Ahead of me, a cubed line of glitch floated like a cloud in the sky. I barely recognized it before I realized I should try to avoid it, and then before I could even think of how, I went through it.
The boots unequipped and my game vision sparked, and then went out.
The hair on my arms stood on end as I fell through the sparks. Stripped of powers, magic, or even my stats, I had nothing but the ever-approaching surface and the healing breastplate that Dagney needed. Gravity snatched me and the leap became a fall.
The wind ripped at my clothes, but I didn’t stop, not as I fell through thick and bristling clouds. The breastplate shook in my hand, the copper circles ringing like wind chimes. I was too high, my descent too fast. I’d made myself a meteor. The g-force pressed my neck backward.
I could see the castle, but it was nothing but a speck in the distance. I wasn’t going to make it. Not unless the boots restarted.
I opened the Breastplate of Healing. My only hope to survive was to put this on. Unless my extra lives would save me? How many did I have?
My stomach rolled. My time to make this choice grew shorter with every inch I fell. Come on boots, come on.
The extra lives might save my body here, but the impact would kill me for real.
My game vision flickered. I saw a flash of my stats, my health bar fading. And a warning. Bold and loud. This item can only be used by one player.
The breastplate would only work for one person.
I could save Dagney, or I could save myself.
There was no option three.
35
MCKENNA
I expected Dagney’s death to feel triumphant. I expected the light of leveling up to brighten my tired eyes, and to feel the relief of having one less person trying to kill me.
And I wanted some kind of justice for the hand she cut off.
I drank my hibisi and turned on stealth, moving away from where my hand dripped blood, moving where no one could see me. The skin at the end of my arm turned solid. A clip appeared at the end of the stub. I could attach a mechanical hand if I wanted. I glanced at the Historians I could recycle for parts.
But then I paused and glanced over.
I didn’t expect the look on Ryo’s face. I didn’t expect Grigfen to abandon his work, to walk away from the discarded death harness, and rush to Dagney’s side.
But they moved like they’d stopped playing the game.
They’d broken character when Andrew had died, but this was different. They worked to heal her as though the game didn’t matter without her.
The new Everstrider lunged through the Historians, hunting me with a sniff, as if she could track my smell.
Grigfen looked over his shoulder. “Don’t kill McKenna, Bluebird. If she dies in the game, she dies for real.”
“Disarm and imprison. Got it,” Bluebird shouted.
Bluebird … As in bluebird_ofdeath?
Why would Grigfen lie to his partner?
Stealth ended.
I didn’t have a place to hide. Bluebird lunged for me, her sword swinging. I fought back with my wings, but doubt had undercut my performance. She slammed her sword down and I blocked her again, spinning once. She hit the butt of her sword into my helmet, knocking me over.
I slammed into a Historian, the glass at my back shattering. I thought that might happen. I snapped a switch and my wings covered with a fan of gold.
Why would they add another player right now? They already had a team, and now someone came in out of nowhere? Why would they mess up the rising tension like that?
I spun and shot a blade. It missed her heart, the blade spinning wildly, cutting a line through her uniform sleeve. She gasped and grabbed her arm where the blade had marked a line of blood. I should have used a poisoned blade.
Next time.
“Does it hurt?” I asked with my queen’s smile.
She came from outside the game so there hadn’t been enough time for them to tell her the rules of this trick. I was going to catch them in their lie.
Her eyes lifted to meet mine. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
I froze.
How did she know to lie?
She showed me her palm, painted red.
I aimed my remaining blade launcher at her. She grinned, and quicker than I thought possible, she rushed for me, twisting in the air in some high-flying trick before she slammed her feet into my chest.
She stood over me with a sword in each hand held to my throat, her armored heels holding my arms down to the ground.
I tried to fight, but I couldn’t. This was not my glorious death scene ending. It was pathetic and confusing. Could the cameras just turn off for a second? I couldn’t remember the lines I’d written for this moment. I couldn’t imagine what my character would be feeling right now.
They felt pain?
She studied my expression. “I have a message for you. I know I do.”
Her grip stayed at her hilt, but she didn’t swing. She didn’t hurt me. Why didn’t they hurt me? Ryo had left, but Grigfen huddled over Dagney’s body, his back to me.
I aimed toward his back. My blade launcher had armed, but I couldn’t press the trigger.
This had to be a trick.
But why wouldn’t they use this trick to hurt me? Why didn’t they just finish me off?
“It was a message from your father. Something about a princess. Something.”
My dad? He always called me princess. “You need seer water.” My voice was ragged.
If she really had a message from my dad, I’d do anything to hear it.
“Does it really hurt?” I said in a soft voice. “Break character for a second. No tricks. No lies. Does it really hurt?”
She nodded and I closed my eyes. But there was no hiding from this.
So they felt pain. That didn’t mean anything.
Andrew.
I didn’t see it happen, but I knew from when I demonstrated the wings on the Devani princess what it had looked like. His mouth would have widened as the death wings he’d been wearing unfurled, the Whirligig engine humming. He’d look for me, but I wouldn’t even meet his eyes as the sharp golden wing folded out and stabbed through his back, coming out below his collar—the tips red with blood.
