The Cage (The Cage 1)

Nok shrieked with delight, jumping up and down and clapping, her mood flipping on a dime, as though the fight had never happened. She took Mali’s hands, swinging her around, trying to make her dance, but Mali just pitched her head toward the sky in distrust. The rain grew. Big fat drops formed rivulets and streams and rivers on the black windows. Rolf was trying to trace them with his finger, but there were too many.

“Why?” Cora turned to Lucky, rubbing her throbbing temples that were soaked with rain. “Why are they doing this? What do they hope to gain by changing things?”

“You’re tired, Cora. You haven’t slept.”

“You know I didn’t take everyone’s food, right?”

A slight pause. “Sure.”

Water flowed down his handsome face like tears, finding the valleys of his eyes, dripping off his jaw. Even if she hadn’t known him at home, and even though the Kindred had dressed him in a stranger’s clothes, she recognized sincerity in his face.

“They want to see what we’ll do.” She twisted her head toward all the watching windows. “They’re standing there now, watching us. You see them, right? The shadows?”

“Sure. I see them.” But his eyes stayed locked to hers. He tucked a wet strand of her hair gently behind her ear. “Do you trust me?” There was a strange hitch to his voice.

Her headache reverberated in her skull, louder and louder, but she nodded.

“Then come with me. There’s something I want to show you.”

28

Cora

LUCKY LED HER ACROSS the grass toward the weeping cherry tree that burst with thousands of blooms. “I found this place the first day, when you vanished.”

Cora could barely hear him over the falling rain. He parted the weeping branches and she ducked inside, flinching as a skeletal branch grazed her arm. But the tree gave them shelter, and the smell was soft and perfumed, and it slowly untangled the tension from her muscles, knot by knot, until she could breathe. The ground was carpeted in velvety pink petals. With the dome of flowers around them, it looked otherworldly.

She hugged her arms tighter over her wet sundress. “It’s beautiful, Lucky. But it doesn’t help us.”

“It isn’t about that.” He wiped the rain from the planes of his face. “It’s the black windows. They can’t see us here.”

She blinked as it slowly sank in. The branches formed a perfect dome that hid them from prying Kindred eyes. For the first time in fifteen days, she wasn’t being watched. Her throbbing headache lessened. She turned in a circle as mist caught in her hair like fairy-tale dust. She felt a million miles away from the half-mad dancing in the rain, and the broken croquet mallet, and the fact that their lives had been stolen. There was only the beating of her heart beneath her dress, and Lucky’s warm hand taking hold of hers, and a thousand feelings of relief.

For once, it felt like home.

A petal landed on his shoulder. She brushed it off. He was so solid beneath her fingers. Real. On impulse, she threw her arms around his neck and breathed in the smell of rain in his tangled dark hair.

“You have no idea how badly I needed this.” She could feel his pounding heart between two layers of ribs and skin and cotton. Her heart responded. She coiled her fingers in his jacket, wanting him even closer. She didn’t want to think about the Kindred. Or the missing food. Or the others.

She tilted her chin toward his. In the desert, they’d almost kissed. It would have been a mistake there, with the Kindred watching. They would have been doing exactly what the Warden wanted.

But there was no one watching now.

She pressed her lips to his. A hundred sensations overtook her. Her heart fluttered and spun like the petals falling around them. He pulled back in surprise. For a few breaths his eyes searched hers, water dripping from his dark hair, and she almost thought she’d made a mistake.

He let out a ragged breath.

Then he kissed her back, harder, his hands threading through her wet hair, pulling in a way that drove her mad. She matched his fervor. No thinking. Letting her heart overpower her head. Shedding all those days her father had told her to smile through pain. There were no black windows watching them. No Cassian was watching them. No other captives were shooting her sharp words and dangerous looks. An urgency swelled in her chest.

He turned his head away. “Wait. There’s something I have to tell you.”

She shook her head. “Whatever it is, I don’t care.” She pulled his shirt tighter, drawing him closer. All she could think about were his eyes in the rose-colored light and his arms around her. She’d had so little practice with this sort of thing, and her hand drifted to rub against her bottom lip. His face darkened like he wanted nothing more than to kiss her again.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you ever since you fell out of that tree,” he said. “But there’s something you don’t know.”

She rested her head on his shoulder, breathing in his scent, tugging at his leather jacket like she was afraid he would dissolve in the rain.

“Cora. It’s about your father.”

She let him go abruptly. It was strange to hear someone else speak about her life at home. It made it all suddenly real again. Her father. Charlie. Her mother watching Planet of the Apes on the sofa. Sadie barking at squirrels. “My father?” She shook her head in confusion. “What does he have to do with anything?”

Rain still dripped from Lucky’s hair.

“He has to do with everything between you and me.” Alarm started to beat in time with Cora’s heart, and she steadied herself against the tree trunk as he continued. “I told you I lived in Virginia for a while. I didn’t tell you when. I moved away two years ago. April third.”

“April third?” She pressed a hand to her aching head, trying to think past the fog. That date was stamped on her parole papers. The day she was admitted to Bay Pines.

He kept his eyes on the ground. “I should have told you that first day, but I just . . . didn’t. I had seen you in the newspapers, and on TV. I knew that your father was a senator and your mother used to be an actress.”

He knew?

She pressed her hand harder against her head, trying to ease the throbbing that cut like a knife. “No—don’t apologize,” she stammered. “I worried that someone would remember the news, but the others all live overseas, so it seemed unlikely. I should have told you about the conviction, but I thought you’d think of me differently. I promise you, I didn’t do it.”