“Wait, so then why have I been letting Steph beat me up every day?”
“Entertainment value?” Cadence suggests.
“Trainees usually learn a little bit of everything, to explore and test their talents,” Grace says. “And you haven’t been showing much of an aptitude for weaving. We figured, with your challenge coming up, even if you couldn’t dreamwalk, you might as well learn how to defend yourself.”
I’m going to fail, aren’t I?
“Definitely,” says Cadence.
“Anyway, now we’re giving this a shot,” says Grace, glossing over my woeful lack of combat aptitude. “Sit still and try to feel what’s around you. Reach for those threads.”
I roll my eyes behind closed lids and flutter my fingers sarcastically.
“Not with your hands.”
I fold them neatly in my lap and imagine throwing pebbles at Grace’s head.
“Wrong image,” says Cadence.
I growl and shift, already getting numb. The ground is cold. A dusty, earthy smell clogs my nose and scratches the back of my throat. It looked flat here when I sat down, but I can feel clumps of earth or stones or something poking up.
“Are you even going to try or can we go inside now?” says Cadence.
I roll my shoulders and make an effort to settle. Abstract patterns of ruddy light and shadow twist behind my closed eyelids. The breeze ruffles my hair, cool on my skin, wafting in the musty, nose-tickling scents of herbs and distant flowers.
There’s a scuffing sound from Grace. Voices in the distance. Buzzing—some kind of insect.
My skin crawls, waiting for the brush of wings and the creep of tiny legs.
“Wrong life-form,” says Cadence. “Try for something bigger.”
Oh, so she’s helping now?
“Nah, just bored. But please, do keep wasting our time. Not like we’re on a deadline or anything.”
I pound my fist against the dirt in lieu of her face and something sparks behind my eyes. Clawing both hands into the earth on either side of me brings it jittering in and out of focus: a tangled web of shadows and bright lines as if I’m facing the sun with my eyes closed.
Except I can feel its heat on the back of my neck. And those aren’t veins wavering at the edges of my awareness.
“Don’t get excited,” Grace says, her voice too even. “Just stay with it.”
My lids flutter with the effort not to scrunch in concentration. Phantom threads pulse in and out of focus in time with my heart, my breath slowing to match.
“That’s it,” Grace says. “Find the balance.”
I dig deeper into the cool earth, knuckles aching. Grit stabs deep under one nail. I snatch the hand to my chest, losing the tenuous connection.
“Well?” I wave the bloody digit in Grace’s direction.
She looks down. “I don’t know how to tell you this . . .”
“But it’s hopeless,” Cadence finishes. “You’re better off giving up now.”
“But it worked!” Grace squeals, jumping up and dragging me with her as she bounces in a tight circle.
I go stiff, elbows out in self-defence. But I’m practically fizzing inside. It’s the first time I’ve so much as caught a glimpse of the dreamscape since fighting off the Mara. Maybe I have a chance after all?
“Yes, fine, you might’ve popped a few sparklies,” Cadence says. “Don’t get too excited. You’re hardly ready to dive back into battle.”
The fizzing stops, replaced by a stone in my gut.
Grace stops bouncing. “What’s wrong? You finally made progress!”
I mumble something about it hardly being anything and try to pull away. But she leans in, so close I can feel the heat of her breath.
“Stop squirming. I just want to see.” She smooshes my face to keep me trapped.
I blink fast and stare into the middle distance as if that’ll make it less awkward.
“So jealous,” she says. “It’s cool how it mirrors your mask. Even the fade-out is pretty.”
I stop trying to push her away. “Fade out?”
Her fingers trace across my cheeks. “The way the silver pulls back under your skin. Not much surfaced, but it’s slowest to fade in your eyes and over these marks above and below.”
She backs off—finally—and I suck in air fast before she can crowd my space again.
“Good work. Now try to do it again.” She plops down and pats the ground.
