Shadowlark

CHAPTER 1

The clockwork dawn is loudest in the old sewers. The sound of the machines pushing the sun across its track in the sky echoes through the tunnels, shaking the ground beneath my feet. Mortar crumbles from the ceiling and falls like snowflakes, surrounding me in a column of white.

“Don’t worry,” I say, reaching out for Tansy’s hand. “This happens every day. It’s safe.”

She shrinks back from me, standing just beyond arm’s reach, twisting her hands together. “Where do we go?”

I turn in place, peering through the flakes of mortar. For a moment I’m disoriented, trying to make sense of the route I’ve known since childhood. There: a tunnel gapes black through the haze. “This way.”

Tansy can read the trees and the sky and the breeze, but this is my domain. This is the world I know. My path is certain—and where I falter, my brother’s ghost leads the way. It’s as though Basil’s just ahead, waiting for me to catch up.

I crawl into the sewer pipe and hear Tansy follow after. Her breathing grows sharp and heavy behind me, the air thick with magic and fear. She’s not used to confined spaces. In the clammy dampness of the sewers, her power shines in my second sight like a beacon, golden and warm despite the tunnel’s cold.

When we emerge into a junction, Tansy stumbles into the muck on her hands and knees. I reach out to help her to her feet, but she backs away, scrambling up on her own.

“Do you hear that?” she gasps.

I close my eyes, concentrating. There’s wind blowing somewhere, whistling through the tunnels, and in the distance I can hear the rustling of leaves. But beyond that there’s something out of place, a sound that doesn’t belong. Pixies? No. Splashing, like footsteps. Kids, then. Rivals, trying to beat us to our destination. Other students come to break into the school.

“Come on, let’s move faster.” I can feel Basil’s ghost moving further away, slipping out of my senses. “Hurry, and we can beat them there.”

“Wait, Lark.” She takes a step toward me, then stops, turning her head, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. “Listen. They’re dangerous.”

I close my eyes again, and this time I can hear their snarling. My foot slips in the muck, splashing loudly, and the snarls change to howls. They’ve heard us. In my mind, I can see their hungry white eyes, their sickly grey skin, their ravenous mouths.

Tansy reaches for her bow, but she’s not wearing it. Her hand closes on empty space. “What if we run into them in the tunnels? There’s no room to fight in there.”

“Fight?” My stomach twists, sickening. “You can’t fight them, they’re just children. They’re just like me.”

“That’s your problem,” Tansy protests. “You’re too soft. Too trusting. They’ll take advantage of that.” She takes a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “Fine. If you won’t fight, then we need to run. What about this way?” She sticks her head into a pipe leading east.

I know that route. I used it when I was younger. But something halts me, the hairs lifting on the back of my neck. Basil didn’t go that way. I can’t sense him anymore—and that alone is enough to trigger the alarm bells in my mind. Basil is everywhere down here. It’s the only place I know he still exists, the only place where I have more than just a folded paper bird to remember him by.

“No,” I whisper. “No. Not that way.”

“Lark, we have to go! Now, or they’ll find us!”

“That way’s wrong, it’s too small. I’m too old now to pass that way.” Around us the snow is hissing into the water, melting against our skin. Tansy’s hair is a halo of white.

“I don’t want to die here, underground, so far from the sky.” She starts trying to force herself into the pipe, stopped first by her shoulders and then, when she tries to go feet-first, by her hips.

I move away from her, eyes scanning the junction. It looks familiar. I’ve been here before, although it’s different now. Vines have grown through the cracks in the bricks, swarming up the walls, reclaiming these sewers for nature. In the spring it will all be moss and flowers and earth, like there was never a city here at all.

A snowflake lands on my cheek, and I look up. Beyond the swirling white sky I can see a hatch.

“We have to go up.”

“What? Are you insane?”

“We’re underneath the Institute now. We can go there instead of the school. They’ll have the Harvest list there, too— we just have to get into the Administrator’s office.”

Tansy pries herself back out of the pipe and comes toward me, peering up through the snow. “We’ll never make it. There’s no ladder. I have no rope. We aren’t wearing climbing gear . . . ” Her voice fades into the background, still listing the things we’d need to climb up into the white sky.

In the distance, far above us, I can hear a bird singing. My brother speaks to me, as he often does down here in the old sewers, down here where I’m closest to him. I ask him, How did you do that?

He smiles. Magic.

“Tansy.” She stops abruptly, mid-word, turning toward me. I reach out. “Take my hand.”

She shrinks away, fearful. “I can’t.”

“You have to trust me.” I take a deep breath. “I promise, I’ll keep you safe.”

The howls have grown to the point where I can no longer hear the birdsong, but I know it’s still there.

Tansy hesitates a moment longer and then reaches out, her palm meeting mine with a jolt that sends the snow swirling away from us, thrashing against the walls of the sewers.

We rise, and the snow rises with us, up into the sky. The hatch bangs open and we go soaring through it to land on the other side. The snow streams through after us, and it takes us both pushing with all our weight to close the hatch against the storm behind us. It slams shut, the sound echoing through the vastness of the space.

We’re standing in the rotunda of the Institute, with its domed sky inlaid with gold and precious stones in a mosaic meant to imitate the world beyond. The sun and moon dance across the interior of the dome in tracks much like the one in the Wall outside.

Tansy is silent now, not looking at me, arms wrapped around herself as she crouches on the marble floor. I can’t see the halo of power around her anymore—but there’s no time, and I haul her to her feet. She pushes my hands away, but at least she’s moving again.

Together we hurry across the floor towards a door on the far side marked “Harvest and Resource Administrator” and, below that, a plaque bearing the name “Gloriette.” Even though I know she won’t be inside—she’ll be preparing for the Harvest Day ceremonies where she officiates—my heart still pounds as we approach.

I press my ear to the door, but it’s made of iron, and I can hear nothing on the other side of it. But even if the other students don’t catch up to us, there are pixies everywhere, and we have no time to waste. I twist the handle, take a deep breath, and shove.

We stumble through, and the door bangs shut behind us. We’re standing in Dorian’s house, exactly as it was the day I left the Iron Wood. His bed is neatly made in the corner, the dresser stands covered in curios, and the map still hangs above it. I squint, trying to make out the city where my brother was headed, but the lines and words blur before my eyes, impossible to read.

A flicker of city magic, twisted and unnatural, touches my senses. Pixies.

“Come on, Tansy—we have to find the list of names for the harvest.”

I start rummaging through Dorian’s kitchen. My heart has risen into my throat, choking me, making my mouth taste like bile. Even though it will change nothing if I find the list, I have to know. Either my name is on it or it isn’t, but at least I can find out if all of this has been worth it—if this time, finally, I’ll be where I belong.

The discordant clang of city magic rises all at once, and something metallic and heavy bangs against the shutters. I slam shut the cupboard I’m searching and back away, scanning the room for a place to hide.

Tansy leaps forward before I can stop her. “Enough,” she cries, breaking her uncharacteristically long silence. “We have to fight.”

She throws open the shutters.

I gather my own magic, ready to smash the pixies into oblivion—but it’s not the city’s spies. It’s Nix, and it makes straight toward me, wearing its favorite bee form.

“They’re coming for you.” Its voice is urgent, clipped. “We have to go, now.”

Who’s coming? The other students in the tunnels? The city’s pixies? Gloriette and her machines? The Iron Wood scouts? The shadows? It doesn’t even matter. “I need to see that list,” I hiss.

As I drop to my knees to search under Dorian’s bed, Tansy heads for the door. “I’ll just go keep watch.”

Nix, hovering behind me, watches her go. “Is that wise?”

The space under the bed is empty. I sit up, turning to look at the pixie. “Is what wise?”

“Letting her out of your sight. What makes you think you can trust her?”

My stomach twists sickeningly. The pixie drops down to perch on Dorian’s dresser amidst the curios—on top of a leather folder. Somehow I’d missed it when I first scanned the room.

“Nix,” I breathe. “That’s it.”

I scramble to my feet. My hands are shaking as they reach for the folder, the one that will contain the list of names for this year’s harvest. Finally I can know whether I’ll be safe. Whether I can stop running.

From the doorway, a flash of light drags my eyes away from the desk. It’s Tansy, glowing with magic—and yet she’s not Tansy anymore. She’s a figure in white, light shining from every pore, pinprick pupils almost lost in white irises. Follow the birds, she says, and I look back down at the folder in my hands.

I pry it open. It’s empty, save for a single object—my brother’s bird, folded out of old, yellowing paper. As I watch, the edges begin to turn black, as if burned by invisible fire. The scorch marks race inward until the entire bird is consumed. It flaps its wings once, its song more a scream than music. I reach out to try to take it, save it, and it gives way to my touch.

In seconds the bird crumbles away to nothing—nothing except the shadow staining my fingertips.

CHAPTER 2

I jerked awake, a ragged sound tearing out of my throat. The world was dark and white, and for a moment I was back in the sewer tunnel, watching the mortar hiss into the dank water below. Then I blinked, and reality reasserted itself. Snow was falling all around me, frigid ice water rolling down my neck as the flakes melted against my cheeks.

“Are you all right?”

Nix. It hovered a few feet away, the whirring of its clockwork mechanisms sluggish and sleepy.

“What?” My voice was hoarse, like I’d been screaming. “No. Yes, I’m fine.”

“You were dreaming.”

I grabbed for my blanket to scrub away the water on my face. “So? What do you know about dreams?” It was barely predawn, only the faintest hint of light to the east to tell of morning’s approach. What had woken me? The dream? Or something else?

Nix dropped down onto the end of the blanket by my feet. “She’s out scouting the city.”

“Who is?”

“That other one.”

I glanced across the embers of the fire at the empty tangle of snow-covered blankets there. Closing my eyes, I tried to make my mind work through the cold and the exhaustion and the remnants of my dream.

The snow had begun a week after I left the Iron Wood, and Tansy had caught up with me only a few days after that. I’d sensed something out there following me, but only sporadically. The fact that her magic only worked in the rain and humidity meant that here, in this dry, frigid air, most of it was buried deep.

I thought I knew who—or what—was following me. I’d stopped and waited, knowing that if it was him, he’d catch up to me. Better to meet him on my terms, find out if he was human or shadow—if he was the boy who’d kissed me or the animal who would’ve tried to kill me but for the bars of his cage.

I wasn’t ready for the stab of disappointment that jolted through me when I saw Tansy’s face emerging from the gloom.

“The truth,” she’d said, “is that I couldn’t stop thinking what trouble you could get into. No magic, no weapons. Alone except for that thing.” She jerked her chin at Nix, who crouched sullenly on the opposite side of the fire, watching Tansy in unblinking, frosty silence.

She had followed me at a distance, respecting my desire to travel alone, but after the snow started she was worried I didn’t know how to handle myself in the cold, and came in to check on me.

I knew she was worried about him. I wasn’t the only one certain I’d be followed as I headed north, away from the safety of the Iron Wood. “He would’ve fooled anyone,” she said, mistaking my silence for shame when she brought it up. “And you didn’t know that They turn human when exposed to magic. It’s not your fault. If he ever shows his face again, he’ll pay.”

I thought of the boy in the threadbare shirt, whose pale blue eyes could be so fierce and so soft. I thought of him swimming in the summer lake, and the utter contentment on his face after he’d finished eating dinner in the clearing with the bees. I thought of that last piercing look before we parted, and I held my tongue.

We kept following the ruins of the highway marked on the map in Dorian’s house, and we came upon a ridge overlooking the city the next day. A once-vast city that now lay entirely in ruins.

Tansy wanted to head into the remnants of the city immediately, but I decided we’d make camp on the ridge and wait. If there was anyone living there, we’d be able to see the signs of it—smoke rising from chimneys, people moving around the streets. I was sick of flying headlong into situations I knew nothing about. We agreed to stay a couple of days—which, I realized, sleep-muddled mind slow to comprehend, had passed. Unless Tansy had found anything, we’d be heading down into the city today.

I shivered, though I could not be sure if it was because I was cold or because I was frightened. I shoved a hand deep into my pocket until my fingers found the blunt, creased contours of my brother’s bird.

I disentangled myself from my blanket and shoved on my boots. Wrapping my heavy coat around my shoulders, I stepped out past our muddy campsite in the shelter of a ruined restaurant and into the freshly fallen snow. I could see the remnants of Tansy’s tracks, half-covered, leading away toward the city. She was always going off on her own, impatient—old habits died hard, she said, and she was used to scouting.

I took a deep breath, trying to shake the uneasiness that lingered in the wake of my dream. There was no reason not to trust Tansy’s motives for following me. It was only my subconscious reacting to one too many betrayals, looking for the next blow before it landed.

Something was wrong. My instincts caught on before I did, and I turned in a slow circle, keeping myself from shivering in the cold with a monumental effort. There was something in the air, still though it was. My nose picked up leather. Wind. And, impossible over the snow, the green tang of grass.

I knew that scent.

No. NO.

The snow had almost completely covered the tracks we’d

made last night. Searching the ground outside our shelter, I found half-filled hollows to indicate Tansy’s footprints and mine, the area I’d trampled looking for firewood, a somewhat more recent path to some trees where Tansy must have relieved herself in the middle of the night. I tried to calm my breathing—it sounded harsh and alarm-loud in the still dawn air.

It was my imagination. I’d thought of him, and my mind was producing whatever evidence it could to make it seem like he was here. He’d have to be a shadow again by now—if he’d found us he would have attacked.

