I’m parting my lips, debating whether or not to tell him the entire truth, when a great screech and a shattering fills the air, as if every plate in the royal kitchen were dropped at once. The tower walls vibrate, and Bo and I cover our ears with twin cries of pain. A moment later, a dull boom rocks the stones beneath our feet.
The floor tilts, sending me staggering back into my bedroom. My dagger falls from my hand and scuttles across the stones, only coming to a stop when it hits the far wall with a clank. My arms wheel and my feet spread wide to steady me, even as my heart screams that it’s pointless to fight, useless to resist. The tower will fall and I will fall with it. This is the moment I thought I was ready for.
But I’m not. I’m not! How could I be? How can anyone ever be ready?
Mercifully, after several endless seconds, the floor steadies and the stomach-flipping tilting stops. My breath rushes out and my heart pounds fast enough to make me dizzy as I turn in a careful circle, taking in the crooked new world left behind in the wake of the quake. My bed curtains list to the left, and my dressing table has fallen on its face, while the pictures on the walls hang at disturbing odds with the room, now that gravity has taken the room one way and pulled the pictures the other.
“Are you all right?” Bo asks, drowning out another faint but troubling sound.
“Sh,” I hiss, ears straining. Outside, the air is still once more, but from somewhere deep within the tower comes a crumbling, crunching … loose sound. A faltering sound; a falling sound.
“Go! Run!” I shout, dashing on bare feet to the door, where Bo stands braced against the frame, wide-eyed and as panicked-looking as I feel. I duck under his arm, snatching at his shirt as I dash for the stairs, dragging him after me, praying the way out is still passable.
It’s one thing to say I’ll die with the city; it’s quite another to climb into bed and let the tower collapse beneath me. That’s too close to giving up, and giving up is too close to drawing a knife across my throat. I’ll fall with Yuan, but I won’t go down peacefully. I’ll go fighting for my life every second of the way. I am a warrior now. Gem made me this way, and I won’t betray him or myself by giving up without a struggle worthy of the last queen of Yuan.
28
GEM
THE city is a monster, screaming and frothing and losing teeth in its frenzy to feed one last time.
The soldiers run like frightened children into the desert, dropping spears and dart blowers and swords in their haste to escape. The few still left inside shove each other as they fight to squeeze through the narrow opening that is all that is left of the King’s Gate now that the walls have all but collapsed. Even before I’m close enough to see the sweat and tears on the men’s faces, I can smell their terror, sour and filthy on the wind, tainting the fresh air crashing over the mountains like waves of redemption.
The men are so afraid of their city that they don’t notice their old monster running toward them until I’m close enough to kill them with a sweep of my claws. Two short, soft boys scream and put on a burst of speed, darting closer to the wall to get away from me, before racing back toward the desert, while the man wedged half in and half out of the opening in the gate cries out and lifts his arms in a desperate—and useless—attempt to protect himself.
If it’s necessary to kill him, he’ll be as dead with those arms up as down, but I’ll leave that decision to him.
“Leave now and I won’t hurt you. Stay to fight me, and you die,” I growl as I pull him through the opening by his armpits and fling him onto the ground. I wait half a second—long enough to see that he has scrambled to his feet and followed his friends—before turning back to the opening and hauling at the rocks blocking my way.
I’m bigger than the men of Yuan. I won’t be able to fit unless I make the opening larger. I dig my fingers into the stone, until they bruise. I wrench at the rocks until my muscles scream with effort. I curse myself for allowing my body to grow thinner and weaker in my weeks wandering the wild. I dig in and dig down and give everything I have and more, but the last colossal stone refuses to move. Not a centimeter, not a fraction of a centimeter.
I grit my teeth and howl with effort, refusing to fail now. Above me, the city howls more loudly, twisted metal and crumbling glass wailing a miserable, selfish cry for blood and suffering and death. But beneath it all is the rush of the clean wind and, finally, a wondrous smatter-patter, the sound of raindrops on desperately dry earth, the remarkable rhythm of rain falling harder and harder until the drumbeat of hope pounds all around me.
The drops kiss my bare shoulders, soak into my skin, bringing me to life like a seed waiting for a miracle.
The stone gives beneath my fingers, rolling away, falling to the ground with a thud. Heart racing, I shove my shoulders through the opening and tumble into Yuan. I roll back to my feet and run, around the granaries, through the barren fields, past fallen trees and massive shards of glass, cresting the final hill in time to see the tower fall.
And fall … and fall, loose stones scattering like bones thrown from a medicine man’s cup, foretelling the death of anyone still left inside.
ISRA BY the time we reach the base of the tower, my childhood home is crumbling all around me. With barely a moment to spare, I fling myself through the door to the outside world and out onto the path, with Bo close behind me. As I dash for the barren sunflower patch, my bare feet crunch through the clods of dirt that are all that remain of the cabbage field.
My breath comes fast and my arms pump at my sides; my lungs are raw, but the salty taste in my throat only makes me feel more alive. I’m alive. Still alive!
It’s my last thought before a stone fist punches me between my shoulders, knocking me through the air. I fly—a bird with broken wings and a belly full of pain—only to fall to the earth with a pitiful moan. My breath rushes out, but I can wheeze only a little air back in. It hurts to breathe deeply. There are too many sharp things inside me, fighting for a place to exist in this soft, bleeding body. My vision swims with red, my fingers flinch at my sides, instinctively grasping for things I’ll never touch.
I blink, pulling the world into focus, to see Bo standing a few feet away, staring back at me, hunks of rocks falling to the ground all around him. I try to tell him to run, but I can’t speak. Even if I could have made words, it would have been too late.
It’s a stone no bigger than a child’s ball that hits him, but it makes contact in the worst of places, colliding with his skull, shattering him in the blink of an eye. I see more red, and then Bo is facedown on the earth. Not moving. Not breathing.
My chest burns, and I know I would cry for him if my body weren’t full of knives made of broken bones. He’s gone. As gone as I will be soon.
Soon I will not be Isra anymore.
I could find peace with it, I think, some kind of peace, enough to close my eyes and move away from the pain, at least, but a moment after the last stone hits the ground, he’s there. He comes running through the wreckage, his expression as fearful and hopeful as I imagine mine was a few minutes ago.
Gem.
I know it’s him and not some vision created by my dying mind. He’s the same as he always was, but also very different. Altered from the boy I knew. He’s leaner, with sharper cheekbones and shadows smudging the skin beneath his eyes. Eyes that are hollow and haunted, but charged with energy that reaches through the air between us, electrifying my body the second his gaze meets mine. He loves me. I see it. I know it the way I know the darkness from the light.
My heart pumps desperately against my broken ribs, heedless of the pain it causes as it celebrates seeing our beloved, too innocent to understand how terrible this meeting is. But I understand. I’m dying. And all Gem can do is watch.
Gem’s gaze travels down my body and back up again, and his steps falter. His lips part, and the hope drains
