Such a Daring Endeavor (18 page)

Shasa lies dead on the sand. Talon and the others flock to Jomeini. Soon the soldiers will discover them on the sand—Solomus doesn’t have time to waste.

Nattie Wilde told him of a girl who would be born, a girl who could restore things. Solomus didn’t want to believe then. He was the one who cast the spell. It should be he who undid it. He studied
The Great History
for further insight, for a sign, for anything to help him. Before he left Jomeini, he was trying to contact Nattie and the other Firsts and was unsuccessful.

But ever since he met Ambry Csille, something about her struck him as different. The fact that she has both her emotions and magic, that she Torrented so late, that she befriended sirens, not to mention the way Jomeini’s tears acted in regard to the girl.

Answers are in that book. And he has to get it.

With a fleeting glance and a wave at Jomeini that he prays she’ll understand, he makes his way for the shed.

***

Jomeini startles at the sensation.

It’s warm and brewing, hot cider, a rush of winter, both blistering and cold spinning in her bones, flooding through as blood gushes from the wound in Craven’s chest. His gnarled hands quiver around the laceration, and he sags to the ground at a strange angle. And as the life drains from him, the magic he stole from her siphons back into its rightful place.

Jomeini gasps. Blood routes in her veins, reviving her, making her spin and soar at once. Nothing, not the sunshine she basked in earlier, or the feel of the wind, of the satisfaction of a full stomach has ever been as substantial as this. She has been found.

She wants to cry, to sing and dance, to thanks the stars. She thinks of girls in movies who kiss the nearest boy for no other reason than to celebrate the arrival of a moment. It always seemed silly to her, but now, now she glances around for someone to embrace and share in the pure euphoria pouring through her. She can’t be the only one feeling this. Everyone has to know how amazing this is.

Craven is dead, and what is rightfully hers has been returned. Nothing could upset her now. Nothing. The blue sky that seemed endless and daunting, now gleams full of hope.

“Grandfather?” she says, searching the shore. “Baba?”

But her grandfather isn’t there, ready to envelop her and offer the comfort she needs. Instead, his hunched form she knows so well, a figure she’s imagined countless times coming to her rescue, shambles toward the shed where she was hiding. Away from where she stands.

“I’m here!” she cries. “Baba, I’m here!”

Solomus glances over his shoulder, the silver strands of his hair tied behind his head. His brows lift, and he squints before waving a shaky hand at her and continuing on his way. Away from her.

Each of his steps drains something out of her. Nothing works, not her mouth, or her feet, not with this tremor rupturing through her frame. Her body tenses. Baba is walking away. Shasa is dead on the sand. And it’s all because of
him.

Arthur Craven. The man who tricked her. The man who stole her.

Anger flashes through her at once, anger teeming as memories of what Craven has put her through, at what she’s lost, all pile in at once. Her legs cramping from being shoved in the crawlspace under his apartment when she wouldn’t See for him. His rough hands slapping her cheeks when she would explain
why
she hadn’t Seen for him. Hours and days and weeks and months of isolation stripping parts of her away bit by bit until she was nothing more than a reed.

“Come on,” says Talon, resting a hand on Ambry’s shoulder before offering a hand to Jomeini.

Talon is my friend
, she reminds herself. Talon freed her, just as he promised he would. But Jomeini doesn’t take his hand. She’s quaking, a plate of earth ready to shift from beneath its oppressor and shake the ground in the process.

Talon blinks, giving her a reassuring smile, but if anything her anger deepens. An emotion so on-hand she could live off of it. It’s not the first time she’s felt so irate. But the magic coursing through her fuels a once-broken engine.

Flames ignite along her arms and travel to her hands, fiery orange and tinged with specks of silver stardust. Talon and the others duck away from her, some diving down to the sand. The light is blinding. It fills her vision, and she shrieks, spiraling it toward Craven’s lifeless body.