I ease down, my finger throbbing where grit lodged under the nail—
“Poor baby,” Cadence says with all the sympathy of someone who’s forgotten human sensation. “Have not! You’re just a whiner.”
I knuckle both fists into the ground in response, going up on my knees to put more force into it. But this time, nothing flickers behind my eyes.
I uncurl and press fingertips to the earth, biting back a yelp. Nothing but pain sparks to life.
“Be patient,” Grace says, sounding anything but. “Give it a minute. Feel for the connection, don’t force it. Reach out, don’t grab.”
My fingers flex, stubbornly digging deeper, but I focus on relaxing just a little with each breath, listening and feeling for the life around me buzzing and rustling and . . . crunching?
“You’re needed,” says Susan.
I jump up, hiding my hands in my shirt as if I’ve been up to something I shouldn’t be.
It’s more than the interruption that puts me on edge. Her voice was abrupt, distant—or maybe that’s just weariness dulling her tone. Her face might be tense, but her shoulders sag with exhaustion.
“Cole just had a breakthrough.” Grace bounces up to Susan as if she hasn’t noticed anything’s wrong.
“I need you to come with me,” Susan’s glance takes in the dirt clinging to my clothes, my grubby hands, even the drop of blood seeping from the pricked nail. “Now.”
I tilt a reassuring smile in Grace’s direction. “Finish later?”
She nods, brows furrowing. She doesn’t know what’s wrong, then.
Susan’s already walking away.
“Is it the ghost from the woods? Is Ash back? Am I in trouble?” I hurry to catch up, voice pitched low, ducking my head as strangers pass.
“The Council of Nine wishes to speak with you. You haven’t done anything wrong. Just answer their questions. Truthfully, girls.”
“Both of us?” Cadence asks.
“They can hardly question you separately.”
When she puts it that way, this sounds more like an interrogation. I hunch my shoulders and wish I could go back to sit in the dirt with Grace.
What have I done now?
Chapter 21: Reunion
I’ve been here before. That might be why I notice more details the second time around.
Or it might be the way I’m doing anything I can to avoid looking to the front of the room.
Heavy timber holds up the roof and lines the walls. Much of it is carved and painted in stylized patterns that shift from angular and sparse to whorled and intricate to smooth and heavy and back again as they wrap around the room. Woven and stitched hangings show still more varied designs.
I squint to compare the lean figures of a woven hanging with the blocky carvings behind it. Why do they work so well together when they should clash horribly? And why am I acting like a crazy person, staring into the shadows?
“You’re not listening. I don’t care what he said,” Cadence insists, annoyed. “Ravel is not a friend. I did not guide him here. Cole did not bring him or help him in any way. Neither did Ash. Anything he’s done, that’s on him, not us.”
“She’s right. I found my own way here. Vi—Cole—she saved my life. Saved a number of my people’s lives, too. But they’re still dying. We need more help. Hers, or someone like her, if you can’t spare her . . .” Ravel might be here asking for help, but he lolls back in his chair, nonchalant. Everything under control. No threat here.
I’m not convinced. Even bound and bedraggled, he’s dangerous. He
never should have been able to find his way out of the city, never mind track me all the way up here. I avoid looking at him, desperate to avoid feeling anything at all, especially here, under the council’s scrutiny.
The elders of the Council of Nine watch, sharp-eyed and silent, as their apparent spokeswoman—my nemesis, Grace’s Aunt Rocky—turns to me. “You deny all involvement with this man?”
“I have nothing to do with him. I want nothing to do with him,” Cadence says.
They can hear her just fine—a faint silver glow lights their eyes and a dusting of mist hovers over their skin, proof of their connection to the dreamscape—but still they stare at me.
“Answer the question, child.” Susan’s voice is remote, her silver gaze just as inhuman as the other council members’ when she turns it on me.
I tighten interlaced fingers to keep them still. “I did not invite, guide, nor otherwise aid or encourage this person to follow us here.”
“That was not the question. What is your relationship?”
