—still holding Marena’s hand.
Marena skidded down toward the roof’s edge too, pulled by Noa’s sudden weight dangling off the side. Gripping Noa harder, she shoved her small feet into the border to stop her slide, then heaved back with all her might. Slowly, Noa was dragged up, inch by inch until she could grasp the railing and haul herself back to safety.
Noa slumped for a moment on the roof in order to catch her breath. Aurora’s sun reflected hotly from the tiles, but having just almost died, Noa didn’t find it nearly so oppressive; even the air felt less cloying-thick in her lungs. She raised her hand to her forehead, relieved to find her wound had finally stopped bleeding.
“What, you wanna stop and get a tan? Come on!” Marena snapped, charging up the new roof as she had the old one. Noa bounced up and followed—up and down and then across—to the next roof in the row.
This time Noa managed her landing better; she wobbled and skidded but didn’t fall. Then Marena was on to the next, and Noa matched her stride for stride, sun sizzling on their backs.
They moved in unison until the fifth roof, which shuddered the moment they touched down. They both tumbled toward the edge but caught themselves on the gutter with their feet, the way Marena had done before, and saw that the mansion behind them had exploded into a fiery ball of flame, causing the shock wave that had just knocked them off balance.
“They’re Channeling Blues,” Marena said, scrambling to her feet. “We have to move faster!”
“Wait!” Noa said, getting up too and snagging Marena’s arm. “We can use the smoke as cover!” She ran to the other side of the roof, but instead of leaping across, dropped down between the houses, Sasha-starfish-style, Marena following.
“There,” Marena panted when they’d hit the ground. She was pointing down the alleyway toward a small shed attached to the townhouse to their left. At Noa’s questioning look, Marena grimaced. “Lotta Clears don’t want cullies messin’ up the house. Give ’em their own ‘houses.’”
“Like dogs,” Noa murmured. She and Marena ran to the shed and closed themselves inside. It was damp and dark, and smelled like decomposition.
Noa couldn’t have been more thankful.
Boots thundered down the street nearby, punctuated by deafening pops and rapid-fire crackles. Noa didn’t want to think of what the Clear Guard were doing with the Blues to try to catch them.
“Is this how they usually go after runaways?” Noa panted, sweating.
Marena shook her head. “That gob, Cyrus, he musta been important.”
“He knows we overheard about the Otec’s new weapon,” Noa realized. “That one he told his wife never to mention.”
Marena bit her lip, for a moment as young as Noa had forgotten she really was. “We can’t blow Clear Province, the checkpoint gobs’ll nail us.”
“What about below?”
“The Tunnels?” Marena breathed, eyes widening. “You’d bring me to the Tunnel Fae?”
Noa struggled, not wanting to destroy her dream of some cadre of underground Resistance. “I won’t leave you behind,” she said finally. “But I don’t know where that entrance was that I came out of. Do you?”
Marena nodded uneasily.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Noa asked.
“It’s in the Main Square. Right in front of the Guard headquarters.”
• • •
Noa and Marena didn’t dare creep from the shed until the commotion had gone quiet for quite some time. When they finally emerged, Noa gulped in Aurora’s strange air and light—she’d actually missed both in the stuffy darkness of the shed.
Marena led the way down the alley on tiptoe, copying how the younger girl flattened herself against one wall. Noa realized, somewhat belatedly, that she now completely trusted this girl who’d said hello by knocking her unconscious with a rock. It was more than that actually—somewhere while dodging death, Marena had started feeling, startlingly, like a sister, a fellow girl-beast Noa admired in the way she admired Isla and Sasha.
When they reached the end of the wall, Marena motioned to Noa to pause while she quickly peeked out into the open streets.
“Extra checkpoints,” she whispered, voice flickering ever so slightly in a way that made Noa stomach sink.
“So what do we do?” Noa whispered back.
“Dunno. I usually sneak at night, but…” Marena grimaced. “We don’t gotta go far, but there’s so many gobs, they’re gonna notice us.”
Noa bit her lip, thinking hard. “What if … we let them? Notice us?”
“You hit your head again?”
“No, Mar, what if we go through right under their noses? In disguise?”
