by Walsh, Sara
I rounded up the boys. “Okay,” I said. “Time to go.”
They rushed out to greet Vermillion. Alone, I lingered among the trees, not wanting to leave but knowing that every second we wasted could be Jay or Bromasta’s last. When I’d stood before the Suzerain, even when I’d learned what those veins in the Solenetta truly were, I’d never felt as condemned as I did now. I was torn between two worlds: Jay in one, Sol in the other. Crownsville. Brakaland. I hated them both in that moment. I wanted only one world, one that was just for me and Sol. Guilt hit—hard. Jay was in danger. And I wanted those things I’d told Sol I wanted. I wanted Jay back. Willie. Even Pete. But I wanted Sol, too—the one thing I couldn’t have.
A twig snapped behind me. Sol had followed me into the wood. He waited some distance away, his face devoid of expression, but I knew him too well now not to recognize the subtle hints of emotion. His arms too tense at his side. His gaze focused—too focused. The tiny twitch of the muscles in his jaw. Sol was hurting, just as I was.
This was it. Our final moments alone. The chance for me to tell him how I really felt. The birds sang. The breeze rustled the leaves in the canopy above. And I couldn’t think of a single word to say.
“Are you ready to ride?” he asked.
“You should probably ride with Ben,” I muttered.
“Probably,” said Sol. He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. “But I want to ride with you.”
* * *
Delane had once warned me about Sol and horses. We’d soon outstripped the others. I clung to him tightly as the ground steadily rose toward a hilltop camp marked with tents. Beyond the camp rose a second hill. It was taller than the first, with a white stone arch as high as a two-story house on its peak. The Nonsky Fault. Peachy tints from the start of sunset struck the arch’s stones.
On the hill closest to us, sentinels swarmed the encampment. Among them, a lone figure fought.
“Sol, faster!”
Sol must have noticed the battle too, for I’d barely gotten out the words when he spurred on the horse. We galloped up the hillside, Sol low over the horse’s neck, his sword already drawn.
I could now see Bromasta clearly. At least twenty sentinels surrounded him. I counted seven or eight already down. Another fell as Bromasta drew his blade across its gut. The harder the sentinels fought against him, the faster Bromasta’s sword flew. I’d never seen anything like it. He was unstoppable. My dad.
Sol slowed the horse. “Wait here for the others,” he said. “Hide the boys.”
I dropped down as soon as we stopped, opened my mouth to wish him luck, but Sol had already gone.
It couldn’t have been more than a minute before the others arrived, but standing alone it felt like eternity. “Delane, get up there!” I yelled. “Hurry!”
Delane passed Ben and the bag of spells into my arms as Vermillion and Alex dismounted their horse.
“We can skirt the camp,” said Vermillion. She slapped Delane’s horse on the flank. “Go!”
Dust from the dry earth swirled as he tore away. Abandoning her horse, Vermillion pointed left. “Up the hill. This way. Quickly.”
Keeping low, we headed for a tent on the camp’s perimeter, little more than a utilitarian tarp anchored to a wooden frame. Vermillion ducked inside. “It’s clear,” she said, holding open the flap. “Boys, hurry. Mia, you too.”
Screams and snarls rose to my left. The clash of steel echoed, but I couldn’t see the fight beyond the city of tents between me and the battleground.
“Look after the kids,” I said to Vermillion. Armed with the pack, I secured the strap across my shoulders, which bolstered my courage. “I’m going to find Jay.”
If it had been Sol or Delane, they would have stopped me. Not Vermillion. In her long battle against the Suzerain, she knew that sometimes a girl just had to take action.
“Then be careful,” she said. Her scarlet lashes grazed her cheeks as she looked down. She smirked. “Solandun will kill me if anything happens to you.”
I paused. Vermillion knew about me and Sol? Was that what she meant with that smirk? I couldn’t imagine Sol spilling his guts to her. It really wasn’t his style. And we’d been pretty careful to keep quiet about what was happening between us, especially with Bromasta around. “You know about me and Sol?” I asked.
