Infinity Reaper

by Adam Silvera

  “You’re just trying to live.”

  “Now that you’ve given me a reason to. I’ve been dispirited this evening, since Edward Iron betrayed me before I could betray him, but now there is hope again. Your grandfather Santiago was one of five powerful brothers with deathlike powers. He could foresee imminent deaths, and when we married, he gave me all of the family’s secrets. One in particular will be of great interest to you.”

  I’ve never done any digging into the Córdovas. I wasn’t even obsessing over it too much until I got to see Sera and Bautista and feel their love for me. This grandfather of mine has the same visions as Sera except I don’t see anything. I only sense threatening forces.

  “Get on with it,” Tala says, keeping an eye out the door.

  “Patience, Halo Knight. You’ll appreciate this tale too,” Luna says, returning to her bed. “After my sister died, I demanded we cremate her. I was hoping to one day discover a way to resurrect Raine from her ashes like a phoenix. I began my journey seeking resurrection and have found myself on the path to immortality after the creation of specters. Around the time I met Santiago, I was learning more about ghosts . . . and he taught me how to bring them to life.”

  “A living ghost?”

  “Don’t be so surprised—my very first success story is the reason your parents and boyfriend are dead.”

  I’m trying to connect the stars. “June is a specter with ghost blood.”

  “She is. She was also dead. The practices I inherited from the Córdovas only function for deaths not long past, which was most unfortunate for Raine but has still given me hope. Though admittedly, I wouldn’t bring back Raine if she functioned like June; alive, but not quite.”

  “What are you claiming you can do for us?” Tala asks.

  “That with knowledge collected from a trip to the past and the ashes of your dearly departed, I can restore them as if they were never away from this world.”

  I drop the oblivion dagger and it clatters at my feet. “You can—”

  “I can bring Atlas back to life.”

  Seventy-Five

  Skybreaker and Shape-Shifter

  EMIL

  The flight back to the Sanctuary is tense.

  Nox isn’t super built to carry three people, but he thankfully manages as Wyatt guides him through the skies. I’m tightly holding on to Ness, still completely blown away that he’s alive, that he’s someone I can wrap my arms around, that I can breathe him in. He’s dizzy at these great heights, so I let him close his eyes, but I need him to keep talking because if he passes out I’m not sure he’ll wake up. He keeps thanking me over and over, and when words feel like too much, he squeezes my hands with both of his to let me know that he’s awake; I can feel the thank-you in his touch too.

  I don’t know where to begin with breaking down everything I’ve been through to Ness, especially with the handsome Halo Knight flying us to safety, but I pray to all these damn stars that that’s a problem I’ll get to have if Eva heals him in time. Then there’s Wyatt, who put my heart before his so we could save the life of a shape-shifter he doesn’t know.

  I’m indebted to them both, and I have no idea how to repay them.

  The sun is rising as we fly over Storm King State Park and the castle finally comes into view. A cycle of phoenixes take flight to begin their day right as we’re landing in the courtyard. This is normally when Wyatt and Nox would wake up and fly too, and instead, the obsidian phoenix goes under the apple tree and lies down.

  “I’ll go and disturb Eva’s sleep,” Wyatt says, muttering about how envious he is for sleep of his own as he jogs off.

  “You still with me, Ness?”

  His head is bobbing forward, his body getting limper by the minute. “I’m with you, firefly.” An evergreen blazer the size of a bloated pigeon hops over to us. “Pretty green bird,” he says drowsily.

  I’m nervous I might have to start slapping him awake when Wyatt, Eva, and Iris come running through the courtyard, breaking up a fight between sun swallowers. I carefully rest Ness on the grass to prepare him.

  Eva immediately investigates his injuries. She takes a deep breath, bracing herself. Her tired eyes glow like a rapid sunrise as colorful lights shine over Ness’s bloody wound from the spell. Iris holds on to her girlfriend as Eva absorbs Ness’s pain. Ness is breathing better by the time Eva heals the other battle scars across his body and face. The pinks, greens, oranges, and blues vanish as quick as a blink when Eva’s work is done.

