Page 18

He groaned and scrubbed his face with his hand.

“You don’t play fair, Clarke. I never said that.

You’re my best friend. I…” Whatever he wished to say seemed stuck in his throat.

“You know what my father expects of me. What I’ve been working toward.

I’ll be leaving for Thornton next week and won’t return for two years.

I don’t want to keep you waiting.” This much was true.

Lord Tanner himself had insisted that Theo spend time in the channels of the South with the nation’s most renowned water Charmers.

A huge honor, though I suspected Lord Shop simply wished to remove his only child from the city while it was under threat and had struck a deal with someone.

Theo groaned quietly, then came closer. Somehow, he’d grown even more handsome in the past few weeks.

Every girl in this hall would agree. “You know that I care for you, Nina.” His hand came to my cheek, then slid into the snarls of my hair.

“Whatever you may think of me,” he whispered in my ear, “you must know that this isn’t what I wanted. ”

I felt the slow unspooling of my restraint as he spoke, but I did not completely thaw. There were rumors that already he’d replaced me with someone else.

“If you want me to come for you when I return,” he said softly, angling my face to his. “Then say it, and I will come.”

And wasn’t this exactly what I’d wished for?

He watched as my mind stumbled, and in the absence of an answer, his lips descended.

They pressed against mine, just as achingly sweet as I feared they’d be.

My hands found his chest, then the lapels of his jacket. His arms gathered around my waist and pulled me in.

“Nina!” The hiss came from behind me, and it sounded dreadfully like Aunt Francis.

I turned to find her looking down her nose in fury at Theo, who now stood with his hands clasped behind his back. “Hello, Ms. Leisel,” he said, a casual grin affixed.

“Back to your place , Mr. Shop,” she said sharply. She watched Theo as he left, his hand resting a second longer than necessary on my shoulder before he went.

Aunt Francis closed the distance between us, her severe expression exaggerated in the dim light. “That boy,” she said tersely, her fingers rising to tease loose curls behind my ear, “has his claws in you.”

I shook my head. “Not anymore.”

“Good,” she uttered dryly. “Boys are fond of treating hearts like toys. Particularly the boys of Lords. I’ve told you this.”

The reminder was not so much to point out the importance of the title, but to point out the illegitimacy of my own. Fake parentage. Fake name. “I know.”

“Right, then,” Aunt Francis said, the words slipping past her teeth in a tumble. “That’s that. The boy will be shipped to Thornton, and you’ll be expected in the House of Lords as they… prepare.”

This, after she’d blanketed me in reassurances that sounded like lies.

Those so-called renegades in the brink haven’t a hope , she’d told me. What could they accomplish against those of our ability? They would be fools to try.

I grimaced. I knew those in the brink to be fools, and they had little to lose.

Aunt Francis saw my expression and sighed. “There is no turning back now, Nina. This is your side.” She did not smile. “You are an exceptional talent—you’ve surprised even me. There is nothing to fear.”

It was only then that I saw the sheen on her forehead, the ropes of tension peeking out beneath her lace collar.

Suddenly, projected all around us were the words of Professor Dumley, speaking of loyalty and serving one’s countrymen.

“Come,” she said, swallowing thickly. “They’ll call on you any moment.”

I nodded, though the dread returned, churning slowly from my center into an all-engulfing spiral. “Aunt Francis—”

“We’ve no time,” she said, and she marched me around the corner.

The queue trickled closer to the curtain openings as the boys were called, then the girls. I grew sicker with every inch gained.

“Nina Clarke. Charmer; Earth. Fellowship of High Order.” It boomed in my ears.

Light applause sounded, followed by a hushed curiosity. I took a seismic breath, pushed the curtains aside, and was transported into the light.

The stage was wide and oval-shaped, cascading onto pearly steps already filled with graduates. They waited with their heads turned to watch me. The spotlights glared down, golden and blinding. They warmed my skin and made the audience nothing but a dark abyss.

The clapping died as I moved across the stage, eyes pinched as I tried to see past the glare to the podium where Professor Dumley stood.

He smiled kindly, his eyes glinting with a spark of pride.

He proffered his hand as I came near and looked back out at the audience as though he were presenting an art piece.

Look , he seemed to say. Look what I have created.

I shook his hot hand and took the scroll. I bowed my head as I was told to do, and felt sheer panic. The audience applauded once more, unaware that I was an epicenter.

And as though the feeling had leaked from my pores and burrowed into the varnished wood beneath me, the stage trembled.

At first, I thought I only imagined it. But the quaking persisted. Grew. The building was humming. A quick, muted crescendo into a monstrous roar. The audience stood and screamed. They barreled over one another down the aisles.

Then, the earth beneath us concussed.

Like houses of cards, we fell. The ground seemed to rise beneath them, swelling like the belly of a giant and then caving, the sound pitched to the point of pain.

I screamed as I saw the graduates on the steps tumbling, and Theo looked back at me with his hands over his ears, his eyes bulging in terror.

The curtains and lights and rigs splintered and dropped, one by one.

Attacks on Belavere City imminent.

The Miners Union had come.

The stage lamps popped and erupted.

Aunt Francis was before me, scrambling amid a sea of the flailing. Swarms of crabs scuttling over one another’s backs.

“Nina!” she shouted, her face bloody.

She was sideways, or I was. She reached me on hands and knees and bid me to stand. Dust rained down in a cloud above her. “Hurry!” she said. “Hurry!”

An alarm was sounding, distant and sleepy. It whirred in one long drone, barely discernible above the screams.

I clambered over fallen rafters with Aunt Francis, tripped on blasted pieces of furbished timber. I fell across the body of a man with part of his head caved in.

Smoke was thick on the air. It joined the dust and made it impossible to see ahead.

A Mason tried to persuade fallen bricks from an exit, but she was already out of breath and the stone moved slowly, sluggishly.

Others joined her, lifting their hands before them and grunting until the stone gave. They tumbled away, clearing a path.

A flood of Artisans barreled through. The earth continued to quake.

Boom after boom shook the walls, cracked the ceilings.

Great plates of plaster detached and fell from above.

The entrance hall was littered with it. Marble tiles lifted and danced in place.

Walls buckled, the entire frame of the school growling its last before it gave in.

And I ran.

It never once occurred to me that I might try to stop the earth from breaking apart. There was only fear.

I was young.

I was not the weapon they thought me.

I gripped Aunt Francis’s hand. I propelled myself headfirst down the entrance hall toward the open doors. A gentleman groaned against a wall, his calf bent at a sickening angle, his eyes wide with shock. I grabbed his elbow, but Aunt Francis wrenched my arm away and screamed in my ear.

I heard nothing above the titanic groan that rose and rose as the walls fell. I spilled down the front steps, Aunt Francis’s hands at my back pushing me forward.

I felt it when her arms fell away, turned in time to see a splay of her limbs, a whip of her black hair as the rubble crashed atop her, and I screamed.

And then I was swallowed, too, buried in the marble and sandstone.