“No, no, you’ll make it worse, Kori, don’t—”
But she takes it off anyway, and all the oxygen whooshes out of my lungs.
Even indirect sunlight has darkened Kori’s skin to a degree my pallid people never experience in the Shadowlands, a smooth, sun-kissed tan against my bruised, weeping nightfolk flesh. Her eyes, those eyes I’ve so badly wanted to meet in any circumstance but this, are a deep earthy brown with flecks of faint green, like new soil, like fertile ground for countless possibilities I so badly want to believe in. Her hair is glossy brown, long waves forcibly tamed into a once-tight braid that hasunderstandably begun to come undone, stray strands of sun-streaked brown sticking out in every direction. Her lips are flower pink, defiant as the planet’s last patches of organic beauty, impossible to look away from.
She’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.
I’m going to watch her die. So why is she smiling—a real, broad smile that burns through my frozen core, makes me almost want to hope when all is lost?
“Adria,” Kori says, “it doesn’t hurt.”
CHAPTER
23
KORI
The planet’s poison floods my veins. Impossibly, instead of experiencing a curtain call, I come awake.
My muscles draw tight against my bones, all suddenly stiff and cold, moments before impossible strength radiates from every joint. It feels like I’m screaming, but I must be the only one who can hear the roar between my ears. Adria’s eyes are blurry.
“Adria.” My voice feels like it comes from someone else. “It doesn’t hurt.”
She kneels beside me, robes stained with blood from my arm. She reaches, reflexively, to cover the wound, before catching herself, afraid of worsening the radiation poisoning that should’ve already begun. But I don’t feel poisoned. I don’t feel sick.
The power rumbling through my veins is so fierce, I can hardly bear it—like direct sunlight in an unguarded pupil, like fresh, cold water in a stomach too long deprived.
“By the Beyond.” Adria shakes her head, so overcome that words can hardly escape. “Kori, what color are your eyes?”
I blink, not comprehending. “Brown.”
“Not anymore, they’re not.”
I look to where Aspect lies unconscious, their surface still freshly shined enough to reveal my reflection. My own familiar eyes look back at me, but bathed in brilliant, electric blue, like Adria’s flames, like the planet’s beating heart.
The Diakópsei has claimed me, finally, after so long waiting for a gap in my armor—but it’s supposed to feel like dying, and it doesn’t. Every dayfolk child is shown an animated guide of what would happen if we ever dared to venture outside without a complete protective set. The first figure’s skin melts off like wax. The second screams until their blood vessels burst, eyes popping out of the skull. The third writhes and twists until their bones rearrange themselves into something utterly inhuman.
If the video wasn’t enough, teachers (or in my case, Chloe) sometimes brought in those who had lost family to the planet’s poison, to describe what they had witnessed—or what unrecognizable corpse had been left by relentless Pagonian mutations.
None of those afflicted by the radiation gleamed with alien strength and stood up, their legs remaining rock-solid, as I do now.
“It’s … not killing me.” Despite the insanity of it all, I listen to my body and suck in a deep, free breath of unfiltered air. It’s crisp, clean, on my tongue and in my lungs. It’s more than the absence of pain; I feel like the embodiment of power. “I don’t know how, or why, but I’m not …”
The sentence trails off in the absence of a satisfactory answer.
“You’re not dying,” Adria breathes in utter disbelief.
“I’m not dying. I feel …” I deliberately unclench my fists, stretching my fingers, blue sparks leaping between them despite my gloves. “Awake. Like I could …” I click the wrist sealant buttons on my armor, prompting another panicked cry from Adria, and toss both gloves away. A little shout escapes me as my hands start to glow, too, galaxy bright, every fingertip overwhelmed with energy. “Stars above.”
Adria simply stares, slack-jawed. “It takes countless sleep cycles to master energy manipulation like that. Even if you did become like me, which would take more than a moment … dayfolk should die, but even nightfolk should collapse.”
Wild curiosity overwhelms my good sense. After a whole lifetime of fear, by some strange twist of fate, the planet’s poison is to me onlypower, and I’m desperate to test the limits. I must be something … else. Something as forbidden as a stubborn fissure between the light and the dark. It’s a terrifying thought, but it hardly registers over the energy roaring through me.
I collapse my remaining armor, both top and bottom, leaving only my borrowed, crudely trimmed nightfolk garments beneath it. My skin tingles and shimmers with strength. Adria watches, hardly blinking, streaked with tears and dirt and dust and blood, jaw still hanging open.
If we get Aspect somewhere safe, I can help Adria fight the other serpents off while the energy surge lasts—take advantage of whatever is happening to me before we waste time trying to explain it. I open my mouth to suggest as much, when all at once the energy flares, burning much brighter, my body a candle struck to life. Then, almost as soon as it began, it collapses and dims. I’m nothing but a dead wick.
Gasping, coughing, but unexplainably, definitelynot dyingas science should dictate, I fall to my hands and knees.
