Aina flung a knife into one of the guard’s throats. The other one turned his gun to Aina instead, and she rolled toward him as a shot fired. She flung his arm to the side and plunged one of her scythes into his stomach. He choked on his own blood and collapsed to his knees as she pulled it out.
Turning back to the group, Aina saw them gathered in a small circle around someone who had fallen. When she got closer, she saw Urill on the ground, his blue hair stained with his own blood and his gold eyes, so like Lill’s staring up at the smoke-ridden sky.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Sofía said, her voice thick with tears as she reached forward to close Urill’s eyes. “Not even magic could save him now.”
“We’ll find him again once this is over,” June said, her own tears falling on her cheeks in trails. Then, in the white ash that coated his forehead, she drew a small arc, and Aina remembered her mother often doing that with coal dust on the Inosen who were brought to her but died before she could heal them. To help the Mothers find them, she’d said when Aina had first asked what it was.
“Help me move him somewhere out of sight,” June said once she finished.
“I’ll do it,” Aina said, then nodded toward a boarded-up store across the street. “That store is empty, so I’ll leave him in there. I’ll loosen one of the boards on the door for you to get in later. You all need to get to the mines as fast as you can. Those Diamond Guards don’t belong to the Tower anymore—they’re Bautix’s, and I bet you he’s given them orders to finally turn, and to kill you all if they find you. Go, I’ll catch up.”
As they stood to leave, June took one of Aina’s hands and squeezed it. “Amman oraske, Aina.”
“Amman min oraske,” she replied, the words flowing from her immediately. May the Mothers bless you too.
After they left and she’d carried Urill’s body into the store, Aina’s gaze trailed north. She had no idea how many more buildings Bautix would bomb, but if he kept going, then Teo’s apartment might be in the line of fire. Without wasting another minute, she ran toward his street.
A few blocks away, the heat of the fires had mostly left her, but smoke and ash were still thick in the air. Out of the white clouds ahead, a figure walked toward her, and she squinted, hoping it was him—when he called her name. Her heart leapt and she raced toward him.
“Aina!” Teo ran the last few steps toward her, becoming visible when he was just a few feet away, and pulled her to his chest in a tight hug—she knew it was temporary, that he’d go back to being angry at her once they were safe again—but she breathed in his scent anyway and tried to hold his warmth to her when they pulled apart again. “What are you doing over here?”
“I had to get the Inosen out of the safe houses.” She gestured toward the fires behind them. “Bautix did this. I got them out in time, but I had to come get you—if the bombings keep going, your apartment will get hit.”
Teo bit his lip as he stared at the flames ahead, the sky shrouded with smoke. “That’s why I came, I heard the explosions and when I looked out of my window, I saw where they were. I knew the safe house would get hit.”
She breathed a sigh of relief at his words; maybe things weren’t perfect between them, but they’d both come for each other now. And they’d make it out of this alive.
“The Inosen are headed to the safe house at the mines right now,” she said quickly. “We should go there too, but I want to check something first.”
He nodded, gesturing for her to lead the way, and she glanced at the buildings around them first before deciding—a theater was nearby, the tallest building in this part of the city at three stories high. From there, she’d be able to see a good amount of the city above the flames and smoke; she could see how much more of it was burning, and how much chance the Inosen in other safe houses had to survive.
The theater only opened in the evening for performances, so the door was locked. She hacked through the lock in seconds with her scythe and pushed the door open into the dark interior.
Before heading to a set of carpeted stairs on the left, she breathed in the clear, cool air of the theater, blinking white ash from her eyes and shaking some of it out of her sleeves. It was odd, how calm and quiet this place was while chaos reigned outside.
She and Teo walked side by side up the stairs, the theater opening on their right with a shadowed stage in the distance. At the top of the stairs, Aina stepped through a set of velvet curtains onto a balcony and looked out at the city.
They were level with the smoke now, so she wasn’t able to see as much as she’d hoped, but she could still take in more than from the ground.
The fires spread south, only for about a quarter mile, even though it had felt like she’d traversed half the city since leaving the tunnels. From here, she could make out Rose Court north. There were fewer fires there—perhaps Bautix didn’t want to risk killing too many Steels—but the warehouse district, visible beyond the landmark of the train station, was aflame just as much as the Stacks and the Center.
Squinting, she looked up at the sky, expecting her eyes to water from the smoke. But it wasn’t all smoke—thick dark clouds had amassed there too, promising rain that couldn’t come fast enough.
The fires, she noticed then, weren’t headed straight north. They curved a snake-like, diagonal path through the city. And that meant they wouldn’t hit Teo’s apartment, which was more directly north. That meant …
Teo realized it at the same time she did.
“Aina.” He gripped her arm above the elbow, his eyes wide.
The same silence, like steadily falling snow, descended over them. Panic rushing through her, Aina reached up, tugging on the curtain, and Teo helped her pull it down. Carrying the billowing velvet, they ran to the balcony.
“Sweet ice,” she whispered, closing her eyes for a brief moment right before the theater exploded beneath them.
The blast propelled them outside, nothing but white-hot air behind them. As they leapt off the edge of the balcony, she grabbed on to Teo’s waist, holding on with all her strength as he held both sides of the curtain out like a tent around them. The air caught it for a moment, carrying them to the ground, but as the heat and force of the explosion behind them roared, the curtain turned to cinders in his hands.
They let go of each other then, their hands over their heads as they dropped the last ten feet to the hard ground. Debris fell around them as they tumbled, rolling across the street while heat seared in the air around them.
Her eyes opened briefly, in time to see more wood and stone falling toward her. She gripped her hands tighter around her head—right before she blacked out.
She didn’t know how long she was passed out, but when she woke, it was to someone tapping her cheek repeatedly. Through bleary vision, she looked up at Teo and noticed a stream of blood coating one side of his face.
And then she noticed it wasn’t Teo tapping her cheek over and over—it was droplets of rain. The sky had opened, and rain fell, darkening everything around them. Mist rose steadily in the wake of the flames.
Teo held out a hand to her, pulling her out of the rubble. They stood for a moment on shaking legs, neither of them saying a word, then turned to run to the edge of the city.