There are too many of them.
I can hear the Devourer cackle. It sounds like it’s coming from all directions. I concentrate on singling it out, then take the open path to my right when a light blinds me. I don’t have time to scream. His hand clamps down over my mouth. Nova pulls me into a pitch-black corner.
“Sh,” he whispers in my ear. He’s holding me around my waist. The hands of a stranger. They seem empty without the black marks covering his skin. The Devourer is on the other side of the wall. She’s speaking to herself nonsensically. Every now and then, she stops and laughs, then screams and cries out for blood. She curses at the moon and the sun and tells them to hurry up.
“Withdrawal,” Nova whispers.
“No, I had withdrawal,” I whisper back. “That’s something else.”
“She gets this way toward the end, when she hasn’t fed since the last eclipse.”
We’re boxed in my black, trimmed hedges. I remind myself of Nova’s betrayal. I remind myself I can’t trust him. I throw my elbow back and dig it as hard as I can into his gut. Slam my boot against his foot. He grunts and falls, and I lift my hands into the air to—kill him? Can I?
“Take me to the tree,” I tell him.
“Wait, Alex, please.”
“Don’t say my name.”
“Fine,” he snaps. He gets back on his feet. “Encantrix, let me explain.”
I call my borrowed power to the surface. I’m not going to kill him. I’m going to make him hurt the way he hurt me.
He meets my power with his own. I fall back on my ass. “Alex, don’t.”
“Don’t say my name.”
He makes a frustrated gesture at the air. “We don’t have a lot of time. I’m trying to help you.”
“Then get me to the Tree of Souls.”
“I’m trying. You just—you have to know. I was just doing my job. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“You didn’t have to try.” I take a step away from him. “You just did. You made me think you were on my side. You made me think I could trust you.”
“It wasn’t supposed to go down this way. There’s more I wanted to tell you. I just couldn’t do it in front of Rishi.”
“Why?”
He’s quiet. I can see the indecision in his face. He takes several steps away from me, hugging his body. He looks up to where the moon is touching the outline of the sun. When he turns around, he moves so quickly, I don’t have a chance to react—my hands are still raised in the air, and he stops inches from me. I can feel the hum of his heartbeat. Like the time I stole his life force, like the time he carried me in the mountain pass.
“The job was to gather power for the Devourer. I scouted you for weeks.”
I shut my eyes. I see him walking in front of the car that day. I see him crossing the street while looking back at me.
“It wasn’t hard to find you. There aren’t many of us left, you know? Everyone knows someone, but none of them had your potential. A score that big, I could get the Devourer to keep up her end of our bargain. To set me free. All I had to do was swap out your Deathday ingredients with mine, and your power would get sent here. It was easy to do when I dropped off my delivery. I didn’t expect your whole family to get in the way to protect you. I didn’t know what would happen, Alex. The Devourer still wanted you. Without you, none of this would work.”
“You created the portal. You made me think I banished them.” I shut my eyes for a moment, and tears run down my face. He starts to touch my hand. “Don’t.”
“There’s more.”
I turn to run through the hedge, but something grips me from behind. White-hot pain sears my skin. Magic floods my veins, and then we’re on the ground together. Pure magic flares through me so quickly that my head spins. His memories flood into my mind. I see my face the way he sees me, hear his heart slamming against his ears like fists against the wall.
There’s Nova as a kid, beating his knuckles bloody on a wall of exposed brick. His tortured back cut up in cruel, bloody gashes.
There’s a little boy hiding in a closet while guns go off in the next room.
There’s a police officer throwing him into a bus like a criminal.
There’s home after home. Monstrous hands that come out of the shadows. His heart beating and beating until it creates a spark. The magic finds him and burns a woman’s face.
There’s Nova, older, bolder.
There’s a boy who never got the chance to be a child. He roams the streets all night and sleeps in the nooks and crannies of the subway, the park, the construction site of a million-dollar high-rise. He’s so hungry he steals and steals until he’s just another shadow in the city.
The black marks start to spread every time he uses his magic. At first, he measures the progress, but soon enough he stops caring. He calls them tattoos.
People look at him a certain way. Fear. Awe. It’s the same thing, I guess. He’s older still, pulling his hood over his face so people won’t ask him what he is. Brown skin and light eyes, like the world’s biggest mystery.
He finds friends on the streets. Lost boys and girls surviving by any means necessary. There’s an accident. A girl screaming. A man with a gun. Nova uses his magic to scare away an attack. The girl runs in fear, not of the attacker but of him. There are blue and red and white lights, and accusations.
There’s juvenile detention. There are men there with magic too. They smell like steel and blood and fire. They whisper of a creature who can help. They call her the Devourer. She appears like a succubus in his dreams, all red lips and promises.
There’s hope. For the first time in so long, there’s hope.
He’s a pied piper of souls. He leads power to the woman with the mask of death. He hears their screams as she consumes. He wants to break away, but he’s bound to her. He longs for her promise to make him strong. He searches for more. He’s walking to a job. He almost gets hit by a car. There’s a girl. He sees her fear. Her power. He knows her from around the way. He loves her anger and her fight. He loves the way she holds her fears close to her heart. The Devourer sees her too. That’s the girl. Watch her. Wait. She’s the One.
He leads her down the dark. He holds her. She saves him. He saves her. He wants her. He loves her. But the human girl loves her too.
He betrays them. He doesn’t want to die.
The sound of rushing blood roars in my ears. Our connection breaks.
I sit up, shaking in his arms.
“There’s nothing I can do to make things right with you,” he tells me. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.”