“You can tell me your name.” The interest in Ezzo’s voice is sincere. And though I’d much rather tell him to go to hell, I might be better off giving him a reason to see me as more than just a petulant Shade. Maybe then, he’ll feel like he’s won something and let me go.
“Raya.” I offer him my first name only, not the Wryvern legacy. “My name is Raya.”
“Well, okay then, Raya.” For a long moment, it feels as though my gamble might pay. Ezzo doesn’t smile, exactly, but he also doesn’t look mad anymore; he looks like the boy from my vision, the one with the warm eyes and the heartbreakingly lovely face. The one who could still choose to grant my freedom.
But then—right as his shoulders set into a decision—the door to the room crashes open and the Bronze called Cemmy comes bursting inside.
“The trackers are raiding this sector. We have to go, now,” she says, lurching Ezzo to his feet. “They can deal with the Shade.”
No, no, no, no.I rail against the iron keeping me captive. “Please, you can’t let them find me here.” Not this far from the Academy and helplessly bound in chains. There’ll be no explaining that to my parents, or to the class masters, or to the guilds. My future will officially be ruined.
“Please, Ezzo, you have to let me go.” I’m not above begging him like I begged his friend. “Let me go and I’ll forget everything that’s happened. Chase can even compel me to forget.”
“Right, because that worked so well the first time,” Cemmy mutters, urging Ezzo away. Then when he turns to hesitate in the doorway, she steps around him to say, “Ez, come on. You can’t possibly be—”
Instead of cutting her off with his words, he does it with his hands, shaping a series of signs I don’t have the language to read.
Though, evidently, she does.
And I don’t need to read sign to interpret the tenor of her answering rage.
“Colors help me, I hope you know what you’re doing.” After a brief but terse exchange, she whips towards me, fishing out a key from her pocket and a knife from the belt at her hip.
“No—please—”
“Relax, it’s to stop you from shimmering, so I suggest you hold very fucking still.” She presses the tip of the blade to my chin, hard enough that I can’t even draw breath without the metal biting.
“Ready?” she asks as Ezzo joins us by the pipe, the question meant solely for him.
“Ready.”
What happens next is a sleight of hand so deft I don’t even realize it’s happened until the deed is complete.
You have got to be kidding me.I fight the urge to scream as I finally understand the switch the two of them had conceived. Because instead of letting me go, the Bronze has gone and tethered me to a wholly different prison.
She’s gone and cuffed me to Ezzo.
CHAPTER 15
RAYA
“Have you lost your mind?” I glance between Ezzo and the iron cuff, cursing our new-found proximity. “I already told you everything I know!”
“You told me everything you wanted me to hear, there’s a difference,” he says, dismissing the Bronze with a quick exchanging of signs. “Now, are we staying to meet your tracker friends, or shall we run while we still can?”
This Sapphire is clearly more perceptive than I first thought.
“I’ll do you one better.” Without a word of warning, I shed my physicality and shimmer us out of the house, praying that the sudden burst of speed will destabilize his In-Between, shatter my problem to pieces.
“Disappointed I’m still here?” Ezzo asks when I jerk us to a halt at the top of the street.
Way,waymore perceptive.
And far more adept.
“You know, I could just shimmer us straight to the Council and say that I was the one who caught you.”
“Right, because I’m sure they’d believe youwillinglycuffed yourself to a Hue with iron.”