As I turned back toward the shelter and the warmth of my blanket, something caught my eye. I would’ve missed it except that the light to the east was growing, and the snow was beginning to shine as well with an eerie, violet-orange glow.

Footprints.

Not mine or Tansy’s—too large. And too widely spaced. My heart in my throat, I followed them as silently as I could. They led to the ground floor of the structure, to the part of the floor that served as roof to our cellar campsite. There the tracks vanished into noise, as though someone had paced back and forth, churning up the snow. The tracks were fresh— fresher than Tansy’s leaving to scout the city.

Though I searched, I could not find tracks leading away— and yet there was no one there and no place to hide.

By the time Tansy returned I had erased the tracks, tramping through the snow and disturbing it to the point where it was impossible to tell anyone but me had passed there. She found me kicking and kicking at the snow, my breath steaming the air, soaked to the knee.

Firewood, I told her, showing her a few branches I’d picked up just before she crested our ridge. To make a hot breakfast. To warm us before we set out for the day.

But despite the hot mash of water and grains, and the roar of the flames, and Nix’s fire-heated metal body nestled in the hollow of my neck, I couldn’t stop shivering.

I had no proof it was him, and yet I knew. It was as though I could feel him out there, somewhere, as though our time spent sharing the same magic, the same sustaining power, had linked us.

Oren. The boy who taught me how to live out here, who saved my life, whose life I saved. The boy who told me he’d follow me anywhere no matter how he tried to stop himself.

The boy I’d learned was a monster.

And I hadn’t forgotten what I’d promised him before he left.

If I find you—and if I’m not me—promise me that you’ll kill me, Lark.

I’d thought my home city was big. When I lived there, it was the only city in the world, as far as most inside the Wall knew. It held the last remnants of humanity. The Wall was the edge of the world.

But it was nothing compared to the sprawling monster that filled the valley. The snow had stopped, and from the ridge we could see all the way to the sea, little more than a grey expanse in the distance. My mind half-dismissed the sight of it, unable to digest how big the ocean must be in comparison—instead it focused on the city, something it could almost comprehend.

The city lay in ruins. Even from a distance we could see that the buildings were crumbling, asymmetrical, falling apart. The tallest structures were metal skeletons of buildings that must have once been so tall they would’ve dwarfed the Institute in my city. Where my city was laid out artistically, aesthetically, with broad streets and well-designed blocks, this city was crowded and sprawling and slapdash, like it had just grown together over the years, and people had just kept adding taller and taller buildings to make more room. I couldn’t even imagine how many people must’ve lived in it before the wars. The tallest spire at the center of the city had something gleaming, reflective, at its top—blinding to look at even from this distance.

As we drew nearer, though, we could see just how dilapidated the buildings were. I fought down a surge of disappointment. Maybe I’d expected a Wall keeping it safe, like the Wall around my own city. Without that shielding against the magicless void in this wasteland, how was anyone but a Renewable meant to survive? Surely the city had to be abandoned—and to judge from the state of the ruins, it would’ve had to have been abandoned for decades, if not more.

Which meant that there were no experiments going on to do with restoring magic to the wasteland—and no experiments concerning curing my brother and me of what the Institute had done to us. Which meant that there was no reason for my brother to still be here.Tansy kept up a running commentary as we headed down from the ridge toward the crumbling buildings.

“There are definitely people down there,” she continued. “But not many, and they keep themselves hidden pretty well. There’s nothing that I can see that stops the shadows from coming in—no Wall like in your city, no scouts like in mine. So maybe the people just stay inside as much as they can.”

“We have to find someone willing to talk to us.” I scanned the long street ahead of us, littered with debris and heaps of garbage made unidentifiable by age. “Dorian said Basil was headed here. I can’t imagine he stayed—this isn’t what he was looking for, that’s for certain. This place looks like it fell decades ago.”

Tansy readjusted the bow on her shoulder, fingering the string idly. “Maybe, if he talked to anyone here, they might know where he headed next.”

I didn’t answer. The thought of having to make yet another weeks-long journey, this time through even more snow and bitter cold, with my dwindling supplies, was intolerable. Basil was supposed to be here. He was the only other person who survived what the Institute had done to me—he was the only person who would know how to deal with it. I just had to find him before I lost control with Tansy, and everything would be okay.

Even now, despite the dry air, I could sense her power just a few steps in front of me. And I wanted it. Now that I knew I could absorb the innate magic of other people, I could barely restrain myself. It was like my actions in the Iron Wood had opened a floodgate that I didn’t have the strength to close.

I kept my eyes on the street. Even though I could still feel Tansy’s magic, at least I didn’t have to see it with my second sight, glittering and glinting every now and then, as if shining in invisible sunlight.

Nix alighted on my shoulder, the whirring of its mechanisms oddly comforting in the quiet. Despite my desire to travel alone, I was glad for Nix’s company—and for Tansy’s too. Though when Tansy was near and chattering away, Nix was always silent. I sensed that the machine had something to say, and so I slowed my steps a little, let Tansy get out ahead of me.

Eventually, the pixie ruffled its wings and spoke. “Smart.” “What is?” I kept my voice to a whisper.

“Letting her walk in front of you. That way if she turns on you,you’ll see it coming.”

Ice trickled down my spine, and the pixie’s words in my dream came back to me, clear as day. Is it wise, letting her out of your sight?Nix’s mistrust of Tansy had penetrated even my dreams.

“Don’t be absurd,” I replied. “Tansy’s a friend. She’s here to look out for me.”

“That other one was your friend too. Where is he now?” I looked down at it on my shoulder, and it gave the strangest imitation of a human shrug.

The machine had no reason to lie. In fact, it had proven more than once that it was incapable of lying. I watched Tansy’s ponytail bobbing with each step and gritted my teeth. I didn’t want to be someone who could only trust a pile of magical circuitry, and never another human, flesh and blood like me.

“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to say.”

“Well, maybe I don’t particularly want to know what you were going to say.”

“Yes, you do.” Nix was as calm and unemotional as ever.

I stayed silent, counting each of my weary steps in my head.

“The people living here are watching you.”

CHAPTER 3

I stopped dead. Tansy was still moving up the street, oblivious to whatever Nix was sensing.

“How do you know they’re watching us?” I whispered, arching my back until it popped, turning my head this way and that. If anyone were watching me they’d see a weary traveler stretching—not inspecting the surrounding buildings for watching eyes.

“Watch the windows.”

I shifted my attention forward, toward the dark hollows in the buildings. I saw nothing—no faces or movement. I was about to say so when something did move. Subtle, quick. Just a shutter closing in a building on the next block.

Tansy had stopped, and I caught up with her in a few strides.

“I’m pretty sure there’s—” I began, keeping my voice low.

“I see them,” she breathed back. “Can’t tell if they’re a threat.”

I sensed nothing, no matter how I strained. I couldn’t tell if it was due to the inconsistency of this new ability to sense the world around me or the fact that iron made up the skeletons of these buildings, potentially muffling anything inside.

Nix spoke up, its voice even quieter than Tansy’s. “They do not appear threatening. In fact, they appear to be more frightened of us.”

A shutter cracked open nearby, no more than an inch. I could see nothing beyond it but darkness compared to the pale winter sunlight outside.

I took a deep breath. “Hello!” I shouted. “We’re not here to cause trouble or harm to anyone. We’re travelers, seeking a man named Basil Ainsley.”

Only silence answered me. We kept walking, eyes drawn to every quick movement at the windows, ears tuned for each light click or thud of a shutter closing or door locking. The temperature was dropping fast, and we knocked cautiously on a few doors, hoping for shelter. But we got no response, and when, in growing desperation, we tried a few handles, they were all shut tight.

We’d gotten about a mile into the downtown part of the city when a noise made us jump back. The clang of one of the ancient garbage cans lining the streets.

The people here were afraid of something—I couldn’t help but think of the most terrifying thing in this wilderness. Shadows. I reached out with everything I had but felt nothing. I tried to make myself move toward the sound but found my feet rooted to the crumbling street.

Tansy slipped her bow from her shoulder in one smooth movement, dropping into a low stance, ready for action. She nocked an arrow to the string and crept toward the sound, slow. I ached to tell her to be careful, but bit my lip, watching.

Just before she reached the cans, a small figure burst out with a frightened yell, darting past Tansy—and straight at me. We collided with a thud, sending me sprawling and my assailant dropping on top of me with a groan of pain.

It was a kid, no more than seven or eight. Dirty in that little-boy way, but in relatively clean clothes. No blood around his mouth. No signs that he was anything other than a little boy. More than anything else, he felt human. He lacked the golden magic glow Tansy and all the Renewables had, but there was no dark void, hungry for magic, as there was with Oren. He felt like nothing—like walking into a room at exactly room temperature.

“Let me go!” he shouted, scrambling backward, eyes darting this way and that. To my astonishment he started to cry as he scuttled sideways into the shadow of a nearby stoop.

Just then a pair of people burst out of the building across the street. A man and a woman, both brandishing weapons. The man, about Tansy’s height and thickly bearded, wielded a knife. Much smaller than Oren’s knife, and clearly designed as a tool, not as a weapon. The woman, whose expression was even more frantic than the man’s, carried a club fashioned from what looked like a piece of a bedpost.

“Get away from my son!” the woman screamed, voice ragged with fear.

Tansy lowered her bow instantly, straightening out of her hunting stance and lifting her hands. I picked myself up off the ground where the boy had knocked me, stumbling backward a few paces.

“We aren’t going to hurt him,” I said hoarsely, trying to get air back into my lungs. “It’s okay.”

As soon as I backed up enough that I wasn’t between them and the boy, the woman ran past the man to kneel in front of the kid, who was still leaking tears, frightened as much by his mother’s fear as anything else. As his mother ran her hands over him, looking for injuries, and mumbled reassurances, the father stepped forward, fingers white-knuckled around the handle of his knife.

“You’d better keep moving,” he said, expression largely hidden by his black facial hair.

Tansy moved over to my side, returning her bow to her shoulder, uncertain how to proceed. I knew how she felt.

“Please,” I tried again. “I’m just looking for a man named Basil Ainsley. Do you know him? Did he pass through maybe a couple of years ago?”

The man’s eyes narrowed, darting to the side as his wife picked up their child, then back to me again. “Why are you searching for this man?”

My throat was so dry my voice came out like sandpaper. “He’s my brother.”

The man considered this, watching me suspiciously, then shook his head. “I’ve never heard of him,” he said gruffly. “You may have noticed, we’re not looking for company. This place isn’t for you, you’d better go.”

The woman crossed back behind the man again, carrying the boy. I saw a flash of red and realized he’d skinned his knee when we collided. The blood was dripping down his shin.

I took a step forward, and the man reacted instantly, the point of the knife swinging toward me.

“Wait!” I said, freezing. “I just want to—here.” I took off my pack, very slowly, and crouched so I could put it on the ground and go through it. Somewhere in there was a pot of salve from Tansy’s mother, an herbalist.

As soon as I opened it I saw Nix, who must have darted inside during the commotion. It looked up at me, flicking its wings silently in recognition—and in warning. I knew why it was hiding; without knowing these people’s history, it was impossible to know how they’d react when confronted with a machine, the very symbol of the extravagance and wanton use of magic that led to the wars in the first place.

I took out the bag that held my last few apples and tore a few strips from it, then located the pot and straightened. Both mother and father were watching my every move, wide-eyed, fearful. What had happened to these people that they lived in such fear?

“It’s medicine,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and calm. “For his knee, so it heals faster and doesn’t get infected.”

The mother cradled the boy’s head against her, eyes flicking toward the father, who was just noticing the skinned knee for the first time.

“Can I?” I asked, taking a slow step toward them.

The man and woman exchanged glances, as though speaking privately, without words. The woman broke first, taking a step toward me and nodding. “You may.”

I couldn’t help a little smile at that—she sounded like my own mother, correcting my grammar. Even if she was brokenhearted from losing Basil, even if she largely ignored me in favor of my other brother, Caesar, I missed my mother.

I moved forward, and the woman crouched so that the boy could lean against her while I tended to his knee. He’d stopped crying and was more interested in examining my face and watching what I was doing. Though he grimaced when I mopped up the blood and spread a thin layer of the salve over his scrape, he didn’t cry again. I noticed that he had freckles, something no one in my enclosed city had. How strange to see just an ordinary human—not a Renewable, not a shadow— living out here. I wondered how it was possible, but I knew enough that now wasn’t the time to ask.

I wrapped the last of the strips around his knee, tying the tightest knot I could. I knew from having two brothers that boys never stayed still long.

“Thank you,” his mother murmured as I straightened. “Sean, what do you say?”

“’anks,” the boy mumbled before squirming out of his mother’s grasp and making a beeline for the building his parents had emerged from.

“Okay.” The man still had his knife between himself and me. “Get going then.”

“Brandon,” the woman said, chiding. “Be civil.”

He shook his head, still watching me, still suspicious. “Don’t trust anyone from the outside. We don’t know who they are. What they are.”

The woman looked up, shading her eyes. I followed her gaze to the bright reflective object on top of the spire. It was dimmer now as the sun made its way down the sky. I still couldn’t make out its shape, but I thought it might be some kind of crystal, refracting the light into a million different beams across the city. The way the woman gazed at it reminded me of the way people in my city checked the time by the sun disc. Maybe it was a kind of clock.

“It’ll be just as dangerous for them out here in a few hours,” the woman said, speaking as though Tansy and I weren’t there. “She helped our Sean. They’re not here to hurt us.”

