“Because I chose the Legion over the Order. I figured you couldn’t… I didn’t think you’d be able to forgive me.” I’m horrified to hear my voice go thin with emotion. I look down at my feet and try to get ahold of myself. “I brought a gun onto school grounds. I ran away from the children’s home to join the Academy. I didn’t even say goodbye. I thought you were angry withme. That you felt betrayed by my choices. And I would have understood, I wouldstillunderstand—”
Arms come around me suddenly, cutting off my words as Master Ira pulls me into a hug. “Apata, no.”
I’m so stunned that for a second I can’t move. He tightens his grip, and I bring my arms up, swallow back the sudden urge to burst into tears.
“I would never abandon you,” he says. “Never. Haven’t I told you that before? Didn’t you remember?”
And—shit. Now I am crying. I grip him back and press my face into his shoulder, try to hold my breath against the tears. He smells the same. Like earth and stone, autumn, books. He smells like my childhood.
A boom shakes the ship, startling us apart. An alarm begins to sound.
“That,” the Master says, “is unusual.”
“Oh,” I say, and I feel almost like laughing. “Probably should have led with this. My friends are coming to save us.”
A moment later, the spaceship gives a giant heave, and all the lights go dark.
31
I blink into theblackness.
The commotion is far-off at first, too distant to really make out what’s happening. I just have this impression of voices, footfalls, the sound of people shouting. Their words meld together, fuzzy and indistinguishable. Almost like white noise.
Then things get louder.
I hear a cry, the blast of gunfire. There’s a whiff of a ray beam, metallic and electric and so fucking familiar, followed by the distinct sound of a body (definitely closer now, right outside the prison door) thumping to the ground. Someone yells, “Stand back!”
I fling an arm across Master Ira and brace for impact.
The exterior door flies off its hinges, skidding across the floor in a shrieking shower of sparks. Three people dash into the room. Avi comes first, her face covered in soot, her whites stained black, eyebrows singed clean off. She’s smiling, brilliant and sun-bright, like she’s just opened a present. A Youvu Hum appears next, holding a holographic map (it looks like Jester’s heat map imprinted with body signals) and appearing distinctly less enthusiastic. And then, behind them both, is Lament.
Lament, stalking through the ruined doorway. Lament, illuminatedby the intermittent flash of the wall-mounted alarm lights. He looks… I’ve never seen himlooklike this. Viscous and live-wire. Combustible. Like wildfire in a jar.
I’m stunned by the manner of his appearance—awestruck, even—so it takes me a second to understand what he’s doing as he approaches the bars of our cell, holds his hand out to Avi and says, “Give it to me.”
She passes him a bottle of inky liquid. He tips the contents onto the cell’s metal lock, which dissolves in a stream of smoke. And then he’s pushing open the broken cell door and striding forward and getting right in front of me, cupping my face in his hands, looking desperately between my eyes. “Are you hurt?”
My head is reeling. I feel like I’ve lost track of the edges of the world. The gentleness of his touch is so at odds with the raw emotion in his expression that it steals the breath right out of me. “No,” I rasp.
“Lament,” Youvu Hum warns from behind, checking the hallway beyond the blasted door, “we have to go.”
Lament releases me. My heart is ringing, my skin alive where his palms held my face. I can feel it still, the place each of his fingers pressed into my skin. My lifestone hangs around his neck, giving off its own faint light.
“Hartman—” That’s Youvu Hum again. “Catch.”
I look over Lament’s shoulder just in time to see my ray gun flying through the air. I reach out and snag it. “But how—?”
“One of the guards tried shooting me with it. His mistake, obviously.”
“Obviously,” I reply faintly, recalling that Youvu Hum is the most skilled hand-to-hand fighter in all Romothrida, aside from Youvu Hum.
“We blew a path from here to the west quadrant,” Lament tells me. His voice is urgent, low, like he’s still struggling to rein in that earlier feeling (whatwasthat feeling?) but isn’t quite succeeding. “Avi managed to buy us a few minutes with her Time Stopper. All the guards on this side of The Parallax are currently frozen, but we’ll need to hurry.” Then, as if only just noticing the man behind me: “Is that who I think it is?”
“Master Ira,” the Master says with a small bow. “At your service, Mr.—?”
“Introductions later,” Youvu Hum barks. “Let’smove.”
I exchange a look with Master Ira. He’s been stuck in this cell for three years. He’s underweight, clearly weakened. I’m worried whatever escape the others have planned might be too much for him to manage, but the Master straightens and places his hands together in a Venthrothian sign of readiness. “I will follow your lead.”
