“No?” I didn’t believe that.
She shrugged, keeping her eyes on Penrose. “He’s the Bard heir. I’m a powerful Clark. Our children will be terrifying in their might. Like the spawn of Andromeda and Cetus.”
A princess and a sea monster?
“They never had children.”
“But they should have. They would’ve, if Perseus hadn’t ruined the fun.”
Ahead of Last, Luvic’s steps faltered, and Last bumped into him. She shoved at him, and he lurched forward.
“But what if he doesn’t want to have children?” I whispered.
Last scoffed. “That’s his only use.” She slowed so Luvic and Justice would draw further ahead. Penrose’s tail was a fiery beacon, waving in the dark. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “Once I’m pregnant, I won’t need him anymore. You won’t have to share me for long.”
You might be wondering why conjurers don’t use artificial insemination or other reproductive technologies. Well, they did. They tried it back in the late seventies and into the early eighties, when the technology first appeared. For some reason, the children born always came out fully human and not conjurer. Rou thinks whatever happened during the flood still lingers on earth—an evaporate hanging in the atmosphere. She always smiles when she says she can taste the floodwaters in the air. She thinks taking the sperm or the eggs out of a conjurer makes the developing baby lose whatever it was that allowed them to conjure. It’s like the parents protect their abilities, but without the shield of their bodies from the flood, the children lose all their illusion.
I’m not sure. I suppose it’s as good of an explanation as any.
Unfortunately, though, I could see where Last’s thoughts were leading. In history, there have been many, many instances of a conjurer killing off their spouse after a child or two was born. It happened frequently in political alliances, when the murdering spouse wanted to raise the children in the tradition of their own family.
Imagine Last raising Luvic’s children to become like her.
I shivered—cold fingers dragging over me. What had Luvic gotten himself into? First killing his siblings, then the strange jackaltooth growl and the bee brooch, and now this. I wished I could talk to him. I wished I could know what he was thinking.
I imagine, though, he wished he could talk to me too.
Still, he wouldn’t marry Last. He wouldn’t have a child with her.
At least . . . I didn’t think he would.
He was in trouble—that much was clear.
I wondered if he’d told Cora. If he’d even seen her since the closing ceremony.
Ahead, Penrose’s tail wagged, and he gave a sharp, short yip.
Last startled, jerking her head to the side. In a flash, the wall reached out and grabbed her.
“Don’t look!” Justice shouted. He kept his eyes straight ahead.
Jagger’s number-one rule: Never help another.
Last screamed. The noise got cut off as the upper half of her was swallowed by the shifting wall.
Luvic didn’t listen to Justice; he swung around, sprang off his feet, and jumped for Last. He moved unnaturally fast—faster than I’d ever seen him move. He caught her legs and yanked her from the wall. She ripped free, and her scream tore through the corridor again.
Luvic’s eyes widened as he realized he couldn’t stop his momentum.
“Justice!” I shouted, right as Luvic barreled into me, and the three of us—me, Last, and Luvic—were flung out of the corridor and into a Den of Depravity.
24
The wall congealed around us, as thick and hungry as the mudflats in Jamaica Bay. Rou had always warned us about the mudflats—“they swallow children”—and we were smart enough to know she meant what she said.
The soft intertidal mud was hungry, and if you walked on it without mudders, you’d sink—first up to your waist, and then slowly (flailing made it worse) to your pounding heart, where you’d be encased in the mud-sheathed drum that muted your heart’s desperate banging. Then you’d sink all the way past your nose, then your ears, then your eyes, until finally, you were devoured. The mud would swallow you with a noxious gulp and a noisy squelch.
I knew exactly what it felt like, because one of Jagger’s caged conjurers had tried to kill me by sinking me in a mudflat just like the ones lining New York’s marshy coast.
