Page 46 of Kingdom of Today
The glower flattened her palm where my heartbeat fluttered too fast and too light. Heat seeped from her. A speck at first, but it quickly grew. Hotter and hotter, soon dispersing. Pain returned with a vengeance, and a scream burst from me. My spine arched, then flattened, the pain gone as quickly as it had begun. I sagged over the ground, panting.
“I’m good, I’m good,” I croaked.
Ember sagged over me, and Domino snarled, “Ember is drained. She’ll be out of commission for weeks when we need her most. All you had to do was listen to me.”
Guilt pricked me, sharp and sure. I’d never seen the librarian so furious.
Another glower rushed over to gather Ember in his arms and hold her protectively against his chest. The same glower who’d accompanied Domino the day I’d interacted with Mykal. “Do not ask her to do this again,” he growled at both Domino and Cyrus. He didn’t wait for a response but carried the unconscious glower away. Many others followed them.
With a hand under my nape, Cyrus helped me sit up. “You able to stand, Pink?”
“I think so.” My gaze flicked to Domino, but the librarian had already disappeared. I winced. Bet he couldn’t stand to look at me. I’d done the one thing he’d asked me not to.
“Good. Because we have a journey ahead of us. We’ve got to get to the castle on foot as fast as possible. It’s closer than the base. CURED released more feeders to combat the glowers. It’s about to be hundreds against two.”
My stomach churned. “We can’t go to the castle.” Astan was there. I gripped his armor. “Please, Cyrus.”
He pursed his lips. “Very well. We’ll head to the base. Let’s go.”
Chapter Twelve
Those who think they can and those who think they can’t are both right.
—The Book of Soal1.20.23.7
As I ran behind Cyrus, I inspected my stomach. Shock almost knocked me flat. Nothing. No bullet wound. No scar. Not even a bruise or a hint of pain. Just smooth, unbroken skin.
When Ember healed me, shereallyhealed me. I owed her everything. Cyrus and Domino too.
But we weren’t out of danger yet. Far from it. My actions had opened an entire train cart of problems. “By the way, I lost my goggles, yet I can see. Nothing is upside down or dark. Everything is upright and well lit.”
“That’s because Soalians see past the darkness and automatically correct the RVM. For us, the lens is the problem.” Cyrus shouldered his way past a cracked door hanging by its hinges on a brick building threatening to topple at any moment. “That’s why CURED keeps a log of all goggles worn into the field, and by whom. If anyone deactivates a pair and survives an outing, they know why.”
Uh-oh. “Maybe I should go back and find mine.”
We’d passed the door, entering an outside courtyard overrun with thorny vines.
“No need. I picked yours up while Ember worked on you.” He spun and tapped the metal band secured around his neck, different from the one over his eyes. “The lens remains activated. You can put it on when we’re closer to the base.”
“Thank you.” He always thought ahead. But. Um. “Maybe I should take the lead. I can see without hindrance. You can’t.”
“The goggles I’m wearing are inactive. I store their chip in the heel of my boot and swapped the lens for a fake that doesn’t restrict my vision.”
Smart.
Cyrus led me across another portion of the battlefield. We jumped over bodies, picking up discarded weapons along the way, all while skirting around the feeders ignoring us in favor of dining on slain glowers, all-you-can-eat-buffet style. The grotesque sight left me gagging. Didn’t help that a fetid stench of rot coated the air, carried by wafts of smoke.
Speaking of. “Why didn’t the smoke affect me?” I rested my finger on the trigger of a harbinger, ready to punch holes in anyone who approached me. “I’m a new Soalian. I should’ve gone down.”
He kicked a severed limb out of our path with more force than necessary. “My guess is your link to Domino impacted your reaction.”
I winced. “About that.” But “link” wasn’t the right word. Unless he knew something I didn’t?
“Later,” he stated, as if he didn’t trust himself to have the discussion now. “What I don’t know is why certain glowers froze.”
That, I could explain. “Lolli shot them with strange green bullets.”
Cyrus hissed something under his breath. “She’s determined to deliver Ember to the emperor. A gift to garner his favor.”
