| |
The mayor’s audience chamber swims into view, all golden and glittering. I don’t know how I got here, but I’m not alone—someone’s breathing. Behind me.
I pick myself up off the floor warily, twist, and lunge to attack. Bad idea—my head spins and the contents of my stomach try to sear their way back up my throat. I stagger a couple steps, bouncing shoulder-first off a mirror. The spiderwebbing cracks are shatteringly loud.
I cringe, but no one comes running. And the only other person in the room is Ange.
Her ankles are bound to the legs of a gilt chair, her wrists wrapped in thick gold cord. She must have been drugged; such restraints seem as if they could hardly hold her long. Still, I wait several long moments before moving to free her. This has to be part of Maryam’s plan, somehow. But, since no one seems to be attacking us right this minute, all I can think to do is free my friend.
The knots fall apart in my hands. I shake Ange’s shoulder. She shifts, muttering in her sleep, but doesn’t wake.
I waste another few minutes examining the corners of the room for any hints of the trap I must be springing before hauling her up. She’s slight and I’ve grown stronger, between Susan’s chores and Steph’s training. It’s still an effort to drag her across the room.
My steps falter at the thought of the long, dark stairwell ahead of us. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. My shoulders hunch not only against Ange’s weight but the threat of attack at any moment.
I can make out just a hint of distant murmuring as if from a conversation a couple rooms away. And yet, I stumble from the mayor’s shining domain into the darkened stairwell without encountering the slightest resistance.
No squad of enforcers steps from the shadows. No monsters coalesce from the air.
I reposition my grip and start down the stairs. Something is sure to go wrong any moment now—but I might as well gain as much distance as possible before then.
I have to stop and rest several times. Every time I let Ange slide to the floor, I think it will be the last. I imagine distant rustling, muffled boots, hushed breaths. I sense the immanent tug of fingers in my hair, or the shove of a hand at my back, pitching us down the sharp steps.
Near the bottom, Ange squirms and mutters, the drugs evidently starting to wear off. Her tears wet my shoulder, scaring me more than anything so far. But she only weeps silently, refusing to respond to questions. By the time we take our first steps into the empty halls that once housed Freedom, she’s at least bearing some of her own weight. I feel suddenly lighter, inside and out.
I did it—saved her—all by myself? I can’t quite believe it yet.
I stagger around one last corner, Ange moaning in my ear, but it doesn’t dampen my eagerness to celebrate her rescue with everyone. Except, when I peer down the corridor leading to the once-torture-chamber-now-storage-room where I left Ravel in charge of the ragtag band of refugees, the door hangs open. The room beyond is dark and silent.
We took too long. They’ve gone on ahead without us.
Good.
Horror at being left behind wars with a quiet glow of satisfaction. By now, they must all be across the barrier and free—and so shall we be. Soon.
I stagger onward, propping up Ange’s faltering steps. We’ll make it. Just a little further, and we’ll find Ravel, waiting for us. Maybe he’ll even backtrack, meet us part way.
I could use the help—I pant with the effort to keep Ange upright and moving forward, blinking away the sting of sweat. Any minute now, he’ll turn a corner with that cocky grin and those dangerous, brilliant eyes. He’ll help get Ange and me across, the last of many. We’ll settle the refugees a safe distance from the monster-haunted shoreline with their supplies. Maybe put our pursuers to good use minding them, or even guiding them back to Nine Peaks.
I smirk at the thought. The elders said it wasn’t worth coming back here. They thought no one could be saved. They thought wrong—and I can’t wait to show them just how wrong.
Of course, I’ll have to wait just a bit longer for that particular pleasure, because once Ange is safe and the refugees are secured on the other side, Ravel and I will return.
This part of the plan I never discussed with him, or Cadence. I am neither burdened by her memories nor driven by her need to complete the mission our parents sacrificed themselves—and us—for.
Which is just as well because I’m not the child they brought into danger and abandoned. I am not bound by their purpose, or path, or powers like she is.
I’ll use whatever and whomever it takes to save my home and the people like me, abandoned in a place they never had the option not to choose, deprived of even the idea of choosing anything else.
I’ll steal the Mara’s prey out from under them and starve those nightmares for lack of dreamers to devour.
There’s more than one way to kill a monster.
Cadence keeps her silence, stunned, perhaps, at my brilliance. Or maybe just absent and sulking. Doesn’t matter either way—because Ange and I stagger around that one last bend to find more than just Ravel waiting for us.
And every one of my self-satisfied, oh-so-clever plans shatters and joins the shards of the tunnel at my feet.