He would glance down at his chest, more surprised than in pain.
But he’d felt it.
I gave him a dramatic death scene, but I hadn’t bothered to watch.
Clouds gathered above Bluebird, blocking the moons I’d flown past to kill Sylvania. She’d nicked my dress with her blade, and I’d been so upset about my outfit that I’d shot her thirteen times. I remembered the way her blood gathered. The moment the light in her eyes dimmed.
They were hurt, but they’d gone home. They woke up. I knew they’d woken up.
But why would Grigfen have told the truth about the pain, but not about the players who’d died? I didn’t understand.
Her heels cut into my wrists, but I didn’t feel it. The shattered glass in my wings cut into my bare back, slowing dimming my health. But I didn’t feel any pain.
There was something different about me.
The sky shattered with a fresh glitch. There was something wrong with the game.
My breaths rasped. It was true.
Marcus.
Sylvania. I rocked my head back and forth. Catherine. Isabel. Sam.
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know.
I screamed but nothing was louder than my thoughts. There was something wrong with the game. I killed them. I really killed them.
Bluebird held her blades to my neck.
“Stop,” I croaked with a throat too raw for me not to feel it. “Please stop. I won’t hurt anyone anymore.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I … “The world was wide enough,” I whispered.
The pressure on my wrists lightened.
“What did you say?” Bluebird asked.
My hands were free. “I didn’t know.”
Behind Bluebird’s shoulders, a column of purple fell from the sky. Ryo.
I shot backward and my mangled wings lifted me to my feet. Stealth on. I flew past the players I’d killed, past the ruins of the stage I’d worked so hard to build.
I didn’t know.
I flit through the battle in the background. “Commander. Retreat!” I ordered to the Savak. My army exited the sky, and then it was just me and Ryo plummeting to the ground.
I pulled the anchor line with my surviving hand and spun it around him. He held a golden something to his chest and flinched backward as I approached.
I caught him around his ankles and dragged him up. He reached toward his hilt.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said. “I didn’t know it was real. I didn’t know.”
For a second he stared at me. Then he bowed his head and released a shaky laugh.
And for the briefest of seconds his loyalty shifted the brightest red.
36
BLUEBIRD_OFDEATH
The world was wide enough.
That was the message. That was it. A weight lifted from my back, and a light brightened on my arms. I’d accomplished my mission, even though I wasn’t the one to give the message. McKenna gave it to me.
Why wasn’t my brain working like it was supposed to?
I searched the battlefront. Devani and Devout scanned the skies for an attack that had stopped as the queen had flown through it. Grigfen still knelt by the injured girl’s side, feeding her hibisi while her wound festered at her stomach.
That was poison if I ever saw it.
“I’m out,” Grigfen said. “No, no, no. I need more hibisi.”
I stepped forward.
Everstriders always carried a pouch of hibisi blossoms at their belt. I handed him the whole pouch off my belt and then I stood over him, my blades in hand, searching for the Savak queen to go visible.
“Thanks, love,” he said. “Dagney, you’re going to have to chew. Hang on for me. Ryo’s almost back.”
The ballroom was an empty war zone, the ground scorched and folded like Kneult paper cranes. Empty Historians paused mid-step, while their partners lay destroyed, their raven cloaks charred, the cloying smell of burnt feathers mixed with the copper scent of blood. A Whirligig orchestra still played on, those instruments untouched by the violence.
There was a hole in the sound where the orchestra was missing important instruments.
There. In the sky. She flew toward us carrying something. I squinted, and it was as if my senses sharpened and I could see the distance much closer. No, it wasn’t something. Someone.
“Prince Ryo,” I said, judging from his purple cloak.
Grigfen looked up. “Oh thank God.” She was zooming toward us at breakneck speed.
I gripped my sword tight. “She’s using him as a hostage. We should gather the Devout and Devani—”
Grigfen touched my leg. I froze, the skin where he’d touched tingling. “No, her loyalty is purple. She’s on our side now.” He placed a blossom on Dagney’s dry tongue.
“That’s impossible. The Savak queen—”
He met my eyes, and I swear I heard bells. “You’ve got to trust me, Zoe.”
Footsteps thudded behind us as McKenna dropped Ryo on the marble floor.
But Ryo didn’t spare us a glance. He rushed to Dagney’s side, copper armor chiming as he ran. McKenna flapped her wings higher, abandoning us and this battle like we’d try to kill her if she stayed.
She wasn’t exactly wrong. She hovered over us. I think I could aim a spear and still hit her, but Grigfen asked me not to.
I trusted him. I didn’t know him at all, but I trusted him like I didn’t anyone else.
But why?
Ryo bent next to Dagney, pulling off her blood-damaged armor, pressing the copper plate to her chest. He wrapped the breastplate around her, tying the ribbons with gentle fingers.
Grigfen stood at my side, his face softened. “It’s working,” he said for my benefit. “She’s healing.”
Dagney gasped, and her gray cheeks brightened to a glowing pink. She opened her eyes and then Ryo bent and kissed her lips, his blood-painted fingers leaving a streak of red on her cheek.
