“Deborl and his friends are in prison.”
“Prison?” I could hardly imagine good news anymore. “What about Wend? He was there, too.” Though Deborl had shot him….
Sine combed her fingers through my tangles. “Wend is dead.” Lines creased her face as she frowned, and a tear dropped from crevice to crevice. “None of them will trouble newsouls again, though it’s only fair to tell you that they were not ignored.”
“I need Sam.” I needed to tell him everything that had happened.
“Of course. Corin, please fetch Dossam.” She signaled to someone behind me—Corin, presumably—and footsteps retreated. “Where is Cris? They said he was with you.”
I gazed at the temple, cold and white and not quite as evil if Cris was still in there. Sam had said Cris had never done anything terrible to anyone. Even after learning they’d all sacrificed newsouls for reincarnation, I still believed that. He’d sacrificed himself for us now.
But I couldn’t answer Sine’s question.
I was going to break.
I wasn’t sure how long I stood there, holding myself together with nothing but threads, but eventually a familiar shadow fell next to mine.
My muscles felt like liquid as I lifted my hand just enough that Sam’s closed around it, and then his arm closed around the rest of me.
The dam broke and everything spilled out. Sam hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe, or maybe the sobs choked me. He touched my hair and face, kissed me. His affection was featherlight, as though he was afraid of crushing me.
I cried into his shirt even though there were other people here. Stef, Sine, Frase. People I didn’t know. I wanted to hide, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to walk. Even now, Sam mostly held me up.
Sam, who, five thousand years ago, had taken immortality knowing the price. How could I ever look at him the same way?
But I couldn’t bear to pull away from him. Maybe I wouldn’t tell him; it would be hard enough for both of us to deal with the fleetingness of my existence.
I would just die.
Where would I go? What would I do?
So lost in myself, and in Sam’s arms, I almost didn’t notice the commotion around the curve of the temple.
“What’s going on?” I swallowed more tears.
“Sylph. Don’t worry. They’ll capture it and set it free outside Range.” He started to adjust his hold on me, but I straightened and pulled away. “What is it?” Concern lined his face.
“I just had a horrible thought.” I wanted to be wrong, but my mind worked no matter how I tried to ignore it. “Help me get there before they put it in an egg.”
He looked uncertain, but kept me upright as I limped toward the crowd gathered around a panicked sylph. The tall shadow hummed and sang, caught in the circle of people with brass eggs. It could have burned any of them, but it stayed in the center and shifted as though trying to decide what to do.
Then it saw me.
I gathered my strength and gave Sam’s hand a squeeze. “Let me through.” My voice cracked, and I had to say it again, but the team with sylph eggs backed off. Maybe they remembered Deborl’s claims that I could control sylph.
I stepped through the line of people, Sam close behind, and Stef after him. The column of smoke and shadow grew still and its songs silent. It looked at all of us and slumped, somewhere between relief and exhaustion.
It was too human.
“We shouldn’t have let him do it, Stef.” I lifted my hand toward the black smoke. People hissed, but when my fingers passed through, there was only uncomfortable warmth. The sylph hummed, calmer.
I raised my other palm toward the midnight curls, but it shivered away from me as heat grew, like it had lost control.
“Oh.” Stef sounded like she wanted to be sick. “Cris?”
The sylph twitched—acknowledgment—and a tendril of shadow blossomed like a black rose, then fell to my feet.
I clutched my chest, my heart caged inside. We’d let him sacrifice himself for us, and now he was cursed—
Cursed.
Sylph were cursed.
Cris had said there’d been no sylph in the beginning. I still didn’t know how they’d been cursed, but I knew what Cris had done.
“Oh, Cris.”
The shadow rose vanished, and the sylph floated between a pair of guards—who stepped aside to let him pass. He flowed like ink down East Avenue, and Sine muttered into her SED. “There’s a sylph going through the Eastern Arch. Open the gates wide and let him be.”
31
HEARTBEAT
AFTER SPENDING A few days in the hospital, I was taken to the Council chamber. The remaining Councilors were there—nine now, since Deborl was in prison—but none of them looked happy to see me. Most just stared at the items on the table: a stack of leather-bound books, a handful of diaries, and a small silver box.
This wasn’t quite everything Deborl had stolen from me, but these things were the most incriminating. The music…