“Alia, there were still wars after the Warbringer died,” said Jason. “Vietnam, Cambodia, the Balkans, countless wars in the Middle East and Africa.”
“But who knows how much worse it would have been if Irene Martin had lived?” Alia brushed hastily at her cheeks. When had she started crying?
Diana squeezed her shoulder. “Listen to me,” she said. “We’re going to reach the spring. We’re going to change all of this.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. We’ll reach the spring. We’ll break the line. And there will never be another Warbringer. No girl will have to bear this burden again. Including you.”
“That’s right,” said Jason.
“You don’t even believe there’s a spring,” Alia said, sniffling loudly.
“I believe…I believe that if there was a start to this, then there has to be an end.”
A buzzing sound broke the quiet of the room. Alia looked down at the phone. “Nim’s here.”
“Go wash your face,” said Jason, taking the phone from her. “Perez will let Nim up. I’ll have the files put on the jet, and we can look them over during the flight. Both of you should pack a travel bag, too.” He put his arm around her. “Alia, we—”
She shook him off and stepped away from Diana. “Don’t,” she said, ignoring the flash of hurt that crossed Jason’s face as she headed for the door. She couldn’t bring herself to let him comfort her. He couldn’t fix this. The only thing that would make this right was the spring.
She closed the door on Jason and his files and the long shadows their parents had left behind.
Diana found Alia flopped on a canopy bed heaped with snowy linens in a large chamber at the other end of the hall. This room had a floor inlaid with wood in the pattern of a huge sunburst, and one wall was painted with a misty view of a lake dappled with pale pink water lilies.
“Monet,” Diana said, finding the name in a memory of one of her art history lessons.
“I was really into that story ‘The Frog Prince’ when I was a kid,” Alia said to the ceiling. “Mom wasn’t big on princesses, so we compromised with a lily pond.”
But the wide windows that overlooked a vast swath of parkland had already captured Diana’s gaze. From this height, the city was transformed. It was like looking into her mother’s jewel case—a city of silver spires and mysterious ironwork, windows that glinted like gems in the afternoon light. The park was rigidly symmetrical in its boundaries, hard lines demarcating where it began and the city ended. It was as if someone had set a door into another world at the center of the city, someplace lush and green, but contained on all sides by strong magic.
Alia’s room seemed full of small magics, too. Her desk was stacked with textbooks and a little hourglass sat beside the lamp, but the sand in it seemed to be lodged at the top. Diana shook it, then flipped it and gasped.
“Is the sand in this flowing upward?”
Alia rolled her head listlessly on the pillow. “Oh. Yeah. It’s because of the density of the liquid inside it instead of air.”
A framed photograph sat on the corner of the desk: a young Alia and Jason on a boardwalk, their hair braided into tight rows, Alia’s head studded with plastic barrettes. Behind them stood the same couple Diana recognized from the photo in the study—a man with a craggy, friendly face, his blue eyes sparkling, his cheeks reddened by the sun, and a woman with dark-brown skin and a soft cloud of hair held back from her face by a cheerful red headband. They were all striking a silly pose, flexing their muscles like comic strongmen. Jason’s smile was broad and open, his dimple carved deeply into his left cheek. Maybe Alia was right about how much he’d changed.
“And what are these?” Diana asked, pointing to a shelf of neatly stacked patterned boxes.
Alia groaned. “It’s super nerdy.”
“Tell me.”
“I’m trying to collect the element that corresponds to my age every year for my birthday, like Oliver Sacks. He was a neuroscientist.”
“I know. We have his books.”
Alia lifted her head. “You do?”
“We try to keep up with the outside world.”
Alia flopped back against the pillows. “Yeah, well, here’s hoping I make it to argon.”
Diana heard footsteps on the stairs and tensed, preparing herself. Alia might trust Nim, but Diana couldn’t afford to.
The bedroom door banged open and a girl stormed through—though she was less like a girl and more like a human whirlwind. She wore open-toed boots that laced up to her dimpled knees and a smock dress that sparkled. The side of her head was shaved and the rest of her hair fell forward in a slick black sheaf that flopped over one eye. The other eye was black as jet and rimmed with gold, and her visible ear was studded with silver and gems all the way from lobe to top.
“I cannot believe you lasted all of what? A week in Turkey? I thought this was supposed to be the big adventure, Alia. The moment when you cast off your chains and—” The girl’s voice broke off as she caught sight of Diana standing by the window. “Sweet mother of apples.”
“Pardon?”
“Nim—” Alia said, a note of warning in her voice.
The girl strode forward. She was round cheeked, round shouldered, round everything.
“Poornima Chaudhary,” she said. “You can call me Nim. Or whatever you like, honestly. God, how tall are you?”
“Nim!” snapped Alia.
“It’s a totally reasonable question. All in the name of research. Your text said we need clothes.” Nim hooked her hand around one of the bedposts and muttered, “Please tell me this girl is less of a pill than the last one you forced me to hang out with. No offense,” she said to Diana. “But, excluding me, Alia basically has the worst taste in people ever.” Her one visible eye narrowed. “Are those bruises? What the hell happened in Turkey?”
“Nothing,” said Alia, fluffing her pillows and propping herself against them. “Boating accident. They had to cut the trip short.”
Diana was surprised at how easily Alia delivered the lie. But how many tears had Diana hidden from Maeve? Some sorrows had to be borne alone.
Nim crossed her arms, bracelets jangling. “You look like you’ve been crying.”
“The jet lag is just messing with me.”
“You weren’t gone long enough for jet lag.”
“I—”
Nim held up her hands. “I’m not complaining. Summer in this dump of a city sucks without you.” She cast Diana an assessing glance. “And you definitely know how to bring back a souvenir.”
Alia tossed a pillow at her. “Nim, quit flirting. You are here for style-emergency purposes.”
“Your life is a perpetual style emergency. So much money, so little chic. Am I right?” She turned to Diana. “Who are you exactly?”
Diana took in Nim’s bright, inquisitive eyes, her head cocked to the side. She looked like a sparkly, round-cheeked sparrow. “Diana,” she said, and smiled. “But you can call me Diana.”
“Are you going to help us or not?” said Alia.
“Of course I am. I love spending your money. But how did Jason convince you to go to a party?”
“Guilt bomb.”
“Typical. All right, my females,” Nim said, whipping out a measuring tape and flipping open what Diana realized was a computer on Alia’s desk. “Let’s go shopping.”
“We can’t go out,” said Diana, though she hated to dampen Nim’s enthusiasm. “We’re already taking enough risks.”
Nim pulled out a pair of green plastic glasses and plunked them on her small nose. “What’s that, now?”
“Jason’s being strict on security again,” Alia said hurriedly. “We’ve had some threats.”
“Crazy, right?” Nim asked Diana. “Can you imagine living on lockdown?”
“Come on, Nim. It’s not like I have that many places to go.”