Noa squeezed his hands, as Callum groaned with effort: “They’re Channeling, Judah. We have to run; I can’t hold—”
Judah jerked alert, dropped her hands, sprang to his feet.
“Got it!” He pushed once more into the crowd, tubes above him strobing red as he ordered them telepathically to let them through.
Callum, heaving, stumbled up to follow. The blue tubes silenced; the sun came back out, and the Greens and Guards behind them clamored in confusion. Noa grabbed Callum, urging him this time, and together they took off after Judah.
Immediately, from their left, a new wave of popping screams erupted—screams Noa now recognized as Color Fae being Channeled. The lines of Green Fae had been to their right; Noa barely had time to wonder which Colorline was clustered to their left. Huge spikes suddenly pushed up through the ground in front of them, skewering Fae around them like bloody, hungry spears.
Noa screamed as her foot barely missed a rising spike; red blood splashed across her face from a boy cleaving in two. In fact, red drops infused all the air around them; she choked on blood-mist, squinting through it to see Judah leap and jump between two thrusting razor peaks.
“Callum!” Judah cried over his shoulder. “A little help?”
Callum pivoted and grabbed Noa by both shoulders, lifting her up and over twin bleeding pixies, spiked wetly through. She felt Judah grab her as Callum passed her to him, then slapped his palms to a rising spike instead. He breathed in hard and ahead of them, the ground turned to melting ice. The rush of Fae slipped and fell, crashing through the now blood-and-flesh slopped spikes.
Noa sprinted faster, matching Judah stride for stride, grateful for the suddenly grippy soles Callum had thought to add onto their shoes. Noa looked at Judah, not needing words; they dropped hands and used their bodies, arms, and shoulders to charge through what snowy spikes remained.
“They’re fighting back, the Blues! They’re rebelling to help us!” Callum called as he ran through the space his gift had cleared, catching up. Noa and Judah looked quickly back to the left, where the Guards had been Channeling the Blues. The Blue lines, superior in number, were now rallying, fighting; the Guards had their hands full trying to crush the outburst. Blue tubes were screaming, and wooden shards flew everywhere, Blues were conjuring shrapnel toward their captors.
Callum pulled alongside his brother; they shared a little grin. “I guess they don’t like their relatives being made into shish kebabs,” Judah smirked. Energized, they all ran faster, feeding off the chaos. Channeling pops like firecrackers sounded somewhere behind them, but they were running so quickly and so together Noa didn’t dare to turn to look.
“Reds,” Callum told them, breathing evenly with the increased stride. “They’re using Reds to stop the Blues.”
Ahead, the crowd was thinning; they were reaching the end of the sea of Colored Fae—and also space to run.
Beyond the crowd, they now saw, was a towering, solid wall.
“Where do we go from here?” Noa asked, panic rising. “Which way do we run?”
“Right or left, we’ll have to double back and disappear into one of the buildings,” Judah called as he hurdled over a fallen Fae.
“But right or left?” Noa cried.
“Left,” Judah and Callum said together, both reaching out to save Noa from slipping on a river of melted ice.
“They’re still scrambling there to control the Blues,” Callum explained, not slowing down a step. “The Guards will be distracted.” They all turned left, and Noa felt herself actually relax a little. They had agreed on something, finally working as a team, just when it really counted. They might actually make it out of this—
“No!” Noa cried, yanking back against the brothers’ hands, pulling them to a skidding stop.
“What?” Callum cried. “We can’t stop, Noa! They’ll catch up!”
“No, it’s Red, it’s a Red compulsion, can’t you see it?” She turned desperately to Judah. “Right or left, can’t you feel the thought? It doesn’t fit! It isn’t real!”
“Noa, come on,” Callum insisted, dismissing her, but Judah was thinking hard, trying to feel what she was feeling.
Callum yanked on Noa, roughly now, but Noa yanked back. “Judah, you feel it, don’t you? We can’t go right or left! They want us to!”
Judah scowled, squinting, but didn’t answer.
