The best the cuffs could do was slow him down, but if slowing Wesley down was an option, then Zekia would take it. He had fast hands and kept using them to try to kill members of their army. Though in fairness, Zekia had been using hers to do a lot worse, but his anger was never directed at her.
Of all the people he’d tried to kill, she was never one of them.
Maybe he was starting to understand that they were supposed to be by the Kingpin’s side together, as family.
Wesley was bruised but not broken, and he watched with unblinking eyes as they tore through Creije, a piece at a time. This was the first district they would take from the capital and it wouldn’t be the last.
One down, six to go.
It was dark out, and the once affluent High Town was now littered with soldiers, ash from the burnt-down houses of Creije’s wealthy elite smoldering behind them. Zekia could see the busker dormitories from here, where Wesley had made his name. The windows stretched in high arches, colored glass like rainbows across the building so that it almost looked like a place of worship. She imagined him growing up there, practicing tricks while the moon watched patiently above.
She liked this part of Creije, which mixed people rich in gold with orphans like Wesley who did what they could to survive. Two sides of the world, so close to each other. Living in perfect contrast, like the array of colors on the dormitory windows.
“You won’t kill me,” the man in front of her said.
Zekia looked down at him.
They had captured him all too easily a few hours ago, not long after they’d stepped off the floating railways and into High Town. There had been a lot of blood since then and a lot of screaming that Zekia hoped quickly to forget. But the moment they’d approached the district barricade and thrown this man to the ground, there had been an impasse.
He was on his knees and looking at Zekia’s new gun with a narrow glare. She didn’t know why—the gun wasn’t originally meant for him. Still, he glared, and the way his fellow soldiers paused and held their breath made Zekia wonder just how important his life was in all of this.
Was he a general?
Did he command them while Doyen Fenna Schulze ran and gave orders from the safety of her hideout in Yejlath?
“Killing you doesn’t matter,” Zekia said. “The future is what matters, and I’m going to fix it.”
The man spat on the ground by her feet. “You won’t win. Frjl will always prevail.”
The idea of freedom seemed funny to Zekia now. It was a dangerous thing to have and to be. Were these soldiers free as they followed orders to risk their lives and go against Dante Ashwood? Was Zekia free, trying to save the realms from a vision that had almost killed her?
If you knew the consequences of something, were you ever really free to choose what your heart desired?
“Creije will never fall.”
“You’re wrong,” Zekia said.
Conquering Creije would be hard, but not impossible, and once it fell, the other cities wouldn’t be far away. They looked to their capital as a beacon, following its example or trying to measure up to what it stood for.
If they took Creije, the rest of the Uskhanyan realm would come easy. Zekia was sure.
Almost.
As an Intuitcrafter, she should have had foresight, but now there were always far too many visions screaming in her head to make sense of. Too many futures that could come true and too many paths people could take. These days, guessing was the most accurate thing she could do.
She’d tried to focus and make sense of all the possibilities once, but she’d lost herself somewhere along the way, and now pasts and futures and their in-betweens swam through her veins like hungry fish.
It didn’t matter, though. Ashwood had shown her the only future that mattered. He’d shown her how to fix everything.
Zekia raised the gun to the man’s head.
She’d never shot someone before. She’d never needed to.
She wondered if it would feel different to destroy a person without magic.
She heard the shuffle as the soldiers behind the barricade gritted their teeth and adjusted their weapons. She was standing in the center, between her army and theirs, and if she killed this man, they’d fire their guns and her Crafters would fire their magic.
More of the dead screaming through her mind.
Zekia closed her eyes. Her finger squeezed against the trigger and—
“Don’t.”
Wesley was a shadow over her.
“Kid,” he said, placing his cuffed hand on top of hers. “Don’t.”
Zekia looked up at Wesley.
He was a little skinnier than when they’d first taken him, with hollowed cheeks and a chin she pictured cutting her finger on. He was also very tall, especially when Zekia was standing side by side with him like this. Then again, Wesley was also a good few years older than her and Zekia suspected that when she got to be his age, she’d be just as big.
Wesley still wore a suit, but it was stained with his blood. And his eyes, stamped purple as the sleeplessness mixed into bruising, held pupils that were nothing but large black circles stealing all the color from him.
He had been stubborn and he had been punished for it, because sometimes hurting people was the only way to save them. Dante Ashwood had taught her that lesson well. And once she finally got Wesley to give in, he would be so proud of her strength.
When she finally got Wesley to give in, everything would be okay.
They would be a family.
Zekia just had to try a little harder.
“Will you join us if I let him go?” Zekia asked Wesley. “Will you join us now that Creije is on the line?”
In an ideal world, Wesley would have said yes.
He would have taken her hand and said he’d be her big brother.
He would have told Zekia that he liked the view from his high horse very much, but that he liked the view from a throne a lot more.
Instead, Wesley lifted his hand from hers and said, “I wouldn’t join you if my life was on the line.”
“Don’t you think it is already?”
