In a new City with enemies hiding in plain sight, Honour and his rebel family build their forces. States is hunting them but that’s the least of their problems—Horatia is harbouring a secret that could kill them all, and Honour is dreaming he’s part of a secret experiment. Or is he remembering?
With Yosiah’s secrets catching up to him—so deadly that he and Miya will be lucky to get out alive—Bennet torn between two times and two loves, and Branwell doubting his place in the future, not everyone may reach the next battle.
The Revelation is the third book in the Lux Guardians series, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller with a historical twist. If you like sinister plots, desperate survival stories, and world-changing revolutions, you’ll love this story of family, friendship, and rebellion!
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BEFORE
It was cold behind the counter in the empty bakery. It was supposed to be warm, with the glass display case between them and the wind howling through the broken door. Horatia huddled closer to her brother on the floor, wishing they weren’t ten years old, wishing they could work and get credits, wishing they had a house to live in. But there was no way they were going back to Lance and Jenny, their last foster parents. Lance, who said awful things to Honour and made him cry, and Jenny, who gave Horatia a bruise the size of a credit on her forearm. This shivering bakery was better than that cramped flat, even if the chill had settled into Horatia’s bones, even if she longed for a blanket instead of the cardboard box they’d draped over themselves.
Her arm was hurting, just inside her elbow where Jenny had squeezed her earlier that night. It kept throbbing and it was all she could focus on until the shadows spilled into the bakery. She saw them reach across the floor, darker forms of people much older than her, and tucked her head under the flattened cardboard box, knowing it was a gang and hoping they wouldn’t see her and Honour.
The cardboard was pulled off them. Horatia squeezed her body into a tiny ball as Honour came awake, gasping and wriggling. She wanted to beg him to be still, quiet, that maybe the shadows would think they were dead and move on. But Honour kept moving, said, “We didn’t do anything, we didn’t do anything,” and Horatia had to peel her eyes open.
It wasn’t a gang of street kids. It was a group of Officials in sleek black uniforms, in blocky helmets that Horatia hadn’t seen before. They didn’t say anything, not even as Honour kept pleading their innocence, asking what they’d done wrong. Horatia was grabbed under her arms and pulled up but she wasn’t allowed to get her feet under her; they dragged on the floor as she was hauled out of the bakery.
Horatia had thought she knew what it was to be scared, but her fear became something else entirely when she saw a black van parked on the curb, its sliding door opened. Only the worst people were taken in the vans—it was a street legend, a scary story, being carried off in a black van. Horatia felt her ratty pants soak through but she didn’t have space in her terrified heart to be embarrassed that she’d wet herself.
“Tia,” Honour whimpered when they were shoved into the van, reaching across the cold metal floor to grasp her hand. Horatia knew she was going to die, or going to a place that was worse than dying, but at least she was with her brother. At least they hadn’t been separated.
But when the van stopped, the door was pulled open, and their arms were gripped again. Honour was dragged one way while Horatia was carried away from him. She screamed, trying to get back to her brother, but she was taken further and further away. She didn’t see him for years after that day and the image of his panicked eyes stayed with her through all of them.
***
Horatia
14:34. 08.11.2040. The Free Lands, Southlands, Plymouth.
The air is choked with ash. It coats my long coat, my shaking hands as I curl them into fists, my ragged braid of hair. It covers my brother’s face as horror fills his eyes, his mouth gaping open. It drifts to the floor where an Official stood moments ago, before I felt for the strands of his life, his energy, and dissolved them.
Shivering, I look at Honour, waiting for his revulsion to turn from the ash of the soldier to me, but he only frowns in confusion. In a daze I see behind his head as blue light flickers and dies—the fence penning us into this square, turned off—and Guardians in dirty white burst into the area. I grab Honour’s hand and hold it tight, praying he doesn’t rip away from me.
He must know now what I’ve kept from him, all the horror in my memories. He has to know I remember what he’s forgotten. I know what they did to us in Underground London Zone all those years ago. More than that, I asked someone to hide his memories of those years. He’ll hate me for it. I can’t tell him everything; I can’t tell him any of it. He won’t understand why I did any of what I did. He’ll never forgive me.
