“I’m going as fast as I can.” With a few more twists, her arms go free, then the last remaining shackle is the iron around her neck. The moment that springs open, she scrambles off the table with imprudent haste.
“Whoa—easy.” The blood loss immediately buckles her knees, forcing me to lurch forward and catch her.
“Don’t touch me, half breed.” She shoves me away despite her inability to balance.
“No wonder you and Raya are friends, you have the same bedside manner,” I mutter, turning my attention to the boy, instead. “Just try not to fall and hit your head for a minute. I’d rather not have to carry you out of here.”
“Then stop wasting time on the typic and let’s go,” she barks, damn near stunning me silent.
“You can’t be serious.” I fix her a look that’s pure judgement. “We’re not leaving him.”
“Why not? He’s a typic.”
“No, he’s achild.” Gods, what is wrong with these Shades? “And he was captured, same as you, and tortured,worsethan you, so try tomuster up a shred of compassion,” I grit, though even as I clamber to pick open his shackles, I find myself wondering if it’s already too late. Yes, the boy has finally quieted his screaming, but the transfusion has left him sobbing with misery, his body riddled with weeping blisters and oozing welts.
“Here, take these.” I fish a handful of Green crystals from Alara’s stash as the boy slowly staggers to his feet. Healing charms are rarely as powerful as a bespoke spell or a tonic—they’re made to treat smaller ailments, not burns inflicted by a Shade—but it’s better than nothing, especially since even the charms cost more than a blacksmith’s apprentice would make. “Now, run.”
Despite the pain of his injuries, the boy doesn’t need telling twice.
“Great, he’s gone, so take me to Raya.”
I can’t decide if I should be impressed by Akari’s single-minded persistence or enraged.
“You know, you’re really in no position to be making demands here.” She’s lost too much color, for one thing, and there’s enough iron in this cellar to keep it from regenerating itself. “But since I made a promise to Raya, are you going to let me help you or not?” I almost wish that she would double down on her disgust and saynot, that way, I could absolve myself of this responsibility and disappear into the night like I should have done earlier, when first given the chance to slip away. Because technically, I’ve already honored my promise; I’ve freed Akari and spared Raya the loss of a friend. So perhaps now’s the time to stop playing with fire, acknowledge that she’s a Shade and I’m a Hue and that our paths were never destined to converge. Find a different way to feel useful.
“Why did Raya want you to tell me about the open question?” Instead, Akari asks me the one thing Raya was certain she’d ask—before allowing me to lend her help.
“She said breaking her magic is the only reason you’d accept for why she’s working with me.”
And on that, it seems Raya was right. Because with a huff and a creative string of obscenities, Akari finally lets me drape her arm around my shoulders and phase us into the Gray.
CHAPTER 18
RAYA
Akari has never not been there for me—not once in the thirteen years we’ve known each other. Through every success, every failure, every fight with my parents and every subsequent despair, through my break-up with Killen, and the Council’s threat to bind my magic, and the night I stupidly snuck into the seeing tower to ask an open question. She’s always known exactly when I’d need her. To the point thatIshould have known something was wrong when I disappeared and she didn’t come looking. I should have realized that something terrible had also befallen her.
Maybe if I had, she wouldn’t have ended up strapped to the Meridian’s table.
Maybe if I had, then her life wouldn’t be hanging by a fraying thread and this embarrassment of a plan.
And as far as plans go, this one truly is bad. Tackle the Divine Meridian—the man whose color Ezzo’s gift hasn’t been able to identify—into the Gray and then hope that I can shimmer away faster than he can follow. Hope that Ezzo will keep his word to free Akari. Hope that all three of us live long enough for her to try and kill me herself.
Which she’ll absolutely want to do; I made sure of that when I asked Ezzo to tell her about my broken magic—and I had to do that to ensure that she’d actually accept his help, understand how I came to align myself with the very Hue we left the Academy to apprehend.
Better she kills me than the Meridian does.The thought fuels me as I speed across the cellar and throw my arms around his waist, blinking us both into the shadows with a dramatic war cry. Because if Akari can kill me, it means that she’s alive. It means that I am, too. That neither of us wound up dying at the hand of a zealot.
He’s still mid-grunt when the air around us strips of color, which—just as I’d hoped—grants me the element of surprise. The moment I see Gray, I give him one good shove then shimmer off in the opposite direction.
Please be slower than I am. Please be slower than I am. Please be slower than I am.The first few seconds are an agony of paranoia. They’re nervous glances over my shoulder and phantom claws tearing at my skin. They’re a questioning of every ripple in the shadows. Though as the cellar gives way to the laundry hall gives way to the street, my heart slowly begins to calm its pounding. I can still sense the Meridian behind me, hear the rustle of his robes as he scrambles to give chase. But if he’s not caught up to me yet, then the plan is working; I’m both avoiding capture and drawing him away, giving Ezzo time to save Akari.
I’m almost to the edge of Meridian territory when my feet suddenly grow heavy, as though I’m no longer shimmering through smoke but crawling through sand. No—wait; it’s not my feet, it’s the shadows. They’re getting denser, somehow. Closing in around me.
What in the hells—?I don’t jerk to a stop so much as I sublime to it, like a fly caught in amber and slowly entombed in bark.
“You can’t outrun your betters, full-blood.” The Meridian’s voice is everywhere and nowhere all at once. In my head, and behind me, and assaulting my sanity from every side. “You are but a shade of the darkness whereas I am the absence of light.” In the space between blinks, he’s appeared before me, stepping out of the ether in a way that defies the laws governing our kind. Not like he’s becoming one with the shadows, but like he’s bending them, displacing them, swallowing them up. Using them to suffocate and restrain me.
How will I get away from him?I beg the future, groping, straining, clambering for the magic in my blood. But it seems whatever’saffecting the shadows is affecting my power, as well. For the first time in my life, I can’t reach it. And I don’t just mean I can’t get it to answer, but I can’t feel it at all. Almost as if my color has already been bound.