Wesley laughed and Zekia didn’t mind, even if it was the bitter, horrible kind of laugh that was meant to make her feel like killing him, just so she wouldn’t be able to use him.
She liked it when Wesley laughed. She liked seeing him happy. She thought it was good that she made him smile every now and again, because the rest of the time all she did was make him scream.
“I’m not afraid of you, kid,” Wesley said. “If you were going to kill me, then you would have done it already. And Creije isn’t on the line. One district won’t break my city. I built it to be strong and when this is all over, it’ll still be standing.”
Zekia could see why people found Wesley frightening. Even now, when he was hungry and cold and looking like he was about ready to fall over, he still looked formidable. He still looked like an underboss.
“The city may be standing, but the people will be on their knees.”
It was Dante Ashwood who spoke then, and Zekia couldn’t help but think how his voice sounded like a whisper in the wind and a storm in the dead of night all the same.
Dante Ashwood, Kingpin of Uskhanya and future Doyen of the realm, had shadows swarming him like fireflies to offer a shield of protection. Zekia thought they smelled like dark, burnt magic, as if Ashwood had seared their power to him, and sometimes she held her breath when they neared, just in case they tried to burn her from the inside out, stealing the parts of her mind that had not yet gone.
Zekia took one of Wesley’s cuffed hands in her own.
His fingers were cold and limp, and he stared blankly ahead as if she hadn’t touched him at all. When Zekia squeezed his hand, his jaw ticked.
Wesley looked like he was trying very hard not to kill her.
The moon acted as a torch as they eyed the barricade.
The fort was erected by the amityguards, with guns and charms holding their
positions steady. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, but Zekia wasn’t worried. Her army had what these soldiers never could: vision. The hope of a new realm, ruled by magic, with Crafters ready for a glorious future, filled with peace and light and no more pain.
They just had to kill a few people first.
But it was worth it. Ashwood had told her so.
Sometimes you have to hurt people to save them.
Ashwood approached the man on the ground and placed his large hands around the prisoner’s head.
“Surrender,” Ashwood said.
From behind the barricade, a voice cracked through a speaker. “We don’t take orders from crooks.”
Wesley snorted. Zekia squeezed his hand tighter.
Just surrender, she thought. If you surrender, then I won’t have to do anything bad.
“Nobody needs to die today,” Ashwood said.
“You sure as fire-gates do,” the voice shot back.
Ashwood sighed, and in a last attempt to stay the bloodshed, he said, “Lay down your weapons and join me. Or keep them and die.”
There was a pause.
Utter and complete silence.
The capital city of Uskhanya was alive every second, from dawn to dusk before the cycle started over, and usually a scream could barely be heard above the bastardized magic and laughter of criminals. But now Zekia could hear the birds crying out in warning and, if someone had a pin, she’d probably hear that drop too.
The speaker crackled again.
The man on the other end took a breath.
“Djefil,” he said. “Go fuck yourself.”
Ashwood sighed. He turned to Zekia. She caught a glimpse of that ghost smile somewhere in his face, and swallowed.
“We can save you.”
Zekia said it quietly, almost a whisper, but then Ashwood twisted his hand around their prisoner’s neck and Zekia felt the snap shoot through her.
There was a wave of anger from the amityguards and in mere seconds bullets spat out from behind the barricade. They stopped inches from Zekia’s face, hitting the shield her Crafters conjured. Crashing against the force field, they sounded like raindrops on a tin roof.
Zekia turned to Wesley, whose hand was still limp in hers. He stared ahead, barely blinking his black eyes as the shots continued.
When he swallowed, Zekia heard it over the gunfire.
Wesley knew what was coming.
He knew the future without needing mind magic.
He knew what Dante Ashwood was going to say, because he knew the man just as well as Zekia did, and he knew what it took to achieve greatness. The sacrifices that needed to be made for a better future.
“Kill them all,” Ashwood said.
And so they did.
One district down. Six more to go.
3
SAXONY
Saxony was not in charge and it was really starting to get on her nerves.
“My answer is final,” Amja said. “We’re not talking about this any longer and I’m finished going around in circles with you.”
Saxony’s amja, her long steel hair grazing her clasped hands, sat on the wooden chair next to Saxony’s father, Bastian. Amja had a look in her eyes that told Saxony to stand down, designed to make her feel regret at challenging her authority, or shame at not trusting in her wisdom. Only, it didn’t work so well anymore. Now all it did was make Saxony want to yell about how wrong her family was.
Saxony had seen war. She had seen what Ashwood was capable of firsthand, especially with her little sister at his side. She knew this was not the time to back down or run scared.
“You’re right,” Saxony said. “No more talking. What we need is action. We have to summon the other Crafter Lieges from across the realms. Ashwood has an army of Crafters and that’s exactly what we need.”
Amja did not even look at Saxony when she spoke next.
“I am the Liege of this Kin now,” she said. “And I will not endanger any more of our people.”
