“Noa,” Callum strained, not moving his eyes from the flaming knife for even the slightest instant. “Please meet Hilo.”
• • •
“Don’t move,” Hilo growled at Noa, sending her a slicing glare. Hilo’s white hair glinted like a long knife when she moved; her eyes were a chillingly light blue, like those of an an arctic wolf.
“She’s not a threat, Hilo,” Callum said slowly, calmly. “None of us means you any harm.”
“Speak for yourself,” Judah muttered, though he remained quite still.
“Hilo, please put the Faefyre away,” Callum continued calmly, ignoring Judah. “I think we all know it’s not something we want to play with.”
Noa didn’t even want to breathe, the air was so charged and tenuous.
Hilo didn’t move, still poised to strike. Callum took a tentative step toward her, then another, and finally put a gentle hand on her outstretched arm.
“Please, Hilo,” he urged softly. Hilo reared back; Noa shut her eyes, unable to see another loved one die—but then she heard a tiny sigh. She opened her eyes: Hilo held the blade at Callum’s throat, but the flames were gone.
Judah chuckled bitterly under his breath, and in a blur the knife was pressing into his throat, drawing droplets of blood.
“Do it,” he challenged.
“You think I won’t?”
“I know you will.”
“Enough!” Callum grabbed Hilo’s arm. “Hilo, put it away.” His eyes were dark, his voice terse and deep, in a tone Noa had never heard him use. A tone that made her shiver.
Hilo snorted but tucked the knife into her tunic. Noa saw her lupine eyes follow Callum warily.
Callum turned his back on them, then knelt to Noa. “Are you okay?” he asked in his different, gentler voice.
“I-I don’t know,” Noa said. He helped her up; she tried not to flinch from his touch.
“Lean on me,” Callum instructed. “Your leg is broken.” Noa looked down, surprised, but he was right: her leg was shuddering under her weight. She hesitated, studying his face—but it was again the gentle Callum face she had always trusted. She squashed her misgivings and leaned her weight tiredly against him.
Over Callum’s shoulder, Noa saw Hilo watching them. Noa looked down into Callum’s collar, flushing and shivering.
As Callum wrapped his arms around her, warmth began to spread from Noa’s chest, radiant from her heart. Little flowers of heat bloomed over her injuries as Callum knit her back together: not just her leg, but her arms, her wrist, her back, her knees. All the things she hadn’t had time to feel when she was running for her life with Marena.
Marena.
Noa closed her eyes. Push it away, she commanded herself. Turn it off.
Amazingly, it seemed to work. Her mind shut out everything for a moment, let her live in the feeling of being healed. It cocooned her—no chasing Guards, no confusing brothers, no insane pixie with a Faefyre knife—but then it was over, and Noa felt the chrysalis fall away.
Callum held her for the briefest second, then gently pushed her back to her feet.
“I’m glad you’re back,” he breathed in her ear.
Noa swallowed hard, avoided looking at Hilo. She’d endured too much to be derailed. “I have a lot to tell you.”
“Not here,” Judah said curtly, eyes on Hilo.
Hilo glared right back. “Where you go, I go, Judah- Pants,” she sneered. “She’s not the only one who’s gonna talk.”
• • •
The walk back to the hidden Tunnel room was strained. Judah fixated on Hilo, seemingly torn between wanting her in sight at all times and not wanting her to lead the way. Noa and Callum fell behind, trying to stay out of their tension even as it infected everything.
“Where’d she come from?” Noa whispered.
“She came looking for Judah. She’d heard we were sighted in the near the Barracks in the Work Sector, knew if it really was Judah he’d hide down here.”
“She wanted to find him? After what she did?”
Callum sighed quietly, uneasily. “She says she missed him. Regrets what happened. Wants forgiveness.”
“Funny way of showing it.”
“Well, you know how receptive Judah can be. Hilo’s cut from the same cloth.”
Noa didn’t know why she felt a tiny pang. “Do you believe her?”
“She’s like Judah,” Callum said guardedly. “She’s … malleable.”
