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I reach the door first.
The knocking stops when I turn the handle. It doesn’t open. The banging starts up harder than ever, desperate but muffled cries rising behind it.
Ravel elbows me aside to wrench at the door, hurling himself shoulder-first at it when the handle refuses to turn. I dart to the bound enforcers and rifle through their pockets, ignoring their moaning. If I focus, I can almost quell the churning disgust at the way these idiots not only locked up survivors in this death trap but also stayed to guard the only escape route.
At least their presence means a key is within easy reach. The banging stops the moment it scrapes into the lock.
I yank the door open. Ravel shoves past. He wheels back with a shout as it flings wide. There’s a rush of one-two-four-many people stampeding into the hallway.
I flatten myself against the nearest wall, losing sight of Ravel. Strangers in a mix of Refuge uniforms, Under’s more sedate dress, and Freedom’s extravagant costumes pounce on the bound and clearly terrified enforcers.
A tug on my sleeve distracts from the impending carnage. I look down into the face of a ghost—no, a living child, one with familiar hazel eyes and tight curls.
Lily scowls up at me. “Took you long enough.”
The impulse to offer reassurance takes me off guard. My hand hovers over her head, wavers across to her shoulder, and retreats limply to my side. “Is—are you alone?”
“Uh, no?” She sweeps a pointed glance at the crowd around us. “Are you? Where’s my Ash?”
I search with her, though not for Ash. It shouldn’t annoy me that she insists on the possessive, especially right now. She’s just a child, and I have more important things to worry about.
It still bothers me. To tamp the frustration down, I focus all the harder on the tide of strangers. I pick out familiar faces here and there, but not the one I want to see. The child’s mother pokes her head out the door, sparking a moment’s worth of excitement that dampens at her timid wave. Amy isn’t the one I’m looking, though she sidles out to stand beside us, crowded by Sam at her elbow.
I watch the opening expectantly as the stream of people trickles to a stop. Ravel is the last one out, looking uncharacteristically ragged and disoriented.
“So? Where is she?” He cranes his neck.
The crowd quiets around us, heads turning to watch, voices murmuring. They are looking to us for instruction. Us—not their leader.
“Where is Ange?” My voice comes out steady, carrying none of the shrill panic swelling in my chest.
Feet shuffle, gazes drop, and Lily’s small, warm hand slips into mine. “They took her.”
I look at Ravel. He stares back, wide-eyed and pale.
“He can’t help you,” Cadence says.
I startle. It’s been a while since she last spoke. Foolish instinct has me scrambling for arguments, but the pressure of a small hand yanks me back into the moment.
Instead of pulling back, running away, waiting for Ravel to come up with something—anything—I drop to my knees, bringing myself down to the level of a pair of serious hazel eyes. “Tell me everything.”
***
I DON’T ACTUALLY REMEMBER being Lily’s age, but I’m sure I lacked her composure.
Cadence’s roaring silence confirms the suspicion. The child recounts the days between my departure and return spent helping her aunt rally stragglers and stockpile goods in a remarkably even tone. It barely wavers when she gets to the part when enforcers descended and ripped Ange away from the rest of the group, dragging her off and locking them all into unprotected dorms without light or food.
Lily doesn’t ask me to rescue her. She just watches, silent trust in her unwavering gaze.
It makes what I have to do next so much worse.
“It’s the only choice,” Cadence says, sympathetic for once. “You can’t sacrifice the mission for one woman.”
I catch Ravel’s eye and he nods, slow and solemn. Though I’m very well aware he is not one to shrink from necessary sacrifice—particularly someone else’s sacrifice—if he told me the truth then he has known Ange longer than anyone.
Maybe Ravel even cares for her somewhere in his malformed little stone of a heart.
I shut out the sight of too many people looking to me for answers, for direction, for hope. Just for a moment, I stop and let myself feel what it was like to have power. To risk the safe plan for the one my heart sings. To have options.
But this time, I have nothing that hasn’t been given to me by foolishly trusting strangers. No magic to change our intolerable reality. This time, I can’t fight the monsters.
But I can save the child in front of me. At least I can do that.
I smile at Lily, though my skin is tight with anguish. Amy’s arms go around her daughter and the child relaxes, relieved someone has come along to make it all better.
If only.
I lead the way, and the crowd follows, unquestioning. Ravel walks at my shoulder, silently supporting this show of leadership. But it doesn’t take much—these people are afraid and, in the absence of the leader they know, desperate for someone to take on the burden and show them the way.
And if some small part of me thrills that the someone they need happens to be me, well, there are worse things. Things like hoping for the impossible. Like dreaming of running off and rescuing my friend instead.
“The mission is what matters,” Cadence says. “Get them across, and then you can worry about the ones left behind.”
So I lead my small band of survivors down the stairs and through the halls and back to a torture chamber full of supplies.
And there, I perform my final act as a leader and tell them to follow the most devious, unreliable, and untrustworthy person I know. I tip the game in Ravel’s favour and back away.
He gives me one stunned glance and snatches at my sleeve. But I slip out the door before he can stop me. Before it has even closed, I hear him taking charge with that hypnotic voice of his.
Good. He’s better at playing this role than I am anyway. Much joy may it bring to him. And if he fails them, may all my ghosts haunt his every step to the final breath of his miserable life.
Cadence screams at me all the way back through the underground warren and up the stairs and only stops when I place my hand on the chilly surface of an unremarkable door that leads to a place I’ve only seen through another’s eyes.
“Don’t you dare,” she warns. “The mission—”
Not my mission.
I don’t dare breathe the words out loud, not this close to the enemy stronghold, but I know she hears me. I can feel her fury. Her confusion. Her hurt.
She is bound to the past by our memories. I’m not. And I’m afraid she’ll never understand. Never forgive me. But that doesn’t change what I have to do.
Because Ravel is the one with the power to save everyone.
Which means I’m the one who’s free to go after the stragglers. I’m the one who has to reach those who can’t escape, or who have never dreamed of escaping.
And, because I’ve decided to be brave but I’m not confident it’s going to work all that well for any of us, I plan to start with both the hardest and the most valuable rescue of all.
Cadence falls silent as I ease that unremarkable door open and slip from the dim and dirty stairwell into unparalleled opulence. The corridor glitters with gold and concealed lights and strategically placed mirrors. I twitch and spin, jumping at every reflection, straining to catch sight of the telltale blur of coalescing Mara before they spot me.
The mayor of the Towers of Refuge could have imprisoned Ange anywhere. She could have had her killed or sacrificed her to the Mara for the sin of her defiance. Maryam Ajera is, if not Ravel’s mother in the most literal sense, at the very least the woman who caused him to exist and raised him. More or less. And I’ve spent time in her devious head. If she had wanted Ange dead, she would have sacrificed her to the Mara in front of her followers. If she had wanted her kept prisoner, she would have kept her with the group to show how powerless their leader really was.
No, if I’m right, she will have kept Ange alive and within reach. A hostage. Maryam’s probably known about her and her little breakaway group for years—decades, even.
She doesn’t want Ange. She wants what she has always wanted.
Me.