She said it as though that was final and Saxony was a child who needed to know her place. Saxony had never thought that she’d want help from Wesley Thornton bloody Walcott, but at times like this, with her amja refusing to see sense, Saxony almost missed the underboss’s penchant for convincing people to do things they didn’t want to. Not to mention that Wesley had named Saxony temporary leader of the Crafters, and without him here to back her up—with Amja acting as Liege to their Kin in Zekia’s place, and Asees and Arjun sectioning their people off to the other side of camp—Saxony was starting to feel like she’d been demoted in some way.
Like nothing she said mattered anymore.
And boy did it suck.
“I do not want more strange Crafters in our camp,” Amja said. “Or more buskers from the other cities. You’ve already brought in an army of misfits to roam around our village. Now you want to fill it with more people we don’t know or trust? You want to start another War of Ages?”
“The war has already started!” Saxony said, failing to contain her frustration. “If I could contact the other Crafters myself, then I would. But only a Liege has that power, Amja, and since you’re standing in Zekia’s place, it’s your responsibility to help protect us.”
“I’m protecting us by staying far from this war and waiting for Zekia to return home.”
Saxony rubbed her temples to keep the growing headache at bay.
Amja was scared, she knew that. She was one of the few Crafters who had survived the War of Ages and now, fifty years onward, she bore those scars inside and out. But hiding wasn’t going to help them, and neither was the delusion that Zekia would run back into their arms the same as she was the day she’d left.
Saxony had seen her sister standing beside Ashwood. She had felt her power when Zekia tried to kill her and then stole Wesley away. She knew that if she wanted her little sister back, then they were going to have to drag her kicking and screaming.
“Father,” Saxony said, turning to Bastian. “Please, make her see reason.”
He sighed and pushed aside a strand of hair that had strayed from his braid into his face. He swallowed, and those piercing brown eyes that Saxony had looked up into for so many years dimmed. He was a large man, but at this moment she couldn’t help but think he looked so very small.
“We’ve lost too much already,” Bastian said. “I won’t lose the only child I have left.”
“Zekia is not lost,” Saxony said, with enough force that her father almost moved back in surprise.
She could get her sister back.
Even if Zekia had done terrible things and even if she had created that awful elixir. Zekia might not be able to lead their Kin anymore, but she was still Saxony’s sister.
She could still be saved.
“You don’t want to lose another child,” Saxony said. “But I don’t want to lose another sibling. I was too young to protect Malik when he died, but I can rescue Zekia if we do this.”
Her father stayed silent, but Saxony didn’t miss the way his frown twitched when she mentioned her brother’s name. They rarely ever spoke of Malik, like not saying his name out loud made the pain go away, but looking at her father now, Saxony could see the agony in his eyes. The grief at losing a wife and a son all at once.
“We know what is best for our people and it’s not another war,” Amja said. “You must trust this wisdom.”
Saxony wished that she could, but she had already seen what monsters lurked in the shadows and now those monsters were stepping into the light, and if someone didn’t do something—if she didn’t do something—then they would swallow the world.
“You’re making a mistake,” Saxony said. “And we’ll all suffer for it.”
She turned from them, the family she had been born into, who she’d once trusted more than anything, and left the room wondering how in the name of the Many Gods she was supposed to win a war with hardly any damned soldiers.
Saxony all but ripped open the door of the tree ho
use to the outside world, bottling the scream in her throat. Outside, Karam stood with her arms crossed at her chest and a knife hitched to her belt, just in case.
Around them, the forest cooed. A poor attempt to calm Saxony.
Karam’s smile tilted. “Does that look mean your family went along with everything you said with a happy smile?” she asked. “Because you do seem happy.”
“It’s like you’re a mind reader,” Saxony said. “Really, you’ve got a lot of talent. Sure you’re not an Intuitcrafter?”
Karam smirked and held out her hand for Saxony’s. The moment their fingers locked, all of the anger that she had felt dissipated.
Well, not all of it, because Karam wasn’t a miracle worker and Saxony was truly pissed off, but enough that she felt like she could breathe a little easier.
“I feel like there’s no point in even trying anymore,” Saxony said as they made their way down the branched staircase. “I’m only ever hitting dead ends.”
And, really, there were so many other things she’d much rather be doing than trying to break through to her amja. War aside, Saxony wanted little more than to spend an uninterrupted evening with Karam. In her arms. In her bed. She wanted more than just the few stolen moments and kisses they had been afforded over the past few days.
But there was no rest in the fight against the wicked, especially with Dante Ashwood attacking districts in Creije.
“You will get through to them,” Karam said. “It is in your blood to lead.”
She squeezed Saxony’s hand a little harder.
“I appreciate the faith,” Saxony said. “But it’s like talking to a busker about the law. Totally pointless. Won’t change their minds no matter what.”
“Tell that to Tavia,” Karam said, as their feet touched the soil.
She gestured across the way, to where Saxony’s old friend was sitting by the campfire, sorting magic into piles, alongside a group of buskers.
“She changed from wanting to run from Creije and its criminals, to fighting to save it and organize her comrades into an army.”
“Yeah,” Saxony said. “Because Wesley convinced her to, not me. Right now I don’t think she’d listen to me telling her to run from a fire.”
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