Incarnate

“Ana!” Sam stood against the bars between his cell and Stef’s, reaching one arm toward me. “What are you doing? Are you okay?”

When Stef stood away from the window, I tore off one mitten and slipped my hand through. Our fingers scraped and caught, but my shoulder was already pressed against the bars; I couldn’t stretch farther. Resignedly, I pulled my arm free and held my fingers against my chest. “I’m leaving.”

He dropped his arm. “Leaving?”

I nodded. “Leaving Heart. Range if I have to.”

Stef glanced between us. “Did something happen?”

The mixture of cold and heat made my eyes water. “I can’t live with Li. Not for a few years, not even for a few more days. I have to get out, even if it means letting go of everything I was trying to find.”

Sam bit his lip. His face was dark and shadowed in the uncertain light, like how I’d first seen him by Rangedge Lake. “Did she harm you?”

“No. Just—” I shook my head. “She tried to burn your song. She’s going to keep doing things like that until — I don’t know — until I break. They’ll never let me see any of you again.”

“It’s going to be hard to see anyone if you leave.” Stef gave a one-shouldered shrug.

“That’s why I’m here. I came to free you all.” I met Sam’s eyes and hoped more than anything he’d say yes. “I thought you’d come with me.” It hadn’t occurred to me that he might not, but now, it seemed more likely he’d stay with his friends.

“Okay.” Sam leaned his forehead on the bars. His gaze stayed on mine.

Stef raised her eyebrows. “You know that when you’re reborn, you’ll be turned over to the Council. Your next life will be in here. And yours, Ana, if you’re reincarnated.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. Seventy or more years in this room, bars separating me from the world? It might not be my fate if I just vanished when I died, but it would definitely be Sam’s if he went with me.

“I don’t care.” Sam reached again, so I did too, and when our fingertips touched, he said, “It will be worth it.”

My shoulder hurt from pushing it against the bars. “I don’t know how to get you out.” Maybe I should have changed my mind now that I knew the price, but I couldn’t stay here, and I couldn’t survive outside Range by myself.

Not just that. Memories of the way he’d kissed me heated my insides. I’d always needed him, for music and refuge and reasons not to hate everything about my life, and now because he made my chest tight and he’d promised a thousand things. He was Sam.

“No.” Stef shook her head. “I’m not going to let this happen. Sam, you’re smarter than that. Ana, if you really cared for him, you wouldn’t sentence him to a lifetime of imprisonment and sewer maintenance.”

“He’s five thousand years old, Stef.” I pulled my hands off the bars in case she slapped my knuckles like Li would have. “Let him make his own decisions.”

Sam smirked, but the hint of a smile vanished when Stef turned on him. His voice deepened. “What Ana said.”

“Idiot.” She marched away from the window.

Sam frowned and turned back to me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the diaries. I was trying to hide them from you, but only because I didn’t want you to worry.”

“I don’t care about that anymore. I think I understand.” A quick glance over my shoulder revealed no one had found me yet, but it was only a matter of time. My knees ached, and my chest itched from pressing against the white stone. “How do I get to the prison from the Councilhouse? Or is there another door?”

“Li was trying to kill you.” His expression was earnest. “I was searching for proof that she wanted to murder you using sylph. Menehem was working on something that might affect sylph, but I couldn’t find anything else about it. I went to her house the day of the masquerade, but she hid any information she had. She, and whoever she’s working with.”

We’d been doing the same research all along. He wanted to prove Li tried to murder me, using sylph so she wouldn’t be imprisoned for it. And I–I’d stumbled onto it, though I’d never quite recognized the threat as he did.

“I know about all that.” I pushed myself up to my knees again and held on to the bars. “It’s okay. Just tell me how to get you out.”

He flashed a hopeful smile. “Go around to the—”

Footsteps. He must have heard them, too, just louder than the wind around the building. And before he could order me to hide, thunder rumbled again and his eyes widened. Stef and Orrin — who was out of my line of sight — swore loudly.

“Go, Ana. Hide anywhere, and don’t come out until the thunder stops.” When I didn’t leave immediately, frantically trying to sort through my thoughts and emotions, he shouted, “Run, Ana. Dragons.”

I lurched to my feet and hurled myself in any direction. Meuric had said they’d come. History books said the same thing — sometimes hundreds of dragons. So I ran until I hit a white wall with a door. Shivering, I twisted the handle and glanced over my shoulder — no one yet — and threw myself into somewhere dark and still and heavy.

The air pulsed.

I spun, heartbeat thudding in my ears. No, not my heartbeat. The air. The walls. White light shimmered across a vast chamber. This wasn’t the Councilhouse. It was the temple.

New panic surged through me, and I darted for the door to escape. I’d rather deal with dragons.

But the door was gone.

Chapter 26 Impossible

I BANGED ON the wall until pain knifed through my palms. I yelled until my voice became shards of glass whistling through my throat. I kicked the wall until numbness raced up my toes and feet.

The door was gone. How was I supposed to escape if the door was gone?

My legs quivered as I strained not to crumple to the floor. There was never a door into the temple, not until ten minutes ago, and it hadn’t even lasted. This shouldn’t be possible. Not just the door, but me being the one to find it. Me, who shouldn’t have been born. Me, who was supposed to be Ciana.

There were too many impossible things.

“Calm down,” I whispered, again and again, hoping eventually it would work. “Breathe.” The air was heavy, like inhaling dry water. My head throbbed with the weight and pressure. My thoughts tumbled: how to get away, how to get free.

I drew away from the wall, but the pulsing air didn’t ease its grip on my head. It was like pressing my entire body against the city wall. Being inside Heart didn’t do this, nor did being inside the white-walled homes or Councilhouse.

But this was the temple without doors, the very center of Heart. On clear days, the temple’s shadow swung over the city like a sundial. Thousands of years ago, they’d used the temple to tell time.

I hated the temple. Instinctively, the first time I saw it and felt it was looking at me, and then when I felt the pulse through the city wall. Rock shouldn’t have a heartbeat.

There was no sound, not even ringing in my ears, like quiet often did. I hated the silence and throbbing and weight, the absence of temperature. Not cold or hot, but not just right, either. It simply… didn’t feel like anything.

I squatted in front of the wall and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for something to happen. For the door to magically reappear. I didn’t want to call out — no matter that I already had — and risk anything coming to eat me. Or, worse, risk the marble-thick air squashing my voice before it was ever out.

The chamber’s faraway white walls glowed in the same eerie way the outside did, wearing no ornamentation. There were no paintings, pottery, or statues. There were no shadows, hardly any depth thanks to the everywhere-