by Laini Taylor
“They weren’t babies, though,” said Sarai. “Most gifts manifest at four or five, if not later, and that’s when they were taken.”
That made a difference. Could Wraith have carried children that age? Even if she could, children would remember it, surely, in a way babies wouldn’t. And if it were true, and the world was full of men and women who’d been born in a floating metal angel and carried from it by a huge white eagle that could vanish in thin air... wouldn’t there be stories?
“I don’t know.” Lazlo sighed, rubbing his face. He was feeling his fatigue. They all were. “What is she?” he asked. “The bird. Do you know? Did she belong to the gods? Was she some kind of pet, or messenger?”
“She?” repeated Feral. They had never thought to assign the bird a gender. “You keeping calling Wraith she.”
“Eril-Fane did,” Lazlo told them. “As though he knew her.”
“Maybe he knows something we don’t,” said Ruby.
“I’m sure he knows a lot that we don’t,” said Feral.
Sarai agreed. “He lived here for three years. He learned enough about the gods to kill them. He must have found out their weaknesses, and who knows what else.”
“We could talk to him,” Lazlo ventured.
Talk to her father? Meet her father? A thrill of anxious excitement raced through Sarai, but the anxiety quickly swallowed the excitement so that what was left simply felt like fear. Would he even want to meet her? Unconsciously, she glanced at Minya. The two were so tangled in her mind, all blood and vengeance and strife.
But what she saw on the bed pushed all thought of Eril-Fane from her mind. She gasped and pointed, and the others spun to look, stricken, sure to find Minya awake behind them and smiling her malevolent smile. But she wasn’t awake, or smiling.
She was simply gray.
. . .
“Is she dying?” cried Ruby. “Have I killed her?” Because Minya looked like she was dying, and what else could it be but the potion? She was
the color of ashes, of stone, and only Lazlo knew what it meant. He didn’t hesitate, but scooped her into his arms and laid her right down on the floor.
“What are you doing?” Feral demanded.
“It’s okay,” Lazlo said. “She’ll be all right. Look.” He took her little hands in his, one at a time, and opened her curled fingers to press her palms to the floor. He held them like that, palms flat against the metal. Her legs were touching it, too, and it wasn’t long before it was obvious: Her blue was coming back.
Sarai took a deep breath. Minya’s death also meant her own, and she’d braced for it for a terrible second. Minya had looked so ill, but she was fine now, bluer every second, and still sleeping peacefully. “What happened?” she asked Lazlo.
“She wasn’t touching mesarthium,” he said. He shook his head. “Stupid. I should have thought of it. But it happened fast.” He marveled. “I’d never have thought it would be that fast.”
“What?” demanded Ruby. “That what would be that fast?”
“Her fading,” he said, looking at his own hands. They were fully blue now, of course, but he remembered how, down in the city when he’d still been human, his hands had turned gray when he touched mesarthium. It had taken days for the tinge to wear off, but Minya hadn’t been lying here for much more than an hour. “It was a lot slower for me.”
“Fading?” asked Sparrow.
He stopped and looked around at them, realizing something. They were all barefoot, in constant contact with the metal. He said, “You know how it works, don’t you? How it’s the mesarthium that makes you blue, and gives you your power, too?”
In fact, they didn’t know. The metal had always been there, and they had always been blue. They hadn’t guessed the one was a consequence of the other, and the notion was at once obvious and staggering. How had they never realized? Lazlo explained it as well as he was able, from what he knew of himself: As a baby, he had been gray. “Gray as rain,” a monk had said, thinking he was dying. But the color had faded long ago, and he hadn’t thought anything of it until last night, when he pressed his hands to the anchor and turned first gray, then blue.
“Do you mean to say,” Sparrow asked intently, “that if we were to stop touching it, we would become human?”
Ruby straightened up. “We could be human?” she asked. “We could live as humans? In the world?”
“I suppose you could, if that’s what you wanted.”
Sarai asked softly, “Would you want that?”