Only when sound rushes back in do I realise that I stopped hearing all noise when I turned that Official to ash. Gunfire chatters around us but only Officials fall, their white uniforms blurring as they drop, electric guns hitting the ground. Between and around them civilians who huddled with hunched shoulders as they waited for their deaths by electric charge straighten and look around.
I don’t wait around to see what happens next. I pull on my brother’s hand, guiding him across the square to a back street that was blocked by blue light moments ago. I have no plan except to get out of this death trap before more Officials come to replace the barrier and pen us in again. Honour is silent beside me, his eyes on the ground. I wish I knew what he was thinking. I wish I was brave enough to ask.
The scent of burnt ash finally fades as we near the back street so I take big, gulping breaths to clear my lungs. To clear the panic tight in my chest. It eases slightly when I see a tall man with long, dark hair marching down the road. Timofei. If anyone knows where Dalmar is, it’s Timofei, and if anyone can make all this alright, it’s Dalmar.
“What the hell happened in there?” he demands when he reaches us. The Guardians flanking him keep moving toward the square we just left but Timofei pauses. “One minute everything was fine and the next we’re getting threats and ultimatums.”
“Threats?” Honour asks, his voice hoarse.
“They said they’d kill ten people for every minute we didn’t surrender.”
The slow rate at which Officials killed the people in the square. I didn’t understand why they didn’t just fire into the crowd and keep discharging their weapons until we were all dead. They used us to hold the Guardians at ransom. To hold Dalmar at ransom. Anger burns in my blood. “Where’s Dalmar?" My anger isn’t at Timofei but he gets the brunt of it anyway.
“In there somewhere.” He nods at the square. “Looking for Hele.”
“Hele?” I breathe. All the frantic energy in me stops dead.
“No,” Honour rasps. “She wasn’t in there. She wasn’t.”
His hand in mine starts shaking. The world sways around me; it’s impossible to pull in a steady breath. I turn back toward the square and Honour’s already moving, running, pulling on my arm for me to keep up. Buildings swim in my vision, my body pitching clumsily with every step, but I refuse to let go of my brother. My lungs burn along with my leg muscles, and I swear I can taste the ash of that Official on my tongue again—but that might be because I can see where it happened, where I killed him without a single weapon, just my own twisted ability.
Honour races across the square, gets to the end, turns in a different direction. It’s busier now than it was when we fled, Guardians and civilians and Plymouth ambassadors in their dark red coats all packed into the area. This isn’t the meet up point, and the aircrafts we’re meant to be running to are nowhere near, but people have converged here anyway. We should be fleeing, sprinting for the crafts that will take us to Bharat, but everyone is like Honour and me. Searching, hoping, praying we find our family alive.
We don’t look at the bodies on the floor—the bodies we’ll have to leave behind when we abandon the town, some regular people, some Plymouth’s ambassadors as well as our own Guardians—not until we’ve scanned every living face and found no hope of our family among them. Then there’s no choice but to look at the dead. I keep my head tilted up, refusing to look at the people on the ground. I can’t see Hele or Dalmar or Wes if I don’t look.
Honour drags in a sharp breath, says, “There.”
My eyes snap to where he’s looking. I see Dalmar first, his blond hair a dirty mess, his face buried in her red hair. Hele. I stumble across the gap, allowing Honour to take his hand from mine now as he sprints ahead of me. Dalmar sees him coming, his chest deflating with relief, and I’m so close now, close enough to see the side of Hele’s face, the freckles, the red flush on the tip of her nose. The tightness in my chest unwinds, not fully, never fully—not as long as I can sense energy, control it, transform it the way I was trained, to change living to dead, a body to ash on the wind—but I can breathe enough to gasp Hele’s name now.
I stumble across the last few steps, and Dalmar and Hele fold me into a hug with Honour, Hele’s soft hand on my face. She asks me if I’m okay and I laugh, not because I’m so relieved and happy she’s alive, but because I have no idea how to answer that question. She must sense I don’t want to talk, that I’m definitely not okay, because she moves her hand to rub my arm and tells me everything will be okay. I want to believe it, but this is nowhere near the end. We might be close to leaving this island and fleeing for the safety of Bharat—the second most powerful mass of land in the world, second only to the City trying to kill us—but sometimes the worst danger doesn’t come from soldiers with guns and aircrafts with bombs. Sometimes the worst and darkest dangers are hiding in our blood, waiting for us to discover them.
