She winks at him. “I don’t have any injuries, slick, but if you feel like poking at me just for fun…”
Kelda squawks, clapping her hands over Ember’s pointed little ears. “Gross! There arechildrenpresent!”
Orion laughs, rich and deep, and something about that exchange—the ease, the friendliness—lights a warm little spark underneath my ribs. Reassures me that they’ll be okay, all of them. They’ll have one another to lean on if somehow I don’t come back from this.
“Okay, just you then, V.” He flicks me on the arm as I start to protest. “Don’t say it. I know for a fact you’ve got an injury or two, so let me see.”
Scowling, I ease my vest from my shoulders and take off my belt. Orion works with gentle fingers to pull the edge of my shirt up.
“Liren’s patch jobs on these stab wounds are still holding up.” He pokes and prods at them, and I grit my teeth. “Pretty impressive considering you haven’t exactly been taking it easy.”
I hiss as his fingertips find the bruises along my rib cage from where the Archangel’s metal hand had squeezed me. “I’ll take it easy when this is all finished.”
“You can’t sell me lies like that, Valene Bruinn. I know your secrets. Kel, can you help me out here?”
Kelda brushes crumbs off her hands and grabs the little sack Orion gestured to, dumping a handful of medical supplies on the floor. One by one, she hands him the items he asks for while he cleans the wounds and changes the bandages and reminds me over and over to sit tight and stop grumbling. He spreads a salve over the multicolored bruises, his warm hands moving over my bare skin in smooth, gentle strokes.
“There,” he says finally. “That should last you awhile longer.”
I roll my shirt back down, moving my torso around gently, feeling the motion of it, the only minor twinge of pain. I open my mouth to thank him, but he’s already grinning at me knowingly. So I shoot him a look and sit back against the wall, snatching up the hardtack and biting off a stale hunk of it angrily. Kelda giggles, and I loop an arm around her in a loose, playful headlock, poking her in the rib cage where I know she’s the most ticklish.
“Watch yourself, smalls. I’m still bigger than you.”
She squirms free, swatting my arm away. “Fornow.”
A shudder ripples through me. Through the floor and the walls of the shack. I go still, listening for… Nothing. I hear nothing outside. Not a single gust of air. Not the creaking of that sign swaying in the breeze.
Everything is still.
I don’t even realize I’m phasing until I’m suddenly outside, standing in front of the abandoned shop, my face pointed north toward that churning storm. All the world around me feels frozen, suspended.
When the light flares up from the black slash of the Depths, I open my arms, welcoming it and how it washes over me like cool water down a parched throat.
Valene…
I close my eyes and see wings, burned like afterimages into my vision. I see rain pouring from the sky, so vivid I can almost feel the drops on my skin.
A moment later, the light stutters and then dies away, sinking below the alloy once more. Wind cuts down the street, ruffling my cropped hair.
“Val?”
I open my eyes and turn to see all of them—Kelda, Orion, Dani, Atlas, Liren—watching me from the steps of the porch.
“Val,” Kelda says again. “Where are you going?”
They wait, their gazes heavy on my skin. Wanting some kind of explanation or response. But I don’t know what to tell them, how to explain the shape and heft of everything I’m feeling and hearing and seeing. The song and the light and the voice that might be coming from inside Trinity or might be coming from inside me. This unmaking season keeps spooling out in all directions, but there’s a piece at the center of all the threads that I’m still missing.
But I don’t have the words for any of that. So I just shake my head and tell them, “I honestly don’t know.”
I go inside, lie down, turn my shoulder to them, and let exhaustion pull me into sleep.
I wake in the dead of night, clearheaded despite the anxiety and guilt churning in my gut. With painstaking slowness, I gather my belt, my knives, my goggles and mask, my gloves and my half-empty canteen, so careful not to make a sound. My eyes stray toKelda, dead asleep in the bedroll next to me, and for a moment, I hesitate, trying to memorize everything about her. The shape of her face, how tall she’s gotten, the little starbursts of freckles along her cheekbones.
Be good, smalls. I’ll be back as soon as I can.
And then I phase silently out of the shack, onto the slanted front porch.
The night sky is clouded and impossibly dark, the flash and rumble of the magnastorms off to the north calling to me.
