Chapter 5 A Beetle Against Glass
A Beetle Against Glass
Sascia calls Danny when she’s back out in the streets.
She doesn’t mention her run-in with Carr or the tender mark his reprimand has left.
She doesn’t say much at all, really, and it doesn’t matter—Danny is an expert filler of silence, one of the many things Sascia loves about him.
He talks about his horrible botanical anatomy professor and the latest paper he has them writing, then launches into a word-by-word recital of the texts he exchanged with Tae last night on their shared project.
The alley looks just as she left it, secluded and quiet. The manhole lies still. Thank god she doesn’t need to open it to run Danny’s tests.
The tiny monitor of the sonar shows the cavernous insides of the sewer, the very top layer of the Dark before it plunges into depths that no human technology has been able to map yet.
Gradients of green, yellow, and red mark the spots where Darkflora or Darkcreatures roam—but all small enough not to be a concern.
There’s an imprint of something larger a bit farther down, in faded colors on the sonar. Whatever was in there has retreated.
“It sounds like nothing’s down there, cuz,” her cousin says with chirpy finality. “Come hang out with me. I’ll order conciliatory pizza for you.”
This is good. This is just what Sascia wanted. Her hypothesis debunked, the world returned to order. Why, then, does she feel just a tiny bit disappointed?
She breathes a laugh. “That actually sounds terrific.”
“See you in a bit, nutjob.”
After she hangs up, Sascia shoves the sonar into her bag and takes one last look at the manhole. Bye-bye, creepy sewer, she thinks. She has no intention of ever fishing in this spot again. She’s going to eat pizza and play Zelda with Danny and erase this entire day from her memory.
She’s almost to the mouth of the alley when she stops, a sigh on her lips.
She can’t help it. She turns back.
Like a beetle, her dad had told her once. You keep throwing yourself against the glass, again and again, instead of flying out the open window an inch to your right.
He meant it as a warning, but Sascia had found herself surprisingly delighted by it.
She really did identify. Beetles look like absolute fools, sure, but they don’t give up.
They might get concussed, but after a thousand launches against the unbreakable, they’ll eventually find their way out. Sascia sees no shame in that.
She cocks her nova-gun and, with her free hand, removes the sewer cover in one smooth, swift movement. The Dark welcomes her, black and cold and odorless.
Is she really going to do this?
(Hell yeah) she is.
She plunges her hand in and keeps to the rim of the hole, fingers skimming over the petals and spiky leaves of the Darkflora in the sewer.
At her touch, petals and leaves become rock-hard, the thorns elongate.
They’re merely testing her—most of the time, humans are not perceived as threats by the Darkworld flora.
(The fauna, on the other hand, is a different story entirely.)
A small mouth nips affectionately at the tip of her index finger—a Darkmoth.
Sascia could recognize a moth with her eyes closed.
They have this specific way of approaching her, all velvet-soft wings and tingling antennae, a kind of gentle curiosity that no other creature of the Dark has at first contact.
“Hello, little friend. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
Concentric ripples shape the surface of the sewer as half a dozen moths burst out in a whirlwind of bright colors. Their wings tickle her cheeks and neck.
“All right, all right,” she huffs around a smile, “calm yourselves—”
Her skin tingles. A different sense replaces the soft membrane of wings at her fingertips. It’s smooth and hard and warm as skin.
In her head, her father warns, A beetle against glass.
Sascia moves fast: she snatches the creature’s limb and pulls, bracing her legs against the grimy cement, nova-gun cocked and ready.
Her arm breaks through the surface of the Dark and she is holding a hand, a proper hand with fingers and a thumb.
A wrist follows, and an elbow. As Sascia hoists herself up, the creature follows, unveiling itself: shoulder and head, porcelain gray skin, long ears peeking through jet-black hair, striking violet eyes.
Vines and sharp-edged leaves are tangled in the creature’s shaggy, shoulder-length locks.
Neon-colored blossoms pepper the black-scaled suit of armor that covers its torso.
Strong brows and cutting cheekbones frame an angular face.
It’s a wild, ravenous beauty, that of thunder cracking in bloated rain clouds or the ocean frothing in stormy rage.
On its cheekbones, swirls and dots shape a Darkprint unlike anything Sascia has seen before.
The outline reminds her of a snowflake, all points and angles.
Its color is a bright purple, presenting the creature as male, but Sascia wonders distantly, through the shock, how sentient creatures’ Darkprints might reflect their gender.
No one has had the opportunity to ask them before—she hesitates to call this creature a boy without confirmation.
“You,” hisses the creature from the Dark.
Me? Sascia shivers at the vitriol in the creature’s voice, but a small part of her is elated. Yes, me. Me, me, me.
“Who are you?” she whispers. “What do you want?”
“I am a prince of Itkalin, commander of the Queen’s army, and lord of the Jagged Blade. But today, I am the one who will deliver your sentence.”
Sascia stumbles back and falls on her ass, the gun forgotten in her palm, her mind reeling from the impossibility standing before her.
There is a creature, an undoubtedly humanoid creature, who just came out of the Dark—no, whom Sascia just pulled out of the Dark.
A prince, a commander, and a lord, who will deliver her sentence.
He looks like a nymph from an art museum or a regal elf from a fantasy film, except a thousand times prettier than any chisel or CGI could conjure.
In his hands, he holds a scythe made of razor-sharp black crystal.
“You have been judged for your actions in the Battle of Feathers,” the elf prince says, “and you have been found guilty of treason. You die tonight.”
And he swings the scythe at Sascia’s throat.