Chapter 38
If You Want It, Take It
I collapsed onto my back and looked up to see Matthias’s outline hovering over me, the golden strands of his hair framing his face like a moon-dust halo.
“Watch her!” Soren commanded before disappearing.
I groaned, shielding my eyes from the night sky with my arm.
My stomach was a cyclone.
My head was a battlefield.
My life was over.
“Glad you made it out,” Matthias said, crouching beside me. “Would’ve sucked if you got us all killed for nothing.”
He laughed.
Actually laughed.
And when Matthias laughed, it was always a string of bright notes that formed the melody of quintessential happiness. My own chest lightened at the sound of it, but twisted with the dizziness from my escape.
When the spinning faded, I sat up. Chapel burned in the distance, a lonely candle.
Crackling glass.
Wind.
Screams?
“I’m messing with you,” Matthias added. He placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. Then he sobered, voice hardening. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is,” I whispered.
“No. And blaming yourself only makes it worse. Don’t give Soren anything else to worry about. You have to hold it together for his sake.”
Muffled shouts from too close and off to my right drew our attention.
Without hesitation, Matthias yanked me up, and we dashed to find somewhere to hide.
I pressed my back against the trunk of a tree and tucked myself into the tangle of branches and leaves.
I spotted Matthias a couple of meters away, peeking at me through a much thicker layer of brush.
We both took a risk, peering into the dark to see who was coming.
Three figures crunched through the leaves, cloaked in stark shadows and flickering orange. One was significantly larger than the other two. This one only seemed to respond in hisses and hoarse whispers I couldn’t quite make out.
“Chapel is empty,” one of the smaller figures—though in no way considered small by human standards—rasped through that familiar Moderator mask filter.
Zade! I’d know that cadence anywhere. Even with the modulator on, I could recognize his speech pattern with the slightest hint of his voice.
A hiss replied, too low to catch.
“They had an underground bunker,” another Mod said. “But access has been severed. We’re searching for other exits.”
I pushed forward through the leaves.
“Extermins are on the way,” Zade said too loudly.
Then a chilling whisper from the most prominent figure cloaked in shadow: “Find the girl. Keep her alive. And bring her to me. That’s all that matters. Tell Azazel nothing.”
That voice.
The one from my dreams.
It’d been in my head.
I slapped my hand over my mouth to silence the gasp.
He’s the one who wants me.
And then another voice came to me. Gentle. Still.
“I am the voice of Truth. Choose to listen to me instead.”
Great. I’m not sure if I should be more worried about the fact that I hear voices or the fact that I just now realized I’ve been hearing voices.
The three figures turned back toward Chapel.
I took four steps into a run before a hand fastened around my arm. Matthias shook his head at me when I turned around. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“They’re going to infiltrate the bunker!” I hissed. “Didn’t you hear?”
“Not your job.”
I fought against his grip, and although nowhere near the iron hold that Soren often used, Matthias held firm.
“So, I just sit here and do nothing?” I asked with my lips ready in a snarl.
“That’s exactly right,” Salah said, appearing behind me.
She had her arms crossed over her chest and her chin high.
“I know you don’t give a crap about any of us, but if you can muster a thread of empathy just long enough for us to get as many people as possible out of there before crashing headfirst into trouble, that would be great. ”
My whole body recoiled at that.
The quiver in her voice betrayed the pose she had chosen, but the words were right on point, striking true. She’d gotten a bullseye on the first pull.
How could I have expected her to feel any differently after what I’d said and done?
“Alright, you two,” Matthias stepped in between us. “Catfight later. My job is to get Ellie here to the next Nest-point. Salah, stay until another team member arrives so that they can send everyone else along. Then you join me—us.”
She nodded.
I frowned and started plotting how I’d be able to sneak off from Matthias and prove Salah both right and wrong. If I could save even one person, wouldn’t that be worth it?
“Stay low and keep to the shadows,” Matthias whispered as he tugged me further into the thick trees.
We wound our way through the woods, sometimes veering away from Chapel, sometimes running parallel to it.
Every second dragged, each breath laced with urgency.
The debilitating weight of what we were leaving behind pressed down on me.
The Tower was slaughtering people we knew as we ran like cowards.
It wasn’t long before we emerged into a clearing, surrounded by thick walls of brush. At the center stood a man with a long beard and glowing tattoos.
Professor Onezimuth.
“The others will be here soon,” he said, his voice low.
The moonlight caught his arm, revealing a fluorescent snake coiled around it.
Is he the mole?
I hadn’t even let myself ask the question until now. He looked the part. So did Marigold, though—pure-faced venom. Or Adriel, always eager for war. It could be anyone, but I hoped it was someone I already hated.
We stood in silence, bracing against the dark until a distant shout broke through.
I darted to the tree line. Chapel glowed brighter—its flames rising like a flare. A funeral pyre being devoured.
More shouting but closer this time.
Salah. Veda. Winifred.
