Rising Silver Mist

by Olivia Wildenstein

  I stared around me, wondering when the cupola would start drilling my mind. Perhaps there was a glitch with this one. Or perhaps I was already resisting its effect. I raised my gaze to the crowns of the calimbors.

  On a platform at the top of the tallest tree stood a rigid figure. Bare forearms were folded in front of a chest cloaked in a shirt that wasn’t Neverrian-made. As blue as the earthly sky. The face was set in the deepest of scowls. How I longed to brush the hard line of Ace’s jaw, run my fingers down the tendons of his neck, smooth the furrow between his eyebrows.

  Would he ever let me touch him again if he believed I’d touched Gregor?

  My fingers tingled. And then the tingle spread to my arms. To my collarbone. To my neck. To my cheeks. To my scalp. The world grew dark and still.

  Then bright again.

  Then dark.

  Bright.

  Black.

  White.

  The white became yellow.

  The yellow became a door.

  An open door.

  In the doorjamb stood a woman.

  My mother.

  I gaped at her. Ran to her. Tears streaming down my cheeks. Her chest was hard and cold. Her arms were slack. I hugged her, pressing my ear against her chest. Her chest was silent but warm. Warm and sticky. Sticky like syrup. Syrup ran down my earlobe and into my hair. I wiped, and my fingers came back red. I pressed away from my mother’s chest. Found it soaked with blood. Blood that was running from a gash in her neck.

  Gasping, rubbing, I scrambled backward. Her black eyes dripped with more blood. It plopped in rhythmic beats against our kitchen tiles. She raised her hand, beckoning me to come to her. A ring gleamed on one of her fingers, black as her eyes, black as her hair, black as her nails.

  Rubies aren’t black.

  The black stones caught the light, absorbed it, refracted it.

  I waited for them to turn red, but they stayed black.

  My mother had never worn a black ring.

  “Catori.” The voice sent a shiver down my spine. Made me forget about the ring. “Baby.” Like falling water mixed with smiles. The most wondrous voice. A voice that could soothe any ache. “I’ve missed you.”

  My heart fluttered.

  “Take my hand, baby.”

  I arched my fingers to reach hers, but stopped at the sight of the ring.

  Red isn’t black.

  Black isn’t red.

  “You’re not…” Not my mother…not real.

  Her face turned into my father’s.

  He was gurgling as blood dripped from his neck.

  I backed away. My hands slammed against something hard. Something that clinked.

  I drew my gaze away from the man standing in front of the yellow door. Stared at the red band twinkling around my finger.

  When I looked up, my father was no longer there.

  I touched my ear. Blood stained my fingers. Pulse skipping, I spun, looked for the source of blood. I was alone. Alone and bleeding. I touched my ear again, ran my fingertips down my neck, found slender grooves and furrowed skin. It was my own blood.

  Just my blood.

  Not my mother’s.

  Not my father’s.

  “Cat!”

  I whirled around. Found Ace where my mother had been. “It wasn’t black,” I whispered.

  Two lucionaga yanked him back. He flung them off him.

  “What wasn’t black?”

  Black.

  Plop.

  Black.

  Plop.

  “Talk to me, Cat! What wasn’t black?”

  “I…”

  The popping turned to whooshing. Wind blew, wet and wild, howling through the branches of the tree, sliding through the cracks in the clapboard walls of our tiny house, ruffling the polar fleece blanket tucked around our bodies, rustling and rough.

  The scent of rain, laundry detergent, and cooking oil filled me. A candle fizzled, then whooshed out. I held my breath but then let it whoosh out too.

  An arm stirred in the dark darkness, settled around my shoulders, pulled me into a pointy shoulder. A scrawny arm. “Don’t be scared.”

  I sucked in a breath and pressed away from the bony body. “Blake?”

  “This house will keep us safe.”

  Safe.

  “Want to play hangman?”

  “Hangman?”

  “Where you have to guess letters before I hang you.”

  “You’ll hang me?”

  “If you don’t guess the word.”

