22. Silver
22
S ILVER
|2 DAYS UNTIL THE ASSURANCE|
As I run toward the shell of our house, the side of the porch buckles and crashes to the ground, bits of black flames flickering around it.
Magic flame, of course. I’ve never seen this specific magic before, but I know it immediately. How could I not? It’s what made the slums what they are. Prime Gore’s magical explosions, the only thing that could shatter Prime Elod’s glass trees.
And my house, apparently.
That must be what was in the bottles Alect warned us away from. Was he actually trying to protect us? Or did he know that telling a room full of teens not to touch something was the surest way to get them to do exactly that?
Shards crunch under my boots as I sprint as hard as I can toward the wreckage.
“Rooftop!” I yell. “Vie!”
I don’t hear a response.
I grunt and run harder, my boots clomping on the hard-packed earth.
This is all my fault. I told them to grab the bag. And Guerre or Alect or whatever-his-name-is told me he was going to set my house on fire if I didn’t get there in time. Where did I think he would keep his fire-setting materials if not his bag? I should have seen this.
I reach the bottom of the tree and pull myself up, skirting around the ghostly flames, some of which are floating in the middle of the air.
“Vie!” I scream. “Rooftop!”
There’s still no reply, and I don’t see them anywhere.
The only sound is the odd, spectral crackling of the fire as it licks at empty space.
Since the porch is gone, I have to make a pretty big leap, but I throw myself forward, grabbing onto the edge of the doorway and crouching in its frame. Wood splinters and crumbles around me.
The door is still there, hanging on one hinge, but beyond it is basically nothing. My house has been reduced to two walls, a sliver of flooring, and half the back room. And I can see from here that my friends aren’t in it. Which means…
I look down.
Below me is a pile of rubble, familiar and unrecognizable all at once.
But I don’t care about any of it.
Because I haven’t heard a peep from Rooftop or Vie yet and it’s feeling less and less likely that I’m going to find them alive.
My eyes stinging, I drop, landing on the couch, causing stuffing to spill out of it like innards.
“Where are you?” I cry, startled to find that my voice is hoarse. “This isn’t funny. Make a noise!” I choke on the last word and the sound of my own panic makes my terror spike.
With an angry shout, I start throwing furniture, chucking beams, overturning broken piles of things I used to value, looking desperately for an arm or a leg or anything, but there’s no sign.
Did the magic obliterate them completely?
I punch the table and it buckles, so I punch it again. And again and again and again until it’s nothing but a pile of splintering pieces and my knuckles are bleeding and tears are streaming down my face. It doesn’t make me feel remotely better.
I just wanted a future. That’s all. A safe place for us. Now the home I have is gone, I helped start a war, I hurt someone who didn’t deserve it, someone I’ve grown close to, and Vie and Rooftop are…
Are…
My legs give out and I collapse, feeling more broken than the wreckage that surrounds me.
Why did I ever get involved in any of this?
What have I done ?
I call their names one more time, half sobbing, and when they still don’t answer I bury my head in my hands and cry, like I haven’t done since my parents died.
I’ve lost everything.
Everyone.
And the worst part is… I deserve it. I got selfish and I tried to get a big payoff without caring who I hurt. I can’t be too surprised when one of the people who gets hurt ends up being me. But why couldn’t I be the only one? Why did Mance and Rooftop and Vie have to get hurt, too?
I cry until my shirt is soaked, my throat is raw, and the creepy black flames that hover over everything start to flicker away, like fading whispers.
But just as I feel like I might pass out from the weight of the grief pressing down on me, I hear the most beautiful sound in the world.
A cough.
My eyes shoot open and I hold my breath, terrified that I hallucinated the sound.
But then I hear it again.
I lurch to my feet, wading through the rubble toward a bed half propped on a wardrobe.
And when I shove it off, there’s Vie, covered in dirt but completely whole, not even a finger missing.
“You suck at rescuing,” she rasps. “I’ve been lying here forever.”
“You suck at being rescued,” I shoot back, tears dripping down my chin. “Make a freaking noise; what’s wrong with you?”
“I tried ,” she croaks. “You were too busy crying like a big baby to hear me.”
We grin at each other, and then she pushes herself up on one elbow and I drop to my knees and throw my arms around her neck. She grunts, but she hugs me back.
“Where’s Rooftop?” I ask.
She clears her throat, trying to force out more words. “When we opened the bottle… there was this weird black stuff. Like liquid, but floating. Rooftop recognized it first and pushed me out the window. It blew up while he was jumping after me. Last I saw, he was thrown somewhere over there.” She points to a collapsed wall, and my heart sinks. “I… think I passed out for a little. How long has it been?”