“I guess you would know,” Noa replied, more sharply than she intended.
“We were young,” Callum said softly. “And without her help, I could never have gotten Sasha safely to your world.”
Noa didn’t answer. She heard the hurt in Callum’s voice and regretted it, but even though she’d defended both Hilo and Callum to Judah, now she felt compelled to take Judah’s side.
“I’m not proud of manipulating her feelings, Noa,” Callum murmured. “What I don’t know is if there isn’t someone else now, pulling her strings, the way I did before.”
An entirely new chill went down Noa’s arms. She glanced ahead at the frightening, stunning pixie, jostling with Judah to take the lead. Even fighting, they moved their bodies the same way.
“That’s the wrong way!” Hilo suddenly snapped at Judah.
“It is not—”
“Yes! Look!” Hilo pointed at some indecipherable part of the dark expanse neither Noa or Callum could distinguish. But Noa watched Judah see it.
Hilo rolled her glittering eyes. “A little rusty, huh?”
Judah glared at her. “Just don’t trust you without proof.”
Hilo’s hand flew to her knife; Callum tensed; then all at once, Hilo’s shoulders sagged. Noa was startled to see how her body seemed to soften, hair rippling in silver waves. Beneath the armor, Hilo was actually delicate, as if drawn with intricate, fine brushstrokes, like etchings made in glass.
Like Judah, Noa realized.
“You have to forgive me sometime, Judah,” Hilo murmured, the words barely reaching Noa and Callum.
Judah’s profile looked carved from ice. “It’s funny how everyone keeps telling me that.” His gaze traveled back toward Callum, toward Noa. It lingered for a moment, then he turned to face the dark instead.
“Come on,” he muttered.
Callum pulled her forward; Noa stumbled to walk beside him, fighting the sinking feeling in her heart.
• • •
“I’ve been on the run ever since the Resistance fell,” Hilo told them that night in the cave as they passed around Callum-conjured grapes and nuts beneath the glow of Stellabugs. It would have been cozy, like a campfire of old friends, if not for the unspoken knots and tangles twisting through the dark.
One by one, Hilo handed Callum the rough-hewn cups she and Judah had once made so patiently by hand. Callum filled them using his gift, then they passed them hand to hand around the circle.
When Hilo turned to pass a cup to Noa, Noa hesitated—but in the Stellabug light, Hilo’s bestiality had softened, like clay beneath warm hands. Her angled cheekbones—before sharp as knives—became hollows worn slowly back by loss. Noa knew, could feel, the fingerprints of grief there. Noa’s own face had been re- sculpted by those hands.
Noa met Hilo’s eyes, still the lightest blue she’d ever seen. Wolflike, yes, and chilling—but also the first eyes to see Judah’s heart for what it was.
Noa smiled tentatively, accepted the cup.
“Careful, Noa,” Judah said quietly. He’d taken Hilo’s knife—his condition of allowing her to speak—and was flicking it methodically against the ground. Noa tingled uneasily—was Hilo using her Green gift to make Noa feel more at ease?
“Shall we ask the Otec to alarm the Tunnels then?” Hilo asked Judah with a smile.
“If you expect us to trust a word you say
,” he replied, not smiling back.
“When did that alarm stuff start, anyway?” Callum interrupted.
Hilo sighed, turned away from Judah. “Once the Resistance was dismantled, Darius began rigging the whole city. A Colored power gets used, those things go off unless a Clear gives permission.”
“I get that, but how do they work? I mean, they’re clearly magical. But magic can’t just exist on its own. It has to be performed by Fae—”
“Not the talisman,” Noa pointed out. “That works on its own.”
“What talisman?” Hilo asked immediately. Her face sharpened, eyes flicking from Callum to Noa. Judah snickered softly.
“Nothing,” Callum said quickly.
“What talisman, Judah?” Hilo demanded.
Judah smirked. “Your boyfriend made it for Noa in the mortal world. To protect her.”
“Callum, no!”
“I had to,” Callum told her firmly.
