فصل شانزدهم

SIXTEEN

I try not to remember the faces of the dead. Running for my life makes for an effective distraction, but even the constant threat of annihilation can’t block out everything. Some losses are impossible to forget. Walsh, Tristan, and now Wolliver occupy the corners of my mind, catching like deep, gray cobwebs. My existence was their death sentence.

And of course, there are the ones I’ve killed outright, by choice, with my own two hands. But I don’t grieve for them. I can’t think about what I’ve done, not now. Not when we’re still in so much danger.

Cal is the first to turn his back on Wolliver’s swaying body. He has his own parade of dead faces, and doesn’t want to add another ghost to the march. “We need to keep moving.” “No—” Farley leans hard against the wall. She presses a hand to her mouth, gulping in disgust, trying not to throw up again.

“Easy,” Shade says, putting a steadying hand on her shoulder. She tries to wave him off, but he stands firm, watching her spit into the garden flowers. “We needed to see this,” he adds, burning a righteous glare at Cal and me. “This is what happens when we fail.” His anger is justified. After all, we sparked a firefight in the heart of Harbor Bay, wasting the last hour of Wolliver’s life, but I’m too tired to let him berate me.

“This isn’t the place for a lesson,” I reply. This is a grave, and even speaking here feels wrong. “We should take him down.” Before I can take a step toward Wolliver’s corpse, Cal hooks one arm in mine, steering me in the opposite direction. “Nobody touch the body,” he growls. He sounds so much like his father it shocks me.

“The body has a name,” I snarl when I collect myself. “Just because his blood isn’t your color doesn’t mean we can leave him like that!” “I’ll get him,” Farley grumbles, pushing off her knees.

Shade moves with her. “I’ll help.”

“Stop! Wolliver Galt had a family, didn’t he?” Cal presses on. “Where are they?” He casts his free hand around at the garden, gesturing to the empty trees and shuttered windows looking down on us. Despite the distant echoes of a city marching on toward nightfall, the square is still and quiet. “Certainly his mother wouldn’t leave him here alone? Are there no mourners? No officers to spit on his body? Not even a crow to pick his bones? Why?” I know the answer.

A trap.

My grip tightens on Cal’s arm, until my nails dig into his hot flesh threatening to burst into flame. Horror to match my own bleeds across Cal’s face as he looks, not at me, but into the shadowed alleyway. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of a crown—the one a foolish boy insists on wearing everywhere he goes.

And then, a clicking sound—like a metallic bug snapping its pincers, ready to devour a juicy meal.

“Shade,” I whisper, extending my other hand toward my teleporting brother. He’ll save us; he’ll take us away from all of this.

He doesn’t hesitate. He lunges.

But he never reaches me.

I watch in horror as a pair of swifts catch him under either arm, slamming him back against the ground. His head cracks against stone and his eyes roll. Dimly, I hear Farley scream as the swifts speed him away, their bodies blurring. They’re at the main archway before I shoot a blast of lightning in their direction, forcing them to turn back. Pain bites up and down my arm, flashing white knives of heat. But there’s nothing there but my own sparks, my own strength. It shouldn’t hurt at all.

The clicking continues, echoing in my skull, faster with every second. I try to ignore it, try to fight, but my eyes dim. My vision spots, fading in and out with every tick. What is this sound? Whatever it is, it’s tearing me apart.

Through the haze, I see two fires explode around me. One bright and burning, the other dark, a snake of smoke and flame. Somewhere, Cal roars in pain. Run, I think he says. I certainly try.

I end up crawling over the cobblestones, unable to see more than a few inches in front of me. Even that is difficult. What is this, what is this, what is happening to me?

Someone grabs me by the arm, their grip biting. I twist without seeing, reaching for where their neck should be. My fingers claw at armor, smoothly paneled and richly carved. “I’ve got her,” says a voice I recognize. Ptolemus Samos. I can barely see his face. Black eyes, silver hair, skin the color of the moon.

With a shout, I pull together the strength I can, and slice at him with lightning. I scream as loudly as he does, clutching my arm as fire fills my insides. No, this isn’t fire. I know what it is to be burned. This is something else.

A kick catches me in the stomach and I let it roll me. Over and over, until I’m facedown in the dirt of the garden, my face scraped and bleeding. The cool scent is a momentary balm, soothing me enough to let me see again. But when I open my eyes, I want nothing more than to go blind.

Maven crouches in front of me, his head tipped to one side, an inquisitive puppy with a toy. Behind him, battle rages. A very uneven one. With Shade incapacitated, and me in the dirt, only Cal and Farley remain. She has a gun now, but it’s little use with Ptolemus deflecting bullets at every turn. At least Cal melts whatever gets close, burning away knives and vines as fast as he can. It can’t last, though. They’re cornered.

I almost scream. We escape one noose only to find another.

“Look at me, please.”

Maven shifts, obstructing my view of the scene beyond. But I will not give him the satisfaction of my gaze. I won’t look at him, for my own sake. Instead, I focus on the clicking sound, the one no one else seems to hear. It stabs with every passing second.

He grabs my jaw and yanks, forcing me to face him. “So stubborn.” He tuts. “One of your most intriguing qualities. Along with this,” he adds, drawing a finger through the red blood on my cheek.

Click.

His grip tightens, sending a firework of pain through my jawbone. The clicking makes everything hurt more, hurt deeper. Reluctantly, I meet familiar blue eyes and a pointed, pale face. To my horror, he is exactly as I remember him. Quiet, unassuming, a haunted boy. He is not the Maven of my nightmarish memories, a ghost of blood and shadows. He is real again. I recognize the determination in his eyes. I saw it on the deck of his father’s boat, as we sailed downriver to Archeon, leaving the world in our wake. He kissed my lips then and promised that no one would hurt me.

“I said I would find you.”

Click.

His hand moves from my jaw to my throat, squeezing. Enough to keep me silent, but not enough to stop me from breathing. His touch burns. I gasp, unable to summon enough air to scream.

Maven. You’re hurting me. Maven, stop.

He is not his mother. He cannot read my thoughts. My vision spots again, darkening. Pinpoints of black swim before my eyes, expanding and contracting with every awful click.

“And I said I would save you.”

I expect his grip to tighten. Instead, it remains constant. And his free hand reaches for my collarbone, one blazing palm against my skin. He is scorching me, branding me. I try to scream again, and barely get out a whimper.

“I am a man of my word.” He tips his head again. “When I want to be.”

Click. Click. Click.

My heart tries to match the rhythm, beating at a frenzy I won’t survive, threatening to explode.

“Stop—” I manage to choke out, one hand reaching into thin air, wishing for my brother. But it is Maven who takes my hand in his, and that burns too. Every inch of me burns.

“That’s enough,” I think I hear him say, but not to me. “I said enough!”

His eyes seem to bleed, the last bright spots in my darkening world. Pale blue, streaking across my vision, drawing jagged lines of painful ice. They surround me, caging me. I feel nothing but the burn.

That’s the last thing I remember before a white flash of light and sound splits my brain apart. And my entire world is pain.

It’s too much of everything, and strangely nothing at all. No bullets, no knives, no fists or fire or strangling green vines. This is not a weapon I’ve ever faced before—because it’s my own. Lightning, electricity, sparks, an overload beyond even my limits. I called up a storm once before in the Bowl of Bones, and it exhausted me. But this, whatever Maven has done, is killing me. Pulling me apart, nerve by nerve, splintering bone and ripping muscle. I am being obliterated inside my own skin.

Suddenly I realize—Is this what they felt? The ones I killed? Is this what it feels like to die by lightning?

Control. It’s what Julian always told me. Control it. But this is too much. I am a dam trying to hold back an entire ocean. Even if I could stop what this is, I can’t find a way past my own exploding pain. I can’t reach out. I can’t move. I’m trapped within myself, screaming behind my teeth. I will be dead soon. And at least this will end. But it doesn’t. The pain stretches on in a constant assault on every sense. Pulsing but never ebbing, changing but never stopping. White spots, brighter than the sun, dance across my vision, until an explosion of red squeezes them out. I try to blink it away, to control something in myself, but nothing seems to happen. I wouldn’t know if it did.

My skin must be gone by now, scorched away by the surging bolts. Perhaps I’ll be given the mercy of bleeding to death. That will be quicker than this white abyss.

Kill me. The words repeat, over and over. It’s the only thing I can say, the only thing I want now. All thoughts of newbloods and Maven, my brother and Cal and Kilorn are gone entirely. Even the faces that haunt me, the faces of the dead, have disappeared. Funny, now that I’m dying, my ghosts decide to leave.

I wish they would come back.

I wish I didn’t have to die alone.