Devon gave me a strange look, no doubt wondering why I wanted loose change at a time like this. He shook his head.
I cursed. I’d dropped my purse with its quarters when I’d been racing toward the parking lot to save Devon from Grant. Sure, I had the chopsticks in my hair and the throwing stars and my phone in my belt, but there was only one thing on me of real value, only one thing that would work as tribute—my mom’s ring.
I raised my hand. The star-shaped sapphire glinted in the moonlight, burning with a dark inner fire. I didn’t want to give it up, but my mom would understand why I had to lose it. Because it was the only way Devon and I could survive this.
“Stop for a second.”
Devon did as I asked. I took one more long look at my mom’s ring, then slipped it off my finger with a pang of regret. I fisted my hand around the cool bit of silver and stepped away from Devon. He reached for me, wondering what I was doing, but I held up my hand, stopping him.
“Tell me to run,” I said through gritted teeth.
He frowned, wondering what I meant, but the realization hit him a second later. He started shaking his head no-no-no.
“We need to run,” I said. “You said it yourself. I know we’re both hurt, and I’m bleeding, but all we have to do is get to the other side of the bridge, and we’ll be fine. You’ll see—”
“There they are!” Grant shouted behind us.
Devon and I whipped around. Grant and the guards were four blocks away and closing fast. All of them were carrying swords, including Grant. Given the murderous glare on his face, it looked like he was just going to kill us now, instead of trying to tear our Talents out of us. Either way, if they caught us, we were dead.
“Do it,” I said. “Tell me to run. Now. Before it’s too late.”
Devon sighed, but he cleared his throat and lifted his eyes to mine. “Run!” he yelled in the loudest voice he could muster.
For a moment, nothing happened, and I wondered if his voice had been strong enough for his magic to work. Then, it was as if a pair of hands reached inside my body and wrapped around my arms and legs. I felt like a puppet whose strings were being pulled this way and that. Despite my many aches and pains, I had this sudden urge to do exactly what Devon said. To run and run and run until I either dropped dead of exhaustion or blood loss. The shape I was in, it was going to be the blood loss.
So I grabbed Devon’s hand, and we started running.
He kept up with me the best he could, but he still couldn’t go very fast, given his own injuries. He hissed with pain, but he didn’t ask me to slow down. He knew I couldn’t, not with his magic compelling me to run, run, run. So I tightened my grip on his hand and dragged him along with me. It was run, or die.
So we ran . . . and ran . . . and ran . . .
And slowly, much too slowly, the bridge loomed in front of us.
“You’re dead, Lila! Do you hear me? You’re both dead!”
Grant continued to shout behind us, but I didn’t dare turn around to see how close he was. All we had to do was make it across the bridge, and it wouldn’t matter. That was my plan, anyway—and the only hope Devon and I had left.
But a funny thing happened. We’d just started up the bridge when I realized that I didn’t feel the need to run anymore. That I wasn’t being compelled by his Talent. Instead, my own transference power had kicked in, and the cold rush of magic flowing through my veins was what was giving me the strength to run.
Devon and I hurried up the gentle curve of the bridge, but I tightened my grip on his hand and veered toward the stone set into the right side.
“What are you doing?” Devon croaked. “Are you crazy? They’re right behind us!”
I risked a quick glance over my shoulder. Grant and the other two men had closed the gap to a block. In a few more seconds, they’d start up the bridge and catch us.
I was counting on it.
I opened my fist and slapped my mom’s ring down on the stone in the center of the bridge, the stone marked with the three Xs. Somehow, the sapphire gleamed, despite my blood smeared all over the ring.
I tightened my grip on Devon’s hand, pulled him away from the edge, and hurried down the far side of the bridge.
I couldn’t be sure, but I thought that I heard a familiar, distinctive clink, as what I had offered up was accepted.
We stepped off the far side of the bridge when the last of the magic burned out of my body. I took a step forward and ended up falling to one knee before Devon could catch me. He hauled me back upright and put his arm around my waist again, but I couldn’t go any farther.
“Stop,” I whispered.
Devon tried to drag me forward, but my bare, bruised, bloody feet barely shuffled along the cobblestones. “We have to get out of here!”
“We’re safe,” I whispered again. “I know we are. So trust me. Please?”
Doubt flared in his eyes, but he nodded and stopped trying to drag me away. Instead, he turned so that we were both facing our enemies.
By this point, Grant and his men were on the bridge.
Grant realized we weren’t going to keep running, and he started laughing. “Making one final stand, eh? Don’t you know that you only do that when all hope is lost?”
I shrugged, as though I didn’t care about how close he was, although I really, really did. Grant was about a third of the way across the bridge, with the two guards a few steps behind him. None of them so much as glanced at the stone where I’d placed the ring. Good.
“You should have let me kill you in the slaughterhouse, Lila,” Grant continued his triumphant crowing. “Not made me chase you all the way out here. Because now—now I’m going to make it hurt.”
I gestured at the blood dripping out of my wounds. “And you think this doesn’t?”