Shadowlark

“Nevertheless.” Steeling myself, I reached out to touch his hand. Despite the insulation all around us I felt a tiny tingle, a buzz where our skin touched. I jerked my hand away and cradled it against my chest.

He looked up, meeting my gaze for the first time as I tried to swallow my fear, my disgust. His eyes sharpened a little, blue even in the dim light. He was searching my face for something, his own expression haunted—but whether he found what he was looking for or not, he pulled away, turning his back, using the bars to drag himself to his feet.

I shouldn’t have touched him. He was a monster—a cannibal. How many people had he killed in his short lifetime? Tansy was right, I should have left him there in that alley. The current that flowed between us was only magic—nothing more. Maybe if I thought it often enough, it would be true. He was a monster.

And yet, he saved us.

I wanted to curl up there on the floor, pull away from the bars as far as I could, and hoard what little magic I had left from what I’d stolen from Tansy.

“They didn’t take my pack away,” I said. “But we’d better try to keep it hidden in case it was a mistake. And I’ve got my knife—maybe we can pick the lock.”

Tansy glanced at me dully. “Just use your magic to do it.” The emphasis was bitter. As if hearing it, and regretting it, she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall.

I understood the bitterness. I could still feel the whitehot agony as the Institute’s machines drained my own magic, replacing it with something false and twisted. How could she ever look at me as anyone other than the person who’d done that to her? I swallowed, trying to ignore the surge of guilt. If I hadn’t taken her magic and broken our fall, we would’ve died. I wasn’t sure we were much better off now, but at least we hadn’t been eaten. Yet. And she’d recover. She was a Renewable. In time, her magic would return.

“I don’t think I can use magic,” I said finally. “There’s so much iron here—I feel like I can barely breathe.”

I searched in my pack, hoping to see a telltale flash of copper, but there was nothing. Nix wasn’t there. I hoped that it had escaped unseen, that it was outside somewhere. The thought of the pixie trapped in these tunnels made me feel sick.

“Tansy, eat the rest of the apples,” I said, fishing the last couple of fruits from the Iron Wood out of the bottom of my bag. They were bruised and a little shriveled, and no doubt mealy-tasting, but still edible. “You need it most. It’ll help you recover.”

She took them dubiously but began to eat anyway. I crossed over to the door, ignoring the way my skin crawled at the proximity of the iron. Despite crouching to get a better look at it, I couldn’t see anything no matter how hard I pressed my face against the bars. I explored it by feel, my arm pressed awkwardly through the bars and wrist twisted back so I could get at the lock. The point of the knife wasn’t quite long enough and narrow enough to reach inside, but I tried anyway, wriggling it around inside the keyhole, hoping to hear the telltale click of tumblers.

After a while, Tansy finished the apples and came to my side, dropping to one knee to ostensibly look at the lock with me. But I could tell she had something to say, the tension radiating from her. I braced myself and kept my attention on what I was doing.

“I’m—sorry,” she said eventually, surprising me.

I lowered the knife and withdrew my arms, letting my hands rest on my thighs. They ached from the awkward angle, showing bands of red where my skin had been pressing so hard against the bars.

“You saved our lives. I can’t—I shouldn’t resent you for that.”

I tried a smile, though it didn’t feel quite right. “It’s okay. It’s awful. Believe me, I know.”

Tansy smiled back, the expression coming more easily to her, though she looked as tired as I felt.

“Can you rest?” I asked Tansy before glancing up at Oren, who had leaned forward and was resting his face against the bars, eyes closed. “I can keep trying for a while if you can sleep.”

“I think I could sleep standing up in the middle of a forest fire right now,” Tansy admitted. “Wake me up in an hour or two, if those guys haven’t come back by then.”

She retreated to the back of the cage, as far from Oren as she could get. She settled down and propped herself up in a corner, then closed her eyes.

I kept at the lock for a while, though I knew how pointless it was. The knife simply wouldn’t reach. Oren stayed silent, motionless. Eventually I conceded that all I was doing was blunting the tip of the knife, and stopped.

“I remember a light.”

Oren’s voice cut through the gloom, soft and quick. There was a tremor in it. I looked up—he still hadn’t moved, forehead pressed against the bars.

“I remember darkness and fog and a terrible hunger. And that I was supposed to be looking for something. And then, suddenly, there was a light. And I knew where to go.”

Tansy’s magic, I realized. In the alley. I kept silent, remembering how good it had felt to strip her magic away from her, take it for my own, let it pool warm and golden inside me. I tried to block out the sound of his voice, fixing my eyes on the lock again.

Oren pushed away from the bars and turned, sliding down to sit on the ground. He let his head drop forward, hair falling into his face. “Why is it that I always end up caged when I’m around you?”

I gritted my teeth. It’d be easier to keep him at a distance if he’d stay confused, only half-himself. It’d be easier if he’d never come at all. Then he could stay a monster, someone who betrayed me. Someone I never wanted to see again.

I held out the knife, gripping the blade and offering him the handle. “This is yours,” I said shortly.

His gaze lingered on it for a moment, then lifted to meet mine. I jerked my eyes away, but not before he would’ve seen the hurt there.

After a silence, he retreated back against the bars. “It was a gift,” he said quietly. “It’s yours.” He fixed his eyes on the back wall, not looking at me. “Besides, you may need it.”

“If I run out of magic and you try to kill us both, you mean?” There was still a little of Tansy’s magic left—I could feel it, tingling, singing through my veins. Tansy herself had fallen asleep as soon as she stopped moving. I could hear the soft sounds of her steady breathing coming from the back corner of our cell.

“You had the chance to get rid of me,” Oren said. “I asked you to kill me.”

“Just because I’m not capable of cutting your throat doesn’t mean I want you here.” The words were out before I can stop them. Anything to keep him at arm’s length.

“Lark—”

“We’re not a team, Oren.” I glanced at Tansy, who stirred in reaction to the sharpness of my voice but didn’t wake. “It’s not like it was. It can’t ever be again. You know that, right? You shouldn’t be here.”

“I didn’t want to be here,” he hissed back. “I don’t control it, when it takes over. I can’t tell it to leave you alone. It—that thing—isn’t me.”

Except it is. Because I could see the ferocity of the monster even now, the brilliant gleam in his eye, the strength in his shoulders and in the grip of his hands as he balled them into fists.

“You’re not even human.” I turned away.

“And you are?”

The words hit me like a blow. The silence drew out between us, tense like wire. Then my lungs remembered how to work again. “I’m human. I’m—I’m me, all the time. I make my choices. This power, this is something that was done to me.”

I could feel Oren’s eyes on me. Only, where they’d once made my spine tingle and my stomach tighten, now they made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. He didn’t move, but it was like I could hear him anyway. I could feel the shape of the air around him. I knew exactly where he was, though I kept my eyes away.

“Just as this was something done to me.” His voice remained quiet, pitched low so as not to wake Tansy. “By the wild. Knowing it doesn’t change who I am, only what I am.”

The buildup of betrayal was less now. It was still there, simmering quietly, but not fighting to get out—as though by venting it, I’d released some of the pressure. I swallowed, closing my eyes. “I wish I didn’t know.”

For a long time, it seemed like Oren wasn’t going to answer. The tension in the wire pulled between us