Vermillion gasped in mock outrage. “I’m Simbia, Mia!” she said. She winked. “I smelled it on his skin in the moment you entered my house.”
The flaps fell shut. Vermillion disappeared.
I smiled. So I had two priorities: not to get caught or killed. As much as I wanted to check the battle’s progress, doing so would probably put me on a fast track to one or both. Stooped, I darted tent to tent, not daring to shout Jay’s name and attract the sentinels’ attention. Every tent I checked was empty. But the kids had to be somewhere—Alex had been sure of that.
I tore across a gap between a tent and a larger canvas pavilion, and caught sight of the battle. I couldn’t see Bromasta, but Sol fought a cluster of sentinels on the fringe, taking down two in the few seconds I watched. Delane, deeper in the melee, felled another.
I scanned the larger pavilion. That’s when I saw the hut. It stood on the periphery of the camp, a wooden shack, its one window barred. It had to be the place. Anticipation rose. Everything else forgotten, I sprinted over and peered through the window.
Six tiny stalls lined the interior—three on each side—each with a bolted door and a small barred window. There were no guards inside. I checked the door. There was neither a lock nor a spot for a bond key.
Disappointed, knowing there was little chance the sentinels would leave the boys so unguarded, I opened the door.
“Jay?” I whispered, not expecting a response.
Silence.
“Jay?”
Nothing.
I’d been so sure this was the place; it was the only sturdy building I’d seen in the entire camp. Where else could the boys be?
“Mia?”
A pair of small, disembodied hands appeared at the bars to my right. Another pair appeared on the left.
“Who’s there?” called a voice.
“Get us out!” cried another.
Stunned, I dashed door to door, looking down through the bars to see faces I recognized from the TV and newspapers. Simon Wilkins from Crownsville. Darryl Someone from Markham Creek. It was really them! Like a crazed activist set loose in an animal lab, I slid the bolts as I went. I guess the Suzerain saw no need for bond keys in a camp this heavily guarded. He was mistaken.
“JAY?”
I slid the last bolt. Jay launched out of his cell and into my arms. Overwhelmed with relief, I crushed him harder than a magician grinding solens for grains.
“What are you doing here, Mia?”
“I came for you!” I cried.
His voice muffled against my shoulder, he could barely squeeze out a word. “All this way?”
“All this way.” I pushed him back, checking him for injuries or marks. He seemed fine. Time rewound and I was back in Crownsville, tearing through the cornfield with the multicolored light dancing in the night sky. “Jay, why did you run from the house? Didn’t you hear me yell?”
He shrugged—a total, one hundred percent, that’s my Jay, shrug. “I don’t know,” he said. “I saw—” His expression turned distant, and I imagined his mother—our mother—beckoning to him between the rows of corn.
“I know what you saw,” I said.
The boys had gathered around us, faces painted with joy. Some of them had been here for almost as long as Ben. I couldn’t imagine how it must feel for them to be free.
“Is this everyone?” I asked, not wanting to let go of Jay’s hand.
“There’s Alex and Ben,” said Jay. “But they didn’t bring them with us. Ben’s sick. I think he’s—”
“He’s here,” I said. “Alex too.”
Jay pulled back. “You got them out of the pit?” He looked to the others, always a leader. �
��This is Mia,” he said, all puffed up. “My sister.” Then to me, with a touch of awe: “The pit? Really? You?”
“I had help,” I replied, charmed. “And we’re gonna need more of it before we get out of here.”
Simon shuffled closer, a little dazed. “Where are we going?”
I offered him a friendly nudge. “We’re going home.”
* * *
Skirting the battle alone had been tricky. Navigating it with five newly liberated boys was beyond challenging.
“You’ve got to keep down,” I hissed, for the tenth time.
“Who’s fighting?” whispered Darryl.
“Some friends,” I replied. “And they won’t thank us if we’re spotted.”
We crouched behind the large tented pavilion close to the hut. It was a little too close to the battle for comfort, but the only place large enough to offer cover for six. But we couldn’t stay there forever. Somehow I had to get the boys safely back to Vermillion. And there was the fight, too. I couldn’t stand not knowing what was happening to Sol, Bromasta, and Delane.
