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“Stab it! Stab! Stab!” Cadence shrieks.
“With what?” I scramble backwards without taking my eyes off of the thing rising from the waves.
“Anything! Whatever you’ve got!”
I claw at my sides as if a blade will magically appear. “Um.”
Cadence groans. “Seriously? You just thought we could go monster fighting unarmed?”
The monster in question is a smoky darkness amidst the roiling sick fog, smooth headed, long-necked, and razor fanged. Unless that wasn’t all neck . . .
I trip, bloody my knee, and dig in to brace myself instead of pushing back up. I need my hands free.
“Yeah, no, put your hands down. This is the part where you run,” Cadence says.
“But what about—”
“Does that look like Mara? Do you see threads, Weaver? Are you armed? Ready for combat? No? So run.”
I shake my outstretched fingers as if magic will spontaneously crackle to life between them. Nothing happens. Nothing but a hair-raising, ear-bleeding shriek from the creature rearing in front of me.
I run, clattering over loose debris and splashing through puddles and bouncing off crumbling walls, until my chest burns and I’m hopelessly lost.
“We’re not lost,” Cadence says. “And you’re fine. Out of shape, sure, but fine.”
“What was that?” I scrabble higher up a pile of rubble, flinching at every splash. “Why couldn’t I fight it?”
Cadence does one of her insubstantial shrugs. “Some kind of water monster. You’re not up on your lore enough for naming it to make any difference. Not the kind of thing you fight with threads, not unless you know what you’re doing. Which you don’t. You’d have been better off grabbing one of Ash’s blades before you snuck out. But this is good, actually. We’re almost there. Just keep climbing.”
She could’ve told me I needed a weapon. Not that I knew how to handle one. I’d just assumed dreamweaving worked against everything. And how many different kinds of monsters were there, anyway?
“Not the time,” Cadence says, rudely. “Climb.”
This particular pile of rubble turns out to continue up a seemingly endless slope. The fog starts to thin, revealing the mouth of an enormous structure. The jagged surface underfoot evens out into soggy, decayed carpet and pitted concrete.
I skirt gaping holes, shuddering at the thought of falling into the inky, brine-reeking shadows below. The ceiling is distant, serrated with greyish blocks of wood and oxidized metal. Shards of glass bite into the open space between slim, weathered columns. It’s not a tower—the space is too high, and wide, and long, opening out in unexpected directions. I can’t imagine what it would have been used for in the time before—the scale seems far too large for mere humans.
I test each footstep; terrified the floor will give way at any moment. But the fog has thinned to a bare throat-scratching mist and the space ahead is increasingly bright and well kept. Light shines through grimy but now largely intact windows. The heavy decay of the city gives way to fresh salt and . . . smoke?
“Nearly there,” says Cadence. “You should probably let him approach first.”
“Lily!”
The shout is mingled terror and fury, and relief so vast it catches at something high in my chest. A figure darts out around a low structure further down the massive corridor and stumbles to a halt, evidently realizing his mistake.
He’s dark, no taller than I am, and not much broader. His shoulders hunch, arms raised in a defensive posture. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
I throw up my hands, palm outward, and back up quickly. “Lily sent me.”
It’s not a lie. Not the whole truth, either, but it stops his threatening advance.
“Lily? Where is she? What’ve you done to her?”
***
IT’S EASY TO FORGET about monsters when everything’s going your way.
Sam—Lily’s dad—turns into my new best friend the moment I introduce myself. Ash had been staying with them while searching for me, as he explains, and Sam’s unabashedly delighted to hear both Ash and his young daughter are safe. And the look on his face when I mentioned Lily’s mom is with them—I wander to the surprisingly good view out the windows to give him a moment, focusing on sparkling sea and distant mountains only barely clouded by fog here at the edge of the barrier, instead of the almost-stranger’s sudden upwelling of emotion.
There has to be a story there. I’m not about to ask, even if Cadence spends most of the walk home speculating.
Between Cadence’s startling navigational abilities and Sam’s familiarity with the city streets, we make good time, arriving not long after dark. Nothing bars our way. Not Mara, unidentified water monster, nor Refuge Force. We slip back into the labyrinth below Refuge without a ripple.
I practically skip through the corridors, eager to make my triumphant return. Several twists and turns in, Sam tugs my sleeve and points. We’re skirting the edge of Freedom and the club is in full swing, bass shaking the floor.
I shrug and change course. He’ll probably get a kick out of seeing it—and I’m keen to scope out my battleground. The next time I face the Mara will not be like the last. Now that I know how to take the nightmares down, their reign of terror is so very nearly at an end it makes my fingers itch.
But the first glimpse of Freedom since my momentous battle with the Mara is a little disappointing if I’m honest. The lights seem erratic, the crowd sluggish, the music fuzzy. The shine has worn off—lacking newness, or maybe intoxication. The stunned awe on Sam’s face nudges something inside me, though, with a flicker of that first overwhelming astonishment I felt when I first saw it. I can’t resist pulling him through to the next hall, and the next, laughing at his wonder and, more to the point, glowing at the subtle attention of the crowd.
It’s different than before. Back then, I was little more than another ornament to accent Ravel’s extravagance. Now, the eyes of the dancers flicker to me and away, startled, grateful, unsure. They know me not as a decorative extension of their leader but as defeater of the Mara, rescuer and hero.
I don’t fully realize what I’m seeing at first, but after the first few halls, the trend is clear: the styles of Freedom have shifted. The dancers’ styles are mimicking things I wore—the costumes, yes, the gold and white, the feathers and chains, lace and delicate traceries Ravel put me in—but it’s more than that. Their outfits are artfully torn, their feet bare. They toy with colourful cords and delicate chains that hang loose from cuffs and bracelets to trail over their hands—held up more than once in salute. There are mimicries and interpretations of the cloak Ange had given me, too, the one I cast off to fight and beat back the Mara.
So I keep walking long after I meant to turn back, pretending to show off each new aspect of the club to the gawking tourist while basking in some well-earned glory. All this, after one successful battle. Imagine how they’ll look at me when I free them for good. First the Mara, then Refuge, and maybe I can even do something about the sea monsters outside, after, once I’ve made the tower safe for the first time in living memory.
And then we turn that last corner and he’s waiting for me.
Ravel, wounds painted over, back taut with pain, eyes dark and hollow and burning.
“Flame,” he rasps, that liquid voice raw.
I turn away, tugging Sam along with me.
This wasn’t a good idea. I didn’t think, didn’t meant to run into him, didn’t want—
And, between one struggling gasp and the next, they’re here.