Shadowlark

by Meagan Spooner

  I listened in silence, caught between the way my heart swelled at Oren’s confidence and the way my own uncertainty flared, knowing that lives would be at stake because of me. Again.

  “I think Wesley argued for it, too. And Dorian told them what you did for the Iron Wood. At any rate, they’re going to go through with it, but they’re all going to be armed with these.”

  He pulled something small and round out of his pocket and tossed it to me. I caught it and felt an odd tug at the everpresent web of magic in the air. It looked like a crude iron sphere with no distinguishing characteristics. I glanced up at Oren dubiously.

  “Parker rigged them up using the Eagles’ talons. You throw them at the ground, and if it’s enough of an impact, they go off like an explosion. But instead they banish all the inorganic magic within a certain radius.”

  I recognized Parker’s turn of phrase and knew Oren was repeating him word for word. Another time, I would’ve smiled to hear him using words like inorganic and radius. Instead, I asked, “So what’s the point of them?”

  “Parker’s theory is that you’re like a machine, and that the magic in you is like the magic in the machines. Stolen, not generated. The idea is that these won’t have any effect on a real Renewable. But they’ll knock out any machines in the area. And—”

  I breathed out slowly. “And they’ll take me out, too.”

  Oren nodded. “I’m supposed to be carrying that one. But I think you should have it, for tomorrow.”

  It wasn’t much use to him—he was safe from me. The shadow in me didn’t want anything from him. There was no hunger to steal what little magic he had inside, keeping him human. But why give it to me? When I started to ask the question aloud, he just pushed away from the wall and folded my fingers gently around the sphere, holding my hands between his.

  “If there was a way to switch me off when the darkness comes,” he said softly, “I’d never go anywhere without it.”

  His face was close, his eyes meeting mine. For the first time, I realized that it wasn’t about hating him the way I hated myself, for being what we were. For the first time, I realized that Oren understood me. He was the only one in the world who could. He was giving me a way to take myself out, rather than let the hunger take over again.

  Oren let go of me and stepped back, shoving his hands into his pockets. “So, you’ll get your chance to face Prometheus. And if Tansy and Nix are in there, you’ll get your chance to find them, too.”

  I took a deep breath, feeling dizzy.

  “But—here’s the thing. They’re going tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” I burst out, staring. “So soon?”

  Oren shrugged. “They didn’t tell me why, but I suspect it’s to do with you. The less time you’re here, the less opportunity there is for you to . . .”

  He trailed off, but I knew what he meant. “Less opportunity for me to hurt someone.”

  Oren grimaced. “They don’t know you, Lark.”

  I shook my head. “No. The problem is they do know me now. The real me.”

  Oren was silent for a long moment, gazing at me with those pale, unreadable eyes. I knew was he was thinking about, knew with utter certainty that at any moment he’d give me another speech about strength and power and only being a weapon when I choose to be. Just as surely, I knew I couldn’t stand to hear it, not now. Not while Nina still lay unconscious, while Tansy might be being tortured at that very moment, while Olivia was pounding the life out of anyone who came near.

  So instead I stood abruptly. “Is that all?”

  Oren opened his mouth, but stopped, hesitating.

  “Try to get some sleep,” he suggested, his voice rough. Then he turned his back, and was gone.

  I let myself sink back down with a creak of the mattress. I knew I should do as he said—that I should do as I was ordered by the Renewables here. But I was buzzing with nerves, and with energy, and I knew I wasn’t going to sleep. There was a good chance I wasn’t coming back from the mission tomorrow. I paced the confines of my room, fingers tracing the curves of the blackout device in my pocket. What do you do when it might be your last night alive?

  • • •

  I waited in the muggy heat of my shut-in room, letting the hours tick by, until the sounds of feet moving past and machines being used and switched off again faded. I’d come to know the rhythms of this place, and I could tell as the world grew quieter that the rebels were all settling down to sleep, that they weren’t plagued by the same restlessness as I was, the night before we faced Prometheus.