No one answered. It was too big a question. They’d all daydreamed about it, Sarai too. They’d looked at their reflections and pictured themselves brown, wearing human clothes, doing human things. Above all, they’d imagined meeting new people who didn’t look at them the way the ghosts did, with loathing that pierced their souls.
“You’d lose your gifts,” Lazlo pointed out.
“But they’d come back if we touched mesarthium again? Yours did,” said Sparrow.
“I guess so.”
It was a lot to take in. They made Minya a new bed on the floor, with a pillow under her head and a folded blanket under her body, leaving her legs and hands in contact with mesarthium. After some discussion, they made a kind of gruel by watering down the mashed kimril, and Sarai spooned dribbles of it between Minya’s lips while Lazlo held her semi-upright. The realities of caring for someone unconscious began to sink in, and it was all the clearer to Sarai that this was a short-term solution.
Ruby took the next watch, and held the green bottle between her knees, her eyes fixed on Minya’s for any flutter of lashes that might signal her waking. The others left them there. The sun was edging toward the horizon, and Sarai still didn’t know if she’d rather it speed up or stop.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that Minya was waiting for her, even in her dreams, perhaps perched in a too-big chair just like the one at the head of the table, with a quell board set up and a smile on her face, the game already in play.
Chapter 19
First Ghost Nightfall
Sarai led Lazlo out onto her terrace to watch the sun set behind the Cusp. With the ghost guards all inside, they had it to themselves: the whole open palm of the seraph.
“That’s where I fell.” Sarai pointed. She’d slid from the pad of the thumb, down the scoop of the palm, and right off the edge near the fifth finger. Lazlo’s jaw clenched as he looked around. He’d almost landed here in the silk sleigh. His first sight of Sarai—his only sight, he realized, of her both alive and real—had been here when she’d screamed from her doorway “Go!” and saved his life, and Eril-Fane’s, Azareen’s, and Soulzeren’s, too. Right in this spot, she’d both saved their lives and lost her own.
“There should be a railing,” he said.
Of course, now that seemed like a good idea. “I never felt unsafe here,” Sarai said. “I didn’t know the citadel would tip.”
She went to the edge to look out. It wasn’t an edge, per se. It curved up at the sides to form a low, sloping wall. Enough to keep one from walking off the side, but not enough to catch a person if it were to tip. And though Lazlo was determined that that wouldn’t happen again, still the sight of Sarai standing there raised the hairs on his arms. He willed a railing to sprout up before her.
“Silly,” she said, running a palm over it. “I can’t fall now. Haven’t you realized? I can fly.”
With that, she sprouted wings from her shoulders, like the ones from their wingsmith dream. Fox wings, they’d been, of all things, covered in soft orange fur. Those had been on a harness. These grew right from her shoulders. Why not? She spread them wide and fanned them down, and lifted into the air. She couldn’t go far. She couldn’t fly away. Minya’s tether held her here, but it was still a thrill. It felt as though she were really flying.
Lazlo reached up and caught her by the waist, and drew her down into his arms, and as fine as it was to fly, it was better to land like this—to moor against him and make herself fast. She settled in, arm
s around his neck, closed her eyes, and softly kissed him. She kissed the side she hadn’t bitten, and she was careful. She only brushed her lips against his, softly parted, playing. Lightly, she licked with the tip of her tongue. His met hers, just as lightly.
She told him what he’d told her a few nights before, when they’d had their first awed inkling of what a kiss could be. “You have ruined my tongue for all other tastes,” she whispered, and felt his mouth smile against hers. There was sound in their breathing, the softest of sighs. Their bodies remembered the heat from before, his lips closing warm on the tip of her breast, and their chests, skin to skin, so brief before the bite.
And the heat leapt alive—a fire licked by winds. Licked and sucked, deep and sweet. They kissed—not lightly, no, not now.
Lazlo winced. There was blood. They’d reopened the bite. He made no move to stop. He held Sarai close, and kissed her. Her feet were off the ground. Her fingers were in his hair. They were tangled in each other on the seraph’s open palm. Under her slip, her elilith pulsed silver. It wanted Lazlo’s lips, his hands, his skin, his fire, as she wanted his weight, rocking with her, his heat, filling her. He wanted to trace her tattoo’s shining lines and taste it, and feel it, and make it glow, and make her purr. Neither of them knew anything at all. But their bodies knew what bodies know, and wanted what bodies want.
