Kim’s wide eyes were like golden pools, reflecting every bit of light.
He must have certainly thought of Binding his cousin, but he’d also never been stupid enough to try. Now it was hard to tell who he feared more.
Angela stood and brushed the bat feces off her skirt, her tights, her arm gloves. She was a real mess now, her shirt torn and bloody and her hair tangled all over again by the wind. She kicked some of Troy’s bones away, pointing at the Jinn. “And now, you’re going to take me to Tileaf,” she said, still gasping for breath, “and you’re going to make sure that Fae doesn’t strike me dead.”
Troy’s wings snapped shut, echoing her anger. Surprisingly, a terrible smile crept across her face.
She reached beneath the rags covering her chest.
What is she doing? She can’t hurt me with weapons now.
That was the Law, both according to Kim’s book and Angela’s own instincts.
Yet Troy was acting like whatever she was about to reveal would hurt Angela even more than death. “Looks like you’re going to release me sooner than you expected,” Troy said, her words escaping her like evil steam.
Then it appeared, swinging at the end of the crude chain around her neck.
It was a gemstone more like a living eye than a crystal, its surface all emerald green iris and a pupil so dark it seemed fathomless. Kim was shouting something, but his voice grew fainter and fainter, while Angela’s mind sank deeper and deeper, falling into this cold Eye that watched her and the universe with an unnameable intelligence. All her wishes, dreams, and hopes seemed to swirl inside of it, and they flashed back at her, teasing and threatening to drive her mad under the power that they held. Had her soul ever felt so dark? Had anything ever held meaning other than this? Her brain felt like mush, and she was going mad for a single unbearable second, every element of existence suffocating her in a boundless ring.
She was as astonished as everyone else when she strode up to Troy and ripped the Eye from her hand.
It glazed over, returning to a blind rock.
Troy went rigid as a cadaver. She slowly turned to Kim, but his face was almost the same shade of white.
Angela slipped the chain around her neck. She and Troy were eye to eye once again. “It looks like this is mine.”
No one said a word the entire journey to Memorial Park.
Nina—or Mikel—shuffled quietly behind everyone, gazing at the bridges and the rickety buildings, tiptoeing through puddles like she’d never encountered water before, taking the strangest pleasure in a rumble of thunder or the drone of the rain. Deeper and deeper, they descended into the lowest levels of Luz, tapping down slick stairways and taking side routes through stone tunnels only Kim seemed to know, the rats and roaches skittering away from their shoes and his light. Tileaf’s tree was the centerpiece of the Academy, yet it couldn’t be more hidden from the public, stuffed away in a crumbling, gated courtyard on the western outskirts of the school. When Kim stopped to open that gate—an enormous fence of iron with a tree engraved on the center lock—Angela was greeted with a grove even more dismal than the overgrown flower beds behind her parents’ mansion. Weeds and bushes tangled in and out of each other, their branches scraggly with neglect, scratching against the high stone of the walls. Poison ivy crawled up trunks of ancient maple and oak. The wind barely had a chance to filter down or toss foliage onto the moldy earth, and trees stood in clumps of unbearable, stuffy darkness, their leaves either bloody or black in the terrible light. Straight ahead, a tunnel made of embracing tree branches bored to the center of the grotto.
The path to Tileaf’s oak was more inhospitable and gray than gravel; nothing but dirt, puddles, chunks of old cobblestones, and the fog curling beneath a steady haze of rain. Kim started down the pathway with a sigh, pushing Angela back when she tried to step ahead of him.
Without warning, Troy peered from a spot in the trees, glowering at her.
Shortly after, the Jinn scampered away into the darkness, twigs popping beneath the weight of her feet and hands.
Kim’s next sigh was heavier than ever. “You should never have Bound her to you.”
Jealous. He might actually be jealous.
“What is this thing?” Angela plucked at the Eye lying against her chest. The chain felt like a rope of ice around her neck. “She thought it would kill me, or make me crazy.”
“You’re already crazy,” Kim said softly, “just like you warned.”
Or maybe he feels guilty about giving me up for dead. I know I certainly would.
“Does it have something to do with the Archon?”
“We never said you’re the Archon, Angela.”