  “You’re okay,” Iris says as she rests her chin on Eva’s shoulder.

  “Thank you so much,” I say.

  “Wow,” Ness says, sitting up. He lifts his holey shirt and examines the smooth skin that’s still slick with blood but no wound. “You’re a true miracle worker.”

  “Happy to help,” Eva says.

  “Helping shouldn’t hurt so much,” Wyatt says as he walks toward Nox.

  That definitely felt targeted at me.

  “He filled us in,” Iris says as she helps Eva to her feet. “I haven’t heard anything from Maribelle obviously, but I’ll wake up Wesley to see if she reached out to him.”

  “Okay. I’m so sorry that we had to leave, it was getting grim in there and—”

  “It was an impossible mission with one victory,” Iris says, though I think she’s hiding behind some diplomatic nonsense when she can keep it real with me. She shakes Ness’s hand. “Thank you for your work.”

  Ness shrugs that off. “Don’t thank me. I did more damage than good.”

  “You did,” Iris agrees. “But we’re personally grateful for the good.”

  Eva hugs Ness, a celestial and a specter united by freedom from an unlikely captor. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she says.

  “You too.”

  Iris takes Eva’s hand. “We should let them catch up.”

  “Actually, would you mind taking Ness to the kitchen quickly? I got to check in on the potion.” I turn to Ness. “You’ve got to be starving, right?”

  Ness is reading my face like some scholar on expressions. “I should eat, yeah,” he says even though he knows something’s up.

  They all walk off, and Ness looks over his shoulder a couple times, too concerned about me to really take in the castle or the phoenixes or his new lease on life. Once they’re out of sight, I go straight to Wyatt, who is lying beside Nox on the grass with his eyes closed.

  “Can we talk?” I ask.

  “I’m sleeping,” he says. “It’s been a very, very long night.”

  “I know. You’ve done so much to save my people. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “There are ways that you can try—” Wyatt shuts up, like he has some automatic flirtation function he forgot to turn off. “It was my pleasure to help.”

  “Except helping shouldn’t hurt so much, right? Look, I know that you’re respecting my headspace as I figure everything out for myself but I want to respect yours too. It was really big of you to risk your life to save Ness’s knowing what he means to me.”

  Wyatt sits up, his blue eyes looking more like an ocean as he tears up. “That’s precisely why I did it, Emil. For you. Ness’s imprisonment was tragic, yes, but he wasn’t some helpless, caged phoenix I’ve been trained to rescue. I’ve taken vows to serve phoenixkind and protect my fellow Haloes, and instead we abandoned Tala and Roxana. This hasn’t been sitting right with me since our flight back.”

  I haven’t seen this side of him before. He’s so upset that he’s crying, something I relate to.

  “You told me to start being more selfish, and I’m sorry that’s come at a cost to you.”

  “I hope it’ll pay off for me in the long run. Ness is a good man who saved your family too, I would never deny that nor would I ever say anything bad about someone I don’t know. I’m simply hoping that I see you on the other side of infinity.” Wyatt looks tempted to kiss me, and part of me wishes he would so I know there’s still something good between us, but instead he lies down with his bac
k to me. I fight back my own temptations to cuddle up to him, wondering if I’ll ever get the chance to do so again.

  I return to the castle and head straight for the lab. Brighton and Prudencia should be back in the next ten to twenty minutes unless they had a pit stop so he could rip out someone else’s heart. The journal is lying open beside the cauldron. I follow the last instructions, soaking the Dayrose root in phoenix tears and setting the potion to a high boil. This will be ready in minutes, and then I’ll figure out when I might meet up with Wyatt on the other side of infinity.

  There’s a knock on the door, and at first I think he’s a ghost because I’m still not used to Ness being alive, let alone here in the Sanctuary. He walks through the lab, paying no mind to anything but me, and straight into my arms. The last time we hugged was when I ran straight into his arms for coming back to help me at Nova, and before that was when we were parting ways, unsure if we’d ever see each other again.

