But then, between one breath and the next, every Shade in that chamber was screaming and the three guards flanking me were suddenly blasted back into the brick.
It should have been impossible.
Itwasimpossible.
Until I spotted Cemmy weaving through the panic and then I knew exactly how my luck had turned. Because where Cemmy goes, Chase follows, and with Chase comes enough stolen magic to incapacitate an entire court.
Novi sent us.
I should have realized she’d find a way to save me from all the way across the world.
I should have never scried her my warning.
But I did, so now I’m sitting on a grimy floor, in an abandoned house at the forgotten end of Sarotuza, laying low until the three of us can escape the city without getting caught.
“Here—this should help with the swelling.” Cemmy hands me a cool strip of cloth.
“Fuck off.” I’m quick to bat her away. It’s been one year, four months, and seventeen days since I was last forced to share air with this self-serving liar of a Bronze; one year, four months, and eighteen days since she led us all into the ambush that shattered Eve. And while I should be grateful for the rescue, I would have sooner died than seen her or Chase again, nor did I need to see them looking more content together than either of them ever did alone.
“Ez, come on, I’m trying to help,” she says, shuffling back to lean against the wall. She’s still every bit as pale and sharp as I remember, her blond hair hanging straight past her shoulders, her blue eyes as piercing as they are cold.
“I don’t want your help, Cemmy. So please, just go.” I do my resolute best to ignore her, staring at the moldy ceiling, the boarded-upwindows, the splintered cracks in the plaster, anywhere except her worry until, with a heavy sigh and asuit yourself, she disappears through the door.
Good. I wince as I sit up straighter, dabbing the cloth to the worst of the throb. I don’t want her to think that all is forgiven. Because a life saved doesn’t somehow erase the one she cost—and that’s all I can see when I look at her: the absence of Eve. How needless that loss was. How preventable. How it might never have happened if Cemmy had put her faith in us instead of the Gold.
“I told you he won’t talk to me.” I hear her say from the corridor, then a long moment later, her more dangerous half stalks into the room.
“I’m not interested in talking,” I grit the words through a clenched jaw.
“I’m not here to talk; I’m here to heal,” he says, dropping into a crouch.
“Well, I don’t want that, either.”
“Then by all means, you’re welcome to stop me.”
Before I can even think to try, he’s placed both hands to my side and engaged his power, pressing hard enough to prove a point.
Point made. I suck a harsh breath through my teeth. In my current state, we both know I’m too weak to fight him; even without the magic, he’s got a good couple of inches on me and no broken ribs. Though the moment his healing spell touches my skin, I lose the will to pretend I don’t want it. After four days of constant pain, the dulling of it is overwhelming, a heady release that makes me forget how Chase’s stolen color is won. The hurt he has to inflict to get it.
“Do I want to know where you found all this Green?” I ask as he turns his attention to the bruises marking my face. The metallic sheen of his magic extends to other parts of him, as well. Golden hair, silver eyes, a bronze tan to his skin, chiseled features that even Eve acknowledged were pretty. A beautiful trap.
“From the same place you’ve been frequenting all year,” he says, a note of judgement creeping into his voice. “A tavern.”
“Kind of a risk, don’t you think? Courting Shades so publicly?”
“It’s always a risk.” Sweat beads at his temples, the feat he’s performing exacting a heavy toll. “But the trackers aren’t looking for a Gold right now and when we run, we need you to be able to keep up, so I did what I had to. We’ll leave just as soon as the search for you quiets.”
“You and Cemmy shouldn’t bother waiting, I’m fine on my own.”
“Yeah, you look like you’ve really got it together.” With another burst of magic, he eases the painful swelling around my eyes. “Why didn’t you see the trackers coming?”
The question irks me to no end. Back in Isitar, I used to scour the Gray for trails all the time. I made it my duty to keep our palette safe from the Council. But thenheturned that very power against me, used it to force another Hue into his master’s genocidal plan. So if he’s wondering why I’ve lost the zeal for watching the shadows, then he can consider himself Exhibit One.
“Who says I didn’t?”
“Colors help me, have you even been checking?” He sees straight through the lie. “Or were you actually trying to get yourself caught?”
“You know what, I prefer my healings without the lecture, thank you very much,” I snap. Novi can talk to me like this. Cemmy, too, at a push, since we were friends for years before she blew that trust apart. But this Gold has known me for all of five minutes and he used every single one of them to ruin my life. It was the Shadeheled to Isitar who cast the spell that stopped Eve’s heart and robbed her of magic, allowing the vengeful shadows to rush in and shatter her like glass, and it was the lieshetold that kept us from putting that Shade down in the first place. Chase hasn’t earned the right to berate me for anything—let alone for endangering the shell of a person his treachery left behind.