The man’s eyes went from me to Tansy and back again. His beard moved as he grimaced beneath it, uncertainty twisting his features.

“Fine,” he said eventually, defeated. “One night only. And that one leaves her weapon outside.” He seemed more suspicious of Tansy than of me, his black eyes narrowing at her.

Tansy opened her mouth as if considering protesting. I didn’t blame her—if they’d tried to take Oren’s knife from me, I would’ve felt naked. I felt a little guilty not volunteering the information that I was armed, too, but I knew it was smarter to keep it on me. I nodded at Tansy and she nodded back, slipping off the bow and her quiver of arrows and giving it to the man. He left them on the stoop as he led us through a revolving door, into the building.

Once inside, the man retreated to a comfortable-looking stuffed chair in the corner to work on something wooden with his knife. Sean plunked himself down to play with what seemed to be a set of polished round rocks, bouncing them off each other at random, and the woman closed the doors behind us.

They’d made a home in what looked like the lobby of some other building. The marble floors were covered with a slapdash assortment of colorful, overlapping rugs, and the large reception area had been divided into rooms by wooden screens. The revolving door opened directly into what I could only assume was the kitchen and dining area, dominated by a huge fireplace built into the floor and a chimney that descended from the ceiling to hover above it. It must have been a gorgeous piece of art and design back when the building was new, but now it only held a small cooking fire. The flames had an odd green edge to them, and my nose detected the acrid smell of chemicals. When I looked closer I saw that the wood they were burning seemed to be pieces of old furniture. I realized with a jolt that they wouldn’t really have access to firewood here in this forest of buildings. They must have been raiding the other ruins—or the rest of the building, which seemed unused—for wood to burn.

The rest of the furniture in the home was an odd mix of ancient-looking pieces, no doubt liberated from the ruins, and rough but solidly made pieces that looked relatively new. Overhead the ceiling was painted with a faded fresco of winged babies and clouds and swirling ribbons, encircled by intricately molded trim.

“I’m Trina,” the woman said as I turned in place, inspecting the odd mix of grandeur and hominess. “And you’ve already met Sean. My husband is Brandon, ignore him. Are you girls hungry?”

I glanced at Tansy, who seemed uneasy, out of place. If even I, who had been raised in a city with buildings like the Institute, felt overwhelmed, she must feel like she’d stepped into another world. And she looked positively naked without her bow at her side.

I smiled at her, trying to look reassuring, and then nodded at Trina. “Extremely,” I answered.

Trina laughed and went to the fireplace, lifting the lid of the pot suspended over the flames. The smell of something delicious and savory wafted toward us, and it was all I could do not to drool.

“I’ll just add some more water, there’ll be plenty for all of us. Come, sit.”

“Thank you,” I said awkwardly as Tansy and I made for the fireplace, beginning to strip off our outer layers. My nose and my fingertips began to burn and itch as they thawed in the warmth of the room. I kept my pack close so that Nix could stay near me. I could hear nothing and knew it was probably on the verge of hibernation, doing its best to stay silent.

As I looked around the room, something shadowy darted from right to left. All I could see was a blur of feet under the screen. I tensed, staring. While I watched, a pair of black eyes appeared around the edge of one of the screens, gleaming.

Trina noticed my sudden shift and smiled. “Relax. That’s just Molly. Don’t mind her, she’s shy.”

There was a faint squeal of protest and a giggle, and the dark eyes vanished again.

Dinner was a stew made of grains and winter vegetables. I was worried about there being meat in it, but Trina assured me that meat was a rare commodity in the city and that they only ate it when they got lucky—and even then, most people didn’t have much of a taste for it. Most of their food came from farms outside the city limits, tended by the whole community. When the harvest was good they all ate like kings all winter, and when it was sparse, they all scraped by somehow together.

Afterward Trina made a weak but fragrant tea out of dried flowers, and we sat by the fire, sipping it. Even Molly emerged for this, bare feet tucked up under her skirt and huge round eyes always watching me and Tansy. She looked no more than four or five years old.

“How many of you are there?” I asked, thinking of row upon row of buildings with shutters that closed as we passed.

“Only about two hundred of us now,” Trina replied.

“And fewer every week,” Brandon added grimly.

Tansy looked up from her tea. “Fewer? Why?”

Brandon leaned back in his chair with a creak. The fabric was worn and faded, and it sagged in the middle where he sat. He shook his head, setting his mug off to one side and retrieving his carving. It seemed to be a rough approximation of a horse, something I’d seen only seen pictures of in my city.

Trina spoke up instead. “It’s not a safe place to be, this city. There are . . . things here. Dark things.”

Tansy and I exchanged glances, and I knew I had been right. Shadow people. I leaned forward, forgetting my tea. “Maybe Tansy and I can help. Tansy’s from a place that’s so good at fighting off the shadow people that they’re afraid to even go near it. And I—” I thought of the shadow child I’d killed and its cry as its fell. “I’ve had a little experience.”

Tansy leaned forward, eager. “She’s being modest. She survived for weeks on her own with a shadow person right on her heels the whole time. Lark’s amazing.”

I felt my cheeks redden. I hoped they’d read it as modesty, and not as shame.

“Shadow people?” Both Trina and Brandon were looking at us, curious.

“Monsters that eat people,” Tansy supplied. “We always just used the word Them where I come from, but Lark’s word for them is pretty accurate. Isn’t that what’s attacking your people?”

They exchanged glances, and Trina nodded slowly. “Maybe. It’s hard to know exactly what they are. They only come at night, when the Star fades. And if anyone ever sees them, they don’t live to tell the tale. They vanish forever. Gone. Taken.”

Eaten, I thought, trying not to shudder. “The Star,” I repeated. “That’s the thing on top of that tower?”

She nodded. “The Star’s how we know when they’re coming. Once the sun sets and the light from the crystal dies, it’s death to be outdoors. Sometimes they break in, though, when they’re too hungry to be turned away by locked doors.”

I followed her gaze toward the door, where I saw rows of barricades ready to be shoved against it. Though the window shutters were closed, I could see glimpses of light through the cracks. Not nighttime yet, but close.

“Don’t worry,” said Trina. I knew she was trying to be comforting, and maybe that confidence was enough to fool her children, but I could hear her fear behind her firm voice. “We’re safe in here. Brandon’s the best woodsmith in the city—nothing’s getting through that door.”

“Tell us about yourselves,” said Brandon, changing the subject.

Tansy answered first, and I settled back against one of the screens, my feet stretched out toward the fire, content to let her tell our story. I slipped one hand inside my pack and felt the cool metal of Nix’s body bump up against my fingers. Sill there, still hiding.

I knew I’d never get used to the way Tansy talked about me, like I was some sort of hero or saint. I never heard her sound anything less than sincere, but I couldn’t understand her faith in me. Maybe to her, and her people, I was some kind of hero. I’d stopped the army of machines from my city from overrunning the Iron Wood and enslaving the Renewables hiding there.

But my city also never would have known where the Iron Wood was if it weren’t for me. And Tansy didn’t know about the child I killed. Didn’t know how all I wanted to do was find my brother and a place to be safe. That when I saw shadows, I didn’t fight—I ran away.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t notice Molly creeping closer to me until a pair of small, warm hands reached for my arm to move it aside. I shifted without thinking, and the little girl crawled into my lap. I froze, glancing up at her parents. Brandon was intent on Tansy’s story, but Trina was watching me and Molly with a smile. I could tell by her faint surprise that this was unusual behavior for her daughter, but that she was happy to see her overcoming her shyness. There probably wasn’t much opportunity in a life as brutal and ruled by fear as this one.

I was the youngest of my family and never had any little kids around to take care of. Molly was small enough that I had no idea what I was supposed to do with her. Uncomfortable, I shifted my weight, half-hoping the girl would go away if I did. But no. All she did was turn enough so she could crane her head around and look up at me.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she whispered as Tansy continued chattering on. She wrapped her hands around locks of my brown hair, giving a firm tug.

I nodded and let her pull me down so she could whisper in my ear.

“I like your friend.”

Of course. Tansy was the social one, after all. The one with the good stories and the rich voice. I smiled at Molly. “Why don’t you go sit in her lap?”

The girl shook her head, impatient, and tugged at my hair for me to lean down again. “No, your secret friend.”

I looked down and saw that Nix had half-crawled onto my hand, its jeweled eyes visible on this side of the pack only. It gave a tiny, startled buzz and dropped back into darkness.

Molly laughed and leaned back against me.

What a bizarre child. Way too observant for someone her age. But then, I’d always been quiet, too. Unusual, out of place. Bemused, I put my arms around her.

The atmosphere inside was so congenial and warm that I began to grow drowsy, and I forgot it was only afternoon, not night. But eventually Brandon stood, setting aside his carving and stretching.

“Time for lock-up,” he announced. When I looked, I saw that the light coming through the cracks was almost invisible now, no brighter than the firelight inside.

Tansy and I helped move all the barricades into place, taking over from Trina, who usually helped her husband secure the building. The huge wooden structures were far too heavy for one person—I was surprised they were even able to do it normally with just two. How afraid they must be, I realized, feeling a little sick. I wished there was something I could do to help them.

Brandon checked and double-checked all the shutters and then sent the children off to bed. I expected Trina to go tuck them in, but it was Brandon’s voice I heard murmuring to the children from the room on the other side of the screen from the fire. The warmest room, no doubt.

Trina smiled at us as she finished wiping the bowls and mugs clean. “I’m afraid we don’t have beds for you girls, but it sounds like you’re used to sleeping on the ground.”

I found myself smiling back. “A dry, clean floor next to a real fire is far more than we were expecting,” I promised. “But it’s only just dusk now, isn’t it?”

Trina nodded, her smile fading a little. “We usually try to sleep after lock-up. It’s just easier that way, rather than lying awake in the dark, listening for every sound. The truth is that if they come for us, we’ll hear it. Nothing can get through that barrier without making a racket. It’s easier for the children, too. No child should have to grow up knowing that the monsters they dream of in the night are real.”

My heart constricted. Suddenly the Institute’s methods didn’t seem quite so monstrous. After all, what would I give to feel safe again every day, to know nothing could get me, that my family could sleep safely? How much would I sacrifice?

My own safety? My life?

My freedom?

CHAPTER 4

After Trina and Brandon had gone to bed, I stayed awake, pacing. As the fire died down the air had grown cooler, but I could still feel sweat pooling in the small of my back.

I’d been given the opportunity to provide my own people with that kind of safety, and I’d run away. Of course, I wasn’t a real Renewable—but at the time, the Institute had fooled me into thinking I was. I believed I had that choice, and I chose to abandon my people. Did it matter that the Institute had planned all along for me to run, so they could follow me? I still made a decision.

I wished I knew what had prompted Basil to abandon his task. All I knew was that Basil had volunteered to try to find the Iron Wood, and that at some point in his journey, he’d destroyed his pixie and vanished. Had he made the same choice I did?

I didn’t know whether that made me feel better or worse. A glint at one of the shutters caught my eye, and I backtracked a pace, putting my eye to the crack. I could just see the Star, dim enough now that I could make out its shape. It truly was like a star, or a snowflake—jagged and uneven crystal spires radiating out from its glowing heart. Though the street outside lay in shadow, the Star was high enough up that it was still catching the last remnants of the sunlight.

The buildings in this city were so destroyed that it was hard to believe only time had worn them down. Some distance down the street, one of the structures was so reduced to rubble that I couldn’t even tell what it had once been. With a jolt, I realized that this city must have been attacked during the wars. That some power-hungry Renewable had targeted it for unknown reasons.

I wondered if that Renewable had created the Star, fading in the dying light. As I watched, the light dimmed, like magic in a dying machine’s crystal heart. Then it winked out, leaving the city in darkness.“Can’t sleep?” It was barely more than a whisper.

I turned. Tansy was sitting by the fire, arms curled around her knees. Nix was nearby, on the other side of the fireplace, wings half-extended as if soaking up the warmth.

I wondered how long they’d been watching me pace. I moved away from the window and joined them, sitting in the empty space between them.

“Just thinking,” I whispered back, conscious of the fact that only wooden screens separated the bedrooms from the kitchen where we were.

“I wish we could do something for them,” Tansy said with a sigh.

I found my gaze going to the shutters again. “Why do you suppose the shadow people only come at night?”

Tansy shrugged. “Easier to get people alone? The upper hand when it comes to hunting?”

I chewed at my lower lip, troubled. “That crystal—the Star—it’s strange. Dorian said that this city once conducted experiments concerned with restoring magic to the wilderness. Do you think maybe the beacon wards them off, somehow, when it’s lit?”

Nix’s wings fluttered, a tiny sound in the stillness. I knew it wanted to comment, but we couldn’t take a five-year-old’s delight as a sign that the family wouldn’t mind Nix’s presence.

“Maybe,” Tansy said, slowly. “But who put it there? Surely not these people.”

She didn’t need to say it, but I knew what she meant. These people were hovering on the brink of survival, living harvest to harvest. And none of them, as far as I could tell, had a shred of magic beyond what sustained them. How could any of them have had the resources to erect such a structure?

I was about to answer when I saw a flicker of a shadow under one of the screens. When a tiny form emerged from behind it, hovering in the darkness just beyond the edge of the firelight, I straightened.

“Molly?” I whispered. “Can’t you sleep?”

She didn’t answer, swaying slightly side to side, her nightgown swishing softly against the tops of her feet. Tansy glanced over, then grinned at me, returning to her study of the flames.

