“Raya, I—”
“You don’t have to explain, Ezzo, I get it, I really do.” She makes a concerted effort to meet my eye. “And I’m not expecting anything, okay? I told you because I didn’t want to lie anymore—but when it comes to the future, I’m very rarely right.”
Oh.
The sudden pang of disappointment takes me by surprise.
“So you . . . don’t think that’s supposed to happen?” I force my shoulders to relax, closing a fraction of the space I’d put between us.
“I don’t see how it could when we’re stuck here.” Raya does her own bit of reshuffling, inching further away from the iron bars, though there’s no escaping the cuff on her wrist or the ferrite deposits laced into the walls and ground. “Unless you can think of some way out?”
“Not really, no.” The guards may not have gotten around to beating me senseless yet, but they were smart enough to slap a cuff on me, too, and to take my lock picks, and I doubt Cemmy and Chase could pull off a miraculous save for a third time—even with Saleen and Akari’s help. “What I’d give for a more active power right about now.”
“Gods, wouldn’t that be nice,” Raya mutters, as though she’s also wished for that more than once. “The funny thing is, I’m actually pretty powerful, for an Indigo—that’s why I messed with that open question in the first place, because of all that useless, passive, family pow—” She cuts off abruptly, as though some bright idea has struck.
“A silver for the rest of that thought?” I prompt, hoping she’ll catch me up.
“Erm . . . yeah—so . . . there might be one more thing I haven’t told you.” A slow blush creeps into her cheeks, like she’s remembering where those words led last. “About who I am.”
“About who you are,” I parrot, entirely baffled. “Why? Did you give me like . . . a fake name?”
“No, Raya’s my real name,” she hedges. “It’s just not my . . . full name. My full name is Raya Wryvern.”
“Okay . . .” If there’s a train of thought here, I’m still following the wrong track. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“Seriously?” She blinks at me for a long second before realizing what’s keeping me stumped. “Right, Hue, sorry—why would you know that?” The red deepens to a darker flush. “My parents are Bastian
and Minerva Wryvern,” she offers in explanation. “The joint heads of the seers’ guild.”
Well . . .huh.
“So, you’re the daughter of two guild masters?” I honestly don’t know whether to be impressed or offended that she thought to hide that.
“And their presumed successor.” Raya shrugs. “Or at least, I was, until it turned out I was terrible at seeing.”
“Okay . . . and you’re mentioning this now because . . ?”
“While you had me chained up didn’t seem like the best time?” She interprets my question in a different way than I’d meant it. Though she is right, I suppose—back then wouldn’t have been the best time; we absolutely would have used her as leverage—though I imagine she thought we’d go much further than that, try to extort her parents for coin, maybe, or even kill her as afuck youto the Council.
Back then, she had no reason to trust us.
“Yes—fair point. But what I was trying to say is: why is this relevant now?”
“Because it’s going to get us out of this cell.” Raya grins, so either she’s seeing something I’m really—really—not, or she’s getting addled by all the iron.
“I’m going to need a little more than that,” I say, raising an eyebrow. “Likehowit’s going to get us out?”
“Well, after the stunt I pulled in the court chamber, the councilman wants me dead, right?” she starts, not giving me the chance to answer. “But he can’t just kill me; he has to give my very important,very powerful parents a reason, or else they’ll kick up too much of a fuss. He has to go through the motions on this, drag me back into that court chamber and declare that, under interrogation, I confessed to working with you and the Divine Meridian. The elders are real sticklers for that stuff.”
“Yes, I remember.” The memory is like an open flame to dry brush. How they paraded me in front of a room full of Shades to deliver their sham of a verdict, just so they could cling to their belief that they treated me fairly, when in truth, they were punishing me for the crime of being alive. “But I still don’t understand how that gets us out of here.”
“It gets us out if the guard is too afraid to let a Wryvern die on his watch,” Raya clarifies. “For all he knows, I could be found innocent tomorrow, so if he thinks I’m, say . . . choking, or seizing, he’ll have to open that door and come inside—then we could overpower him.”
Well, I’ll be damned.This time, I am impressed—though it’s certainly not a foolproof plan. The guard could easily decide not to care, for instance, or he may be stronger than we realize, or one of the more dangerous colors. He might even bring a second Shade with him and then we’d stand absolutely no chance. But a flawed idea is better than no idea, and I’ve not been able to think of anything more inspired, so it’s either this or die.
“You’d better make this convincing,” I say, climbing to my feet.
“Don’t worry, I’ve been known to trick a few class masters in my time.” Raya flashes me her teeth. Then, with a theatrical flourish, she flops into position and starts coughing like she’s actually dying.
