But together, we found a way to heal.
And to love.
And while the horrors of our past were never truly gone, we chose not to let them dictate our future.
Eve became my future, andwe’ll die like the starsbecame the words we’d whisper to each other when we were afraid, a fragile promise we never shared with the others. It was ours alone. Private.
Or at least it was until this Shade said them.
How she broke through the compulsion to do that, I don’t know, but she did, and coming from her, the words felt more like a warning, not unlike the one currently emanating from my scry.
Get ready to run.
Cemmy never did learn when to take no for an answer, and if her Gold has a specialty, it’s using the magic he steals to get his way, so I shouldn’t be surprised that once again, those two have chosen to meddle.
Meddling is the future’s way of showing you something, Mom used to tell me, back before she slipped into the past tense.When you feel its hand guiding you, listen to what it’s trying to say.
It doesn’t take an Indigo to decipher what Cemmy is trying to say. But with the Red’s compulsion still spelling every part of me frozen, I can’t send a message back to describe the full extent of my predicament, or alert her to just how many trackers she and Chase will be facing if they do come bursting in unprepared, how they’ll only be condemning themselves to the same prison. All I can do is rail against the magic keeping me helpless, try to break free of its clutches before the three of us wind up dead.
Too late.
With a crash and a hail of debris, the wall to the tavern bursts apart, showering the Golden Stag’s occupants in a biting rain.
Go, now.
Thanks to the sharp shards of iron the explosion unleashed, the Red’s oppressive hold on me has fractured, releasing my body from its magical cage. And though I know I should listen to the urgency beating against my chest—the voice screaming that my best chance is to go, now, without sparing a thought for the Indigo girl who threw Eve’s promise at me like a threat—I can’t shake the feeling that she’d said those words for a reason.
We’ll die like the stars.
It was the future who told her to say them—of that, I’m certain; I recognized the state of vision she kept falling into while trying to orchestrate our escape. Which makes the real question: why was she trying to help me escape in the first place? Why is the girl frommy execution suddenly working to change my fate? What could an Indigo possibly want with a Hue so badly she’d risk acting against her own Council?
Some truly excellent questions for later. I snap-make the decision. Or hells, maybe the drink does it for me, but I turn back and pull her out from beneath the wreckage.
“You can stay with them or come with me.” I offer her a hand and a choice. “It’s up to you.”
And for a split second, she hesitates, a mix of shock and suspicion warring in her eyes. She’s looking for the catch, the lie, the hidden agenda, as if stunned to discover that she’s suddenly the one in need of help instead of the one lending it—and that a Hue is willing to help a Shade at all. But for whatever reason, she seems as eager to avoid the trackers as I am, and that makes us briefly aligned.
“Let’s go.” The second she takes my hand, we’re running. Past the mess of startled typics and upturned tables, out through the hole Chase rent in the tavern, and away from the symphony of dazed surprise and outraged yells. With a whole armada of Shades on our tail, phasing into the Gray isn’t an option, so we’re forced to run through the streets instead, following the clipped instructions Cemmy’s sending down my scry.
Take a left then two rights; there’s a market you can use for cover. And enough iron on the way to get us there unseen—if the Indigo can get that far. Which is a problem I failed to consider when I lost my mind to this whim. The second we emerge into the maze of metal, she doubles over, as though hooked around the waist by an invisible snare.
“We can’t avoid the iron until we lose the Shades, so you need to suck it up,” I say, dragging her forward.
“It’s not that easy, half breed.” She spits venom between shallow breaths. “That stuff is poison.”
“Well, then you’re free to phase away whenever you’d like; I can’t exactly stop you.” Nor would I mourn her loss or try to convince her to stay. If she wants to put an end to this reckless alliance, then quite frankly, that’s a win for me. I won’t have to deal with the fallout.
“Where are you taking us, anyway?” the Indigo asks, biting back the pain.
“Somewhere there’s a lot of people,” I say, since from the shadows, the trackers can’t see us so much as they can see our echoes, ghostly flickers that are indistinguishable from one another in the Gray. Two echoes fleeing a tavern together are a pinch to follow; they’re a pair of fireflies leaving behind them a glowing trail. But once we mix in with a crowd, the task will grow much harder; the trackers will have no choice but to blink back into the physical realm and search us out in the flesh—which I very much doubt they’re going to do in a market this laden with hate.
Shit, it’s a Church market. Cemmy chose our escape route well. Not only is the entry arch cast from iron, but thick spikes of the metal line the narrow walkways and sit between wares. There are ferrite amulets on the tables, iron charms hanging from the awnings and strung around the merchants’ necks, enough that the second I force her into their midst, the Indigo groans and loses her feet—and her stomach.
“We just have to get to the other end,” I say, tightening my grip on her hand. While it does seem cruel to subject her to such agony, turning back now would mean the end of us, and I won’t force her to stop running when she can call uncle on the suffering at any stage. She’schoosingnot to phase away from the pain. And as long as she retains that ability, that decision should be hers to make.
We weave through the stands as fast as the color in her veins allows, praying that the typics won’t notice the blood that’s started crying down her face. Back when Mom was still alive, we didn’t live in such a hateful city, so I never saw the damage iron could inflict on a Shade first-hand. Not to this extent, anyhow—nor would I ever expect any Shade to let it get this bad. Yet here she is, still stumbling after me.
What the hells are you running from that you’d rather endure this?Just this morning, this girl was wearing Academy robes and attending executions with her classmates, so unless she suddenly decided to turn rogue in the last eight hours, she has no reason to fear the Council, nothing to be gained by helping me evade their clutches or fleeing them herself. Then again, if she wasn’t part of the hunting effort,then she had no reason to be in that tavern, either. Absolutely nothing about this Indigo makes sense.
