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I walk fast to escape their banter.
It’s not just how irritating they’re being, or even Ravel’s history of manipulative and cold-blooded behaviour that’s the problem. Time is running out for Ange and everyone else back home, and I’m so far from being back in fighting form it’s as if I haven’t started.
Which is why I can’t afford to waste any more time persuading Grace to ditch Ravel.
I veer off toward a quiet patch where a thin strip of orchard borders a cultivated area of mixed crops and press both hands to the soft earth. I close my eyes and reach—
But irritation is the only thing that fills my senses. That, and the chirping and cooing of a couple of idiots.
“What’s she doing?” Ravel stage whispers.
“Meditating.” Grace practically stands on top of me.
I take a deep breath and try to block them out.
“It’s the only thing that seems to help,” she continues. “She’ terrible at weaving, and my sister has been trying to teach her to fight, but she hasn’t been making much progress on that front, either.”
I dig my fingers deeper into the soil. Focus. Breathe. Block them out.
A thump shakes the ground. Sudden warmth heats my back.
“Am I doing it right?” Ravel’s voice, too close.
Something brushes my hands, and I swat, connecting with a satisfying smack.
“Ouch,” he says. “I feel something. I think it’s working.”
Grace laughs. “Connection is the first step. I’m not sure meditation is your path, though. Come on, I’ll teach you to weave.”
“No, I’m getting something here.” He hums. “Yes, yes, I feel it, a whole world opening up before my eyes—”
I hiss with irritation and scoot a few inches away. Focus. Focus . . .
It’s no good. I whirl on Ravel. His eyes are closed, lips upturned in a smirk.
I kick him. Not as hard as I could, but it’s enough to send him sprawling. Anger flashes across his face. But he blanks it out in an instant and raises his hands in mock surrender.
“This isn’t a game,” I snarl. “Go play somewhere else. I have real work to do.”
“He was just—” Grace starts.
“You don’t get it. People are dying out there. Who’s going to stop it? Not you. Not him. Not your precious council.”
She backpedals. But I’m in no mood to let this go.
“Did you forget? Think I was like you? Playing at power to fit in or sooth my pride or whatever? I can’t afford to fail. People are counting on me. My friends are counting on me.”
“We’re your friends,” Ravel says, coming up to put an arm around Grace.
She’s slack jawed and pale, not because a beast who sacrifices human beings to feed his own desperate lust for power has her in his grasp, but because I’ve hurt her. Obviously the only thing left to do is turn on him instead. He’s had it coming for a long time. “Friends don’t try to feed each other to monsters.”
His mouth flattens. “That wasn’t—”
I bristle, bracing for his defence, preparing for him to turn it around on me, to make his crimes somehow my failure, or maybe to turn to Grace for sympathy. His deviousness is beyond my capacity for understanding, I know that much. I’ll just have to be ready for his lies this time, poised to hit back harder than whatever he can throw at me.
But instead of fighting back, he just sighs, visibly deflating. “You know what? Never mind. You’re right. I was an ass. I used you and I’d do it again. I’m doing it right now, chasing you down to drag back into my mess because I can’t handle it alone.”
He pats Grace reassuringly, pulls away, and drops to his knees in the dirt, turning dangerous eyes up at me. “I need you, flame. I’ve betrayed everyone who ever looked to me for help, and I can’t make that right without you. So, here I am making trouble for you yet again.”
He raises his hands in an attitude of supplication, though his mouth quirks at the edges even in this show of humility.
And a show it is, for manipulation is in his nature, just as being pushy is in Cadence’s.
“Hey! Don’t you ever lump me in with him,” she complains. “You know he’s no good. We don’t need him.”
I close my eyes. Take a deep breath. Reach for the expressionless, emotionless calm I learned under Refuge’s harsh tutelage. If he won’t fight fair, there’s only one thing left to do.
When I face them again, I am ice all the way through. “I’m walking away now.”
This time only silence follows me.
***
IT’S THE LAST DAY BEFORE my big showdown, and I’m no closer to winning that idiotic challenge than when I first made it.
I haven’t even been able to find my way back to that almost-vision of threads, though I’ve broken every nail and scratched my fingers to bloody shreds trying to claw that connection back from the earth. I’ve huddled in what feels like every clearing, garden, and quiet stretch of pathway in town, and even snuck out of Nine Peaks to try various groves and out by the stream, but no luck.
