Unbroken

“Es,” I whispered. The dark inside me was starting to hurt as it grew stronger; it was pulling things from me, important things. Memories. Identity. Strength. “Don’t. She will not win.”

Esmeralda nodded past me, toward the abyss Rashid had punched into the center of the room—the hole through which had fallen so many children. “Oh, it looks like she will,” she said. “Sorry, Cass, but I never was much of a martyr.”

I slowly, painfully turned my head, and saw that the children, alive, intact, aware, were floating in midair. Rising up out of the dark, completely unharmed.

“Did you really think I’d let the Djinn do something so cruel as to slaughter all these innocent lives?” Pearl asked. “I saved you from yourself, Cassiel. The Wardens are finished, and humanity with them. I’m what comes next. And now, so are you, my sweet, cold sister.”

Cold, so cold. The pain inside was excruciating now, a black fire I couldn’t control or fight. The power I pulled from Luis was spinning away from me into that void, eaten by something… something that was reaching through.

Something that was trying to clamber its sharp-edged way inside me, as her power froze and shattered every bit of strength and power left in me.

The children were forming into a tightly bound cluster around us, all facing outward… so many young Wardens, so powerful, and all their power was directed inward, channeled together into a pure white shell around them as they floated in the air over the darkness. A milky, glassine skin that sealed them all inside, together.

And it began to kill them.

The power being produced was so vivid, so unnatural, that I could sense their small bodies failing under the strain. It didn’t matter to Pearl. Nothing mattered now, except her goal, almost in her reach.

The Void children remaining in the bubble imploded… their darkness exploded out of them, destroying their fragile shells, and flooded together like spilled mercury, spread in a sinuous curve along half of the dome.

It formed a liquid design, the blaze of power, and the absence of it.

Black and white.

Yin and yang.

The opposing forces of the universe.

“Stop,” I whispered. I grieved for the children who had just… disappeared, but that battle had been lost a long time ago; Pearl had chosen them, hollowed them out, made them avatars and vessels. The other children, the ones on the white side of the dome… those still had souls, minds, personalities. They could still be saved, if only I could stop this, soon.

But I was losing everything. It was bleeding, slipping, turning dark. Everything, dark.

Then I heard a whisper, and it rose up out of the remnants of the light inside me, out of the very roots of the earth. Not a word, but a feeling, an intuition. It was the breath and life and voice of the Mother, speaking to humans, brushing over us.

Life. Pure, untainted life, a power so pure and intense that it brought sharp tears to my eyes. It didn’t warm me, but it promised me warmth, life, escape from despair.…

And then I felt Pearl gather to strike. In this moment, when the Mother was finally, gently opening herself to humans, allowing just the merest suggestion of contact with them, she was vulnerable through them.

I had to act. Had to.

But all I could manage was one last, dying burst of power—just enough to shock Pearl a little, break me free of her grip, and send me tumbling forward in a heap. I hit the glittering wall of power that had formed around her and the children head on, with stunning force.

It didn’t yield.

Pearl looked down at me, remote and cold, and her eyes were the lightless empty of the Void. “You reject what I offer, Cassiel. You offend me.”

“Good,” I said. It came out raw and bloody, but satisfying. “Kill me, then. If you can.”

She walked down a set of invisible steps, as her children parted for her—some of them had already collapsed, their white light guttering out, and the rest were burning like candles in a furnace. All their power was flowing into Pearl, I realized; it was in the unearthly pale glow of her skin. She had embodied it, and the darkness.

If she completed this last, cruel act, she would be more powerful than anything else in this world.

I couldn’t break this shell, or the cycle of power that was feeding back on itself inside it. I couldn’t save myself, or the children. I couldn’t do anything except kneel there, cold and empty, as Pearl glided toward me.

But I could do one simple thing, after all.

I could duck.

The power that lanced out of her erupted in a pure white bolt, heading straight for me; if it touched me, it would burn me to cinders.

But it didn’t touch me. I let myself fall backward, anchored by my knees, and Pearl’s strike hissed and burned the air an inch above my chest.

It bored straight through her own shell of power, lanced out into the room, slammed into the back wall, and kept going.

And I rolled out through the burned opening of the shell as it began to knit itself closed, sealing Pearl and the children in.

I barely made it over the closing threshold before it irised shut.

The black-and-white sphere containing Pearl and her followers began to rotate now, slowly at first, but growing in speed and strength.

I collapsed gasping on the broken stone floor, and wondered if I had enough strength to battle Esmeralda, who was the only living thing in the room left now outside of the sphere… but as I rolled myself over on my back and looked at her, I realized that I needn’t have worried.

Esmeralda had felt it, too, that whispering touch of the Mother. Her eyes had gone wide and very dark, and they were filled with blind tears. She was still clutching Rashid’s bottle in one shaking hand, but I didn’t think she even realized she still had it.

She didn’t see me at all.

“She forgives me for what I did,” Es said. “I feel it. I feel it. I can—I can change —”

And she did, drawing in a deep breath; the thick, muscular coils began to shift, contract, drawing together in a smooth, tapering glide… and Esmeralda was standing. She looked down at her long, smooth legs, slender feet, and cried out—grief, joy, shock all boiling together. The white shirt she was wearing reached almost to her knees now, and it left her looking younger than before, a child playing at dress-up. I wondered how many years it had been since she’d been herself, been truly and completely human.

Just in time to lose everything again.

She blinked and looked down at me. “You don’t look so good, lady,” she said. “I’ve seen dead things on beaches with better color.”

“Esmeralda,” I whispered. “Get out. Go. Find Isabel.”

“She doesn’t need to find me,” Isabel said from the doorway. “I’m right here, Mom.” She was still covered in plaster dust, smeared and dirty, but she was alive. And behind her was Luis, bloody but still upright. He ignored Esmeralda, ignored the spinning sphere hovering in the middle of the room, and limped to me.

“We’re okay out there now,” he said. “Lots of sleeping kids. Djinn are holding the power bubble over us.” He collapsed down on the floor next to me, and pulled me into his arms. “God, you’re cold, Cass.”

I couldn’t tell him I was dying, but it was true; the darkness that I’d been infected with was eating away, steadily and quietly killing me. It was a kind of virus, I decided; as it fed on me, it reproduced. Soon, I’d be a vessel for it, like Pearl’s Void children.

And then I’d be unacceptably dangerous.

I’d failed on every level. Luis, Isabel, even Esmer-

alda… they had succeeded. But I hadn’t stopped Pearl. I hadn’t even slowed her. All my power, all my history, and it had come to this.