CHAPTER 15 RAYA #2
“That’s impossible.” A typic in the shadows isn’t an option that makes the list. They can’t phase, for one thing, nor can they survive the shadows long enough to fill a house with wails; they’d shatter instantly.
Unlike Hues, they lack the magic to protect themselves with an In-Between, because they’re not an in-between, and their blood is anathema to the Gray.
Their presence would, quite literally, destabilize the realm.
“I know it’s impossible.” Ezzo tenses as the voice pulls closer still. “But that’s what I see.”
“Well, then look again,” I urge, right before a stir from beyond the doorway makes that urging obsolete.
“By my colors, is that a—”
“Child,” I finish for him, the word exhaling like a sharp stitch. “It’s just a child.”
Though as the girl steps into the room proper, I realize there’s no just about it.
I’d guess she’s five or six years old—if a day—dressed in grimy, threadbare rags, and thin to the point of emaciation.
A child of the slums, most likely, born and raised on the streets.
But it’s not the tragedy of her life that turns the air in my lungs to acid—it’s her face, the blood crying crimson tracks along her cheeks.
This girl is cracked china, a porcelain doll splintering under the weight of too much heat.
And there’s a wrongness about her, a festering rot that’s eating right through her skin, leaving it raw and blistered.
Leaving the shadows in her wake as wilted as a starving leaf.
“Can you help me?” Up close, her voice is a fraying wire, feeble and weak. “I want to go home.”
“Look at her eyes, Raya.” Ezzo’s whisper is riddled with fear. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
“No, I haven’t.” And the sight sends my hand clambering for his.
A Shade’s magic presents as a spiked rim around the iris.
A rogue’s magic burns black every chalky white inch.
A Hue’s magic is invisible.
Whereas this girl’s eyes look as though the magic is slowly breaking them from within, a spitting blaze glowing red between the fractures.
“I don’t feel very good.” She reaches out for us, her fingers cracking piece by piece. “Please, will you help me? Can I go home now, please?”
Without rhyme or warning, the magic holding her together turns that last plea into a scream, rending her cracks wider—her pain shriller—until with one final, malicious growl, the shadows rush in and shatter her to bits, leaving nothing behind but a grotesque memory and a jagged red heap.
Holy mother of shit. The cry that escapes me is a choked heave, it’s ragged breaths, and stinging eyes, and dry retching.
There’s a storm building between my temples, bile rising in my throat, shock ringing in my ears.
And I’m shaking, and I’m shaking, and I can’t seem to make the shaking stop.
I knew the shadows had the power to shatter; I’ve read the texts and I’ve learned the theory.
But to watch it happen right in front of me .
. . to see a person—flesh and blood and sinew—reduced to nothing but a pile of glass .
. . it sickens me from soul to spleen. Though it isn’t my knees that give way beneath me, or my hiccupping sobs that turn to a strangled wheeze. It’s Ezzo’s.
He drops like a ship casting anchor, the cuffs pulling me down with him.
“Gods, will you be careful—?” The moment I catch sight of his expression, the reprimand dies on my tongue. Where I’m shaking, he’s vibrating like a plucked string, his cheeks wet with horror, his breaths sputtering like a dying fish.
“Ezzo?” I may have just watched a girl shatter, but he looks as though he lived it. His eyes are wild, haunted, his pupils blown as wide as the sea, staring at some distant memory that has him in an iron grip.
Colors help me, he’s falling apart.
And I can’t afford for him to do that. Not while we’re still in the Gray, where he’s in danger of shattering the same way she did.
Cuffed together as we are, I can’t take the risk that the shadows won’t view us as one.
So instead of railing at him to get up and snap out of it, I gentle, taking his trembling face in my hands.
“Hey—you’re okay, okay?” I tell him, softly, like I believe the words leaving my mouth.
“Whoever she was, she’s gone now. We’re safe.
You’re safe. Everything’s okay.” I keep repeating that refrain until slowly—so agonizingly slowly—he begins to respond to my touch, the frantic rise and fall of his chest calming.
“Raya?” My name escapes him in a waking rush, the clouds finally clearing from his expression. But even as he pulls the room back to focus and stabilizes his shield with a grunt, the pain in him remains grim and potent, as though he’s still trapped in a nightmare that refuses to dull.
“It’s okay—you’re safe,” I say again. Only for him to jerk beneath me like a scandalized buck.
“Erm . . . what are you—?” As Ezzo glances between us, I suddenly realize why he’s so taken aback.
When he fell, the cuffs ensured we’d fall together, and I landed smack bang on top of him with my knees hugging his hips on either side.
Then I made it worse by leaning in closer, so close that I can practically feel his breath and taste his magic.
Hells, another inch and we’d be kissing.
“Right—sorry.” I lurch back as though electrocuted. “I’m sorry, but you were—”
“No, it’s fine. My fault.” Ezzo hurries to disentangle our limbs. “Seeing that just hit . . . it was just a shock.”
I don’t think he’s lying, exactly, though I do get the sense that it’s also not the whole truth, like there’s another reason he felt that girl’s death so deeply.
But since now doesn’t seem like the best time to press the subject, I pull us back to our feet and ask, “Any idea what kind of Hue that was?”
“That wasn’t a Hue, Raya, it can’t have been,” he says, certain to a stubborn fault.
“Well, it wasn’t a Shade, if that’s what you’re suggesting.” My conviction is equally staunch. “Shades don’t shatter.”
“And Hues don’t manifest the ability to phase until they’re older.
That girl was far too young to have come into her magic.
And even if she wasn’t, Hues don’t wander around bleeding from the eyes before they shatter.
We just . . . shatter.” The hitch in his voice reeks of experience.
Which—given his age—he’s probably had ample time to gain.
“Okay, so then what does that leave?”
