“Have more,” Ma urged him.
He shook his head, his gaze fixed on me. “Is it true?” he asked me.
“Is what true?”
“The blood trials.”
Fuck, had the news reached them already?
“Oh, yes,” Ma clapped her hands together. “Lowland announced them a few hours ago. A chance for my beti to shine once more. A chance for our daughter to showcase her skills for everyone to see.”
Baba’s mouth worked as if struggling to hold back a chiding. He inhaled through his nose and exhaled to calm himself.
“Danika?” he probed. “Is it true?”
“Yes, Baba. It’s true.”
“Of course it’s true,” Ma snapped. “Lowland said so.”
But he’d wanted to hear it from me. To understand why I’d agree to such a thing.
“I wasn’t given a choice, Baba.”
He dropped his gaze to his plate. “We can run,” he said. “We can go now.”
“What are you talking about?” Ma stared at him, mouth parted in horror. “Why would we run?”
“No.” I reached across the table and took his hand. “Not yet. I have a plan.”
“What are you talking about?” Joti asked.
Baba ignored her. “Tell me.”
“I can get through the trials. I know I can. But I need you to get away.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet, but you need to stall. Feign sickness, whatever it takes, but don’t move to central Middale.”
“Anu,” Ma pleaded with Baba. “Make her stop. My head… It hurts.”
“Drink some water.” Auntiji topped her glass up with water from the jug on the table.
Ma picked up the glass and glugged it as if on autopilot. She sighed, and her expression grew dreamy. Her attention dropped to her food.
“Joti, you too,” Baba ordered.
My younger sister complied.
“They’ll be out of it for a while now,” Auntiji said. “Now, tell us what really happened at these games. Tell us everything.”
“I feel sick,” Baba said.
Ma and Joti were washing the dishes in the kitchen, and Baba, Auntiji, and I were gathered in his study. I’d told him everything, and it was a weight off my shoulders.
“I had no choice but to kill them, Baba.”
“I know, beti,” he said. “You did the right thing. Those bastards had it coming.”
My father rarely cursed, but when he did, he did it with a satisfying vehemence. “I remember this blue mist. They used it when I was a young man.” He prodded the fire in the grate. “You say this Danaan can get you to Nina? That he’s on our side?”
“I trust him.”
“And this Killion… This weapon… You trust him?”
“He saved my life several times. I trust him implicitly.”
“And I trust you.”
“I can’t believe they would kill their own,” Auntiji said softly. “To prevent the return of emotion.”
“Yeah, power can make monsters out of the best of men, and these guys were already pretty twisted.”
The doorbell rang, and a moment later, Joti popped her head around the study door, eyes wide with shock.
“The shining one says you have five minutes.”
Shit, I’d allowed time to get away from me. This wasn’t a social visit, even if that’s how Aspen and Lowland intended it to look. This was a visit to warn my family, to promise them that I’d get them out, even though I had no fucking idea how right now. Then a possibility occurred to me. Magnus. He was one of the immune, and the last time we’d spoken, even though he’d said there was nowhere to run, he hadn’t said there was no place to hide, and that’s all I needed. A hideout for my family. If he could help, he would, I knew it. But what if Slade refused to let me swing by there on the way back to the inner city?
No. I’d find a way. It’s what I did.
“Baba, promise me you’ll do whatever it takes to avoid the move to the inner city.”
“I promise,” Baba said.
“I have ways to induce sickness,” Auntiji said. “Those shining fuckers won’t be setting foot in this house.”
Okay, good. All I needed to do now was speak to Magnus and hope and pray that he knew of a place to hide my family until Killion and I could retrieve them.
“No,” Slade said. “Lowland’s orders are clear. We need to head back to the Keep.”
“Fuck. Look, you want out of Middale, right? Freedom?”
He sighed. “This will help us?”
“Yes. I have a contact, and I need to speak to him.” Okay, so Magnus wasn’t really a contact, and he could still tell me to fuck off, but saying it this way made it sound more promising. “You can tell Lowland I wanted to see my guard friends. Rally the troops and all that shit.”
The corner of his mouth turned up, lifting his tusk. “Huh. Yeah, that could work.” He turned the wheel sharply, taking us off the main road and onto the slip road that would take us toward Sector B and the barracks where I hoped Magnus would be.
“Don’t you need to check in with Lowland?”
“I’ll explain the detour later. That way he can’t say no.”
I sat back with a smile. “You know what, Slade? You and I are gonna get along just fine.”
Guards greeted me with cheers and fist pumps as I stepped out of the car.
“Fucking A for Sector B,” one of them said.
“Nailed it!” another added.
This was a triumph to them, and the loss of their comrades didn’t register because that shit was buried by the drug and the blue mist. My speech, my rousing words, were gone from their minds, so I did the only thing I could. I smiled and fist-bumped my way through the crowd and into the barracks.
Magnus was the only reason I was here.
I found him in his study, waiting for me, and as soon as I shut the door behind me, he bridged the distance between us and pulled me into a hug, crushing me to him.
This was new. This was so not our dynamic, but something had changed after our not-date of hot wings and beer. Something had shifted, and now he was hugging me, and I was letting him. Hell, I was hugging him back because it was so fucking good to have this moment, this contact, with someone who understood the death and horror of it all.
He cupped the back of my head with one large hand and massaged my scalp. “You fucking made it, Khatri. You fucking did it.”
I breathed him in, then pulled back. “They’re making me do it again.”
“I know. What the fuck?”
“Politics and shit I don’t understand, but I found the weapon.”
His eyes grew wide. “Where is it?”
“Not an it, he. It’s a person… A… I don’t know what he is, but he’s powerful, and the ancients have been keeping him a prisoner all this time.” There was so much about Killion that I could tell him, but all he needed to know right now was that Killion was our way to stop the Tuatha. “His name is Killion, and he can help us stop the Tuatha and bring them down, but he needs to gather his strength first. He’s coming back for me in six days.”