Ari
In the next few hours, several things will happen at once, and all of them will someday determine the fate of Angel City. But Ari doesn’t know this yet. No one does.
After Sam failed to show last night, he’d been moved to a new location without explanation, and he doesn’t know what happened, whether they learned of Sam’s plans, whether Sam is alive, or whether he will ever see her again.
He has received no food or water since Sam last visited him. His stomach feels as if it has been hollowed out; his lips are cracked, cutting his tongue when he runs it across. He hasn’t taken sand in days, and the withdrawal makes his hands tremble, fogs his mind, and makes him feel sore and distracted, his usual charisma dulled.
Sam.
They must have figured out her plan. But how? Is she on the run now? Have they captured her? Is she alive? Is she alive?Is she alive?The questions whirl in his mind until he wants to scream. How could he have not been there for her, when she must have needed him? How can he be so helpless in here?
Through the blur of his vision, he sees the door open. Two of the guards step in. It’s time, he guesses. Lumines must have agreed to the exchange, and Grand Central is going to kill him before they can ever get him back. One of the men reaches him and pulls him roughly to his feet. Stars explode across his eyes, and the sudden lightheadedness makes him sway. A second guard comes to steady him. Ari closes his eyes and feels their hands on his arms, guiding him forward. His feet drag against the wood. How far will they have to walk? He isn’t sure he can hold himself up, but somehow they are beyond the door now and in a hallway, and then they are beyond that,stepping outside into a blazing sunset of an evening, and miraculously, he is still moving.
At last, he can see where he is. They are at the top of the Red City’s hill, standing in a round pathway that leads back to the Confession Rooms in one direction and a round building behind the property’s stone walls in the other. The smell of fresh earth and roses is heavy on the air, the climbing vines thick and impenetrable. He can see the cityscape clearly from here—especially tonight, everything tinted red with sunset, a never-ending stretch of metal and grid. Above it all loom the Winged Towers, red eyes blinking from their top floors.
At the center of the pathway he spots Diamond Taylor and Will, along with their polemist Sebastian and a dozen of their highly ranked crewmen. The other Lumines prisoners are already here too. Isla’s wrists are bound behind her back, her hands covered. The bandages around her gunshot wound are stained with patches of red. She doesn’t have her glasses, and he realizes she must still be suffering the side effects of her last sand dose, because she keeps furrowing her brows in pain, as if a migraine has flared to life. Her eyes have trouble focusing on her surroundings. At last, when he’s close enough, her gaze shifts to him. She looks pale, dark circles prominent under her half-blind eyes, but her expression is one that he knows well. She is looking for an opening. A fight.
Is Grand Central going to kill her too?
As they draw near and the other side of the circle comes into view, he sees Alexander Reed with Rudra, alongside Lumines crewmen and a line of Grand Central hostages. No one is moving or speaking, but the air is thick with tension, ready to be lit aflame.
Sam is nowhere to be seen.
His gaze darts about for her but finds nothing.
Sam,Sam.She isn’t here.
She should be standing to the left of Diamond. But she isn’t, which can only mean that his worst fear has come true. They’ve discovered her plot.
And finally, the terrible thought that he can’t bear hits him all at once.
Sam is dead. They have killed her.
She is gone.
She is gone, and everything is over.
Ari’s eyes well with sudden tears. He blinks them back, but under the waning light, he knows the shine in his eyes must be obvious. The stone inhis chest sinks deeper. Sam, her wide eyes turning toward him in class, the surprised smile on her mouth, whisperingHito him. Sam, standing in the silver moonlight, face turned up to his. Sam, leaning over him, pressing a butterfly’s kiss against his lips, each of them silently yearning for a future that will never be.
If Sam is gone, then nothing matters. Will the police still show up tonight, as Sam had arranged? Will he die? What difference will it make? What would he do with his life, anyway, without her in it?
When Ari reaches the circle, his guards position him next to Isla. Even though she can’t see well right now, she still turns slightly in his direction, as if checking to make sure he’s able to stand on his own.
Reed shakes his head at Ari’s unkempt hair, his wan, sweaty skin, the bags under his eyes.
“He looks like shit,” Reed says to Will.
“He’s alive,” Will says, then nods at their captive crewmen. “You want him or not?”
“Shakespeare first,” Reed says.
Diamond shakes her head. “No,” she says calmly. “Plato.”
Reed glares at her, his eyes swiveling shrewdly from her to Ari. At last, he nods at one of his men, and they prod the alchemist named Plato forward. She takes two steps.
Will nods his approval—not to Ari’s guards, but to Isla’s.
Isla hesitates, closing her eyes, and steps forward, following the shadows of her guards to Lumines’s side before turning back around. Rudra undoes her bonds, and she lowers her arms to her sides and flexes her fingers. On the other side, the freed alchemists look poised to move.
