“Ale?” I whisper, and I hear how helpless I sound, but I can’t make myself care.
But it’s not Ale, I realize a moment later. It’s a guard. He unlocks the cell and starts to pull me out.
“What—” I say.
“Your people want to see you,” he says.
It sounds a little mocking. I suppose it’s time for my trial by angry mob.
I’m dizzy from blood loss and covered in chains, so the guard has to scoop me up in his arms. I can barely keep my head up, but I look around at the empty cells we pass. I try to find an opportunity to escape. I don’t see one.
We’re already in the foyer of the tower somehow.
I struggle.
“Don’t bother,” the guard says.
No. There has to be something I can do. I can’t face my people like this. I have to look like someone who can save them.
The guard opens the door to the tower. He stops short.
“Signor Ragno,” the guard says, a little wary.
My papá is just outside. He’s straightening the collar of his suit and looking very grim.
“Let me carry her,” he says.
The guard is silent for a moment. “I’m the head guard,” he says finally, like this is a position that means anything anymore.
“I don’t recall you being the head guard,” my papá says.
“Well, I am now,” he says.
“She’s my only daughter,” my papá says. “If your daughter had done something terrible—”
“My daughter would never do something like this,” the guard says.
“—she would still be your daughter, wouldn’t she? Please. Don’t deny me the chance to hold her one last time.”
There’s a brokenness in my papá’s voice that I’ve never heard before. For a moment, I’m terrified. He really thinks I’m about to die helplessly at the hands of a mob. He really thinks he’s about to lose me forever.
Then I see the glint in his brown eyes.
I knew it. I knew my papá would still help me. I knew someone would help me.
“I don’t want to go with him,” I say. “I don’t care about any of you.”
That, apparently, is the persuasion that the guard needs.
“Fine,” he says. “You take her, and I’ll walk behind—”
He shifts me into my papá’s arms like they’re trading a sack of potatoes. My papá isn’t a big man, and he wavers for a second, undoubtedly surprised by how heavy I am with all the chains. He still smells like our family’s house—a scent I didn’t even realize I knew until this moment. I’d never left for long enough to miss it.
He turns to face the long side of the cathedral.
But then he sprints in the other direction, into the city streets.
The guard swears and chases after us. In spite of myself, I laugh. My papá isn’t big, but he’s fast.
“Just get to the catacombs,” I say. “I’ll take care of the guard.”
“He won’t follow us in there,” my papá says. “Most of the other guards are gone because they went in and never came out—”
My papá knows exactly where to go. He’s obviously planned for this. In moments, we’re pushing through a door and stumbling down dusty steps into the darkness of the catacombs. He sets me on the ground and starts to say something.
But then a shadow blocks out the light from the top of the stairs. The guard has followed us. He hesitates for a second. Then he squares his shoulders, touches something in his breast pocket—a superstitious herb blend that he thinks will protect him, no doubt—and descends.
Frantically, I turn onto my side. I press my bloody leg into the floor, hoping I can still get something out of the wound I made in Iris.
Nothing happens. For a second, none of it feels like it was even real—the white city across the veil, the shadow creature roaming around the catacombs, and the girl with the blazing eyes who I almost destroyed. But then, I feel the stone underneath me grow cold.
The guard reaches the bottom step and starts to lunge at my papá. But a second later, the floor opens up beneath the guard, and he’s gone.
For a long moment, my papá just stares at the empty space where the guard used to be. When he turns back to me, his face is white.
“What…” he says. “What did you just do?”
“Do you have something to break me out of these chains?” I say.
My papá doesn’t say anything.
“Oh,” I say. “Maybe the guard has keys. I can bring him back—”
“Emanuela,” my papá says. “Do you know what they were about to do to you? In the cathedral?”
I hesitate. “They… they were going to—”
“They were going to kill you,” he says. “The city is almost dead. They think that sacrificing you—the watercrea’s murderer—is our only chance. We have no other way to save ourselves.” He pauses. “But you have a way.”
“Yes,” I say. “Just help me get out of these chains.”
“There’s no time,” he says. “More people will come looking for us. Just tell me what to do.”
The realization creeps across my skin, slow and cold. I thought he was here because he wanted to save me. But he only wants to save himself.
The vide is lingering by my leg, waiting for more blood. I feed it. I ask it, tentatively, if it has a way to break my chains. I’m not sure what it’s capable of, but I have to try.
I feel something cold on my thigh. I look down.
There’s a faint, shadowy hand extending out of the darkness. It’s creeping across my skirt.
It takes everything I have to hold still. I watch the thin fingers slide up, reaching for my bindings.
The chains get very cold. And then they shatter.
My papá startles back.
I leap to my feet and shake myself free. I have no idea what just happened, and the vide just looks like a formless shadow again. But it’s a formless shadow that’s hovering very attentively by my feet.
I think it wants payment. It
