Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
I grab his shoulder and give it a quick squeeze as I enter. “You were right. What is your name?”
“Dodge.”
“Dodge, you’re getting a raise. And you have officially been promoted to”—I make up a title—“lift captain.”
“Oh!” A breath rushes out of him as he works the lift controls while looking at me over his shoulder. “Thank you, Master! Thanks!” Then he turns back to his duty and watches the floor counter move on the display panel in front of him as we descend.
Mitch leans in to me, whispering, “There’s no such position, you know that right?”
“There is now.” And for some reason, these words come out mean. Angry too.
‘For some reason,’ Finn? The reason is that the love of your life—the woman who has been planning your wedding for a decade and the only woman you have ever been intimate with—is going into the tower tonight.
And there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
The elevator halts, the doors open, Dodge calls out the floor, “Ground level,” and Mitch and I exit, making a sharp left towards the central canal. The frigid, night air hits me suddenly because I am half naked and shoeless. But I welcome it because it shocks me into a higher state of alertness.
Once we hit the main walkway, the Maiden Bridge is only a few steps away.
Jeyk is waiting for us at the bridge.
“Are you gonna get her, Finn? Are you gonna hide her? You’re not gonna let her go in there, are you?” Jeyk is wound up, his eyes wide, but not the way Mitch’s were when I opened the door for him. Mitch is cool under pressure. Composed. He’s a thinker.
Jeyk is all instincts. And his instincts right now are telling him that Clara needs saving.
“We’ll see,” is the only answer I give him. Because, of course, there is no way for me to stop what’s happening. I don’t have the power.
Well, I guess I could just not show up—keep Clara in my new palace, or make a desperate attempt to leave the city and cross the expanse of desert sands in some kind of hopeless escape—but it’s a fantasy.
If I don’t have the ceremony… all those Little Sisters. Plus Clara. Plus Gemna…
Of course, this all might be bullshit, but… what if it’s not?
Escape isn’t possible. There’s nothing out there in the sands. It’s nothing but wasteland. Every year-four student in Tau City knows this because that’s the year they make us run the wall. A twenty-mile marathon that children must complete, in some way or another. You don’t have to run the whole way—you can walk or skip or crawl if you want, but you will circle the city on the wall before they let you go home. Because they want us all to understand that this is it. There is nothing out there. It’s dust, and wind, and sand and nothing else.
We’ve been walking across the Maiden Bridge as I think all these things and now we’re on the other side, the Maiden Tower looming large right in front of us.
Amazingly, there are no Matrons waiting for us at the door. Though there is a guard. For a moment I think that guard is gonna stop us, but as we approach, he just steps aside, looking the other way.
Mitch pulls it open as Jeyk and I walk through, then he follows us inside.
But we don’t even reach the main staircase that winds up the center of the building before those old nags come rushing out from every direction, their blue tunics fanning out behind them.
“No!” one of them is barking. “No! No! No!” She points her finger right in my face as she approaches. “You do not belong here.”
I slap her finger away and she gasps. It is forbidden to fuck with a Matron. They aren’t in charge of anything but the Maidens, but if you piss one off and end up in front of the Council, they take the Matron’s side every time.
Personally, they’ve always kind of scared me. They cloister themselves back there behind the Maiden Tower, almost never participating in anything outside of this district. But they are imposing and mean. As children we are taught to never question them. Never even talk to them, actually. Especially if you’re male. They shun the opposite sex in a way that comes off as… personal.
But I’m not a little boy anymore. I’m the Extraction Master. I might not be in charge of them, but it goes both ways. They are not in charge of me, either. No one—not even the Council—has any sway over me. So these bitches can go to hell for all I care.
In the back of my mind though, I see my mother. Not as my mother, but as one of them. This thought is enough to make me shudder. It also reminds me that I know much, much less about this city, and my place in it, than I thought did yesterday.