“Let go of me,” Noam snapped, trying to pull his wrist free, but Dara’s hand only tightened.
“Álvaro, I swear to god, if you don’t come with me right now, I willleave you herefor Lehrer to find. Let’s go.”
At this point, Dara was freaking Noam out more than the soldiers were. He let Dara drag him down the steps, only managing to shake off Dara’s hand once they got to the landing. Below, he felt gunmetal outside the door to the stairs on the second floor. On instinct he magnetized that door shut, too, and just in time. A heavy weight collided with the steel, the sound echoing up the stairwell. The door didn’t budge.
“Shit,” Dara whispered. And—he had a gun in his hand,what the fuck, what thefuck—
Only, no, that was an illusion. Noam felt the magic when he looked for it, glittering around the edges of the thing and refracting light in a perfect pattern.
“I don’t think that’s going to help,” Noam said, but Dara ignored him.
Dara’s fear was contagious, seeping off him and curdling in Noam’s blood. Dara pressed his whole body against the third-floor door.
“Let’s—” Noam started, but Dara just said “Ssh!” and leaned his brow against the doorframe.
Noam hovered there, useless. They were both breathing heavily, the air gone humid between them. Noam magnetized the rest of the stairwell doors just in case.
At last, after Noam had started to worry they’d simply run out of oxygen in the staircase and suffocate, Dara tucked the fake gun into the back waistband of his drabs. He glanced over his shoulder at Noam, whites of his eyes gleaming in the strange light.
“Now.”
Noam demagnetized the door.
The hall outside was pitch black except for the flicker of emergency lights casting weak green pools on the floor every twenty feet. If anyone was in the hall a moment ago they were gone now, scurrying away in the rooms branching off both sides.
This was insane. Noam was trespassing on government property with a flopcell full of treason and a crazy boy wielding a gun. A crazy boy who hadalso been trespassing on government property. Noam hadn’t forgotten that Dara neglected to mention what he’d been doing here.
Noam crept in Dara’s wake. The doors they passed loomed like great blank eyes, marking the two trespassers even if the blinded cameras couldn’t.
“Careful,” Dara said, looking back at him, and Noam realized his fingers sparked with electricity.
He balled his hands into fists and nodded, and after a moment, Dara reached over for his wrist again. This time his touch was light, just the barest pressure against Noam’s pulse point, guiding him forward. Dara’s magic was as palpable as a thousand quivering strings.
Noam never in his life felt so alive.
“You there! Hey—you!”
He and Dara whipped round. A man strode down the hall toward them. He wore a general’s uniform, and if the blue ribbon on his button hadn’t betrayed him as a witching, the way he held one hand aloft—as if prepared to stun them both with a jolt of magic where they stood—certainly would have.
Noam’s mind seared white. He started toward the end of the hall, ready to run, but Dara grabbed his arm at the last second.
The general lowered his hand, crossing those last steps to Dara and Noam with a slow frown settling onto his lips. “What are you doing here?”
He was looking at Dara, not Noam.
“Oh, you know,” Dara said. He waved a hand in the air, casual as anything. “Boyish exploration.”
Noam expected the general to snap or call for backup. But instead he sighed, as if Dara were a disobedient son and not a trespasser on government property.
“Even you aren’t allowed to wander around secure areas without a chaperone, Dara,” the general said, folding arms over his broad chest. He looked down his nose at the pair of them. “And who is your friend?”
“That’s Noam,” Dara said before Noam could introduce himself. “He’s new. Needed the grand tour.”
“I see.”
Noam couldn’t stop staring at Dara. He’d never seen him act like this. Gone was the moody boy Noam knew, all traces of his usual sullenness evaporated. There was even something mischievous about the subtle curve of Dara’s mouth, the way he tilted his head to the side.
He was magnetic.
