jealous of his hand in this moment. How he runs it through the mess of his hair.
“Not about us,” I stop him. “There’s trouble. More trouble than I can explain right now.”
“Well?” he says expectantly.
“We have to get out of here. I’ll explain later.”
“Explain now.” He grabs my wrist to stop my frantic pacing.
I gawk at him and pull away. Before I can respond to Erik’s demand, the door bursts open and a man stumbles in. At first I think we’ve been discovered, but then Jost appears in the doorway behind him.
But Jost surprises me, releasing his fist. It makes hard contact with the Sunrunner’s jaw. He bounces back but doesn’t fall and soon he’s tussling with Jost. They wrestle each other to the floor and I jump up, looking for a way to help without accidentally ripping apart the room or anyone in it.
The Sunrunner pins Jost to the floor, his arm coiled around his neck.
“Little help here,” Jost gasps against the pressure.
I whip around, looking for something to attack the Sunrunner with, and as I do, the room spins to life, full of purple and gold and crimson. I could use my alteration abilities.
“Do it,” Jost croaks.
Before I can, Erik jumps in, surprising the Sunrunner enough that he loses his grip on Jost, who reverses the hold, pinning the other man to the ground as Erik unceremoniously cracks the medicinal bottle of whiskey over our attacker’s head, knocking him out.
“What’s going on?” Jost demands, his breath coming in heavy, fast pants.
I look to Erik, but neither of us speaks. I hadn’t planned on convincing both of them to come at the same time. That would require a miracle.
“Do you know what he was going to do to you? I got to know Burris on the mission,” Jost continues, pointing to the man on the floor. “Kincaid doesn’t send Burris to bring you tea. Trust me. He sends Burris to kill you—or worse.”
“Why would anyone want to kill us?” Erik asks in a cool voice.
“That’s what I’m asking you,” Jost says.
“Why don’t you ask Burris?” Erik says, crossing his arms defensively, abandoning the brief brotherly camaraderie.
“Because he’s not currently very talkative,” Jost says, “and because he already told me.”
“Told you what?” I ask.
“That he caught a spy and was going after her,” he says. “I assume he means you.”
My heart thumps when he looks at me. “We have to get out of here.”
“And go where?” Jost asks. “Kincaid will be after you.”
“We know where the Whorl is,” I say, trying to keep my head clear and my words rational despite the trying circumstances I’ve found myself in this evening, but when I finish relating the night’s events, neither of them acts surprised. Erik places an arm around my shoulder, but I shrug it off, aware of Jost’s tensed jaw.
“Why are we still here?” Jost asks, his gaze glued to the floor. “If Dante knows where the Whorl is, we need to go.”
“We have to wait for Jax. We can’t get past security without a distraction,” I tell him. Our eyes meet for a moment before I look away, confusion blooming in my chest.
“This ought to be good,” Erik mutters, “and by good, I mean very, very bad.”
THIRTY-SIX
JAX’S DISTRACTION COMES IN THE FORM OF blowing up a garage that sits far enough from the main house that we aren’t in imminent danger but close enough that the security force acts swiftly, giving us the opportunity to slip out of an entrance at the back of the house. As smoke pours from the wreckage, we flee the estate in the stolen crawler, Dante and Valery tucked safely inside with a bag of food and water. Jax has kept his word—everyone is too busy to see us go and the gates are unattended. I don’t look back at Kincaid’s playground. There’s nothing left for me there. Jost drives north, following a rough map Dante has drafted.
“Hopefully, the men notice I’m gone first,” Jost says, his hands white knuckled on the steering wheel. “They’ll probably assume I’m out somewhere killing Erik. It’s actually a fantastic alibi.”
“Yeah,” Dante says, from the backseat. “Because it’s very believable.”
“To be clear,” Erik says, “you probably won’t kill me though?”
“The night is young.”
“Let’s get to the island before we kill each other,” Dante suggests in a mild tone that grows weaker as the adrenaline wears off.
We collapse into silence after this, the somewhat good-natured threat still hanging in the air. Although it’s clear now that everyone knows about the drama between Jost, Erik, and me.
Now that we’re off the estate, the road grows wild the farther we get from the inhabited Icebox. I turn around, hoping to stem the rolling nausea from our ride. “Dante,” I call, leaning my chin against my seat, “do you think Jax will be okay?”
We’d left him at the estate to deal with the fallout of the explosion. Dante grins. “He’ll be fine. He’s headed straight to the Agenda to let them know what’s happened so we can rendezvous with Falon later.”
“That night when I caught you in the cells,” I say, hoping this question doesn’t destroy Dante’s mood, “did you get my mother out?” I’ve been wondering since I found him strapped to the exam table, not knowing when or how he’d been taken.
Dante swallows hard and nods, but he doesn’t give me any details.
Her freedom means she’ll come after me again, but I have new enemies to worry about. The woman I knew as my mother is already dead. Even if I alter her I don’t think I can erase what’s happened. Would she remember what she’s done? The people she’s killed? I’ve spent enough nights contemplating how my own actions have led to deaths: Enora, my father, the nameless threads I ripped in cold blood. I was passive in those actions but I feel their blood on my hands like the sticky, black substance that coated my feet on the night of my retrieval. I can’t dismiss the past, it lives in my head and infects me. Even with her soul back, her morality intact, would my mother be able to calm the bitter truth of what she’s done?
And I know one thing for certain, my mother would want me to push forward, to find the Whorl, to get to Amie. I haven’t given up on that yet. I won’t let Arras and Earth be severed without reaching Amie first and removing her from Cormac’s control.
But Loricel’s words
We pass along the coast in silence, weaving through abandoned metros, past service stations crawling with vines, tiny saltbox homes, and an endless series of unlit relics. No signs of life appear. I wonder what lies at the heart of the Interface. Someday, when this is over, I will explore and rebuild Earth. If I find nothing, I’ll build my own world.
I look behind me. Erik rides silently. Even if Jost knows nothing happened between Erik and me, it’s meaningless. I didn’t kiss Erik, but I wanted to. I ripped a deeper void between them than can ever be patched.
Erik didn’t kiss me that night either, because he loves his brother despite everything that’s passed between them.
Now that we’ve driven beyond the Interface’s boundary, overhead a sprinkling of stars peek out and the moon perches in the gray night sky. In Arras, a Spinster moves the time along, determining how the light will fade, whether the sunset will be orange or rose or purple. She places a false moon in the sky. Earth is a world born from nothing but potential. I think of the books in Kincaid’s library. The ones that contain theories on Earth’s origin,