Marena squinted at Noa, the grinned slowly.
“Do you know where we could get some of those fancy clothes?” Noa asked.
“You’ve come to the right cullie.” Marena rubbed her hands, looked around quickly. She pointed down the alley toward a window, lighting up. “Come on, I’m gonna need a boost.”
“Wait, you’re going to steal the clothes from this house?” Noa asked. “Isn’t there like … a Laundromat that would be safer? Where there are a lot of clothes and no one will notice—”
Marena rolled her eyes. “In the Blue work sectors, maybe. Not in the Province.” She trotted to the window, turned back impatiently toward Noa, who followed reluctantly.
“Maybe I should be the one to go in,” Noa suggested, feeling a surge of sisterly protectiveness, even as she knew she would make a terrible thief.
Marena scoffed. “Please. I’m a pro.” She winked at Noa and lifted her foot. “Boost me, pixie.”
“How are you going to open the window?” Noa grunted, clasping her hands so Marena could step up. Marena smirked and lifted the glass easily.
“Them gobs alarm our powers but not doors and windows,” she snickered, then disappeared inside.
Noa waited anxiously, every second a century. It reminded her of waiting for Isla to return after she’d snuck out at Harlow. Isla had always teased Noa for that because nothing bad ever happened to Isla.
Until it did.
Noa shuddered, silently prayed for Marena to hurry up.
As if in answer, Marena slipped out the window and dropped lightly to the ground, a bundle crushed beneath her arm.
“Good news and bad news,” she whispered quickly. “Good news is, I got you some ickle-pretty pixie robes. Bad news is, there weren’t any in kid sizes and I heard them gobs in the next room so I didn’t wanna hunt around.”
Noa did not like the sound of that at all. “Can’t you just wear the same size as me?”
Marena snorted. “No Clear kid would wear clothes that didn’t fit. That’s what them Blue cullies are for.”
“Well we can’t just break into a bunch of houses until we find your size—”
Marena waved away Noa’s panic, smug. “Duh. I’ll just be your indentured Greenie. Get it?”
Noa studied Marena uncertainly. “You think that’ll work?”
Marena grinned. “’Course. Just act like a selfish, lazy, spoiled gob and we’ll be slicked!”
• • •
Noa needed Marena’s help to dress herself properly in the intricate Clear robes. The numerous elaborate ties and crisscrosses—clearly the work of indentured Blue Fae—slipped inexpertly through Noa’s fingers. The voluminous robes were deepest ivory but danced in sunlight: thousands of tiny diamonds were interwoven with the stitches.
Marena scrutinized Noa when she was finished. “Your face is ashy and your hair’s all fuzzy, but it’ll do.”
Noa suppressed a laugh. “Thanks.”
Marena held up a short cord, attached to two circlets. “Nicked this too.” Noa crinkled her face in confusion, and Marena rolled her eyes. “Forgot you been living under rocks. It’s your leash. Or mine, I guess. Can’
t be dirtying your pretty Clear hands unless you need to Channel me.”
Grimacing, Noa leaned over and helped fasten the rings around Marena’s wrists.
“Cut that out,” Marena scolded. “Don’t look at me. I’m beneath you.”
“Or just really annoying,” Noa teased.
Marena huffed, but Noa saw her eyes dance. “C’mon, Clearie.”
• • •
Noa took a deep breath and walked into full view of the sidewalk, yanking Marena behind her. She managed not to look back at Marena, who yelped with each step—pretend-yelped, Noa hoped—but she couldn’t help glancing anxiously at bustling passersby.
“Stop lookin’ guilty!” Marena hissed behind her.
Noa began to nod but stopped herself. ‘Clearies’ didn’t interact with cullies. She pressed her lips together, made no sign of hearing as Marena whispered, low and even, “Go right here. Left at the crossing. Then we’re smack in the Main Square.”
Noa walked purposefully to the right but stuttered when she saw the checkpoint directly in her path. Her heart beat so fast she was afraid, for a moment, she might pass out.