They wanted, but they parted, with wildfires in them and blood on their tongues. “I want...” Sarai murmured.
“Me too,” Lazlo breathed.
They gazed at each other, awed that fires could kindle that fast, and frustrated that they couldn’t let them kindle. Sarai had only meant to kiss him, and now she wanted to climb him, consume him. She felt like a creature, fanged and hungry, and...she liked it. She let out a shaky laugh and loosened her hold on him, sliding down so her feet once again met the ground.
The friction made him close his eyes and take a steadying breath.
“Your lip,” said Sarai with a grimace of apology. “It’ll never heal at this rate.”
“I like this rate,” said Lazlo, his voice at its roughest—as it was, Sarai was learning, in moments of grief or desire. “I can always get another lip,” he said, “but I’ll never get this moment back.”
Sarai cocked her head. “There’s nothing at all wrong with that statement.”
“No, nothing. It’s perfectly true.”
“Lips probably grow on vines somewhere.”
“It’s a big world. Chances are good.”
Sarai smiled and felt like a silly girl, in the best possible way. “I like this lip, though. I’m appointing myself its protector. No kissing until further notice.”
Lazlo’s eyes narrowed. “That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had.”
“Think of it as a challenge. You can’t kiss, but you can be kissed. I should make that clear. Just not on the mouth.”
“Where, then?” he asked, intrigued.
She considered the matter. “Your eyebrow, for example. Probably only there. Not your neck,” she said, a glimmer in her eye. “Or that place right behind your ear.” She brushed it with her fingertips, sending a shiver through him. “And absolutely not here.” She traced a slow line down the center of his chest, felt his muscles tense through the linen, and wanted to lift his shirt and kiss his skin right then and there.
Lazlo seized her hand and pressed it to his hearts, which were slamming against the wall of his chest. He gazed at her, all astonishment and simmer. How his dreamer’s eyes shone. Sarai could see herself in them, and the setting sun, too: a bit of blue in each iris, some cinnamon and pink, and twin swaths of glowing orange glazed over gray. “Sarai,” he said, and his voice was even rougher than in grief or desire. It sounded broken and put back together with half its pieces missing. It sounded ravaged and sweet and perfect. “I love you,” he said, and Sarai melted.
It had been wrong, earlier, in the gallery, with Minya and ghosts and promises and threats, but here and now, it was right. It was perfectly right, and proved Sarai a poor protector of Lazlo’s lip after all. She kissed him. She gave the words back to him, murmuring, and kept them, too. You could do that: Give them back and keep them. “I love you” is generous that way.
And when the sun touched the Cusp and sank away behind it, they stood at the railing Lazlo had made and watched light diffuse through the demonglass—the thousands of giant skeletons melted and fused to make a mountain—and a drumbeat of nerves kicked off inside Sarai.
How strange that this was her first ghost nightfall. She hadn’t even been dead a full day. Would her moths burgeon, or had she lost them, too?
It was time to find out.
. . .
From the beginning, Sarai’s gift had manifested as the need to scream. Her throat and soul demanded it every nightfall. If she tried to resist, the pressure would build until she couldn’t abide it. This thing that was in her, it had to come out. It was who she was.
Or it had been.
Darkness settled slowly and Sarai waited for the feeling, the burgeoning of moths within her. But she felt nothing—no fullness, no scream. She put her hand to her throat as though she should feel the thrum of them in her, waiting to take shape where her breath met air.
There was nothing. No thrum, and, of course, no breath. She looked at Lazlo, stricken.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I can’t feel them.” Sparks of panic lit through her. “I think they’re gone.”
He ran his hands down her arms and back up, so he was holding her shoulders. “It might just be different now,” he said. “It might feel different.”
“I don’t feel anything.”