  “We never play hangman.”

  “What do we usually play?”

  “Tic-tac-toe.”

  “Want to play tic-tac-toe instead?”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Give me your palm.”

  I gave Blake my palm, felt a nail gently slide over my palm to form an X. “Where are the lines?”

  “You have to draw the lines. You like drawing lines.”

  “Blake, are you really here?”

  “Touch my face.”

  I swept a trembling palm over the right side of his face. Found an ear where none had been the last time I’d seen him. “You have both your ears again?”

  I moved my hand over more of his face that I couldn’t see because it was so dark.

  His cheekbones were hard underneath the pads of my fingers. “Your face. It’s healed.”

  Bang. An explosion rattled against me. I latched on to Blake, hid my face in the crook of his neck. When silence returned, I ran my fingers across his face to check if he was still there. The skin underneath my fingertips sank like a soufflé taken out too early, deflating over the cartilage of his face. His nose flattened. One eye gleamed, not the other.

  The air turned denser, leather and fumes.

  “What’s happening?”

  His arm tightened around me, no longer narrow and bony. The arm was strong and crushed me. Flattened me against a chest that was hard and cold.

  “You were my first kiss,” Blake said. “Be my last, Cat.”

  “Your last?”

  The air thickened until there was no more oxygen, only the musty, rank odor of car exhaust.

  “We have to get out of here,” I coughed, clutched my throat. “Blake—”

  A mouth landed on mine, pulled my lips in like a suction cup. I dug my hand against the chest, shook my head from side to side, but the lips wouldn’t let mine go. I clawed, screeched, but the sound only slid from my throat to Blake’s without breaking out. I gripped the sides of his face, pushed, pressed, pinched. Nothing. I latched on to his ears and yanked.

  Ears.

  Blake only had one. He’d lost the other during the war.

  But I was holding two ears.

  Two.

  The mouth freed mine, and I gasped for air.

  Air that wasn’t stained by fumes.

  The darkness receded, became purple and gold.

  Blake was gone.

  Faces crowded around me. Eyes. Hundreds of them watched me. I turned, head pounding, heart thundering. “How much”—I croaked—“longer?”

  A collective intake of breaths sounded around me.

  Did she just talk to us?

  She must still be in a trance.

  No.

  Yes.

  Impossible.

  I approached the bars, wrapped my fingers around them, fixed my gaze on a child with a long, narrow face and lips so red they looked chapped. I remembered my father telling me that when attacked, yelling at a crowd for help was useless. You had to single out one person and appoint them to save you. Concern them and they will become concerned, he’d said.

  I pointed to the young boy in the tunic as bright as his lips. “You in the red, how much longer?”

  His eyes that already ate up most of his face widened.

  The cage shook. I rocketed backward against the bars. My head slammed against metal. Stars exploded at the edge of my vision. Latching on to the bars to keep my body upright, I tipped my neck up.

>   Dark curls swooped over a smooth forehead, green eyes seared into my face, long fingers curled around the bars.

  “Cruz…” Had he come to set me free? Was my time over?

  His mouth moved, and I strained to hear his words, but if there were any, they were lost in the deluge of air that swooshed through the bars of the cage, loosening my ponytail.

  He yanked hard, then released the cage, sent it hurtling upward. I hooked my feet around the bars and gritted my teeth as my stomach soared into my throat. Gasps, shouts, screams echoed around me. Dots of fire whizzed around Cruz like shooting stars.

  Another body shot toward him, gripped him, punched him. Like in a flipbook, the action uncoiled in bursts of motion.

  Random words pricked my buzzing mind: Cupola, defective, Seelie, blood, mist.

  I closed my eyes until the cage leveled and stilled, until my loose black strands stopped flogging my cheeks and forehead. Was the lull the onset of a new nightmare? Pulse thudding, I cracked my lids, and a spot of red bloomed in my hair-streaked vision.

  I was still in Neverra. I didn’t dare let go of the bars for fear of toppling. It was the little boy with the cold-burnt lips. He pumped one open palm in the air twice.