“Judah!” Callum insisted, panicked. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying, help me—”
“No,” Judah said to Callum, putting a firm arm to his brother’s chest, spinning to look intently at Noa. “If not right or left, then where?”
Noa swallowed, looked around frantically. “I don’t know….” Then she gasped, seeing the only solution: “Over.”
Callum shoved Judah aside. “This is ridiculous, we’re going left!” he insisted, lifting Noa off her feet, slinging her across his shoulders. Noa yelped, grabbed Judah by the arm. Her wild eyes found his.
“Do it!” she cried.
Judah hesitated for a split second, then his hands were on Callum’s back and he was using his gift with all his might.
“Stairs,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Put her down, and go make stairs.”
Callum’s face contorted, struggling to disobey, finally slackening into acquiescence. He put Noa down, ran to the massive wall, and laid his palms upon it. Behind them, Noa heard the thunder of an approaching stampede; the Guards were fighting through the Colored Fae resistance. They had moments only, if that.
As Callum did Judah’s bidding, his voice came out strangled: “We don’t even know … what’s on the other side…” but he didn’t stop his work. When the stairs were done, Judah pushed Callum up first, then Noa, then shoved himself up in the rear. The wall was tall, so tall, but they had to climb; Noa forced her legs to work, forbade herself from looking down, tried to ignore the growing noise of thunder—
But the thunder was on them. Below, Channeling pops erupted like machine-gun screams, and fireballs began spraying at the wall. Huge scorch marks sizzled beside, below them, as the fireballs torched closer and closer to their mark.
“Move!” Judah screamed upward. Against her better judgment, Noa looked down; Judah’s foot was on fire.
“Callum, move!” she screamed, shoving his calves from behind.
Callum obeyed and climbed like lightning to the top, still moving jerkily as he bent to haul Noa up. Noa reached down for Judah’s hand just as the stairs beneath him smoothed away. The Guards had reached the wall; they’d Channeled Blues to flatten Callum’s stairs right out from under Judah’s feet. Judah slid down the wall; Noa screamed and barely caught him by the fingertips. But he was too heavy, and she too weak; she slid down too, pulled by his body like an anchor. Callum grabbed her disappearing ankle, falling to his stomach on top of the wall, and with an almighty hurl, wrenched them all up and over.
“They’re climbing the wall!” Judah panted as he got to his feet. “They’ve conjured lines and ballast!” When Noa and Callum didn’t answer, Judah turned—they were staring out over the wall’s other side, frozen.
Judah looked where they were looking.
It wasn’t a wall that they had climbed; it was a dam. A dam that dropped down and down and down, into a sucking riot of rushing, crashing rapids.
Judah didn’t wait, didn’t stop to worry or to think—
He grabbed Noa and Callum, and jumped them all over the edge.
• • •
“Noa! Are you okay?”
Noa was coughing too violently to answer, choking on darkness and swirling dust so thick she could barely suck in any air. Through filthy tears she saw the white of her elbow bone—naked, grotesque—poking terribly from her arm, its skin swinging sickeningly in a mottled, filthy swath. Moonlight lit the verminous debris around them—the carcass of the cabin’s landing which had disintegr
ated beneath their feet.
Noa knew they should never have ventured into this rotting, freaky cabin. Why did she let Isla talk her into things like this?
Isla’s silver eyes pierced the darkness sharply, alert and tense. She had also fallen through the decayed, insect-eaten floor, but had bounced up easily, in the way she always seemed to do. Now she hovered over her fallen sister, fervent with concern, poised to fight any foe that should appear. Isla was speaking, but her voice echoed thickly in Noa’s ears, her words amorphous blobs slowly swelling into shape.
“I’m calling for help, stay still. I won’t let anything happen to you, I swear.”
Noa collapsed backward, let her body slacken, did as Isla said. She tried not to think of the insects and rodents, the larvae and fungus breeding in the dampish rot beneath her head. Why oh why had she let Isla talk her into going inside this stupid ‘haunted’ cabin?
Noa shuddered, remembering the fall.
“Stay still, silly.”