“Can’t we fight?” asked Darryl.
“You’re not going anywhere near that mess.”
“I wanna get ’em.”
“Well, forget about it, because it’s not going to happen!” I crawled to the end of the pavilion and peered out.
The three guys raged amid a great mass of sweaty, grunting beasts. Blood soaked Delane’s torn sleeve. Sol ducked as a sentinel swung a fist aimed for his head.
My heart stopped. Another beast approached him from behind. Sol stepped back, right into its path. Bromasta’s warning cry rang across the camp. Sol turned. He effortlessly swung his blade at the sentinel’s leg. It collapsed.
I drew breath, but it was just a temporary reprieve. The guys couldn’t keep this up forever.
“How does it look?”
Jay had crept up behind me. He crouched at my side.
“Like they’re totally outnumbered,” I said.
“We have to do something.”
What that was, I had no clue. I put my head in my hands to think and noticed my pack at my hip. I looked at the boys, eagerly awaiting our next move. The answer became perfectly clear.
* * *
“There’s to be no funny business,” I said to the boys as they huddled around me. “You do what I told you to do and you do it only when I say.”
“Got it,” said Jay, with a nod.
“Got it,” repeated the others.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Everyone ready?”
Five heads nodded.
“Then here goes.”
Heart pounding, I stepped out from behind the pavilion. “HEY! MORONS!”
The sentinels turned like a pack of rabid beasts. Sol’s eyes widened as he spotted me. I gestured for him to move. When it was clear he didn’t understand, I opened my hand and flashed the decimator in my palm. As the sentinels moved en masse toward me, I caught sight of Sol grabbing Delane’s arm. The two retreated, slashing the sentinels in their path. I could only trust they’d take Bromasta with them.
Heart still racing and not in the slightest bit convinced that we could pull this off, I crushed the orb between my palms and launched it into the oncoming pack. The first line went down in the blast.
“NOW!” I screamed.
The boys scurried from hiding. One by one they pitched their spells into the chaos. The more they pitched, the faster I handed them spells from the bag. Jay pitched a killer, right into the path of five furious-looking sentinels. They toppled like pins to the ground. The blasts were deafening. The flashes were blinding. But the boys and I kept on until the last decimator had been thrown and silence fell over the camp.
Now Sol stalked the fallen, his sword ready, his figure hazy amid the clearing dust. Most of the sentinels were out cold. Some groaned and struggled to their feet. It was time for the guys to finish the job.
“Okay,” I said, turning to the boys. “Everyone back. You are not watching this part.”
A collective groan rose from the group, but there was no way I was letting a bunch of kids watch the full-blown slaughter I knew was to come. To my relief, a distraction soon appeared. Vermillion, half-clad in the sentinel’s tunic, hurried toward us with Alex and Ben at her side. I went to cover Jay’s eyes.
“We saw it,” she said. “They had no idea what was coming!”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Weren’t they great?”
“And brave,” said Vermillion. Her gaze turned dreamy. She viewed the boys like they were a rack of designer clothes laid out just for her . . . and her jars.
Guessing any one of the boys would happily donate a whole head of hair to Vermillion’s collection, I pulled Jay closer. He shrugged me off. It wasn’t Vermillion who’d caught his interest. He peered across the battlefield, eyes squinting through the swirling dust and smoke, to where Bromasta checked for surviving sentinels.
“Dad?”
I’d been grinning since our victory. Now my smile faded. I didn’t know how Jay could have possibly remembered Bromasta, but, clearly, he did. Free of my grip, he tore between the bodies of the fallen, vaulting their outstretched limbs. I didn’t stop him.
“DAD!”
I watched, stunned, as Bromasta finally heard his call. He lowered his sword. A smile appeared. The weary years he carried on his face were wiped away.
“Jaylan!”
Unaware of anything around them, Bromasta scooped up Jay as if he were air. Their greeting couldn’t have been any more different from my and Bromasta’s frosty first meeting in Vermillion’s kitchen.
I took a couple of hesitant steps, wondering if I should join their reunion. Something held me back. This was Jay’s moment and I didn’t feel a part of it.