  Ten.

  Ten, what?

  Minutes?

  Screams sounded. I twisted in the cage. Pressed my forehead against the bars. A shiny lasso wrapped around Ace’s writhing body, pinched his throat, pinned his arms to his torso, jammed his legs together. An inhuman shriek rose from my lips as he thrashed and twisted.

  Cruz leered at his captured prey, then lifted the hand that wasn’t holding the golden lasso. Ribbons of dust squirmed on his palm, danced in his wild eyes. With a feral growl, he tossed the dust. Like dry sand, it sprang off his hand and hit Ace’s face.

  Ace went still.

  “Cruz. NO!” I screamed. I pulled on the bars, trying to force them apart, but the metal held. “NO!”

  Ace paled.

  Grayed.

  Shouts echoed against the calimbors, ricocheted against the cupola, rebounded against my ribs.

  A tsunami of anger rolled through me, rocketed out of me.

  Like a rock breaking, Ace crumbled.

  50

  Loss, Lost

  “NO!” The cry broke out of my mouth as Ace’s light blue shirt flapped emptily, rose like a wind-blown plastic bag, then drifted.

  Cruz grinned as his dangling lasso coiled into his palm like a volitor branch. And then he was hanging to the side of the cage, his fingers inches from mine.

  Calm. The word slid off his lips and snaked around me like his lasso.

  The fuck I would stay calm! I scrabbled to locate my own dust. My hand trembled so hard I had to squash it underneath my other hand. Nothing prickled underneath my palm.

  The dust had to be there, though.

  Had to be.

  I pressed harder, mashed my air pipe to seize it, wheezed, but kept clutching, adding more pressure. My throat clenched, and my lungs shriveled.

  Prickling erupted under my fingers.

  I loosed them off my throat.

  Shouts.

  More gasps.

  Figures darted away, whorled into a long, runny smear, like paint dripping over a canvas, like rain dripping over a windshield. Air filled my mouth, buoyed my lungs, filled me with unadulterated adrenaline.

  “I trusted you and you killed him,” I growled.

  The green eyes stared unblinkingly at me. The mouth opened and closed like a fish’s.

  I flung my hand toward the face.

  The eyes went wide.

  The fingers fell away from the bars just as an arm snaked around my shoulders. “He deserved to die. Like Stella.”

  I looked up into my father’s face. “Dad?”

  Ace’s empty shirt slapped the cage, as pristine and white as falling snow.

  White.

  Not blue.

  A bone-chilling hush fell over my body as I slid the fabric through the bars of the cage and ran it between my fingers. “It’s white. Daddy, it’s white!”

  I looked up, but my father was gone.

  Something clanked behind me. I spun. Found Ace standing, as pale as the white shirt that had evaporated from my fingers. His lips were rigid, his gaze tight.

  My hair spiraled around my face, slicing my view of him. I rushed toward him, brushed his face to make sure he was real. His hands settled on my elbows, held them gently. I stared into the jeweled blue depths of his eyes.

  “You killed him.”

  “I— I—” Heat pooled behind my eyelids as his declaration twisted like a steel blade inside my chest. “No…”

  “Cruz is gone because of you.”

  My heart cracked as tears dripped off my chin, dripped onto Ace’s purple shirt.

  Purple.

  I pushed away from him.

  “You’re not real.”

  “I’m real.”

  “You’re not.”

  I hit his chest until my arms ached and my knuckles smarted. And still I hit, but Ace didn’t disappear. I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes and crumpled to the floor. Agony seeped into my heart, cleaved it open like the serrated wheel of a can opener tearing through metal.

  “I thought he killed you,” I wailed.

  “The only killer here is you.” Ace’s answer destroyed me.

  51

  Darkness And Light

  Clapping erupted around me.

  I jerked my head off my knees and gaped at the sea of faces surrounding the cupola, at the blinding smiles and twinkling eyes. Velvet pouches filled with coins jingled as they changed hands. The clamor was so loud, I covered my ears.

