Page 4 of The Blood Traitor

“Don’t care,” Kiva mumbled, dragging her feet.

The quarrier’s grip turned painful as she hissed, “You once told me I was strong and powerful and I could survive anything. That I owed it to myself to find a reason to live. Now I’m telling you the same, Kiva Meridan.”

Slumping in Cresta’s hold, Kiva said, “That’s not my name.”

“It is.”

“It’snot.”

“You are who you choose to be,” Cresta declared in a hard voice. “You arewhatyou choose to be. And right now, you need to choose to live. You can figure out the rest later.”

Even in her sorry state, the words left a mark on Kiva. The idea thatanything was her choice was laughable. For ten years in Zalindov, she’d lived by the choices of others, fighting to survive, day after day. When she’d finally tasted freedom, the decisions she’d made had done nothing but lead her right back to where she’d started, after losing more than she’d ever imagined possible.

The hole in her heart gave a pang; not even the angeldust could mask it completely.

“Make no mistake, I don’t care about you,” Cresta went on mercilessly. “But you saved my life once, and because of that, I owe you a blood debt. So you’re going to survive today, and you’re going to survive tomorrow, and you’re going to keep on surviving until those gods-damned drugs are out of your system. After that, you can decide what the hell you want to do with yourself. Live or die, you’ll be out of my hands. But until then, you’ll listen to me. And I’m telling you to buck up and prepare yourself for the worst day of your life.”

Kiva was so distracted by Cresta’s speech that she hadn’t realized they’d arrived at the domed building and were lining up with the other inmates, all readying to descend the ladder shaft down into the tunnels.

Struggling to maintain a steady stream of thought, Kiva murmured, “Why are you here?”

Cresta made a frustrated sound. “I just told you.”

Kiva shook her fuzzy head. She must not have been given the same amount of angeldust that had kept her mostly unconscious for the last few weeks, the lower dosage affording her enough lucidity to ask, her words heavily slurred, “No, why aren’t you in the quarry?”

There was a moment of hesitation before Cresta answered, “Rooke changed my work allocation after the riot. He didn’t like that I’d survived for so long, so now I’m a tunneler, facing an exhausting and inevitable death.”

Six months Cresta would have. A year at the most. That was the fate of a Zalindov tunneler.

A fate Kiva shared, now that she was no longer the prison healer.

She should have been terrified, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

For some reason, she didn’t think the angeldust was to blame.

“Next,” came a bored-sounding male voice, causing Kiva to look up from the dead grass to see that they’d reached the mouth of the building, where a pair of guards were ushering prisoners toward a set of ladders poking out from a rectangular hole in the earth.

“I know you’re messed up right now,” Cresta said urgently as the inmates in front of them disappeared into the shaft. “But whatever you do, don’t let go of the ladders.” At the blank look on Kiva’s face, she hurried to add, “Think of something important to you. The boy — the one with the stutter. You love him. Hold on for him.”

Tipp.

A foggy memory of the freckle-faced, gap-toothed boy blazed across Kiva’s mind, causing the pain in her heart to throb anew.

“Next,” repeated the guard, waving toward Kiva and Cresta.

“One rung at a time,” Cresta said. “Do it for the boy. I’ll be right beside you.”

Kiva nodded dully, her head feeling too heavy for her shoulders, but at the same time, impossibly light. She tripped over her own feet as Cresta prodded her forward, the guards watching with amusement. They knew who she was, how far she’d fallen. They wereenjoyingthis.

Fire rose within her, but it didn’t last, the angeldust sweeping it away by the time her hands reached for the metal rungs.

There were two ladders bolted side by side, and as Kiva began to descend the first, Cresta kept her promise and remained with her, all the way down to the first platform, then on to the next set of ladders. Down they stepped, rung after rung, platform after platform, with Cresta murmuring quiet encouragement. Kiva watched her hands as if they belonged to someone else, feeling nothing, only vaguely aware that shewas moving downward, that her muscles were burning, that the air was becoming stale and chilled.

Tipp. She would hold on for Tipp.

Even if, after what he’d discovered, after what she’ddone, he surely hated her now.

An agonized sound left Kiva, and Cresta looked over in alarm. But then they stepped off the final ladder, causing relief to flood the other girl’s expression.

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