  “You shouldn’t have rescued me,” Ness says, holding me close.

  “Got to live up to my nickname,” I say.

  “Popping up like a firefly in the night.” He steps back to look me in the eyes. “It was a great surprise, don’t get me wrong. But busting into the Bounds? I don’t know that I could’ve pulled that off.”

  “You would’ve tried. I owed you the same respect.”

  Ness sits on a stool, grinning up at me. “I guess we’re stuck in our very own infinity cycle, taking turns saving each other from doom. Hopefully we don’t get separated again. I like the idea of us staying together. A lot.”

  “Me too.”

  There’s so much unspoken between us that when I’m reading between the lines it’s like I’m finding all the right words in caps lock.

  I’m blushing and turn to the Starstifler as if there’s more for me to do here besides make sure it doesn’t blow up in its final minutes brewing. “How are you feeling?”

  “Physically? All healed up, but exhausted. Emotionally? Relieved to be here and terrified that someone will drag me back to the manor or the Bounds at any moment. Psychologically? Destroyed over how a father could try to have his son killed and then greet his resurrection by using his powers for political gain.”

  “He tried to kill you?”

  “The Blackout,” Ness says, and explains everything to me about how Iron and Luna tag-teamed that terrorist attack to gain support and sympathy for the presidential campaign. “I’ve only ever been a pawn in their games. Someone to carry out missions and then sacrificed for the greater good.”

  I already wanted more for Ness when I thought his father was just abusing his powers, but to discover that Iron tried to blow up his son? There are no words.

  “You’re probably thinking it can’t get worse, right? Luna turned the Senator into a specter with shifting powers of his own.”

  I don’t give a shooting star what anyone says; this insanity feels like it’s ripped out of some dystopian novel, and I’m scared I might be one of the heroes expected to save the world.

  “Okay, that’s absolutely wild, but we can stop him. This is the power-binding potion from Bautista’s journal. You just mix a specter’s blood into a vial of the Starstifler and their powers won’t work anymore.”

  “Knowing our luck, it won’t work.”

  “I’ve seen it work. I sort of went back in time.”

  “You did what?”

  There’s so much to catch him up on, all the way back to the Crowned Dreamer battle where Brighton stole the Reaper’s Blood, but I focus on what brought us here to the New Ember Sanctuary—our temporary split from the Spell Walkers, discovering Maribelle and I could retrocycle, going through Bautista’s and Sera’s lives, learning about Luna being Maribelle’s mother, and bringing back the ingredients to the Starstifler.

  Ness is staring in awe. “I’ve just been grounded in my bedroom and impersonating a bunch of people.”

  “That’s definitely a lot.”

  He begins pacing around the lab. “This makes sense. Luna was telling me about having a child, which was news to me and . . . I never thought it was Sera Córdova. Being the Senator’s son ranks high in awfulness, but so does being Luna’s granddaughter.”

  “No offense, but Maribelle pretty much only went to the Bounds to kill Luna.”

  “None taken. I hope she gives her the death she deserves.” He stops pacing in front of the cauldron. “So this can disempower the Senator.”

  “And us,” I say. I turn off the cauldron and the Starstifler smells like nature, which my city nose appreciates. “It’s ready.”

  I let it cool down while reflecting on everything that had to happen to get to this point. My powers had to manifest, no matter how much pain they’ve put me through ever since, and now I’ll be able to protect so many people by disempowering the Blood Casters, Iron, and any other specter. But no matter how much Prudencia and I tried cracking Sera’s codes, we owe so much to Wyatt and his theories that got all the retrocycling in motion. Part of me feels like he should be here with me now as I’m using the steel baster to fill up the first vial of Starstifler that’s existed in my lifetime.

  “That doesn’t look very drinkable,” Ness says.

  “That Blood Caster downed it.” I fill up six vials and hand him one. “You can too. Enjoy your freedom.”

  Ness eyes the potion. “So I drop some of my blood into this and then my powers are gone?”

  “Bound, but yeah.”