It was cold behind the counter in the empty bakery. It was supposed to be warm, with the glass display case between them and the wind howling through the broken door. Horatia huddled closer to her brother on the floor, wishing they weren’t ten years old, wishing they could work and get credits, wishing they had a house to live in. But there was no way they were going back to Lance and Jenny, their last foster parents. Lance, who said awful things to Honour and made him cry, and Jenny, who gave Horatia a bruise the size of a credit on her forearm. This shivering bakery was better than that cramped flat, even if the chill had settled into Horatia’s bones, even if she longed for a blanket instead of the cardboard box they’d draped over themselves.
Her arm was hurting, just inside her elbow where Jenny had squeezed her earlier that night. It kept throbbing and it was all she could focus on until the shadows spilled into the bakery. She saw them reach across the floor, darker forms of people much older than her, and tucked her head under the flattened cardboard box, knowing it was a gang and hoping they wouldn’t see her and Honour.
The cardboard was pulled off them. Horatia squeezed her body into a tiny ball as Honour came awake, gasping and wriggling. She wanted to beg him to be still, quiet, that maybe the shadows would think they were dead and move on. But Honour kept moving, said, “We didn’t do anything, we didn’t do anything,” and Horatia had to peel her eyes open.
It wasn’t a gang of street kids. It was a group of Officials in sleek black uniforms, in blocky helmets that Horatia hadn’t seen before. They didn’t say anything, not even as Honour kept pleading their innocence, asking what they’d done wrong. Horatia was grabbed under her arms and pulled up but she wasn’t allowed to get her feet under her; they dragged on the floor as she was hauled out of the bakery.
Horatia had thought she knew what it was to be scared, but her fear became something else entirely when she saw a black van parked on the curb, its sliding door opened. Only the worst people were taken in the vans—it was a street legend, a scary story, being carried off in a black van. Horatia felt her ratty pants soak through but she didn’t have space in her terrified heart to be embarrassed that she’d wet herself.
“Tia,” Honour whimpered when they were shoved into the van, reaching across the cold metal floor to grasp her hand. Horatia knew she was going to die, or going to a place that was worse than dying, but at least she was with her brother. At least they hadn’t been separated.
But when the van stopped, the door was pulled open, and their arms were gripped again. Honour was dragged one way while Horatia was carried away from him. She screamed, trying to get back to her brother, but she was taken further and further away. She didn’t see him for years after that day and the image of his panicked eyes stayed with her through all of them.
***
Horatia
14:34. 08.11.2040. The Free Lands, Southlands, Plymouth.
The air is choked with ash. It coats my long coat, my shaking hands as I curl them into fists, my ragged braid of hair. It covers my brother’s face as horror fills his eyes, his mouth gaping open. It drifts to the floor where an Official stood moments ago, before I felt for the strands of his life, his energy, and dissolved them.
Shivering, I look at Honour, waiting for his revulsion to turn from the ash of the soldier to me, but he only frowns in confusion. In a daze I see behind his head as blue light flickers and dies—the fence penning us into this square, turned off—and Guardians in dirty white burst into the area. I grab Honour’s hand and hold it tight, praying he doesn’t rip away from me.
He must know now what I’ve kept from him, all the horror in my memories. He has to know I remember what he’s forgotten. I know what they did to us in Underground London Zone all those years ago. More than that, I asked someone to hide his memories of those years. He’ll hate me for it. I can’t tell him everything; I can’t tell him any of it. He won’t understand why I did any of what I did. He’ll never forgive me.
Only when sound rushes back in do I realise that I stopped hearing all noise when I turned that Official to ash. Gunfire chatters around us but only Officials fall, their white uniforms blurring as they drop, electric guns hitting the ground. Between and around them civilians who huddled with hunched shoulders as they waited for their deaths by electric charge straighten and look around.
