“Why didn’t it explode?” she asked the silent room.
Pryce let out a deep breath she hadn’t known he was holding. “I don’t know, Nina. It just stopped there, in the middle of its roll.”
She felt Eli take a step forward and stop at her side. “It just stopped?”
“Yes,” Pryce said, his tone clipped. “It froze. As if by magic.”
Eka’s words from the day before flashed into her mind. We will regain lost powers; clairvoyance, immortality.... and manipulation of time and space.
She felt Eli’s eyes turn to her, and Pryce dropped his arms and turned toward her, too.
“Nina,” he said urgently. “Did you do this?”
“Not on purpose,” she whispered. “I just... begged for the bomb not to go off. And it stopped, I guess.” She swallowed. “Eka said... he said we’d be able to control space-time. Is that what this is?”
Eli looked dumbfounded. “I would say it can’t be that, but I thought you weren’t clairvoyant, either.”
“How long is this going to last?” Nina said to the room at large.
“I don’t know,” Pryce said. “But we need to get rid of this, fast. Is there some way we can remove it? Send it somewhere?”
Nina looked at Rachel and hurried to her. Her color was returning, but she still looked sick. “Are you going to be okay? How do you feel?”
Rachel nodded. “Peachy.”
“I need a favor,” Nina said, kneeling next to her sister. “I’ve seen you send objects across distances as long as you know where you’re sending them. Can you send an object to a person?”
Rachel looked confused for a second, then understanding dawned on her face. “Oh, yeah. I can do that.”
They watched her climb to her feet and wobble over to the bomb, holding their breath collectively as she knelt and stretched her palm over the small silver sphere. She concentrated, closing her eyes, and the space around the ball started to waver like a mirage in a desert. The air in the room was thick with her bright energy, and for a second it didn’t look like it was working. Then there was a slight hiss and the bomb disappeared.
Rachel looked at them with a triumphant grin. “Now that’s why you have a witch on the team!”
They all laughed, and Pryce gave her a tight, lingering hug as Eli and Rachel high-fived. As she was in his arms, Nina was very aware that this was the first time since they’d met that he’d touched her for so long; like Eli, his hold was familiar and comforting, but there was also a scent to him that tugged at her heartstrings. She pulled back from him, aware of the press of his body against hers but strangely unselfconscious about it.
“So,” she said. “You saved my life, I save yours. How about that?”
Pryce smiled. “How about that?”
“Guys, let’s go!” Rachel called. “I don’t want to know what’s going to happen if that shithead told his friends about our break in before he arrived.”
Nina pulled away from Pryce’s grasp, slightly disappointed that she had to stop touching him. He looked just as reluctant as she did to break the embrace.
“Do you think the bomb went off?” Rachel asked as they piled back in the car.
Eli watched an ambulance streak past them on the street, closely followed by a police car and a firetruck, all sounding their sirens. In the distance, a plume of smoke rose above the trees, and a man wearing orange was diverting traffic toward an alternate route. A white news van was just beyond, its giant satellite dish pointed toward the sky.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I think it did.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The car slowly filled with panic as they sped away from the scene. Nina was dimly aware of Rachel crying beside her in the backseat of Eli’s Porsche; she slung an arm around her sister’s shoulders mechanically, unable to pull herself out of the vortex of thoughts and emotions in her mind. Her dragon essence was buzzing around beneath her skin fretfully, and she clamped her eyes shut for a moment to reel it in before she accidentally slipped her skin and started to shift into her dragon form. She seemed to be experiencing everything from the bottom of a well—all sights and sounds were distant and compressed, far away and untouchable, unlike her terror. Her terror was very real and tangible.
Joey tried to kill me. My teacher tried to kill me. He tried to kill us, she corrected herself as she looked at Rachel’s tear-stained face. And he almost succeeded.
“Who’s working with him?” she heard herself say aloud. The sound of her voice went a long way toward bringing her back to reality. “He kept saying he’d made a deal. Who made a deal with him?”