You can do this! Noa ordered herself. She reached back through her mind, searching for an inspiration, someone to emulate—and found Ansley, the golden social queen who swanned through Harlow’s halls. Privilege was Ansley’s native skin. Noa pictured Ansley’s face as her face, made Ansley’s walk her walk: every stride prettier and fiercer, as if the sidewalk were her own. Before she knew it, she was at the checkpoint, face-to-face with a silver-clad Clear Guard.
Her Ansley-aura vanished. His face swallowed it whole—not his eyes, which were sharp hazel and certainly frightening, but more his brows, so inky black and thick that his whole presence became ursine. Growling from every hair.
Ansley, Noa thought feebly, but the strengthening spirit did not come. She reeled, almost turned and fled—and then saw her:
Isla.
Isla’s ghost coalesced just beyond the Guard, blond hair swirling madly like a lion’s mane or a mermaid under the sea. Her silver eyes shone like beacons, glinting bright with mischief: Isla, girl-beast, calling out to Noa’s girl-beast blood.
Noa inhaled Isla’s spirit like breathing fire; she straightened up, flared her eyes, raised her nose into the air.
“Ugh! What’s all this?” she demanded before the Guard could speak. She saw instantly that it was the right move; he stepped back, apologetic and deferential, on his heels.
“Sorry, miss. Just some runaway cullies we need to find.”
Noa rolled her eyes and tossed her head. “Cullies are like dogs. You practically have to potty-train them.” Noa yanked the leash leading to Marena. “This one used to try to get away. But we house-broke her good.”
The Guard chuckled, nodded. “You headed to the main square?”
“Where else!” Noa snapped snottily, as if offended he’d even ask.
“Runaway cullies can be dangerous. If it’s not urgent, I’d advise you go home quickly—”
“I’m not afraid of vermin.”
The Guard reddened deeply, flushed with shame. “Of course, miss, go on through.”
Noa stalked past him, yanking Marena behind her. “Praise Otec,” she sneered in the Guard’s ear, feeling a savage spark of glee at his flinch.
As soon as Noa was past the checkpoint, she exhaled deeply, shuddering, as if releasing Isla’s reckless bravery. A very Noa-like anxiety flooded back, along with shock and hindsight—fear that made her tremble. Her skin felt ripply like jelly.
Behind her, she heard Marena’s faintest snicker.
Noa didn’t risk turning around, but could picture the pixie’s approving smirk. It made her proud instead of scared. She turned left at the crossing, feeling confident again—
Until she saw another waiting checkpoint, this one larger, and manned by several Guards. One held a dazed, gray-shirted cullie at the ready for enhanced interrogation; there was a backup of several Clear Fae waiting to be allowed to go through.
Noa licked her lips. If they had an army, she’d need one too, if only in her mind: Ansley’s walk. Isla’s swagger. Marena’s smirk. Sasha’s mind. She got in line, girl-beast blood pumping.
But something was wrong. Ahead of Noa, one Clear after another was turned back, denied access to the Main Square.
Noa’s fingers tightened on Marena’s leash, but Marena could say nothing. But Noa knew what Marena wanted to say: we have to find a way.
Noa shook her hair back, picturing Isla’s mermaid mane, and stalked to the front of the line as if the Clears in front of her did not exist.
“Square’s shut down,” the Head Guard said, not bothering to look her in the eye. Noa knew immediately that snotty wouldn’t work with this one. He was too arrogant himself.
“I know,” Noa said sweetly instead, picturing Sasha’s strategic use of snuggles to get her way. “Runaway cullies! Imagine! That’s why Daddy Astraled me to come back home right away.”
The Guard narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth, but Noa quickly continued. “You know Daddy.” Noa smiled, batting her eyes. “Well, of course you do. Everyone does. I’d hate to have to tell him you kept me in danger, but of course you would know best….” Noa dropped her eyes deferentially, then peeked up and saw with satisfaction that the Guard was wavering. She could practically read the thoughts running through his mind: he didn’t know who she was, but he definitely didn’t want to admit it; Noa’s patrician manners proved her story.
Noa knew she was close. She put a kind hand on his arm; he looked at it in surprise, almost awe—the way Noa herself had looked when touched by deities like Ansley at Harlow.
“I know, such a pickle these cullies put us in,” Noa leaned in confidingly, as if it were a secret. “But look, you’ve only just started building the blockade. I’ll just slip right through….”
