CHAPTER 7 EZZO
EZZO
It’s amazing how fast your luck can change, how in the space of a heartbeat, a clear sky can darken with a vicious storm. A second can mean the difference between life and death, happiness and misery, an execution or a reprieve.
Oblivion or an escape.
After three days of beatings in a lightless cell, I was aching to face the first and under no illusion of attempting the latter.
Because what would have even been the point?
All year, I’d been skirting the fire, courting the trackers’ attention in the hopes that they’d do their jobs well, end it for me.
And besides, with my wrists chained to the dock and a whole gallery of Shades staring back at me hungrily, it would have been pointless to try.
There was no getting out of that court chamber.
I was going to die, today, at the Council’s hand, for a made-up crime that shouldn’t exist, and if that was to be my fate then the last thing I intended to do was show them fear.
So when they concluded my sham of a trial in less than a minute, I didn’t protest. And when they asked for my parting words, I didn’t give them the satisfaction of hearing my voice break.
Instead, I’d picked a random Shade in the crowd—a pretty girl with hazel eyes, auburn hair, and a fine constellation of freckles dusting her ivory skin—and glared at her until she looked away, startled, as though my condemnation was the true injustice.
It was supposed to be my final act of rebellion, a way to leave a lasting impression while the static charge of magic was building to a murder in Green.
Just like the one that took Eve.
It seemed fitting that I would meet the same death as she did.
Romantic almost.
A relief.
But then, between one breath and the next, every Shade in that chamber was screaming and the three guards flanking me were suddenly blasted back into the brick.
It should have been impossible.
It was impossible.
Until I spotted Cemmy weaving through the panic and then I knew exactly how my luck had turned. Because where Cemmy goes, Chase follows, and with Chase comes enough stolen magic to incapacitate an entire court.
Novi sent us.
I should have realized she’d find a way to save me from all the way across the world.
I should have never scried her my warning.
But I did, so now I’m sitting on a grimy floor, in an abandoned house at the forgotten end of Sarotuza, laying low until the three of us can escape the city without getting caught.
“Here—this should help with the swelling.” Cemmy hands me a cool strip of cloth.
“Fuck off.” I’m quick to bat her away. It’s been one year, four months, and seventeen days since I was last forced to share air with this self-serving liar of a Bronze; one year, four months, and eighteen days since she led us all into the ambush that shattered Eve.
And while I should be grateful for the rescue, I would have sooner died than seen her or Chase again, nor did I need to see them looking more content together than either of them ever did alone.
“Ez, come on, I’m trying to help,” she says, shuffling back to lean against the wall. She’s still every bit as pale and sharp as I remember, her blond hair hanging straight past her shoulders, her blue eyes as piercing as they are cold.
“I don’t want your help, Cemmy. So please, just go.” I do my resolute best to ignore her, staring at the moldy ceiling, the boarded-up windows, the splintered cracks in the plaster, anywhere except her worry until, with a heavy sigh and a suit yourself, she disappears through the door.
Good. I wince as I sit up straighter, dabbing the cloth to the worst of the throb.
I don’t want her to think that all is forgiven.
Because a life saved doesn’t somehow erase the one she cost—and that’s all I can see when I look at her: the absence of Eve.
How needless that loss was. How preventable.
How it might never have happened if Cemmy had put her faith in us instead of the Gold.
“I told you he won’t talk to me.” I hear her say from the corridor, then a long moment later, her more dangerous half stalks into the room.
“I’m not interested in talking,” I grit the words through a clenched jaw.
“I’m not here to talk; I’m here to heal,” he says, dropping into a crouch.
“Well, I don’t want that, either.”
“Then by all means, you’re welcome to stop me.”
Before I can even think to try, he’s placed both hands to my side and engaged his power, pressing hard enough to prove a point.
Point made. I suck a harsh breath through my teeth.
In my current state, we both know I’m too weak to fight him; even without the magic, he’s got a good couple of inches on me and no broken ribs.
Though the moment his healing spell touches my skin, I lose the will to pretend I don’t want it.
After four days of constant pain, the dulling of it is overwhelming, a heady release that makes me forget how Chase’s stolen color is won. The hurt he has to inflict to get it.
“Do I want to know where you found all this Green?” I ask as he turns his attention to the bruises marking my face.
The metallic sheen of his magic extends to other parts of him, as well.
Golden hair, silver eyes, a bronze tan to his skin, chiseled features that even Eve acknowledged were pretty. A beautiful trap.
“From the same place you’ve been frequenting all year,” he says, a note of judgement creeping into his voice. “A tavern.”
“Kind of a risk, don’t you think? Courting Shades so publicly?”
“It’s always a risk.” Sweat beads at his temples, the feat he’s performing exacting a heavy toll. “But the trackers aren’t looking for a Gold right now and when we run, we need you to be able to keep up, so I did what I had to. We’ll leave just as soon as the search for you quiets.”
