Shards and Ashes

Harmony looked at her father. “Daddy?”

He shook his head. “I tried to save you. I told you what would happen. You didn’t listen.”

The Nido patted his cheek with her free hand. “We took care of the problem last time, and we’ll fix this too.”

A cry escaped Harmony’s lips. It might have been a word, or it might have been only a sound. She wasn’t sure. The Nido restraining her stepped away, and she almost fell. She took several steps toward her father. “How? Why?”

There were two Nidos with her father, and even though she wasn’t being held back, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, much less what she could do.

“Your sister caught their attention. What was I to do?” Her father glared at her through bloodshot eyes. His sallow, fleshy face didn’t look anything like the father she remembered.

Harmony shook her head. “And Mom?”

He stepped closer, so he was near enough that she could embrace him. “That wasn’t my doing. I didn’t know. . . . She was sick, and I only left her at the hospital for the night. I didn’t know they—”

“But you knew when you . . . what? Told them where Chas would be?”

“I had to make a choice,” he pleaded. “I tried to save you.”

Although the two Nidos watched them, they didn’t interfere. Harmony looked into her father’s face, but she couldn’t summon any words for him. Night after night, she’d hoped he would recover from the dual tragedies of her mother’s and sister’s deaths, but he wouldn’t. He was responsible, and now they both knew it.

“You told them where Chastity was . . . and now me too?”

“All I did was add it to the necklace. I warned you, but you wouldn’t listen.” He pointed at her. “The tracker is on that. I had no choice.”

Harm’s hand went to the charms around her throat. She yanked the necklace free and threw it at him. “You had a choice.”

“You don’t understand,” he insisted. “They would’ve killed us both. They would’ve killed all three of us before, when Chastity was blaspheming. I saved you then. What was I to do?”

“Not give either of your daughters to the monsters. If there is another world where we meet after this life, I hope Chastity and Mom are there waiting for us.” She slipped her hand into her pocket. “Maybe they’ll forgive you, Daddy. Maybe I will too.”

She withdrew the knife and shoved the blade hilt-deep into his throat. As the Nidos grabbed her arms, she watched her father clutch his bleeding throat. It wouldn’t help. She’d learned where to stab a human; she’d severed his carotid artery.

“If I hated you, I’d have let you go into their foul stew while you were still alive,” she told him as he died.

The distant sounds of music, the sizzle of a nearby streetlight, and her father’s dying were all she heard then. The Nidos gripped her arms, but she kept her hand tight on the hilt of her knife.

I don’t want to die.

If she didn’t get away, she’d end up drowning in corpses. The images in her mind were almost as vivid as the real thing had been. This time, though, Chastity wouldn’t be there to rescue her.

Harmony let her body go suddenly limp, surprising them and dropping to the ground as they lost their grip on her. That was one of the first lessons she’d learned: do the unexpected. Most captives tried to tug away or shove, so her captors were likely to be ready for that.

As she rolled to her feet, she launched herself at one of the Nidos. She knew she couldn’t kill them both, but she wasn’t going to let them take her away. Better to die fighting than drown in the dead. Her shoulder stung from an unavoidable stab wound, and she knew dimly that there were other wounds she wasn’t registering yet. None of that mattered though. I want to live. I want Chris to live. She knew he should’ve been there by now, and the thought of reaching him, of keeping him out of their vats, was enough to give her an extra surge of adrenaline.

“Harmony!” Chris yelled.

She wasn’t sure when Chris had come outside. All she knew for sure was that she was on the ground, on top of the Nido, and her knife was wet in her hand. A trickle of something dripped down her cheek. She didn’t know if it was her tears or her father’s blood. The temptation to look at Chris warred with the fear that he’d look at her with disgust.

“Harm,” he repeated, softly this time. He had hands on her waist, lifting her up with little effort, as if she really was the rag doll she suddenly felt like. He pulled her away from the dead Nido and her now-dead father.

“You’re bleeding,” she said foolishly. Bleeding was normal; death was normal.

He took her hand, and uncurled her fingers from the hilt of the knife. “There was one inside, too, or I’d have been here sooner.”

“This time . . . I thought . . . I really thought I was going to die,” she whispered. “I don’t want to die.”

Instead of saying things that would make her fall apart, he suggested the same thing he had not long after Chastity died: “We could go north. Try to get to somewhere safer.”

She leaned against his side, not just because of the ritual but because she wanted to feel close to him, and this time, she gave him the answer she never had before, “Yes.”

And they walked away from the Norns, away from the father who’d betrayed her, and away from a life that held a too-soon expiration date.

Burn 3 by Kami Garcia

THE FACES OF missing children flash across three vid screens above our heads, forming a gargantuan triangle that looms over the street. Children have been disappearing for weeks now. Protectorate officers claim they’re runaways, but there’s nowhere to go inside the Dome. The truth is no one cares about a bunch of poor kids from Burn 3.

I glance at the screen again and squeeze my little sister’s hand tighter, dragging her through the filthy alley.

“Why are we running?” Sky asks.

“We’re just walking fast.”

I don’t like bringing her outside at night, but we’re out of purification tablets and she hasn’t had any water all day. The dirty streets are bathed in neon light from the signs marking the rows of identical black metal doors that serve as storefronts. In the distance, towering buildings covered in silver reflective panels rise up around a labyrinth of alleys. Those buildings are all that’s left of the city that stood here twenty years ago. Retrofitted and repurposed for the world we live in now. I’ve never been anywhere near there. It’s the wealthy part of Burn 3, no place for poor kids like us.

We reach an exposed stall draped in a black plastic tarp. An old woman swathed in layers of dark fabric huddles underneath. Her face is pebbled on one side, the result of poorly healed burns. Even though the Dome keeps us under a constant shadow, it’s dangerous to be outside all day, and I feel sorry for her. But few people can afford the high rent for an indoor shop.

“Two purification tablets, please.” I hold out the coins stamped with a crude number three on both sides.

She takes the currency in her gloved hand and gives me two pink tablets. They don’t look like much, but they’ll turn the black water running through the pipes a safer shade of gray. Before our father died, he told us stories about the world before the Burn. A time when water was clear and you could drink it straight from the faucet, and walk outside to stand in the sun without layers of protective clothing. That was before his mind deteriorated and I couldn’t tell if his stories were memories or delusions.

A siren eclipses the sounds around us and an automated voice issues a directive. “Alert: the atmosphere inside the Dome has reached Level 2. Please put on your goggles and return to your domiciles immediately. Alert: