He turned the brass knob and entered a dining room. Levi had never been here before, but he knew exactly where it was because he recognized the plates—the delicate geometric design circled the porcelain in a vibrant blue. His mother had kept a shard of one, tucked secretly into a kitchen cloth, hidden away like all of the Glaisyers’ most precious things.
This was his family’s home, before the Revolution. In Caroko.
It was magnificent. The stone floors gleamed, a golden dust sprinkled beneath the polish, making Levi feel like he stood upon stars. The woodwork around the windows—painted a rich orange—was so intricate he could have stared at the designs for hours. The ceilings, too, were an artistic masterpiece, each tile similar yet completely unique, a lattice of paint and metalwork, its beauty surpassing anything his mother had tried to describe.
Levi was stepping into his parents’ stories, and he itched to explore more. In the next room, he found paintings of people who looked like him—they shared the same strong set to their brows, the same warm hue of brown skin, the same orb-maker colors in their curls. This was the place where his parents got married. This was the Glaisyer estate passed down through generations. This was his history.
It thrilled Levi, but the more he explored, it also depressed him. Because even if he could see so much of himself here, it wasn’t a perfect fit. He couldn’t simply walk among the past and feel like he belonged. He had never been to this home. He had never met most of the people who’d lived here. Like his pinstripe suits, this place fit only in the category of nearly and not quite.
Levi was approaching the grand foyer when he heard it. Shouts. The clamor of shattering glass. And though he couldn’t see the black haze yet, he could already smell burning. He knew his parents’ stories well enough to know what such a noise meant—the rebels were coming.
And so, in a moment of instinct, Levi did exactly what his parents had done. He reached for the closest thing he could find—a teal porcelain spoon—tucked it in his pocket, and he ran.
That morning, Levi grabbed the orb-making supplies from the trunk of his Amberlite and hoisted them over his shoulder, ignoring the trembling of his hands or the stirring of memories in old, forgotten places of himself—places he’d prefer to leave behind.
Enne climbed out of the passenger seat and staggered over a mound of dirty, half-melted slush. “Where are we?” she asked. Like everything in the Ruins District, the manor in front of them was held together by little more than crumbling stone and the loose threads of history. Since he’d spoken to Harrison yesterday, Levi had guessed that if he explored the abandoned estates, he’d come across an orb-maker’s home eventually—and with it...
“It’s a workshop,” Levi answered grimly.
The pair didn’t speak as they wandered the house’s paths. Weeds had crawled out of the cobblestones, and the broken remnants of windows and lawn sculptures littered the grass. A fountain full of grime and rainwater sat in what must have once been impressive gardens. There was something especially eerie about the way it had been left—the destruction of the Revolution untouched, as though the horrors from that era lingered, as well.
Do you know what they did to the orb-makers in Reynes?his father had taunted him, when Levi had first developed an interest in the city.They killed them all.
The workshop door, already hanging on its hinges, broke open easily. Levi stepped inside, dropping his bags of coal, tools, lighter fluid, and sand to the dust-coated floor.
First, Levi stripped down to his undershirt, exposing the tattoos on the underside of each of his forearms: a spade and an A. Next he scraped the refuse collected in the ancient furnace. While he worked, Levi was aware of Enne’s eyes on him. It was strange to sense her aura in a workshop and not his father’s, the warm espresso scent instead of perfumes and smoke.
But that didn’t make it more welcome. Enne watched from a stool in the farthest corner of the room, her arms crossed and the violet of her aura twisting in nervous torrents.
“You still haven’t told me how your meeting with Harrison went,” she said.
“I’m trying to concentrate,” Levi grunted, and he was—mostly. After he finished shoveling coals into the furnace and lit the fire, he tried to remember his father’s instructions. It didn’t make sense that his emotions from those memories still felt raw when the lessons themselves seemed clouded. To make matters worse, Levi had never extracted volts from a Mizer before. He’d always used old volts to activate new orbs.
“So Harrison didn’t agree to the pardons,” Enne said flatly.
“I never said that.”
“Well, you haven’t said anything.”
It would take thirty minutes for the furnace to grow hot enough, then another ten minutes to melt the sand. This unfortunately meant that Levi had nothing to do, and so he fiddled with his rows of punty pipes, trying to make himself look busy while he waited. He didn’t want to look at Enne—she saw through his poker face better than anyone.
“Harrison negotiated with Owain yesterday,” Levi told her. “But Owain is printing the story tomorrow: the state of emergency in the North Side is finished. No more patrols. No more curfew.”
“And the gangs?” she pressed.
“Every gangster in the North Side—except the Doves—will receive a pardon. Including me. Including you, if—”
“They agreed?” Enne asked, her shoulders sagging in relief, making her suddenly look much smaller perched upon her stool. She let out a shaky, disbelieving laugh. “What did you say?”
After the way she had looked at him the last time they’d seen each other, Levi was taken aback by how good it felt to see her smile. The thought confused him. He had not forgiven her, but it was hard to separate the two versions of Enne in his mind: the girl he had loved and the girl who had killed his best friend.
But it didn’t matter. He knew that once he told her about the interview he’d promised to Owain, she’d be furious—probably enough to storm out of here, and Levi needed the volts. For the Scarhands. For Fitz Oliver.
“I blamed it on Vianca,” Levi told her.
Enne’s smile faltered. “That makes sense,” she murmured. Vianca was the one who’d ordered Enne to save Levi the night of the Shadow Game, a stunt that led to Sedric Torren’s and Malcolm Semper’s deaths. Vianca was the one who’d commanded Enne to organize the Spirits into a real gang. Vianca lurked behind so many of their crimes, and so blaming her shouldn’t feel like a lie.
But they’d only ever saved each other because they wanted to.
