“No,” I say, automatically. “I have to show you—”
He sighs and stands up. “Clearly, you can get to the other cities through the catacombs, since that’s where you came from. So I’ll send another search party down there.”
“Wait,” I say. “It won’t be that simple. There’s a—” I cut myself off.
“There’s what?” he says.
I can’t tell him about the vide. Until I’m out of this cell, I can’t tell him anything.
He sighs. “I don’t enjoy seeing you in here, Emanuela. I want you out. I do. But things are getting very dire for Occhia. If you can’t control your hysterics for long enough to comprehend my very sensible plan, I’ll do it without you.”
He starts to turn away, but then he pauses.
“You’ll thank me later,” he says.
As if he gets to decide that. As if he gets to decide anything at all about me.
I throw myself at the bars, and when I hit them, the clang is tremendous. My papá flinches and stumbles back.
“I can do this without you,” I say.
His eyes flicker to the chains wrapped around my whole body. “It doesn’t look like it.”
Then he’s gone, slipping away down the stairs. The tower door creaks open and slams shut.
I sink down to the floor of my cell. I don’t understand what just happened. I don’t understand why he’s not proud of me. I don’t understand why he doesn’t want me at his side.
I’ve never seen him flinch the way he flinched when I threw myself at him. He looked… terrified.
Last time, the tower was mostly silent, but that was nothing compared to the quiet now. There’s not even the faintest suggestion of breath or movement from the other prisoners. They must have all wasted away and disappeared. There are no guards thumping up and down the stairs. Outside, the cathedral bells aren’t even ringing.
I feel like I’m the only person in the whole city. All I can do is remind myself that I’m not. I have to be patient.
But when I’m lying here, alone in the dark, I have nothing to do but relive it all again. The watercrea’s needle in my neck. The cold, sick feeling of my blood being sucked out of me. The quiet defeat of the other prisoners—the sound of a hundred people dying without a fight.
I turn over and shut my eyes, desperate to block it out. But I can’t. This place is crawling all over my skin and into my ears. It’s telling me I only managed to escape it for three days. It’s telling me that being able to run from my omen for ten years was just luck, and I can’t run forever.
I know it’s lying. But the longer it talks, the harder it is to fight off.
Hours later, when I hear the tower door creak open, I sit up and press my face to the bars. I don’t care if it’s an angry mob. I just need to talk to someone.
“Hello?” I say. My voice sounds so small in the empty stairwell.
I hear his soft steps and see his long shadow on the floor, and then Ale comes into view. He stops in front of my cell. He doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me.
He’s changed clothes. It’s good to see him in familiar Occhian attire, dark and drab as it is. His missing eye is covered with gauze, bandages wrapped around his head to hold it in place. His hair is matted with dried blood. Apparently, even at the illustrious House of Morandi, he didn’t have enough water to clean himself properly.
I want to ask if the wound hurts. I want to ask if he’s all right. But they seem like such silly questions. The important thing is that I get him the water he needs. Then I’m going to make sure he rests, because he looks like he really needs to lie down.
“Did the guards see you?” I say.
He hesitates. Then he shakes his head. He gingerly touches the bandage around his head, like he’s making sure it’s in place.
“Verene is going to pay for what she did to you,” I say. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“I know,” he mutters.
He looks miserable. It’s not that I expect him to look overjoyed, but we are about to save our city. That’s not something to be miserable about.
But maybe he’s remembering the way the two of us fought in the jail in Iris. We’ve never fought like that before.
“Ale,” I say. “What happened in Iris…”
He turns back to me.
We won’t fight like that again. From now on, he’s going to listen to me. He’s learned, unfortunately, what happens if he doesn’t.
“It’s behind us now,” I say. “Let’s go save Occhia.”
He doesn’t move.
“I can teach you how to pick a lock,” I say impatiently. “It’s not that hard. Just reach in here and get some of the pins from my hair. We’re going to have to be quick, because my papá was acting very strange, and he might be—”
“I thought you were dead.”
Ale barely whispers the words. I stop, certain I’ve misheard.
“What?” I say.
“When the watercrea took you away,” he says. “I thought you were dead. I thought your omens were going to spread in hours. My papá didn’t even say goodbye when he got his, you know. He ran straight to the tower, because he wanted to give up as much blood as he could. He wanted to set an example for everyone else. The next day, the guards brought us back his clothes and his wedding ring. It was… it was just so quick.”
Ale hasn’t said a word about his papá since he died. The elder Signor Morandi was loud and gregarious and very unlike his son, but he doted on Ale, dragging him to meetings and showing him off at parties and telling everyone that one day he was going to be a wonderful head of Parliament. At the time, it made Ale miserable. He endured as little of it as
