CHAPTER 35 EZZO
EZZO
The space between life and death is quiet. It’s free from the screams, and the pain, and the crushing weight of responsibility; it’s free from the grief that’s been eating at me every day.
I am no place and everywhere all at once, walking hand in hand with Eve through a vista that never changes, never darkens, never fades, a sky painted at twilight. Just as it should be.
“Not anymore.” Her voice is warm and musical, even as it fills with regret.
“Always, Vee,” I say, adamant. “It’s you and me, remember?” Until we die like the stars in a glorious blaze. Together. Always together. That last part isn’t up for debate.
“The world had other plans for us, Ez,” she whispers into the silence, and that’s when I realize that she’s as blurred as the scenery around us, that I can no longer see her as clearly as I used to, I can only remember—but at the same time, I can’t actually remember the exact shade of her eyes, or the exact shape of her smile, or the exact pitch of her laughter.
“Well, then I don’t want to live in that world.
” I cling to her memory the way a drowning man would a raft, like it might somehow sharpen her edges.
“I don’t want to live without you.” And this might be the very first time I’ve admitted it out loud.
All year, I’ve been racing towards this moment, searching for it, hoping for it, dousing the ache for it with drink.
So then why, now that I’m here, does it suddenly lack the feel of truth?
“I think you may have found yourself again, Ez,” Eve says, as though reading my mind.
“You always did need a purpose—watching out for us, it wasn’t just what you did, it was part of who you are.
A part you forgot, for a little while, but it never went away.
All you needed was to get your hope back. ”
“I don’t want hope, Vee—I want you.”
“I’m right here.” She places a hand to my heart, and despite the blur of her features, her touch is real and solid, a comfort and a surprise.
“The shadows can’t shatter love, Ezzo, no matter how hard they try.
Nothing can ever change it. Nothing and no one.
And being happy again won’t change it, either; our story will always remain ours.
” She’s fading faster now, waning, disappearing before my eyes.
But I don’t want her to go.
I want us to stay in this in-between forever, frozen in time.
Except I also want to go back to the court chamber; I want to help Cemmy and Chase make it out of that room alive.
I want to live to see Novi again, and Lyria, and Magdalena.
And more than anything else, I want to ensure that Raya survives the night.
Raya. Gods, just thinking her name ties my stomach in knots.
I saw the vision the future sent her—I don’t know how I saw it, but I did; I felt the inevitability in it—the need, the longing—and now all I feel is guilt.
Because how can I be here, with Eve, and even think about another girl?
How can I ever allow myself to replace her?
“Don’t question the good things when they come, Ez.
” Eve’s ghost merely smiles the dazzling smile that I remember.
“The only future I want for you is the best. I want you to live because you can and because you deserve to—and I want you to love because you deserve that, as well. Even if you choose to love a Shade,” she says.
Then with a force I’m not expecting, she pitches me back into the Gray.
*
The ringing in my ears is deafening, the pain in my head blinding, and the chaos raging around me a disorienting rattle to the brain.
Colors help me, what did I miss? The court chamber is alight with activity, though the tenor of the fear inside it has changed.
There’s still screaming but also screamed instructions, a frantic scrum of bodies, cries of relief, along with Shades in various states of consciousness, freed from their tables and stumbling like newborn deer.
I see Akari, holding up a trembling Saleen; Cemmy, working to rid a sobbing initiate of his needle; Chase, on one knee in the center of the chamber, his jaw set with concentration and his arms braced wide against the air, a terrified group of kids gathered behind him.
He’s casting. That realization dawns a split second before it’s joined by the rush of whys bubbling up in my veins.
The void is gone.
Oh, shit. All at once, I grow wise to the hungry storm of shadows, no longer cracked and wilting, but livid, and vengeful, and biting furiously at my shield.
At Chase’s shield. I quickly shake off the last of the fuzziness and take over the cast, relieving him of the burden of having to keep me from shattering, as well.
He’s really doing it, though. Projecting his In-Between like an Emerald, using the stolen power he drained.
From Alara.
I shudder as that reality pummels me with its full weight.
You’ll have to take her color. I don’t know why I’m so surprised when I’m the one who told him to do it in the first place, begged him to do it, in fact, even as his answering signs turned sharper and a disbelieving anger soured his face.
You know I can’t do that—it’ll kill her, he’d clipped.
But thanks to me, Alara was dying anyway, and since the choice was between doing the unthinkable or letting the unthinkable happen, it was no longer a question of if, but when, and Alara’s last act in this world was to help us stop her brother from destroying the Gray.
She let Chase take her color.
Just as she told me Adriel’s weakness, how to throw him off-balance so that I could rip the knife from her heart and stick it through his.
A void is still a man, after all—when you stab him, he bleeds. Dies.
Except you didn’t get that far. That much I remember clear as day, getting close but not close enough—so if Adriel’s gone, he must have been bested by someone else. Though if Chase was busy draining Alara and Cemmy’s job was to save Saleen, then who—?
