Far below, in the backseat of Svena’s sleek, armored sedan, which was currently hidden by magic to look like just another stretch of desert, Katya, youngest and most disappointing daughter of the Three Sisters, sat with her face pressed against the bulletproof window, staring up at the balcony where her sisters were beginning their attack on the Heartstriker Champion.
No, she thought angrily, she had only one sister here. Despite the familiar face, there was no way the silent puppet who obeyed Estella’s orders without question was actually Svena. But while Katya was now certain her sister was not herself, it didn’t change her situation. Whatever that thing beside Estella actually was, it still had Svena’s power and knowledge. Katya, on the other hand, had nothing. No money, no weapons, not even a phone. She couldn’t even get a moment to herself to think up a strategy. Other than the brief chance she’d stolen to run to Julius, Estella hadn’t let her out of her sight.
Unless, of course, you counted right now.
Katya licked her lips. This far down, there was no way Estella could see her, and while the car was locked and sealed with magic, it was nothing compared to the protections she’d slipped through all the times she’d run away from her mothers’ fortress. It would be so simple: a quick kick to break the lock and then freedom. But though Katya could see the whole escape like it had already happened, she didn’t move.
Part of her was mortified. What sort of dragon was she to let a chance like this, perhaps herlastchance, slip by? But the rest of her, the parts that valued survival over pride, knew that every time she’d run, Estella had caught her. Every time she’d escaped, the seer had always been waiting at the end. This time, though, Katya didn’t think her sister would be satisfied with simply returning her to her prison in their mothers’ glacier. This time, Estella would kill her.
That was enough to dampen even Katya’s instinct to run. But just as she decided that her odds of surviving were better if she stayed put and played along, something thumped against the car’s rear windshield.
Katya jumped, hand flying to her mouth to stifle her surprised yelp. When she whirled around, though, it was just a bird. A pigeon, to be precise, fluttering against the window like it was trying to get in.
Shaking her head, Katya slapped her hand against the glass to scare the stupid thing away, but the bird wouldn’t go. It just flapped harder, cooing loudly. She was about to bare her true nature and give it a real scare when she saw the bird had something in its claws.
Before she could see what it was, the bird flew away, abandoning its catch on the trunk of the car. Now that there was no longer a pigeon flapping around on top, Katya could see it wasn’t a mouse or some other garbage, but an elegantly folded piece of paper. With her name on it.
Katya went very still, ears straining. Other than the fading flap of the pigeon’s wings and the ceaseless desert wind, though, she didn’t hear a thing. Both of her sisters were still dealing with Conrad, and the Heartstrikers were all inside their mountain, leaving the desert empty, but not for much longer. If she was going take a risk, it had to be now.
Heart pounding, Katya reached out, transforming her hand just a fraction until she had enough claw to pop the rear door lock. It broke with a softcrack, and then her arm snaked back, her fingers returning to their human shape as she snatched the paper off the trunk where the pigeon had dropped it. The moment the note was in her fingers, she darted back into the car, curling herself into a ball in the far corner of the backseat as she spread the folded paper flat over her knees to read the scribbled handwriting in the bright moonlight.
From a friend,it said.Don’t be late.
Below this, someone had printed out a small map to an address in the DFZ, but that was it. There was no signature, no instructions, no additional information of any kind.
Clutching the note in her hands, Katya glanced up through the window at Conrad’s empty balcony, and then back over her shoulder at the door she’d already broken. Beyond it, the empty desert sky beckoned, and Katya inched closer, breathing the fresh air deep into her lungs as she hovered on the threshold.
At this point, it was no longer a question if she would run. The door was already broken, and there was no way to fix it before Estella and Svena returned. They’d know she’d disobeyed, which meant she was already committed. But there was a world of difference between mere fleeing and a planned escape, and with Estella on a rampage, Katya was going to have to plan this very carefully indeed. Since her enemy was a seer, getting caught was pretty much a foregone conclusion. With that in mind, the challenge wasn’t avoiding her sister, but surviving the confrontation when Estella cornered her.
Fighting her was out of the question. Not even Svena had been able to do that. What Katya really needed in this situation was insurance, something Estella valued more than Katya’s life that she could hold over the seer when things inevitably went bad. She was trying to think of what when her eyes landed on the golden orb of the Kosmolabe, carefully nestled in the cup holder between the front two seats.
A wicked smile spread over Katya’s face. She made no sound, used no magic, but when Estella and Svena finally returned to the car, the Kosmolabe was no longer in it, and their youngest sister was nowhere to be found.
Chapter 5
When the guy at the pizza place said Justin lived in the middle of nowhere, Julius had assumed he was speaking hyperbolically. When he reached the address, though, Julius realized the man had been telling the plain truth.
Apparently, Justin had been living, or at least eating, at the end of the abandoned strip of land that ran between Algonquin’s Reclamation Land and the industrial parks of the DFZ’s southwest. The intersection where the automated cab dropped him was within sight of the border at 8 Mile Road, even farther from the city than Marci’s hoarded cat house had been. There, at least, the neighborhood had still been semi-inhabited. Out here, there was nothing, just overgrown grass, collapsed houses, and magic. Wild, thick, unfriendly magic that hung in the night air like humidity, warding off even the most daring and desperate squatters.
Just climbing out of the cab was enough to make Julius’s hair stand on end. If it wasn’t for the fact that he could smell Justin nearby, he would have climbed right back in. But he’d come out here on a mission, so he ordered the car to wait and set off down the cracked road in search of his brother.
If it wasn’t for the creepy magic, this would have almost been pleasant. The September night air was cool without being cold, and the empty lots were quiet and still. Other than the occasional floodlight on the chain fence that separated Reclamation Land from the rest of the urban wilderness, there were no lights anywhere, but compared to the cave-like dark of the Underground, the night itself was almost bright, especially now that the moon was rising. But even with the quiet and the natural light to help him, it still took Julius almost five minutes before he finally spotted his brother crouching on the toppled steeple of an old church like some kind of post-apocalyptic Batman.
“Were you going to say something eventually?” he called, walking out into the middle of the cracked street.
His brother’s eyes flashed neon-green in the dark, and then he turned away. “Get lost.”
Julius shook his head and started circling the church’s crumbling walls. “How did you even get up there?”Please don’t say flew.
“I jumped. I’m not stupid.”
Considering he was currently sulking in a magic-soaked wilderness on a roof that was in sight of the border of a private domain claimed by a spirit who’d sworn to kill every one of their kind, Julius wasn’t so sure he agreed with that assessment at the moment. But his brother clearly wasn’t coming down any time soon, so he started making his way up, using the rotting window sills and cracks in the brick walls as handholds until, at last, he hauled himself onto the roof.
“Good grief, Justin,” he sighed, looking around at the filthy nest of old soda bottles and discarded pizza boxes. “What are you doing up here?”
“What’s it to you?” his brother sneered, hunching his shoulders. “How’d you find me, anyway? You suck at tracking.”
“But I know your eating habits,” Julius said, nudging a grease-stained, waterlogged breadstick box off the roof’s edge so he could sit down. “And I wanted to make sure you were okay, which you’re clearlynot.”