  Long legs walked toward me, kneeled. Arms gathered me. “It’s over.”

  I stiffened at the sound of the voice, leaned away. For a long moment, I held my breath. Then I lowered my hands from my ears and touched the boy’s jaw. Looped one of his curls between my fingers. He felt real, but did that mean he was? “I…I killed you.”

  Cruz smoothed back my hair. “Did you?”

  My brow crinkled. “Is this another…another—”

  He shook his head. “It’s over. I promise.”

  “What a show you gave us! Making us all think you were choking yourself when you were really pulling out your dust. Spectacular!” Linus’s cheery voice made me touch Cruz’s shoulder.

  If I had truly pulled out my dust and flung it at Cruz, how was he still here?

  “I have a bet on who was the intended recipient of your dust, Catiri.” A giddy Angelina stroked the velvet underside of a pouch. “Will you tell us?”

  I ground my teeth and turned pleading eyes on Cruz.

  Conversations erupted around us. Names of possible recipients were tossed around the crowd

  “Silence!” The king clapped loudly. “Silence. Keep your enquiries for this evening. I promised the future Mrs. Vega a grand celebration, and what a grand celebration it will be. Now give her space so she may gather her wits.”

  Conversations swelled as the courtiers broke into smaller groups.

  I burrowed my face against Cruz’s shoulder, whispered, “I don’t want a party. I want to go home.”

  He sighed, then scooped me up and airlifted me out of the cage. I let my lids slide shut as the air buffeted my face, as the fire underneath his skin crept under mine.

  “The dust was for me, wasn’t it?” His voice was soft.

  Without lifting my head, I murmured, “It was.”

  “What did I do to deserve to die?”

  “You killed Ace.”

  A beat. “Sound reason to end my life.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “If by okay you mean out-of-his-mind furious, then yes, he’s okay.”

  I smiled, but then I didn’t.

  Then I cried.

  Hours passed. Entire days. Purple mornings slid into violet evenings. Suns became lustriums which became suns again. I slipped from sleep to a state of semi-wakefulness where I noticed I was
enclosed in soft sheets instead of golden bars, and that someone sat in the corner, watching over me, rocking in a yellow chair.

  The chair reminded me of the one my grandfather had built for my mother when she was pregnant with me—surely a figment my addled mind had created for comfort.

  Sometimes, Ace sat in it. Sometimes, it was Cruz. Sometimes, it was Veroli.

  Soup was administered into my dry throat. Water was dribbled through my parched lips. A musk-scented sponge was swept over me. A comb was passed through my hair. All these ministrations were made with the utmost care and in the utmost silence.

  I was alive, but barely.

  “She’s growing weaker. We need to get her up. Get her food. We can’t just let her sleep.” Ace’s voice was hushed.

  “What do you suggest?” Cruz snapped. “We drag her out of bed and force her to ingest a ten-course meal?”

  “If that’s what it’ll take, then yes.”

  My lids fluttered over my eyes as I listened to them fight. Fight over me. How could they still care about me? I’d killed one with imaginary dust and the other with lies.

  Their argument grew more heated, but I didn’t understand what they were saying as they had switched to Faeli.

  “Don’t fight,” I murmured.

  Silence. And then two sets of bare feet padded toward me.

  Ace crouched in front of me. “Cat?”

  I looked at him, at his crumpled brow and tight jaw. “You died,” I whispered.

  “Cruz told me.”

  “He killed you.”

  He tipped one of his eyebrows up and smiled. “Wouldn’t put it past him.”

  Cruz didn’t smile, though. He stood beside Ace, arms folded against his chest, rigid as a washboard.

  “You’re angry with me?” I asked Cruz.

  “I’m angry.” His pupils throbbed. “But not with you.”

  “Did the Night of Mist already pass?”

  He shook his head. “It’s in four days.”

  “Four? I’ve been asleep for…”

  “Nine days.”

  I sat up so fast my head spun. I’d assumed three or perhaps four days had come and gone, not nine.