by Everly Frost
“I need to tell her, I guess. Do you really think your brothers can fight an entire army?”
I feigned a cocky expression as I pulled him to his feet. “Only because I’m with them.”
“I like that you call them your brothers,” he said, joining me on the path back to the tower. “And I’m glad you have them.”
Three nights later, something woke me in the dark. The lamps in the hallway outside my room were dim and the old clock on the bedside table told me it was the middle of the night. All was still, but something had drawn me from sleep. A sound? A movement? I listened carefully but couldn’t place it.
Michael was fast asleep beside me, breathing deeply. He’d slept soundly for the last three nights, as though he had months of sleep to catch up on. Each night, he kissed my forehead, wrapped his arms around me, and we stayed that way until dawn. I was always the first to wake, but each day when he woke up he was more relaxed, less on high alert. I slipped out of bed, navigating around him, and headed to the dresser to get my snowsuit.
“You’re awake,” he said from behind me, sleepy and half-awake. The blanket scrunched as he pushed it back, rubbing his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling … Rift’s on duty and I’m sure it’s fine. But I’m going to the surface to make sure.”
“I’m coming with you.” Without hesitation, Michael pulled on his suit and within moments we were both clad from our feet to our necks in white camouflage gear, facemasks in our pockets, hoods up, and goggles resting on our heads.
“Should we take a flashlight?” he asked.
“It’s a full moon tonight.” I smiled, excited as I realized I’d have the chance to show him what the tower looked like in the moonlight. “It’ll be fine, trust me.”
Above ground, the chill wind hit me immediately through the back of the open tower. I shivered and Michael ran his hand across my shoulders. “Cold?”
I shrugged. “I don’t have to be.” I fished the pouch out of my pocket to show him the black pearls. We’d started collecting them and putting extras into pouches ready to take south with us.
I tugged him along and once we were past the doors, it was strangely calm with the tower sheltering us from the icy tumult. The stone path shone in front of us and the mangled sculpture sparkled like diamonds, reflecting light across the space. The magnolia tree appeared white in the moonlight with a dusting of new snow accentuating the contrast of its black branch.
“You were right about not needing light.” Michael slowed to take in our surroundings, his chest rising and falling in slow, indrawn breaths.
I drew him over to the tree, its barren branches reaching to the sky like silver antlers.
“I wish you could see it in full bloom,” I said. “It’s like something out of heaven.” I spread my arms wide and tilted my head back to breathe in the wildness of the breeze curling around my cheeks, a tendril of hair escaping across my face.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself the center of his attention.
“You are,” he said, “something out of heaven.”
He made no move toward me, but everything told me he wanted to. “We should find out what woke you up.”
I took a moment to assess the sounds around us. If I took the nectar in my pocket, my senses would be magnified a thousand times, making my assessment much easier and quicker, but I’d given up so much already and I wasn’t going to pass this moment by.
I closed the gap between us, meeting him on the path. My heart thundered in my chest, my stomach fluttered, and I almost couldn’t breathe. I removed my glove and dropped it to the ground, knowing that if my fingers froze, the cure was in my pocket. It was a risk I was willing to take.
I reached for him, brushing my hand to his cheek, the warmth of his skin against mine. Tingling energy shot through my hand and wrist and for the first time in a long time I sensed my own mortality. I wanted to be both to him—mortal and immortal. I wanted him to see both sides of me.
Still he didn’t move, waiting for me. He was holding his breath like I was holding mine. I leaned in, lifting up on my tiptoes just a little, my lips close to his. For another moment, he was still, and then … his arms rose around me, his fingers entwining in my hair, releasing it from where it was tucked inside my hood, drawing me closer.
He kissed me and I kissed him back.
Drawing breath, I leaned against the tree, pulling Michael with me. I could have been floating or flying or anchored right there with the tree at my back and Michael kissing me, one hand planted on the tree, the other entwined in my hair. He broke the contact and began to speak, but I crushed my lips to his again, deciding that I’d never have enough, that this moment was never allowed to end. He smiled against my mouth as I ran my hands across his face and it was as though months of sadness were erased with every touch.
“I love you, Ava,” he whispered against my lips. His words washed over me, filling me with sunlight. There was warmth at my back and warmth where his hands touched me.
“I love you, Michael,” I answered, tears sliding down my cheeks, saltiness making our kisses bittersweet.
When I let him go, he drew back to see my eyes, kissing both my eyelids. A quizzical look passed over his face. “You’re glowing.”
I laughed. “That happens sometimes when I take nectar.”
“I thought you didn’t…”
I pursed my lips. “Wait, you’re right.”
Michael drew back even farther and his gasp was audible. “Ava, look.”
I followed his gaze upward to the branches of the magnolia tree, but instead of bare winter branches, they were lush with flowers. More were forming as I watched, budding and growing before my eyes, more than I’d ever seen on the tree.
“How…?” I needed to see the black branch and began to twist, but Michael was staring at his hand.
It was pressed against the tree and where his hand connected with the bark, light radiated out from it, swirling through the tree trunk. As I lifted myself away from the trunk, the light faded. Quickly, I replaced my hand next to his, both our hands side by side as if it took both of us to make the tree grow—the mortal and the immortal side by side.
