Steelstriker by Marie Lu

Author:Marie Lu [Lu, Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250221728
Google: rUsjEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Published: 2021-09-27T23:00:00+00:00

21

RED

If there’s one place in the capital that no one is interested in tonight, it’s the National Museum.

As the celebrations go deep into the night, fireworks whistling and sparking through the evening air, Jeran and I head to the quiet paths around the museum.

There are no soldiers here. Why should there be? No one is thinking about the relics on display in these halls, and every guard is busy with the rowdy crowds swarming elsewhere in the capital. Only a single sentry is posted at the front and one at the back of the museum, watching halfheartedly for petty thieves. One look at their faces tells me that they’re just biding their time, grouchy for having to spend a solstice celebration night stuck at the museum’s steps.

I’m quiet, but my mind is a storm. I can’t stop thinking about the dream I’d had with Talin earlier in the night, that half kiss. I can still feel the heat of her touch, however phantom it might’ve been. I can still feel myself pleading with her not to go, to reach out to me when she wakes. I can still feel the agony of her pulling away again, her fear returning. Her pain had washed over me in waves.

Constantine is certainly pressuring her will at every turn, and I can feel her cracking under the strain of it all. They are breaking her as surely as they’d wanted to break me, to turn her into the perfect Skyhunter—obedient, efficient, cruel.

If you don’t find a way to take this whole damn system down, they just might succeed.

My fists clench. No. No way I’m going to lose Talin too.

My focus turns back on the museum. If we can uncover what exactly the artifacts from Mara are—and why Constantine is so hell-bent on retrieving them—then maybe we can figure out how to use them against him. How to destroy them.

The benefits of Striker training never cease. Jeran moves so quietly within the shadows of the museum that even I lose him now and then as we go. I head to the opposite side of the building. We take note of each other at either end of the museum’s looming steps, above where a sentry stands guard. As we do, I remove some of the wristbands from my arm and untie the ceremonial sash around my sleeve. Then I make my way to the thickets that line the edge of the museum’s raised foundation.

There, I purse my lips and make a whistle that imitates one of the fireworks launching along the thoroughfares.

The sentry turns in my direction. He sighs, then heads down the steps while grumbling to himself. I press against the side of the rising stone stairs, melting into the shadows. He passes by without noticing me at all.

From the other side of the building, Jeran steals into the museum without a sound.

As the sentry goes to investigate, I pull myself up the side of the entrance steps and rush toward the entrance. As I move, I hear the sentry again make his annoyed huff as he finds my abandoned wristbands and sash.

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