“You and Cemmy shouldn’t bother waiting, I’m fine on my own.”
“Yeah, you look like you’ve really got it together.” With another burst of magic, he eases the painful swelling around my eyes. “Why didn’t you see the trackers coming?”
The question irks me to no end. Back in Isitar, I used to scour the Gray for trails all the time.
I made it my duty to keep our palette safe from the Council.
But then he turned that very power against me, used it to force another Hue into his master’s genocidal plan.
So if he’s wondering why I’ve lost the zeal for watching the shadows, then he can consider himself Exhibit One.
“Who says I didn’t?”
“Colors help me, have you even been checking?” He sees straight through the lie. “Or were you actually trying to get yourself caught?”
“You know what, I prefer my healings without the lecture, thank you very much,” I snap.
Novi can talk to me like this. Cemmy, too, at a push, since we were friends for years before she blew that trust apart.
But this Gold has known me for all of five minutes and he used every single one of them to ruin my life.
It was the Shade he led to Isitar who cast the spell that stopped Eve’s heart and robbed her of magic, allowing the vengeful shadows to rush in and shatter her like glass, and it was the lies he told that kept us from putting that Shade down in the first place.
Chase hasn’t earned the right to berate me for anything—let alone for endangering the shell of a person his treachery left behind.
“How did you even find me, anyway?” I ask, seething. “Have the two of you been stalking me this entire time?”
“No, we were in Heresse, actually.” Chase takes the bait without biting.
“But then Novi scried to tell us you were in trouble, and we decided it was worth the trip to try and get you out—though we didn’t know if you’d still be alive when we got here or if we’d be able to track you down. You got really fucking lucky.”
I don’t feel lucky.
The three days I spent getting beaten by a rainbow of Shades didn’t feel lucky.
And neither does the life I have ahead of me now.
“I hope you don’t think this makes us even,” I say when Chase finally exhausts his supply of Green and pulls away, his energy drained and his breath rasping.
“We’ll never be even,” he agrees, and Gods, even his contrition has me itching to rip his throat out.
Chase knows he did wrong and he’s taking responsibility, to the point where railing at him feels like a petty waste of time.
A waste of anger. Because, deep down, I know that at the root of his lies was a good reason, a sister he loves just as much as I loved Eve.
But knowing and forgiving are two different things and they don’t always go hand in hand.
Sometimes, when you break things, it makes them stronger, more resilient. Sometimes broken things stay broken.
Which is why I can’t stay here.
With him.
With her.
With the memory of the happiness they took from me even as they forged their own.
I have to leave. Right now. Before the need to hurt them back rears up and swallows me whole.
“Ez, please—you can’t go out there; the city’s crawling with trackers.” Cemmy chases after me as I make to flee the house. She hasn’t changed at all, if I’m honest. Still stubborn enough to try and sway me, still reckless enough to break into a Council stronghold despite the devastating odds.
Still familiar enough to implore me with Ez.
“Gods, when is that not true?” But I don’t want to be swayed, and I don’t want to be chased after, and the more she tries to prove she cares, the more the pressure of these past few days—of this past year—threatens to come bursting out.
“We’re Hues, Cemmy, there will always be trackers after us, no matter where we go or how low we lie.
We exist, they hunt us, we escape, they do it over, until one day, we simply run out of time.
That’s the story.” And it’s not the kind you can change by holing up in some house.
“Fine. You want to leave? Leave. Drink yourself into another prison, I can’t stop you. Just take this with you.” She presses a brand-new scry crystal into my hand.
“I don’t need a babysitter, Cemmy.”
“And I have no intention of becoming one,” she clips, crossing her arms. “But I promised Novi we’d look out for you, so at least do her the favor of wearing it. That way, when something happens—”
I don’t miss the fact that she says when not if.
“—we’ll know what to tell her. You can give her that much, can’t you?” The look she fixes me could sublimate stone. “I mean it, Ez. You want to punish me? Go right ahead, we both know I deserve it. But don’t punish Novi, okay? She’s done nothing to earn it.”
The words wrap a hand around my heart and squeeze, pumping shame into my blood.
I’ve known Novi since I was ten years old, more than half my life.
She was the first Hue Eve and I found when we started searching Isitar for others, and the pin that kept our family together every time the world threatened to pull us apart.
Cemmy’s right—she hasn’t earned my silence, and if something were to happen to me, I’d want her to learn the truth so that she could grieve and move on.
“Fine, I’ll wear the scry.” I relent, slipping the chain over my head then tucking it beneath my shirt. “Happy?”
“Be safe, Ez,” is all she says in reply.
Then, true to her word, Cemmy steps aside and lets me go.