“I don’t understand,” he admits on a shaky exhale.
Kalden appears at my side, holding an unconscious Joss in his arms. “Orelle isn’t losing her humanity, if that’s what you’re worried about. The last of the solar energy will drain from her body soon enough. And it won’t come back until she’s re-exposed to direct sunlight. But what’s more concerning is whether my friend survivesyour murder attempt.”
“Her veins . . . they were glowing,” Gabe stammers. “I thought she was going to hurt Elle.”
“Both Sols and Pyres bear the mark of the sun, but we aren’t the same. We Sols maintain our humanity. We feel, eat, love, and shit just like any other humans would, but with an added boost of borrowed power during daylight hours.”
Niles sluggishly rises to his feet, all traces of his prior brightness gone from his narrowed cerulean eyes as he continues where Kalden left off, stalking closer to Gabe. “And unlike you, we have no interest in unnecessary bloodshed. We prefer to keep our distance from you Shades, since you’re the ones who tend to escalate into violence.”
“We need to get Joss to Lucis,” Kalden says, reminding Niles there’s no time to pick a fight. “She’s stable for now, but I’m not sure how much longer she’ll stay that way. We need to staunch the bleeding.”
“Can I help?” I ask, already releasing the blade cuffs to slice off the leather sleeves of my bodysuit.
Thanks to how skintight the material is, I nick my shoulder with the sharpened nightstone tip several times, sending fresh daggers of ice to devour the little warmth that remains in my veins. I hiss through my teeth. There’s irony in my pain tolerance drawing the line at tiny slices when it hardly bats an eye at my usual migraine attacks, or the puncture wounds I’d gotten around my throat from the Pyre’s talons.
Once I finish ripping off the second sleeve, I hand both pieces to Niles. “You could use these as makeshift bandages until we get her proper medical attention.”
Niles nods his gratitude, wrapping the leather around Joss’s amputation sites.
Gabe grabs hold of my left arm. “You’re going with them?”
“Where else is there for me to go? I can’t go back. Your father willeither have me executed or sent to the Abyss.”
“Maybe not, if I talk to him . . .”
“No, Gabe.” I take a measured breath. “He already hated me before, for my inability to comply with breeding expectations. Even if the footage of my confession doesn’t make it past the production team, anyone who sees it will know I’m proof that our beliefs, our whole system, are built on lies. I was already disposable to him, but now I’m a threat.”
Gabe doesn’t respond, so I tug free from his grip.
Once my back is to him, he rasps, “Then I’m coming, too.”
I whirl back around. “What?”
“I’m not letting you walk into a den of Sols alone.” Gabe’s gloved fists clench at his sides, voice lowering. “We can’t trust them, Elle. Just because they look more normal than the other creatures doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous.”
Niles scoffs a few feet beside us. “You nearly kill me and Joss, and yet you have the nerve to accuseusof being dangerous?”
He pulls out the cuffs from his back pocket.
Gabe steps away, head shaking.
“The only way you’re coming with us is if I know you won’t be shooting a missile at my back.”
“I won’t,” Gabe insists.
Niles leans in closer, nose scrunching. “I don’t believe you. You still fear us. Fear and hatred are two sides of the same coin, especially foryourkind. Your bigotry makes you distrustful of anything or anyone that doesn’t align with what you deem as right and good. It’s why you didn’t hesitate to throw that explosive. Your eyes told you we didn’t look like the charred creature beside us. Our skin wasn’t seared. Our posture wasn’t threatening. Yet you dehumanized us anyway, simply because our veins differed from yours.”
Seconds pass. When Gabe finally responds, he does so by unhooking the belted pouch containing the remaining missiles and shoving it into Niles’s open palm.
Niles waits expectantly, eying the igniter protruding from Gabe’s pocket. “That, too.”
He hands it over, and Niles secures the cuffs around Gabe’s wrists.
A familiar rhythmic whir stirs in the salty breeze behind us, tugging at a memory I can’t quite grasp as we make our way closer to the beach. My shoulders roll back a bit when I see Aruna and Twilynn looking relatively intact, though both flinch as the Sols approach.
“What in the burning pits of the sun are you doing?!” Aruna curses at Niles, who ushers a restrained Gabe forward. “That’s Chancellor Bren’s son!”
Jaw clenching, Niles points to the woman lying limp in Kalden’s arms. “He did that to her. If Joss doesn’t make it, I won’t give a fuck who he is. Murdering an innocent life has consequences.”