Hilo’s eyes filled, and she hastily looked away.
Judah scoffed bitterly. “And you claim you came here to make things right with me. Another lie. What a shock.”
Hilo sprang to her feet, anger burning up her tears. “I didn’t lie. I don’t feel that way about Callum anymore, not since it meant losing you. And…” Her voice shook hoarsely, but she forced herself to say it: “Lily.”
She spun toward the wall in humiliation, wiping the tear streaking down her cheek. But Judah wouldn’t give her that. He leapt up too, right at her back, hissed relentlessly into her ear: “Your Fyre—”
“She already apologized to you, Judah,” Callum said quietly.
Judah snarled but backed off. For the first time since Hilo had appeared, his eyes found Noa’s eyes. His were angry, hard. But Noa held his gaze. Feel it, Noa tried to tell him. It’s okay to feel it all.
Behind Noa, Hilo was breathing fiercely. When she finally turned back to face Judah, his eyes left the beam of Noa’s gaze.
“I’m not in love with Callum,” Hilo repeated at him, calm but even. She turned to Noa, eyes like ice. “But I know what a talisman is.”
Noa flushed in shame, then anger.
“Don’t blame her!” Judah snapped.
Hilo flinched, eyes flicking between Judah and Noa. For a moment, Noa saw the fierce, silver beast—but just as quickly, it was gone.
Hilo turned to Callum, calm.
“You asked how the tubes work. They’re actually not unlike a talisman. A talisman works because it has a piece of living soul. The tubes—the liquid in them? Darius harvests it.”
Noa closed her eyes.
Hilo smiled bitterly at her. “Yes, little mortal. Those tubes hold liquefied Fae. That’s what happens when the Otec calls you to Review.”
Noa wanted to scream and fight and cry—but against whom, against what? She’d built walls and borders—Home, Here, and In Between—and her sanity hinged on their separation. More than her sanity, because her sanity was just her mind; this went deeper—to her marrow, to the chambers of her heart.
Hilo kept talking, not knowing how she was breaking Noa’s boundaries, cutting the fragile threads that were holding Noa’s being together: “If you use your powers, or you’re caught mixing with other colors—‘cullies,’ they call us, like dogs—you’re first indentured to some Clear family as their personal Channeling slave. But if you really mess up, or repeat-offend … you’re melted down in Review.”
Judah snickered quietly, didn’t need to speak aloud: Sounds familiar.
Callum leapt up, frantic, angry: “He can’t … He’s that far gone? Our father? He can’t be!”
“Are you really surprised?” Judah demanded.
“But murder, mass murder—”
“What did you think would happen when you took Lily away!” They all were standing now, Judah furious in his brother’s face. “He snapped! He cast out Mom!”
Callum stumbled backward as if Judah had slapped him. Judah spun on Hilo. “Tell me now and don’t dare lie! Where’s Lorelei? What happened to her when the Resistance fell?”
“Judah—” Hilo stepped back, held up her hands. Noa’s body seized, frozen in fear.
“Tell me!”
“I—”
“Please, Hilo—” Callum croaked.
“I-I can’t—”
Judah snarled, grabbed her, shook her by the shoulders. Noa had to look away. “Tell me now!”
“She’s dead! Okay? She’s dead!” Hilo cried, breaking.
Judah’s face contorted with shock, anger, disbelief. “Liar!” He threw her to the ground, held her open knife flush against her throat.
“She’s not!” Noa cried, lunging at him, desperate to pull him back. “Judah, stop, please, she’s not lying! Please, she’s not, she’s not!” Noa started sobbing wildly, heaving against him, scrabbling at his hands. He let her pull him from Hilo; they collapsed together to the floor. He didn’t cry but she did in torrents, as if it were her mother who had died—because it was, not her mother but Marena, and Isla too, and the fragile, broken strings that no longer kept anything separate or safe—
Judah looked at her, more frightened than any child. He didn’t move or speak, poured every plea into his gaze.
