“Blackburns have four of Her eight magical artifacts, your mother is an Echelon, Ash is an Allwitch, you’re an Eight, and youdidn’tthink you were the product of the last time the Goddess participated in land breeding?”
“No,” I said, “I didn’t.”
Why would I?
* * *
The next day, jolted from my nightmare, and with no desire to put myself — or Skye — through the phantom flu all over again, instead of falling back asleep, I left our room to run. I was passing Leland’s room at the bottom of the spiral when his door swung open.
We hadn’t spoken since I’d left his clothes at his door. The beige hoodie, the white T-shirt, his gray sweatpants, and his sand-colored cooling jacket, all washed and folded.
“You’re running?” he asked. He checked the time on his transmitter and frowned. It was an hour before dawn, and a string was stuck in the neck of his hoodie like he’d just hopped out of bed and hastily thrown it on.
“I can’t sleep,” I said.
“Don’t run in a sweatshirt,” he sighed. “You’re going to pass out.”
I held out my hands to remind him. “Wrists.”
“Take my jacket.”
“No, but thank you.”
He palmed the back of his neck, then glanced behind him, turning back to me after spotting his running shoes. “You want company?”
I shook my head. “You don’t have to.”
“All right,” he sighed. “I’m going back to my bed.”
I tore myself from his door, and ignoring the growing pit of emptiness in my stomach, I set out for the city as the sun came up. I ran through the desert, past the sea of purple ivy, the forest of spiky brambles, and the long stretch of land where there was nothing to see except twilight shadows and an occasional barren tree with alien probes for branches. But scenery wasn’t needed. Paths through Creatus were either smooth concrete or, farther from the city, gravel, dirt, and sand. The blurring, muted colorsmade it easy to forget where I was, so I slipped into my head.
“I’ll come by after my shift,” Gray had said the night we were supposed to camp in my backyard, though I was already back in bed by the time he texted he wouldn’t make it. At that point, the tent I’d bought for that night was already broken down to its original, assembly-required state, a heap of stakes and poles stuffed back into its nylon stuff sack.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he’d said, and he did, but . . .
A spine-tingling sensation drew me back to the present, and the memory faded.
It was light out, and I didn’t know how, but I was standing directly in front of the portstop to Conventicles Crossing. An unknown voice spoke to me in my head.The Allwitch temple has the answers.Go to it.
I stepped on the egress, unable to deny the compulsion to port to Hartik’s Hollow.
When I got there, I hardly realized I was on Varanus Street, or that I was mindlessly walking up to the gates of the Allwitch temple. I reached for a rolled piece of parchment tucked between the iron fence bars.
Open it.
Read.
I stood beneath a streetlamp and unrolled the parchment to read the short letter.
As soon as I read it, the trance was over.
The Aspirants will be freed when you leave Everden, it said.
I blinked around at the forbidden part of Varanus Street and noticed the scrying orb, which had followed me my whole run, was suddenly nowhere to be found. I quickly stuffed the parchment in my sweatshirt pocket, realizing I needed to leave, ideally undetected.
Then I felt the sharp pain in my temples. I was gripped by it, weakened. My limbs were heavy, cold sweat rolled down myspine, and I’d just made it to the front steps of the nearest shop before collapsing. I was still sitting there, dizzy and trying to rub the headache out of my eyes, when Vyra Lennox stormed down the street in a huff.
“I knew it,” she said, marching up the steps with her French-manicured nails trailing up the handrail. “I knew you were running here.” One step below me, she stopped. “You really don’t get it.” She feverishly punched something into her transmitter. “The Allwitch temple isforbidden.”
