Unbroken

kill them, she said, and it was like all the evil in the world shrieking its last, hot breath into me. I made you fall.

I’m not falling, I told her, and came free with a sudden, flashing beat of silver wings that broke her into tiny flakes of ash and smoke, screams and despair.

She was a nightmare that humanity had dreamed, and now she disappeared into the Void.

I beat my wings and fought my way back up, away from the black pull of death, to the last whispers of light at the very top of the world.

The Void closed.

Pearl was gone with it.

The Djinn were silent now, amid the countless human dead, staring up at me. I had just murdered an entire race. The Mother was safe, but the agony of what I’d done would echo forever. Nothing would be the same. Nothing would be saved, not of the race that I’d come to love and cherish. Their cities and histories would fall into ruin, into silence, into dust. Not even their whispers would remain.

Unless I righted the balance.

I couldn’t do it alone, and wordlessly, I sent out a call.

I felt them coming to me, on the aetheric—all my brothers and sisters, True Djinn and New, powerless and powerful. Some were bound in nets of glowing thread—those enslaved to bottles. Some were free, and wild with power.

One drifted close to me, and I recognized the tense, restless boil of blue-black energy within the netted cage that bound him. Save yourself, Rashid said. Don’t do this.

But it had been Ashan’s plan all along, and I was, finally, at peace with it. Ashan was gone, but the conduit remained.… Venna, though frail and broken, stood ready, and I reached out to her on one side, and to the caged, brilliant coppery flare that was David on the other. Together, they were halves of a whole, a key to the heart of the Mother.

Down in the human world, only a moment had passed. Long enough.

I let go of all that I had drawn in, all that I’d taken from those lifeless human forms. All the energy. All the breaths. All the heartbeats. But there is no perfect transfer of energy; there is always loss, both going and coming.

I’d known from the beginning that not all those I’d taken could, or would, come back. I had no control of that, or choice. Some hearts restarted. Some breaths were taken. For many, the seconds that had just passed went unnoticed, except as a nightmare.

I gave everything I had to make them live. Everything. Every last drop of power and energy that made me what I was, flowing out through Venna and David. When I had no more, I let go.

I had done what I’d been fated to do, and I was content with that. My light was going out of the world.

And then… something touched me. Something huge, gentle, kind… and wise. Not the Mother. Something beyond, as great in proportion to her as humans were to the tiniest insects.

I had been touched by something divine, and as the last of the Djinn Cassiel passed away…

… My consciousness flowed back into flesh that I’d left behind.

Outcast, again, but this time, by my own choice.

Unfortunately for me, that meant that I had fallen back into a body that wasn’t just drained of life, but dying. I had one breath left, maybe two, and a single heartbeat left before Esmeralda’s very effective venom destroyed it beyond all repair.

“No!”

That was Isabel’s raw scream in my ears.

My eyes were still open, but now I blinked away a film and focused on the girl’s sweaty, white-streaked face. She was shaking and gasping, but she put her hands on my chest and drove healing power into me, warm and rich and golden, a flood of peace that quickly turned toxic as it battled the intense venom Esmeralda had injected. The damage was grave, and Isabel fought for me, fought so hard that the pain that came with it was something I could only accept, and embrace. My blood burned. My nerves fried under the stress. Organs pulsed and wept poison. Muscles ripped and re-formed. Bone knitted.

But even so, she couldn’t save me. Not alone. But she wasn’t alone, because she had a bottle in her hand, and the cork was lying discarded six feet away, and Rashid was kneeling beside us now, indigo face sharp and intense, eyes like burning glass as he cleaned the toxins from my blood and flesh, wiping it away as it burned its way out of my skin and through clothing.

It hurt, living. It hurt so much. And again, it wasn’t enough. Rashid couldn’t save me. Isabel couldn’t save me.

And that was all right. I hadn’t intended to survive, although it would have been good to see Luis one more time. Pearl had been right. I belonged with her, in the dark.

I was still fighting, weakly, to survive when the world shattered around us, and re-formed, as the Mother found her perfect match—a conduit of power who held the awareness of a Djinn and the compassion of humanity.

The human Lewis Orwell had died in her arms, and her intense love had transformed him in her embrace into something astonishing, bright, perfect.…

A Djinn. A brand-new Djinn.

Welcome, brother, I whispered to him on the aetheric, and the new creature that had once been Lewis stepped out of the mists and into the world for the first time, and brushed his fingers lightly over my brow.

“You do get yourself into trouble,” he said, and his smile was all human, all Lewis. “There. That’s fixed, Cass. Try not to break this body quite so much. It’s all you’ve got left.”

He faded out again in a white flutter of power—gone and not gone, not ever gone. He was the new gravity, the center of the Djinn world. Venna hadn’t been able to hold for long, and David, I knew, had never wished to be a conduit; now neither of them had to bear that burden. It was Lewis, only Lewis, and no one had ever been better suited.

I drew in a deep, slow, lovely breath, and Rashid sat back on his heels, staring after the newly made Djinn. “Well,” he said. “That’s something you don’t see every day.” He looked down at me, and his smile was sad, and fierce, and a little angry. “I once asked you for your firstborn. Do you remember that?”

I did, though I didn’t feel the need to speak. He could see it in my eyes.

“I’ll be back when it’s time to fulfill that bargain. As much as your human loves you, I don’t expect it will be very long.”

He misted away before I could tell him that I’d kill him before he took a child of mine. That would, it seemed, be an argument for another day.

Isabel threw herself across me, still shaking, and I hugged her back, hard. I smoothed her hair, just as I had when she was such a small child, and she said, “Cassie, please stay. Please.”

“I will,” I whispered, and my eyes filled with human, burning, perfect tears. “I will.” There was something odd about my left arm and hand. I raised it and stared at it, not realizing for a moment what it was… and then I felt the pulse of blood in my fingers, and laughed out loud.

Whether it was a gift of the Mother, or something Lewis had left me, my metal arm was gone.… It was, in fact, a melted heap of bronze on the floor next to me.

My arm was flesh. Perfect, and unmarked.

I looked beyond my arm, and saw Luis holding Esmeralda in his arms. He looked up at me and shook his head.

She hadn’t made it back. One of the many I’d taken, and lost.

My burden. My great and terrible guilt I would carry for the rest of my human days.

He gently lowered her to the floor and walked over to me. One effortless pull got me to my feet and into his arms, pressed hot against his body as he held me close, so close. He sighed and rested his head against mine for a moment before finding my lips with his in a bright, burning kiss.

“Something’s different,” he said.

Well, yes. The storm outside was breaking apart now; the black was fading on the aetheric, replaced by a still, soft pearl gray shot through with glittering, translucent colors. Everything was different.