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“He’s Eli. I trust him with my life.” Kaleida tilts her head, trying to catch my gaze. “You know, this is my family now. I lost everyone I had, and these guys only spent a year with their parents before being sent to live at school. We only have each other.”

My eyes stick to the ground.

“I’ll tell you the story. You choose what to believe.”

I rub the mud off my hands while she speaks. I have no choice except to listen, but I don’t mind a distraction.

“In the great expanse of nothing, where the waves didn’t crash and the sun didn’t rise, where the laughter never sounded and tears never fell—thought only belonged to one: Ametrine, goddess and creator of the land and those beyond. And she recognized, deep within her matterless existence, that being alone would be the end of her. Her purpose was to create, and it would have to be more than whipping colors and textures and patterns into existence and sitting back to admire her work. She had to create something that mirrored the inherent purpose inside her—life.”

“Of course she did.”

Kaleida points her dark brown finger at the mud and lets a smile push up her freckled cheeks. “First she created the dirt and dust and rocks of the lands, the salt and tides of the seas, the rising sun and falling stars and the toes and whiskers and beaks and stingers of all the creatures she filled her world with. Then she sat back for thousands of years, watching life unfold, watching the beauty and the creatures multiply, and the landscape evolve and change with the seasons. But she was lonely, still plagued with the call to create. So she created beings with the fiercest of hearts and delighted in watching them navigate the world—and abhorred the death that inevitably came. She made one after another, watching them live and die alone, improving her design each time, tweaking the intricacies inside and out, until one day, she created a being so perfectly imperfect—wonderfully flawed and passionate, matching the give-and-take world she had created—that she was drawn to him.”

“The goddess fell for her creation?”

“Who doesn’t love a love story?” She drops her chin into her hand, beaming. “Ametrine took on the physical form she spent so many centuries refining and joined him in the young world as a Vaile. They fell in love—the first love—and the idea of him wasting away to dust tore her apart so deeply that she shared her essence with him, making him immortal. A god, like her.”

“Wait, heressence?”

She frowns at me. “You really haven’t heard any of this? I thought Hollows would have maintained some knowledge after the Separation.”

“I was told there are gods and that I should believe in them like everyone else.”

Kaleida takes a long pitying look at me. “Her essence makes her who she is. It resides within, capturing what matters most to her.” She stares at me until I nod, then continues. “Ametrine made two more Vaile and shared her essence again, creating two more gods as company for them. Her lover used a part of the essence he was given to bring to life the Hollows. They lived among the many more Vaile that Ametrine created. The Vaile and Hollows each had a role in maintaining balance and harmony in the world and completing the cycle of magic. Then—”

“Cycle?”

She gestures to the nature around us. “The gods gift magic to Vaile when we’re born, it gets activated inside us when we mature and it goes into nature when we die so it can be gifted again.”

“This isn’t helping me believe. It’s making it worse.”

Kaleida laughs and pulls on one of her gathered curls. “He’s right. You’re difficult.”

“Elivander said I’m difficult?”

“Actually, he said you’re a pain in the ass.” She seals her lips in a smile, eyes wide.

“Really?” I smile back. “Not a pain in his balls?”

She falls into a fit of giggles, and I twist around to glare at him. His back is to me, aiming his next shot. My insides itch from the rising heat, calling to that often dormant part of me that wants to fight.

I grab a beat-up slingshot he left behind, like the ones in Caldera, but the sling is made from a stretchy vine. I skim my hand over the pile of ammo and pick an unpolished marble with light streaks of pink through the gray, like sunset before a storm.

A child’s toy. I got this. I stand and face the clearing, stepping forward until the chain pulls tight on my ankle cuffs. The heat settles in my chest. I load the marble, roll my neck and extend my arm out in front of me, slingshot in my mud-stained hand. With a stretch of the sling to my shoulder, I find my target.

“What are you doing?” Kaleida asks.

Hunting.

He’s pacing now, waiting his turn. I follow him with my aim, gliding my arm back and forth, mirroring his movements. The clouds drop lower, restless and probing. With another pivot, he spies me hunting him. A quick pause, and he keeps moving. That sideways glance, that smirk—they kindle a furnace in me. Instinct trickles out of my pores. I’m aware of every shift. The encroaching clouds. Sypher turning to watch. Milo’s anxious hands. The wind tossing Eli’s hair. The waving leaves.

Eli stops pacing. He sets his gaze on me, his eyebrows taunting, his tapping fingers provoking, the thought of a marble colliding with his smirk so damn tempting. He gives me the slightest nod.

I squint and line up my shot. His stare penetrates the air around me, burning holes in my concentration. I blink him out of my thoughts, but sizzling fingers slip down my neck and back, his darkness reaching out to me. I release the sling, and the world slows down. The marble flies, rising into the air like a birdtaking flight. I soar right along with it, straight into the besieging clouds, my heart thundering in my chest. I want to look away, but I can’t. It makes contact—a solidplunk—with the ground.

Three feet in front of him.

Eli drops his head to the tragic marble in the dirt, then looks back at me, a glint of satisfaction in his eyes. I fall right out of the sky.