“I think I have some ideas,” Pryce said grimly.
Eli’s head whipped toward him suddenly. “Pryce, it isn’t an Outcast, is it?” He didn’t wait for Pryce to answer; his voice rose an octave when he spoke again. “It is, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think so,” Pryce said mildly. “I actually think it’s one of your people.”
The car was silent now. Rachel had stopped crying, and she turned her red-rimmed eyes to Nina, fear written in her gaze.
“No,” Nina said angrily. “No, none of our dragons would do this.”
“One of your dragons just tried to kill us, Nina,” Pryce said, just as upset. “Being bonded doesn’t make you a saint. Just like being an Outcast doesn’t make you a sinner.”
Her cheeks flushed when she heard his accusatory tone, but she held her ground. “I’m not willing to point the finger until we get more information.”
“But you’re fine with Eli pointing the finger for you?”
Nina glared at Pryce from the backseat, and he held her gaze with an angry stare of his own. When she saw he wasn’t going to back down she turned away and cast her glance out the window, taking in the scenery without really absorbing it. She could still feel his gaze on her, but after a moment, it didn’t feel angry anymore; it felt morose, dispirited, even. Nina wanted to be angry that Pryce would expect anything from her—sympathy toward Outcasts, fairness in the face of danger, any kind of answer for her behavior—but she couldn’t gather the energy. Instead, she just felt terribly confused. She didn’t look forward again until she heard him turn around in the passenger seat.
“We need a new plan,” Rachel said weakly. “And now we have to be extra careful. Whoever Joey was working for is going to be incredibly pissed at us, to say the least. We killed one of their plants.”
“Without even taking any damage,” Pryce mumbled. His eyes appeared in the rearview mirror and connected with Nina. “You’ve never done anything like that before? The time-stopping trick?”
“No,” she said stiffly. “I think I would have mentioned it.”
“Another new power,” Eli said, wonder mixing with the agitation in his voice. “Time control.”
“Space-time control,” Pryce clarified. “And it would be nice to know we have that kind of ability on our side once shit really hits the fan.”
The Porsche zipped into the parking lot beside the Olinda’s community center. Nina helped Rachel out of the car, hooking an arm around her waist as they walked to the back entrance. A wave of guilt settled over her, drowning the indignation she’d been suffused with earlier. I did this to her, she thought as she helped Rachel limp into the building and down the stairs toward the dragon-safe lair. My stubbornness did this to her.
Rachel turned her head toward her as they got to the bottom of the stone steps. “Hey, I know that look,” she murmured and Nina lowered her to one of the plush couches. “That’s your ‘It’s all my fault’ face. Don’t do that right now. We need you in top form. You’re still being hunted.”
“Probably more savagely than before,” Pryce said as he stormed into the room. He pulled a duffel bag from behind his curtained bedroom and threw it on a nearby table. “We need to come up with a plan, and stay here until we’re ready to execute it.”
Nina, who had just gotten her breathing back to normal, felt panic start to claw at her throat again. “We can’t
just sit here when we should be out looking for The Heart!”
“What do you suggest we do?” Pryce snapped, anger overtaking his expression for the first time. Nina was shocked to see him lose his cool—he was unshakeable up to this point. He seemed to see her discomfort, and he was visibly more relaxed when he spoke again. “We can’t just go running around after cold leads. You’re going to get killed, Nina, and then what was this all for? What the hell am I going to do without you?”
“Don’t try to fucking guilt me,” Nina spat, feeling her energy turn bitter. “I got us into this, and you’re going to let me get us out. You’re not in charge of this, I am.”
Eli came to Nina’s side and looked from her to Pryce, a somewhat amused look on his face. “Pryce, I think Nina’s right.”
Nina turned to look at him, feeling a surge of overwhelming fondness. She wanted to kiss him, and when he turned to meet her gaze, she saw the warmth behind his eyes and nearly pulled him to her lips right there. Then he spoke again, his words careful and metered.
