Page 5 of Keeping Sarah

She had Rex in her body.

That thought haunted me. I had watched over Deacon for hours before I’d left the infirmary. I was exhausted and sick with the thought of all that had happened during that awful battle we hadn’t seen coming. I knew why Sarah had possessed Rex’s body. She wanted to save us. We’d been overrun, outgunned. The fight had been pandemonium, and she found a way to stop it all in a nanosecond. She done the only logical thing she could do at the time, or else we all would have been murdered.

But it was still batshit crazy.

I jogged out to everyone who had gathered aroundAllegiant,waiting for word on how Deacon, and everyone else, was doing. Night had fallen. I hadn’t realized so many hours had passed. Deacon’s father, Valor, Silence, the rest our crews, and Valor’s friends stood nearest to the ship where our most injured patients were. And behind them, the conduits.

I tried not to hold all of this chaos against the ghosts—I knew Sarah would hate me if I had. But it was hard. Had the conduits not threatened Rex, had they not gone off the deep end…it didn’t matter.

Once there had been over a hundred of those speakers of the dead. Now, there were just eighteen, not including Omen.

And right before the fight, they had thrown their allegiance to Sarah. For that alone I had to bury my anger.

“How is he?” Valor asked, his face paler than I’d ever seen it.

“Ode says he will be alright.” I said.

I paused to let him collect himself after the news broke his composure, then explained everything else she had told me about his condition. I wished I could have held Valor and offered him comfort, but that was an impossibility due to him being a ghost now. But the see-through man in front of me had bought me as a very young boy and practically raised me. He was Deacon’s father, but in so many ways, he was mine too.

“It’s gonna be okay, Valor,” I said, giving him the only reassurance I could. “But he must rest, or he could die.”

Silence, his living paramour, stepped forward. “We will make sure he’s alright, Jac. I assume you’re going after Sarah?”

“Soon.” I gave her a half-hearted smile. “I just…if I found her before seeing him awake and okay, she’d kick my ass.”

Silence laughed sweetly. “Yeah, I think she would.”

I pushed through the crowd and found myself next to Omen, who was speaking to a conduit I didn’t know. All of the ghostly women looked worn. Scared. Like the rest of us.

I addressed the group. “Conduits,your queen, my consort, saved us all by ending that fight and stealing Rex into herself. What will you do to rescue her, the way she rescued you from his wrath?”

They exchanged knowing glances, before the one near Omen spoke. “We have been discussing it, Jacaranda, and,” she took a stiff breath, “we believe it would dishonor Sarah for us to go rescue her.”

I stared at them in shock. “What?”

“Well,” she nervously continued, “it was her choice to take Rex into her body…we’ve never seen anyone living do such a thing. None of us knew it was even possible, it’s not in the holy texts—"

“You owe her your lives!” Omen roared furiously at them.

“Not technically,” the conduit said meekly. “I mean, we don’t know how the fight would have gone, and—"

“You fucking cowards, I’ll do it myself!” Omen bellowed.

She stomped away. Three of the conduits ghosts followed her. To talk her out of it or to go with her, I wasn’t sure.

I glared at the remaining fifteen. “She is right about you. All of you. You have dishonored your names, your families, your legacy. Justice Bateen was right to execute you.” I followed Omen into the house. “Omen, wait—"

She emerged with her rucksack from a bedroom in the back. The three conduits who had followed her had theirs, as well.

Omen stopped in front of me. “What?”

“Don’t go yet,” I said. “Once Deacon has woken up, I’ll come with you—"

“Don’t bother.” She went past me. “I won’t tell her you were with the cowards—"

“Excuse me?”

Omen spun on me, her expression filled with fury. “None of you have even moved to save my queen—"

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