“Yes, of course it’s a horrible idea, Saleen, but we can’t be in two places at once.”
“She’s right, Sal,” Akari says, putting a hand to Saleen’s arm. “They need a Shade and Raya needs an active power; this is the safest way to do it.” The look that passes between them is a silent battle, a war of attrition Akari eventually wins. As much as Saleen may hate the idea, she’s smart enough to recognize that we’re right, that unless my mother chooses to relay my message—and that’s a feeble hope, if that—we’re on our own here, there’ll be no cavalry coming.
“Be safe, Raya.” Ezzo’s whisper is low and quiet, a tiny exhaling of air as he brushes past me.
You too.There’s no time for me to breathe a reply, no time to lament the fact that this may be the last I ever see of him. Now that we’ve reached the end of our fundamental path, the future can’t guide our steps anymore; it’s already done its part, led us to the critical thread in the tapestry. What happens next is solely up to us.
“So . . . just in case we die and I don’t get another chance to say this: I’m sorry for giving you such a hard time about the open question, Ray. And the Hue.” Akari, however, has never been one for holding her words back—even while we’re mid-crisis and shimmering towards danger.
“Eh, I would have done the same in your shoes.” I shrug. “I’m sorry for always being such a stick about Saleen.”
“Eh, I would have done the same in your shoes.” Akari parrots the sentiment, because—let’s face it—neither of us would have put our money on Saleen being the linchpin that would keep this strange little group from collapse. Though I guess I should have known that she’s theonlyone who could have convinced Akari to risk the future she’s been working towards. Because while I was never in love with Killen, Akari’s nevernotbeen in love with Saleen. I’m not surprised their paths led back to each other.
And yours led to a Hue.It’s amazing, isn’t it? How fast things can change? How one truth can unravel a whole history of lies? Just a few days ago, I genuinely believed that Ezzo’s kind was a blight, that it was righteous to hunt them—to kill them—even when they werebarely surviving. Maybe if I had asked the right questions, I would have seen the lie sooner, stopped believing everything the Council fed me as fact. Then again, I never was much good at doing that, and I’d always been too afraid of disappointing my parents to break with the guild’s sanctioned method of asking.
Councilman Denata was afraid, too—of a fucking baby.
All because he was born with a power the Council didn’t like.
And now, here we are, thirty years later, and that fear’s about to cost us our lives.
If it hasn’t cost him his already.The closer we get to the seeing tower, the slower the shadows appear to stir, thickening to quicksand until we lose the ability to shimmer altogether and start having to wade through the clotted dark.
“We’ll never make it to the roof like this,” Akari yells as we scale the stairs one grueling step at a time. “How did they even get up there? It’s not like there’s a way to climb ou—” Her voice shocks to silence as we finally reach the room at the top of the tower, and the furious tempest raging inside. “By my colors, Ray—can you—? Are you seeing this?”
It would be impossiblenotto see it, not to notice how Adriel’s reformed the tower’s apex into a cyclone that devours the sky. He’s not merely bending the shadows anymore, he’s perverting them, mushrooming the roof to form a jagged ledge over which he can suspend his father.
Oh Gods—what was I thinking? We can’t fight this kind of power.My realization comes too little too late, a split second after he’s whirled towards us and deadened the magic in our blood. A split second after that, we’re both sucked into the swirling night.
CHAPTER 31
EZZO
If you had asked me a week ago, I would have said to hell with the magic. To hell with the typics, to hell with the Shades, to hell with anything I couldn’t find in a tavern. I didn’t want to care anymore. Not about my life, not about their lives, not about the Gray. Yet, here I am, a week later, racing to save all three.
In the Academy, no less.
The one place no Hue should ever be.
This is Raya’s world, not mine. It’s where—until just a few days ago—she lived, and learned, and loved, where she grew to doubt her magic so deeply that she risked it on a forbidden question.
It’s hard not to see fate’s hand in that.
It’s hard not to see it in the way we keep finding ourselves at the heart of these impossible tasks.
The future doesn’t think they’re impossible.Hells, it seems to think I have a future with Raya, which does suggest that we might make it out of this alive.That’s not what it suggests, and you know it.I mean, sure, Raya’s vision means it might be a possibility—but that’s all the future is: a possibility. A hundred thousand of them, in fact. Ask a slightly different question, get a slightly different answer. Make a slightly different decision, kick destiny onto a different track. Being on a fundamental path doesn’t change that. The future may have nudged and nudged and nudged us in order to try and stop its own demise, but now that we’re here, it’s powerless, and there’s absolutely no guarantee that the choice to split up was right.
We might not survive it.
Even if we succeed, we might not survive it.
Raya might not survive it.
It wasn’t until I watched her shimmer away that I realized how much I’ve come to worry about her. That all thebesafesand casual touches might add up to more than just friendly like. That, despite what I told her in the cell, I might actually want the possibility the future’s offering—but that the very thought is also riddling me with doubt. Because it’s not been long enough, has it, since Eve died? How long even is long enough? How do you suddenly reallocate the space in your heart?
And Gods, how do you do it with a Shade?
“Any change?” Saleen’s voice snaps me back to what’s important: Adriel, the castle, the room full of acolytes and initiates we’re somehow supposed to save.