“But I think Pryce has a point, too. We can’t just continually risk you. You’re so important to dragonkind. We have to finish what we started.”
Nina threw her hands up in exasperation. “I can’t believe you two chose this moment to agree, and not before the fucking disaster we just left behind. What’s wrong with you two?”
She turned to glare at Pryce, but he was watching Eli with a look of amusement that mirrored the one Eli had given him moments before. Nina frowned and moved her gaze from one to the other. Rachel raised her eyebrows, asking a silent question.
“What’s going on?”
Pryce and Eli both turned to her with startled expressions, like they’d forgotten she was there.
“Just a guy thing,” Pryce said.
“I think we finally understand each other,” Eli said, smiling—though, to Nina, it seemed rueful.
She opened her mouth to ask him to explain, but something told her it wasn’t a conversation to be had right now. Suddenly feeling as though she were under a spotlight, she started to pace the wide space in the center of the black-walled lair, twisting strands of her wavy black hair between her fingers as she thought aloud.
“We need to go somewhere where we can be relatively sure we can be safe, but also further the mission objective.”
Rachel laughed, and the bright cadence told Nina she was feeling much better. “Mission objective? Holy shit, she’s snapped. Nina, maybe you should calm down for a second between planning World War Three skirmishes.”
Nina ignored the jab. “We have to find out where that Heart is, and get it to the Council as soon as possible. But how are we going to find it? It would take us too long to find it ourselves, but maybe with some equipment we could make progress.”
“Where would we get it?” Pryce asked. “You don’t exactly have a cabinet of dragons who can get you weapons and technology at your disposal.” He shot her an aggrieved look. “And the ones I have access to aren’t to your liking, apparently.”
“No, I don’t have that kind of access.” Nina brushed Pryce’s jab off, too. She didn’t need Rachel or Pryce’s help, she realized. She stopped in her tracks and looked at Eli, hope starting to return to her for the first time in what felt like years. “But you do.”
“What?” he asked self-consciously. “What are you talking about?”
“We’re going back,” Nina said excitedly. “We’re going back to the Council. They have to listen to us now. Remember what Eka said: ‘If you find yourself in grave danger or other dragons are at risk, let us know.’ This has to count.” She looked at the others. “They have to help us!”
Pryce and Rachel looked at each other uncertainly.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Pryce said evenly. “It could go wrong very fast. Maybe before you even show up.”
Rachel was less sure. “If Eka really said that, maybe it’s worth a try.” She shrugged. “Eli made this guy sound really trustworthy.”
“He is,” Eli said, warming to the idea. “And if we tell them we’re looking for the Heart, maybe they’ll help us.”
The urge to kiss Eli was stronger than ever. “Yes, exactly!”
Pryce threw his hands up in exasperation. “Have you two lost your minds? How the fuck are we supposed to bring up the Heart to them if we’re not supposed to know about it?”
“You won’t be letting them know,” Eli said pointedly. “It’ll be me and Nina.”
Pryce was shaking his head. “We don’t know who the enemy is. You could be walking right into their hands.”
Nina felt something snap inside her. “It would be the same situation if we were going to your Outcasts. We don’t know anything for sure.”
Pryce looked stricken. “Nina, if you let me explain my reasoning—”
“Do you have any?” she snapped, her anger growing as she spoke. “Are you capable of being unbiased? It seems to me that you can’t wait to pile blame on those council slugs,” she sneered, putting air quotes around the phrase they’d heard him use repeatedly. “Excuse me if I’m a little tired of listening to that baseless negativity right now.”
The pain in Pryce’s eyes nearly made Nina apologize to him on the spot. Before she could say anything, however, his gaze hardened and he set his jaw.
“You should be careful what you call baseless, Nina. You’re not exactly unbiased yourself.”