“Why don’t you come sit with us? You can play with my secret friend if you want.”

She took a step forward, just the edges of her toes crossing the ring of firelight. I could see only the faintest outline of her face, her wispy hair, the flash of firelight in her eyes. Why didn’t she come?

My mouth went dry. I don’t know how I knew—it had nothing to do with my abilities, my sensitivities. She made no telling sound, no movement; even the swish of her nightgown had stopped. The steady gleam of her eyes was fixed on my face.

But I knew.

“Tansy,” I whispered, not taking my gaze from the figure in the shadows. Slowly, I reached for the strap of my pack to bring it closer.

I heard Tansy shift, straightening, recognizing the urgency in my voice if not the reason for it.

The girl heard it too. Like a predator scents its prey’s fear, she knew. She took another step forward, and I saw the dark grey tracery of veins on her tiny foot. Her teeth gleamed in the firelight, even and white except for a gap where she’d lost a baby tooth.

Shadow.

And then all I saw was teeth and dead, grey skin and desperate, hungry white eyes. She was on me faster than I could register movement, the pain of her fingernails scratching at my skin jolting me into action. I struggled, the shadow girl’s screaming and snarling mingling with Tansy’s shouts of confusion and Nix’s furious buzzing. I heard other howls rising, the scrape of footsteps, the crackle of hungry voices.

The little girl’s nails dug into the fleshy parts of my shoulders, clinging to me with unnatural strength, her teeth snapping inches from my nose. A string of saliva ran from her lips to my face. I held her away with one hand pressed against her throat—she didn’t even notice, as though she didn’t need to breathe. With my other hand I groped for Oren’s knife, the one I’d kept hidden in my pack.

Not again. The words flashed through my mind, bright, searing. Not again. I can’t kill another child.

My strength was giving out. Her teeth caught my earlobe and tore, sending pain like burning needles scattering down my neck and across my face. I heard a scream, not even recognizing the sound as my own voice until I had to gasp for air and the sound ended.

I struck out with the blunt handle of the knife and felt it connect with a dull thud, sending her reeling back with a piercing howl of pain and confusion. I lurched to my feet, a wave of dizziness rushing through me as I swung my pack onto my back. Droplets of blood scattered across the floor as I stumbled, colliding with something warm. I shrieked, only to feel fingers wind through mine and hold tight.

Tansy.

“Tansy—we’ve got to—”

She hauled me backward toward the door. “My bow’s outside,” she gasped. One of her eyes was half-shut and streaming tears, and her other arm hung oddly. Before us was the family, silhouetted by the fire behind them, pacing and watching us, looking for their moment. The pale bandage around Sean’s knee looked strange and out of place, surrounded by the sickly grey flesh of a shadow person. None of them—not even Molly, who had regained her balance—looked like they’d be slowed down by the meager injuries we’d managed to inflict.

They were waiting. Waiting to see what we’d do, waiting for one of us to make even the tiniest movement.

I stepped backward and hit wood. The door. I groped with my free hand for the handle, only to find rough wood, exposed nails.

The barricades. We’d locked ourselves in with monsters.

“Your arm,” I said in a low voice, trying to keep it from shaking. Trying my hardest to keep the creatures from sensing my terror and striking. “Can you help me move this?”

Tansy shook her head, not taking her eyes off of the shadow people. “No,” she gasped. “And we’d never get them all moved in time—they’ll attack if we try.”

My eyes went to the screens, and beyond them, the lobby that stretched back toward a wide staircase. Past that I could see only darkness, my night vision ruined by the fireplace in between.

Tansy swallowed audibly. The sound prompted a gurgle of anticipation from Brandon, his grey face and white eyes sunken behind the black beard. “We’ll never get past them.”

I knew she was right. Molly, the tiniest of them, had leaped on me before I’d even realized she meant to move. There was no way.

A mad whine cut through the low growls and snapping jaws, and we looked in time to see a copper blur zip across the room, directly at Trina. She howled and reeled back, clawing at her face. The blur slowed enough for me to recognize Nix, shifted into a tiny ball of spikes, zipping from shadow to shadow and screaming all the while. They pawed and clawed at the air, but Nix was too fast for them.

I was frozen, staring—but Tansy didn’t hesitate. She surged forward, dragging me with her by our joined hands, making for the back of the lobby. Once I was moving she let go of my hand, stretching her longer legs and putting on a burst of speed. She reached the doors at the back—a pair of them. She ran to one first, jerking at the handle, then skidded to the other. She pulled, pushed, clawed at the wood—but it didn’t budge.

“No good!” she shouted. “The stairs!”

I spun, my shoes squealing against the marble floor, and made for the broad stone staircase. I heard the boy give an outraged scream, and then the solid clink of metal striking stone.

Nix. My heart seized, and I almost stopped.

“Don’t let it be in vain,” gasped Tansy, surging past me for the stairs.

I gasped for breath, the air sobbing in and out of me. Blood was seeping down my neck from my ear and into my shirt, sticky and wet. I fought another surge of dizziness and turned back for the main room. I couldn’t leave Nix now. But just then I heard the familiar whine of madly whirring wings and a voice that only became distinct as it went zipping past me in a flash of copper and sapphire: “Gogogogogogogogooo . . .”

I saw a shadow, indistinct, clawing its way around one of the screens. I bolted up the two flights of stairs, my pack bouncing heavily against my spine.

I found Tansy sprinting down a carpeted corridor on the third floor and I followed, gasping for air. There were doors on either side of the hallway, but though we tugged and pounded on each one, they were all sealed up tightly. The hallway ended in a broad window overlooking an alley below. Only part of the glass remained around the edges, jagged and splintered.

Nix’s momentum carried it out the window several feet before it turned and zoomed back in, hovering, clockwork grinding and twitching as it tried to keep flying despite the damage it had taken. Tansy took only a moment to gasp for air and then spun around, ready to try the other direction—but the shadows were there, indistinct in the dark, coming faster and faster.

I looked at Tansy, who looked back at me. Time stopped for a moment and we stood there, her one eye nearly swollen shut, the other wide with terror. She’d only ever fought the shadows at a distance. She’d never seen them up close, seen their white eyes, heard their unearthly screams. A small amount of light came in through the window, and I saw a droplet of sweat roll down her temple, silvery with moonlight.

Sweat. Water.

I yanked off my pack and used it to knock out the rest of the glass on the bottom of the window frame before slipping it back on. I grabbed at Tansy’s hand, jerking her toward the window. The alley, three floors down, looked a long way away.

She resisted. “Are you insane?” Her voice shook. “We’ll break our legs. We’ll break our necks. I don’t—I don’t want to die that way—”

“Do you want to die that way?” I gasped back, thrusting an arm out toward the oncoming shadow monsters. “Trust me.”

“I can’t—” She twisted away from the window, pressing herself into the corner, eyes rolling toward the shadows as they raced toward us. Only a few seconds now before they reached us.

“Tansy.” I jerked her arm, turning her toward me. “Trust me.”

She stared at me, and then before my eyes the frightened girl turned back into the scout that had so awed me when we first met. She straightened and reached for my hand, her sweaty palm pressing against mine.

We took a few steps and then leaped out into empty space.

I glimpsed her for an instant, the silver moonlight and the golden energy of her power mingling in my vision. I closed my eyes, opening myself and letting the hunger wash over me, and did what I’d wanted to do from the first moment Tansy had caught up to me.

As her power surged into me I turned my face towards the ground racing toward us. I wrenched at the spot inside me where the magic pooled, and with a blinding flash, the alley went white-gold.

We struck something invisible and yielding and bounced off before landing on the cracked ground below—bruised, but whole.

I lay dazed, my head spinning and vision sparking. The rush of warmth and life that enveloped me had wiped away the terror of the last few minutes. I’d saved myself this way once before, in my own city, but that was before I’d gained the second sight. I’d never seen what it looked like to do this magic before. I floated, light-headed and giddy, for what felt like hours, watching the sparks wheel and dance overhead.

It wasn’t until Tansy moaned beside me that I came back to myself and realized only seconds had passed. My ear throbbed where the shadow girl had bit me, my neck sticky with blood. Though I could feel the remnants of Tansy’s magic still sparking inside me, I already wanted more. But she was starting to shake, and when I reached out to touch her shoulder she rolled away from me, curling up into a fetal position. She had nothing left to give me.

I heard a wretched howl and looked up, the golden light vanishing instantly. One of the shadows—I couldn’t even tell which one—was climbing out the window. It came skittering down the wall, leading the way for the other three. Their fingers found purchase on the tiniest of cracks in the brickwork, sliding down the surface as if it weren’t a vertical wall.

“Tansy! Come on, we’ve got to move.”

I leaped to my feet, buoyed by my pilfered magic, and dragged her with me. She gave a confused cry, but after a few moments she got her feet working again and managed to stumble with me toward the mouth of the alley. We were both looking back over our shoulders at the shadows as they reached the ground when a guttural sound stopped us dead.

A fifth shadow stood before us in the mouth of the alley, framed in the moonlight. I could only see its white eyes glittering, fixed on us, burning with hunger.

Tansy and I lurched back and to the side until our backs hit the brick wall of the building. The fifth shadow advanced on us, its harsh breathing labored and thick with wanting.

The shadow family caught up, the largest stepping up to corner us. Brandon, I tried to remind myself, my brain clinging desperately to the knowledge that just an hour ago these had been people, kind and decent, and oblivious to what they really were.

The other three members of the family sent up a low, sighing wail, and I turned my face away, willing my stolen magic to change them back before one of them pounced on me or Tansy.

The Brandon-shadow growled low, the sound building—I knew he was about to snarl and leap.

When it came, I shoved back against the wall, instinct trying to find a way to escape.

But where I’d expected pain and blood and the crunch of my own bones, I heard only an answering snarl of rage.

I opened my eyes. The Brandon-shadow had leaped not for me, but for the fifth shadow. They were no more than a tangle of teeth and muscle and sinew, feral screams. Blood splashed onto the pavement, inky-black in the moonlight. The Brandon-shadow broke away with a cry of pain.

No longer silhouetted, the fifth shadow was easier to see.

I stopped breathing. No. It can’t be him. My mind refused to believe what my eyes were telling me.

The other shadows jumped on him, the children and mother together, and my eyes blurred with tears of shock and confusion and focus as I tried to concentrate. Tansy slumped to the ground, overwhelmed, still shaking violently from the aftereffects of being harvested.

The knife was still in my hand. My fingers tightened around it, but the fight was moving so quickly I couldn’t track who was where, only that it was still going, that the fifth shadow was still fighting. One of the smaller shadows was flung free, stumbling against the opposite wall of the alley.

The Brandon-shadow barked a short command, wordless and wild, and the remaining two shadows broke away and backed up, limping and snarling their rage. After a few more wails and whimpers, the family turned and loped away, vanishing down the other end of the alley.

The fifth shadow turned toward us, its breathing harsh and irregular. I heard Tansy gasping for breath at my side, trying to rise despite the way her legs and arms shook. I put a hand on her shoulder, my own fingers trembling.

Though she could not have understood, Tansy slumped back, too weary to try again.

I summoned every ounce of courage and stepped forward. The shadow snarled a warning, half-fury, half-anticipation. The hunger in its voice was unmistakable.

I swallowed, licked my lips.

“Oren?”

He didn’t react, his white eyes fixed on my face, his teeth bared and bloody from the wounds he’d inflicted and received. His hands clenched and unclenched, the muscles in his legs quivering as he stood there, struggling with himself. He twitched forward only to jerk back, the tendons standing out on his forearms, in his neck.

I started to lift my hand and too late remembered that it was the one holding the knife.

The shadow leaped forward, raging, grasping at my shirt and jerking me in close so that I felt the heat of his breath, smelled the grass and the wind and the metallic tang of blood. He growled a low, desperate, drawn-out sound.

The growl turned to a gasping groan, the breath shuddering in and out of him. He stumbled forward, his body heavy against me. Suddenly the hand twisted in the fabric of my shirt wasn’t holding me close—it was holding him up, and my knees sagged with his weight.

He coughed and reached out with his other hand for me, trying to keep himself from falling. He lifted his eyes, anguished—for the briefest instant I saw them flicker from white to palest blue.

Then his grip failed and he dropped like a stone, unconscious before he hit the ground.

CHAPTER 5

He looked exactly as he had the day he left. I’d memorized every contour and feature of his face in that moment when he’d looked back over his shoulder at me. I traced them now, my fingertips shaking. His skin was clear again, all signs of the dark grey veins and semitranslucent flesh gone. Long, fair eyelashes, stubborn jaw, sandy hair that fell wildly over his forehead.

Despite the evidence of my eyes five minutes ago, it was nearly impossible to believe he was a monster, looking at him now. I tried to remind myself that no matter how human he seemed when he was feeding off my magic, he was a shadow and always would be. The moment he left my side, he’d become mindless, dark, and hungry. The moment I ran out of magic to keep him human, I’d be dead.

My mind was blank. I’d thought I would never see this boy again. Or, at the very least, if I did, he’d kill me before I had a chance to figure out what I thought of him.

I’ll find you. His last words to me hung so vividly in the air that for a moment, I thought he’d woken up and spoken. Even in the dark, you shine.“My pack.”

I jerked away from my inspection of Oren’s face and turned to see Tansy, half-propped awkwardly against the wall, one eye swollen shut and her arm still dangling uselessly at her side.

“My pack,” she moaned again. “I need my pack. I need my pack.”

