The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) by Saruuh Kelsey Page B

it must hurt but he doesn’t complain.
    “Whatever it is,” he
says, low. He waits until I raise my eyes to continue. “It can’t
beat you. You’re stronger than anyone, Miya. Nothing can break you
unless you let it.”
    Siah’s intense stare
gives me a foothold on the present. I loosen my grip on him a
fraction and imagine myself repeatedly punching this crippling fear
until it’s nothing, until it can’t affect me. I am Miya. I created
myself. I’m who I want to be. This won’t beat me, won’t break me. I
never have to be Leah again.
    “There,” Siah murmurs,
“you’re you again.”
    I feel a smile
building at how right he is but quickly chase it away with a glare
at the flecked-grey steps beneath me. “Thanks,” I mutter. He
touches my hair, quick as anything, and we resume walking.
    Our
room is on the third floor—something I’m grateful for when I
realise some people have to go up a hell of a lot more
stairs. How many floors does this place
even have ? I think, as I stumble through
the doorway. The door doesn’t close right because The Guardians had
to shoot it open, but there’s a chair we can lean against it for
some sense of privacy. All things considered, it’s better than
Underground London Zone luxury to me.
    Livy doesn’t wake as I
tuck her into the bed, and Thomas is asleep as soon as his back
hits the mattress. Being quiet about it, Yosiah and I turn the rest
of the furniture the right way up.
    I drop onto a
half-comfortable purple sofa and lean my head back, relieved and
ready for bed. The seat dips under Siah’s weight as he settles
beside me and a sigh sinks into the air around us.
    “What do you think
will happen,” he asks after a while, “when The Guardians have won
and States has lost control?”
    “I
think we’ll probably die,” I say on a yawn, getting a prod to my
shoulder in reply. “Okay. If we survive, I reckon The Guardians
will take over from the Ordering Body. They’ll tell people what to
do and control everything. I don’t think they’ll be as bad as
States, but we’ll never be free of authority. There’ll always be
someone telling us what to do, setting rules for good reasons and
for bad.” I shrug my jacket off and close my eyes. “It’ll be
better, probably, if the Guardians win. We might even be able to
live the way we want, with them in charge. But that’s if they win.”
    “You don’t think they
will?” Siah’s turned towards me—I can tell by the way his breath
falls on my neck.
    “If we make it to
Bharat, we’ll stand a better chance.”
    “And if we don’t?”
    “We’ll be dead.”
    “Hmm.”
    I crack open an eye to
find Yosiah’s face pressed against the back of the sofa, his eyes
closed and his mouth hanging open. I watch him for minutes. He
shifts in his sleep, his hands closing into fists and his breathing
speeding up. I touch the inside of his elbow but my touch doesn’t
calm him like it normally does.
    “No,” he gasps. Then:
“Mel, run!”
    My entire body goes
rigid, my spine a straight line. The fear in Siah’s voice … I’ve
never heard him sound that way. Never.
    I wake him as gently
as I can. He bolts off the sofa, looking around like a startled
kid.
    I approach him slowly.
“Siah?”
    “I’m fine.” That’s all
he says for minutes as he fights to keep his hands still, watching
their every tremor. He looks up at me eventually and in a stronger
voice repeats, “I’m fine.”
    He
doesn’t speak when I pull a bed from inside the sofa, following
instructions we were given earlier, nor does he comment as I throw
an old cover over it. Yosiah gets into the left side of the
bed, his side,
without uttering a word.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ I
don’t ask. I mean to but exhaustion grabs me in its big hand and
drags me to sleep. I don’t think Siah sleeps at all that night.
     
    ***
     
    Honour
     
    06:57. 15.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Northlands.
     
     
    The Guardians have
spent all night gathering supplies by looting the