Heat spires across the sand, twirling through it, and Talon and the others stagger back once more as Craven’s body burns to a crisp. Simultaneously, the metal enclosing Jomeini’s throat unlatches, dropping with a thump.

Jomeini’s shoulders heave. Breath inflates her lungs with more life than she’s ever felt. His body is black, his arms charred and cradled to his chest, his mouth gaping in a macabre, silent scream. A lump on the sand.

That was deliberate. That was her choice, not his. Retribution for all those nights shoved in a crawl space while Craven waited for her to have a vision for him. The hunger gnawing at her stomach like a rat, the way her legs cramped from not being able to extend. Fear, panic, paranoia, they all become a kaleidoscope of images shifting in her brain, never fading, just changing, but all present.

She blinks as the exhilaration fades. The waves come into view. The sand caves around her bare feet, filtering through her toes. Heat slams into her cheeks and a breeze flags through her hair.

Every eye is on her, including the attention of the soldiers patrolling the boardwalk. The men in khaki file through the sand, leaving the white vans and making straight for her.

Anger reignites once more, and the flames sprout of their own accord, licking along her skin, testing the particles in the air. She directs her hands at the soldiers. They thrust backward, flinging through the air at the force of her power.

Talon pushes up from the sand, his brows gathered in concern; Ambry Csille and her brother stare in open shock. The two others’ eyes boggle wide. Shasa’s body rests feet away. Sand feathers her cheeks. Her hair splays out, a colored, beautiful contrast to Craven’s pathetic remains.

“Come on,” Talon says again once the heat leaves her. The energy, the frustration, the hate, it all cools to a simmer, and she jerks back at his touch. She glances for her grandfather, only to find him returning from the boat shed with a book in his hand. He’s frozen on the sand, staring at her in dismay.

“Jo?” Talon says.

Talon, kind, thoughtful Talon; Talon who resented Shasa but came to visit them anyway, Talon who swore he would free them, finally did it. This time her hand is steady as she slides it into his.

“It’s back,” she says, a thick stream burning her bones as if saying hello. “It’s back.”

“Apparently so,” says Talon, disconcerted, glancing back at Craven, now blackened and brittle. He pats her hand, urging her to move faster past the lifeless soldiers in the sand.

Jomeini tugs him back. “We can’t leave her here,” she says, gesturing to Shasa.

“We won’t,” says Talon, clearly torn between helping Jomeini and going back for his betrothed.

“I’ve got her,” says Ren, the kind blond man who helped her escape. He jogs across the sand and bends to scoop Shasa’s limp body from the sand. His sister trails behind the group of them, meeting up with Solomus, whose slow hobbles finally join them as well.

Grandfather takes her from Talon’s warm, strong arm. His is weak and shaky in comparison.

Bitterness elbows in, ramming its way into her chest at the touch from this old man who raised her. Jomeini slides her hand out of his grasp and forces her gaze ahead. She doesn’t want to hear what he’ll say. She used her bleakfire strictly against every way he ever taught her. She hears his voice even now.

Control, Jo. It’s all about control.

She was in control, all right. And she did…that.

And the worst part is she felt good doing it.

“Baba,” she says, not sure what will come now.

“I never should have left you,” Grandfather says, hushing her. “I should have brought you with me.”

“It’s done,” says Jomeini with so much animosity it makes Talon’s eyes narrow. “Did you find what you went after?”

She isn’t sure which instance she’s talking about. How he left her to go to that shed and come back with some random book? Or when he left her three years ago, without telling her why.

Grandfather blinks in confusion, a hint of pain passing over his eyes. He clutches the book to his chest with his free hand. “Yes. I did.”

A girl with silver hair and thick-rimmed glasses makes wide, windmilling gestures with her arms, hurrying them along. “Let’s go, let’s go!” she says, darting around to open the back hatch of the second of the two vans Ren had tried to get Jomeini to earlier.

“Good,” says Jomeini, though it doesn’t sound that way at all.