I recognized their voices crying out in harmony and surged forward to meet them, but Matthias’s hand clamped around my arm, then my mouth.
“Shh!” he hissed. “They could be mimics. Wait.”
Onezimuth stepped to the edge of the clearing, passing me. Veda reached us first, wrapping me in a quick, desperate hug before steering me back further into the circle and away from the trees.
Salah and Winifred arrived seconds later, rushing towards us. Onezimuth lingered at the tree line, his gaze searching the darkness for everyone else, most likely.
“Where’s Marigold?” Matthias asked, too casually, his hands sliding into his pockets, and his attention clearly on Salah.
“She was right behind us,” Salah said as she looked over her shoulder, panting from still trying to catch her breath. She peered toward the trees with her brows furrowing.
The fire at Chapel flared again with us all looking on. It was spreading, stretching into the tree line, ready to consume.
And Marigold was nowhere in sight.
Matthias bolted back into the woods without a word.
A gust of wind tore through the clearing at the same time—and suddenly, Soren appeared, Zuri limp in his arms.
She would usually look small in his hold, but tonight she seemed especially fragile with her red hair blackened in soot.
Soren set her down in the middle of the ring. The others rushed to her, and I moved close enough to see over their heads.
Relief swelled in my chest. She was alive.
Zuri’s freckled skin was covered in more ash, and a few burns littered her skin here and there, but her eyes were open, and she was sitting. She let out a small whimper at Onezimuth’s hand brushing her hair out of the way to check a substantial burn on her neck.
Then Soren was gone again, disappearing past me and back toward the hell I caused.
“Ezra!” Salah cried out, racing past me toward the old man now hobbling into view.
She threw herself into him, sobs muffled by his shoulder. He patted her back gently.
“It’s alright, Salah,” he murmured.
Once she’d calmed enough, he stepped back and addressed the rest of us.
“It’s going to be alright, everyone,” Ezra spoke with smoke-ravaged exhaustion. His eyes landed on each person in the clearing without bias. “We have plans in place for this.”
Farren slipped in quietly behind him, looking as pristine as ever save for the lone black smudge on her cheek.
Winifred hovered nearby, her hand resting on Ezra’s shoulder.
“We’ll wait for Marigold, Matthias, and Adriel,” Ezra continued.
He didn’t mention Soren because we wouldn’t need to wait for him.
He’d hunt me down anyway. It was implied that wherever I went, Soren would shadow.
“Then move to the next Nest point. Once we reach our first safe house, we can discuss the next plan of action. Rest for now if you can. This night will only get longer.”
No one rested, not really. How could we?
Salah, Farren, and Onezimuth sat with Zuri, tying strips of their clothing around her wounds—healing herself not being a part of her Charism, unfortunately.
Meanwhile, Winifred leaned into Ezra and whispered something I couldn’t quite make out.
I wanted to listen, but I wanted to escape everyone’s attention, their rightful judgement, more.
I edged back to the clearing’s border, my feet dipping into the shadows with the same heady effect as if I stood on a cliff overlooking the sea on a stormy night. Soren was out there. Matthias. Riaan.
“I am faithful,” said the small voice somewhere behind my left ventricle. “I will protect you from the evil one.”
“You know where it is?” Winifred asked, not quietly enough.
Ezra answered, softer, “Certainly in my office still.”
“If you want it, take it,” a voice hissed from the nape of my neck like fingers crawling up toward my scalp.
“And what about the other one?” Winifred asked.
If Ezra replied verbally, I didn’t hear it.
“You good?” Farren said, suddenly appearing behind me, a hand slapping onto my shoulder.
I held back my complaint about her interrupting my eavesdropping. “Mmhmm.”
She inched closer and tilted her head so that ours touched before she whispered, “The books are still there. I’m gonna get them if you want to come with me.”
I pulled back and looked at her with one brow cocked. I made sure to match her whisper.
“Books?”
She nodded her head back toward Ezra and Winifred, who had gravitated further from us and were now well out of earshot.
“The Garden Tomes,” Farren whispered so low now that even I could barely hear her.
The Living Tree and The Knowing Tree.
“The answers you need,” hissed that less favorable voice. “And the way to your true destiny, on the throne beside me.”
“They’ll help you,” Farren whispered. “And they’ll help all of us. They have answers we can’t find anywhere else.”
Morally, I should have wanted to help fix what I’d broken, but mostly, I wanted answers to the questions still bubbling up inside of me.
I turned fully toward her and gave the slightest nod.
Her eyes sparkled with her usual mischievous light. She tried to position herself to whisper again without looking as if that was what she was doing. “You go first. I’ll follow. Tell them I went after you. I’m the strongest one here; it’ll make sense.”
I nodded again, the slightest dip of my chin.
Without needing any more of a promise from me, Farren moved to join the group tending to Zuri.
I took as few glances over my shoulder as possible until no one was watching and then leapt off the edge of that cliff and into the shadows.