CHAPTER 18 RAYA
RAYA
Akari has never not been there for me—not once in the thirteen years we’ve known each other.
Through every success, every failure, every fight with my parents and every subsequent despair, through my break-up with Killen, and the Council’s threat to bind my magic, and the night I stupidly snuck into the seeing tower to ask an open question.
She’s always known exactly when I’d need her.
To the point that I should have known something was wrong when I disappeared and she didn’t come looking.
I should have realized that something terrible had also befallen her.
Maybe if I had, she wouldn’t have ended up strapped to the Meridian’s table.
Maybe if I had, then her life wouldn’t be hanging by a fraying thread and this embarrassment of a plan.
And as far as plans go, this one truly is bad.
Tackle the Divine Meridian—the man whose color Ezzo’s gift hasn’t been able to identify—into the Gray and then hope that I can shimmer away faster than he can follow.
Hope that Ezzo will keep his word to free Akari.
Hope that all three of us live long enough for her to try and kill me herself.
Which she’ll absolutely want to do; I made sure of that when I asked Ezzo to tell her about my broken magic—and I had to do that to ensure that she’d actually accept his help, understand how I came to align myself with the very Hue we left the Academy to apprehend.
Better she kills me than the Meridian does.
The thought fuels me as I speed across the cellar and throw my arms around his waist, blinking us both into the shadows with a dramatic war cry.
Because if Akari can kill me, it means that she’s alive.
It means that I am, too. That neither of us wound up dying at the hand of a zealot.
He’s still mid-grunt when the air around us strips of color, which—just as I’d hoped—grants me the element of surprise. The moment I see Gray, I give him one good shove then shimmer off in the opposite direction.
Please be slower than I am. Please be slower than I am.
Please be slower than I am. The first few seconds are an agony of paranoia.
They’re nervous glances over my shoulder and phantom claws tearing at my skin.
They’re a questioning of every ripple in the shadows.
Though as the cellar gives way to the laundry hall gives way to the street, my heart slowly begins to calm its pounding.
I can still sense the Meridian behind me, hear the rustle of his robes as he scrambles to give chase.
But if he’s not caught up to me yet, then the plan is working; I’m both avoiding capture and drawing him away, giving Ezzo time to save Akari.
I’m almost to the edge of Meridian territory when my feet suddenly grow heavy, as though I’m no longer shimmering through smoke but crawling through sand. No—wait; it’s not my feet, it’s the shadows. They’re getting denser, somehow. Closing in around me.
What in the hells—? I don’t jerk to a stop so much as I sublime to it, like a fly caught in amber and slowly entombed in bark.
“You can’t outrun your betters, full-blood.
” The Meridian’s voice is everywhere and nowhere all at once.
In my head, and behind me, and assaulting my sanity from every side.
“You are but a shade of the darkness whereas I am the absence of light.” In the space between blinks, he’s appeared before me, stepping out of the ether in a way that defies the laws governing our kind.
Not like he’s becoming one with the shadows, but like he’s bending them, displacing them, swallowing them up.
Using them to suffocate and restrain me.
How will I get away from him? I beg the future, groping, straining, clambering for the magic in my blood.
But it seems whatever’s affecting the shadows is affecting my power, as well.
For the first time in my life, I can’t reach it.
And I don’t just mean I can’t get it to answer, but I can’t feel it at all.
Almost as if my color has already been bound.
“Tell me, what will you do when the well you draw from fills with poison?” the Meridian asks, appraising me the way one would a bug. “How will you survive when the power you’ve been leeching disappears from the Gray?”
Up close, he’s even more intimidating than he looked from afar.
Piercing blue eyes—devoid of the tells of magic; stern, hooded features; a smile that could rot meat.
His ashy hair hangs down past his ears in a messy tangle, the waves falling like spent matches against the chalky white of his skin, pale as a deadly cliff.
And yet, every part of him exudes charisma.
He makes me want to watch him, even in the silence between threats.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It takes a staggering amount of effort to form the words. “You’re the one leeching power.” He’s quite literally strapping Shades to a table and bleeding the color from their veins.
“I am setting the shadows free!” he roars, the rage twisting his expression into a livid mask.
“I’m the only one who can live in harmony with the darkness, the last remaining void among a rainbow of thieves.
” His assertion doesn’t make a lick of sense, though I don’t expect that he’ll explain it, nor do I intend to stick around and ask.
Whatever his beliefs, we’re never going to agree on his actions, and there’s no point trying to reason with a madness this pronounced.
What I need to do is figure a way out of here, before he grows tired of lecturing his prey.
Phase, Raya. You need to phase. In the Gray, the Meridian is a dangerous anomaly, but in the real world, he’s just a man. There are no shadows for him to manipulate there, no darkness to do his bidding or magic to inflame his ire.
Come on, come on, come on. With his power deadening my color, blinking between worlds becomes as grueling as running through a wall of brick—yet I’m sure I can do it.
When I commune with the future, I have to engage my magic, whereas phasing is more akin to a fluid changing of states.
It’s not casting, it’s thinking your body across realms, either towards the pull of shadows or against it.
And right now, every ounce of strength I have is begging the shadows to let me go.
Let me go, let me go, let me go. The pressure surrounding me increases, the weight of smoke and ink crushing the marrow from my bones. Please, you have to let me go. When finally they do, it feels as though my flesh is ripping, like the strain of victory might rear up and shatter me whole.
But it doesn’t.
I return to the real world with a growl and a crisp rending of air, to a nausea so intense it doubles me over.
Damn it, Raya, you don’t have time for this.
Run. Now. I force my feet to start moving, to find the nearest shelter, the nearest alley, the nearest crowd, any place that could hide me should the Meridian choose to chase me across realms. It’s only once I’m several streets removed, breathless and drenched in sweat, that I begin to suspect he didn’t bother.
Clearly, he’s decided that one lone Shade is unlikely to upset his plans.
And to be perfectly honest, I can’t say I blame him.
Because what I watched him do was so impossible—so contrary to color theory—that I wouldn’t believe my story, either. Without proof, all the Council will see is a desperate Indigo trying to save face with a lie.
Akari’s your proof. The thought jolts me back to attention. What if Ezzo hasn’t freed her from the cellar yet? What if Alara got the better of him? What if by the time we pulled our plan together, Akari was already dead? What if, what if, what if . . . my mind is suddenly awash with dread.
It was my fault that she was there to begin with.
My poor decision that kick-started this chain of events.
If she dies, it’ll be because I was so busy thinking about myself—about my future, my problems, my broken magic—that I sent her off to sell her skills alone in some sleazy tavern, just so I could get the answers I wanted without her learning of my mistake.
And I did that despite knowing full well how dangerous Sarotuza has become for Shades, that she wouldn’t be safe out there on her own.
Show me where I’ll find her.
It takes all of my courage to ask the future that question.
So long as she’s still with Ezzo, I’m confident it’ll answer, but what it might show me is another question altogether, a whole different testing of fate.
Though as it turns out, my fears have been concentrated in the entirely wrong place, on Akari’s death instead of Ezzo’s.
Oh, crap. The vision that greets me is almost too predictable. A relief, yes, but also a disaster I should have seen coming from several hundred miles away.
Crap, crap, crap. I immediately start running towards the inn the future is flashing in my head. Saving Akari from the Divine Meridian was one thing, now I have to go save Ezzo from the wrath of my best friend.