“I’m with you,” I said. “I’ll always be with you.”
Finn smiled down at me, his eyes warm and hope-filled. Then we walked hand in hand toward the rising sun.
108
The wind floated free from the crack in the pavement. It drifted past the streetlights flickering off and swirled in the soft stretches of sunrise.
The air was cool. The coolest it had been since the girl had woken up a mine. The heat had broken and given way to a fresh, open-air, sweeping breeze. It was the kind of breeze that ushered in cooler weather and, eventually, prickles of cold.
Perhaps in the north, the cold was already blanketing the nights and shaking chill fingers over the hills and the lakes. The wind might be able to skate through the misty exhales of deer in the forests or ride in the bushy tails of squirrels preparing for winter.
The wind sighed. It would go north. It had to tell the man’s wife her son was gone. She would need to know there was a new Ward.
If the boy’s body had survived the inferno, the wind would try its best to carry him to the northern woods. If there were only ashes, the wind would carry those.
It blew a gust of air and skated across the sunlight, drifting over the battle-hardened brother.
He was sleeping. There was a tattoo under his right eye. The wind tapped against it. The wind couldn’t read, but it knew what the marking meant. It had seen it before. This was what happened when a conjurer was cut off.
It was the physical evidence of the ripping-out of their illusion. The battle-hardened one was only human now. He would be blind to the world of conjurers. He would be blind to himself.
The wind moaned as the battle-hardened one shifted and murmured “No!” in his sleep. The scent of salt and cosmic tears coated his cheeks. He smelled like a sword that had broken and steel that had gone dull.
The wind wouldn’t pity him.
What did the wind care if he suffered? What did it care if he was in pain?
He had killed the man. He had killed the boy.
He had wanted revenge. He’d gotten exactly what he wanted.
This.
The solange-eyed one gripped the girl’s hand, and as he passed a Smith cousin, he said in a low voice, “Make sure he’s safe until he wakes. Don’t let him see you.”
The cousin nodded, and then the solange-eyed one pulled the girl close and held her hand. They walked toward the sunrise. The wind would follow. It would go to the fortress and find the boy?—
It stopped.
It curled tight and flattened itself against the pavement.
There was a shadow there. Deep, dark, deathlike.
It knew this shadow. It was the cold chill of an old tree spreading its executioner’s shadow over a bare strip of lawn.
It trembled and then quietly snuck into the darkness.
The solemn one was there.
The pixie-like one was standing next to him.
He stared after the girl, a strange, unreadable expression on his face. He didn’t move, and if the wind didn’t know better, it would think he was dead.
But no. He was only watching, breath held, unmoving.
He stared after her as if he were on a sailing ship, watching the shore of his homeland fade away.
When the girl and the solange-eyed one finally rounded a corner, the solemn one let out a long breath. The wind nudged his hand, and he curled his fingers into a fist.
