CHAPTER 6 RAYA #2
“What do you think his gift is?” I ask, examining him with interest. Hues don’t share in our specializations; their colors are a dilution of magic, and thus, more varied and abstract.
Some of their gifts are trivial, while others are downright terrifying in their might.
The only truth that’s universal to every Hue is that they can’t survive the Gray for long.
The shadows revile the typical tint of their blood.
Seek to expel it. Without a complicated spell called an In-Between, the Gray would rush in and shatter this Hue like glass.
Which is yet another reason why these proceedings were originally held in the physical realm, where the accused weren’t in danger of spontaneously hastening their own demise.
Though now that the court has been relegated to the Academy, it does beg the question of how, beat up as he is, this Hue is sustaining such a taxing spell?
Or why he’s even bothering to sustain it—to keep himself alive—when he already knows the outcome of his trial?
“No idea, but I think we’re about to find out,” Akari says as a charged silence settles across the crowd, the presiding judge—Councilman Lars Denata, head of the trackers’ guild—having called the room to order.
The councilman is a stern man of almost sixty, his ashy hair salted through with silver, his sun-worn skin toughened to a pale and leathery hide.
Like the rest of the judges, he wears a heavy robe that’s embroidered to announce his color—Orange, like Akari—as signified by the hammer symbol that graces his cuffs.
A formidable man both inside the court and out of it.
I should know: growing up, my parents had him over for dinner all the time.
“We have convened here today to rule on the most egregious of crimes: the birth of a half breed.” His voice booms loud across the chamber, stern and menacing. Though for his part, the Hue doesn’t so much as flinch. He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t fidget. He barely even seems to hear him.
“In direct contravention to the Council’s decree, an Indigo Shade, now deceased, deigned to mate with a typic, resulting in a Sapphire Hue whom she did not surrender.”
A Sapphire? The words rip through my chest like a pack of starving mutts.
A Sapphire. This Hue is a Sapphire.
The same color as my vision.
“The violation of this decree is not only illegal, it also presents a clear and ongoing threat to our kind. It allows for offspring that endanger the Gray by draining it of its magic, thereby jeopardizing the shadows and our way of life.”
This time, I swear I see the Hue snigger, though that doesn’t make a lick of sense given that he’s about to die.
“You will all do well to remember what you witnessed here today,” Denata continues, turning his attention to the sea of acolytes hanging off his every syllable.
“For it is a needless tragedy and an unnecessary burden on the members of this tribunal, who have no choice but to call for the Sapphire’s immediate execution.
Does the condemned wish to address the court before his sentence is carried out? ”
Alongside the shock of the Hue’s color comes a shock at the speed of it all—how in the space of a minute, he went from accused, to condemned, to being offered his last rite.
And while I absolutely understand the need for this law, I can’t help but find the lack of ceremony unsettling.
This half didn’t choose to be born any more than the rest of us choose our parents, and even a justified killing feels as though it should warrant a little more pomp and judicial pride.
I mean, hells, I’ve had reprimands from Professor Lyons that lasted longer than this trial.
Say something. I find myself urging the Sapphire to speak on his own behalf. To beg, or scream, or grumble, to rail against what he must believe to be gravely unjust.
But he doesn’t.
He merely sets his jaw and lifts his head in defiance, as though he’s long since made peace with this outcome. As though some part of him yearns for it.
“Very well. This court will now administer the punishment. Please fetch the executioner,” the councilman says, sending for the Green who will end the Hue’s life.
That’s when the Sapphire finally grants himself a moment of unadulterated spite, allowing his eyes to rake across the gallery and condemn the rest of us.
That’s when, for the briefest of seconds, they bore straight into mine.
No.
His gaze is a bolt of lightning to a meadow of dry brush.
For while his face may be bruised beyond recognition, there is absolutely no mistaking that burnished shade of brown.
No, no, no, no.
It can’t be him.
It can’t be the boy from my vision.
Even the future wouldn’t be so cruel as to imply that I’m destined to fall in love with a half.
It’s not him because it can’t be. I try to reason away the horror.
Brown eyes are hardly uncommon, after all, and the rest of him is too beat up to identify with any kind of certainty.
But most of all, it can’t be him because he’ll be dead in a matter of minutes.
Already, his executioner is circling him like a shark, keenly awaiting the councilman’s command to unleash her magic.
A command which suddenly can’t come soon enough.
“Gods, just do it already,” I mutter, gripping the balustrade so hard the wood groans beneath my fingers.
“Easy, Ray.” Akari places her hand over mine, though I can tell by the set of her jaw that she’s also feeling a little untethered. Neither of us has ever witnessed an execution, and no amount of schooling can prepare you for watching someone die.
