Traitor Born (Page 34)

“Finally,” he whispers. “Get mad, Roselle. Let the rage and injustice of what they’ve made you sink in. Together, we’ll destroy them all.”

“Oh, it’s sinking in. Just like my claws in your face if you don’t leave me alone.” I’m too exhausted to be tactful.

“What’s this about claws?” Grisholm asks behind us. The firstborn golden boy is swathed in light from the window. Reykin turns to greet him.

“Roselle is angry at me,” Reykin says, “because I won’t let her out of being my slave for a day. I might have to postpone it, though, otherwise I’ll feel cheated. She’s restricted to the Palace for the briefing and she has to see a physician.”

Grisholm grunts. “I’m not allowed out right now either. I don’t understand why we can’t just go to the trial grounds and watch the secondborn training camps. Roselle already decimated the attackers.” He looks at me with surprising admiration.

Reykin snorts in agreement, playing along. “Is it true they didn’t have monikers?” he asks.

“I didn’t see any monikers,” I reply. “Some of it is a blur.”

Glisten returns with an armload of items. “I have a few choices for sweaters,” she says, holding them up. Reykin reaches out and takes a long cream-colored one. Shaking it out, he holds it for me. It’s more like a coat that clasps in the front, sensor-controlled with a small apparatus on the sleeve to regulate the temperature.

Surprised by Reykin’s gesture, I pause for a moment. Slowly, I turn and thread my arms through the sleeves. Reykin’s nearness floods my senses. His scent surrounds me. I turn back, and he’s already reaching for the clasps, securing the ones to cover my abdomen and leaving the ones below my waist undone. I touch my hair, smoothing it, self-conscious about what I must look like.

Glisten hands me matching slippers. I drop them and shove my feet into them without bending down. The fit is perfect, and that annoys me, too. These people know entirely too much about me. That’s part of their strength—information is the key to their power. Their data scientists are as lethal with information as I am with a sword.

“Water,” the assistant says, passing me the glass with ice. “And chets.” She holds up a packet with maybe twenty inside. The value of this in my air-barracks back on the Base would be stunning.

“Thank you.” I accept the chets, resisting the urge to take a whole one now, and drop them in the pocket of my sweater for later, when I can better afford to be dull. Right now, I need my wits.

Clifton’s deep voice greets the liaison at the entrance to the reception area. He looks immediately to me, cuts off the man in front of him with his hand, and walks in my direction. “Roselle.” He says my name with such relief that I feel as if he cares. Large hands reach out for me and hug me. It’s shocking that he’s embracing me in a setting like this. He’s firstborn. I’m secondborn. The intimacy is taboo. It’s also causing excruciating pain in my ribs.

“Clifton,” I whimper and exhale.

Reykin puts his hand on Clifton’s shoulder and shoves him away from me. “Don’t touch her.” Clifton looks at the hand on his shoulder, then their eyes lock. The arms dealer isn’t used to anyone coming between us, and he doesn’t like it. Not one bit. “She’s injured,” Reykin adds.

Clifton throws Reykin a murderous glare. It was a trying night for him. Many of his friends and associates were murdered. He’s probably still adjusting to the shock.

“I’ll be better in a day,” I explain gently.

Clifton’s expression softens. “I’m sorry. I’ve been worried about you. I thought you died last night.” Real sorrow shines in his eyes. I want to fall back into his arms. He’s not emotionally bereft like all the other people here. It makes me almost forget he’s dangerous. Almost.

Clifton still has an agenda, and I’m a huge part of it.

“Excuse me, sir,” a Star assistant interrupts Clifton. “I was told that you have the surveillance footage?”

Clifton nods. He lifts his hand and unlocks his sword-shaped moniker. His eyes open menus made of holographic energy. “Where do I send it?” The man indicates his moniker. Clifton nods and initiates the transfer. Dropping his arm, he says to me, “You haven’t introduced me to your friend.”

“Firstborn Clifton Salloway,” I begin, “may I introduce Firstborn Reykin Winterstrom.”

“Winterstrom,” Clifton says, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“We haven’t,” Reykin says.

Clifton gazes at his left hand. “You’re a Star. How do you know my Roselle?”

“Your Roselle?”

“I’m her commanding officer.”

“She’s an advisor to the Halo Council, of which I’m a member,” Reykin replies with an entitled firstborn air he has perfected.

Suddenly The Virtue storms in, lifts a vase of irises from a mirrored side table, and throws it against the glass wall. It shatters into pieces. A ripple of flinches moves through the assembled assistants, but I’m used to the tides of war. Breaking glass merely gets my attention.

“Every unapproved secondborn out!” The Virtue bellows.

Secondborns claw each other in their haste to leave. Glisten is among the wiliest, leading the way. I don’t move. After the mass exodus, only an intimate number of secondborns and a slightly larger number of firstborns remain. Some I’ve met before, like Valdi Shelling. Others I don’t even recognize—except maybe the one in the corner, staring at me.

“How could you let this happen in Virtues? In my city!” The Virtue rages at Dune. Dune remains silent, unruffled. “And you!” The Virtue points at Clifton. “You should have seen this coming!”

Clifton begins making his apologies and shifting the subject to the plan for upgrading security features around the city. “With the massive wartime technology my team is developing . . .”

My eyes return to the firstborn in the corner. He’s still watching me. This older man seems so familiar. I don’t know why. My head tilts. He smiles at my who-are-you gesture, and then recognition dawns—I should say, Gates of Dawns.

Adrenaline crashes into my bloodstream. He’s Sword Commander Walther Petes. Dune’s fraternal twin brother. Here, in the Halo Palace. It must be him. My eyes go to his moniker, expecting to see a silver secondborn sword, but it’s gold. He’s a firstborn Sword.

He has the same build as Dune, with the same chiseled bone structure and the same full-lipped smile. His hair is a warm chestnut color. He wears it short—military length. His nose is different from Dune’s. This man’s nose has been broken a few times and never repaired. He’s clean-shaven. I try to see the color of his eyes, but he’s too far away.

“And you!” The Virtue rages on, his finger jabbing at me. “How are you still alive after you fell from the top of the Sword social club?”

“I’m hard to kill,” I reply.

His eyes flare. He glances from my face to Dune’s, and then back. “You’re ‘hard to kill.’ That’s your answer?”

“Yes.”

A rumble of surprised laughter shakes his shoulders. “She’s hard to kill,” he roars, laughing furiously and looking over everyone in the room. Others join him tentatively. His rage-filled gaze returns to me. “So am I. If I find that you were a part of this, I will rip your throat out.”