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“Not the worst idea.”
“I’m not leaving without Ness,” I say, staring Wyatt in the eyes. I’m indebted to Ness for saving me over and over even though we were strangers who only met less than a month ago.
“Of course,” Wyatt says, though it’s clear he knows the dangers he’s risking for a cause he doesn’t believe in. “What do you propose we do to find him? Shout his name over and over?”
“No, but you’re on the right track. We don’t go looking for him. We make him come to us.”
“How do we do that?”
I conjure two gold and gray fire-orbs, hoping to draw Ness to my flames.
Sixty-Nine
Solitary Confinement
MARIBELLE
Ever since the announcement, Tala and I have failed to travel through the Bounds unnoticed.
My fire-arrow collides into the chest of a woman trying to touch me with her electric hands. Tala kicks off a wall and drives the butt of her crossbow into someone’s forehead, laying him out. She fires an arrow into the shoulder of another inmate charging toward her, and he collapses in agony. I skip over a couple of the ten or twelve bodies piling up and we continue our hunt for Luna.
There have been over one hundred steps spiraling down from where we began, as if solitary confinement is in the center of the earth. There is every possibility in the world that we’ll get caught by the guards and buried away in one of these cells too, but the memory of this alliance with Tala will make me feel less alone. Grief can be so isolating, and Tala and I have been united by revenge over the murders of our parents in ways that Iris and I were driven apart.
Luna may not have gotten her hands dirty, but the monsters she created are the reason we all lost our loved ones. We’ll slay the monsters next.
We reach the lowest level. I light our way through what feels like a dark cave. There’s a woman shouting and banging on a door, and it isn’t until we get closer that I realize she’s not locked up. Tala aims her crossbow, but I stop her from taking a shot through the darkness, like when she killed Kirk.
“This is your fault!” the woman shouts, crying. “You swore I would become a Blood Caster!”
“Luna,” I say.
The young woman turns and white flames run up her arm. There’s something familiar about her. Her hair looks choppy, but that’s not it.
The stars be damned, she’s the specter that Atlas and I were pursuing the very first night of the Crowned Dreamer. Atlas had gotten a tip that a specter attacked her own family, and we rushed to the scene, pursuing her for blocks before we brawled. She was powerful too, and I needed a gem-grenade to take her down. That was also the night we first met Brighton and Emil, days before Emil’s powers manifested; some might even call our paths crossing destiny.
The same can be said for this woman who was arrested after Atlas and I flew away.
“Do you remember me?” I ask.
“You have fire now,” she says.
“Turns out it was always in me,” I say. “Is that Luna in there?”
She nods. “She gave me power and claimed she cared about me, but was nowhere to be seen when I was locked up.”
“There is no part of me that cares,” I say. “Luna is ours to end.” The woman holds out her palms like she’s about to unleash some fire. “Take a second to think. You’re outnumbered, and your power has been dampened from your time here in the Bounds, away from the stars. I’ve only grown stronger and less patient. You choose what happens next.”
The specter looks between us and the door, weighing her choices.
The white flames vanish, and so does she into the darkness.
Tala wastes no time running toward the cell, eager to make sure that Luna’s breath remains a stranger forevermore. She drops a gem-grenade and blows down the door. We stand outside the tiny room where Luna is pressed against the wall.
My grandmother eyes us like the reapers we are.
Seventy
Hunt the Shifter
