She kept her hands on the wheel, fighting the urge to rap her nails while the guard read through her details.
There were three more men at the border control station, one on the ground and two on elevated posts, each decked out in gear and artillery. Her father’s gun was strapped beneath the driver’s seat. She hoped she wouldn’t need it.
“Purpose?” asked the checkpoint guard.
“School,” she said, trying to remember which of the boarding schools was out this way, but he didn’t ask.
“You know these papers don’t grant you come-and-go privileges, right?”
She nodded. “I know,” she said. “I’m not coming back.”
The man went inside, and Kate tipped her head back and waited, hoping they would hold. Her eyes ached from tears, but they’d stopped falling hours ago, and her shades were down against the glare of the setting sun. The radio was set to a news station, a man and a woman talking about the mounting tension between Harker and Flynn. A riot at the Seam. The fact that Callum couldn’t be reached for comment. She shut the radio off.
“Miss Torrell,” said the man, handing back the papers. “Drive safe,” he added, and she almost smiled.
“I will.”
The gates went up, and Kate pulled forward, out of Verity, and into the world beyond. It was ten miles of buffer zone to the nearest crossroads. Ten miles for Kate to decide where she was going.
She switched the radio back on. The Verity news feed was already losing its signal, and a few moments later it crackled out entirely, surging up with a different voice in a different city in a different territory. Gone were the reports of North City, of the Harkers and the Flynns, and she drove on, half listening, until a line caught her ear. “. . . violent murders have people shaken and police stumped. . . .”
Kate reached forward, and turned the volume up.
“Yes, that’s right, James, disturbing reports out of Prosperity, where enforcement is still investigating a string of grisly murders in the capital, originally thought to be gang-related.”
She reached the crossroads, and stopped.
Temperance to the left, Fortune to the right, Prosperity straight ahead.
“While the police refuse to release any details, a witness called the murders ritualistic, almost occult. The killings come in the wake of another attack last week that left three dead. Crime in the territory has been on the rise for several years, but this marks a frightening new chapter for Prosperity.”
“Scary times, Beth.”
“Indeed.”
“Indeed,” echoed Kate, hitting the gas.
August ran a finger over the single black tally at his wrist.
It was a new day.
A fresh start.
He rose, and dressed, but not for Colton.
He checked himself in the mirror, the dark fatigues hugging the slim lines of his body, the blocky white FTF stitched over his heart. His hair still fell into his eyes, but they were darker now, the color of pewter, and he found himself avoiding their gaze.
August sank on the edge of the bed, Allegro toying absently with his laces as he cinched his boots. When he was done, he lifted the cat onto his knees and looked him squarely in the face.
“Am I all right?” he asked, and Allegro looked at him with his massive green eyes, and cocked his head the way Ilsa did sometimes when she was thinking. And then the cat reached out, and rested a small black paw on the bridge of his nose.
August felt himself smiling. “Thank you.”
He got to his feet. A case sat waiting on the stack of books. A gift from Henry and Emily. The violin inside was new, not polished wood, but metal, stainless steel, the strings heavy. A steel bow sat beside it.
It was a new instrument, for a new age.
A new August.
He took up the violin, nestled the cool metal beneath his chin, and drew the bow across the first string.
The note that came out was more than sound. It was high and low, soft and sharp. It filled the room with a steady pitch that vibrated like a bass through August’s bones. It was unlike anything he’d ever heard, and his fingers itched to play, but he resisted, lowering the instrument, letting the bow slip back to his side.
There would be time to call the music.
Time to summon the souls.
With Harker gone, North City was already sliding. Malchai with the Hs torn from their skin were attacking the Seam. Corsai were feeding on anything they could catch, even if it wore a Harker medal. The citizens were panicking. They didn’t know how to find safety when they couldn’t buy it. It was only a matter of time before the FTF would have to cross the Seam and step in.
And when they did, August would be with them.
He wasn’t Leo, but without his brother’s strength, his sister’s voice, he was South City’s last Sunai. And he would do what was needed to save the city.