“Is this supposed to happen?”
“We made a leaf grow once. But this … This is something else.” I twisted so I could keep touching the tree as I moved. “Don’t let go, but come with me. I need to check the branch.”
We rounded the blooming tree together, our hands trailing after each other, silvery light gleaming beneath our skin. There were so many magnolias on the tree now that they burst and dropped, white petals filling the air around us. I kept Michael close as we moved until I could see the black branch.
Along its length, leaves grew, growing thicker with every second, more and more as we touched our hands to it.
I stared in awe.
“It’s the middle of winter,” Michael said, amazement filling his voice. “How is this happening?”
I intertwined my hand into his, keeping contact with the branch as magnolia petals rained down around us and the black branch came alive with leaves.
I said, “Kiss me again.”
He smiled and ducked his head and what began as something light turned deeper until the night sky blurred and the stars bled into each other and the moon itself grew so full that it filled every dark corner with light.
I loved him and he loved me and when the kiss ended and I opened my eyes and he opened his, we clung to each other because there wasn’t anything else we could do. Even when he nudged me and said, “Ava, what is that?” I could barely move.
Right next to our hands, something else had grown. It took me a moment to focus—it was so much harder with his cheek against mine and his trailing kisses in my hair distracting me.
My eyes widened. “It looks like…”
A flower.
The tree had grown a flower. Not a magnolia flower, but a brilliant rose, the color of a thousand sunsets combined
, deep orange turning to red and fading to pink at the tips with purple and blue at its center, nestled in earthy green and brown leaves, as though all the colors of the world were in harmony.
I smiled. “It’s us, Michael. We’re making it happen.”
He smiled back at me and for the first time, he was once again the boy I knew before I died.
Before I could say anything else, footsteps broke the spell of the moment.
Rift raced around the corner, his cheeks flushed, his whole body agitated. He skidded to a halt as he saw us. I recognized the slightly thin hue of his skin and knew he’d left his shadow behind. “Ava, you need to see this!”
His voice died as he saw the tree. “How…? What…? That’s … amazing…” He stared another moment before he shook off the shock. “You’re going to have to fill me in later. You need to come with me to the cliff.” He focused on Michael without missing a beat. “Michael, I need you to get the others—all of them—and bring them to the cliff beside the marsh pond. But keep low. We’re being watched.”
Without another word, Rift raced back up the path toward the cliff and I needed to follow him.
I didn’t want to leave Michael, but he dropped a last kiss on my lips before taking off in the other direction. I hated the space he left behind, but Rift was afraid and it would take something really dangerous to make Rift afraid.
As Michael disappeared inside the tower, I raced after Rift along the path to the left of the tower and to the side of the marsh pond. I kept low as I approached, wondering what was out there that worried him so much.
Inside the marsh pond, to my surprise, the mech had gathered itself together and stood tall inside the water. It half-turned in the direction of the ocean as I passed by. I ducked down, keeping low and crawling to the edge of the cliff, where Rift flattened himself against the ground.
“The mech woke up two minutes ago.” Rift kept his voice low. “All the bugs came together, but it hasn’t moved from that spot right there.”
“What’s it doing?”
“Waiting for that.” Rift pointed.
I squinted as I pulled my nectar pouch out. As I chewed, the distant horizon came into focus. Out to sea and drawing closer with every minute was a ship. Its masts were at full sail, gusting toward us in the strong wind. It looked like something from a movie—a pirate ship with mast and sails. Except that the flag was the official flag of Evereach, the diagonal, blue slash across it symbolizing Evereach’s most coveted resource—fresh water—the resource that had started the world war with Seversand.
My stomach sank. “It’s Olander. The ship mustn’t be electrical in case there’s an EMP. But what’s he doing here?”
The mech suddenly maneuvered itself onto the path at the edge of the cliff, standing only a few feet away from us, so close I could have reached out and touched its leg. “What’s it doing now?”
“No idea, but I don’t think it got the ‘keep low’ message.” His forehead creased into a frown. “Listen. Do you hear that? Something’s not right…”
There was a whisper of sound. It was the sound of something lashing and scraping, something so much like the crash of waves against rocks that it was almost imperceptible. I realized that it was the sound that had woken me.
It was the sound of moss and thrashing vines.
The mech shuddered and for a second I thought it was about to explode. Alarmed, I considered touching it to see if I could control it, get it to back off and lie low. One of the mech’s feet lifted off the ground and planted itself slightly behind the other. It bent at the waist, its arms up in fists, head down.
The sounds grew louder. Closer. Rustling. Struggling. Attacking…
I drew a deep breath of realization, but it was too late.
A second mech launched itself over the edge of the cliff, slamming into our mech with such force that both giants slid backward, grappling with each other.
My hair whipped my face as I turned to Rift with a scream.
Olander wasn’t on his way. He was already here.
Chapter Twenty-Five
RIFT’S WHISPER was a shout in my magnified hearing. “Get back!”
