Chapter Forty-Seven

Under the sway of that voice, Rebel and Anjeline shook in unison. They swirled around as an unseen hand split the air apart. A shadow massing in the far corner near a gargoyle dotted out the light. A figure stepped straight out of midair, first fingers and then an arm and leg, and in its whole, the hunched shape rose, unbending itself.

There, framed under the pale moon like a picture, stood Nero.

It hadn’t occurred to Rebel until then. They had been too distracted by the chase to realize that he was one step ahead of them this entire time. Jaxon inched back on the uneven gravel, not far from the rooftop’s door. With stiff movements, she fumbled at her waist for her switchblade but only felt Anjeline’s warm fingers cover her own.

“Looking for this?” Nero wore a smile like a trump suit and raised the knife in his palm. He tossed it over his shoulder, and it disappeared beyond the roof’s edge.

Rebel gritted her teeth. “You have no power here,” she said in a pained breath.

“Magic”—he inhaled a breath—“is power. You think I would offer up a piece of my soul and then let the Wishmaker vanish with my daughter?”

“She’s no daughter of yours,” Anjeline hissed. “You’ll never have your wish.”

A chuckle came in response, sparking a shudder through Rebel, and her fingers itched to wipe that smirk off his face. Nero cocked his head and his one arm slid from behind his back. When he uncurled his hand, her eyes narrowed down to what he held. Prince Sithchean’s ivory staff. It had fallen from his bony fingers and right into the magician’s waiting grasp. A stave possessing more magic than even he possessed. To command the shadows. For a second, they froze, imagining what he might have schemed.

“Your minor tricks were cleverer than I expected,” Nero told her. “I’m almost impressed, though inconvenienced. Even I wouldn’t have dared to enrage the Prince.”

“Maybe,” Rebel said, proud of her steady voice, “I’m just better than you.”

“Dear, that’s what I was hoping for.” A grin wrinkled Nero’s eyes, and they swirled to pitch-black. His grip on the staff tightened, amplifying his strength and purpose as he moved. “An amazing thing. You wished and the consequences touched you not. All this time, the most selfless of hearts was of my own flesh. I knew it was you. You merely needed a little help coaxing it out.”

The pride in his voice caused a wave of nausea in Rebel as realization surfaced. Everything he’d carried out had been preplanned, forcing her to this point. To take her heart.

“You can’t have it.” Smoke flashed off Anjeline.

She pulled at Rebel, taking them both another step toward the door. Jaxon gave a nod as his one hand slipped inside his jacket. But a snap of Nero’s fingers and a gust of wind slammed the door shut. Locks clicked magically into place. Rebel stumbled back as a sudden cough racked her chest and she found herself gasping for air.

“And yet your heart will be your downfall,” Nero said, glancing over the roof’s ledge. “If those half-breeds don’t get beyond the Bright Guard first.”

At his words, another howl broke through the night. More screams drifted from beyond the streets below, and a melody pervaded the sky—drawing ever closer.

Nero moved forward, holding out a hand in a calming gesture. “Light and dark magic within you are at war,” he told Rebel. “But a wish, my dear? A wish can liberate what is suppressed. Have you any inkling of the power you possess, to wish without consequence? How powerful we could be—together?”

Rebel caught her breath and shook her head. “Men like you always believe they can take whatever they want.”

“You think there are others as powerful as me?”

“There will always be those like you.”

A weight permeated the air. The repulsiveness of his magic penetrated the heat of Anjeline’s. This was what he wanted. For Rebel to use her wish. Taking away the only means for Anjeline to be set free. Then he’d manipulate them both. Use her.

A figure rushed passed them, moving so fast that Rebel only saw the quickest flash of a foxtail and Jaxon gripping a revolver. A gunshot reverberated through the air. Just as Nero raised his staff—the bullet zipped by him, swirled around like a boomerang, and drove into Jaxon’s own stomach.

“Jax!” Rebel cried.

Jaxon’s mouth opened in a soundless cry.

A spatter of blood hit her on the cheek, and like a bag of bones, he crumbled on the roof, clenching his side. Anjeline and Rebel tried to rush toward him, but their limbs slowed as though they were treading in cement. Rebel’s shoulder grew heavier, the weight of her satchel and the vase dragging her down. And a horrible force clotted the air.

“There will be no miracles for you.” Nero swept his hand. “You can choose my way…or the hard way.”

