Chapter 22 #2
The Aether in my veins ignited. Not the controlled, channeled power I'd used before. This was raw. Unfiltered. Hers and mine, braided together into something that burned through every limit I'd ever known.
My hands glowed. Not silver. White. Blinding, pure, terrible white.
The first automaton reached me. I touched it.
The machine exploded.
Not from impact—from overload. My Aether flooded its circuits, its corrupted power meeting pure light, and the result was detonation. The automaton blew apart in a shower of steel and sparks.
I moved.
I was no longer fighting. I was unmaking. Every machine I touched died in a burst of light. Every collar within ten feet of me sparked and died, freeing the citizens from their paralysis. They fell, gasping, clutching their throats, their eyes clearing for the first time in months.
Rafe watched, his face finally showing something other than confidence.
Fear.
"Stop her!" he screamed at his guards. "Kill her!"
But the guards were hesitating. Their weapons were trained on me, yes, but they were also looking at the freed citizens. At the machines burning around them. At the man who'd promised them order and was now ordering murder in the streets.
I walked toward Rafe.
The white light surrounded me like a halo, like a crown, like a storm given human shape. The ground cracked beneath my feet. The air smelled of ozone and burning metal.
"This is what you don't understand," I said, my voice layered with Iraia's, with mine, with something older and angrier than both.
"You built a machine. A perfect, efficient, soulless machine. But machines break. And the thing that breaks them—" I reached him, grabbed his throat, lifted him off the ground, "—is the one thing you can't control."
I slammed him against the spire's wall.
"The human heart," I whispered.
The white light surged.
The Central Spire groaned. The Aether-nexus beneath us— the one Iraia had shown me—shuddered as my power met its corrupted core. For a moment, the entire city held its breath.
Then the spire began to fall.
Not explode. Crack. From base to summit, the steel and concrete split along fault lines of light.
The top tilted, slowly, majestically, like a tree felled by lightning.
Rafe screamed—actually screamed—as his monument to progress leaned and toppled into the plaza, crushing the remaining automata, sending a shockwave of dust across the city.
I dropped him.
He lay in the rubble, his suit torn, his shield broken, his face covered in blood and dust. The great Rafael Morales, Architect of Novus, reduced to a man gasping in the dirt.
I stood over him. The white light was fading, leaving me exhausted, trembling, barely able to stand. But I held the gun I'd taken from the guard. I pointed it at his head.
"Any last words?" I asked. "Teacher?"
He laughed, wet and broken. "You... you can't kill me, Vienne. You never could. I'm the only one who knows how to get back. The only one who knows the way... between worlds." He coughed blood. "Kill me, and you're stuck here. Forever. With them. With her."
I hesitated.
Because he was right. I didn't know how I'd come here. Didn't know if there was a way back, or if I even wanted one. But the knowledge—the possibility—was something only he possessed.
"Then you live," I said. "In a cell. In the dark. Until you tell me everything."
I struck him with the gun butt. Hard. His eyes rolled back. He went limp.
The plaza was silent.
I turned. The citizens—thousands of them, their collars dead, their eyes clear—were staring at me. At the ruin of the spire. At the body of the man who'd called himself their god.
Echo stepped forward. Her collar was gone, a burn mark around her throat. She was crying.
"Who are you?" she asked. Not in fear. In awe.
I looked at the gun in my hand. At the rubble. At the dawn breaking over the steel horizon.
"I'm the ghost who said no," I said. "And I'm taking you home."
The cheer started with her. Then spread. Then became a roar that shook the broken city louder than the falling tower.
I swayed. My vision blurred. The Aether had taken everything—every reserve, every drop of strength. I felt Iraia retreating, exhausted, whispering "We did it" before sinking back into the depths of our shared soul.
Strong arms caught me.
I looked up, expecting Kael, expecting Echo.
It was Cassian.
He was wearing armor, travel-worn and dust-stained. His leg brace was gone, replaced by a steel rod that clicked when he walked. His face was bruised, his eyes wild, his hair matted with sweat.
He'd ridden north. He'd found me. He'd walked into a war zone for me.
"You idiot," I breathed. "I told you to wait."
"And I told you," he said, lifting me into his arms, "that partners don't wait. They come."
He kissed me. In the rubble. In the dust. In the middle of a freed city and a fallen tyrant.
The citizens cheered louder.
And for the first time since I'd died on a rooftop in the rain, I let myself believe that maybe—maybe—the living was worth the dying.