Noa whipped her head to the right, ignoring the shooting pain up and down her neck. That voice wasn’t Isla’s—not commanding, not imperial with confidence and strength—but clear and high, like the burble of a laugh. It sliced through the dust, the thick, the fog—and belonged to a little girl with chocolate curls.
“Sasha,” Noa murmured, smiling, knowing now it would all be okay. “Isla, Sasha’s here—”
“Who’s Sasha?” Isla demanded. Noa painfully turned her head back to her older sister.
“Sasha,” Noa urged, “Sasha, our sister.”
Isla frowned. “What sister?”
Noa opened her mouth to respond—but all that came out was water.
• • •
“Noa!”
Noa heaved and choked as the water roared up and out her lungs, a deluge of everything inside. It was a torrent, a flood, and for some reason tasted spicy, with the tang of mint. It went on and on, until Noa felt herself on the edge of passing out—then suddenly her lungs stuttered and breathed in. Her eyes flew open and were blinded instantly, everything too sharp, too bright: the blinding sun, Callum’s and Judah’s faces, even the air itself.
And she was wet.
“You should have let me conjure a parachute or something!” Callum exclaimed at Judah. “Not just shoved us over like some—”
“There wasn’t time! You were dazed from my compulsion—”
“Yeah, that’s another thing!”
“She’s fine!” Judah looked defensively at Noa. “Right? Tell him!”
Noa sat up gingerly, still breathing voraciously in and out. She realized she was on a bank of some kind, soaked, safely away from the giant, frothing whirlpool of seething, broiling rapids. It wasn’t far enough for Noa. Not that she could move herself coherently to do anything about it.
She breathed and breathed, slowly adjusting to how the air was warm and spongy in her lungs. Surprisingly, it didn’t take as long as she would have thought—even in her pain, she was getting used to the heaviness of the air.
Noa turned to Callum, wincing, “He had to compel you, Callum. The Guards had you mind-controlled with their Red compulsion. You wanted to run us into a trap.”
Callum grimaced, ashamed. “I know. I couldn’t detect it.”
“It’s okay.” Noa stretched shakily. “You’re not Red Fae. It’s natural for Judah to be able to sense it better.” Callum didn’t look very comforted, so Noa turned to Judah for help. “Right, Judah?”
Judah was tense, unreadable. “Right.”
Noa stretched again and looked around. They had evidently traveled quite a distance in the water; the dam was far on the horizon.
“Did we lose them?”
Callum nodded grimly. “For now.”
Judah smirked. “They probably think we’re dead. Won’t be looking for us for a while. Which they wouldn’t have thought, had you conjured your little parachute.”
“You say that like you’re proud, but Noa could have been hurt.”
“I broke both your falls, Callum. Stop complaining. We couldn’t stay there and let them catch us. I knew you’d heal us if we got hurt.”
“What if I was hurt myself?” Callum demanded.
Judah rolled his eyes and looked away, but Noa saw his flinch; he hadn’t had a plan for that.
Callum sighed and shook his head, helped Noa up. “We should get moving.”
“It may have been dangerous,” Noa whispered softly, not wanting Judah to hear, “but if they think we’re dead and they won’t be coming after us, it’s better for us, isn’t it?”
Callum paused a moment, his head on hers. “If they believe that.”
“Hellooooo,” Judah called impatiently, arms crossed a few feet away. “Let’s get out of sight just in case.”
Callum glared at him, suspicious.
Judah glared back defiantly, then sighed. “The thing is…,” Judah began, pointedly ignoring how Callum closed his eyes in dread, “when Arik hurt Noa, and we lunged at him? He kind of saw my face.”
“So? He doesn’t know us.”
Noa bit her lip, her stomach sinking. “He knows Judah.”
Callum turned back to her, confused. “What?”
“Judah told me about him one night, when we sort of talked about stuff…,” Callum tensed, and Noa continued quickly, “It was when we were looking for you, after Thorn had kidnapped you.”
“Oh.” He didn’t look reassured.