  I pressed my cheek to the door. Oren hadn’t locked it on his way out. If it were anyone else, I would think they had simply forgotten, but Oren didn’t miss details like that. He left it unlocked on purpose, giving me the option to escape. He was worried about me.

  Beyond the door, I could sense the telltale glow of the guard’s energy. A Renewable—they weren’t taking any chances with me. I didn’t recognize the signature, but whoever it was, I didn’t want him or her tagging along when I went to find Olivia. I didn’t even know what I was going to say to her, but I knew I didn’t want an audience.

  Burying the thread of guilt warning me against what I was doing, I reached out with agonizing slowness until I could just tap into the edge of the man’s aura. I didn’t need to take a lot of his power, just enough to make him drowsy. The darkness inside me stirred sluggishly, and I fought to keep it down. If I let it wake, there was no telling what it might do.

  You don’t have to do anything, whispered my guilt. Just do as you’re told and wait.

  But I kept at it, knowing that if I paced inside my room all night, I’d go mad. Gradually, I could feel the man’s consciousness waning, his power flickering and dulling all around him. I eased the door open as silently as I could and found him leaning back against the wall. He twitched as one of the door hinges squealed, but didn’t wake.

  I slipped down the hallway in the opposite direction from the guard, my senses buzzing and tingling with the extra magic in my system. The air was only slightly cooler out here than in my tiny room. Though there were giant air-circulation vents all over the place, the air was still close and warm. It made me long for wind, the same wind that had so frightened me the first time I’d heard it howling through the ruins. Still, the farther I got from my tiny room, the better I felt.

  I’d been to the infirmary only once, right after the mission. But I remembered where it was, and my feet brought me there without hesitation. There were no guards on that door—after all, they believed the monster was contained, safe in her room. I let my mind trickle out carefully, enough to sense one presence in the room. Nina? Had they left her alone?

  But when I eased the door open a fraction, I saw a healer sitting at the foot of one of the beds, head drooping onto his chest. His was the life force I’d sensed. There was a form in the bed, but I felt nothing from it. My throat closed. Nina’s body was as inert to my senses as the bed she rested in.

  They had connected her to a number of machines, one of which I could tell from here was trying to artificially restore her magic. I could hear their mechanisms whirring and clicking, a gentle cacophony echoing through the silent night. Though the healer seemed to be asleep, I stayed where I was. I told myself that it was because I couldn’t risk waking the healer watching over Nina, but I knew the truth. From here, I could just glimpse Nina’s face, ashy and drawn. I didn’t want to see more.

  I stood there on the threshold for what felt like an hour, unable to enter, unable to leave. My handiwork, lying there at the edge of life.

  When I finally turned away, I knew where I was going. I had a good idea of where Olivia would be if she wasn’t in the infirmary with her friend. I headed for the roof, pausing at the door that opened up onto the nighttime Lethe air. I couldn’t sense anything beyond it, but Olivia wasn’t a Renewable. She had the same magic all normal people did, untapped—but it was quiet and hard to detect this far away. I took a deep breath and swung the door s
ilently outward.

  She was there, sitting on the edge of the roof, legs dangling over empty space. She didn’t look back as I entered, but I saw her stiffen and I knew she’d guessed it was me. I hesitated, hanging onto the edge of the door, unwilling to let it swing closed. Now that I was here, I had no idea what I wanted to say. I wanted to confess, but she already knew what I’d done. I wanted to take it back somehow, but it was impossible.

  “Olivia—” I began, my voice emerging as a whisper. “I’m so sorr—”

  “Don’t.” Her voice was quiet but sharp, cutting through mine like a knife. No bubbly enthusiasm, no friendly warmth. She sounded tired. Angry. “If what Oren tells me is true, then you didn’t mean to hurt anyone, and you have nothing to apologize for. And if he’s wrong, and you did it on purpose— then I don’t want to hear you lie about feeling regret.”

  I took a step back, half-intending to leave her alone. But before I could act on the impulse, she turned, glancing over her shoulder me. “You’re thinking about tomorrow, aren’t you?” she asked. “About the fact that you might not come back.”