The Guard was still staring at her hand. Just let me, Noa pleaded silently. Just let me go through. Finally the Guard straightened, the picture of a diligent officer looking her in the eye. “Okay, but go right home—”
Noa’s heart sank as he broke off midsentence; another Guard—a Captain of some sort—beckoned him to a conference of several huddled patrolmen. “Wait here,” Noa’s Guard said distractedly. He went to join the conference, and a new Guard, extremely burly and missing a chunk from his nose, came to stand stock-still in Noa’s path.
“Um, hi. He was just letting me thr—” Noa began.
The burly Guard slid his eyes chillingly to Noa’s, not moving another muscle. Noa shivered. Her spirit army of girl-beasts evaporated in that single look.
Marena suddenly gasped behind Noa. Noa turned, then froze.
Cyrus and Amarine were striding toward the conferencing Guards.
“Um, it’s okay, I’ll just go back after all,” Noa told the burly Guard quickly, spinning fast. But he grabbed her arm with meaty fingers.
“Wait,” he growled. Noa swallowed, trying not to shake.
In the conference, Cyrus was gesturing emphatically around the square, back toward Noa. She bit her lip. Don’t look here, please don’t look here, she prayed with every beat of her frantic heart, Please don’t look here, please—
Cyrus didn’t, but Amarine did. Her eyes swept the line of waiting Clears, falling on Noa; she looked confused, then recognition practically screamed from inside her mind—
—and above them all, glass exploded in deafening chains of fireworks that filled the air with shards of translucent, swirling shrapnel. Not just glass but something else, something wet and red—
Noa gagged, realizing she was inhaling flying blood. The Clears in line screamed, white clothes shearing and staining crimson; the burly Guard released Noa’s arm in the sudden chaos. Noa looked down at her own robes, drenched in blood; she wondered why she felt no pain, knowing she must be bleeding too. She looked
around frantically, glancing up, and realized—it wasn’t blood but liquid from the red alarm tubes above them, still shattering and exploding everywhere.
Others pointed, screaming at the tubes. Noa saw Cyrus look up in fury; then in a sudden, terrible instant, his head whipped her way, his eyes meeting hers in total recognition—
Marena’s leash suddenly ripped out from Noa’s hands, and the Green alarms above erupted in screams and flashes. Noa barely understood the streak of Marena sprinting into the center of the Square, leaving doubled-over Clears sobbing in her wake—
“Get her! She’s one of them!” Cyrus screamed fanatically, pointing at Marena. The cloud of Guards fell upon her, descending like a hurricane over her tiny frame—
Noa sprinted after Marena. She could just see Marena’s face through the swarm of silver and white, barely found the pixie’s small blue eyes—and Marena’s look silently said it all:
Run, you dolt. I’m saving you.
Noa’s heart broke as her body turned independently of her conscious will. Blinding tears streamed down her cheeks as her legs ran to the hidden entrance to the Tunnels. She keened, bone-deep, as her arms found and twisted open the heavy circular door, as her legs propelled her body inside—
—and she fell down, down, down, into air, into emptiness, the trap door clanging shut above her…
So when she finally crashed, everything—her body, her soul, her self included—was swallowed into darkness.
• • •
It took Noa a long time for her body to discover it was still alive. Her eyes came first, blinking to adjust to the eerie lavender glow deep within the Tunnels. When they did, she lay still, sure she was dead, sure what she had just seen could not be real.
Marena had not sacrificed herself. Noa had not let her. Marena was not lost. Not dead. It could not be. She stared up into the dark, knowing only grief.
Then Noa turned her head—and remembered fear.
Judah and Callum were there, where they’d promised they would wait for her, but they were backed up against one wall, hands up in clear surrender. Across from them was the most beautiful and frightening girl Noa had ever seen—a girl-beast made real, feral in the flesh. She was lithe but hard, all muscle, and crouched to leap with tearing claws; her ice-white hair, scraped back tight, fell down her back like a blade; her pointed, filed canines were bared and gleaming with the blinding light of fangs. She had a knife aimed at the brothers’ throats. The knife blazed with orange fire.
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