Page 37

Numbness threatens to overtake me. It’s the same full-body tingling I felt when I was told of Mother’s death. And the same numbness I felt as the enforcers held me down on the floor in front of the judge who sent me to Halazar.

“It’s…gone.” I wish I could scream so loud that it would fill the chasm before me. The rubble looks like it’s been there for months. This brutality wasn’t recent.

“The building is, but the people might not be.” Silas’s optimism is a balm.

He’s right. Even as my heart is fragmenting, as despair pulls me down and questions spiral, I find my legs beneath me once more. I’m not helping anyone, myself included, if I crumble.

“Do you know where they might have gone in a time of crisis?” Silas is clearly trying to help guide me through this. I don’t have the capacity to thank him in this moment, but I know I will have to when I can think clearly again.

Blinking through tears that I refuse to let fall, I cling to the last fragment of hope that got me through Halazar. “There is somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“The start of a network—a passage out of the city.” Close enough to the club for easy access. Not attached, to avoid discovery in case of a raid.

“Out of the city?” He sounds surprised. I nod. I’m glad Arina didn’t tell him everything. Since Eclipse City borders the sea and river, it’s heavily regulated, to maintain Oricalis’s iron-fist control of trade.

Silas follows as I lead him away from the pit and narrow alleys that splinter off from the square the Starcrossed Club once stood in.

I stop before an inconspicuous metal door, then glance around the alley and up at the windows.

No signs of life anywhere. When my attention returns to the door, my chest tightens.

The lock has been smashed in.

I throw it open. It’s empty. No supplies. No messages. The hatch in the back has been left sickeningly ajar.

“No…” I stagger into the room to get a view of the inside of the hatch. Where there used to be a ladder descending into the tunnels underneath the city is twisted and gnarled metal that ends in rubble. The passage collapsed. “No, no, no. ”

“Maybe they went somewhere else?”

“There is nowhere else.” I bite out every word, fighting to keep my voice steady.

“This path was our escape route. Our fail-safe. It led to where we had our storehouses of supplies. It would’ve never been left open like this.

If it was compromised…” I run a hand through my hair, trying to think of whether Bristara ever said anything about an alternative.

I’m sure she had other routes. But where they’d be is a mystery.

“Fuck!” I slam my fist into the wall. But the word echoes louder in the small, empty space.

“Clara.” Silas is at a loss. He’s run out of hope to give.

“I don’t know where else they’d go.” The weight of the admission chokes me.

“If the enforcers knew of this path, I must assume they knew every path.” I round to face him.

“Did Arina tell you anything else?” Perhaps after I was taken, they correctly assumed there might be a threat to them and left well before the club was destroyed and our passageways raided.

He shakes his head.

“Of course not…” I sigh heavily. The one thing she didn’t tell him was the one thing I would’ve wanted her to say. Arina and the rest might be alive—I choose to believe they are until I know otherwise—but I’ve no idea how to find them.

“Let’s keep looking around,” he suggests.

“I promised you we’d get back.”

“We will. But we have a bit of time still.” Silas clasps my shoulder, and I shift to face him. He wears an encouraging smile. “You’ve come this far…you’ll regret it if you don’t try.”

I nod, and we emerge back into the alleyway. Every route I can think of leads to a dead end. Every building that was once familiar is distorted. Dull outlines where there was once color and sharpness. Everything becomes a blur, building after building, street after street.

But then Silas’s sudden inhale jars me. “Clara—”

He doesn’t have time to get another word in. A rough hand clamps over my mouth. Panic and anger rush through my veins as I’m snatched off the street and dragged into an alley.

I grab the offender’s thumb and use it as leverage to rip his hand away from my face.

I might still be recovering from the torture and neglect of Halazar, but I’m still the same Clara who grew up on these streets.

Years of survival in Eclipse City have honed my instincts to a deadly edge that can never be dulled.

Hand at my hip, cards fly from my deck. I spin, ready to strike.

Thank the Twenty I don’t.

“Gregor?” I say with a breathless mixture of shock and relief.

“The one and only.” He shifts his left hand away from the deck he always wears strapped to his right biceps and envelops me in his arms. “Sorry for manhandling you. I didn’t want to make a scene where others might see.”