I left Oren’s side and crouched, fumbling with the straps of my own pack in my haste to take it off. I knew what she needed. To regenerate magic required energy, and that required food.

“Your pack’s in the house, Tansy. But I have food here. See, look—cheese. Take it.”

But she shoved my hands away, trying to stand. “No—my pack. I need it.”

“Tansy!” I hissed, trying not to shout and alert any other shadows who might be nearby. “We can’t go back. We have to leave it. Even if the shadows didn’t return there, we can’t get past those barricades and we can’t climb up to that window to get back inside.” I reached out and took her good shoulder, giving her a squeeze. “It’s gone. Accept that. We have to keep moving, we can’t stay here.”

She’d started to shiver, and I realized I had too. Neither of us had had time to grab our jackets before fleeing the building. If we didn’t find shelter, and soon, then Tansy’s shock was going to be the least of our worries.

I heard a familiar sound and straightened, letting Tansy slump back again. A weight lifted, letting me take my first full breath since the Molly-shadow had lunged for me. Nix came winging fitfully up the alley, the grind of its gears harsh and irregular. I moved toward it and held out my hands. It shifted midair, spiky form reverting to that of a bee, and dropped gratefully into my palms.

“I followed them,” it said, voice unusually tinny. “They’re gone, they didn’t turn around to come back. That one scared them off.” Its blue eyes turned to the motionless form lying unconscious in the middle of the alley.

“And you?” I whispered, lifting my hands so I could try and inspect the pixie in the meager moonlight. “Are you okay?”

“I will require some time to repair myself, but I will soon be fully functional.” Already I saw it shifting, tiny needlelike arms emerging to begin bending damaged panels and pieces back into the correct shapes.

“Thank you.” Carefully I transferred the little machine to my shoulder. “You saved us.”

It clicked with irritation as it inspected my torn earlobe. “Keep Lark alive,” it said absently, dismissively, in its programmer’s voice. Kris’s voice. I tried to ignore the surge of hurt and confusion that sound brought and turned back for Tansy.

“We can’t stay here, Tansy. Can you walk? Did you eat?”

She took a bite of the cheese, uninterested but following orders. Only after she swallowed did a little spark return to her eyes as she discovered her appetite. She finished the rest ravenously and licked her fingertips.

“Your arm?”

“I think my shoulder’s dislocated,” Tansy said with a grimace, picking herself up with some difficulty, but managing to get to her feet on her own power. I was never so functional after my own experiences with having my power harvested from me.

“What do we do?”

“Pop it back in.” Though the grin she flashed at me was nearly feral with exhaustion and pain, it was still Tansy’s grin, and a second wave of relief washed over me. We could do this. Recover. Survive. Find a way out of this cursed city.

“Tell me what to do.”

By the time it was done, I was the one who had to stagger away and put my head between my knees, sweating and trying not to throw up. I could still feel the scrape and pop of bone under my hands radiating through me like the scratch of nails on a schoolroom chalkboard.

When I felt more sure I wasn’t about to lose the dinner I’d eaten not two hours before, I helped Tansy make a sling for her arm. She’d regained a little color in her face, but it was clear her arm wasn’t going to be useful for some time.

“My bow is outside the house,” Tansy said, remembering. “Not inside. They made me leave it. We can go back for it.”

“No. You can’t draw it like that,” I said, nodding at her arm. “It’d be useless.”

“But—it’s my bow.” She was staring at me like I’d suggested she leave one of her legs behind.

“I know. But Tansy—it’s just a thing. If we go back that way we risk the family finding us again. What if the entire city is full of people who turn into shadows at night? That whole street will be full of shadows trying to break through their own doors to get to us.”

She shook her head, closing her eyes.

“Your bow, your pack—they’re just things. You’re what’s important. You can make another bow, another pack. But there’s only one you, and I need you.”

“Would you be saying that if it were your pack? If it was Oren’s knife, or your brother’s bird, back there?”

I bit my lip, but nodded. “Yes. I would leave them behind.”

Tansy swallowed, the fingers of her good hand twisted so tightly together that the knuckles gleamed white in the moonlight.

“We need to move,” I whispered, taking that for agreement. “We have to wake Oren.”

Tansy’s jaw tightened, and her eyes moved past me. I knew she was looking at Oren’s unconscious form in the middle of the alley.

“Leave it,” she said, coldly. “It’s just a monster.”

I fought the urge to clench my own jaw. “Tansy, you saw those people in there. They didn’t know. None of them know. Oren may be the first self-aware shadow ever, and only because I told him. When they’re human, they’re human. You sat at their hearth, ate their food, told them stories.”

“And they betrayed us.” Tansy’s lips pressed together in pain and determination, confusion and fear.

“It’s not betrayal when you don’t know,” I insisted, moving so that I’d be in her line of sight, force her to meet my gaze. “They knew something happened at night. They thought we would be safest indoors. They were doing their best.”

“There’s no forgiveness for betrayal,” muttered Tansy, looking away.

I groaned. “We don’t have time for this. Help me get him up.”

“No.”

I sucked in a deep breath. “If you want to come with me, then he comes too. It’s that simple.”

Tansy’s eyes flicked from me to the unconscious Oren and back again. After a long pause, she sniffed briskly and nodded. “All right. Wake him up.”

She got to her feet as I crossed back to Oren and gave him a shake. He didn’t move—not even a groan. I called his name, shook him some more, pinched the skin on his arm, and—in desperation—slapped him across the cheek. Nothing.

“Lark,” Tansy breathed.

“I know what you’re going to say. I can’t leave him. He saved us.”

“No—Lark—” She reached down and touched her fingertips to my shoulder.

Something about her touch triggered an alarm at the back of my mind, and I tore my gaze away from Oren’s long eyelashes.

A trio of dark figures stood at the mouth of the alley.

They weren’t shadows—I could see that right away. They stood watching us with deliberation and poise, lacking the animal eagerness and focus of the shadow people. They were thick and bulky forms, and their heads were bulbous.

I couldn’t do it. I was spent. One companion unconscious, the other wounded and despairing, and me—I was just me, what could I do against this new breed of monster?

And then my focus snapped into place and I realized they were men, wearing suits and helmets. Protection against the void. I could hear the sounds of their breathing, harsh and artificial. One took a step forward, and his tinny voice came through some filter in his helmet.

“You three, get moving. You’re coming with us.”

They bound my hands behind my back with rough, scratchy rope. Tansy they left unbound after verifying that her right arm truly was useless. Though they tied Oren’s hands as well, they were forced to half-drag him along. At times he seemed to regain some level of consciousness, managing to walk a little, but the few times I saw his eyes open they were staring and vague, unfocused. He didn’t know what was happening.

I hadn’t seen Nix, but I no longer felt it on my shoulder. I hoped the pixie had fled or hidden itself in my pack.

They asked no questions and marched us along in silence. Trina’s words came back to me, what she’d said before the sun had set and everything had changed. They come at night. And if anyone ever sees them, they don’t live to tell the tale. They vanish forever. Gone. Taken.

We had assumed they meant the shadow people. But they were shadows themselves. What could be so horrible that even the shadow people feared it?

Our captors led us to a round iron disc in the ground. One of them pulled out something that looked a little like a crowbar and inserted it into a hole in the disc, prying it up and open enough for a man to pass through. The smallest of the three figures dropped down into the blackness below, and then they dropped Oren down afterward. I heard him land with a sickening thud—no one had caught him. They shoved Tansy forward and she stumbled down, landing only slightly more gracefully than Oren.

The man holding me pushed me to the hole’s edge. “Down you go,” came his tinny voice.

I wished my arms were unbound so I could use them for balance. But one glance at the impassive, reflective surface of the helmet and I knew there was no point in even asking. So I stepped forward and dropped through, striking the ground and rolling as I hit.

We were in some sort of sewer system beneath the city. The close air pressed in, strangling and dank. The other suited men dropped in and closed the hole over our heads. The tiny bit of moonlight vanished, leaving us in darkness more complete than any I’d known before.

Somehow, the suited men knew exactly where they were going, missing every bit of broken stone and exposed pipe as though they could see in the dark. I heard Tansy stumbling and cursing almost as much as I was—her natural grace and coordination were no use when she couldn’t see and was being forced to march along quickly. I couldn’t hear Oren, but had to assume from the dragging sounds behind me that they were still bringing him.

Eventually we stopped, the hand that had been propelling me forward now shifting to grab the collar of my shirt and haul me back. I still couldn’t see anything, but I heard footsteps moving forward, followed by the grating shriek of rusty metal. I heard Tansy give a grunt of pain as one of them brushed past her, jarring her shoulder.

A weight stumbled against me, a familiar smell on the air. I fought the urge to jerk away, instinct warring with what I knew to be true.

“Oren?” I whispered. “Are you awake?”

For long moments, there was only the shriek of metal and the sound of his breathing. Then, voice so hoarse I almost couldn’t understand him: “Lark?”

And then hands were shoving us forward again, into what felt like an even smaller space. The hinges shrieked once more, and a door clanged shut behind us.

A fog descended over my thoughts. Muffling iron surrounded us on all sides, the metal insulating my senses. I was worse than blind. Devoid of every sense, cut off, everything silent and still as death. I gasped, trying to force air into my lungs, and could only breathe the smell of metal, sharp and cold.

Dimly I heard Tansy say something, and then the answering bark of one of the men. A light came on, dazzling my eyes. Our captors stripped off their suits, revealing ordinary people underneath. Their clothes were worn, but nowhere near as ragged as ours—but for the sweat and grime of wearing the suits, they seemed normal. Another door opposite opened and we were shoved through. I couldn’t see right, couldn’t hear. All around was iron, worse than the Iron Wood, worse than my cell in the Institute.

I went where they shoved me, kept my feet only because falling would mean touching the iron beneath me. Even Oren felt like metal when his body brushed against mine—I couldn’t feel the familiar tingle of energy between us, sensing only death and stillness.

After an eternity they shoved us forward and then clanged a barred door behind us. I ricocheted off the back wall of the room. No, not a room. A cage. Bars on all sides. Trapped. I scuttled to its center, as far from the four iron walls as I could. We were all together, Oren sprawled on the ground and Tansy leaning against the side wall, glaring through her one good eye.

A key turned in a lock.

“Wait,” I gasped, as hoarse as if my lungs were on fire. “Who are you? What are you going to do with us?”

Two of our three captors kept walking, but one hung back. I realized it was a woman, now that she’d taken off her suit.

“You’ll stay here until he asks for you. If he decides you die, you die. If he has a use for you, you live.”

“He,” I echoed, starting to shiver as shock settled in. “Who?”

“Prometheus.”

CHAPTER 6

They’d left a light on, just enough for us to see by. It glowed a steady white-gold—magic, I thought, but I couldn’t sense it. The iron bars, the iron in the walls and the floors and the ceilings, kept me from sensing anything properly. The air was thick and close, warmer than outside but still clammy and cold.

Though my head still rang with the silence of iron, my other senses were beginning to return and try to compensate. I hadn’t realized how much I’d gotten used to being able to feel the magic around me, and how much there was to sense even in a magicless void.

I dropped to my knees where Oren was slumped on the ground, ignoring the way my instincts told me to get as far away from him as possible. “Are you okay?”

He pressed his palms against the stone floor and shoved himself upright. His face was haggard, making him look older. The blue eyes were distant, confused. Though there was no sign of the monster in his gaze, I could still see the ferocity— that belonged to Oren as well. Not just to the beast.

“What’re you doing here, Lark? Why aren’t you—” His gaze swung past the bars, the whites of his eyes showing his panic at being closed in. “Where are we?”

I glanced at Tansy, who was watching us with clenched jaw. She shook her head, and I turned back to Oren. “I don’t know. Underneath the ruins of a city. You were—” I stopped, unable to say it.

Oren swallowed, gazing at my bleeding ear before turning so that he could see Tansy, taking in her injuries as well. “Did I—”“No,” I said quickly, interrupting him. “You saved us.”

He grimaced, brows drawing inward. “That doesn’t sound right,” he muttered, lifting a shaking hand to rub at his eyes.

“Nevertheless.” Steeling myself, I reached out to touch his hand. Despite the insulation all around us I felt a tiny tingle, a buzz where our skin touched. I jerked my hand away and cradled it against my chest.

He looked up, meeting my gaze for the first time as I tried to swallow my fear, my disgust. His eyes sharpened a little, blue even in the dim light. He was searching my face for something, his own expression haunted—but whether he found what he was looking for or not, he pulled away, turning his back, using the bars to drag himself to his feet.

I shouldn’t have touched him. He was a monster—a cannibal. How many people had he killed in his short lifetime? Tansy was right, I should have left him there in that alley. The current that flowed between us was only magic—nothing more. Maybe if I thought it often enough, it would be true. He was a monster.

And yet, he saved us.

I wanted to curl up there on the floor, pull away from the bars as far as I could, and hoard what little magic I had left from what I’d stolen from Tansy.

“They didn’t take my pack away,” I said. “But we’d better try to keep it hidden in case it was a mistake. And I’ve got my knife—maybe we can pick the lock.”

Tansy glanced at me dully. “Just use your magic to do it.” The emphasis was bitter. As if hearing it, and regretting it, she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall.

I understood the bitterness. I could still feel the whitehot agony as the Institute’s machines drained my own magic, replacing it with something false and twisted. How could she ever look at me as anyone other than the person who’d done that to her? I swallowed, trying to ignore the surge of guilt. If I hadn’t taken her magic and broken our fall, we would’ve died. I wasn’t sure we were much better off now, but at least we hadn’t been eaten. Yet. And she’d recover. She was a Renewable. In time, her magic would return.