Another gust from nowhere pulled against them.

The magician’s eyes swirled to a black abyss, and the wind increased, swathing them in a cloud of putrid sorcery. The darkness clenched Rebel’s spine, weaving around her insides, stroking her heart. It overwhelmed her senses, and a horde of other sickly sensations assaulted her all at once, greater than last time. Her feet slipped on the gravel.

Anjeline caught her around the waist. “Stay with me,” she said.

Nero balked at them, curling his fingers around the staff, and the wind flourished. His voice came out less smooth and less human. “You think you can have love with one of them? They aren’t your family, Rebel. I am. In our own way, we are all searching for home. You had one with me once.” He held out his hand, his power heaving the atmosphere like gravity, slicing through it and drawing her in.

Rebel felt it within her—magic—dark clashing against light. It drove up inside her, yearning to meet his. Its irresistible enthrall calling to her. Wanting to give in.

“Stay strong…” A voice broke through. Rebel looked up into the fiery gaze of Anjeline staring back with the same tenderness and care that had been snatched from her before. “He’s not your family, Rebel. He’s not your home.”

Nero snarled, stamping the staff, and the roof trembled. “Listen to me!” Another gust pulled at their clothing, whipping at his words. “You need magic to heal. Don’t you see? I’ve come to save you.”

As the pull escalated, Rebel pressed against Anjeline, her heart slowing with each breath, trying to ignore the tempting magic that could save her. It caressed her, fondling lines of seduction over the cracks in her heart, the aching darkness. She felt Anjeline clench her arm so hard it hurt. It should hurt.

Losing Anjeline would hurt forever.

She looked up, meeting the gaze of the man, of the father, whom she’d dreamt about seeing since she could remember. “You’re the reason I need saving. You took away everything I could’ve had…” She inhaled over what he’d taken away. A childhood. A home. Love. Time itself. The things that should have been hers, taken from her because of his revenge.

Nero’s mouth twisted over the truth of her words. “We’ll make it right…” He put his hand out farther. “Wish for your heart now. We’ll be safe with your jinni. You’ll be blessed with all the wishes you ever wanted.”

Blank windows of his soul stared back at her. Now, as Rebel looked at the man who was supposed to be her father, she saw past his hard gaze to the inhumanity in them. There was nothing in his eyes that resembled emotions. Nothing left of the man her mother must have loved once before he let darkness devour him. She would not let it devour her. If Rebel ever had family, surely, it wasn’t him. It was the fox hanging on for dear life. It was the fiery Wishmaker at her side.

“I am not your flesh. I am not your means,” she threw back at him. “You made a mistake. It’s not my heart I’m doing this for. You can’t bring back your family. And I can’t bring back you.”

The barb hit home.

Nero’s expression twisted between heartbreak and hatred. “Dark. Light. It matters not. Better to rule among demons than to serve among angels.”

The melody in the air had increased. The roof’s door was vibrating again, the knob jerking wildly. It would be less than minutes before the wolves burst through.

“You’ve made your choice!” Nero’s eyes flashed.

A great wave rippled out from the staff.

The force jerked Rebel forward. There was a shimmer where her bag had been, and then her satchel dangled from Nero’s shoulder. In that sudden, fatal instant, she realized he now possessed the vase.

“No!” Rebel spread her arms, trying to keep Anjeline behind her.

Magic yawned from his staff, spinning a kaleidoscope of light and creating a sucking vortex. An ever-widening tempest that inhaled the space between them. It pulled at Rebel and Anjeline, lurching them forward, grasping at their limbs and hair. Stray pebbles scraped along the ground and disappeared off the roof.

“Let go!” Nero’s voice lifted above the growing gale. “Come with me!”

The vase exerted its will over Anjeline, greater now with the staff’s power, and the force of it yanked her helplessly toward the magician. Terror struggled up Rebel’s throat. She dug her heels to stop themselves from being dragged and held on to Anjeline’s hands.

Something appeared behind Nero’s shoulder. With the element of surprise, Jaxon lunged for the staff, knocking the vase from the magician’s grasp. It dropped, skittering across the rooftop. Nero seized Jaxon by the throat, and in a stream of magic, he was propelled back with devastating force.

Then Nero charged for the vase—but to their surprise—it jerked away from him. The vase altered its course and hovered in midair, suddenly surrounded by a glowing nexus. A shield of protection. Someone’s magic. But not his own. Far off in the distant sky, a shadow rose atop a flock of gleaming falcons.