T
alon looks as though he’s ready to stumble from exhaustion, but he helps Ren and me lift Shasa’s limp body into the van. His shirt, vest, and pants are torn and filthy, and I can’t tell whether the dismal smell of waste is wafting from him or me. Despite Miles Odis’s healing, Talon can barely walk and looks worse than I’ve ever seen him; worse even than he looked after being weakened from the siren’s spell.

Jomeini sits beside her grandfather on a large supply trunk near the front of the truck’s cargo hatch, which is separated from the driver by a wall of metal indented with a single window. The wizard frames a book under his arm; he hunches over more than usual in order to shuffle to the back to be with her.

I can only imagine what they must be feeling right now. Solomus’s head is lowered, and he lifts a tentative arm around his granddaughter, whose eyes shift before she leans into the embrace.

I glance away, toward Talon. His absent gaze is pinned to Shasa’s lifeless body on the vanbed’s black liner.

So much loss. So much death. Shasa. The sounds of Craven’s body burning, of his cries, of Jomeini’s tortured shriek as she released the fire, they’re all permanently planted in my mind, playing through on repeat.

Talon presses his palms to his knees, trying to force his body upright. But his hands slip, and he nearly collapses forward.

Bent over, I weave through the collection of trunks and sit by him. To thank him, to apologize. The same urge I got in the dungeon to comfort him swells up, and just like before, I hold myself back.

Shasa’s eyes are closed. Her head lolls as we drive slowly through streets, her hand sliding from its place on her chest.

A hollowness fills me. Shasa and I had our fair share of disagreements. But I never would have wished this on her. I never would have thought she would die.

As if Talon has the same thought, his subdued eyes catch mine.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

It takes ages for him to answer. He blinks at me in that mask of his, an expression put on to hide whatever else he’s really feeling.

“If only we’d gotten out there sooner. I could have saved her, I could have stopped him. I—I can’t believe she’s gone.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” I say. “You did all you could.”

Talon’s shoulders quake with repressed emotion. “She asked me to free them a long time ago,” he says. “I never wanted to kill Craven, though. That felt too much like murder to me. But I also never thought he would kill her.” His voice cracks, and the pain in it kinks into my heart. I place a hand on his arm, wishing I knew what to say.

“I can fix her, you know.”

My lids flick up. Talon stiffens. Jomeini weaves her way around the supply trunks we sit on, offering me a tentative smile. I scoot closer to Talon, making room for her to join us, when instead she kneels at Shasa’s head. Shasa’s body jostles again as we go over another jagged bit of road, and Jomeini lifts Shasa’s head to rest in her lap.

“You can fix her?” Talon looks at Jomeini before his hesitant eyes find mine again.

“I have my magic now,” Jomeini says, her fingers brushing Shasa’s cheek. “And she hasn’t yet been dead for a full hour. I can restore her life.”

“No one’s restoring anything,” Dircey calls from the front seat. “No one uses magic until we’re safely out of this city.”

“She’s right,” says Ren with regret from his perch on another trunk. “Those soldiers found us at Black Vault the minute I channeled near them.”

Tension plays through the silence. I wish we had a window, some way to see the soldiers or how close we are to the city gates. Then again, it’s probably better that we don’t. None of us dares to speak, and we all hold our breath as Dircey follows a line of similar white vans out of the city. I wonder how the Black Vaulters came across an Arcaian van, but I don’t dare ask.

Talon pulls a bracelet from his pocket, and he fingers it in his hands. It’s leather, dark and inscribed with small symbols. I’ve never seen him with it before.

“Are we clear yet?” Jomeini asks, wiping her palms along the folds of her filthy skirt. “I can’t wait much longer or it will be too late.”

I worm around, trying to see through the small window to the dashboard out front. Trees span the way ahead, along with a clear thruway. If we’re to the thruway then that means…

We made it. Praise angels.

“Clear,” says Dircey. The van jostles a few times; Ren braces himself with an arm against the wall. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it quickly.”