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The door opened, and Caduan blinked blearily at me, brow furrowed in concern. I didn’t give him time to speak before my arms were around his neck, and my mouth crashed against his.
You would raise your hand against your own people? Siobhan had said, seconds before they killed her. My own people? What people? They had just murdered their best, a woman who had given them everything that she had, who believed in loyalty until her dying breath.
All I could think about was the emptiness where Caduan had once been.
He held his aim for several long seconds, then lowered his weapon and turned away, joining his brother. And all while Ezra just stood there as if made of marble, helpless as he watched his garden wither.
“Never mind,” I muttered. “I just—” But she tipped my head back, so that I was looking directly into her eyes again. “I love you,”
“I can’t sit here and be happy,” I choked out, “when there are so many people waiting for me. People who did not get the chances I did.”
I made a final, desperate push. But then Max drew in a sharp breath and yanked his hand away. My concentration snapped. My weak butterfly dissolved and fell to the earth, disappearing into nothingness before it hit the ground. I barely saw it. I was just looking at Max, who let out a low hiss as he rubbed his hand. My heart fell.
But over time, I realized that Max had never been a cynic. He was a wounded optimist trying desperately to return to his natural state. I loved that about him.
My fingers curled into fists, clenched so tight they trembled. He had watched everyone he loved die. Those people deserved justice. He deserved justice.
My head was pounding. And my heart — my heart hurt.
Tisaanah Vytezic
I felt as if my mind was being rifled through, my memories picked apart like the bones of a carcass.
“My name is Ishqa Sai’Ess. And I am here to right a wrong that I made very, very long ago.”
Huh?
“Is it really so powerful?” he said, quietly. “The thing that she will become?” The human smiled. “It is the most powerful thing the world will ever see.”
“It means, ‘No one.’”
And then friends. One day I cannot remember the shade of Caduan’s eyes, or the way that Siobhan’s proud smile made me feel.
But one day, I cannot recall her name.
She loves him. She had never let herself think of it in those terms, not even alone to herself. It is a dangerous word. Only now, at the end of the world, does she let herself feel it.
She says nothing until he leaves the room, and then she lets out a mangled scream through torn-up vocal cords. It echoes through the room and the hall and the Tower, until healers come rushing in to see her, and she turns her head away so they do not see the tears streaming down her face.
She wants to be with him. She wants to hold him until the world goes quiet, wants to comfort him, to grieve with him. She wants to fall to her knees and beg for his forgiveness. She wants to carve out her heart and thrust it into his hands — I know this isn’t much, but here it is, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to make up for destroying the best things in both our lives.
When she wheels out of that room, Maxantarius Farlione is a hero, not a criminal.
There is a body here, on the concrete ground. A body with wings.
She is so, so afraid. She does not trust herself to weave words that convey all that she needs them to understand. They hate her.
“There are things we can do with Fey blood,” Nura said. “Fey magic. Things we can create, with access to all the different threads of magic. Things that might be powerful enough to save us.” Fuck no. “You want to create more Reshayes.”
“Then it would appear,” Nura said, “that our greatest enemies have allied themselves with each other. It makes sense, doesn’t it?
“I never claimed it was good. I never claimed it was right. It’s terrible. I know it is, and I know I’ll be damned for it in this life or the next one. But we have a choice, Tisaanah. We can end it all, right now. If we don’t win, millions will die. And you will never free your people. You told me you would do anything. So would I.”
That was the first time I had looked up at the Towers and thought they looked foreboding rather than comforting. Now, they disgusted me.
“How?” I choked out. “How can anything we do make this better?” “It can’t. Not this part.”
“It doesn’t matter how good our intentions are, or how hard we try. It would become something— something twisted. That is what we were fighting for? Just another slaveowner?
I had to force the words up my throat. “When I told you we would save them, I believed it. I wanted to believe it.” I pressed my hand to my heart, and for a moment, my lips parted and no sounds came out. Everything was too close to the surface. Too raw. And this terrified me, because I lived my life carefully guarding what I presented to the world. “Those lives,” I choked out, “are my family just as much as they are yours. There is nothing I wouldn’t have sacrificed to save them. Nothing. Because they deserved better. They deserved so much better.”
I was dizzy. And before I realized what I was doing, I was on my knees.
I let out a humorless scoff. “What a thing to bind us. I’d rather that we be tied together by a shared dream for the future rather than a shared terrible past. And I so wanted to give us that future. I still want to give us that future. But…” My throat closed, but perhaps they heard the words I couldn’t say: But I don’t know how.
“You must have been so young when we all fell. A child raised in the remnants of nations, like so many. But it is good to root ourselves in what we once were. The Drifting Songs were not just Nyzrenese, you know. All of our gods lived beneath the earth, and we all sang our versions of the Drifting Songs to send our dead to them.” Then Riasha opened her mouth and began to sing. Her voice was raspy and unpracticed, words off-key, and yet they were the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.
“And the most important part,” she added, “is that no one will ever find us.” “Not a soul.” What a dream.
I don’t know if I trust myself, anymore. It is nice to dream. And I’m just so… tired.”
We both knew the dream was gone, replaced by duty. It was nice while it lasted.
“Perhaps we could try to make things better from the inside,” she said, weakly. “Guide Nura. Control her worst impulses.”
“I would skin her,” Tisaanah muttered, and I quirked an eyebrow at her. “That’s charmingly vicious. Comforting to know that if she survives me, she certainly won’t survive you.”
“Nura—” But she was gone. Shadows wrapped around her like a cloak, reducing her to a smear of darkness. Just like that, her decision was made. And I knew her well enough to know that there would be no coming back from this — no half measures.
My mental walls, meticulously crafted, tore apart like paper. Still, I pushed forward, resisting the urge to fall to my knees.
Sammerin just shook his head. “Creating is harder than destroying. In the end it’s always worth it.”
I am the blood of the people that yours have stolen, the voice said. And I’m reclaiming what has been taken from me.
You do know, Aefe. Aefe. The feeling of hatred — hating the way he said that name. Hating it and loving it. Knowing this person. Trusting them. Mourning them. Perhaps loving them.
Tisaanah’s silent scream became a piercing one. I felt her magic withering. I felt him hacking away at the power that still was hidden, deep and weak, within her. Whatever was left beyond it was barely magic at all. And she was stretched so thin, going in so many different directions at once. If he didn’t stop, he would kill her.
“Caduan.”
IT IS HIM
A beautiful girl, with patches of colorless and tan skin, one silver eye and one green, staring right through me.
A female Fey stood there, wearing a simple white shift. She had tan skin, and long deep-red hair, and a smattering of pearlescent purple across her cheeks. Her eyes were a dark violet. They were deep-set, and tired, and very afraid. I stepped backwards.
It seemed cold and loud and crowded. An overwhelming place to live, with a mind so cold and empty.
“Even if I am only Reshaye?”
“Even then,”
