Stef leaned toward me, shouted by my ear. “Why aren’t we leaving?”
My tortured voice wasn’t even as loud as hers, but I tried. “Gray means outside. Black or white means inside.”
She looked ready to cry, but nodded and hauled herself higher on the archway. One foot on the left edge, one on the right. She positioned herself over it like a spider waiting to pounce.
I understood. The second the portal turned to gray, we were going through. I hastened to follow her example, screaming to Cris as loud as I could that we were ready.
But when it did flicker and the black became smooth gray, I wasn’t prepared. My foot had slipped and I was trying to push myself up with just one leg. All my muscles felt shredded, though, too worn to move.
Stef grabbed my wrist and dragged me through the gray archway just as it began to change.
Silence.
Real silence, not the temple unsilence where not even my ears would ring.
And air, windy and cold, but it didn’t try to pull me places. It was thick enough to breathe.
Frigid skin pressed against mine, and I opened my eyes to see Sine above me. Her mouth moved as though she spoke, but I couldn’t hear, so I just blinked and breathed and waited for my muscles to melt. For now, at least, they were too cold to hurt. I reveled in the ability to lie flat on my back and not be moving.
“Ana.” Sine sounded far away. “You have to get up.”
I turned my head to find Stef staring up at Councilor Frase. She looked the way I felt. Dull. Not really here.
The market field cobblestones had never been so beautiful.
“Ana!” Sine’s shout brought me back to myself. “Get up before I find someone to carry you.”
That didn’t sound like a bad idea at the moment, but as I regained control over my body, I remembered market day, Deborl’s speech, Meuric dying in front of everyone, and the resulting mob.
I sat up so quickly Sine almost didn’t dodge fast enough. “Where is Sam?” I tried to make my eyes focus on her again, but I’d moved too fast, and dizziness swarmed inside my head.
“Hospital.” She stood and offered a hand. I climbed up by myself when I saw Stef finding her way to a more vertical position, too. “With everything that happened the other day, he received a few serious injuries, but he’ll live. He just woke up an hour ago.”
I wanted to feel numb, not vainly try to patch the cracked dam of emotions. Sam. Cris. Janan. Soon I was going to break.
Just not in front of anyone. Please.
“What day is it?”
“You’ve been missing for two days.”
It felt like a month. Maybe Cris had managed one last favor, letting us out as close to the time we went in as possible.
The dam inside me strained. I should have stopped Cris. I’d as good as killed him.
“Where’s Deborl? I’m going to electrocute him and then set him on fire—” Stef gasped as she leaned on Frase’s shoulder, hiding her face.
“Deborl and his friends are in prison.”
“Prison?” I could hardly imagine good news anymore. “What about Wend? He was there, too.” Though Deborl had shot him….
Sine combed her fingers through my tangles. “Wend is dead.” Lines creased her face as she frowned, and a tear dropped from crevice to crevice. “None of them will trouble newsouls again, though it’s only fair to tell you that they were not ignored.”
“I need Sam.” I needed to tell him everything that had happened.
“Of course. Corin, please fetch Dossam.” She signaled to someone behind me—Corin, presumably—and footsteps retreated. “Where is Cris? They said he was with you.”
I gazed at the temple, cold and white and not quite as evil if Cris was still in there. Sam had said Cris had never done anything terrible to anyone. Even after learning they’d all sacrificed newsouls for reincarnation, I still believed that. He’d sacrificed himself for us now.
But I couldn’t answer Sine’s question.
I was going to break.
I wasn’t sure how long I stood there, holding myself together with nothing but threads, but eventually a familiar shadow fell next to mine.
My muscles felt like liquid as I lifted my hand just enough that Sam’s closed around it, and then his arm closed around the rest of me.
The dam broke and everything spilled out. Sam hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe, or maybe the sobs choked me. He touched my hair and face, kissed me. His affection was featherlight, as though he was afraid of crushing me.
I cried into his shirt even though there were other people here. Stef, Sine, Frase. People I didn’t know. I wanted to hide, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to walk. Even now, Sam mostly held me up.
Sam, who, five thousand years ago, had taken immortality knowing the price. How could I ever look at him the same way?
But I couldn’t bear to pull away from him. Maybe I wouldn’t tell him; it would be hard enough for both of us to deal with the fleetingness of my existence.
I would just die.
Where would I go? What would I do?
So lost in myself, and in Sam’s arms, I almost didn’t notice the commotion around the curve of the temple.
“What’s going on?” I swallowed more tears.
“Sylph. Don’t worry. They’ll capture it and set it free outside Range.” He started to adjust his hold on me, but I straightened and pulled away. “What is it?” Concern lined his face.
“I just had a horrible thought.” I wanted to be wrong, but my mind worked no matter how I tried to ignore it. “Help me get there before they put it in an egg.”
He looked uncertain, but kept me upright as I limped toward the crowd gathered around a panicked sylph. The tall shadow hummed and sang, caught in the circle of people with brass eggs. It could have burned any of them, but it stayed in the center and shifted as though trying to decide what to do.
Then it saw me.
