“I understand.” She hands me the open bottle and I take a sip of it, savoring the flavor. We walk along, looking at boats. “Are you going to miss this?” she asks.
“No,” I say immediately, but I don’t know if that’s true. “I won’t miss being scared all the time.”
“Will we ever not be scared all the time?” she asks.
“I hope so.”
“I’m glad that I’ll have you.” She links her arm with mine.
“Me too.”
“Do you think you can shadow us?” I ask.
“No problem,” she says.
She closes her eyes and concentrates. “We’re invisible to others now.” She winks at me.
“Fantastic. Come with me. I want to show you something.”
I lead her around the outside of the house to the gigantic doors where I first entered the estate. “This is Kingdom. Have you been in here yet?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “We were brought in through an interior courtyard.”
I show her inside. It’s just as I remember it, a creepy art gallery of portals. I take her over to the one of Naren Falls. We watch the falling water hit the pool of blue water, sending up spray everywhere. The dead body of the soldier isn’t visible anymore. Maybe some big beast dragged it off and made a meal of it. I don’t know, but I’m glad I don’t have to see his corpse.
“You can feel the mist on your face when you’re not in your secret bubble,” I say. “It’s a portal.”
“Cease speaking!” she says in disbelief. “Who made this?”
“Kyon.”
Her eyes get wider as she says again, “Cease speaking!”
“It’s true,” I reply. “Watch this.” I wind back my hand and throw the round, gold bottle stopper at the portal. It lands on the lawn and it half-rolls, half-hops on the turf, because the sphere is now caved in. “It’s sort of brutal on anything that passes through it though.” I take a sip of the Winslet, then pass it to her.
She takes a long draught before staring straight ahead at the falls. “That’s in the annexed area, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It. Is.” I feel her nudge me with the bottle. I claim it for another drink.
“How dangerous is the portal?” she asks. I glance at her. She looks at me, and then at the Winslet bottle.
I wind my arm back and throw the open bottle into the portal. After the emerald-colored glass crosses the frame, it implodes, shattering and spewing sparkling wine all over the lawn in front of Naren Falls. Birds on the branches of the trees inside the frame take flight.
“Well, that’s not good,” she admits.
“No. It. Isn’t.”
“I liked that wine.”
“It was good, right?” I say.
“Mmm.”
“So we’ll have to find another way there, unless you can think of a way we can get through this without imploding.”
“I’ll work on it.”
“I’ll look for another mode of transport. How are our flipcarts coming?”
“I asked Fulton for a couple. I told him that I wanted to teach you how to ride one, because you expressed an interest in learning.”
“Really? What did he say?”
“He said the flipcarts will be here sometime after zenith.”
“I like Fulton.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “He has a beautiful aura.”
“It’s nearly after zenith now. Should we go get our ride on?”
“I don’t know what that means,” she says.
“Let’s go see if the flipcarts are here and stash the other bottle of Winslet.”
“Let’s,” she agrees.
CHAPTER 17
PART OF THE PARADE
Leaving Phlix behind in her tower room in Victory, I return to my room in Mercy. I wander onto the balcony. Resting my chin against the railing, I look out at the river. The surface is without waves; the boats glide over the water without disturbing it, as if it’s solid and not liquid. My flesh tingles with an eerie feeling. The river has its eyes on me, watching. The still surface feels unnatural. There’s something in the river’s depth that wasn’t there before. My skin grows cold, and I have the overwhelming urge to shed my bones—to project into the future.
Stumbling into my bedroom, my timing is off and I don’t make it to my bed. My cheek hits the soft carpet and it rattles my head. Something attempts to keep me here even as I slip away. I blink and see the outline of Nezra, who crouches down on the carpet by me to smile as my vision fades. The curl of wintry breath passes through my parted lips.
I leave my body, but Nezra’s heavy gravity holds me just above it. She fights me, trying not to let me go. “Kricket,” she says in a singsong voice, “I can’t wait to see you burn for what you’ve stolen from me!”
I bury her in the night as the stars rip me away and I drift in time. I follow the events as they happen in the future. Strikers arrive to take me to Freming House, the gilded cage where they keep their priestesses hostage. It’s not all they do there. It’s a lab, as well—a testing ground for more new genetic mutations. It’s a house of horrors. The things they’ll do to me border on the depraved. I can’t stay and watch it very long—it’s too brutal, and I’ll get the chance to experience it firsthand soon enough.
I turn in time and shift to another destination, one that I’ve promised to go to with a plan for Excelsior’s death. I have that plan now; it’s just unfortunate that I won’t survive to see it come to fruition. At least I get to die knowing he’ll follow me soon.
Touching down outside the crumbling governor’s mansion in New Amster, I find Giffen and Pan speaking together in low voices by the giant sentinel statues that preside over the manor. Giffen feels my presence immediately when I near him. He looks in my direction. He pushes his energy toward me, and I become a golden silhouette of billowing stardust and light walking out of the night. I keep my attention on Giffen, ignoring the man who was only my father for a brief time. There’s nothing really to say to him, anyway. He walked away.
“You’d better have a plan, like we discussed, Kricket, or bad things are going to happen to—”
“I do,” I interrupt. “We’re creating a Trojan horse for Excelsior. It’s something that he won’t be able to resist. He’ll be dead in two days.”
“What is this Trojan horse?” Giffen asks.
“I’d rather not say. It’ll ruin the surprise, and I don’t really think I can trust you to keep a secret.”
“If he’s not dead by then, we’ll turn your Rafe friends’ families over to the Alameeda.”
“Is that what you told Trey?”
“He didn’t tell you?” Pan asks beside me.
“No. He never told me about your threat. He just asked me to do it for him—for his family.”
“And you agreed?” Pan asks, like what I’ve said doesn’t compute.
I ignore him. He gets nothing more from me. Instead, I say to Giffen, “Will you tell Trey something for me?”
“Depends on what it is.” Giffen replies honestly.