  “I’m looking forward to drinking this once I’m positive the Senator is no longer a threat,” Ness says, setting the potion down on the counter. “Once he realizes that I wasn’t killed in the Bounds, he’ll come looking for me again. This time he won’t even have to be discreet about it since everyone knows I’m alive. The media can circulate my face while not knowing that he can change his.”

  I don’t want to know what it’s like to be hunted down by an entire country at that scale.

  “But if you drink it now he can’t ever force you to use your powers again.”

  “Then what, Emil? Do I become some honorary Spell Walker? Or am I going to get kicked to the curb because I might not be worth the trouble I attract?”

  “Where I go, you go.”

  “But why? I barely know you, but you’re also the only person alive who I trust. Why are we going through such great lengths for each other?”

  I lift my shirt, only high enough to show him the scar in my side from where he stabbed me. “You did this to save me and I believe you. Trust goes two ways.”

  “But even that . . . killing you would’ve been more merciful. Instead I keep protecting your life and you keep protecting mine. Why are we doing this? Are we friends? Or are we more?”

  “I think we’re more than friends.” My heart is hammering as he steps closer to me. “But I also thought you were dead and . . .” It really sucks that retrocycling doesn’t let me change the past because I would like to avoid everything I have to say now. “. . . I started connecting with Wyatt. He’s not my boyfriend, but we’ve been bonding since I got here and I’m even thinking about becoming a Halo Knight. It’s not like the world is going to forget my face after I give up my powers, so I might as well keep doing some good.” He takes a step back and I want to grab his hand, but that’s not right. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I feel like I did.”

  Ness shakes his head. “You thought I was dead, and even then, you’ve never owed me anything. But I am interested in how you feel now that you know I’m alive.”

  I’ve had so many regrets these past few weeks, so many things I wish I had done and said. “I want to get to know you better. Not just who you’ve become because of this war, but who you were before it and who you want to be when it’s done.”

  “If it ever ends,” Ness says.

  “I’m going to make sure of it,” I say, shaking a Starstifler. “I want to make sure you never have to hide your beautiful face ever again.�
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  Ness smiles. “Beautiful, huh? You’ve come a long way from only being able to say my face is solid.”

  “I’m trying to have fewer regrets. Life’s heavy enough.”

  “What do you want to know about me?”

  There’s so much, but I start simple. “How’d you choose your name?”

  “It’s the name of a star in the Cloaked Phantom. It’s the dimmest star in that constellation, and that’s what I liked about it. I’ve been growing up with a lot of eyes on me since my mom was killed, and my classmates thought my life was flashy because I was working all those political circuits. This power was finally going to give me some discretion to figure out who I wanted to become.” He takes my hand in his. “Things took a turn with all the Blood Casting, but I can’t get too upset since it led me to you too. Maybe one day when everything settles we’ll get to morph into something together, firefly.”

  The way he calls me firefly and gently brushes my palm has me blazing inside. He’s reading my face, like he knows how successfully he’s seducing me with his touch. I’m not fighting it. I’m pushing away all my guilty thoughts about the Halo Knight I first kissed while flying on a phoenix because Ness is back from the dead and I want to stoke these flames for once in my life.

  I put my hand on his heart, and it’s beating as fast and hard as mine.

  My lips practically fly to his, and I kiss the shape-shifter who has always found me beautiful because of who I am and has never wanted to change me. He’s kissing me back, taking charge as he picks me up and sets me down beside the cauldron. My palms are on his cheeks as his tongue slowly slides across mine. I’m not ready to strip down to nothing yet but I take off my shirt and I don’t ask him to keep his eyes closed this time. I’m hoping everything I’ve thought about him is right, that he’s not about to be disappointed by what he finds underneath. He smiles even though I don’t have a single ab in sight, like seeing more of me is enough to make him happy. He removes his own shirt and presses his bare chest against mine, and it’s the first time I’ve ever been flesh to flesh with someone like this. Our bodies have been through so much before this point, and maybe, one day, our bodies are going to go through some really great things together.