“Let’s go home, then,” the Senator says.
Home. That cold manor stopped being my home before the Blackout. It’s a cage of a different kind. But if I can bide my time and wait for the Senator to leave a crack in the door, I can slip out and never look back.
Hopefully I can escape before helping the Senator become the President.
Three
Death’s Hold
MARIBELLE
Months ago—I can’t remember, four months, maybe five—there was a celestial on a street corner advertising her ability to see into the past and future. I’m not normally this desperate, but I was willing to try anything to uncover the truth behind my parents’ deaths. Atlas had warned me to not get my hopes up; I should’ve trusted his instincts more. Mama always said I had a tendency to get lost in my foggy mind and someone clear-headed like Atlas could be good for me. The celestial and her crystal ball were useless, but all this time later I finally have my answer: June, the specter with ghost blood, possessed my mother and framed her for the Blackout so the country would lose faith in the Spell Walkers.
Then June possessed me and made me kill Atlas.
I needed space from everyone, so I’m up on the sky deck of the Aldebaran Center, legs dangling over the edge, fourteen stories high, and the Crowned Dreamer’s starlight prickles my skin one last time before completely fading into the night. It’s done. Luna’s last shot of becoming immortal. I wouldn’t say no to crates of star-touched wine and boxes of blaze cake as a thank-you for the miracles Brighton and I worked tonight.
I did come away with one gift. The oblivion dagger twirling between my fingers is beautiful. Not because of its look, stars no. The rare dagger looks like rotted bone and carries the dark gray stains of all the ghosts that have been slain by it—most recently Luna’s parents. The dagger is deceptively heavy too, heavy like the celestial’s crystal ball, which I had hurled across her velvet-decked room once I realized her reading was a hoax, some side hustle to make money. The oblivion dagger is beautiful because it’s the weapon I’ll be able to use to end June forever.
I’m exhausted—beat down, bone tired, sore muscles. The last time I rested was when I collapsed onto Atlas’s corpse hours ago in the museum, immediately after my new powers revealed themselves to me and everyone around me in a ring of fire. But I can’t sleep without Atlas tonight. This feeling reminds me of those dark lonely nights after the Blackout, when I forced everyone away, even my then–best friend, Iris, who was grieving her own parents too. But then Atlas became a light. Some afternoons I needed him to help me out of bed. Other times I was strong enough to do it myself. Right now the idea of crawling into any bed without him terrifies me.
The cold wind blows back my dark hair. I wish Papa was around to braid it for me like he did when I was growing up. But he’s not.
Death has a hold on me, taking everyone I love.
Mama, Papa. Atlas. Simone, Konrad.
It didn’t have to be this way. If I’d known that the founders of the Spell Walkers were actually my birth parents, I would’ve understood that my power to glide was only a hint of what I’m capable of after inheriting Bautista de León’s phoenix abilities. I would’ve known that the strong instincts that kept me alive in combat were more of a sixth sense, an extension of Sera Córdova’s danger-detecting visions. I could’ve strengthened my powers and kept Mama and Papa at home before they left to try and save the world. Before they set our movement back by years.
I could’ve used my power to keep Atlas alive.
While we’re waiting to see what the deal is with Emil, and if Brighton is coming back with me after so we can track down the Blood Casters together, I should pick up Atlas’s car, which I left a couple blocks away from the Alpha Church of New Life. I don’t have a sheath yet for the oblivion dagger, and it’s too thick to fit into my boot, so I conceal it back inside the padded pocket of my power-proof vest.
I reenter the building through a pyramid-shaped door, and a pair of practitioners watch me cautiously, as if I might blow up the facility the way they believe my mother blew up the conservatory. These practitioners are on the younger side, maybe a few years older than me, so maybe they weren’t paying attention eight years ago when the Spell Walkers helped out a dozen Gleam Cares by raising millions for high-tech upgrades. People paid for photo shoots with my parents and Iris’s parents. And Iris and I felt like royalty when donors were requesting personal greetings and birthday wishes for the children in their lives. But the most money came from people who wanted to know what it felt like to fly—and not just fly, but fly with then-beloved Spell Walkers. Why go skydiving when the Luceros could take you flying around your neighborhood for a few minutes?
Things weren’t perfect then, and they’ll never be perfect, but I would kill for those times.
I will kill for those times.
I round the corner, and someone is sobbing. Prudencia is sitting on the floor, crying into her hands. Emil must be dead. I know he has a good heart, but it only seems fair. If Emil hadn’t released June when we finally had a hold on her in the Apollo Arena, then Atlas would be alive right now.
“Did Emil die?” I ask.
Prudencia can barely get any words out, and she doesn’t bother wiping any tears from her glossy brown eyes. “I don’t know. The practitioners are working on him already, but Brighton . . . he’s unconscious too, and they have a team trying to save him.”
From what I understand, Brighton and Emil are the closest people in her life. Prudencia’s parents were killed too, and now she’s also on the edge of losing everyone she loves. She only got involved in this war because she wanted to see this through with her best friends. Will she stay with the Spell Walkers if they die, or go back to her celestial-hating aunt? I don’t know.
“There’s still hope,” I say. It’s true—I don’t waste my breath on empty words. “Specters have been known to faint early in their journeys—after consuming elixirs, when their powers first surface. Their bodies have to adjust. And the Reaper’s Blood is a whole other level. I’m sure Brighton will pull through.”
“Brighton isn’t supposed to be a specter,” Prudencia says.
Well, no one is supposed to be a specter. Myself included. But Emil’s ambitions to create the power-binding potion Bautista and Sera were working on before they died feels like an impossible task. It may not be easy to get an experienced alchemist to turn someone into a specter, but that task isn’t as daunting as reverting every specter back into an ordinary person. That star has long fallen out of sight, as the old proverb goes.
“Brighton made his choice,” I say.
“And you chose to help him, which makes me want to send you flying through the wall . . . but I also know Brighton. Even if you didn’t help him, he would’ve shown up. If anything, you kept him alive.” Prudencia stares straight ahead at the opposite wall, which has a calming poster of celestials running on water. I can’t imagine it’s having any positive effect on her right now. “What was his reasoning for drinking the Reaper’s Blood?” she asks.
When Brighton first presented his plan, I could see through what some people, even Prudencia, probably mistake as charm. “He said he had to be the one to drink it. He said it would be too risky for me since we don’t know enough about the blood type of someone who inherited both celestial and specter properties.”