“Come on!” Tavia yelled. “We need to go!”
She pulled Karam toward the door, where the customers were now blindly running and screaming as their vision temporarily disappeared.
They spilled back out onto the streets of Rishiya and Karam ripped the glasses from her face.
“Have you considered trying not to get yourself killed every now and again?” she asked as they darted through the city.
“Not really,” Tavia said, struggling to keep up with her pace. “I think I’d find it boring.”
She didn’t need to look at Karam to know that she was rolling her eyes, but Tavia felt invigorated. She had the magic she’d come for, so all in all the trip to the city had been a roaring success. And with the warm breeze on her neck and fire of victory in her belly, Tavia felt like maybe all hope wasn’t quite lost.
Karam could call her reckless and the Crafters in the camp could call her a danger, but Tavia had a job to do. She had buskers to lead, and she was going to win this war and save Wesley, whether people approved of her methods or not.
2
Zekia
ZEKIA HAD A GUN.
She’d never had one before and she wasn’t even sure if she’d use it. She didn’t like how large it looked in her small hands, or how heavy it felt for something that held only six bullets. Six lives that could be ruined. Zekia’s hands were far smaller and could ruin far more than that.
Still, she had a gun.
It was best to have a gun when Wesley Thornton Walcott was conscious. Zekia had learned that the hard way.
The former underboss of Creije was handcuffed beside her, at the head of their army, eyes like charcoal as he stared into the bloody wreck of the district. The handcuffs were as unnecessary as Zekia’s gun, because everyone—even the people they were about to kill, who should have been too busy to notice—knew that Wesley could slip them in a moment.
The best the cuffs could do was slow him down, but if slowing Wesley down was an option, then Zekia would take it. He had fast hands and kept using them to try to kill members of their army. Though in fairness, Zekia had been using hers to do a lot worse, but his anger was never directed at her.
Of all the people he’d tried to kill, she was never one of them.
Maybe he was starting to understand that they were supposed to be by the Kingpin’s side together, as family.
Wesley was bruised but not broken, and he watched with unblinking eyes as they tore through Creije, a piece at a time. This was the first district they would take from the capital and it wouldn’t be the last.
One down, six to go.
It was dark out, and the once affluent High Town was now littered with soldiers, ash from the burnt-down houses of Creije’s wealthy elite smoldering behind them. Zekia could see the busker dormitories from here, where Wesley had made his name. The windows stretched in high arches, colored glass like rainbows across the building so that it almost looked like a place of worship. She imagined him growing up there, practicing tricks while the moon watched patiently above.
She liked this part of Creije, which mixed people rich in gold with orphans like Wesley who did what they could to survive. Two sides of the world, so close to each other. Living in perfect contrast, like the array of colors on the dormitory windows.
“You won’t kill me,” the man in front of her said.
Zekia looked down at him.
They had captured him all too easily a few hours ago, not long after they’d stepped off the floating railways and into High Town. There had been a lot of blood since then and a lot of screaming that Zekia hoped quickly to forget. But the moment they’d approached the district barricade and thrown this man to the ground, there had been an impasse.
He was on his knees and looking at Zekia’s new gun with a narrow glare. She didn’t know why—the gun wasn’t originally meant for him. Still, he glared, and the way his fellow soldiers paused and held their breath made Zekia wonder just how important his life was in all of this.
Was he a general?
Did he command them while Doyen Fenna Schulze ran and gave orders from the safety of her hideout in Yejlath?
“Killing you doesn’t matter,” Zekia said.”The future is what matters, and I’m going to fix it.”
The man spat on the ground by her feet. “You won’t win. Frjl will always prevail.”
The idea of freedom seemed funny to Zekia now. It was a dangerous thing to have and to be. Were these soldiers free as they followed orders to risk their lives and go against Dante Ashwood? Was Zekia free, trying to save the realms from a vision that had almost killed her?
If you knew the consequences of something, were you ever really free to choose what your heart desired?
“Creije will never fall.”
“You’re wrong,” Zekia said.
Conquering Creije would be hard, but not impossible, and once it fell, the other cities wouldn’t be far away. They looked to their capital as a beacon, following its example or trying to measure up to what it stood for.
If they took Creije, the rest of the Uskhanyan realm would come easy. Zekia was sure.
Almost.
As an Intuitcrafter, she should have had foresight, but now there were always far too many visions screaming in her head to make sense of. Too many futures that could come true and too many paths people could take. These days, guessing was the most accurate thing she could do.
She’d tried to focus and make sense of all the possibilities once, but she’d lost herself somewhere along the way, and now pasts and futures and their in-betweens swam through her veins like hungry fish.
It didn’t matter, though. Ashwood had shown her the only future that mattered.
He’d shown her how to fix everything.
Zekia raised the gun to the man’s head.
She’d never shot someone before. She’d never needed to.
She wondered if it would feel different to destroy a person without magic.
She heard the shuffle as the soldiers behind the barricade gritted their teeth and adjusted their weapons. She was standing in the center, between her army and theirs, and if she killed this man, they’d fire their guns and her Crafters would fire their magic.
More of the dead screaming through her mind.
Zekia closed her eyes. Her finger squeezed against the trigger and—
“Don’t.”
Wesley was a shadow over her.
“Kid,” he said, placing his cuffed hand on top of hers. “Don’t.”
Zekia looked up at Wesley.
He was a little skinnier than when they’d first taken him, with hollowed cheeks and a chin she pictured cutting her finger on. He was also very tall, especially when Zekia was standing side by side with him like this. Then again, Wesley was also a good few years older than her and Zekia suspected that when she got to be his age, she’d be just as big.
Wesley still wore a suit, but it was stained with his blood. And his eyes, stamped purple as the sleeplessness mixed into bruising, held pupils that were nothing but large black circles stealing all the color from him.
He had been stubborn and he had been punished for it, because sometimes hurting people was the only way to save them. Dante Ashwood had taught her that lesson well. And once she finally got Wesley to give in, he would be so proud of her strength.
When she finally got Wesley to give in, everything would be okay.