Traitor Born (Page 29)

My eyes widen. “No one told me.”

“I figured as much when your mentor informed me that I should move on with my life.”

“Dune said that?” I shift in my seat. My side aches, making it hard to breathe. I can’t find a comfortable position.

“Yeah. He said, ‘Secondborns don’t have the luxury of friends,’ as if I have no clue what it’s like to be secondborn. As if I don’t understand the dehumanization and subjugation, being treated like a piece of meat! Then he gave orders not to let me back in the Halo Palace without an invitation.”

Anger swells in my heart. All this time, I’ve been worrying that Hawthorne was dead. Dune could’ve easily assuaged my fear, but that didn’t fit into his agenda.

No longer surrounded by skyscrapers and the bright lights of the city, I wonder for the first time where Hawthorne is taking me. The night travels by. I don’t care where we go. I just want to keep flying and never look back. I wonder if there’s any place in the world to hide with Hawthorne. It’s too hard to be without him, every night lonesome and long.

The aircraft slows and descends, passing over a tall wall that has a fusion-powered security dome. As we near the energy field, a hole develops, allowing Hawthorne’s airship to enter before it closes behind us. We circle a sprawling estate centered amid pastoral grounds. The house itself is old and majestic, made of stone and glass with cathedral peaks. “You live here?” I ask.

The airship sets down on a hoverpad adjacent to the formal entrance of the mansion. “It’s my family home in Virtues. This is Lenity; we’re just outside of Purity.” An illuminated path leads through a formal garden to the stone steps of the house.

Lenity is the sister city of Purity, but I don’t see a city. I just see land and lakes in every direction. Hawthorne powers down the engines. My mouth hangs open a little in awe. “This is quite a change from the air-barracks. It must keep you busy.”

“The secondborn staff runs the place. I have very little to do.” Opening his door, he climbs out, pulls his armor from his chest, and sets it aside on the ground. He closes his door and walks around to my side, unlatching my door and offering me his hand. I take it. As he pulls me up, I wince. My ribs feel cracked. My hand goes to my side. “Are you okay?” Hawthorne asks, concern etched in the lines on his face.

“One of the Death Gods slammed me into the railing. I think I cracked a rib—hitting the water like a brick didn’t help.”

“Can you walk?”

I nod. “Yes. It just hurts.” I limp forward. My boots squish with water.

“Hold on.” Hawthorne bends down and pulls my boots off, leaving them on the ground. The powerful muscles of his side look a little like shark gills. He straightens, and I get to see him in just a leather war skirt and sandals. My heart beats harder. My cheeks feel flushed. “Better?” he asks. I nod. He takes my arm gingerly, hugging me to his side with his arm around my waist for support.

We follow the illuminated path through the gardens. “Tell me about your house,” I urge, trying to think about anything other than the ache in my side.

“The original house was a gift to my great, great—I don’t even know how many ‘greats’—grandfather, from The Virtue of a few hundred years ago for some act of bravery. My father went on and on about it when I told him I was coming here to get away from Forge for a while.”

“What act of bravery?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t listening.”

“Hawthorne,” I chide him.

Hawthorne’s expression turns stormy. “My father didn’t care what happened to me for the past ten years, and now he wants my attention?” His jaw tightens. “Now he wants me to care how we got a pile of stone and mortar—like it means something? It doesn’t. It’s all just stuff—possessions. You and I never needed any of this—we had each other.”

All this time that I’ve been struggling with the loss of him, he’s been doing the same and trying to adjust to a life and a family that never wanted him. “You’re right. They can have only what you want to give them and nothing more.” We take a few more steps. “But”—Hawthorne slows—“I’m not sure they’re entirely to blame. They didn’t make the laws.”

He resumes a faster pace. “No. They just follow them unquestioningly.”

The front of the house is a gigantic open archway with no doors. A security field of soft golden light shines down from the keystone. Up-lighting from the base of the structure makes it look like some monster about to swallow us whole in the moonlight. I’m able to pass through the security field with Hawthorne because of his moniker. Had I been alone, it may not have allowed me access.

On the other side of the entryway, the floor is made of rough black slate with fossilized pyrite swords embedded in the stone. The foyer branches off in several directions, taking different paths. The ceilings are a couple of stories high with a gallery and a clerestory above the nave-like entrance. Skylights glow with moonlight.

It’s obvious that the exterior walls were once made of ornate stone, but some have been replaced by invisible, open-air security fields so that the outside merges with the inside, a connection with nature. It’s fascinatingly beautiful, and so different from where we come from, Hawthorne and me. We lived in a windowless, tree-shaped fortress and air-barracks, hardly ever seeing the outside unless we were fighting or mobilizing. Now his house is literally a part of the landscape.

A sleepy-looking secondborn with a brown mountain range moniker enters the foyer. He stops short when he sees us. His hand moves to the side of his head in an “oh dear” gesture. “Sir?” he says.

“Send a medical drone to my quarters, Ashbee,” Hawthorne orders.

“Would you like a tray as well?” Ashbee inquires, eyeing the smudges our dirty feet have left on the slate floor.

“Yes. Thank you. Just send it with a mechadome and go back to bed.”

“Very good, sir. Will our guest be staying for the evening?”

“Good night, Ashbee,” Hawthorne replies.

Hawthorne takes me to his quarters at the back of the house on the main floor. His bedroom is nearly barren, except for a very large bed and a couple of large wingback chairs. There are only three “solid” walls. A fourth side is open to the outdoors. The seating stands in front of this nonexistent fourth wall. Without the lights on, it’s easy to see outside. The view of the lake is gorgeous in the moonlight.

“Someone stole your wall,” I murmur.

Hawthorne snorts with laughter. “There’s a wall. It’s an invisible security field. You can’t walk through it unless you have my moniker or you’re touching me. It allows in the breeze but keeps out the bugs.” A warm wind blows in off the lake outside. In the distance looms a wilderness of trees. I hear their leaves rustling and the sound of the frogs and insects chirping. I’m unaccustomed to it, but it appeals to me on a visceral level. “Low light,” Hawthorne orders. Dim illumination pushes away the darkness.

Hawthorne shows me to the attached bathing area. An array of automated white candles flames to life as we enter. At the far end of the chamber, a huge claw-footed tub sits on a floor of limestone. The outside wall has been removed here as well, replaced by an invisible security field. Smooth river stones and stepping stones lead to a walled garden beyond. Flowering trees and topiaries offer some privacy, but the starry night is perfectly unobscured.