CHAPTER 33 EZZO
EZZO
Drop by drop, Saleen’s blood is agonizing a typic, his screams rising in volume even as hers begin to fail.
And hers aren’t the only ones—around the chamber, more and more of the acolytes are inching towards death, their bodies shaking with the blood loss and growing clammy with sweat.
If we don’t do something soon, we’ll lose every single one of them, all seven colors—or rather, all six, since there’s still one terrified initiate for whom Alara hasn’t yet fetched a mate. One conspicuously empty table.
What is she waiting for? Around the typics, the poisoned shadows are slowly starting to wilt, their smoke darkening to an ash that’s pocked and brittle, as though the very fabric of the Gray is disintegrating.
If there was ever a time to complete the rainbow, this feels like it would be it.
So why is Alara still here, then? I trace her movements as she stalks between pairs, adjusting the tourniquets and needles where necessary.
Why does she seem wholly uninterested in abducting the last kid?
A great question for later. I strain against the compulsion pinning my feet in place, searching for a crack, a weakness, some way to break free of the crystal’s spell.
Pre-made charms have a relatively short lifespan, and she’s using it to immobilize me, Cemmy, and Chase, so the magic must be close to reaching its limit.
I just need to apply the right pressure, find a critical spot against which to—
The vision hits me mid-struggle, entirely unsolicited and unexplained.
Or at least, I think it’s a vision; it’s playing out exactly how my mom always described the pictures she saw in her head.
One second, I’m in the court chamber, watching a group of acolytes bleed steadily into their graves, then the next, it feels as though I’m in another place altogether, watching the very end of their story—of our story—and the Gray’s.
This is Raya’s vision. I instantly recognize the cataclysm she’s been warning about since we met.
Except this time, I see every part of it.
The death, the love, the heartbreak, the pain, the absolute certainty that our paths were always destined to collide over and over again, to bring us here, to this moment, where our choices would decide the fate of an entire realm.
“Did you just see that?” Cemmy’s shock makes it plenty clear that I’m not the only one who received the future’s sending.
In fact, judging by the sea of wide eyes and stunned expressions, I’d venture everyone in the court chamber did; the acolytes, the initiates, and—if I’m not reading her hesitation wrong—Alara, as well.
“That’s the future your brother wants,” I call out, seizing the opportunity to shake her faith.
“It’s what we’ve been trying to tell you, Alara; Hues can’t survive without magic—we die without it—and Adriel knows that.
He knows that if he poisons the shadows, you’ll die, and he’s doing it anyway.
He’s sacrificing you every bit as much as he is them. ”
“Shut up!” she roars, but there’s a hint of a quiver to her voice now, a tiny fracture of an invitation.
“He’s using you, Alara.” I push the advantage.
“You’re a means to an end for him, disposable labor.
Adriel put you at risk each time he sent you out to fetch him tributes and he’s put you at risk today, left you to do the dirty work—the dangerous work—while he’s off catching up with the councilman. ”
“I said, shut up.” Word by word, my truths are beginning to flame her cheeks red. “My brother—”
“Hates all magic, Alara.” So I don’t shut up; I keep right on pushing.
“That means your magic, too, the magic running through your veins. Do you really think he’ll make an exception once the shadows have been cleansed?
” I ask, throwing in another wedge. “He thinks you’re a mistake, Alara, don’t you see that?
He thinks all Hues are a mistake. He’s counting on the poison to kill you for him.
He doesn’t even care about you enough to admit that himself. ”
“Shut your filthy mouth!” All at once, she’s careening towards me, a knife clasped between her fingers and her eyes sizzling with rage. “My brother would never lie to me! He loves me!” The force of our collision breaks what’s left of the charm’s spell.
“Alara, don’t—” As we both crash down to the marble, I barely just avoid the tip of her blade.
“Cemmy, Chase—go!” I yell, because while I didn’t mean to bait myself into a knife fight, a distraction is still a distraction and if she’s fighting me then she can’t be stopping them.
“Go help Saleen!” A sharp sting grazes my ribcage as Alara angers at that idea.
Oh no, you don’t. With a hiss, I buck out of harm’s way, my hand jerking out to catch the charm she tries to throw in their direction.
“Alara, please—Adriel’s not worth your loyalty,” I grit as the resulting flash sends us rolling arm over head, the knife trapped precariously between us. “He’s not worth your life!”
But in the end, that’s ultimately what he costs her.
I don’t see the exact moment she loses control of the blade, I hear it, her pained surprise and the soft squelch, the sickening gut of flesh parting around metal.
No, no, no, no, no. I’m quick to shove away from her, though there’s nothing to be done about the wooden hilt protruding from her chest, the shock creeping across her expression.
“Well, isn’t this unfortunate.”
Before I can so much as think to press my hands to the wetness blooming her robe red, the shadows harden around me, the oppressive nature of the void intensifying as Adriel suddenly appears in the chamber, the councilman hanging limp behind him.
But no Raya or Akari. I don’t get the chance to dwell on what that might mean.
“I’m afraid I can’t allow you to do that.” Adriel’s first port of call is to send Chase and Cemmy flying back from Saleen, landing them in a tangled heap behind the tables.
Shit, the needle. They haven’t taken out the needle. Cemmy had only gotten as far as loosening the tourniquet—which Adriel immediately refastens with a flick of his wrist.