  I nodded, and she tilted her head to the side. A silent summons.

  When I settled down beside her, she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “I always come up here the night before a mission. I don’t know why, but it helps.”

  The ground was a dizzying distance below us, but Olivia seemed unconcerned. I tried to ignore the drop, focusing instead on the city and the phosphorescent glow of the fungus on the cavern walls. For a while we sat in silence, me staring upward and Olivia looking down at her feet as she swung them gently side to side.

  I wanted to speak, but I had nothing to say. At least, nothing I could put into words. She was the closest thing I’d made to a friend here, but now it was like we didn’t even know each other. Maybe I was just torturing myself, sitting beside this walking, talking reminder of what I’d done to Nina, the people I’d hurt by hurting her.

  Because the truth was that I liked Olivia. No matter how much I wished I could hate her for how close she’d grown to Oren, she hadn’t done anything wrong. She was helping him, giving him training—and friendship—he desperately needed.

  I found myself saying, “Tell me about your brother.”

  Her head snapped up, and I hurried to add, “I’m sorry— you don’t have to answer. Oren mentioned him, and I thought—it’s fine.”

  “No,” she said slowly. “No, I don’t mind. You’ve lost a brother too. Maybe talking about it would help.”

  She sucked in a long breath through her nose, letting it out in an audible sigh. “We were . . . close. That seems like such an inadequate way to say it. We were twins. Two halves of a whole. From childhood we were like opposites—he had black hair, I had blonde. He was quiet and thoughtful and I was anything but. He was born a Renewable, and I definitely wasn’t. But we worked that way.

  “Things weren’t great for Renewables even before Prometheus. People fear them, hate them, because of what they did all those years ago, causing the cataclysm. Causing all of this. Bran—that was his name, Bran—he’d get teased a lot, bullied by the other kids. I’d beg him to use his magic on them, but he always refused, said it’d just prove them right. That’s when I started to learn to fight. If he wouldn’t defend himself, then I would.”

  The thought of Olivia as a child beating up the other kids made me smile. She already looked angelic, sweet, incapable of violence—she must’ve been an even more improbable warrior as a cherubic little girl.

  “Once Prometheus took over, things got worse. Bran moved into the walls early on, while I stayed on the outside as long as I could. I’d do odd jobs for Parker and Wesley, the occasional jaunt inside CeePo. Until one day I was caught. And my brother, my stupid, stupid brother, came to rescue me. I made it out. He didn’t.”

  I waited, but she didn’t speak again, her jaw tight as she looked down at the city below us, her eyes resting on the shadowy, semicircular building that housed Prometheus and his government.

  “What does Prometheus do to Renewables when he catches them?” I asked softly. It clearly still hurt Olivia to talk about her brother, but whatever happened to Bran might’ve also happened to Basil.

  “They die,” she said shortly. But then, before I could absorb it, she added, “Eventually.”

  Unbidden, the image of the Institute’s Machine rose in my mind. I hadn’t thought of it in what felt like forever, but as soon as I saw the low, squat chair, I could almost feel the glass shards slicing into my skin and draining away my magic.

  Olivia saw the horror on my face. “This is why we fight him, Lark,” she said in a low voice. “He’s done amazing things for this city, but it all comes at a price we’re not willing to pay anymore. Just remember this is why we’re doing it. This is why they’re carrying out your plan, even though—” She paused. “Even though everything.”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

  “Usually, the Renewables he does this to die not long after. Bran was in the middle—he lasted a few months before he finally gave up.” Olivia was dry-eyed, but the sadness in her voice was overwhelming.

  “Olivia,” I said, my voice sounding strange, “what’s the longest any of Prometheus’s Renewables have survived being repeatedly harvested?”

  Olivia tilted her head to the side. “I don’t know for sure, but I’ve heard that there are a few that predate Wesley. And he’s been there for two years now.”

  Years. There were Renewables who’d been down there for years. And it’d only been four years since the resistance fighters moved in and found my brother’s journal. There was a chance, however slim, that if Basil was like me, he could’ve leeched power from the other captives and survived Prometheus’s harvest each time.