Not even when it’s necessary.
It’s unnerving, isn’t it? How much they look like us?
It’s even more unnerving how resigned this Hue is to meeting the black.
How he seems to be rooting for it.
Then why doesn’t he just shatter? I lean forward for a closer look at him, trying to decipher the serenity in his smile.
All he’d have to do is drop the In-Between and then the shadows would grant him his wish, rush in and smash him like a fragile vase.
He could end his life on his own terms, right here, right now.
But for whatever reason, the Sapphire remains still and silent and alive, and as the Green raises her hand in preparation, I’m ashamed to admit that I’m the one who falters in anticipation of his demise.
Thanks to last night’s vision, I’ve already seen more death than I care to count; I don’t need to watch a flash of magic stop this Hue’s heart. I just need it to happen.
Come on, come on, come on. His death will prove, definitively, that my premonition was a lie, just another nonsense answer to a question I shouldn’t have been asking.
So when he drags in a breath, I hold mine.
And when the spell builds to its crescendo, I close my eyes, as if out of respect.
Maybe that’s why I miss the exact moment chaos erupts, when a different spell altogether incapacitates the trackers and sends his executioner flying back.
What in the—?
“Ray, get down!” Akari jerks me to the floor as a dense and heavy fog descends across the crowd, mingling with the shadows to turn air to smoke and day to night. The haze is everywhere. It’s everything I see, everything I feel, everything I touch. A perfect blinding.
Too perfect.
I’m suddenly struck by just how uniform the darkness has become. How it’s lacking in form and texture. How there’s no caustic smell to the smoke and no irritants stinging my eyes.
Is this a glamour? I blink until the illusion begins to crack.
Breaking free of a Red’s compulsion might be close to impossible, but their glamours grow brittle the second you recognize them for what they are. Whoever wanted this Hue spared has somehow trapped the entire chamber inside this magical cloud of black, distracted us from the real threat.
But . . . why?
Why would some rogue Shade want to save the Sapphire so badly they infiltrated the Academy? The most impenetrable building in Sarotuza? Better yet, how is it that I was able to shake off their glamour when no one else has?
Killen. The answer hits me all at once. Just a few hours ago, he’d used his color to rid me of any and all Red, and that spell won’t dissipate for a few more hours still—if not days.
He’s the reason that, through the crush of panicked bodies, I’m able to spot the rogue Shade approaching the Hue.
Though—inexplicably—he seems no happier to see her than I am.
From my place in the gallery, I can’t make out the angry words they’re trading, but after a brief and terse exchange, the rogue starts fussing with the Sapphire’s chains, then when his cuffs snap open a minute later, they both flee towards the back of the court.
You should follow them. The idea whispers through my mind, bold and tempting. If I can stop these two illegal Shades from leaving, then maybe the Council will finally look past my inability to predict. Maybe this is how I buy myself a second reprieve.
“It’s a glamour, Kiri! The smoke isn’t real!
” I say as I spring to my feet and take off after them.
To my surprise, both the Hue and the rogue are running from the chamber instead of shimmering—which makes sense for him; he lacks the power to speed through the shadows, but why she’s not shimmering them to safety is anybody’s guess.
As is why he wisps right through the wall but she takes the time to open the door.
Colors help me, is she trying to get caught? For a long moment, I’m too stunned to give chase. What kind of rogue doesn’t shed their physicality when it matters? How did such incompetence even manage to break into the Academy in the first place? Or incapacitate this entire hall?
Those are excellent questions for later. I, on the other hand, do shimmer, closing the space between us in a few fractured blinks.
“Hey you—stop! Stop right—”
“Don’t.”
The command jerks me to a halt a mere inch from the rogue Shade’s side, close enough that—if my arms were still working—I could reach out and grab her by the cowl. Close enough to see her eyes.
But that’s—it’s not possible. The breath catches in my lungs, the magic silencing my startled questions. Her irises aren’t burned black to the edge the way a rogue’s should be, and there’s no spiked rim, either, so she’s also not a Council Shade.
This girl is another Hue.
As is the guy that just wisped through the wall and spelled me immobile. Using a Red’s magic. I can still see the ghost of it flaming in his eyes.
“She’s cleared the way for us—let’s go,” he says, prompting the girl away.
I did no such thing. I want to yell at him, to make it perfectly clear that I would never work with him or his illegal friends. But his compulsion extends to my tongue, it seems, and before they both hurry after the Sapphire, he adds an additional caveat to his command.
“You will not tell anyone what you saw here,” he orders. And by the time my limbs unfreeze and Killen’s spell accelerates his will off me, the three of them are long gone.