Nova cocked the gun and slipped her finger over the trigger.
It should be her. She needed to be concerned with her own self-preservation. The sanctity of her own secrets. Killing Narcissa is what any Anarchist would do. What Ace would have wanted her to do, and almost certainly what he would have done himself.
Nova let out a shuddering breath, turned, and took aim.
Ingrid stilled, eyeing the barrel that was suddenly targeting her own chest. “Don’t be a fool.”
“Run,” Nova said.
Ingrid glared. Nova glared back, a drop of sweat falling into her eye.
Slowly Ingrid pulled herself to her feet. She eyed Nova warily as she took a step backward toward the fire escape, then two. “You’re making a mistake.”
“Can’t be as big as the mistakes you made today.”
With her brow beginning to twitch, Ingrid turned and started to run. Nova waited until she was launching herself over the edge of the roof before she squeezed the trigger.
The bullet hit Ingrid in the back of the arm. She cried out as she fell and Nova heard the clang of her body hitting the metal landing of the fire escape. Then the structure shook and thumped as she staggered her way down, jumping from landing to landing. Below, Nova heard someone yell—Ruby?—and soon, another cacophony of explosions rocked the building. Cursing, she ran to the ledge and peered down to the street, where a new patch of stones was missing from the wall of the theater and now scattered across the road. Ruby was on her back, coughing, with Oscar kneeling at her side. And Ingrid—
Nova scanned the street, only spotting Ingrid’s tall boots as she disappeared around a corner.
She slumped forward, unable to tell if she was relieved or not to see Ingrid get away.
Her legs were shaking as she pushed herself off the side of the roof and turned around.
Only for her heart to lodge into her throat again.
Narcissa was no longer kneeling over the Librarian’s body. Instead, a series of bloody footprints tracked across the roof, to the ledge facing the destroyed library. Narcissa had climbed up onto the low parapet, carrying the book her grandfather had managed to save.
“Narcissa, no!”
Ignoring her, Narcissa lifted her arms in a graceful arc over her head, then tipped forward over the edge. Nova screamed and ran toward her, though she knew she was far too late. She grabbed the ledge and leaned over, just in time to see the glinting surface of a broken mirror on the concrete below, as Narcissa swan-dived into it and disappeared.
The air squeezed from Nova’s lungs as she watched the reflection of blue sky and smoking flames shudder in the glass, before turning still once more. She recognized the mirror as the one that had been above the mantel in the rare books room. Bricks from the fireplace were scattered throughout the alley, blown there from the explosion.
Nova groaned, exhausted to her core, and sank down to her knees, her arms dangling limply over the wall. Her head fell forward, pressing into the cool stone, and she had the distant thought that she would be perfectly content to sit there, unmoving, for a month. Even if the air was full of smoke and debris. Even if there was a dead body and a pool of blood mere steps away from her. She did not want to move. She didn’t know if she could.
She felt heavy and drained. Her thoughts jumbled together as she tried to cope with what her expectations had been for the day, and what had become reality.
As she tried to determine what to do next.
Narcissa had gotten away. Nova knew that Ingrid had been right—the girl was a liability. She knew too much. And though Nova didn’t regret her decision not to kill her, or to let Ingrid kill her, she also wondered how long she would be haunted by the fear that Narcissa would turn up at any time and give up her secrets out of revenge … or, perhaps even more likely, use those secrets as blackmail.
The Librarian was dead. Good—because he couldn’t betray her. Bad—because he had been one of the Anarchists’ few reliable resources.
Bad—all those guns were destroyed. At least, she assumed most of them were destroyed, and any that weren’t would no doubt be in the hands of the Renegades by the day’s end. Double bad.
But, good—they had not learned anything about Nightmare. Not who she was or where to find her. Not even definitive proof that the Librarian had supplied her the gun she used at the parade.
Although, the Sentinel surely would have deduced that there was a connection between Cronin and Nightmare, based on how Cronin was so close to responding to his questions, but Nova couldn’t think clearly enough yet to determine how much danger that really put her in. After all, a lot of criminals came to Cronin for supplies. It didn’t exactly narrow down the search.
A clang reverberated across the rooftop, the sound conjuring the memory of metal armor and cold arms tightening protectively around her as they flew through the air.
Nova inhaled sharply.
“Are you okay?” said the Sentinel, sounding more gentle than he ever had before.
Nova swallowed. She didn’t respond and didn’t turn to look at him, even as his footsteps thumped closer. He stopped, not beside her, but beside the Librarian’s body.
Nova turned her head enough so she could glimpse him from the corner of her eye. He stood just outside the pool of dark blood. She inspected his profile, his suit, the arms that she had seen burn with flame and glow with energy, but that were now dull, metallic gray. There were signs of stress from the battle—singe marks on his side, dents on his back. But for the most part, he looked little worse for wear.
She had all but forgotten about the gun, which she had dropped in her rush to stop Narcissa. Now she found it beside her knee, the handle cool in her palm as she picked it up.
“Would you really have let him go?” she said, sitting back on her heels. “If he’d given you the information you wanted?”
The Sentinel said nothing for a long time, before finally admitting, “I hadn’t decided yet.”