Home > Steelstriker (Skyhunter #2)(2)

Steelstriker (Skyhunter #2)(2)
Author: Marie Lu

Only my eyes remain exposed. They are still as large and dark as ever, though they have been broken down and rebuilt into something new and superhuman. And now I see something different reflected in them whenever I pass a mirror—the presence of someone else haunting the back of my mind.

“Half of them are Marans,” Caitoman says to Constantine. After the many months I spent in captivity in the labs, I have picked up enough Karenese to get by.

“And the other half?” he asks. The question sounds disinterested, but through our bond, I notice the Premier’s attention pique, as if he had been waiting impatiently for Caitoman to tell him more about the prisoners.

Caitoman’s lips curl into a thin smile. He is all that Constantine is not: thick muscle and height and strength, full brown hair and mischievous eyes. But even Constantine’s eyes don’t possess the void that his brother’s have. When I look at the General, all I see is the ocean at night. Merciless and churning.

“Rebels we caught at the border states,” Caitoman replies. I struggle to keep up with his rapid Karenese. “Two of them were leaders of the recent unrest at Tanapeg. One of them is from Carreal. She was heading the attempt to break Carreal from the Federation.”

Rebels from the border states, Tanapeg in the west and Carreal in the south. I’ve been hearing about them for months, ever since I first started shadowing the Premier and protecting him. Through our bond, I sense a deep satisfaction coming from Constantine at his brother’s report.

“I assume you’ve questioned them thoroughly,” Constantine says.

Caitoman lifts an eyebrow at his brother as an unspoken understanding passes between them. “You should know that,” he replies.

My hands clench and unclench, even as I tell myself to control my emotions. I have directly witnessed how General Caitoman interrogates his prisoners. Seen with my own eyes how many tools and weapons he uses, how creative he can be, how good he is at keeping people alive through it all. How that thin smile remains even after the very end.

I force my thoughts of the General away and instead look around the arena, always watchful for any threats to the Premier.

If Constantine dies, my mother dies. This is the only thought that fuels my concern for the Premier’s life and health. If he is killed, a message gets relayed instantly to whatever secret location they’re keeping my mother. A sniper shoots her. By the time Constantine’s heart has stopped beating, so will my mother’s.

So I watch for any potential assassins, spies that might harm Constantine, danger waiting in the shadows. I watch, even though it makes me sick to my stomach.

You’re angry with me.

Constantine’s voice in my mind jolts me out of my watch. I still haven’t gotten used to this new bond between us. The Skyhunter and her master. He sounds different in these secret conversations to me from when he speaks aloud. His voice is smoother, less hoarse and more refined, perhaps how he’d sounded before his illness took hold.

I’m always angry at you, I respond to him through our link. I glance over to catch him looking sidelong at me with an expression that I hate. His eyes tell me he can sense the roiling tide of emotions, my fury with him for making me stand here and oversee this. So I fold my emotions ruthlessly back, as if I were squeezing the muscle of my heart to force it smaller.

It’s one of the first things I learned after my Skyhunter transformation: My bond to the Premier’s mind draws much of its strength from my emotions and his. It is why Red and I had always sensed each other’s feelings so acutely, why our emotions seemed almost to feed each other. Why Red was the most powerful on the battlefield when consumed by his rage. I’ve found the colder I can make myself, the harder Constantine has to work to sense anything through our link. The more I hold back my emotions, the less Constantine can sense of my mind.

And Red …

The less I allow myself to feel, the more distant I grow from Red.

Though I can still sense the steady, faint beating of his heart from some great distance, that is all. I haven’t felt a ripple of emotion from him since my transformation. Since I started to pull myself back like this. It’s almost a relief. The less I feel, the less Red can feel of me. And the safer he and any surviving Strikers will be from the monster I’ve become.

It seems to amuse Constantine, the way I struggle to keep him at bay. But if he’s aiming to get a reaction out of me, he’ll have to dig harder than this.

Half of these prisoners mean nothing to you, Constantine goes on. They are from countries you’ve never visited. The others are those who never treated you right. Maran nobles. Strikers who resented you for being on their patrols. Are they so sacred to you?

My lips twist. You’re one to talk about what’s sacred.

Why? Because I’m going to make Mara a better place?

He knows what he’s doing. I grit my teeth and fight to hold back my anger. It doesn’t belong to you.

He folds his arms across his chest and nods down at the turned earth. The ornate headpiece he wears today over his shaved head sways, strings of jewels clicking and tinkling. The energy source from the Early Ones is rumored to be so powerful that it can bring warmth and light into every house across the land, he tells me. Worth digging up a jail, wouldn’t you say? And the people we’ll execute today are war criminals, scoundrels who hoarded wealth, and zealots who pledge themselves to a nation that is no more. Worth executing, wouldn’t you say? He casts me a knowing look. Tell me I’m wrong, Talin.

You’re wrong.

Tell me Mara would do anything differently in my position.

Wouldn’t change anything if I did, would it? I bite back. I can hear the snarl of my answer echo in his mind. You only do what you want. You ask me only to taunt me.

He runs his fingers along the hem of his sleeve. Truth sounds like a taunt when you don’t want to hear it.

I rest my hands against the ledge before me, waiting for my emotions to still.

Let me tell you a truth, then, I tell him in the most serene voice I can muster through our link. You are afraid to be seen as a weak ruler.

In an instant, I know my aim is true. He looks away from me, but through our bond, I sense his amusement flicker briefly into annoyance. We can play this game from both sides and sometimes, just sometimes, I’m the one who wins.

The hint of his irritation disappears, and he settles back into his cool demeanor. Careful, Talin, he tells me before looking away. Remember who drapes you in wealth.

I look down at my new outfit. Where before I wore the somber and refined sapphire uniform of Strikers, now I have clothes dripping in foreign luxury. Black wool and leather layered underneath with fine linen and trimmed with silver fur now covers me from neck to toe, and over my ornate sleeves are armguards fashioned in the strongest, most beautiful black steel I’ve ever seen, all branded with the Federation’s seal.

Constantine wants his war machine to look good.

Did they dress up Red in fancy things like this too? Had he been paraded around like a puppet before he managed to escape? I find my thoughts drifting, as they often do, to the memory of him at my side. His figure, strong and seemingly invincible, crouching protectively behind me. His face, outlined by late-afternoon light in Newage’s bath halls.

Is Red thinking about me out there?

I pull my thoughts harshly back. Let myself go too much, and Constantine will sense the twist of my feelings. He’ll know I’m dwelling on Red again. I’d learned this the hard way early on, when I was still recovering at the National Laboratory and wept an entire night, yearning for Red. The next morning, Constantine had shown up in my chambers, interrogating me on whether I’d felt Red’s location. He’d sent Caitoman scouting in the woods where I thought Red might be. I’d been wrong, luckily—my transformation had put me in such a state at the time that my mind was a haze. But it was enough of a warning.

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