Raya. Where the fuck is Raya? I’m instantly on my feet. If Akari’s here, then she must be, too, the Orange would have never left her behind, not unless she was—
Oh Gods. I finally spot her at the very back of the court, sprawled beside Adriel in a way that feels irrevocable, her chest still and silent with the absence of breath.
No. Absolutely not.
All I can think as I spring to action is that I cannot go through this again.
Not like this.
Not today.
Not when our story was only just getting started.
You don’t get to die, you hear me? I’m not letting it end.
I blink into my gift, searching out a Green from among the mayhem.
There’s still a whole rainbow of Shades in this room—and what looks like a dozen more racing towards it, which is another problem, sure, though it is the kind I’m able to prevent.
“Get the initiates out of here!” I yell for Chase and Cemmy to begin making their escape, to take Akari and Saleen with them.
They might yet require their magics if they run into those Shades on the way, Shades who’ll see two illegal Hues and nothing else, who won’t understand the crucial part they’re currently playing in keeping the shadows from sickening with Adriel’s plague, who won’t care about the senseless death of a few typics.
“But, Ez—”
No, no buts. “You have to go now, Cemmy.” I try to impress on her that this is need, not recklessness, an effort to save their lives, not throw mine away.
“I’ll be right behind you.” With Raya. That’s all the time I can spare arguing while she’s still slumped lifelessly on the other side of this chamber.
I also have to go now. I have to get her a Green.
“Hey you—come with me!” I practically snatch the shell-shocked acolyte off his feet, half dragging him across the marble.
He’s a slightly older Shade—sixteen or seventeen, maybe—and burly enough for the blood loss not to have left him uselessly dazed, especially now that the shadows are replenishing his color.
“Heal her,” I bark, though in reply, he merely shakes and shakes and shakes, his cheeks wet and his skin ruddy.
“Hey.” I snap my fingers in front of his face.
“She’s one of you, understand? A Shade. And she’s the only reason you made it off that table, so pull yourself together and fix it.
” My gruff method of asking finally sets his fear straight.
Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead.
As the Green loses himself to the healing, I try to make sense of how Raya ended up here, with only a cut to her palm but not breathing, lying next to what remains of the Divine Meridian.
She wasn’t even in the room when I endeavored to attack him; I don’t think she had any charms on her and there’s no sign of a weapon, and she’s an Indigo so it’s not as if she could have hit him with a spell.
Hells, I don’t even know if there is a spell that would wither a body like this, as though it’s been collapsed from the inside and then seared, wilted to ashes.
None of this is adding up.
Though for once, I don’t need it to.
I just need the Green’s magic to work.
And when, at long last, it does, I’m the one who stops breathing, and when her eyes flutter open, the rest of the court disappears.
I barely notice the Green scramble away from us or the way the chamber is slowly beginning to fill; all I see is her, and me, and this kernel of possibility, what we might one day become now that the life’s returned to her cheeks.
“Did it work?” she croaks, trying to blink herself back to the present. “Adriel—did I—? Is the void gone?”
“It’s gone.” With a soft hand, I pull her up to sit.
“You stopped him. I don’t know how you did it, but Adriel’s dead,” I say.
And then I do the very last thing I ever thought I’d do again—the very last thing I ever thought I’d want to do again, let alone so badly that every part of me aches—I lean my face into hers and I kiss her.
It’s a tentative kiss at first, little more than a chaste brushing of lips.
And it isn’t enough. The sudden hunger it ignites is insatiable, a spark kindling to a full-on blaze, burning brighter, raging hotter, dousing only when, all at once, Raya stiffens and pulls away.
“Gods—sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.” I should have asked permission before assuming she felt the same.
“No, that’s not—” The hesitation in her eyes is a bucket of cold water. It’s jumping into a freezing ocean when you don’t know how to swim. “I’m not her, Ezzo.” Raya’s voice is quiet, the charge in it gutting deep. “I’m not Eve.”
No, she’s not.
Nor do I want her to be.
Because I’m not looking to replace Eve—what we had can’t be replaced, it can only be remembered, and holding onto it too tightly almost cost me my friends.
So no, Raya’s not a replacement, she’s a chance to start again.
A chance at something completely unexpected—completely misguided—but as a Hue, my life has never been without risk.
And this is the first risk, in a long time, that actually feels worth taking.
“I know exactly who you are, Raya Wryvern,” I say, tilting her head up by the chin.
“That’s why I kissed you, and if it’s okay with you, I’d really”—really—“like to do it again.” Because it doesn’t much matter that we’re still at the Academy or that the room around us is now flooded with Shades.
Right at this moment, all that matters is her name on my tongue, and my hands in her hair, and the way she shudders when my fingers graze her skin.
Because it feels good.
And I’m done questioning the good things.