“You know what it leaves—you just don’t want to believe it.”
“Want has nothing to do with it.” I’m refusing to believe it because it has no basis in fact. “If she was a typic, then how was there any magic in her eyes at all? Better yet—how was she walking? Or talking? Or begging us for help? Shouldn’t the shadows have shattered her immediately?”
“Yes, they should have,” Ezzo concedes, taking a step towards the room she came from. “So why didn’t they?” He takes another, then another after that, tracing the trail of blood the girl left through the house. “And how did she get here in the first place? Typics can’t phase.”
Yes, thank you, captain obvious, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.
“Maybe a Hue helped her across,” I say, since no Shade in their right mind would ever dream of doing it. Not when the Gray is increasingly becoming our sanctuary—the one place that remains untouched by the clergy and the Church.
“Gods, is there anything you Shades won’t blame us for?” Ezzo’s tongue clicks against his teeth. “Think that accusation through to the end, Raya; why would a Hue want to phase a typic into the Gray? If the shadows destabilize, we die the same way you do.”
“Yeah, well, maybe there’s a Hue out there holding a grudge.”
“Maybe they should be.”
“And maybe they—” My contempt cuts off abruptly as we reach the scene of the crime, a room that glistens from wall to wall with a mosaic of splintered glass. “Is that—?”
“Far more than one typic.” Ezzo’s horror is a creature I can see, and smell, and touch, the shake in his voice a mirror to the quiver in mine.
“I’d say this looks more like dozens.” Each having shattered neatly into their own pile, a sea of reds, greens, blues, and yellows that thread a rainbow through the inky dark.
The seven colors. If Shades don’t shatter, then why is this floor littered with every one of ours? And if typics can’t phase, then how did so many end up here, in a room that stinks of death and perverted power? Where did they even come from?
“The missing typics.” The answer to that last question hits me all at once.
“What missing typics?”
“The ones that have been disappearing across the city.” Ezzo’s spectacular lack of notice continues to astound.
I was barely out of the Academy five minutes when I happened across the flyers; how could he have spent days in Sarotuza without spotting them?
How is a Hue this oblivious still alive?
“Maybe if you drank less, you’d pay a bit more attention. ”
“Excuse me?” Ezzo reels back as though I’d slapped him.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” I say, meeting the indignity in his eyes. Tell me you didn’t go straight from your execution to the tavern. Tell me you weren’t drinking yourself into an early grave when I found you.
“You don’t know the first thing about me, Raya,” he spits, his rage simmering to a threatening boil. “So please, save us both the trouble of pretending you do.”
“I know you gave up.” As much as I shouldn’t keep goading him, the flush staining his cheeks is making my anger bold.
I’ve been wanting to rail at him since the moment he fed my magic to his Gold, and if he can so blithely strip me of color without consequence—without showing any regard for how much pain it would cause—then why should I care if I hurt his delicate little feelings?
“I know your gift could have kept you safe if you’d bothered to use it; I know that you had the chance to escape Sarotuza, and instead, you allowed yourself to get caught—again.
That you didn’t even try to fight one passive Indigo girl. ”
“Shut up.” The coward snaps his head away, unwilling to face the truth.
“Wow, is that the best you can do? How very cutting, Ezzo. I’m so impressed by your—”
“Raya, shut up. There’s someone coming.” In an instant, his hand is pressed to my mouth, his body crushing me against the wall.
And though I don’t immediately hear the same threat that he did, only a few seconds pass before a sickening crunch of glass validates his assertion, accompanied by two sets of footsteps and a trading of clipped remarks.
“How long did this one last?” The first voice is deep and melodic in tenor. A man’s voice, without question, as cold as it is proud.
“Close to a bell and a half.” Whereas the second one is timid, a woman who sounds frightened and desperate to avoid his ire. “A vast improvement on the previous tribute.”
“Not nearly improved enough. Go get me another.” His reprimand sends a physical tremor racing through the house, as though his irritation can infect the shadows. “And not some starving whelp of a street urchin this time, I want an older, healthier child.”
I shiver as he confirms the worst of our suspicions. That yes, the shattered girl was a typic, and yes, they deliberately phased her into the Gray to do . . . Gods, I don’t even know what.
Let’s go take a look, I mouth at Ezzo, pointing towards the room they’re inside.
Absolutely not. He shakes his head, eyes widening as if to add: are you out of your fucking mind? But since he made the oh-so-smart decision to cuff our wrists together, when I push off the wall, his choices narrow down to: follow me or fight. And if we fight, we’ll definitely get discovered.
“Is that wise, Adriel?” The woman asks as we edge towards them. “A healthy child will be missed.”
“I don’t want excuses, Alara, I want another typic. If I was able to catch us a Red and an Orange in one day, then you should be able to wrangle a couple of children.” Once again, his anger seems to rip through the shadows, delivering an admonishment I can feel.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. I’ll find you a better tribute.
” Alara is mousy, short, and obedient, but that’s as much as I can glean before she dashes off in search of his prize.
Him, I can’t quite see yet, so I take another creeping step forward and will him to turn around.
Come on, Adriel, come this way. Come into the—shit!
My whole body freezes as a shard of typic cracks beneath my heel, echoing like thunder in the stillness of the empty house.
“Don’t move.” Ezzo’s arm instantly snakes around me, keeping me from bolting with an urgency that’s whisper tight.
An eternal second passes.
Two whole lifetimes.
Three.
Then, just as I’m about to lose my grip on my air—when I’m all but convinced that Adriel has grown wise to the intruders eavesdropping on his crimes—his attention drifts in the other direction and with a flourish of robes, he disappears into the night.
But not before I’m able to get a nice, good look at his face.
At the Divine Meridian’s face, I should say.
Since he and Adriel are the same man.