Renegades (Hotbloods #3)

“I’m glad. I wasn’t sure it could wait until I saw you this evening.” Lauren sighed anxiously, ducking into the nook. Navan and I followed, taking a seat wherever we could.

“How are you even reading all of these?” I asked, picking up one of the nearby tomes. The writing was in a language I couldn’t decipher, though there seemed to be texts in several languages lying about. Hardly any of them were uniformly one kind or another.

She smiled shyly, tapping the side of her purple-rimmed glasses. “When I first showed an interest in the books here, Queen Brisha installed a device in the lenses of my glasses. It links up to the language center in my brain and transforms the writing into words I can understand.”

Navan looked stunned. “She gave you one of them?”

“I think she saw how desperate I was to read this entire library,” Lauren said, glancing around with an expression of contentment.

“And I bet you will! So, what’ve you got for us?” I asked, gesturing to the texts that lay in haphazard piles all around me.

“Oh, sorry about the mess,” she mumbled, picking up a large, cream-colored book. “This is the one we’re going to need,” she explained, flicking to the right page. “So, I was doing some research, as you can see, and I came across this. It’s not a textbook, per se, but the journal of some horticulturist here in Northern Vysanthe. No idea who he is, but he seems to know his stuff. Now, he says that the poroporo fruit I was talking about still grows in remote ice caves up in the Fazar mountain range. They’re pretty much at the pole of Northern Vysanthe, but they’re reachable, by his understanding.”

“How come they’re still there, then? Surely, those addicts would just have harvested it all?” Navan asked dubiously.

Lauren smiled. “That’s where it gets interesting. In order to protect the fruit, the old royal family put safeguards in place. They used to do that a lot, apparently. There are loads of instances of it happening with precious gemstones, ancient relics, sacred sites…” She trailed off, flipping to another page in the book.

“What kind of safeguards are we talking about?” I wondered. “Are there actual guards, or some sort of barrier?”

Lauren shook her head. “Nothing so simple, I’m afraid. The horticulturist describes beasts of some sort, though he didn’t stay long enough to find out what they were. All he says is there were ‘vast shadows in the darkness’ that killed his two partners soon after they ventured into the caves, judging by their screams. He muses, later on in the passage, that these creatures might have been bred for the purpose of security.”

Navan and I exchanged a look. “What, so they’re like guard dogs?” he asked.

“Not dogs—think bigger than dogs,” Lauren replied, giving a reluctant shrug. It seemed like, whatever these beasts were, we were going to have to discover them ourselves. “Like I said, it’s hard to tell from the horticulturist’s notes, but they sound pretty massive, whatever they are, and even more dangerous.”

“Does he say anything else about them?” I pressed, the thought of vicious, unknown Vysanthean creatures filling me with dread.

“He says that, whatever they were, they took his partners unawares. The horticulturist ran before he could be captured, too. He mentions a strange sound, and a sudden feeling of immense heat and extreme cold, both at once, but that’s all he describes,” Lauren said apologetically, closing the book. “But he says the fruit is still there, ripe and ready for the picking. You’ll just need to get past whatever is lurking there.”

I frowned, envisioning a coiled dragon nestled atop piles of gold and jewels, or a troll with a wooden club standing in front of a gaping cave mouth. Whatever it was we had to face, it sounded like something straight out of a fable. Saying that, nothing surprised me anymore. Vysanthe was full of things that wanted to kill me, so why not these mysterious creatures, who crept out of the dark and made strange sounds? It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that had happened to me this summer.

“Anything else we need to know?” I asked anxiously.

Lauren tapped a passage. “The poroporo fruit only ripens at certain times of the year, and always at night. From what I’ve gathered, it happens during what is known as the Alignment of the Queens, which is when eight stars align every other month, for a week or so.”

I sighed. “Let me guess, that’s weeks from now?”

“No, actually. That’s this week,” Navan cut in, his tone intrigued.

“You’re right,” Lauren confirmed. “In fact, it started two nights ago, but the sooner you can harvest the fruit, from the beginning of the Alignment, the more potent the juice will be. That’s why, when it was used recreationally, there was never anything left to replant by the end of the Alignment. Whole crops would be destroyed by desperate people tearing off the fruit.”

“Okay, so we need to go tonight then,” I said firmly, looking to Navan. We didn’t have to be in training again until tomorrow evening, for night combat training and night flying simulations, which gave us plenty of time to leave Nessun and get the fruit.

“If we want the good stuff, then yeah. I’ve drawn out a map for you to follow,” Lauren said brightly, handing me a folded piece of paper.

“Wait, how are we supposed to get all the way to the pole of Northern Vysanthe?” I asked, the thought coming to me in a burst of panic. “We don’t have a ship anymore, and I doubt we can hitch a ride.”

Navan smiled. “The serum, Riley. It makes you less vulnerable to the cold, and you’ll be able to brave the harsh air.”

My heart thundered at the prospect. “We’re going to fly there?”

“We’re going to fly there,” he repeated, “but we’ll have to leave as soon as everyone in the palace is asleep. It’ll be too risky in daylight. People will see us leave and wonder where we’re going.”

“Tonight it is, then,” I said softly, forcing a smile onto my face, though I felt nothing but trepidation inside. The prospect of coming face-to-face with some unknown creatures wasn’t exactly comforting, and that was only if we managed to get out of the palace without being spotted. Even then, there were no guarantees we wouldn’t be tailed.

It was going to be a long night.



As darkness fell, I stood on the balcony of our apartment and stared out at the twinkling lights of the city below. Navan joined me, handing me a glass of something sparkling that Queen Brisha had sent to our room, while he sipped from a glass of something thick and red. My drink wasn’t alcoholic, as far as I could tell, but it refreshed me in a way no other liquid ever had, tasting faintly like apple, though a little sourer. I drank it down in one gulp, my nerves getting the better of me.

“What do you think these creatures are?” I asked, my eyes drawn to the silver dome of the training center.

Navan shrugged. “Something savage. If they’re anything like the guard beasts we have in the South, they’ll be trained killers.”