“He means nothing to us.” Cadence has escalated from mildly irritated to full on outraged.
Ravel raises an eloquent dark eyebrow over those startling gold eyes of his. “Flame?”
What do I tell them?
We obviously know each other, but how can I sum up our twisted history in a way they’ll comprehend? That small boy, watching—obsessing—over a stranger from afar, present at the worst moment of my—Cadence’s—life, when our parents were killed. And years later, his unexpected offer of protection when I needed it most. An ally I was so desperate to claim that I was willing to ignore his controlling, manipulative, even abusive nature.
But in the end, he’d willingly put himself in danger for me . . . been willing to die, even, to save me . . .
What was Ravel to me, really? More than a stranger, less than a friend, possibly an enemy, certainly devious, dangerous, willing to sacrifice anything and anyone he deemed fit—
“That’s enough,” the scarred woman says, lifting a hand.
An unseen hook digs into my gut and yanks. Silver glows at the edge of my vision. I hold my hands out, each finger limned in the same mist that shimmers over the councilmembers. “How . . . ?”
“You are one of ours,” she says, waving a hand in dismissal. “Just because you can’t access your abilities at will doesn’t mean we can’t. We needed your honesty. Now we have it.”
Wait, what?
Susan won’t meet my eyes.
I plant myself in front of her chair, rigid with the betrayal. “All this time?”
She shakes her head mutely. The elder beside her, Ash’s grandfather, reaches for me, scarves rustling. She raises one hand, just a twitch of her worn fingers, and he stops.
“All this training and struggling to access the dreamscape on my own, and you could have turned it on like flicking a switch?” I don’t yell, though the harsh whisper claws at my throat like a scream.
“You don’t understand,” says Cadence. “It’s not the same.”
Susan nods.
“Flame—” Ravel starts.
“You,” I whirl on him, and for once, I have no problem owning that stupid nickname. Fury burns through every inch of me. “You don’t get to speak. You don’t get to be here after you—you—”
“Flame, they’re dying.” His voice is ragged; his cocky attitude discarded like a crumpled mask. “We need you back.”
No. How dare he even ask? As if he’s the one who cares? As if I’d do it for him? As if it wasn’t my plan all along, wasn’t what I’d been working so hard for all this time, wasn’t—
“She can’t,” Cadence says.
The scarred elder echoes her nastily for Ravel’s benefit, or maybe for mine. “Remove him,” she orders.
The nearest elder reaches a mist-silvered finger into the air as if plucking an invisible string. Ravel’s searching gaze shutters. He slumps, bindings keeping him from toppling from his chair.
Part of me is relieved. The rest is furious. “What did you do? He wasn’t hurting anyone.”
Susan still won’t look at me. The others watch with austere disapprobation as if I’m a small child—someone else’s—throwing a tantrum.
“Does she need to be here?” one asks.
“They’re debating,” Cadence says when no answer is forthcoming.
I pace. Silver-glazed eyes swivel to follow in otherwise stone faces.
I’m tempted to turn on my heel and stalk out without another word. Ravel can fend for himself, or not. There’s no reason to make his fate my problem.
But what he said just before they knocked him out—I have to know more.
How many have died? And who? Faces flicker before my eyes: Ange, Lily, hapless Amy . . . Sam, who I barely managed to bring back to them. They have no way to defend themselves from attack, not without me.
Or someone like me.
I plant my feet against the darkness that rages at the edges of my vision. “Send a team.”
There’s no response. But this is what needs to happen. I’ve been trying as hard as I can, but even with today’s breakthrough, I’m way too far from the kind of power needed to save anyone, much less a whole city’s worth of people. I take the part of me that insists this is my job, my calling, my purpose, and shove it as deep and as far away as I can.
It doesn’t need to be me. It doesn’t even have to be Ash.
“Send help,” I repeat, louder. “He might not be a good person, but Ravel’s telling the truth. There are still people in that city that need saving. Send a squad to help them.”