“Help me, Adriel.” Alara’s plea is ragged but optimistic, brimming with a hope that swiftly wavers as he sweeps past where she’s lying. “Please, I need a Green. You can shimmer me to a Green.”
“I could.” He briefly turns to appraise her, his face filling with pity and regret.
“But that would only prolong your suffering and that’s not something I want.
You were a good sister, Alara—a loyal sister, brave.
If not for what you are, we could have remade this world together, but your color makes that impossible.
I can only pray that you’ll take comfort in knowing your sacrifice helped usher in the new age. ”
“My color—?” Her understanding dawns gradually, grudgingly, as though she can’t quite fathom the betrayal. “Adriel, please—we’re family.”
But the only family he’s interested in is his father, the final tribute he means to drain.
“Do you believe me now?” As he binds the councilman to the last table, I drop my voice to a whisper and rekindle my efforts to make his sister see sense.
“He lied to you, Alara—this entire time, he knew that you would die here today. But you don’t have to die here—you don’t have to die for him.
We can take you to a Green, we can get you out of the castle, all you have to do is tell us how to stop him; he must have a weakness.
” And having spent her whole life by his side, she must know what it is.
“Your brother’s not a prophet, Alara, and what he’s doing isn’t going to free the shadows, it’s going to destroy the Gray—I know you saw the same vision that I did, I know you felt the truth of it—so please, help us.
Don’t let him do to you what the councilman did to him; don’t let him throw you away. ”
It’s those last six words that break her, I can tell by the way her chin starts to tremble and her eyes fill with pain.
Not the physical kind—like from the knife wound bleeding her chest—but the kind that comes with having your heart broken by someone you trust and respect. By being betrayed by your own brother.
“Color,” she finally rasps, betraying his trust in return. “The presence of it is anathema to his power, that’s why he deadens it in others. If you attack him with my charms, it’ll buy you a few seconds.”
Seconds. I’m still grappling with that grim reality when she grabs the front of my shirt with surprising strength.
“When he’s gone, the shadows won’t wait; they’ll come for the typics.”
“That’s okay, they’re protected,” I tell her, working through the problem in my head.
“The initiates all have some color in them now.” The fresh screams coming from Denata’s table are proof of that, proof that Adriel wasted no time before sticking a needle in his dear old father—and according to the list we found in his sanctum, even a little blood should be enough to shield them for a few minutes.
“We’ll be able to get them to a portal.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Alara’s breaths are growing heavy, her words barely audible above the din. “With seven colors bleeding, the poison will spread through the shadows fast. Any magic that touches it will wither.”
But isn’t it already withering? I steal a glance over at the initiates, at how the air around them continues to crack and pucker like dried ink. How is that different from—?
Oh.
It takes me a long moment to understand what she means.
If that’s what the poison can do now, in a void, then I shudder to think what it’ll do when it’s not being suppressed, especially in a castle made entirely of magic, with no physical counterpart to phase to outside the Gray.
If we allow the poison to spread, there might not be an Academy left.
And if it dies, we die with it, Hue, typic, and Shade.
Shit. Our original plan isn’t going to work if that’s the case. The three of us won’t be able to maintain physical contact with all seven initiates. Not immediately, anyhow. Not while we’re also juggling the needles, and the acolytes, and the panic, and . . . everything else.
“Then use your gift, Alara,” I beg, since she’s not limited in that same way. “You’re an Emerald—you can project your In-Betweens, keep the kids safe.”
“I don’t have any Green charms.” Her reply is as knowing as it is labored.
Because I have no magic with which to heal her and she’s lost too much blood to sustain such a spell.
Hells, half this chamber’s lost too much blood and the other is fast approaching that point as well.
No matter how hard we try or how quickly we work, lives are going to be lost here.
Though I can think of one way to minimize the death.
Even if the cost is monstrous.
“Are you truly willing to help us, no matter what it takes?” I look Alara dead in the eye, imploring her to absolve me of this sin.
“Yes.” There’s now a crimson veil staining her teeth.
“Then I know what to do.” With a bitter sigh, I search out Cemmy and Chase, grateful for the language that allows me to sign out the plan to them unheard, unnoticed by Adriel who remains preoccupied with his father.
And while they don’t like my idea any more than I do, we’re officially out of time and options, and we still don’t know if the cavalry is coming or what has become of Akari or Raya.
We don’t have the luxury of a plan that’s perfect.
“On three,” I sign, swallowing down the dread. “One . . . two . . . three!”
I toss a fistful of Alara’s charms in Adriel’s direction, watching the spells detonate in a color-rich mist. He snarls in surprise, the explosion slackening his grip on the shadows just a bit, just enough to allow us to move more freely.
“Now!”
We all charge at once—Chase towards Alara, Cemmy towards Saleen, me towards the man who styled himself as the Divine Meridian, the knife I pulled from Alara’s chest ready to deliver him a kinder end than he means to inflict.
And though it strikes me that by doing this, we’ll be propagating a cycle that’s been repeating itself for centuries—turning on another because of how much, or how little, magic they bleed—I don’t see any other way to save the shadows.
Whether I like it or not, fate has conspired to rob us of good choices, so today, a bad one is going to have to win.