“He is,” Raspin replies, believing every word of it.
I snort in disgust. “Did he happen to notice when he got to Amster that he was one daughter short?” The bitterness in my voice is extremely apparent.
“He rarely speaks of you, but when he does, it’s always with the greatest respect and admiration for your sacrifices.”
I laugh humorlessly. “My sacrifices? Oh, that’s—” I shake my head and exhale a harsh breath. “Do you know why he abandoned me on Earth?”
“You’re the prophecy. You’re the one who sparks the war. He couldn’t bring you back. He had to leave you there. It was your destiny.”
I nod my head as if I’m okay with it. “Oh . . . it was my destiny! So it’s all part of the plan?”
Giffen exhales in relief. “Yes.”
Rage boils over as I yell at him, “Screw your plan! And screw him!”
“Not! Working!” Raspin yells at Giffen. He storms to the doors, ripping them off their tracks as he leaves the room.
“Now you’ve made him mad,” Giffen sighs in frustration.
“Just let me see if I understand you. You want me to allow you to hand me over to the Alameeda in exchange for my sister, but you don’t want me to retaliate against you by using my ability to see the future to harm you in any way.”
“Yes, and—”
“Wait! There’s an and? Why is there an and?”
“We need you to be our eyes on the inside. We want to communicate with you and—”
“You want me to spy for you.”
“Yes.”
“You guys have some big, fat, huge, bouncy—”
Raspin enters the room dragging Trey’s unconscious body behind him. I don’t know what they did to him, but he looks dead. With a hand around Trey’s throat, Raspin lifts him up, ready to gut Trey with his knife if I blink at him the wrong way. “Ya shefty wee monster! I’ll carve him to prove to ya that I am heartfelt,” he seethes. He’s being honest.
“Wait! Please!”
Raspin’s hand stills just above Trey’s chest.
“Okay, I’ll do it! Just stop!”
“Ya swear upon it?” Raspin asks angrily.
“I swear on it,” I reply in desperation, trying to reassure him. “Astrid gets saved and I get thrown away again. It’s fine. We have a deal. Just don’t hurt him, okay?”
Raspin looks like he doesn’t believe me. “Should something happen to Astrid, it happens to him. I gut ’em all if she’s harmed.” He raises his knife, placing it to Trey’s neck, drawing blood as he begins to cut.
“Nothing will happen to her!” I try to placate him in a stream of words. “I’ll make sure of it!” He stops cutting. It’s an eternity that I wait—those seconds I watch Raspin take as he decides whether or not I’m telling the truth. A part of me isn’t sure if he’ll believe me. Even when Raspin lowers the knife in his fist, I have trouble breathing.
My legs are numb with fear. When he stops holding Trey by the throat, my chin drops to my chest for a second in relief and I let go of the breath. He places Trey on the ground against the wall. I stare at Trey for several seconds, trying to see if he’s still breathing. There’s a swollen knot by his left temple. It’s hard not to lose my mind as I strain against the metal on my wrists, finding that I can’t free myself. The cut on Trey’s neck is slowly dampening his collar with his blood.
I turn my attention back to Giffen. He rises from his chair, pulling out his communicator from the pocket of his Comantre uniform. I can’t believe that my father is associated with these two psychos—then I think about how he abandoned me—maybe it makes perfect sense. I clear my throat and ask, “Does Pan know about this plan?”
Giffen’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “He knows.”
In a shallow tone I ask, “Does he agree with it?”
He ignores my question. “I need to take your image.” He holds up his communicator in front of me.
“What are you planning to do with my picture?”
Giffen snaps a couple of shots. “I have to send it to Kyon Ensin. We’ll pretend to be Comantre Syndics. He doesn’t know who we are or who your sister is. Hopefully, none of them have realized yet that she has Alameeda blood or that she’s a priestess. When Kyon responds, I will demand a trade: you for her. I will tell him that she is Comantre and was working in the Isle of Skye when the unrest broke out. I will ask for her safe return in exchange for yours.”
“How do you know she’s not already dead?” I ask.
“She’s too pretty for that. They’d keep her for entertainment.”
Raspin smashes another chair, unable to contain his rage.
I blanch. “Why wouldn’t they know that she’s a priestess—or at least know that she has Alameeda blood? Isn’t it obvious?” I ask in a near whisper, trying without success to keep my inquiries between the two of us.
“She wasn’t born with pale hair like yours. She has Pan’s coloring—black hair, but her eyes are blue. We altered them before she went in.”
“How did you do that?”
“We injected pigment to make them green, but it only lasts a few rotations, then it reverts to her normal hue.”
“Alameeda blue?” I ask.
“That’s right, like her mother’s.”
His attention is back on his communicator again. “Wait,” I say, seeing that he’s about to send the pictures he took of me.
“What?” he asks.
“You want this to work?” I ask, meeting his eyes.
“Of course!”
“If you want this to work, you should hit me.”
His eyes narrow. “What?”
“I look okay right now—I look like you’re not serious about getting your supposed consort back. You have to make it urgent or Kyon will take a little time to find out exactly who Astrid is before he hands her over. You have to put it on a faster time line. You have to take the control away from him and keep it. If he thinks that you might kill me, he’ll lose the advantage. He can’t know how you got me or that you have Trey. When you meet him to exchange us, it can’t be here and we have to go alone—just you and me, Giffen.”
Raspin growls at me, “Going!”
“He can’t go,” I argue. “There’s too much emotion there. He can’t cope. A priestess could read him like a billboard. You can get out alive with Astrid because of your telekinetic gift. It’s the only way I can think of where everyone has a shot at survival.”