I start to lurch to my feet only to find Techeki still holding me back.
“Are you mad?” he shouts, forced to put his head close to mine to be heard. “You’ll be killed before you’ve even reached them.”
“She’ll destroy the temple!” I scream back, shredding my throat. “She’ll destroy everything she has left. I can’t let her become this thing!”
“She thinks you’re dead, boy,” Techeki replies, voice cracking with the effort of shouting over the din. “That’s why—after Daoman, Jezara, the temple … I heard her, cloudlander. I heard her say your name.”
I spare a glance for Techeki, shock coursing through me. She hasn’t seen me—she doesn’t know I’m alive.
I can stop this.
A scream from the terrace jerks my attention back. Inshara’s pressed up against the stone now, and the mist is gathering around Nimh so densely she’s almost wearing it like a second skin. It reaches out, stretching like another set of arms, reaching for Inshara.
“Wait—Nimh! WAIT!” The wind tears my voice away.
Before I can stop it, the mist grabs Inshara and pulls her in, her scream cut short. Both she and Nimh vanish inside the deadly whirling mass. But where I’d half expected the violent torrent to halt, Nimh’s goal achieved—for surely Inshara could not survive so much mist—the storm rages on.
The force of the storm rips more stones from the terrace, one flying so close to us that Techeki’s forced to drop to the ground, covering his head with both hands. I manage a single glance back over my shoulder, the ruined path of destruction that Nimh left gaping like a scar across the city.
No. I will not let her do this—for their sake, for hers.
I heave a couple of breaths to ready myself, brace my feet against the top of the stairs—and then break into a sprint.
What will the mist feel like?
Will I have enough time to stop her, toreachher, before I’m dead? Before I’m twisted? Before I’m nothing more than a ghost?
My family’s faces flash before my eyes. I’ll never see them again.
Miri and Saelis—I’ll never hear my friends’ laughter.
Nimh.
The storm hits like a wall, stones battering my body, crashing against me, slicing my skin. One tears open a gash across my face—I can feel the skin peel back with sickening certainty.
Any moment now, and the mist will have me… .
A blinding light, a roaring in my ears …
And then nothing.
Confused, I open my eyes, my arms lifted to ward stone and mist alike away from my face. All around me is mist. Up close, it’s as beautiful as it is frightening—it gleams as if lit from within by every color at once, glistening like iridescent feathers. It roils around me, seething, angry—and yet I feel nothing, except a flare of heat against one hip. I lift a hand and see the mist swirl around my skin, which is unmarked and untwisted.
“North?”
I whirl around. Nimh is there, just behind me, gazing at me with round, tear-filled eyes. There’s no sign of Inshara.
It’s just Nimh and me, wrapped together in our own world of mist. She hovers a breath away from me, her gaze roving over my features, hungry, desperate. Her hand lifts, but halts just above my face, her fingers trembling with the desire to touch me.
“You have to stop this!” I gasp, not waiting to question my luck that, somehow, I’ve bought a few moments before the mist takes me. “You’re destroying everything that you love out there. She isn’t worth it.”
“There isn’t anything left that I love.” The tears in Nimh’s eyes spill over. “You’re dead.”
“I’mright here,” I insist, wishing I could reach out and grab hold of her. “I’m not some trick of the mist. Whoever told you I was dead waslying.”
“You can’t be,” Nimh cries. “The mist would destroy you. You have no protection.”
My hip throbs again, and with sudden realization, I dig my hand into my pocket until my fingers close around the small, round stone Nimh gave me on the cliff top. It’s so hot my instincts tell me to drop it, but I hold on, gritting my teeth.
