“You … you were the one?” Luc’s heart was pounding against his rib cage. Was Rhys the Radical Corinthe had told him about? Luc hadn’t understood what she’d meant by a Radical—it sounded like the universe’s version of an anarchist. Now he realized that maybe his assessment hadn’t been so far off.
Rhys swiped his sleeve across his mouth. “Time … space … they flow like water. Only love is eternal. Remember that.” Rhys tried to return the locket to his pocket, but it popped open as he fumbled with it. Luc stiffened; he recognized the tune that suddenly floated on the air. It was the same tune that Corinthe’s locket played. The lockets were almost identical.
Only there was no ballerina inside.
It was an archer. His bow was pulled back, strung with an arrow that pointed up toward the heavens. It spun slowly to a halt, and Rhys looked up at a point in the sky.
“Where does the compass point?” Luc asked.
“To the thing I want most. A dead star.” Rhys stumbled forward, determined, as if he might walk up an invisible staircase to that phantom star in the sky. But he tripped over his own feet and pitched forward, straight into Luc.
“Easy,” Luc said, slipping a shoulder under Rhys’s arm. Without thinking, his free hand unclasped the chain on Rhys’s waist and the compass swung free. He slipped it into his own pocket in one fluid motion. “Let’s take you back inside.”
Luc supported Rhys back inside. Rhys was moving clumsily, tottering from side to side, singing along with the music and trying to get Luc to dance. Luc finally managed to wrestle him into an oversized chair just outside the ring of dancers. As he started to leave, Rhys reached out and grabbed Luc’s arm. The candlelight lit up the bloodshot whites of Rhys’s eyes.
“People leave us all the time, but it don’t mean they didn’t love us,” he said. “You gotta hold on to that no matter what.”
In the middle of the celebration, Luc thought about his mother, as she used to be, for the first time in years.
“Forgive,” Rhys whispered, even as his eyes were fluttering closed and his head nodding to his chest.
And Luc knew that maybe, someday, he could.
19
The sky was lit an unnatural, smoky color. Gray wisps drifted across the open space over Corinthe’s head. She wiped a thick coating of dust from her face with the hem of her shirt.
Miranda was gone. If Corinthe stayed here, underground, she would die with her.
Sirens still screamed all around her, mixing with frantic shouts. As she lay there, staring up at the sky through the broken-apart ceiling, a soft crying sound filtered through to her over the din of sirens and yelling—almost like the noise of a tiny kitten. She tried to ignore it, but it tugged at her insides, compelled her to her feet. She remembered that once, years ago, she had found a stray cat and wanted to keep it; Miranda had forbid her to do so, telling her that pets, obligations, affections, were too human and thus unbecoming of a Fallen Fate. Corinthe hadn’t been able to explain that animals connected her to her old world, to a place where energy flowed between beings, where she had felt safe and necessary.
Corinthe hadn’t thought of that stray kitten, and Miranda’s response, in years. She felt a pulse of sadness. She wondered whether the kitten had lived.
Carefully, she listened again for the sound of crying, cocked her head to isolate the noise. It was coming from the lagoon. Something inside her chest tugged, pulling her toward the sound. She clawed her way out of the rubble. At the edge of the water, half hidden under an uprooted eucalyptus tree, was a very young girl, maybe four or five. Tears had made tracks down her dirty face, and though she had her thumb jammed into her mouth, she continued to cry. When she saw Corinthe, she dropped her hand and lifted both arms to be picked up.
Corinthe didn’t hesitate. She reached out and gently scooped up the girl, who wrapped her arms around Corinthe’s neck. She was surprisingly heavy and smelled like something familiar, from Humana. Strawberries.
Suddenly, Corinthe had a wave of memories: summertime farmer’s markets, passing stalls filled with fruit the color of rubies …
Soap and clean sheets …
The smell of Luc’s shirt …
Corinthe forced the images out of her head. “Where’s your mommy?” she asked.
The girl shook her head, pointing a stubby finger back toward the fallen rotunda. Corinthe looked over her shoulder at the pile of broken columns against the backdrop of a burning city. How could anyone survive that destruction?
She couldn’t leave the girl alone. Corinthe remembered when she’d been exiled, how scared and alone she had felt before Miranda found her. She knew it shouldn’t matter what happened to one random little girl—she knew it wasn’t her business—but it did matter. At the moment, it mattered more than anything else.
“Let’s go find her,” Corinthe said.
They turned away from the water, and gradually, the girl’s sobs turned to sniffles. The girl’s weight was almost too much for Corinthe—she was so weak—but she refused to put her down. As they started across the lawn, which was torn apart now, gaping with fresh wounds in the earth, she felt a tickle against her cheek. The girl was brushing her fingers through Corinthe’s tangled hair.
“Pretty,” she said softly.
Corinthe managed to smile. “Thank you,” she said. She felt a prickling behind her eyes and blinked rapidly.
Now what? In the distance, the road looked mostly empty of people—overturned, abandoned cars emitted smoke in the street, but most of the damage, and most of the medical help, would be in more populous places.
Which way should she go?
Another aftershock rumbled through the ground. Corinthe ducked, shielding the girl with her body. Bits of floating debris stung her back and arms.
When the noise subsided, Corinthe pushed back to her feet and hefted the girl, now wailing again, to her chest. Then she heard a woman shouting behind her.
Corinthe turned around.
The girl lifted her head and began to cry. The woman ran toward them, arms outstretched, stumbling over the uneven ground. When she reached Corinthe’s side, the girl launched herself out of Corinthe’s arms and into her mother’s.
The woman wept, clinging to her daughter, murmuring, “It’s okay. Mommy’s here. It’s okay.” Then she looked at Corinthe. “God bless you,” she sobbed, and she threw one arm around Corinthe, drawing her in.
Corinthe froze.
She felt the woman’s gratitude. No one had ever hugged her like that before.
“Thank you,” the woman said as she pulled away. She reached up and tugged on something around her neck, then pressed it into Corinthe’s hand. “Thank you.”
The woman made her way toward the street, the child still clinging to her, sobbing into her shoulder. Corinthe looked down at the object the woman had given her. A St. Jude pendant rested in her bloodied palm.
The patron saint of lost causes.
She held it up by its silver chain, watched it twirl like the tiny ballerina in her music box. An ache started deep inside her and took away her breath. The pendant started to tremble.
All she’d ever wanted was to return home to Pyralis. That had been the reason for everything: the single driving force behind all of her actions. Every time a horn blared, tires screeched, or music blasted from a car stereo, she had longed for the serenity, the quiet, of the twilight world.