“Twenty minutes or so?” I guess.
She curses and tries to get up, but I don’t wait for her. I rush over to the wall, tripping in my haste, and duck under it, crawling forward on my stomach.
Rooftop’s there, lying limply on the ground, facing me.
His left leg is crushed under the weight of the wall.
His right leg is covered in black spots, like the magic is gnawing away at it, seeping further into his veins.
His eyes are closed.
And his head is covered in blood.
Vie appears beside me, and when she sees Rooftop her normally tough expression cracks and she looks like she’s about to cry.
“Can you help?” I ask, putting one hand on the wall.
She winces, but says, “Of course.”
We lie on our backs, brace our palms side by side and heave, pushing ourselves to our knees and then our feet until we manage to flip the wall in one big push. It lands with a crash, and then so does Vie, as she collapses next to me. I reach out to help her up, but she’s already crawling back toward Rooftop, her hands outstretched to search for a pulse. I hang back, swallowing the lump in my throat, not sure I can handle it if she doesn’t find what she’s looking for.
When she gasps and then nods, a joyful smile on her face, I’m dizzy with relief, and I lean against the top three shelves of our cupboard for support.
Vie checks his injuries—clumsily, because it’s usually Rooftop’s job—and declares that the head wound isn’t actually that bad; it just bled a lot. He might have a concussion, but he should be okay. The left leg is broken, but the bone isn’t sticking out. I throw her my tattered vest and she wraps it above the injury to help stop the blood flow, and then I join her to go over the rest.
We don’t know how to treat the magical wound, but at least it doesn’t seem to be spreading, and it isn’t bleeding either. It’s cauterized, like it was made by fire, and yet every black spot is cold to the touch.
He’ll live, though.
He’ll definitely live.
And now that I know that…
I have to make sure Mance will, too.
I stand up.
“Get a healer to clean and dress the injuries properly,” I tell Vie. “Plus some kind of painkiller to take the edge off. Whatever he needs; we’ll figure out how to pay for it later.”
“What exactly are you gonna be doing?” Vie asks, eyes accusing.
I heave a sigh. “Don’t be like that, Vie. I have to go after her.”
“Do you?”
“She could die!”
“So?” Her voice is as sharp as one of her many knives.
“So she doesn’t deserve that,” I tell her.
“We don’t deserve a lot of things that have happened to us,” Vie shoots back, standing up to confront me. “That’s life.”
“I think that’s a convenient excuse to be a crappy person,” I tell her. “I think a lot of bad things that happen have a little help from selfish people hiding behind excuses just like that. And I’m not going to be one of them. Not anymore.”
“But if you—”
“Let him go, Vie,” Rooftop says.
Immediately we’re both by his side, pushing him back down as he tries to sit up, asking him how he’s doing and whether he remembers what happened and what day it is and who we both are.
He shoos us off. “I’m fine, I’m fine. I remember everything. Enough to know that you need to see what I found in that bag before it blew up on us. Get it for me?”
Somehow, in the middle of running from the blast, Rooftop managed to shove the satchel down his shirt. I pull it out, and there’s a stack of letters inside, just like the ones I lifted from Guerre’s pocket. The other half of the conversation.
“What do they say?” I ask.
Rooftop has a coughing fit before he can answer, and I glare at the dust in the air that still hasn’t settled. I glare at the weird magical flames, too, just in case they have anything to do with it.
“He’s starting a war,” Rooftop wheezes finally.
“I know that part,” I interrupt impatiently. “What’s the plan for tonight?”
He peels one particular letter away from the rest, this one without the seal of either realm. I skim it rapidly and my stomach sinks. Then I shove the letters back in the satchel and sling it onto my shoulder.
“I have to go,” I say. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. But I can’t just let this play out like this. I can’t let—”
“Just one more thing,” Rooftop coughs. “One more letter.” He pulls this one out of the inside pocket of his coat. “I found it shoved in the corner after that night you stayed over. And… I read it.”
“Snoop,” I say, snatching the paper out of his hand.
But I know what it is before I even look at it.
It’s the letter Mance wrote. The one she gave to me what feels like ages ago. The one I didn’t believe because it didn’t fit with the brutal image I had of her.
The image that was false all along.
Skimming its contents again now, every word rings true, and my throat gets tight.
What might we have averted if I had just believed in her then?
“Go,” Rooftop says.
And I do.