I turned away, their moment too personal to observe, even for a former Historian.
“I’m sorry,” McKenna said from above, “I didn’t know.”
Years of Everstrider training had taught me the priority of battle. First, you save. Second, you heal. Third, you run in smacking.
We saved who we could, we healed who we could, and now it was time to fight.
I pulled Grigfen away from the rest of them. “We need to make a strategy,” I said. “I know you believe she’s on your side, but this is the Savak queen we’re talking about; she’s not the kind of person we should turn our backs on, or enlist on our side.”
“Our side?” he asked softly. How did I know his face well enough to see it soften? He saw me. It wasn’t through a crowded room. It wasn’t through a magic glass or a few thousand miles.
It was close enough to touch.
My eyebrow twitched. “You’re my ally. Right?”
That was what he said.
His skull grin cracked into the widest smile. “Is that what I am?”
I glanced around. The Savak were gone, the Devani and Devout tending to their wounded, or sleeping, weak with overuse of magic.
“She’s not going to hurt us, love.”
I let go of the hilt. My chest lightened as Voyager shifted into rest mode. “So we’re not…” I cleared my throat. “Fighting?”
“At the moment, no one is trying to kill us.” He moved closer like I was his victory, wrapped me in his arms, and lifted me off my feet. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
He lowered me to the ground. He gave a quivering smile but didn’t look away from me, not for a second. I should not feel this comfortable with a stranger. I’d never been good at talking with … well, anyone. I babbled when I was nervous, I said things wrong to nearly everyone I met, and then I would lie in bed for days afterward going over my foolish words again and again in endless blithering circles. But with this oddly painted, strangely sad, handsome no one, my muscles loosened, my heartbeat steadied.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world to step inside his shadow, to breathe in his smell—incense and tea, something herbal and softly sweet.
He pulled off his crown as though he was going to give it to me. It sloshed in his hand so he peeled back the leather that capped the metal, and inside clear crisp water glowed in the moons-light.
“Fancy a drink?” he asked.
“I’ve never drunken from a crown before.”
“If you’d prefer, I could fetch you a skull for a cup.”
“Oh no, I’ve done that thousands of times.” He grinned and I lowered my voice. “Seer water?”
“Yeah. I’ll watch your back.”
I drank.
* * *
After those last three notes played, my mind was finally my own. HOLY BATMAN I’m really here. Look at those stats! What skills do I have? Tracking. Yes. I knew my senses were stronger than I remembered. And my stamina and endurance were buffed like whoa. And …
Grig touched my arm and I squealed my loudest nerd squeal. “THIS IS THE GREATEST THING TO EVER HAPPEN! Lookit those graphics, it’s like we’re really here inside a video game!”
He held my face in his hands. “Only you would sneak into a deathtrap and squeal about the graphics.”
I leaned against his palm. “Oh, you’d do it too.”
His copper eyes specked in the light. “For you I would.”
I touched his cheek. I was so glad to have my brain back. So glad to know why I knew him.
I knew the way his lips curled when he smiled, I knew the silly faces he made when he thought he was funny, and the way his mouth dipped at the corner when he was sad, but there was no warning for the
way his kiss stole my breath. There was no preparing for the way his lips pressed against mine.
It was like going home.
When I dared peek after, he grinned with his painted eyes closed. His fingers grazed my cheek. “Ten out of ten, would play again.”
He kissed my cheek and then my lips again. This time my lips parted with his, and I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, and he held me tight against his chest. My insides bubbled like champagne and I felt like laughing, so I did, even though it broke through the kiss too soon.
His eyes shone, and when he closed them and rested his smudged nose against mine, a tear slid down his cheek leaving a line in the black. “I’m both devastated that you are here, and simultaneously embarrassingly grateful to see you.”
His grin changed to a straight line, his eyes steely as his focus shifted to behind me. I knew this look too. I reached for my sword before I turned to face an enemy.
A pulsing white line ripped open the sky.
37
DAGNEY
Ryo helped me up. The breastplate felt tight against my chest. He pulled me to him and kissed me again in victory. Kissing Ryo was like the moment the armor closed around my chest, as if his lips on mine had shut out the pain. I didn’t care about the people watching. I didn’t care that he saved my life and was probably going to rub it in my face like the jerk he was. I kissed him and my brain shut off every other thought I’d ever had except happiness. It felt like eating my favorite food, or snuggling under a blanket with a good book while it rained outside my window, or like the feeling when my highlighter markers were arranged in the colors of the rainbow. Like things were right and good and I didn’t have to die. I slid my hand around his jaw and held him closer. I didn’t die! That was worth celebrating.
I pulled back and beamed at him. “Let’s go win this thing.”
The sky cracked open.
That obnoxious sky. “And quickly.”
“Yes, now is not the time for snoggin’,” Grigfen said, his grin back where it belonged, although some of the makeup from his face had somehow marked up Bluebird’s cheek. I decided to be saintly and not mention it.
Ryo, however, pointed and laughed.
Glitch Kingdom Page 26
