31

Gideon says into the three-way, “We’re going to have to head in with the wind. Hang on.” The copter swerves and dives into a thick plume of smoke before it pulls clear again.

And reveals a scene of mayhem.

The refinery is lit like a massive beacon, the air thick and choking. All around it, bodies litter the ground. From this vantage point they look like rag dolls in Lasters’ trousers, bloodied and bent, torn by bullets. One of the pipes running up the side of the refinery gives a sudden lurch and crashes, crushing against the topside of a tank. The fire spreads to a large metal garbage bin where Laster children have been stashed for safekeeping. I scream in horror as I watch them leap like little fleas, some of the youngest of them being pulled out by hair covered in burning embers, or clothes, or whatever there is to reach.

Jared grabs my hand and holds on tight. “Lu. Lu, look at me.” I turn away from the carnage below. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it now. I think we’ve got about a three-minute window.”

I nod, speechless. Yes, time enough for mourning the dead another time.

“Okay.” I wipe at the senseless tears that I find streaming down my face. “Okay. Now.”

Jared slides Doc Raines’s medical chest out from under our feet. He pulls two keys on a ribbon from his pants pocket and unlocks the lid. Dry ice escapes in a puff of white. Gleaming dark nodes, encased in opaque squares, sit neatly on trays. Jared lifts one, two, three, each one containing at least fifty or more of the tiny cubes, and more trays beneath.

“Ice cubes?” I lift an eyebrow at Jared.

He grins and squares his shoulders. “Well, it’s hot out there, isn’t it? I think the people could use a little something to cool things down.”

“I think you’re right.” I swallow down an emotion so big it threatens to drown me. I take in hand a tray Jared offers. He takes another.

“We won’t be able to take this back, Lu. Once it’s done—”

I stop him there. “I know.” With a lift of my chin, in a voice not even shaking much, I tell him, “No regrets. This is the only way.”

Our eyes lock. For one long second my True Born and I are alone in the world.

Without another word, I tip my tray out the side of the copter.

…

The fire is an inferno as we near, hot as a sun. In moments the ice melts, leaving behind a trail of wet black spots that streak against the smoke-choked horizon. Jared tips his over the side, hands me another tray. Within minutes the crowd below is splattered red. Crimson black streaks fall from the sky, fall on the upturned faces of the Lasters, who stop to stare at us with watchful, hungry expressions on their faces.

I think the skin could easily absorb it, Doc Raines had said. If they were to enter the water supply or were injected… With any luck, the crowd below will absorb the Talismans made from our blood, Margot’s and mine. They’ll be able to transform the DNA of this broken world. They’ll help the Lasters ward off the worst ravages of the Plague.

The copter circles back around, and I can see it now, the air filling with drops of blood, as though the sky is bleeding tears. I am shaken by a deep sense of déjà vu, as one of my dreams charges into waking life. The same dark-red rain. My tears mix with it, turning the hills and fields around Dominion a blooming crimson.

The copter finishes its pass and the thick, billowing gray smoke curls and clears for Nolan Storm, who emerges on top of a tank. This Storm is an angry god, ancient and mysterious. Hair whipping about his face, Storm turns his face to the copter.

“Oh God.” I freeze. “He’s going to kill me.”

“No, honey.” Jared’s voice is thick with sarcasm. “He’ll kill us both.”

The air around Storm parts. He snarls, his face a death mask. It takes a second before I see the lone soldier rising to meet him from the belly of the tank. Another blink of an eye, and Storm has thrown the man’s head one way, his body the other. Storm stomps and the tank lid crushes down as though it were made of cardboard.

He stops. Jared and I watch as Storm extends his arm, pointing one long finger at someone. It’s my father, I realize. Lukas Fox cowers behind a bank of maybe a dozen soldiers in riot gear. It’s not enough to save him.

Storm pounces. Bodies leap out of the way. Then the True Born leader stands before my father’s war party. One machine gun goes off with a staccato burst. Storm flips the gun sideways, somehow missing the bullets meant for him. He throws a kick. A line of men falls, limbs cracked in two. And then, with an ugly light in his unearthly face, Nolan Storm takes my father’s neck into his bare hands and wrings it.

My father’s body slips to the ground, lifeless. It’s done, then. Lukas Fox, the power behind Dominion, the true puppeteer of the Watchers, is gone. I wait for more sadness to grip me, but I feel nothing but icy numbness spreading through my heart.

The True Born leader makes a running jump onto the top of a second tank. He tips his head back, throat exposed and crown of bone substantial enough now to be splattered with the blood of his enemies, and roars. Impossibly, we hear it over the copter’s purr, a bone-shattering, air-ripping horror that raises the hairs on my neck. It vibrates through the metal carapace of the copter. Shakes the ground.

Laster and soldier alike freeze. No one moves, even through the thick smoke and violent fire. Storm surveys the scene as though claiming everything with his eyes. And then he tips his head up, staring right into the copter where we sit. I can tell he sees us, sees me. His lips curve with the smallest hint of a smile.

