CHAPTER 14 RAYA #2
So anything I share should be safe . . . Perhaps I’ve been playing this all wrong. If Ezzo won’t live long enough to betray my secrets, then maybe instead of fighting him, I should be feeding his curiosity, using his thirst for answers to satisfy mine.
“Because I was failing, okay?” I drop my head to the wall and lace my voice with resentment, feigning a break in will.
“I’m no good at communicating with the future the right way and they were going to bind my magic if I didn’t turn things around, so I asked a question that’s forbidden and now my visions are all messed up. Happy?”
“It’s a start,” he says, softening an inch. “Do you believe they’re real? These messed-up visions?”
“The ones I had in the tavern were—and before you ask, I don’t know why they were so specific when this one is so abstract.
No one’s talked to the future like this in hundreds of years; I’m still trying to work it all out.
” Though his Gold did just go and prove that fate-touched magic remains fate-touched even when it’s running through another’s blood, so I suppose I do know that now.
“Is that why you came looking for me at the Golden Stag?” Ezzo asks. “Because the vision showed you that we were somehow involved?”
“Yes.” I cringe at his poor choice of phrasing, adopting the truth he wants to hear in place of my true goal: claiming credit for his arrest. “It seemed like the best way to prove that I could still be a seer. That I haven’t broken my magic for good.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t put too much stock in the Council’s idea of broken.” This time, the edge to his words is directed at them instead of me. “They have a nasty habit of changing the rules when they feel like it.”
“Which means what, exactly?” If he’s going to make accusations, the least he can do is spell them clear.
“It means they lie. Especially about magic.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say—because it is. Because why would the Council lie about magic when they want us to use it? When they make their money off it? When it keeps us safe?
“Is it?” Ezzo raises an eyebrow. “Just think about it for a minute—think about everything they’ve ever told you about illegal half breeds like me.
Aren’t you wondering how I’m sitting in front of you right now?
Here? In the Gray?” He motions to the veil of shadows swirling around us.
“Aren’t you wondering how I haven’t shattered yet? ”
I have been wondering that, yes. Not since he chained me to this pipe—I’ve had more important things on my mind—but it did occur to me when the trackers first led him into the court chamber; I did wonder how he was able to maintain such a difficult spell despite being so beat-up.
“Are you saying you don’t need to cast an In-Between to survive here?” My disbelief drips with surprise. Because—hells, even the Council couldn’t maintain a conspiracy that contrived.
“No, I’m saying I’ve been casting one this whole time, so easily you didn’t notice.
” He emphasizes that second part, the part that breaks with established fact.
“It’s a myth that the Gray seeks to expel Hues, a lie the Council started telling when they decided to purge our kind.
They knew that they could never fully eradicate us—Shades have been bedding typics since the beginning of time—so instead, they made it harder for us to survive, spent decades rewriting our history, spreading misinformation, and burning records until ta-da”—he snaps his fingers—“we were all suddenly learning a faulty version of the In-Between spell.”
“I’m sorry—burning records and tampering with spells?
” I have to pick my jaw off the ground. “You do realize how utterly insane you sound?” And how utterly impossible that would be.
For what he’s claiming to hold true, the Council would have had to mess with every scroll, book, and ledger from here to Isitar, corrupt the sanctity of every archive.
“More insane than banning a way of seeing the future?” Ezzo’s questions are growing increasingly sharp. “More insane than you seeing something the entire seers’ guild missed the second you decided to break bad?”
“Yes, that’s—” The objection dies on my tongue, my mother’s words bubbling up to contradict it.
There has been one documented case. Around four hundred years ago.
Right around the time the Council started purging Hues from the continent.
That can’t be a coincidence. As much as I hate to admit it, the timeline he’s alluding to fits, and it would explain how a similar catastrophe could have gone unnoticed by the guild last year.
“I’m not saying I believe you,” I hedge, considering my words with care. “But even if I did, your Gold—Chase—already has my magic, and the future showed him the exact same vision it showed me.” Give or take a few of the more sordid details. “There’s nothing else I can tell you.”
“You can tell me your name.” The interest in Ezzo’s voice is sincere. And though I’d much rather tell him to go to hell, I might be better off giving him a reason to see me as more than just a petulant Shade. Maybe then, he’ll feel like he’s won something and let me go.
“Raya.” I offer him my first name only, not the Wryvern legacy. “My name is Raya.”
“Well, okay then, Raya.” For a long moment, it feels as though my gamble might pay.
Ezzo doesn’t smile, exactly, but he also doesn’t look mad anymore; he looks like the boy from my vision, the one with the warm eyes and the heartbreakingly lovely face.
The one who could still choose to grant my freedom.
But then—right as his shoulders set into a decision—the door to the room crashes open and the Bronze called Cemmy comes bursting inside.
“The trackers are raiding this sector. We have to go, now,” she says, lurching Ezzo to his feet. “They can deal with the Shade.”
No, no, no, no. I rail against the iron keeping me captive. “Please, you can’t let them find me here.” Not this far from the Academy and helplessly bound in chains. There’ll be no explaining that to my parents, or to the class masters, or to the guilds. My future will officially be ruined.
“Please, Ezzo, you have to let me go.” I’m not above begging him like I begged his friend. “Let me go and I’ll forget everything that’s happened. Chase can even compel me to forget.”
“Right, because that worked so well the first time,” Cemmy mutters, urging Ezzo away. Then when he turns to hesitate in the doorway, she steps around him to say, “Ez, come on. You can’t possibly be—”
Instead of cutting her off with his words, he does it with his hands, shaping a series of signs I don’t have the language to read.
Though, evidently, she does.
And I don’t need to read sign to interpret the tenor of her answering rage.
“Colors help me, I hope you know what you’re doing.” After a brief but terse exchange, she whips towards me, fishing out a key from her pocket and a knife from the belt at her hip.
“No—please—”
“Relax, it’s to stop you from shimmering, so I suggest you hold very fucking still.” She presses the tip of the blade to my chin, hard enough that I can’t even draw breath without the metal biting.
“Ready?” she asks as Ezzo joins us by the pipe, the question meant solely for him.
“Ready.”
What happens next is a sleight of hand so deft I don’t even realize it’s happened until the deed is complete.
You have got to be kidding me. I fight the urge to scream as I finally understand the switch the two of them had conceived. Because instead of letting me go, the Bronze has gone and tethered me to a wholly different prison.
She’s gone and cuffed me to Ezzo.