The Toll (Arc of a Scythe, #3)

by Neal Shusterman

Faraday returned to Munira at sunrise, pounding on her door until she let him in. “I’ve deciphered it,” she told him, clearly having been up all night working on it. “It’s eye-opening,” she said. “The fail-safe exists, although Da Vinci never said what it does.” But before he even stepped inside, Faraday held something out to her that caught the early morning sunlight, refracting it in shifting patterns on her front door. A scythe ring. Munira gave him a half-hearted smile. “If this is a proposal,” she said, “shouldn’t you be on one knee?” “I propose,” he said, “that you take your rightful place among us. I’m deeply sorry to have left you yesterday, Munira. I was overwhelmed, and I am not the most perfect of men.” “No,” she admitted, “you’re not. But you’re better than most. If you don’t count the last three years.” “Point taken,” Faraday said. “This ring was Scythe Anastasia’s, but Scythe Anastasia will no longer be with us,” he told her. “So tell me, Munira… Who will you be?” She took the ring, turned it in her hand, and thought about it. “I had my Patron Historic all picked out that day they denied me the ring,” she told him. “Bathsheba. She was the obsession of one king, and the mother of another. A woman in a patriarchal society who still managed to change the world. Her son was Solomon the Wise, so you could say she was the mother of wisdom.” Munira looked at the ring for a long moment, then gave it back to Faraday. “The invitation is enough,” she said. “But if I am ...