I don’t wait around to see what happens next. I pull on my brother’s hand, guiding him across the square to a back street that was blocked by blue light moments ago. I have no plan except to get out of this death trap before more Officials come to replace the barrier and pen us in again. Honour is silent beside me, his eyes on the ground. I wish I knew what he was thinking. I wish I was brave enough to ask.
The scent of burnt ash finally fades as we near the back street so I take big, gulping breaths to clear my lungs. To clear the panic tight in my chest. It eases slightly when I see a tall man with long, dark hair marching down the road. Timofei. If anyone knows where Dalmar is, it’s Timofei, and if anyone can make all this alright, it’s Dalmar.
“What the hell happened in there?” he demands when he reaches us. The Guardians flanking him keep moving toward the square we just left but Timofei pauses. “One minute everything was fine and the next we’re getting threats and ultimatums.”
“Threats?” Honour asks, his voice hoarse.
“They said they’d kill ten people for every minute we didn’t surrender.”
The slow rate at which Officials killed the people in the square. I didn’t understand why they didn’t just fire into the crowd and keep discharging their weapons until we were all dead. They used us to hold the Guardians at ransom. To hold Dalmar at ransom. Anger burns in my blood. “Where’s Dalmar?" My anger isn’t at Timofei but he gets the brunt of it anyway.
“In there somewhere.” He nods at the square. “Looking for Hele.”
“Hele?” I breathe. All the frantic energy in me stops dead.
“No,” Honour rasps. “She wasn’t in there. She wasn’t.”
His hand in mine starts shaking. The world sways around me; it’s impossible to pull in a steady breath. I turn back toward the square and Honour’s already moving, running, pulling on my arm for me to keep up. Buildings swim in my vision, my body pitching clumsily with every step, but I refuse to let go of my brother. My lungs burn along with my leg muscles, and I swear I can taste the ash of that Official on my tongue again—but that might be because I can see where it happened, where I killed him without a single weapon, just my own twisted ability.
Honour races across the square, gets to the end, turns in a different direction. It’s busier now than it was when we fled, Guardians and civilians and Plymouth ambassadors in their dark red coats all packed into the area. This isn’t the meet up point, and the aircrafts we’re meant to be running to are nowhere near, but people have converged here anyway. We should be fleeing, sprinting for the crafts that will take us to Bharat, but everyone is like Honour and me. Searching, hoping, praying we find our family alive.
We don’t look at the bodies on the floor—the bodies we’ll have to leave behind when we abandon the town, some regular people, some Plymouth’s ambassadors as well as our own Guardians—not until we’ve scanned every living face and found no hope of our family among them. Then there’s no choice but to look at the dead. I keep my head tilted up, refusing to look at the people on the ground. I can’t see Hele or Dalmar or Wes if I don’t look.
Honour drags in a sharp breath, says, “There.”
My eyes snap to where he’s looking. I see Dalmar first, his blond hair a dirty mess, his face buried in her red hair. Hele. I stumble across the gap, allowing Honour to take his hand from mine now as he sprints ahead of me. Dalmar sees him coming, his chest deflating with relief, and I’m so close now, close enough to see the side of Hele’s face, the freckles, the red flush on the tip of her nose. The tightness in my chest unwinds, not fully, never fully—not as long as I can sense energy, control it, transform it the way I was trained, to change living to dead, a body to ash on the wind—but I can breathe enough to gasp Hele’s name now.
I stumble across the last few steps, and Dalmar and Hele fold me into a hug with Honour, Hele’s soft hand on my face. She asks me if I’m okay and I laugh, not because I’m so relieved and happy she’s alive, but because I have no idea how to answer that question. She must sense I don’t want to talk, that I’m definitely not okay, because she moves her hand to rub my arm and tells me everything will be okay. I want to believe it, but this is nowhere near the end. We might be close to leaving this island and fleeing for the safety of Bharat—the second most powerful mass of land in the world, second only to the City trying to kill us—but sometimes the worst danger doesn’t come from soldiers with guns and aircrafts with bombs. Sometimes the worst and darkest dangers are hiding in our blood, waiting for us to discover them.