“I heard it above,” Noa told him, tortured. “They declared her dead when the Resistance fell.” She expected him to scream, to wail, to make noise and curse the world—but he didn’t. What he did was so much quieter, and so much worse— he crumpled inward.
Something in Noa couldn’t bear to watch.
“But the pixie, she also said—” Noa said desperately, recklessly, knowing it was wrong, knowing it was the most wrong thing she could possibly do. “She seemed to think there was a chance, somehow, that it wasn’t true—”
Judah froze and stared at her, then slowly rose, a sunrise of terrible, terrible hope. From behind, Callum gripped Noa’s shoulders, spun her toward him so hard it hurt. It was blinding there from his face too—this terrible hope she’d conjured when she knew, more than anyone, it was magic so dark it could kill them all.
“What do you mean?” Callum begged. “Please, Noa, what do you mean?”
“I-I…,” Noa cried painfully. What had she done? What was happening? How could she have betrayed everything she knew most deeply—
“They didn’t show her body, they never buried it,” Hilo said slowly, softly. “They should have. She had been queen.” Hilo glanced at Noa, and Noa braced herself to see that hope there too—but Hilo’s eyes weren’t hopeful. They were tired, and sad, and kind. Hilo was helping Noa. She was sharing the burden of Noa’s mercy.
“Well, she’s obviously not dead then!” Judah declared, latching onto certainty with giddy glee. “Darius would have strung her from the rooftops!”
Callum was more measured, but Noa saw him falling too. “If she were dead, there’d be proof,” he agreed.
Noa took a shaky breath. Hilo touched her hand. Noa breathed out, so grateful she almost cried.
“We’ll find her, save her,” Judah was saying.
“Yes, our sister and our mother both,” Callum agreed.
Hilo’s hand lifted from Noa’s. “Your sister?”
“Noa’s sister,” Judah said quickly.
“What’s going on?” Hilo said sharply. “Don’t lie to me. I can feel your anxiety bleeding through the room.”
Callum looked at Judah, and Judah exploded. “Absolutely not!” he cried. “No!”
“Judah—”
Judah turned to Noa. “Tell him no!”
Noa bit her lip, conflicting thoughts and feeling overwhelming her.
Callum stepped in. “Look, she’s down here with us, isn’t she? And nothing’s happened, no one’s followed her. We need all the help we can get, especially if we have to find Lorelei too—”
“She can’t be trusted! Noa, tell hi
m!”
“I-I don’t—”
“She’s alive, isn’t she?” Hilo whispered. “Lily—I didn’t … My Fyre didn’t…”
“Of course she’s not alive!” Judah said immediately, but Callum hung his head in acquiescence.
Hilo looked shocked, then elated—then furious. “How could you not tell me?” Hilo screeched at Judah. “I thought I killed her! You let me think I killed her!”
“Then I guess we’re even!” Judah screamed right back.
Hilo wailed and stumbled back into the wall of the cave, crumpled down against the wall. “You’re right,” she cried. “You’re right. I let you think you started the Faefyre when it was me … I let you think you killed her too.” Hilo was crying now, from anger and shame and regret and so much more. She cried ferally, both girl and beast, both fierce and shaken to her core.
“I deserved it,” she cried, ripping at her silver hair, the way Noa had seen Judah do so many times. “I deserved it, I deserved everything I got—”
Judah ran to her, rage pouring from every cell. Hilo’s knife was in his hand; his arms were shaking; Noa had never seen his face so cruel—
He screamed, an animal’s scream—
—but then he fell to Hilo’s side, the knife clattering to the floor.
The look that passed between them then—it broke Noa’s heart.
Hilo and Judah fell against each other, shuddering, and Noa had to look away. She felt a light touch on her elbow, looked into Callum’s plaintive face, and tentatively, touched his arm.
When someone spoke again, Noa was surprised to find it was she herself.
“She’s my sister too,” she said clearly, voice steady and strong, standing once more on her own. Judah and Hilo pulled apart to look at her. They looked as if they’d been eviscerated, wrecked—but now put back together right.
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