Because that’s not just any Shade the Meridian has gone and shackled to the table; it’s an Orange with dark, angular eyes and sharply cut black hair.
It’s Akari.
CHAPTER 17
EZZO
I should have never allowed Alara to abduct the boy. Regardless of Raya’s logic, I knew it was a bad idea; I felt the wrongness of it in my bones. But then I remembered the room full of shattered typics—all those piles of glass the Meridian condemned to a filthy floor—and I couldn’t not dosomething. For the first time since Eve died, I felt the need to watch.
And it felt better than drinking.
It’s always felt better than drinking, if I’m honest; it’s why I used to spend so much time hiding inside my gift. An obsession, Eve often called it, though not the kind she discouraged unless I allowed myself to get too lost. She understood what the others didn’t: that I don’t watch because I’m scared, but because I’m guilty—that even a decade later, I’m still trying to atone.
When I watch, I’m useful.
When I watch, I can prevent the Council from inflicting more needless hurt—or in this case, the Divine Meridian.
That’s how we stop him from doing it again.Heartless though it was, Raya did make a good point—and she made it sound convincing. How she did that, I don’t know—I don’t know why I chose to stick with her at all, what possessed me to cuff myself to a Shade, and go Hue hunting with a Shade, and make small talk with a Shade who looks at me like I’m a piece of meat to be fed to the dogs.
But I did.
Because something about her—and I don’t mean the fact that she’s pretty; it’s not a physical thing, it’s more like a . . . I can’t even explain what—tugged at me in a way that felt important, like she was keeping a secret I desperately needed to learn.
So instead of leaving her to the trackers, I allowed her to drag me into this infernal plot.
I let her talk me into using a child as bait.
And now that child is being tortured in a cellar and I have no earthly clue how we’re going to free him without getting ourselves caught. Already, his screams have forced me to clamp an arm around Raya’s horror, but it’s the moment she catches sight of the Shade strapped to the Meridian’s table that her fear changes to abject shock, the kind that tells me I’ll no longer be able to keep her panic under control.
Shit.
I phase us into the Gray before she can betray our presence, so that when she breaks free of my grip and spills her curses, they’ll dissipate harmlessly into the void.
“Raya, don’t—” I try to calm her, to stop her doing something reckless that’ll land the both of us in that cage in the corner.
“Get off me, Ezzo, we have to go back!”
My only saving grace is that she’s too incensed to initiate the blink on her own, to remember she has that power.
“Raya—”
“I said get off me, you filthy half breed! That’s my friend in there! I’mgoingback!”
Ah. The force of her reaction suddenly makes sense. If it was Novi on that table, I’d be fighting me the exact same way.
“Not without a plan, you’re not.” I pin her to the wall with a sobering effort, keeping a firm grip on her shoulders as I demand that she look at me head-on. “If you want to save your friend, we need a plan.”
“My plan is to kill them.” Raya’s eyes are wild, frantic, stray locks of russet framing her stern resolve. “Whether you help me or not.”
“I amtryingto help you. But you have to let me—”
“There’s no time, Ezzo. Akari could already be—”Dead. The very thought strips the strength from her voice. And suddenly, Raya’s not breathing anymore, she’s gasping, her nails clawing into my skin as she struggles to keep herself whole.
“Hey—hey, listen to me.” I tilt her face up by the chin and temper my words. “They’re not going to kill her right away, okay? They could have done that in the cage if they wanted.” And you don’t shackle a person so tightly just to turn around and slit their throat. “You saw the tools they had in there, Raya; it’s all bloodletting equipment, not designed to kill a Shade fast, but to bleed them out slow. That gives us a few minutes to think this through.”
ThoughwhyI’m helping her do that is an entirely different question. Saving one Shade was madness enough, wasn’t it? What am I even doing, conspiring to save two? I should be using the fact that she’s distracted as a means to put an end to this disastrous detour, to go find the others and forget whatever evil the Divine Meridian is brewing.
Except there’s a child on that table.It’s Eve’s voice chiding me from beyond the grave. A childIendangered and a girl for whom Raya would revolt. I remember what that kind of devotion feels like. How, to defend it, I’d have worked with any monster in the world—Shade, Hue, Council or Church. I wouldn’t have discriminated across blood color, and I don’t have it in me to inflict the pain I’ve been living with this past year on another soul, no matter how much I’m supposed to hate her.