With the last of the surviving sentinels dispatched, Sol approached me.
“It’s good that Jay remembers,” he said. He looked from Bromasta to me. “Isn’t it?”
“I guess,” I replied. I didn’t know. The adrenaline that had carried me through the battle drained to my feet and then seeped into the ground. Only emptiness remained.
“We should move, Mia,” said Sol. “Before more sentinels arrive.”
Sol rallied the troops. One by one, they headed off toward the arch on the second hill. At the front of the pack, Bromasta carried Jay on his shoulders, his sword in Jay’s hand. Only I lagged behind. My reunion with Jay in the hut suddenly felt flat. Jay should have been on my shoulders. He should have been laughing and joking with me. I was the one who’d spent six years taking caring of him! I was the one who’d gone through hell to get him back. I wanted to tell him all the things that I didn’t say enough in Crownsville—that he was the bravest, coolest kid I’d ever met. But I didn’t think anything could tear him away from Bromasta’s attention. Especially not a sister jealous of her own father.
It was ridiculous. I knew Sol would laugh when I confessed all this later. He’d tell me I was crazy. He’d say I was—
I stopped.
There was no later.
I looked to the arch, now an ominous beacon. These were my last minutes in Brakaland. My last minutes with Sol.
He walked way ahead with Delane.
“Oh, God,” I whispered, and picked up my pace. “Sol! SOL!”
I only got a few feet before a voice called out. A shiver traveled down my spine.
“Not so fast, Mia Rheinhold.”
THIRTY-ONE
My name is Mia Stone,” I said, and I turned to face the Suzerain.
I had no idea how long he’d been there or where he’d come from. Thin air? I didn’t know. He stood about twenty feet away, still in his three-piece suit, oblivious to the carnage around him and the sulfurous odor that lingered from the decimators. I stared him down. What else could I do? There really wasn’t any place left to run.
“That was impressive,” he said, as he strode gracefully toward me. “But I can’t allow you to steal my treasures so easily. Come with me now and w
e can avoid more bloodshed. I am a man of peace, Mia.”
Peace? Sol had once called him a man of persuasion. His words didn’t persuade me.
“Tell that to my mother,” I said.
He knew who I meant. He’d called me Rheinhold. It didn’t faze him.
I wasn’t sure if the others had noticed my absence. In a way, it was better if they hadn’t. Elias would shed their blood. Mine was too precious for him to waste.
“I know of your escapades in Bordertown,” he stated. “I know what you stole from Master Malone. I want the Solenetta, Mia.”
And yet, I remained unmoved. I wanted Sol. Didn’t mean I was going to get him. “I won’t create your Equinox.”
“I truly doubt there’s anything you can do to stop it.”
I defiantly kept my silence.
“Your choice, Mia,” Elias said. “Please don’t test me.”
I held my ground. No was the only answer he was going to get.
Elias slowly nodded. “Then rise,” he commanded, surveying the sentinels at his feet for the first time. “Rise with flame and fury.”
Smoke rose from the sentinels’ bodies and sparks ignited the air. One by one, the fallen got to their feet. Flames burst from their skin. The heat was intense. The stench of burning flesh, atrocious. Flanked by his flaming army, Elias again faced me. Smoke coiled about his body—pale smoke, the color of his suit, as if it emanated from the fabric. Then fire burst around him, the air aflame. The grass at his feet ignited. It shriveled to black.
“Come with me, Mia,” said Elias.
The sentinels moved as one. Beneath the flames their features melted. Flesh became bone. I choked on the scent of billowing smoke.
So this was to be my death. I wouldn’t give myself up to him, not even to save my own life. Everything the Suzerain had done to me and my family, whether he knew it or not, had created the person who stood before him. A resilient person who would face his fire and not give in.
“Mia,” said Elias, his warning clear in his tone.
I stared Elias in the eyes. “I’d rather burn.”
The sentinels advanced. Little more than ten feet separated me from their flames. A few steps more and I would get my wish. Ready to meet my fate, I closed my eyes, said good-bye to the world, and took a step forward.