The stone faces crack, one by one, though the silver doesn’t bleed fully from their eyes. “No.”
“You don’t understand. There’s no one there who can fight back. Why do you train your people to fight if not for this? Send them out before it’s too late!”
“Cole.” Cadence’s voice is tight, near breaking.
“The lost cannot be saved.” The response is inflectionless, coming from many throats at once, eerily like the layered, echoing tones of the Mara. “No more lives will be spent on that city.”
But one face reflects the horror I feel at their response. Susan’s forehead is knotted over eyes silvered with more than just magic.
“You can’t abandon them!” I plead with her alone.
But she’s not the one who answers. Her fellows speak as if with one voice: “The decision is made. As for the boy, he will be permitted to serve. Be thankful. In following you here, his life has been spared.”
I look at Ravel, limp and ragged and helpless in his chair and wonder if he wouldn’t rather have stayed to be eaten by monsters. Of all the people to be saved, why him?
No. I can’t accept it. I won’t.
“You have no choice,” Rocky says as the silver fades back under the elders’ skins—along with their spying ways, if I have any luck left. “You are powerless, and we have spent enough lives on that deathtrap of a city.”
I hunt for a sympathetic face, a way out of this nightmare, something, anything. There has to be some argument, something I can say or do to persuade them . . .
“You’re dismissed.” A flat, merciless order.
“No. I won’t just leave like—”
“As you wish.”
The floor rushes up to meet me.
Chapter 22: Company
I wake up to the sight of a familiar wood-and-plaster ceiling, and spend the next few moments pushing away the sick weight of a bad dream.
Voices in the next room drag the nightmare into reality.
“She did what?” Susan laughs over the clatter-slosh-clink of dishes.
“You should have seen it!” Ravel’s voice is smooth, confident. The master manipulator at the height of his powers.
I stumble through the doorway, scrubbing sleep from my eyes and trailing knotted bedding.
“You’re up.” She raises a soapy hand in greeting, smiling, though she won’t quite meet my eyes.
“Sleepyhead,�
�� Ravel calls, flicking a dishtowel in my direction.
Ravel. Casually doing chores in Susan’s kitchen.
He looks strange without his usual ostentatious paint and ornamentation, his dark tangle of tattoos mostly hidden under a bright oversized tunic and baggy trousers—obviously borrowed.
My head spins. Do I chase him out the door or confront Susan first? Could I manage both at the same time?
“Or you could play it cool,” Cadence says. “Pretend you’ve accepted the council’s orders and then do your own thing when they’re not looking. Always worked out pretty well for me and Ash.”
Susan pours a glass of water and places it on the table. “Sit. Breathe. I’m sure you have questions.”
Ravel hangs his towel neatly on the drying rack and slides into a seat across from me. “Been a while, huh, flame?”
His tone is friendly, bland even, but when Susan turns to grab plates, he holds a single finger in front of his mouth, widening his eyes meaningfully. “Maybe I can help bring you up to speed while we eat?”
Susan sets the table and turns back to the counter.
“As you may remember, the esteemed elders denied my petition.” He picks up a plate and angles it, inspecting both sides with exaggerated curiosity. “And since I wasn’t supposed to know about this delightful place in the first place, I’m now under house arrest with my favourite person.”
He grins over the plate. Cadence gags.
“I’m helping you get settled and become a productive member of our community,” Susan corrects, plopping a loaf of bread in the middle of the table. “You’ve been invited to join us, since your home is . . .”
She darts a glance in my direction, then bustles away without finishing.
“So, basically, I’m your new roomie—again.” Ravel reaches for the loaf.
“We only have two rooms.” I hitch a thumb at the doors. “And they’re both fully occupied. Guess you’ll have to find some other place to crash.”
“We’ll make space,” Susan calls, busy at the counter.
Ravel shrugs. “Housemate, then, if you’re going to be pedantic. Oh, here—I brought something for you.”
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