THE ELEVATOR WHISKED DOWN, LIKE a plummeting rock. Alouette gripped hold of the ornate metalwork as the breeze battered at her hair. Below, the lights of Ledôme’s boulevards, parks, and manoirs grew larger and brighter as she descended, and in the distance, the windows and floodlit lawns of the Grand Palais glowed into view.
Looking over it all, Alouette felt strangely numb and completely alive, all at the same time. It was as if she’d gone up this tower as one person, and now she was returning to the ground as another. Something had shifted inside her, and everything was now reforming, reshaping, evolving. Who she was. Where she came from. What she was capable of.
She was still Alouette Taureau, the girl who’d been saved and loved by a convict named Jean LeGrand. She was still the Little Lark, too, the girl who’d been raised, nurtured, and trained by the Sisterhood. But she’d flown beyond those names now. There was something new brewing inside her. Beginning to emerge.
These half-formed and dream-like thoughts cycled through Alouette’s mind as the elevator finally touched down and its door clanged open. She stepped out, and for a second, gazed up at the vast TéléSky. The stars blinked and sparkled in the blackness.
She thought of the world beyond Ledôme, where shimmering starlight like this was never seen. Where the clouds blanketed everything, offering only rain and dampness and never-ending gray. Where people lived in the rusting remains of old freightships. Where the stomachs of children growled and girls sold their blood for a few extra largs.
The discrepancy, the inequality, and the injustice of this twisted and wrenched deep inside Alouette. But the feeling was quickly replaced by another. This one was stronger. More profound. Rooted into the very core of who she was.
It was the feeling of resolve.
She reached down, into the collar of her uniform, and pulled out her devotion beads. Her last remaining link to the sisters who’d raised her. The women who’d trained her. The rebels who’d made her who she was.
The sudden sound of footsteps on gravel cut off her thoughts. Before Alouette could turn to see who was approaching, someone grabbed her arms and pinned them behind her back.
Instantly her body electrified. She could feel every nerve and sinew inside her switching on. Her mind went calm like a lake and her breath stilled to almost nothing.
Elevate the Meek, she thought, as she prepared to move into a twisting lunge.
But the blow to her head came a moment later, spiraling her vision into darkness. She felt the ground come rushing toward her. She felt her chin knock against the stone. And just before the stars twinkled out completely, she heard a gruff voice say, “Madeline Villette. Somehow I just can’t seem to get rid of you.”