“Go—now!” What happens next is a tangled mess of spells, curses, and charms. It’s surprised screams and growled obscenities, iron-damped magic and crystal-borne power. It’s clutching Killen in my arms until the dust settles to reveal that we’re not the only casualties of fate’s meddling.
Ezzo.
He’s on his knees across the square, lip split and nose bloodied, driven to surrender by a swell of magic and kept from running by two hulking Reds.
He doesn’t say anything as we’re phased away.
He doesn’t look at me.
He doesn’t protest.
Though his hand does brush mine for the briefest of seconds, as if to remind me that we’re still allied. That’s when I understand the gift he’s buying me with his silence. If Ezzo doesn’t acknowledge me, then I can claim that we’re not together. I can claim that I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, a spectator to the violence while he’s the cause, the evil Sapphire acting on the Divine Meridian’s
behalf. But no matter how hard I work to catch his eye and tell him that I won’t do it—that I won’t be responsible for the death of another Shade, however diluted their color—Ezzo only heeds melong enough to give an almost imperceptible sigh.There’s no point in them killing us both, it seems to say, and it makes me want to slip my shackles and shake him until he understands thatIdid this, not him. The future showed memycapture, not his, and he shouldn’t have to pay formywillingness to follow that instruction blind, without taking a single second to think.
Except that truth won’t save him.
He’s an illegal Hue who’ll be executed regardless; the only question now is whether I’ll also be standing trial.
Was this your plan, huh?I ask the future.Is this what you wanted? For both of us to end up in cuffs?
But of course, the future can’t answer that question, and even if it did, I imagine it would simply confirm what I already know in my heart: that the only thing it wants is its own survival—and that I truly am a coward down to the last. Because when the trackers lead us off in opposite directions, I don’t make a single plea for them to spare Ezzo’s life.
CHAPTER 25
EZZO
This time, Ireallydidn’t mean to get caught. I was only in that square because of Raya, and it was clear, from the second we got there, that it was already too late; the Shade was already gone. And not some random Shade, either, but Raya’s ex, Killen—I recognized him from the park and the prophecy she’d self-fulfilled. He was the Shade we’d both left with the courtesan, though never in my wildest dreams did I think that decision would condemn him to such a gruesome death. Drained, branded, carved bloody, and left to hang on the Church’s doorstep. A fate I wouldn’t wish on anyone, not even an Academy Shade.
Though that didn’t make lingering in the square any less dangerous, surrounded as we were by faithful eyes. Then when the trackers blinked into that basilica a minute later, I knew our time there was well and truly spent.
Raya was too far out of my reach to help.
But Cemmy and Chase weren’t.
What happened next happened quickly, though in the moment, it felt as though I was watching the world through molasses, glimpsing the violence in fractured fits and bursts. I saw the spells flying, the typics running, the Council’s justice closing in around us like a trawler’s net. And then—right as I was about to try my luck in the shadows—I saw the mirth of a tracker who had Chase firmly within aim.
And just like that, I was back in the theatre house in Isitar, watching a flash of magic build to murder in a Green’s hand. To my murder—untilEve threw herself in front of the spell and saved my life. She died so that I wouldn’t, and now, here I was, in a position to make that same decision, to step in front of the spell hurtling at Chase and spare Cemmy that same heartbreak.
I didn’t have to do it; I could have easily just phased and ran, taken from her the same thing she took from me. But that’s not who Eve would’ve wanted me to be and it’s not who I wanted to become. Because deep down, I knew Cemmy didn’t deserve that. She didn’t deserve to lose her happiness to the trackers and spend the next year drinking herself stupid in some filthy tavern. And so my best instinct took over and I stepped in to spare her that pain, only to find that it wasn’t a deadly Green spell this time, it was an excruciating Orange.
I lost sight of what happened next—there was too much magic screaming through my blood—but when the spells finally stopped flying, Raya and I were the only two the trackers had successfully trapped. And while they very much wanted to put an end to me immediately, our capture had the distinct misfortune of causing a spectacle, which prompted the lead tracker to stay my execution with a growl.Not here, he’d said—now that they had an audience, they had to at least pretend they meant to give me a trial. Or hells, maybe they just wanted the option of questioning both me and Raya, to see if our stories aligned, use me against her. Andthatwas preventable.
My fate was sealed at birth, but she could still talk her way out of this, continue walking her fundamental path. So I said nothing to the trackers, and when Raya caught my eye, I shook my head ever so slightly and made it clear that there was no point in us both dying. And I swear, I didn’t mean it as a test of loyalty—I really didn’t—Iwantedher to look away so she’d survive.
So then, why does the fact that she stayed silent suddenly feel like a betrayal?
Why is the last thing I hear before they separate us an echo of Chase’s warning whispering through my mind:remember what she is.
CHAPTER 26
RAYA
The trackers don’t take me to the prison, they take me to the Academy, to a holding room in the basement where they leave me for hours on end. One bell passes, then two bells, then three, four, five, eight, ten. And still no one comes for me, nor does the castle thrill with a summons to the court chamber, so if they’re planning to execute Ezzo, they’ve either done it behind closed doors or they haven’t done it yet.
They won’t kill him until they’ve questioned you.I spend the silence clinging to that hope with each breath, too afraid to reach for my magic and learn the true answer.They’re going to want to compare your stories. They may not give him another trial but they’ll want to find out what he knows first.
It would be easy to believe that—if not for the fact that no one’s come to ask whatIknow all day.
