnecessarily,” he said, in case I’d forgotten that everything hadn’t needed to be done.
“Right,” I said. “Well, I guess I figured you offered something to society that was worth saving.”
“Even though you couldn’t tell who I was?” he said, taking a step forward.
“Um, yeah. I guess I feel everyone adds something to society that’s worth saving.”
“Oh, okay,” he said with a smile. He took the last step to the bars. “And here I was beginning to think I was special.”
His hands encircled the bars and gripped mine. I straightened my fingers and slid them between his.
“Fine,” I said. “You might be a little special.”
* * *
I heard the wheels of a carriage and a horse’s hooves traveling up the road. Dresden heard it, too, and turned his head toward the door.
“What exactly is the procedure for this place?” I said.
I found it weird that they had taken the time to make the trip to the tower twice.
Dresden shook his head. “It doesn’t involve them making a trip back here so late in the day.”
I frowned at the thought of letting go of him. I slid my fingers out from between his and walked to a barred window at the other end of my cell
“Well, they’re definitely coming back for some reason,” I said. “That’s the same carriage and driver I had coming here.”
I watched the carriage make its way to the tower and something flew into my view. I screamed and fell back.
“What’s wrong?” Dresden said, rushing to the spot he could get closest to me.
I glared at the window into a laughing face.
“Sorry,” the face said, looking at us and chuckling. “I couldn’t help myself.”
“Who the hell are you?” Dresden said across the cell.
He stopped laughing and I realized that he was the boy that had jumped onto my carriage on the way to the tower.
“The name is Taegan,” he said, “not that it’s a huge concern to you.”
Another head appeared next to his and looked in the window.
“Is that her?” the new face said, looking at me.
“That’s her,” Taegan said with a nod.
“Okay,” said the second arrival. He disappeared again.
“What are you two doing?” Dresden demanded.
“You’re the one I saw earlier, aren’t you?” I said before he could answer.
“Yes,” he said. “We’re here to do what I promised.”
He disappeared. I got up from the floor.
“What’s going on?” Dresden said to me.
I walked to him, grabbed the sides of his head, and kissed his forehead.
“They’re going to break us out of here,” I said with a smile.
There was a small pang of satisfaction when his forehead glowed red.
“And you know them?” he said.
“Not personally, I had a brief run-in with Taegan on the way here.”
“And he said he was going to break us out?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking at the gated door.
I heard the carriage finally reach the front of the tower and come to a stop.
“The thing is, I don’t know how they’re planning to do it,” I said.
I didn’t know why but an uncomfortable feeling rolled over me. The gate opened and the same guard from earlier walked in.
“Two visits in the same day,” he said, looking at us. “Aren’t you the lucky pair?”
“What do you want?” Dresden said.
He reached out, grabbed my arm, and dragged me back to him.
The guard laughed, “Isn’t that sweet? But it really isn’t her you should be worried about.”
I could feel the heartbeat in my chest speed up at his words. I looked up at Dresden and wrapped my arms around him, intending to try as hard as I could not to let him be taken away from me.
“I have orders to bring you in front of the Council, General Stone,” the guard said. “They want to make plans with you.”
“I’m going with him,” I said.
“I’m afraid you’re not,” the guard said, looking at me. “They want you guys split up and brought in one at a time. You know, so nothing funny happens.” He walked to the door of Dresden’s cell and opened it. “I suggest we get moving so as not to keep the Council waiting. Quite a few of them aren’t bearers of patience.”
Dresden looked down at me and nodded. I sighed and my grip loosened at the look in his eyes. He kissed me in the same spot I had kissed him on the forehead. He slid out of my arms and I watched him walk out the door of his cell. The guard closed it behind him.
“You might want to stay where you are,” he said, watching me take a step closer to them.
I watched his fingers melt together and half of his forearm flattened into a sharp edge.
“My orders include making sure he comes quietly.”
Dresden took a step back, his hand to his neck. “You can’t take my word in saying that I will?”
“I’m afraid not,” the guard said, raising his now lethal looking arm.
“No!” I screamed.
A silhouette jumped into the entranceway. “Stay back,” it said, pointing at me.
Dresden’s eyes darted to him and the guard turned.
I felt relief when I realized that it was Taegan’s partner.
“Cover your ears and close your eyes,” he said.
I watched his dark skin gradually turn lighter. I ran to the back wall of my cell, turning my head and closing my eyes when his body became too bright to look at. My hands flew to my ears. I could feel in my soul what was going to happen next. A shockwave rushed past me. It was almost immediately followed by an earth-shaking explosion and a blast of extreme heat. I could feel the ground and tower rattle around me. I curled into a deaf, blind ball on the floor. Various objects pelted me and then everything was silent.
For a moment I was terrified that the enormity of the explosion had caused me to go deaf. I opened my eyes and took my hands away from my ears. I heard rubble fall to the ground. The side of me that was not against the wall twitched in pain. I looked at my singed clothes and body. My skin instantly began to repair the burns.
I looked at my leg and swore loudly. I could see my femur for a few moments before the muscles and tissues started to rebuild themselves over it. I compacted myself tighter together when I heard footsteps coming toward me.
Taegan walked to me. “Good, you’re conscious and relatively unharmed. You can change into these.”
He placed a new set of clothes on the floor in front of me and turned to walk back out the way he had come.
“We’ll be waiting outside.”
I watched him jump over a huge stone that had broken through the bars of my cell. I made sure he was outside before I lifted myself off the floor. The left side of my body was covered in blackened skin and pink spots of new skin in various sizes. I felt a tug on my scalp and reached up to find new hair growing from bald spots.
I changed into the new clothes, making sure to disturb my skin’s healing as little as possible. I walked to the hole in my cell and lifted myself over the chunk of stone Taegan had jumped earlier. As soon as I was over it I gasped.
The front of the tower looked like it had taken a blast from a couple of sticks of dynamite. The door, along with a twenty-foot radius around it had been reduced to nothing but blackened debris. I retched but was somehow able to keep myself from throwing up when I saw what I knew had to be body parts blasted in several directions.
“Oh, my God, Dresden,” I said, tears streaming down my face.
“That’s not your fellow prisoner if that’s what you’re concerned about,” said a voice behind me.
I turned and looked at Taegan.
“He’s over there,” he said, nodding back to the bars of my cell.
I ran over to the pile of stone. Tears streamed down my face even more when I saw Dresden’s severely burned face. The skin was completely burned off the right side of his face; his right eye stared up at me blankly. I began to move the rocks that pinned his arms and legs. I moved a particularly large chunk of rock and found his chest was caved in. I stopped letting myself look at him in too much detail and focused on moving his lifeless body out from under the pile of Star Stone.
“He’s going to be fine,” Taegan said. “He’s Winged so his body will repair itself. He luckily got far enough from the blast that his body remained intact.”
I turned my head and glared at him. “
Luckily
?” I said. The word dripped from my mouth like acid. “He needs to be taken to a hospital so everything can be set right and he can heal properly.”
“No, you need to get going before people start to wonder what the hell happened here,” he said, grabbing my arm.