“I don’t think I can use magic,” I said finally. “There’s so much iron here—I feel like I can barely breathe.”

I searched in my pack, hoping to see a telltale flash of copper, but there was nothing. Nix wasn’t there. I hoped that it had escaped unseen, that it was outside somewhere. The thought of the pixie trapped in these tunnels made me feel sick.

“Tansy, eat the rest of the apples,” I said, fishing the last couple of fruits from the Iron Wood out of the bottom of my bag. They were bruised and a little shriveled, and no doubt mealy-tasting, but still edible. “You need it most. It’ll help you recover.”

She took them dubiously but began to eat anyway. I crossed over to the door, ignoring the way my skin crawled at the proximity of the iron. Despite crouching to get a better look at it, I couldn’t see anything no matter how hard I pressed my face against the bars. I explored it by feel, my arm pressed awkwardly through the bars and wrist twisted back so I could get at the lock. The point of the knife wasn’t quite long enough and narrow enough to reach inside, but I tried anyway, wriggling it around inside the keyhole, hoping to hear the telltale click of tumblers.

After a while, Tansy finished the apples and came to my side, dropping to one knee to ostensibly look at the lock with me. But I could tell she had something to say, the tension radiating from her. I braced myself and kept my attention on what I was doing.

“I’m—sorry,” she said eventually, surprising me.

I lowered the knife and withdrew my arms, letting my hands rest on my thighs. They ached from the awkward angle, showing bands of red where my skin had been pressing so hard against the bars.

“You saved our lives. I can’t—I shouldn’t resent you for that.”

I tried a smile, though it didn’t feel quite right. “It’s okay. It’s awful. Believe me, I know.”

Tansy smiled back, the expression coming more easily to her, though she looked as tired as I felt.

“Can you rest?” I asked Tansy before glancing up at Oren, who had leaned forward and was resting his face against the bars, eyes closed. “I can keep trying for a while if you can sleep.”

“I think I could sleep standing up in the middle of a forest fire right now,” Tansy admitted. “Wake me up in an hour or two, if those guys haven’t come back by then.”

She retreated to the back of the cage, as far from Oren as she could get. She settled down and propped herself up in a corner, then closed her eyes.

I kept at the lock for a while, though I knew how pointless it was. The knife simply wouldn’t reach. Oren stayed silent, motionless. Eventually I conceded that all I was doing was blunting the tip of the knife, and stopped.

“I remember a light.”

Oren’s voice cut through the gloom, soft and quick. There was a tremor in it. I looked up—he still hadn’t moved, forehead pressed against the bars.

“I remember darkness and fog and a terrible hunger. And that I was supposed to be looking for something. And then, suddenly, there was a light. And I knew where to go.”

Tansy’s magic, I realized. In the alley. I kept silent, remembering how good it had felt to strip her magic away from her, take it for my own, let it pool warm and golden inside me. I tried to block out the sound of his voice, fixing my eyes on the lock again.

Oren pushed away from the bars and turned, sliding down to sit on the ground. He let his head drop forward, hair falling into his face. “Why is it that I always end up caged when I’m around you?”

I gritted my teeth. It’d be easier to keep him at a distance if he’d stay confused, only half-himself. It’d be easier if he’d never come at all. Then he could stay a monster, someone who betrayed me. Someone I never wanted to see again.

I held out the knife, gripping the blade and offering him the handle. “This is yours,” I said shortly.

His gaze lingered on it for a moment, then lifted to meet mine. I jerked my eyes away, but not before he would’ve seen the hurt there.

After a silence, he retreated back against the bars. “It was a gift,” he said quietly. “It’s yours.” He fixed his eyes on the back wall, not looking at me. “Besides, you may need it.”

“If I run out of magic and you try to kill us both, you mean?” There was still a little of Tansy’s magic left—I could feel it, tingling, singing through my veins. Tansy herself had fallen asleep as soon as she stopped moving. I could hear the soft sounds of her steady breathing coming from the back corner of our cell.

“You had the chance to get rid of me,” Oren said. “I asked you to kill me.”

“Just because I’m not capable of cutting your throat doesn’t mean I want you here.” The words were out before I can stop them. Anything to keep him at arm’s length.

“Lark—”

“We’re not a team, Oren.” I glanced at Tansy, who stirred in reaction to the sharpness of my voice but didn’t wake. “It’s not like it was. It can’t ever be again. You know that, right? You shouldn’t be here.”

“I didn’t want to be here,” he hissed back. “I don’t control it, when it takes over. I can’t tell it to leave you alone. It—that thing—isn’t me.”

Except it is. Because I could see the ferocity of the monster even now, the brilliant gleam in his eye, the strength in his shoulders and in the grip of his hands as he balled them into fists.

“You’re not even human.” I turned away.

“And you are?”

The words hit me like a blow. The silence drew out between us, tense like wire. Then my lungs remembered how to work again. “I’m human. I’m—I’m me, all the time. I make my choices. This power, this is something that was done to me.”

I could feel Oren’s eyes on me. Only, where they’d once made my spine tingle and my stomach tighten, now they made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. He didn’t move, but it was like I could hear him anyway. I could feel the shape of the air around him. I knew exactly where he was, though I kept my eyes away.

“Just as this was something done to me.” His voice remained quiet, pitched low so as not to wake Tansy. “By the wild. Knowing it doesn’t change who I am, only what I am.”

The buildup of betrayal was less now. It was still there, simmering quietly, but not fighting to get out—as though by venting it, I’d released some of the pressure. I swallowed, closing my eyes. “I wish I didn’t know.”

For a long time, it seemed like Oren wasn’t going to answer. The tension in the wire pulled between us was less, but I could still feel it tugging at me, making me fight to stay away. Then I felt him draw breath to speak.

“Then I guess that makes two of us.”

The silence stretched out again. Oren was watching the back wall as though he could see anything but shadow there, beyond the pool of light cast by the spherical glow by the door. He looked thinner than the last time I’d seen him. Older, despite it only having been a couple of weeks. I fought the impulse to reach out for him, to feel that telltale tingle that spoke of the flow of magic between us.

“Does it help to talk about it?” I asked, watching him. I’d intended it to sound sympathetic. Instead it sounded hurt.

“No.” Briefly the muscles in his jaw stood out, and he turned his head. For a quick moment, he caught my gaze, searching.

Then it was back to the wall again. I could see the struggle of emotions on his face as clearly as if they were my own. I realized he’d never really lived among people as an adult, had never learned to hide the things he felt and saw. Though he spoke little, he said volumes.

“It’s like an unbearable ache,” he said, softly. “Hunger— except that it’s not something that food can solve. We eat because it’s the only way we know to consume what we really need. It’s incompletion, being severed, half of a whole. It’s needing something you can never get, not completely.”

He closed his eyes, letting his head back to rest on the bars. “And it feels as though if you could only fill that void a little, the tiniest bit, you could come back to yourself. And you’d do anything to feel that way again.”

I barely managed to suppress a shudder. The more he spoke, the more I recognized the things he was saying. The hunger, the need to feel whole—the need to take what’s yours. How quickly and thoroughly I’d consumed Tansy’s power. And how quickly I’d wanted more.

“And when you make the kill,” he whispered, “in that instant you know it’ll never be enough. That you have to keep hunting. Keep searching. Keep killing.”

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t look at him. He glanced at me, and I could sense his shame and self-hatred, his fear that I loathed him too. How could I tell him that the revulsion he could see on my face was for myself?

“Lark,” he said softly. “Say something.”

I knew what he wanted me to say. He wanted me to forgive him, to tell him it wasn’t his fault, that he couldn’t help what he was. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the warm light washing over his face, glimmering in his hair, softening the angles of his face. He wanted me to absolve him.

I wished I could turn into that light, let it touch my face too, wash the both of us in its golden glow. Part of me wanted to comfort him as I had the night he was caged in the Iron Wood, distract him from his claustrophobia. But my tongue felt like lead, my throat choked with fear. I just kept staring straight ahead, my eyes on the shadows at the back of our cage. I couldn’t even deal with my own fear; I had no way now of helping him with his.

Eventually he turned away to curl up on his side on the stone and close his eyes. I stayed awake, shivering, hand clenched around the handle of his knife. I wanted to tell him how true his words had rung for me. I wanted to tell him I didn’t despise him.

But I knew he despised what he was, and I couldn’t bear the thought of him hating me too. Perhaps I was no more than a shadow myself. Was that what my city had done to me in their experimental Machine, tearing out my magic and then synthesizing it again? A shadow killer more perfect than any monster in the wilds—they could only destroy and eat and hunt, never truly sated. I could harvest what I needed from someone with a single thought.

I could feel the tiny trickle of power that flowed from me to Oren even without touching him. I knew I was all that was keeping him human, and yet a part of me wished I could sever that connection, hoard the power for myself, hold onto this feeling as long as I could. Because even if I didn’t feel whole, even if I didn’t feel perfect, it was better than the hunger.

Surrounded by stone and iron, we were wrapped in silence. I closed my eyes, trying to think past my horror and revulsion. But it was hard to see the point.

I knew my brother wasn’t here. Our city had done to him what it had done to me, turned him into the same thing I was now—and I was falling apart. Perhaps my brother had made it this far, and perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps he was one of the cursed townsfolk, oblivious, fearful of the dark.

Perhaps he was nothing but a shadow himself.

When Tansy woke again, rousing Oren and me as well, she spent some time trying to get at the lock with the knife. When finally she threw the knife down with a clang, I jumped, heart racing.

She glanced at me apologetically and stooped to pick it up again, offering it back to me. I put it back in my pack. My brother’s paper bird looked at me from among my supplies, but I just shut the pack again, ignoring it.

“Well, seems like we’re going to be here for a while,” Tansy said, flashing me a weak smile. “And I’d rather not be trapped in here with a monster.”

She glanced at Oren, who straightened, eyes flicking from her to me. Before I could protest, Tansy held out a hand to me. “Well?” she said. “Take what you need.”

I stared at her outstretched hand, uncomprehending. “What I need?”

“To keep him human. I know it’s you, your magic, whatever makes you unique. I saw it back in the Iron Wood, and I saw it when you saved us in the alley.”

“He saved us,” I corrected her, still not taking her offered hand.

“Whoever saved who, he’s looking a bit grey around the ears, and I don’t want to wait and find out how long it takes him to turn back.”

Alarmed, I looked over at Oren. I knew it didn’t work like that—you were either shadow or not, no in between— but I couldn’t help but inspect him closely. He rolled his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest.

“So,” Tansy interrupted my thoughts. “Let’s get this over with. Just—not so much this time?”

I swallowed. In the alley, I’d torn what magic she had in one instant, ruthless and quick. Taking a deep breath, I reached out for her hand. Her palm was sweating—she was nervous. But her hand was steady, and she didn’t pull away.

“Are you sure?” I asked, glancing at her.

She nodded. “It’s necessary. And I trust you.”

I wanted to scream at her that she shouldn’t—that I’d taken more than I needed in the alley, that I could’ve stripped her and left her for dead. That part of me wanted to do that now. But she was right. I didn’t have much left from what I’d taken that first time, and without it, Oren would revert back to his shadow self. And we’d both die.

I closed my eyes, looking with my second sight for the flicker of magic around her. It was weak, almost invisible despite the dampness of this underground cell. A meager meal of apples was not going to help her regenerate much. But even a little would do.

I let down my guard just a fraction, feeling a little warmth slide into my hand from hers. A few hours and I’d forgotten how good it felt. I opened the channel a little wider, taking a slow breath, basking in it. Tansy’s hand felt clammy in mine, but I ignored it, focusing on the magic, the life force. I’d never had the luxury of examining this connection, the intimacy of it, how I could trace it back through our joined hands and up her arm, through her veins and muscles, to her heart, which danced a steady beat through the web of magic inside her. I tugged at a strand of the web and felt Tansy give a strangled gurgle of pain.

I jerked my hand away, gasping, opening my eyes and willing the dark, cold cell to return and banish the lovely warmth of Tansy’s magic.

Dizzy with the aftereffects, my vision blurring and dancing, I tried to sit back up, to find Tansy amid the swirling shadows. She was on her back, breathing hard, but otherwise fine, watching me, massaging her hand and grimacing.

“You okay?” she asked.

A sound rather like a laugh escaped me as I tried to put myself back together. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“I feel a bit like I’ve fallen out of a tree, but I’ll live.” Tansy started to struggle up onto her elbows, but Oren left his post by the cage wall and went to her side, offering her his hand. She stared at it for a few moments, gaze flicking from his outstretched hand to his face, and then gingerly let him help her up into a seated position.

“Thank you,” he said simply.

I heard Tansy swallow, audible in the muffled quiet of our prison. Her brows drew in, lips pressing together. “Yeah,” she replied. “Well, I wasn’t doing it for you.”

He let go of her hand and retreated again, but I wasn’t fooled. I knew Tansy enough to know that a week ago she wouldn’t have offered what she’d just offered. She wouldn’t have even accepted his hand to help her up.

The bands of tension around my heart eased a little, my mind clearing a fraction as though a fog was starting to thin. Maybe our situation wasn’t so hopeless after all. If I could get Tansy and Oren working together, trusting each other as they had each once trusted me, maybe we could get out of this mess.