  I’d assumed Basil was dead. But maybe I was wrong.

  We sat in silence for a time, each lost in our own separate thoughts. I could feel Olivia’s tension—her easy manner was gone, despite her willingness to talk to me. She had a part to play in tomorrow’s mission, too, just as important as mine. She was going to be the distraction, drawing away Prometheus’s Eagles to give Oren and me a chance to get close to him. Though she was usually so open, it was impossible to read Olivia now. There was still grief and anger there, and part of me wondered, if Oren weren’t going to be there, if she’d let me run in blind, without the distraction, and get caught.

  “Make sure you have no regrets,” she murmured, interrupting my increasingly dark thoughts.

  “What?”

  Her feet had stopped swinging, and she sat motionless, gazing into the middle distance ahead of her. “That’s how you go on these missions time after time. You make sure you have no regrets. Just in case.”

  Something in her voice chilled my heart, and I shivered.

  She went on. “You talk to the people you care about, and you make sure there’s nothing you wished you’d said.”

  For a moment, I thought she was talking about me, about the ruins of our seedling friendship. Then I recognized the quiet desperation in her voice, and I realized.

  “Have you spoken to Oren yet?” I whispered.

  Olivia hesitated, but then I saw her nod out of the corner of my eye. “We spoke a little after we finished training this afternoon. I told him what I’m telling you now.”

  No regrets. I couldn’t argue with Olivia on it, because it made sense. Make sure that you leave things as well as you can, so that you can face what’s coming with a clear head.

  “I’m glad he found you,” I said quietly, quickly, as though my mind might interfere and stop me once it realized what I was saying. “He’s had a very lonely life. A terrible one, sometimes. But here, with you—he seems happy. I think my one regret would be leaving him alone, but he won’t be alone. And that’s a good thing.”

  Olivia didn’t answer, and when I turned to look at her, she was staring at me, her face unreadable. “You think I love him, don’t you?”

  My heart seized for half
a beat, and I fought to catch my breath. “No—I mean, maybe. I know he cares for you. You spend so much time together.”

  She laughed, but it wasn’t a comforting sound. “I promise you, Lark, I don’t have the slightest interest in Oren. Not the way you’re imagining.”

  “But—”

  “I have somebody,” she said simply, dropping her chin onto her knees. “And I haven’t given up on her yet.”

  My thoughts ground to a halt. Her?

  Then it all clicked. She and Nina are close, Oren had told me. Nina took care of her when she lost her brother. Suddenly my heart froze altogether. I’d nearly killed the woman she loved. I might well have killed her yet, if she never woke up.

  And this was the woman we were trusting to keep the Eagles off our backs—where one wrong move on her part would leave us with Prometheus’s entire army closing in around us.

  “What I regret,” she went on, softly, “was not getting to see her before the mission. She’s undercover most of the time, and comes through so rarely. I wish I’d been able to speak to her one more time.”

  I looked down to see Olivia gripping the edge of the roof, white-knuckled and tense. I could feel the fury and helplessness in her as if it were magic, visible to my other senses. She didn’t look at me, all the intensity of her gaze dissipating into the mist-filled air over the city.

  I began to retreat, knowing there was nothing I could say. But as I got to my feet she spoke again, her voice emerging in a mumble.

  “Oren told me once that he hurt you.”

  I swallowed, thinking of my torn earlobe, and of Oren’s refusal to believe that he hadn’t done it in his shadow state. “No,” I said. “No, he never has.”

  “Then he’s certainly afraid he might. That’s why I’ve been trying to help him. There’s a darkness in him that I don’t understand, but he’s terrified of it. He’s afraid it’ll make him hurt you, the way you hurt Nina.”

  Sick with regret, I wished I could reach out to Olivia—but my touch was the last thing she’d want. I had no idea Oren was so afraid of the shadow inside himself down here, when there was more than enough magic to keep him human. But then, wasn’t I terrified of the darkness in me?