“No one deserves this, Raya. No one,” he says, turning to look at me head-on. “And I know it doesn’t feel that way right now, but this pain will get better with time. It won’t disappear entirely, but you will get better at carrying it.”
“Did you get better at it?” I think I finally understand the reason he’d all but given up when we met.
“I didn’t want to get better at it. I haven’t wanted much of anything this past year, to be honest, other than to drink until I could forget, drown out the past.” Ezzo’s admission is its own weight.
“Is that why you let yourself get caught?” I ask, the question little more than a breath.
“The first couple of times, yes,” he says, equally quiet. “I guess I figured if I was careless enough, the trackers would make the hard decision for me, save me doing it myself.” He confirms what I’d long since begun to suspect. “But when we were in that square, I wasn’t thinking about dying, I just saw a chance to help the others get away. And you were supposed to get away, too, Raya.” His eyes sharpen back to the cell. “They had no reason to think you were working with me, so why didn’t they let you go?”
“Turns out, I’m not smart enough to save my own neck.” I sigh, hugging my knees to my chest.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, when they put me in front of the tribunal—in front of Councilman Denata—I decided to ask him about what you saw in the Meridian’s church.”
“You asked him about Adriel?” It’s hard to tell if Ezzo’s appalled or impressed.
“Among . . . other accusations.”
“And?” Though at the very least, he’s certainly entertained. “What did he say?”
“He denied it, of course, but he also sent me here, so I’m taking it as a yes.” I shrug, trying to relay the next part lightly, like it isn’t churning my insides with dread. “For ‘further interrogation’, apparently, but I’m betting that’s just a pretense. He won’t want me running my mouth again.”
“Then so much for saving the fundamental thread.” Ezzo’s resigned huff is sadder than I expect. “Unless maybe you already saved it in the court chamber? Do you think your confrontation with the councilman could have been a trigger in some way? The catalyst the future needed to course-correct?”
That might make sense if not for the original vision it showed me, where the arm draped around my shoulders had graduated from comfort to something else.
“Maybe.” I drop my head to the mold-bitten brick, trying to ignore the fact that the idea no longer strikes me as so far-fetched. “But I’ve never been a very good seer, Ezzo, and I’m fate-touched now, as well, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in anything I say. I probably read the vision wrong.” Otherwise, why would the future have forced me to lead Killen to his death? Surely that only brings Adrielcloserto poisoning the shadows? Surely locking us up in here does, too, since there’s not much we can do to stop him from behind bars, and the others aren’t likely to succeed, either, if their efforts are distracted by the need to get us out. No, my being wrong is the more likely scenario—and far more true to life.
“Why do you keep saying fate-touched like it’s a bad thing?” Ezzo’s voice lilts with the question. “Didn’t you say that’s how every Indigo used to see?”
“Erm . . . yeah, we—” How is that his take-away from this? “We learned a better way to solicit visions, a way that avoids us getting punished by the fates.”
“Punished, huh?” He raises a brow. “Is that your word or the guilds’?”
“The guilds’ . . .” I still don’t understand what he’s getting at. “But being fate-touched can make you lose your magic altogether; wouldn’t you call that a punishment?”
“I think my mom would have called it a gift.”
A gift?I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing. “You think it’s agiftthat I might lose my magic? Gods, don’t tell me you’re starting to side with Adriel.”
“No, I’m not starting to side with Adriel.” He rolls his eyes. “It’s just . . . not all magics are created equal, Raya—some exact a heavier toll. My mom always described the future as her burden, something she had to see while everyone else got to enjoy the present, skate through life without constantly having to predict. She made it sound pretty exhausting, actually—hells, I just watch and that’s exhausting enough for me. So if being fate-touched makes it possible for you to see even bigger and more imperative things—like fundamental paths and cataclysms—then yeah, maybe losing your magic is the future deciding that you’ve already done your bit, allowing you to live your life unencumbered.”
“I—” Have never thought to look at it that way before; as a Wryvern, that’s not really something I’m allowed to think. My magic—my lineage—has always defined me. It’s who I am, who I’ve not become yet, and who people expect me to be. It’s the only part of me my parents care about. “I guess that . . . could be nice?” I say, since it’s not the worst fantasy to believe. “How come your mom taught you so much about this stuff, anyway? Fated paths and fundamental futures, I mean? It’s hardly the stuff most Indigos care about.”
“My mom wasn’t most Indigos.” His lips quirk with a smile. “She used to talk about them all the time, always insisted that she and my dad were fated.”
I’m assuming she meant that in a romantic sense rather than a literal one, since their illicit coupling couldn’t have been preordained.
Unless it was. . . That thought takes me by surprise—but if there’s anything these past few days have taught me, it’s not to underestimatefate. If, for whatever reason, it did decide to push a Hue and a Shade together, then it would have had to ensure that Hue had been born in the first place, which would have meant prompting a Shade to turn rogue and marry a typic, then teach her son how to survive long enough to fulfil his purpose and start the cycle again.
“But I’m sure that’s a little hard to understand,” Ezzo’s quick to add, as if expecting me to minimize the idea. “Choosing to believe that the fates would orchestrate something so forbidden.”
“Not as odd as you might think,” I say, since minimizing it hasn’t been working for a fair while. It was hard to understand when Akari and I first left the castle, and when the future led me to the Golden Stag tavern where Ezzo was drinking himself numb, and especially when he invited Chase to feast on the color in my blood. But three days and a whole bunch of revelations later, I’m starting to consider all manner of odd things. Like finally coming clean.
“Ezzo, there’s—there’s something I haven’t told you,” I say, since given where we are—what’s about to befall us—keeping this secret feels kind of pointless.
“Well, now’s as good a time as ever.” Though his voice stays light, his body stiffens, bracing for whatever admission is to come. He knows I’ve been hiding something—he even asked me about it back at Saleen’s, when I was still intent on being less forthcoming—he just doesn’t know what that something is yet, and I have no earthly clue how he’s likely to react.