I started to suggest that we make another pass at the lock but was interrupted by the outer door banging open without warning.

Two men entered, one shutting the door behind them while the other came forward, his hands full. The light was behind him, so it took me a moment to recognize the long, curved shape slung over his shoulder.

Tansy, however, recognized it right away. She sat bolt upright, her eyes on his shoulder. I could sense her tension as though it were my own.

“So we traced you back to where you’d been squatting.” The man’s lip curled a little, as though we’d been living in a rat-infested dump. “Living with the Empty Ones,” he said, and spat through the bars onto the stone floor.

With a start, I realized what he was holding—Tansy’s pack. And her bow and quiver, slung over his shoulder. I glanced at her, but she didn’t look at me, her wide eyes fixed on the man.

“We were planning on giving this back to you if Prometheus gave the okay,” he said, hefting the pack in one hand, squinting at us through the bars. He wasn’t very tall, no taller than Tansy, but he was a burly man, strong. “Which one of you does this belong to?”

I expected Tansy to leap at the opportunity to get her pack back, after her panic in the alley at having lost it. But she remained silent, lips pressed together, muscles tense. I stared at her, confused—and the man saw me looking.

“Ahh,” he said. “The rest of you, back against the wall. You—” and he crooked a finger at Tansy, “come here.”

Tansy got to her feet, jaw squared, breathing in and out through her nose. She crossed toward the door of the cage, standing just out of arm’s reach of the man with her pack.

“We expected the usual stuff, dried fruit, knife, feathers for arrows.” The man tossed a couple things out of the pack, whatever had been on top, and then dug his hand back into the bottom of the bag. “Imagine our surprise when we found it was full of these.”

His hand emerged, holding a small copper sphere. I’d never seen anything like it before, but I saw Tansy flinch. She certainly recognized it. Her eyes flicked toward me, hidden and guilty. Something tickled at the back of my mind, some instinct that blared alarm.

“Courier pigeons. Now, what reason would an innocent traveler like yourself have for carting a bag full of pigeons around? They’re Renewable messengers. And you’re not a Renewable, are you?”

Tansy didn’t answer, jaw squared.

The man thrust out his hand through the bars, bringing the sphere close to Tansy’s face. Her head jerked back, but she stood her ground. So near to her, the sphere unfolded, its surface rippling, extending wings and a faint glow that responded to the aura of magic surrounding her.

A machine.

The man laughed unpleasantly, withdrawing his hand. The sphere shut up tight again, and he dropped it back into the pack. “So what messages were you sending back to your leader, hmm? The location of our city? The number of people here? Our defenses?”

Tansy said nothing. This time she didn’t look at me, but I knew. A burning cold spread through my body, an icy weight settling in the pit of my stomach.

The man tossed the bag aside and reached for a key on his belt, unlocking the door. “Prometheus wants a word with you. We’ve got a great many uses for someone with your . . . talents.”

As he grabbed for Tansy’s arm, she jerked it away, whirling to look at me. Her eyes were anguished, hot with guilt.

“Lark, please—please, it’s not what you think.”

I could only stand there, pinned to the stone with shock. “You were—spying on me.” The bag of messenger machines lay forgotten on the floor behind the men. Suddenly I remembered her scouting forays, how she’d race through her meals so she could go off alone. To signal Dorian our location. Now I understood her desperation when her pack was lost.

“No!” She struggled as the man grabbed her more firmly this time and dragged her back. “The barrier you made, it’s starting to fall apart, and Dorian asked me to—I can’t refuse him, no one can refuse him. I really was worried about you.”

I swallowed, trying to push the bile back down where it was threatening to rise in my throat. Dorian was no better than Gloriette or the other architects in my city. All anyone saw in me was something unique to be studied. To be used.

“Lark, I’m sorry. Please.” The man was dragging her away—the cell door slammed shut, and she wound her fingers in the bars, trying to stay long enough to make me understand. “I never would’ve let him do anything, he only wanted to know where you were going.”

Her eyes met mine. I felt sick, nauseous, barely able to stand. Her fingers were white-knuckled, clutching at the bars. I didn’t know who Prometheus was or what these people wanted with Tansy, but the only uses I knew for a Renewable were tantamount to torture. I thought of the captive Renewable powering my own city, in perpetual agony, constantly harvested of her magic, again and again.

Tansy was crying. “Lark, forgive me.”

All I could think of was her bitterness in the alley at having been fooled by the shadow family, the anger I recognized now for shame. I said the only words I could think of. “There’s no forgiveness for betrayal.”

CHAPTER 7

When the outer door slammed closed, it was all I could do not to drop to the ground like a stone. I couldn’t think through the roaring in my ears, couldn’t begin to pull myself together with my stomach knotting itself over and over.

Kris, Dorian, Tansy, Nix, even Oren himself—I was tired of the people around me taking advantage of this awful power I didn’t even want. Tired of them taking advantage of me.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Oren stalking from one edge of the cell to the other, long strides eating up the distance and pale gaze sweeping the shadows beyond the bars. More than ever he reminded me of an animal, some untamed beast raging at its captivity. For a long time there was no sound but the scrape of his shoes on the stone and his harsh breathing.

Then he abruptly whirled toward me with a snarl. “We’re running out of time, Lark. You have to do it.” There was a faint sheen of sweat on his brow.“Do what?”

“Kill me.” He indicated the knife in my hand with a jerk of his chin.

I took a step back, staring. “What?”

“You couldn’t do it at the Iron Wood, fine. You could shove me off into the wilderness and forget me. Here you don’t have that luxury. It’s now, or it’s later when I come at you in your sleep.”

I gritted my teeth. “It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t trying to forget anything.”

“But you wouldn’t have to watch me fall,” he hissed. “You said to me—before, you told me that we weren’t a team anymore. Fine, we’re not. But Tansy’s gone now, and you’ve got no source of power. When you run out, that’s it. I’m a shadow again, and you’re dead.”

I could see the betrayal in his gaze—but why was it such a crime not to want him dead? “You’re afraid,” I retorted. “Because we’re in here, because you don’t like not being under the sky.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “So? That doesn’t change the facts.”

I shook my head, shoving the knife back into its sheath in my waistband. “Panicking won’t help. We’ll figure something out.”

“By standing there sulking about Tansy?” Oren started pacing again, making two circuits of the cell before halting again and turning toward me slowly. “You’ll have to defend yourself.”

I met his gaze, watching as his eyes narrowed and he took a few steps to the side, circling me. “If you change.”

“When I change. So I might as well speed up the process. Make you defend yourself now.”

I could feel my heart starting to race, wondered whether he could hear it, whether any of his shadow-self traits lingered when he was in human form. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

The tension drew out between us as he circled, and I could feel it stretching thin. Without warning he feinted a lunge at me, making me fight to hold my ground.

“You don’t want to hurt me,” I said, forcing my voice to stay even. If Oren decided to take matters into his own hands, I wasn’t sure I could hold my own.

“That’s right,” he burst out. “That’s why—” He let out his breath, dropping out of that deadly hunter’s stance. “That’s why I need you to act. I can’t do it. I’ve tried.”

My blood roared in my ears. “What do you mean?” I whispered.

“I mean I tried. After I found out, after you sent me away.” Oren turned to look through the bars of the cell, so all I could see was his profile, the tension in his body. “Animals don’t kill themselves, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t do it. Every instinct fought against it, and I wasn’t strong enough. I’m not stronger than the thing inside me.”

For a moment my mind tried to picture it, tried to imagine what awful thing Oren tried to do to himself, to rid the world of one more shadow.

“Not killing yourself isn’t weakness,” I said finally. “It’s not cowardice.”

Oren just shook his head, moving forward until he could press his forehead against the bars, a plaintive gesture. His long fingers wound around the iron. “It’s certainly not bravery.”

I had no answer to that. Not when I didn’t know what I was myself—perhaps we were both no more than things, echoes of who we once were. Maybe we both deserved death. The silence thickened the air.

“That girl,” Oren said finally, still gazing out at the darkness beyond our cell. “She was your friend?”

“I thought she was.” The words tasted sour, and I swallowed hard. “I can’t forgive what she did.”

“You thought I was your friend, too, and look where we are now.”

“You only follow me because you can’t help it, the monster can’t let me go. You said yourself that I shine in the darkness.”

With a weary groan, Oren straightened and turned so he could look at me again. He tilted his head back, looking up at the ceiling. “You’re the only thing that keeps me human,” he said after a silence. “But if I woke tomorrow completely cured and whole, I would still follow you anywhere.”

My throat closed. I couldn’t look at Oren, couldn’t listen to his voice, without my mind replaying the night we parted. The sweet softness of his mouth cut by the metallic tang of blood, the wave of longing mixed with revulsion. The hopelessness in his eyes when I told him not to touch me. His bitterness now as I kept him at arm’s length, too confused to know what to do with him.

He was so careful not to come near, to stay away as I’d demanded that night—and yet now he stepped forward and lightly brushed the back of my hand with his knuckles. Just enough so that I could feel the electric sizzle of power passing from me to him, pulled away by the dark void of shadow inside him.

“Sometimes we can’t help the things we do.”

Every impulse in my body wanted to turn toward him, to slide my hand into his and let our fingers wind together. To smell grass and wind all around me, a light in the deep, dank darkness of this prison. Instead I just stood there, remembering the taste of shadow, waiting for something I knew wasn’t coming.

I cleared my throat and sucked in a ragged breath. “I’m not going to just sit here and wait to die.”

Oren stepped back, letting me move around him and head for the door of the cage. I crouched by the lock, running my hand over it, but I knew I didn’t have enough magic left to open it. When I’d freed Oren from his cage in the Iron Wood, I’d been surrounded by Renewables, and though I hadn’t known it then, I’d been able to draw on them all to bend the laws of magic and iron and open the lock with my mind.

Here there was only me. And I couldn’t magic iron on my own.

My eyes fell on Tansy’s pack. It was still lying where the man had dropped it, well out of arm’s reach even when I lay down on my stomach and stretched my arm as far as I could through the bars. Even Oren’s long arms wouldn’t be able to reach it.

There may not have been Renewables around, but that pack was full of machines. And inside them, somewhere, were tiny hearts full of the magic that powered their clockwork mechanisms.

I closed my eyes, trying to reach past the muffling field cast by the iron bars between me and the pack. I tapped into the tiny, dwindling reserve of energy inside myself and concentrated on my arm, still stretched out past the bars. All I needed was a tiny nudge. A spark. One little touch to get one of the copper spheres to roll my way.

I felt the power spark and pop inside me, my head spinning, but I forced myself to keep reaching, keep trying to nudge one of the machines my way. I opened my eyes a fraction, squinting through the haze of golden sparks and threads.

The bag moved, bulging as something inside it shifted. I groaned, head dropping as the magic flowed from my outstretched fingertips.

Something rolled out of the mouth of the pack, and I dropped like a leaden weight, collapsing down onto the stone. I’d thought magic under ordinary circumstances was tiring— working through so much iron was like trying to run uphill wearing a coat lined with rocks.

Blearily, I lifted my head, forcing my dazzled eyes to focus. One of the spheres had rolled toward me, but when I reached out, my hand still fell short. My heart sank.

A tiny whir of clockwork jolted me out of my daze. A panel separated itself from the smooth surface of the sphere, followed by another, a slow unfolding with a groaning protest of gears, like muscles gone stiff from the cold. A tiny flash of sapphire within the depths of the sphere winked back at me.

“Are they gone?”

I gasped, lightheaded and dizzy from the magic, and unwilling to trust my own eyes. “Nix?” I breathed, staring.

Oren came to my side as I spoke, and together we watched as the sphere painstakingly unfolded itself. It had none of the ease of the courier pigeon the man had shown Tansy—I could tell this form was difficult for the shape-shifting pixie. Nix stopped halfway back to bee-form, gears stirring feebly as it lay on the stone floor. I imagined it panting and sweating, trying to catch its breath.

I reached out my hand as far as it would go, and the pixie crawled onto my palm. “How—I thought maybe you’d escaped when we were taken. Did you double back inside the building?”

“I hid in that antechamber where they keep their suits,” the pixie said. “They never even noticed. When they went out to search the area where you were found, they saw the other one’s bag and the machines inside. I flew in when they weren’t looking.” With an obvious effort it finished its transformation back into its favorite bee form and then cast its crystal-blue eyes over the cell. “Where is that other one?”

“Gone.” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, but even I could hear the way it quivered.

The multifaceted sapphires swung toward me. “So she turned on you. Correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe someone tried to warn you about that.”

I closed my eyes. Already part of me regretted what I’d said to Tansy as they dragged her away. I’d probably never see her again. “Not now, Nix. Please.”

The pixie shook itself and turned, its little legs like dull needles against my palm as it scanned our surroundings. “I see this one is still with us, though,” it said flatly, watching Oren unblinkingly.

“The feeling is mutual,” Oren muttered, turning away and shoving a hand through his hair.

“I couldn’t see or hear anything all balled up like that.” Nix lifted off of my hand for a few seconds, testing its wings now that it wasn’t stuck imitating one of the dormant courier pigeons. “This does not appear to be the optimal place to recover and regroup, however. Why are we wasting time in here?”

“We’re locked in,” I said, trying to remember that I was glad to see Nix. Even if it was infuriating beyond all belief.

“That ought to be no problem for you.”

“Too much iron,” I replied. “Not enough magic. I was trying to reach the pack, thinking I could steal some from the machines in there.” My breath caught. “Nix—can you fly out there and nudge them closer? If I can just get my hands on one, I think I could do it.”