Underneath her anger, she knew he was right. She didn’t have much reason to hate the Outcasts, and she knew now that the Council did actively mislead its citizens about them. But she also knew that Pryce was never going to see the Greater Horde the same way she did, nor would he ever understand her need to be a part of it. His disdain for mainstream dragonkind confused and wounded her more than she wanted to admit, and it bothered her that anyone could feel that way toward something she’d wanted her entire life. Pryce would never get it. Eli did. It was this fact more than anything else that made her take Eli’s hand in hers and stare coolly at Pryce.
“I’m not unbiased, Pryce. I don’t pretend to be. I just have good taste.”
Then she turned on her heel and led Eli across the room and behind her private curtain, pulling a stack of blank paper from one of the tables as she disappeared behind the partition. Nina wanted to feel triumphant; when she thought about the dumbfounded look on her sister’s face and the look of hurt and dejection on Pryce’s, however, all she felt was guilt.
***
Eli and Nina drove toward the Council headquarters in silence. Nina still had his hand in hers, and it gave her more than a slim measure of comfort. His long fingers intertwined with hers felt more like an anchor at the moment, tying her down while the waters of uncertainty were doing their best to throw them overboard. Each time he looked at her, she tried to give him her most self-assured smile, but she knew from the tension in his own expression that he could feel every ounce of her nerves in her energy.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible was about to happen, either to them or to Pryce and Rachel—especially after having an uncomfortably strained goodbye before leaving them behind. Nina knew it very well could be that she was just feeling fatalistic after having so many near-death experiences. Anyone would be shaken up, she told herself. Just try and focus on why you’re doing this: fulfilling the prophecy that your parents believed in.
Nina realized so many things had been going wrong that she’d started to doubt the prophecy herself. Maybe the “original” didn’t even exist. Maybe Pryce’s information was bad in more ways than one. Maybe her parents were mistaken. Maybe there was no Rose Quartz Heart. Maybe she should just give herself up to the Council right then, and resign herself to living without powers and without ever becoming a full-fledged dragon.
She pulled her hand from Eli’s and covered her face, stifling the sob that was threatening to spring from her mouth. She felt the car turn into the long driveway leading up to the Council’s parking garage, and the seatbelt pressed a
cross her chest as the Porsche skidded to a halt in one of the spaces.
“Hey,” Eli said gently, his soothing tone infused with worry. “It’s going to be okay now. We’re going to get out of this, and they’re going to help us find the Heart. Then you’ll stop this whole chaotic mess from tumbling down on our heads and we’ll live happily ever after. We’ll both be future Council members. Well,” he said, laughing, “if the Queen will allow it.”
The tenderness and certainty of his pronouncement stopped Nina’s tears. She looked into his dark blue eyes as an intense wave of adoration uncurled inside her. She cradled his face between her shaking hands.
“What if we’re wrong, Eli?” she whispered. “What if we can’t get out of this? What if I screw everything up and we don’t get to fix it?”
“We have to,” he said firmly. “The Council never abandons its dragons, Nina. I won’t let them abandon you.” He took her by her waist and pulled her a little closer. “You’re our best hope for survival. Our only hope.” His voice softened. “My only hope, in fact. And I’m starting to depend on you for more than just survival.”
Nina leaned forward and kissed him, putting all of the love she felt for him into the hungry press of her lips against his. It was enough, at that moment, that he believed in her; it was enough that he felt so devoted to her that he’d risk angering the Council, an entity they both revered. It didn’t matter to her that a sense of foreboding was starting to choke her, taking away her ability to think clearly about how they were going to find and approach Eka. She only cared that Eli was next to her, putting all of his faith in her—and that he wanted to stay by her side from now on.
“I don’t think I could do this without you,” she whispered, drawing him close enough to plant tiny, light kisses down the curve of his jaw. “Thank you, Eli.”
Eli’s cheeks were flushed, and Nina could tell from the warmth in his eyes that it wasn’t because he was embarrassed.
“I should be thanking you, darling. For everything you’re about to do. I’ll probably never stop thanking you.”
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