That’s when I see it. That’s when I know. Nolan Storm isn’t going to kill Jared and me for what we’ve done. Nolan Storm will be king of them all.

King of a world of True Borns.

…

I sink back into the vinyl of the copter seat, sucking air into me as though it’s a scarce commodity.

Gideon’s voice breaks in. “Where to next, folks?”

Beside me, Jared seems equally stunned. When I finally come back to awareness, I realize he has my hand in his, where he slowly shuttles a finger across my skin. Back and forth, back and forth, as though it can comfort us both. Jared raises an eyebrow at me in mute question and seems relieved when I nod. “Take us to the main water tower.” His gaze never leaves mine. “Might as well do this up with style.”

The water tower is the main water supply for thousands of Lasters. Once we dump the last tray in there, many more can be saved from the wasting Plague.

“Aye-aye, captain.” Gideon’s face brightens with humor. From the corner of my eye I watch him flip a switch. The headset flares with a crackle. Jared and I are as good as alone.

“Do you reckon he’s had this planned all along?”

“What?” Jared peers down into the ragged streets.

“This.” I spread my hands into the sea of chaos below.

“Naw. I think he sets up shots and lets other people knock them down as they will. Or not.”

“You think we were set up?”

Jared levels me a serious look. “I think you’ve been set up your whole life. Don’t you?”

Truth. We were designed, Margot and I, to be pawns in these men’s games of power, first by our father and Resnikov, by the clever hands of the scientists. Our very DNA was imprinted with Cernunnos’s will, which his faithful followers made known to the Watchers. As daughters to the Upper Circle, Margot and I were gussied and groomed to become exactly what our parents wanted of us.

But somewhere along the way I stopped being and doing what everyone else wanted of me. I’m not sorry about what we’ve just done, Jared and I. I reckon this night we’ll have saved thousands upon thousands of Lasters from the grave.

I may not recognize who I am any longer, this young woman who’s gone as rogue as Plague-bit DNA, but I know she’s doing no one’s bidding but her own.

“You know he’s serious.” Jared’s softly spoken words interrupt my thoughts. “Storm’s going to want to marry you.”

Our knees knock together. I gulp back a string of tears. I’m not ready for this conversation. I nod as though I am. “I know.”

“You should marry him, Lu. It’s the right thing for you. Will you?” He sucks in his lip with a breath, and I realize he’s as close to tears as I am.

“I-I know I should. I don’t want to.”

“Don’t, Lu.” Jared’s lips are inches from mine as his eyes burn into me. “Don’t. Don’t marry him. I know you should, but don’t. Marry me, Lu. Be with me. It’s selfish but I can’t—can’t seem to help it.” Jared blinks away a tear and takes another expectant breath, as though waiting for a blow. A shock of blond hair falls over his face as he looks down at his open hands. He folds my fingers into his. “You asked me a while back never to give up on you. And I never will. I can’t. No matter what you choose.”

My heart stops, then thunders into a gallop. He curls a lock of my hair around his finger. Fingers that can kill and maim. Yet these are the fingers and hands and arms that soothe me more completely than any but my sister’s. Dominion’s heiress apparent, I am becoming something else: the mother of a new world. I know where my duty lies. But there’s a choice, for once. A choice for me alone to make.

Heart or duty? Heart or head?

It doesn’t help. I’ve been raised for duty, not love.

What would Margot think?

And with that thought, everything clears.

I take a moment, feeling the rush of the cool, wet night air on my skin as the darkness falls across Dominion, blending with the bloodred rain that gently coats the dying city. One day soon it will turn everything green and new again. Tomorrow the Lasters will wake up changed. And maybe the lights will start coming on again. Maybe the cars will be driven and the houses lived in. Maybe tomorrow, mamas will kiss their babies good morning instead of goodbye.

Maybe the Plague will be vanquished, at least for many. And the rest? We’ll get to them, in time. All I know right now is that I’m exhausted. And free. Nolan Storm has won his kingdom. I reckon he won’t see the need for a political marriage after all.

…

Jared holds my stare, beat for beat, measure for measure. Lock and key.

“I could never marry someone else. Not Storm, not anyone. You are mine, Jared True Born Price. Mine forever. You’re stuck with me whether you like it or not. And don’t you ever, ever forget that you like it,” I say with a little hiccup.

Jared stares down at me, an emotion like wonder stamped on his too-handsome face, as though something irrevocable has happened.

And it has, I reckon. We are one now, he and I. I have lost everything. But maybe I’ve found home.

“That’s as it should be, Princess. And don’t I know it.”

His head comes slowly down to claim mine in a knee-weakening, heart-stopping kiss. Just a whisper from my skin, I freeze him with a faux-haughty look.

“That’s queen to you, Jared Price.”

“Queen Lu,” he murmurs against my lips. And then I’m lost in a sudden maelstrom. “Yes.”