“I can do better.”

Nix launched itself off my hand and buzzed out through the bars to land on the outside of the lock. Spidery little legs unfolded out of its body, the way they did when it was damaged and needed repairing. This time, however, they went skittering over the surface of the lock, darting inside, exploring, thorough. Nix’s round head disappeared inside the lock as well, and for a while the only sounds were the clicking of its spindly legs and the gears that made them move.

But then came a solid thunk. My heart leaped into my throat.

Nix backed out of the lock, half-stuck, tripping into the air. It staggered a bit, struggling to fly while managing far too many legs—but it finally succeeded in folding the extra legs away and zipped back to land on my shoulder.

Hand shaking, I reached out to touch the door.

It swung open.

The tunnels under the city were a maze as complex as the sewer system in my own city—but I hadn’t learned this system as a child at my brother’s side, didn’t know where each turning led. It was like being inside my dream again, only I didn’t know where to go, and I couldn’t feel my brother leading me through.

The place was lit at random intervals by tiny shards of magic contained in glass spheres, connected by glass filaments as finely crafted as any I’d seen in the Institute back home. The advanced craftsmanship was more than a little out of place in a sewer underneath the ruins of a cursed city.

Oren was sweating despite the chill. I knew he was suppressing the panic of being underground by sheer force of will—I couldn’t ask him to try and help me find our way out. He had been semiconscious at best when we were brought to the cell anyway. Nix had been even more blind and deaf. I’d been struck temporarily senseless by the presence of so much iron. The only one who would’ve had any chance of retracing our steps was Tansy—and she was gone.

Even in the quiet of my own thoughts, the word made me feel sick. Gone.

I kept my hand in my pocket, fingers wrapped around my brother’s paper bird, as if somehow through it I could summon his competence and confidence. I chose paths at random, listening for the sounds of wind or the smell of fresh air, but instead the air grew more still, more quiet. I sensed we were moving downward, not upward, and the further we went, the warmer the air grew.

Despite my uncertainty, despite the fact that we were utterly lost, I felt myself breathing easier and standing straighter with every step. I was growing used to the iron supports in the stone around us. I’d stopped long enough to absorb some magic from the machines in Tansy’s pack, and I felt the power shimmering inside me like sunlight, intangible but no less real.

Twice we encountered people coming the opposite direction, but we were able to duck down a side tunnel and avoid being seen. The third time, however, came when we were walking down a long corridor without any branching tunnels. A man and a woman came around the corner unexpectedly, chatting. Oren hissed and I jumped, turning and treading on his feet as I tried to escape backward down a route that didn’t exist. He put his hands on my shoulders, steadying me, as Nix zipped inside the collar of my shirt.

I reached inside me for the bits of power I had left, ready to use it against them if I had to. I’ve been in a prison twice now. I’m not going back.

I took quick, shallow, steadying breaths, every nerve alive, every muscle tensed. I felt Oren’s hands grow rigid on my shoulders as they approached.

They walked straight past us without even looking.

I stared ahead at the spot where they’d been, too shocked to even turn and track their progress away from us, down the corridor we’d come from.

“. . . not like we can tend them ourselves,” the man was saying, voices echoing back to us through the tunnel. “Or grow anything down here.”

“True, but self-sufficiency is the first rule. Prometheus insists on it. How can we justify—” And they turned a corner, voices fading into unintelligible murmuring.

Oren let out a long breath, the air stirring my hair. I shivered, pulling away abruptly. He just shrugged, looking as confused as I felt.

Nix peeked out from my collar. “They don’t recognize you as escaped prisoners,” he noted.

“But surely they know we’re strangers? That we don’t belong here?”

Nix considered this, emerging the rest of the way from my collar and dropping into the air so that he could look us over. “Unless there are so many of them living here that they don’t all know each other.”

We kept walking, silent, shaken. Just how many people could be down here? I wished that I could see the outside, see what time of day it was. Were these people about to turn into ravenous shadows at any moment as well?

It was then that I realized Oren was siphoning less power from me than he had been. What had been a steady stream was now a trickle. Either he was somehow needing less magic to sustain his human form, or—

My eyes caught a glimmer of violet light as we turned a corner, and it hit me. No wonder I’d been feeling better, stronger, brighter. There was magic in the air. Iron all around, still, but it was containing the magic, holding it in. Like the Wall in my home city.

We stopped long enough to share a meal, dividing up the last of the cheese from my pack. It would’ve been a meager meal for one—between the two of us, it barely seemed like anything at all. My ear had stopped bleeding, and I rubbed the dried blood off my neck. I couldn’t do anything about the stain on my shirt, but at least I could minimize how warlike and battered I must look.

When we started moving again, a few more people passed us by, none of them giving us so much as a second glance. This time we knew to act as though we belonged there, but nevertheless my skin prickled. I instinctively reached for my power every time, ready to fight.

It was Oren’s idea to follow the people.

“When you’re hungry and snares aren’t working,” he said, keeping his eyes down, trying not to look at the stone ceiling and walls surrounding us, “you follow animals to find their dens. You can follow a bird back to its nest for the eggs.”

The people had to be going to and from something, he pointed out. There had to be a base somewhere. Storage for supplies or weapons. Places to sleep and eat.

So the next time we heard the sound of footsteps, we went towards them, ending up at a T-junction. As a trio of tunneldwellers approached, we fell into step behind them, trailing enough that they wouldn’t try to talk to us, but close enough that we could see where they were headed.

Eventually we ended up in a hallway that was rectangular instead of the round, squat tunnels we’d been in since the prison cell. At the end of it was a huge iron door. Oren put a hand out, touching my elbow, and we slowed, watching the trio carefully. I knew what he was warning me about—if the base was behind that door, then the people who had captured us could very well be on the other side of it. And they would surely recognize us, even if the others didn’t.

One of the tunnel-dwellers, a man with thick salt-andpepper stubble spreading across his jaw, reached out for a leverlike handle and hauled back on it. The doors slid open to either side, vanishing into the walls. Inside was a grate, which he slid open as well. He and the other two stepped into what appeared to be an empty room and turned around as one. It looked hauntingly familiar. The man who’d opened the doors reached out as if to close them and then spotted Oren and me.

“Well?” he said, one hand on the grate.

“E-Excuse me?” I stammered.

“Are you going down?”

Oren’s hand tightened on my elbow as he took a step back. Suddenly, my memory clicked into place. I knew what this was—I’d been in one before.

“Yes,” I blurted, reaching out for Oren’s hand and then heading for the box. For the elevator.

I could hear Oren gasp a quick, anguished breath as we squeezed into the elevator. For someone who didn’t like being underground, this must be torture. I wound my fingers through his, putting my body between him and the elevator’s other occupants. Though my mind recoiled at his touch, knowing what he really was under the veneer of humanity, the rest of me tingled, goose bumps rising along my arms despite the warm air. I turned my head away, not looking at Oren’s face.

The grate screeched as the man with the stubble slammed it closed behind us. Then he opened the lid of a box that stood on a post in one corner and banged his fist into a round, flat button. The elevator gave a lurch—Oren’s fingers went rigid in mine—and then with a surge of magic that sang through my head, the whole thing went dropping down.

I was glad it had been so long since the last time I’d eaten a proper meal. My stomach felt like it climbed into my throat, and my feet tingled, desperate to make it known that they were still in contact with the floor.

I looked up and saw that Oren’s eyes were closed and his face almost serene, far calmer than I’d ever seen him. Only the tightness of his grip and the glint of sweat in the hair at his temples betrayed his terror. Here he was no monster—he was just a boy trying to trust that I knew what I was doing. I leaned against him and felt the tension in his body relax just a fraction.

For a moment, it was like none of the past few weeks had happened. It was just me and Oren—there was no sickening tang of blood in the air or hunger inside me. The walls between us vanished for a few precious seconds.

Then the box stopped with a shudder and a screech of protesting gears, and I stepped away. I took a deep, quiet breath. We had to act like we made this trip all the time. I kept an eye on the man with the stubble, watching everything he did in case we needed to get back up the same way we’d come down. All we needed was to figure out the quickest way out of this place.

The man shut the lid on the box with the button and then reached for the grate, shoving it aside. I tensed, waiting to see what was on the other side of the outer doors. A base, holding the people who’d captured us; more tunnels, as endless and confusing as the last; even the outdoors. I was so turned around that I couldn’t dismiss that as a possibility, though it was now so warm that I could feel sweat starting to form between my shoulder blades.

The stubble man jerked at the handle, sending the outer doors sliding open with a rusty screech. He and the others got out, and Oren went stumbling after them, eager to leave the confines of the box. His hand was still clenched around mine, and he tugged me with him. I staggered, trying to catch my feet, eyes on the ground. We were on some sort of ledge overlooking a space so vast I could feel it sucking at me.

Then I looked up, and stared.

This was no base—it was a city.

Metal buildings of every imaginable shape and design grew out of the rock like mushrooms, roofed with rustyred iron and corroded copper green. Some were polished, gleaming turrets and towers. Others were rough and pockmarked by time and abuse, looking no better than debris from the ruined city above. Even here there were signs of the wars, as though people simply grabbed what they could and went underground. The buildings were connected by an insane network of stairs and walkways, cobbled together from pieces of salvage—I saw the leg of a giant mechanical walker stretched between two balconies and bolted into place, and just below us, a roof made out of a series of overlapping gears hammered thin and broad.

High above, fog shrouded the ceiling where the warm, moist underground air hit the cold stone overhead. Water dripped in a constant but sparse drizzle. The cavern was so large that there was even a breeze, fitful and changeable, stirred by the convection of the hot air below and the cold above. Overall the air was thick and humid, vastly different from the wintry cold outside.

Above the fog, the ceiling was studded with a series of what looked like the same glass and crystal lights we’d seen in the corridors, but on a far grander scale. They scattered the white-gold light of magic through the fog, which caught it and sent it dancing into a thousand colors that lit the city. It was as though the sky was paved with rainbows.

We stood on a ledge overlooking most of the city, although some of the walkways led upward to buildings higher than us. These were smaller, less rusted, clearly newer. At the very bottom of the huge cavern, on the floor, was a building in the shape of a semicircle, parabolic. In the courtyard before it were multicolored squares of fabric and a throng of people moving around and beneath them.

The size of the place was staggering. There were people everywhere—hundreds, thousands more inside the buildings maybe, more than I could count or guess. In circumference the cavern was not much bigger than my own city, but it went down and down and down, enough to fit my city many times over, stacked on top of itself. The far side was lost in the haze of distance, fitful rain, and fog.

Hope sputtered to life inside me. Perhaps my brother had made it here after all. Maybe they’d captured him the way they’d captured us. Maybe even now this Prometheus was using him the way he—or she, for that matter—was using Tansy.

A memory of the Machine the Institute had used to experiment on me bubbled up in my mind, and I tried to push it away. Tansy made her choice.

“We should go,” Oren whispered, although there was no one around and the cavern was alive with the sounds of people and machines, a distant roar of life and chaos. “Try our luck with the tunnels.”

“But someone here might be able to tell us how to get out.”

“And how would we ask them without giving away that we’re outsiders? I’d rather be lost in the tunnels than back in that cage.”

“We’ll find a way. We could wander in those tunnels up there for a week and never find our way out.” I looked at him, his squared jaw and fierce scowl, and added gently, “We don’t have that long.”

Oren sucked in a deep breath through his nose. I could see him trying to scent the fitful breeze, make sense of it, orient himself in the chaos of light and sound and people. His blue eyes darted this way and that, tracking a dozen different movements, the muscles in his jaw working. Out of his element, he was every inch the animal I’d thought he was when we first met. Cornered. Anxious. Poised to fight or flee.

He turned away from me, but I knew him well enough to sense his fear. Fear of losing himself, fear of hurting me. Fear of dying underground, away from the sun, breathing recycled air.

He was right to say we should go. Part of me knew it. But my feet wouldn’t move, rooted to the stone beneath them. My eyes followed the people going about their business below, oblivious to the two strangers watching it all from above.

How could we hope to infiltrate this city as complete outsiders without being caught? And all just to ask for directions?

I sucked in a deep breath, for in that moment I realized that wasn’t why I had to stay.

Somehow, as it often did, Nix knew what I was going to say before I said it. “Don’t,” it buzzed softly, for my ears only. “She betrayed you.”

I shook my head and then lifted Oren’s hand, pressing it between both of mine. “I’ll come with you back to the tunnels, keep you human as long as I can, until we reach the surface.”

He looked up, eyes fixing on mine, but the relief that flashed through his features vanished the moment he saw my face.

“But then I’ll be coming back alone. I have to find Tansy.”

Oren turned his head, showing me his profile as his eyes scanned the city before us. His face was as sharply sculpted as ever, the dirty sandy hair falling over his brow, jaw clenched. He’d seen mountains and oceans, and yet I could still see him struggling with the scale of this underground city, with its iron and copper palaces, so large it had wind and clouds and rain.

We still hadn’t talked about what happened the night he fled the Iron Wood. How he’d asked me to come with him— how I’d refused. The warmth of his arms. Of his lips. My revulsion at the taste of blood.

It was like an iron forest stood between us, and I couldn’t sense his heart any better than I had been able to sense the world beyond the iron bars of our prison cell. Even with our hands still locked together, he was worlds away.

His face didn’t change, no intake of breath—my only warning that he was about to speak was that he pulled his hand from mine abruptly.

“Where do we start looking?”