Human shapes loomed over the edge of the cliff—twenty or thirty of them and still more poured over the edge, all of them dressed in bugs.
The moss had turned itself into thorny vines, beating at the intruders, curling and snatching and trying to dislodge them from the cliff, trying to fling them back into the ocean, but the bugs formed a protective layer over their bodies. Every attempt simply ripped bugs off them. The bugs swarmed back to cover the intruders, reconnecting and allowing them to keep climbing.
“They have their own suits. But it’s too soon. It’s not midwinter.”
“Ava, there’s no time to figure this out. C’mon. We’re stronger as a group.” Rift urged me into a run and I kept pace with him along the path toward the tower.
We dodged the two giants as they crashed into the marsh pond, splashing foul water over the edge of the cliff. Other bugs, different bugs, swarmed around them.
As we ran past, the intruder-mech smashed its fist through the arm of our mech, but our mech separated and reconnected again to avoid the blow, hitting back at the attacker with one hand while at the same time grabbing an oncoming soldier and flinging him back over the edge. My eyes widened as an idea rushed through my head.
“You go!” I shouted to Rift. “I can hold them off.”
“No, Ava…”
But I was already running to our mech, reaching the edge of the marsh pond, where the water was a violent wash of movement. As I ran, I drew out the remaining nectar from my pocket and swallowed all of it. I was going to need every bit of strength for the fight ahead.
With my extra strength, I launched myself at our mech, slamming into it with a single thought: Cover me.
The mech disintegrated into bugs, dissolving and dispersing around me as the intruder-mech attempted to grab it—and me—but I was moving too fast and the bugs moved with me, spinning around me and attaching to the anchor points on my elbows, knees, and shoulders and reforming once more into the giant. Except that this time, I was inside it. Only my face was visible outside the mechanical suit, a bug on each of my temples relaying my commands to the rest.
I hit out at the intruder with the mech’s massive hand, studying the other’s reactions and searching for its weaknesses. I couldn’t see if there was someone inside it, although that was unlikely since I couldn’t see a face.
Regardless of whether there was, my plan was the same—I needed to damage its anchor points and that would force the other mech to disperse. In the meantime, I was going to use my mech to defend the tower.
Ducking beneath the other mech’s arms, I raced along the cliff’s edge, slamming into the soldiers as they pulled themselves over the edge.
They wore uniforms that I hadn’t seen before and I remembered Michael telling me that Olander had unified the Hazards and Bashers. They may have changed their appearance, but they would always be Bashers at heart: cruel and unyielding, the tormentors of slow healers, and the ones who were really responsible for my brother’s death.
I threw the oncoming Bashers back into the air as the other mech pursued me, flinging them as far and hard as I could. Each time I grabbed one of soldiers, I aimed for the anchor points in their bug suits, ripping the important bugs from them and crushing them in my mech’s fist so that when they fell, their suits disintegrated midair. The fall wouldn’t hurt them, but without anchor bugs, they couldn’t climb back up.
At the same time, I drew the intruder-mech away from the tower. I couldn’t stop all the Bashers from getting past me and a number of them slipped by nearer to the tower, but I’d at least kept their numbers to a minimum. As I ran along the cliff’s edge and no more Bashers attempted to climb over it, it was time to get rid of the other mech before it turned its sights on the tower.
Stopping in the nearest clearing on the path next to the cliff, I had seconds to brac
e before the intruder reached me. It tried to gain leverage by barreling into me, its arms squeezing around me, but by doing so, it exposed its elbows.
I hit back, slamming my fists against its back, concealing my real target: the anchor points. At the last moment before we crashed into the tree behind us, I snatched the anchor bugs from one of its elbows, crushing them. At the same time, I pushed the intruder in the other direction, giving me a moment to make absolutely sure that the anchor bugs were destroyed.
The intruder-mech shuddered. Its left arm disintegrated into small bugs that buzzed and tried to find their places again. Its right arm compensated, dispersing a spare anchor, but I only had to repeat what I’d just done.
That or…
Its head was faceless—an oval with no distinguishing features. If it was designed the same way as mine, then the control center was near the temple. If I could destroy that, then I’d destroy the whole thing.
My moment of thought and hesitation was too long. The other giant pummeled my mech with its fists, forcing me to my knees. I fought back, grappling with it, all the while harnessing my extra energy, preparing to release it. I just needed to get the machine’s head within my hands…
Something small but fast hit me from the side. The bugs in my suit separated, allowing the projectile to sail through without harming me. I followed the object as it shot into the tree behind me.
The Basher who’d fired the gun was preparing to pull the trigger again, but another soldier slammed into him. “Don’t waste the tranqs! Leave the mechs. C’mon.” They raced away along the path toward the tower.
As fast as I could, I honed in on the gun, assessing its shape and size. The shooter had said the projectile was a tranquilizer, but tranqs were almost as bad as mortality weapons in the short term. I’d been subdued with multiple tranquilizer darts before. Enough of them would cause my brothers to fall.
The other mech used my moment of inaction to hit back, attempting to grapple me to the ground. I let it, all the while reaching for its head. I willed the suit around me to withdraw from my hands so that my bare skin could connect.