Ice Country(55)

Skye’s given us both the gift of hope. I wonder if she saved any for herself.





~~~





While we’re all energized with Skye’s words, I tell them all about Wes, and how he’s going to get us out, and how when he does, we’ll get them out too. The Wildes and Heater and Marked are all surprised, but pleased, and it only adds to the rising level of excitement.

But then, all of a sudden, it’s as if another minute of talking is more than any of us can handle, because we’re still confined, still prisoners, so we retract into our cells and our own individual thoughts. Except for Buff and Wilde, who I hear whispering to each other long after the rest of us stop listening. I wonder how that’s working out for him—flirting with the unflirtable.

But even they stop eventually, and all goes quiet.

It’s so quiet that I suspect at least a few of the group have fallen asleep. I peek through the hole and try to see Skye, but all I see is the cracked and chipped gray blocks of the opposite wall, painted shimmering hues of orange and red by the flickering torchlight.

I want to sleep too, to turn off my brain and let the hours slip by until Wes comes to crack Big on the head and give us our freedom back.

But I can’t, so I lay there in silence, worrying about Wes and Jolie, and wondering about Skye’s sister, Jade. Could she really be alive after all these years? Somewhere in this very palace?

I hear a sound, a whispered conversation. Buff and Wilde chatting again? Nay, too close. Circ and Siena.

I slither forward noiselessly, till my ear is right against the bars but I’m still outta sight. It’s a terrible thing to do, I know, spying and eavesdropping and all that, but I just have to. Everything about the thing Circ and Siena has intrigues me. They seem younger than me, a year or two perhaps, and yet there’s such certainty in each other, in their togetherness. It’s fascinating and magnetic and I wonder just how rare it is.

I can’t hear their words, but their tone tells me everything. Soft, tender, occasionally broken by laughter. I peek through the bars. They’re holding hands again, and playing some game with their fingers, trying to trap each other’s thumbs. I smile, watching them do that simple thing in this impenetrable dungeon.

I don’t know how much time passes as I watch them. They stop with the thumb fight and just talk and talk and talk, like they’ve talked this way hundreds of times before, and will continue hundreds of times after. So easy.

Finally, though, Circ rubs his eyes and scoots back, outta sight, presumably to take a nap. Siena stays by the bars, however, flicking them lightly with her forefinger, making a soft ting!ing sound.

“Psst!” I hiss, my attention-getter of choice.

She turns, sees me, a snake with its head stuck through the bars.

She crawls over.

“Thank you,” she says.

“For what?”

“For telling us what you did. It’s bigger news’n when good ol’ Veevs got all big with child.”

“Sounds like a big deal,” I joke.

“’Tis for me,” she says. “A year back I had no sisters, thought Skye’d been taken by the Wildes, maybe killed. And of course, Jade was long gone. Now I might still have both. I only wish my mother could’ve known.”

“She passed?” I say.

“No, she’s dead,” Siena says, looking at me strangely. “You’ve a funny way of talking, you know that?”

“I could say the same about you,” I say.

“’Spect so.” She goes back to ringing her finger off the metal bars. The conversation fades for a minute as I muster the courage to ask her what I want to. I feel silly just thinking it, especially since I’m older, probably more experienced with relationships, if you could call what I had with any of my exes relationships.

“You gotta thing for my sister?” Siena says, looking me in the eyes suddenly.

I laugh and if I had any liquid in my mouth I woulda surely spewed it out. Like sister, like sister apparently. Blunter than a lumberjack’s axe at the end of a long wood-chopping day.

“Is it that obvious?” I say.

“No,” she says. “But she’s my sister, so I look out for her, and she does the same for me.”

“I don’t want to cause any problems,” I say, “especially not if she and Feve…”

“Feve?” Siena whispers. She looks across the way to make sure he’s sleeping. “She’s not with Feve. Skye knows I’d kick her butt halfway to ice country if she was with the likes of that baggard.” She scratches her head, as if thinking. “Well, I s’pose we’re already in ice country, so I’d hafta kick her back to fire country, but you know what I mean, don’t you?”