“Arik’s the son our father wishes he had,” Judah explained impatiently. “After you left, Darius kicked me and Mom out, married Arik’s Clear mom, Fayora, and adopted that bastard. Now he’s the little Otec-in-training.”
Callum’s eyes flared. He spun from Noa, furious: “You let Darius abandon Lorelei? You had one job!”
“I didn’t let the Otec do anything!” Judah fired back. “And in case you weren’t listening, he kicked me out too!”
“Stop!” Noa demanded, again getting between them. “This is not the place—”
Callum ripped his hands through his hair. “Where is she? We have to find her! Judah, please—”
The muscle at Judah’s jaw pulsed, and he looked away. “I don’t know. The last time I saw her…” He broke off, swallowed hard.
Noa bit her lip. Right before they’d gone into the Portal, Judah had revealed what Lorelei had told him in a desperate moment: that she’d wished Judah had been Banished, that Callum was the son she’d wanted with her. It was partly why Judah had run away to Noa’s world.
Judah took a deep breath, his voice tight. “The Resistance was helping to take care of her before I left. Moved her from place to place, kept her safe.”
“We’ll have to find them, then,” Callum said immediately, then turned to Noa. “You understand, don’t you?”
Noa’s hand found his. “She’s your mom. We’ll find her and Sasha both.” She quickly glanced at Judah’s back. His face was hidden. She squeezed Callum’s hand.
“Judah, you were right before. I was wrong. We should hide in the Tunnels,” Callum said sincerely.
Judah shrugged, but turned to face them again, scowling his trademark scowl. “I’ll lead, obviously. You suck down there.”
He took off in front, leaving them to follow. Noa squeezed Callum’s hand in thanks, and he squeezed back.
• • •
Judah led Callum and Noa along the bank until the rapids narrowed into a rushing river. They walked in silence for what felt like hours, until the bank itself got thinner, a single-file path, beside a rising, angled wall that Judah and Callum told Noa outlined the border of the city. The wall, like Aurora’s buildings, looked like melted wilderness: pressed leaves and dirt and vines, hardened into stone. As if the city literally grew out of the ground.
Noa puffed and pressed her body on, everything made harder by the strangeness of Auror
a. The heaviness of the thick, fragrant air, the searing brightness of the sun, even the minty after-tingle of the water. It was overwhelming to Noa’s senses, even as it energized the boys.
“How much farther?” she asked no one in particular.
“Looking for an entrance,” Judah mumbled in front.
“I think I recognize part of where we are,” Callum said from the rear. “Do those look like the Southside plants to you?”
Judah paused to look at the city beyond the sheerness of wall, and Noa put her hands to her hips, trying not to show her relief at the tiny break.
“If you’re right,” Judah answered, “that would mean that those skyscrapers we just ran from…” He trailed off, eyeing Callum.
Callum exhaled slowly. “The homesteads. Darius replaced the homesteads.”
“What do you mean?” Noa asked. “He built that freaky tube-place where people—I mean, Fae—used to live?”
“It was really different before, kind of bohemian,” Callum told her, “Families combined their gifts to build in their own style—no two homes ever looked the same. Some were caves or shelters, others big mansions or strange angular tepees…”
Judah’s eyes glinted, mouth curling into his half-smile. “And it always changed, even day to day. It was the perfect place to hide out, especially after pulling pranks. Hilo and I—” Judah broke off abruptly, face hardening.
“Hilo was still your friend, Judah. Your memories of her are real,” Callum told him gently.
“Until you made her your little spy.”
“I explained: I had to keep an eye on you, for your own—”
“Good, yeah. I’ve heard that before, Callum.”
“But if Darius got rid of the homesteads,” Noa interrupted, “where do Fae live?”
“Those skyscrapers,” Judah said. “I guess like dorms.”
“No,” Callum corrected softly. “They were barracks.” His eyes met Judah’s.
“Segregated,” Judah nodded.
“Segregated … by Color?” Noa asked.
Callum nodded. “That’s why the one we entered was only alarmed with red tubes. It only housed Reds. Darius destroyed the homesteads and separated the families by Colorline.”
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