Human touch still feels like an oddity after my time in Halazar.

I don’t mind it. I never have. But after months of beatings as my only contact…

There’s now a stiffness in my shoulders I must consciously relax out of them.

I need to force my arms to return Gregor’s friendly embrace.

I don’t want to let Halazar pull me from my friends.

I won’t. As if knowing all of this, Gregor squeezes me tighter.

I try to exhale the last dredges of the prison from my body.

As I pull away, I take stock of him. He’s in a familiar, worn-down leather jacket that highlights his broad shoulders and hefty midsection.

Thick brown eyebrows shadow his dark bronze–colored eyes.

Stubble coats his jaw, set against the pale of his skin, identical to the stubble that coats his head where his hair once was.

“You shaved your head?” I can’t stop myself from running my palm over his prickly head.

“You haven’t seen me in almost a year and that’s what you say?” He gives a full-bellied laugh. “Fuck, Clara. I thought you were dead.”

“Me? Never.” I grin slightly.

“Half the hair fell out from stress and worry. Figured I’d just shave the rest.” He touches the thin layer of fuzz as well. “Whatcha think?”

“Hair or no, you look like the same oaf you’ve always been.” He’s got the same goofy oversized smile, which nearly makes me weep with relief at the sight of it.

“But a lovable one at that?” He seeks reassurance he shouldn’t need.

“No doubt.”

“Damn straight.” Gregor steps away, and his entire demeanor shifts when he turns to Silas. The warmth evaporates like gutter water on a summer’s day. “You are?”

“A friend,” I reassure Gregor. “It’s because of him that I was able to get here.” Would I have found a way out on my own? Eventually, yes. But Silas certainly helped expedite the process. And I didn’t have to risk discovery by doing something rash at Ravin’s soiree.

“A story I want to hear. The rest of us will, too.”

“The rest of you?” My heart skips a beat.

“Yeah, this way, let’s get off the streets first…it’s best if I don’t linger too long.”

“Still making trouble?” I fall into step behind him. Silas takes up the rear, though I can sense his hesitation. I try to give him an encouraging look, but he doesn’t seem convinced.

“Don’t know any other way.” Gregor wears a wry grin. “Now, keep your head down; last thing we want is someone else—less friendly—to recognize you. Even with your own hair chopped off.” I duck my chin. It takes no small amount of effort to keep my questions silent.

We stay off the main road and keep to the side streets between brick-and-mortar homes.

Not a word is exchanged out of an abundance of caution, even though the questions threaten to burst from me.

Behind an iron gate is a garden path that leads to a narrow townhome.

The front facade is simple, but the building is as stately as the rest in this affluent district.

My muscles relax, my pace slows, and the tension seeps from me as I feel the same sense of safety I always had around the Starcrossed Club.

I admire the building for a moment, a knot tightening in my chest. Already, it feels like I’m returning home.

We enter into a tight coatroom. As I shut the door, I notice that just above the curved door handle is a four-pointed star stylized in the shape of an X.

On the left side of the X is a brass S, on the right a C.

The same symbol is inside the silver bracelet I’d gifted Arina when she left for the academy.

“Starcrossed Club,” I whisper, running my fingers over the almost insignificant detail that was once my entire world.

“Bristara says we have to keep the spirit alive, somehow,” Gregor says warmly, though the words are twinged with sorrow. The club would still be alive and well if not for…whatever happened. “Let’s go to the lounge. We’ll be more comfortable there.”

Through the second door and out of the coatroom, the hall splits in two.

A narrow, straight staircase rises to the second floor on the left.

The right pathway is perforated with doors, ending with one of framed glass that leads to an inner courtyard in the back.

The first door to the right of the entry is shut, but the second one we pass is not.

I halt.

It’s a galley kitchen. Jura is there, humming to herself the jaunty tunes she picked up from her days working on the riverboats.

To think…I was once sick of those songs.

Now I feel like I’ve never heard finer music.

Her long raven-black hair cascades in waves down her back, the light brown of her skin complementing the richness of her brown eyes. Eyes that now turn to me.