“How does it usually work?” he asked. He wasn’t panicking, but his hearts were in his throat. Sarai’s gift had brought her to him— into his mind and his life—and he loved being in dreams with her. It was better than any story he’d ever read. It was like being inside a story and writing it all around you, and not alone but with someone who just happened to be as magical and beautiful as a fairy tale made real.
“I scream,” said Sarai. “And they fly out.”
“Do you want to try screaming?”
“But I scream because I can feel them, and I need to, to let them out. But there’s nothing.”
“You could still try,” he said with such sweet hopefulness that she almost felt hopeful, too.
So she did. She’d never liked anyone to see her do it. She’d been ashamed. She’d known it must be revolting, to see a hundred moths fly out of someone’s mouth, but she didn’t worry that Lazlo would think so. She didn’t even turn away, but stepped back, in case it worked, so that moths wouldn’t fly right in his face. And then she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, imagined them, summoned them, and...screamed.
Lazlo watched, intent. He saw her lips open, and her fine white teeth part, and he saw her rosy tongue, which just a moment ago he’d savored with his own, and he saw...He took a small, sharp breath.
He saw a moth. It was twilight dark, purple black, and its wings brushed her lips as it emerged. They were plush, like velvet nap. He saw antennae like tiny plumes. He started to smile, relief swelling in his chest, but some cautious part of him paused.
And then the smile faded. The relief died. Because the moth... vanished.
No sooner did it leave her lips than it simply ceased to be.
There was another behind it. It met the same fate. Another, another. The same. They came pouring out, and all of them vanished the instant they left her lips. Lazlo remembered the birds they’d made that morning in her room: his, mesarthium, hers, illusion. When she’d sent them airborne, his had flown, but hers had vanished just like this.
Her ghostself might be infinitely transmutable, but it had this limitation: Her illusion had to be part of her, contiguous.
Sarai’s eyes were closed. She couldn’t see what was happening. Lazlo reached for her. “Sarai,” he said softly. “That’s enough.”
She blinked her eyes open, closed
her mouth, and looked around. The air was empty. Where were they? “I...I felt them...” she said.
“They disappeared,” he told her, sorrowful. “As soon as they left your lips.”
“Oh.” A bleakness opened up in Sarai. For a moment, she’d been so glad. She’d known, though, hadn’t she? If her moths had been winging around, she’d have been able to see through their eyes, smell what they smelled, feel the breeze. But she hadn’t seen or felt or smelled anything, and she felt like she’d lost a part of herself. She leaned into Lazlo’s chest. “That’s that, then,” she said. “I’m useless.”
“Of course you’re not.”
“What good am I? I don’t know how to do anything. If I don’t have my gift, I can’t help.”
He smoothed her hair. “You’re valuable no matter what you can do. And you aren’t useless, as it happens.” She couldn’t see it, but his lip tugged into something like a smile—stinging his reopened wound—and he added in a tone of exaggerated consolation, “Who else could protect my lip from kissing?”
She drew back and looked up at him, eyebrows raised. “I think we both know I’m a failure at that job.”
Sympathetically, he agreed. “You are terrible at it. But I don’t care. There’s no one else I want not protecting my lip. The job is yours forever.”
“Forever? I hope it heals, though.” “Look who’s already trying to shirk. Do you want this job or don’t you?” She was laughing now and could hardly believe it. How had he made her laugh, when she’d been flooded with self-pity?
“But listen,” he said, growing serious again, not willing to give up on her gift just yet. “What would happen if you...I don’t know, caught one of your moths on your finger, and kept contact with it, so it wouldn’t vanish.”
“I don’t know.”
“Care to try?”
She was skeptical, but she said, “Why not?” And she did it, eyes open. She willed a moth to burgeon, and as it emerged, she caught it on her fingertip, and held it out before her. They both looked at it. Sarai wondered: Was it even really one of her moths—a magical conduit to the minds and dreams of others—or was it just another shred of illusion, like the songbird from earlier, without any power at all? How could she know, unless she placed it on a sleeper’s brow? “I suppose I’ll have to try it on Minya,” she said, though she was reluctant to go in—not just into Minya’s mind, but even into the citadel. She liked being here alone with Lazlo.