I gathered my strength and gave Sam’s hand a squeeze. “Let me through.” My voice cracked, and I had to say it again, but the team with sylph eggs backed off. Maybe they remembered Deborl’s claims that I could control sylph.
I stepped through the line of people, Sam close behind, and Stef after him. The column of smoke and shadow grew still and its songs silent. It looked at all of us and slumped, somewhere between relief and exhaustion.
It was too human.
“We shouldn’t have let him do it, Stef.” I lifted my hand toward the black smoke. People hissed, but when my fingers passed through, there was only uncomfortable warmth. The sylph hummed, calmer.
I raised my other palm toward the midnight curls, but it shivered away from me as heat grew, like it had lost control.
“Oh.” Stef sounded like she wanted to be sick. “Cris?”
The sylph twitched—acknowledgment—and a tendril of shadow blossomed like a black rose, then fell to my feet.
I clutched my chest, my heart caged inside. We’d let him sacrifice himself for us, and now he was cursed—
Cursed.
Sylph were cursed.
Cris had said there’d been no sylph in the beginning. I still didn’t know how they’d been cursed, but I knew what Cris had done.
“Oh, Cris.”
The shadow rose vanished, and the sylph floated between a pair of guards—who stepped aside to let him pass. He flowed like ink down East Avenue, and Sine muttered into her SED. “There’s a sylph going through the Eastern Arch. Open the gates wide and let him be.”
31
HEARTBEAT
AFTER SPENDING A few days in the hospital, I was taken to the Council chamber. The remaining Councilors were there—nine now, since Deborl was in prison—but none of them looked happy to see me. Most just stared at the items on the table: a stack of leather-bound books, a handful of diaries, and a small silver box.
This wasn’t quite everything Deborl had stolen from me, but these things were the most incriminating. The music…
I slumped in my chair, grateful when Sam sat next to me; they hadn’t let anyone visit while I was in the hospital.
“Today’s session is closed.” Sine focused on me, her gaze hard and holding back all emotion. “And it will probably stay closed. Typically we are in favor of sharing our decisions with everyone in Heart, but this—Ana.” She said my name like heartbreak.
Everyone stared at me, but I didn’t look away from Sine. I just waited.
“Deborl’s methods were reprehensible, but he did uncover several unfortunate truths.
“First, you were in possession of Menehem’s research.” She pressed her palm on the diaries, as though she could crush them into dust. “The same research that describes how he created Templedark. You lied to us. You hid information regarding our existence and our history. Regardless of whether Menehem left the research in your care, it was never yours to keep.”
I clenched my jaw and said nothing, because nothing I might say would help. I had kept the research. I had lied. Those things were true.
“Second, there’s Meuric.”
The name alone conjured memories of his stench, his grating voice, and his manic laughter when he told me that Janan ate souls. I shuddered and swallowed the taste of acid in my throat. Below the table, Sam took my hand and squeezed.
“Is what Deborl said true, Ana?” Emotion cracked through Sine’s voice when she asked, “Did you kill Meuric?”
Had I? I’d thought so before, but then he was alive in the temple. He would have stayed alive, but Deborl brought him out. Both Deborl and I were responsible, but if I hadn’t stabbed and kicked Meuric to begin with… “It was self-defense. He tricked me into the temple. He was going to trap me there. We fought. I won.”
“And you decided not to tell anyone.” Sine glanced at Sam, probably knowing I’d told him, but if she was going to punish him for not coming forward, she wasn’t going to do it now. “That brings me to the third complaint.” She touched the temple key and books, and confusion flickered across her face. The other Councilors, too, seemed unsure what they were looking at.
“Those were Meuric’s,” I offered. Technically the books weren’t, but he could have shared them with the community. He’d decided not to.
“And yet,” Sine said, “when you came into possession of them, you hid them.”
It wasn’t like anyone else would have remembered them. Deborl would have taken everything, and I would have no answers.
Maybe I had too many answers.
“Do you remember what happened to Cris?” My voice caught on his name.
The Councilors glanced at one another, muttering, until Sine shook her head. “He was killed during the mob on market day.”
My fists balled up and my jaw ached from clenching it, but there was no point in arguing. They wouldn’t remember that Cris had become a sylph, or what Janan did to newsouls, or that they’d all agreed to bind themselves to him in the first place. The forgetting magic was too strong.
They’d only remember that they didn’t trust me. That I’d lied. That I’d kept things from them.
“Ana.” Sine leaned on the table. “I know the newsouls are important to you.”
She had no idea.
“The Council had several emergency meetings after market day. We did listen to what you had to say, and we’ve already put laws in place to make sure newsouls are protected. Anid and Ariana are safe. So are any others born.”
And me? I’d never feel safe again. Neither would those inside the temple. Still, it was more than I’d expected. “Thank you.”
“But,” she said, “I’m afraid given what we’ve discussed today, the Council has decided to revoke your status as a guest in Heart.”
Everything inside of me spun, dropped, slammed. She couldn’t do that.
“Be reasonable—,” Sam started, but Sine held up a hand to stop him.