The Cage (The Cage #1)(42)
Author: Megan Shepherd

Yasmine’s green eyes flashed in his head again. She had woken him on the boardwalk, and he’d jerked upright. His head had been pounding and he hadn’t been thinking straight. All he knew was, he was somewhere he didn’t belong, and there was an ocean and shops and a beautiful girl. He’d grabbed her hard enough to bruise her. He hadn’t meant to threaten her. But she must have been so scared already, and his size frightened people. . . .

“What did you see?” he growled.

“I see you taking care of Nok. You know she is scared so you sneak to the farm when no one is looking and get her a peach. You leave it for her on the bed.”

He sighed in relief. Mali hadn’t seen, then. That look of fear crossing Yasmine’s face, and her tearing away, and him chasing after her, certain she had answers, still so dazed he didn’t know what he was doing. She’d run straight into the ocean and dove into the water. Leon had yelled at her to come back. By the time he’d gone in after her, she’d stopped moving.

Drowned.

While trying to escape from him.

He stopped pacing and glared at Mali. God, he hated how she never seemed intimidated by him, no matter how he tried to push her away. He hated most of all how much he liked the shape of her face, and that stringy hair, and that cold look. He’d thought Yasmine had been beautiful too.

He jabbed a thick finger in her face. “Listen, kid. You may think you understand humanity, but you’ve been living with those bastards for too long. I’m done with this whole social experiment. They can mess with time, spy on me, I don’t care. I’m done with this—you most of all.”

He stomped past her toward the house, where he ripped off a few sheets from a spare bed and stuffed them into a pillowcase, then stormed out the back. The jungle called to him. He’d never belonged in this pretend town anyway. He should have taken Yasmine’s death as a hint that he belonged alone. A cold shiver ran through him, and he whirled toward the ocean.

Was it Yasmine’s ghost? Was she the one giving him headaches?

He liked the solitude of the jungle. No talking. No arguing. No stringy-haired girls with scarred fingers. There were the black windows, sure, but what did he care if he was on display? Let them watch. All they’d see was a guy not giving a shit.

“Be careful.”

He nearly jumped. Mali stood behind him on the path. How she’d moved so fast to get there, he wasn’t sure. In fact, in the moonlight and shadows, he wasn’t sure she was real at all, and not a hallucination brought on by stress.

“There is a reason the Kindred create the town. Humans are not meant to live on their own. Away from the group you start to lose yourself.”

The branches around her rustled, and when he caught up to her, ready to unleash a string of curses, she was gone.

Had she even been there?

Shaken, head throbbing, he pushed farther into the jungle. He’d slept in the huts before. With the sheets, he could make himself comfortable. He could scavenge food from the farm. He didn’t need the others at all. If the Kindred wanted to punish him for it, let them try.

He paused and tilted his throbbing head toward the sky.

Sometimes he thought he could hear the moon moving.

30

Cora

NO MATTER HOW FAST Cora ran, Lucky’s words clung to her heels. All this time, he’d been lying to her. About the accident. About believing they could go home. About believing she wasn’t stealing food. She plunged into the shadows of the forest. There was no moon or stars, but her eyes adjusted. She followed the steep path toward the mountain biome, the farthest one from town.

Sweat slicked on her face. The path curved, trying to steer her back to town, but that was the last place she wanted to go. She leaped off the path onto the wild forest floor, where roots and twigs twisted at her feet. Snow began, softly at first. She ignored the blinding flakes and kept running until Lucky was far behind her and the town was a distant memory, until her foot caught and she slammed to her knees.

The shock of impact left her numb. Her frozen lungs fought to pull in air. She squeezed her throbbing toes and searched for what had made her trip.

There—a sled.

It was old-fashioned, with wooden slats and metal runners, though the edges were harmlessly spongy. Next to it were five more sleds. Leon had told them about this puzzle—some kind of racecourse.

Her body started shaking so hard it threatened to shatter. She had been running off-trail for hours, and she ended up exactly where the Kindred wanted her to be. Running in circles. Her brother, Charlie, had owned a pet rat before he’d left for college. Sometimes he would take it out and let it ride around on his shoulder, but most of the time it ran on a wheel in a corner of its cage. Running, running, running.

She felt like that rat. Running endlessly, going nowhere.

She shoved the sled down the mountain. “I’m not playing your games!”

The hair on her arms started to tingle. The pressure in the air crackled. She balled herself tight, pressing her back against a tree, not daring to look up. She knew, if she did, Cassian would be there. She clenched her jaw in anger. Well, if he really could read her mind, good. She focused on how much she hated him.

But when she did look up, and saw his two boots, and then him standing so stoic in the snowfall, the anger vanished. This was the person who had rescued Mali. Who had saved Cora’s own life from the Warden. Could she truly hate someone who would do that? Did he deserve her fear—or her admiration?

Cassian’s boots crunched softly as he approached. He crouched so they were eye to eye. He wasn’t wearing a coat, but he didn’t shiver. His head tilted to study the goose bumps on her bare arms.

“You should return to the house, where there is warmth, and try to sleep.”

A snowflake landed on his cheek and melted quickly. The metallic sheen to his skin had a way of absorbing the low light so that he almost glowed in the darkness—a man made of starlight. A man from her dreams. She leaned her head against the tree and squeezed her eyes shut. She had never noticed before, but snow made a sound when it fell, like rustling leaves.

“I have brought you something,” he said.

Cora opened one eye, begrudgingly curious.

He removed a small object from his uniform pocket and held it an inch from her palm. It took Cora a moment to recognize the delicate gold chain tarnished around the clasp, the golf club charm and the theater mask and the airplane. Her necklace. She had thought it destroyed forever, like Lucky’s watch and their clothes and every trace of their previous lives.