Someone was coming.

With eyes wide, Nero lashed out at the vase, only to be jarred back at the protective bubble girdling it. He raised the staff, uttering words of a defensive charm. A web of mystical threads wrapped itself around him and penetrated the shield. His fury swelled like a rushing wave, dark and deep.

The vortex’s force increased.

The embroidered creatures upon his magician’s suit began to move, their lion-like bodies with the twin goat heads and reptilian tails, peeled up on his sleeves. A surge of towering black shapes extended from the beasts, fangs reaching out to lick at Rebel’s arms. The things broken inside her heart clenched and ground, as if she weighed twice as much, her boots losing their grip on the roof.

Jaxon desperately held on to the roof’s ledge, keeping his beaten body from being blown away by the gale. The incessant dark magic grew to an almost unbearable pressure, siphoning all strength from Rebel. She sprawled forward, falling to her knees. Anjeline tumbled over her shoulder and toward the vase. Her fingers scrabbled against the roof as its lure wrenched at her legs to draw her within.

“Anjeline!” Rebel reached for her. “Stop!”

In that instant, Anjeline stopped.

Suspended.

Between the magician and his daughter.

She felt her magic rise, commanding. Anjeline’s foot was beginning to disappear into the hungry mist sweeping around the vase’s opening. Searing tears blinded Rebel’s vision as she tried to stretch as far as she could, lying flat on the roof. Her ribs stabbed as she reached for Anjeline, conscious of their utter helplessness. Her heart tearing itself apart.

Dark and light battling within.

Everything fell quiet around her as her past was being blown away and her future was being sucked from her. But in that second, all turned calm. There was only Anjeline, holding arms out to her. “Remember…” she called to Rebel, the vortex ripping away her words.

Remember where your magic comes from.

Rebel’s heart might be flawed, but there was no part of her that hadn’t made up for it, becoming stronger. Her pendant flared with her mother’s signature, as powerful on the charm as Nero’s magic, and within rushed her own weapon. It happened almost as a second thought, an instinct that she didn’t know she had. Her legs shook with the effort, standing straight up, slow and weak, as in a dream. She reached out, too far away to touch Anjeline, but she had to try.

So she reached.

Not with hands, but with heart.

Magic seethed, filling the dark cracks of the organ thrashing in her chest. Her fingers felt heavy like they belonged to someone else. Then began to heat. Magic throbbed in her palms. Illuminating and tingling. Now, she stood in front of Nero, feeling it swarming in her blood, calling to her like nothing she had ever heard, and she pushed against the vortex.

Against his power.

Her insides hummed, her heart raging in her chest into a beautiful inferno. And in that moment, she was not a lost girl. She was not even the Fingersmith. She was Rebel, who spurned the darkness, who would never surrender under the world’s fiction and the denial of love that it had heaped upon her. She rose in the radiance of her own magic, hair streaming and eyes blazing, gentle, savage, and beautifully broken. Fear no longer existed, only a raging desire to undo everything her father had destroyed. She reached farther, twisting the wind with her hand.

The vortex cracked.

The lure lessened and Anjeline swayed an inch closer to her. “Grab my hand!” It took all the air in Rebel’s lungs to call over the wind. “Please, Anjeline…don’t leave me!”

With another inch, they touched.

Fingertip to fingertip.

With that contact, she realized everything she’d wished for was right in front of her. Not because of a wish, but because of those eyes gleaming like living fire. They were powerless to save themselves, and yet only one thing could. Love creates a magic of its own.

Nero was wrong. He had forgotten the most important thing about wishes. They weren’t meant to be taken, to be fulfilled for oneself, or even for the moment, but for each other. Now she understood. Everything she’d done since she’d discovered wishes were true wasn’t to heal her heart’s brokenness. But to fill it. To find her home. She had found it. And she would give everything for it.

She had a promise to keep.

Rebel directed all her energy into this one, single act. “I already have my wish,” she called to Anjeline over the rushing vortex. “It’s you. I wished for you. And I won’t let him use my heart against you.”

“Rebel, no!” Anjeline screamed.

She closed her eyes to the chaos, to the one she would be leaving, and breathed as deeply as she could. “I sacrifice my wish,” she said, “for your freedom.”

And with it, Rebel’s heart gave one last beat.