Susan made a bed up for Ravel in her main room that first night, and he’s been staying with her ever since. He still insists on calling us roommates at every opportunity. Grace spends all her time hanging on him, begging for glamorous stories of Freedom as she and Susan teach him to master everything I’ve failed at. Even Steph has been falling all over herself to teach him to spar.
As far as I know, despite his newfound skills in gardening, weaving, housework and fighting, he can’t actually dreamwalk, but I’m not about to enquire. Whenever I enter the room, their happy chattering stops and they all stare. Their questions are tentative, neutral, their attempts at humour forced. I refuse to respond, refuse to so much as look in their direction. No matter what I do or say, I can’t seem to counteract Ravel’s charm offensive. But that doesn’t mean I have to be party to it.
The night before my challenge, Grace finds me pounding my hands into the packed dirt in front of the side gate we use most often.
She sits down without comment. Her quiet, even breaths are calming.
I relax ever so slightly, fists uncurling, senses expanding. There’s a brush of—something. A sense of light—but my eyes are closed. A fluttering at the edges of my awareness, a pulse, a tangle of threads—
“You really don’t notice stuff, do you?” she says.
I let out a soft hiss of frustration. Almost. I was almost there.
“You’ve never asked me where my parents are.”
I frown, squeezing my eyes tighter shut, drilling fingers deeper into the cool soil where I’ve scraped and scratched it to some measure of softness.
“They died when I was four. Left us with my dad’s family, went off on some mission and never returned. For the longest time, no one even told us they’d died. We just kept waiting.” The breeze rustles around us, carrying a scent of night-blooming blossoms. “You’re not ready. You won’t win tomorrow. You can barely tap in, never mind cross over.”
I let my head fall back. The rest of me follows, stretching out on the ground in utter exhaustion. “I have to try.”
But the image of myself, bleeding into the sand of the training ring while the entire city points and laughs, won’t let me go. My pulse picks up, cold sweat beading on my skin, because as bad as public humiliation is going to be, there are worse things than failing in front of my enemies—and, if these people would abandon my entire city to the monsters, then they are my enemies.
My embarrassment would be nothing compared to the true cost of tomorrow’s failure.
“Ravel told me,” Grace interrupts my horror. She scoops up a handful of dirt and lets it patter back down like gritty tears scattered across the earth. “You were right. I don’t know what its like to see people killed right in front of me. I don’t know what it’s like to fight for the lives of my friends. But there are things you don’t understand, either.
“There is not one single person here who hasn’t lost someone they loved. No one wants you to fail. They just don’t want to see more of your life wasted. You only just came back to us.”
“But they’re willing to abandon a city full of people?”
Her shoulders slump. “It’s not that simple. The council has to weigh the costs, choose the battles we have a chance of winning. They have other priorities to consider. Our missions are about more than just fighting monsters.”
“It’s a whole city!” I take a breath, lower my voice. “They’re my friends, Grace. And even if they weren’t, they don’t deserve to die.”
“The council’s made its decision. They’re not going send anyone out.” The words are harsh, but she leans against me in silent apology.
I close my eyes. “It doesn’t matter what happens tomorrow, does it? They never had any intention of helping me, of sending me back, even if I could fight properly. Did Ash know? When he brought me here?”
“Ash can be . . . determined, when it comes to his goals. He would have put your safety first, I know that much. I don’t think it occurred to him he’d be sent away after bringing you back.”
I wrap my arms around my knees and rock, grieving all my plans, all my hopes. My friends, and all the others who will fall to the nightmares.
Lily, her family who’d only just reunited. Ange, still fighting for a better future for all of us, even after Cass’s death. The hunger of the Mara rampaging unchecked until there’s no one left.
My ability to combat the Mara isn’t coming back. The council won’t send anyone in my place, and Ash won’t be able to fix anything, even if he returns tonight.
I hadn’t realized just how much I was relying on his return to set things right until this moment.
I keep making the same mistakes. I’d pinned my hopes on him saving the day in Refuge, too. And before that, tried to rely on Refuge’s rules for protection, and then on Ravel and his ridiculous little kingdom. But in the end, there’d been no one but me to stand against the Mara and—
Hang on. Ravel. Escaped.
“And good riddance,” Cadence says.
No, that’s—I’d known Ash could move through the barrier around the city and take me across it. But Ravel . . . He got out on his own.
I jump to my feet, buzzing with the implications. Grace stumbles to her feet, knocked off balance by my sudden move. I turn and seize her hand.
“Where’s Ravel?”
She studies me. “I’ll show you, if you tell me why you want to know.”
“I’ll explain on the way.”