“Clearly not impossible, since I heard from someone else,” Jude Madson answered.
“Forgive me for waiting until I had all the information we required before acting. You convinced the rest of the society to attack all those communities, and where did that get us? Nowhere. Clearly someone warned them what was coming, and most of them got away. You should have let me go too. Now you have no one on the inside.”
“Because I believed you had betrayed us. I still think you’ve turned. You were certainly convincing,” the mayor sneered, “when you broke into our base, attacked your fellow society members, and freed those elementals.”
“Of course I was convincing. That was the point. And I’m ready to be convincing again if I have to be.”
The mayor shook his head. “I don’t buy it. Lawrence gathered plenty of evidence of your betrayal before he was murdered. That evidence was mysteriously destroyed soon afterwards, but my wife will happily sit here and tell you all about it. Lawrence told her—”
“The evidence that all points to the fact that I was doing what I was asked to do?” Archer demanded, leaning forward as he raised his voice. “We want to wipe them out, don’t we? All of them—and their disgusting, unnatural magic. If a few of us end up as casualties along the way, so be it.”
Ridley physically recoiled from his words, almost banging her head on the ventilation duct surface just above her. Archer was so callous, so cold. So full of hate. How had he hidden this from her? How had she been so blind?
Something seemed to tighten around her throat, making it harder to breathe. She felt smothered, suffocated. The gas mask was too uncomfortable. The backpack was too heavy. The metal tunnel she hunched inside was too small.
She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t stay and listen. Couldn’t be still. Couldn’t be silent. She had to move, had to get out, had to get OUT! She managed to focus enough to become air once more, and then, in a desperate rush, she was gone.
9
Ridley soared to the very top of Aura Tower. The moment she was human shaped again, she tugged the mask free and screamed into the buffeting wind. How could she have been so, so, so stupid? How could she have fallen for Archer Davenport and all his lies? She should have listened to her head and not her ridiculous heart.
She thought of their first kiss beneath a stormy sky in the wastelands. Of Archer saying that her magic was beautiful. Of the way he’d held her gaze when she asked him to confirm he wasn’t part of the Shadow Society. That is the absolute truth, he’d said.
She screamed into the wind again.
Then she became air once more, let herself fragment, and whirled, directionless, amid the shimmering skyscrapers of Lumina City’s Opal Quarter. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Archer was hidden within an arxium cloud in a secret room below ground, but eventually, he would come out. Magic would find him and magic would tell her.
An indeterminate amount of time later, as a fine mist of rain began to fall, that’s exactly what happened.
Ridley was near enough that she sensed Archer’s presence somewhere in the lower part of Aura Tower. She sped back, rushed through the open doors, and spotted him waiting in front of the private elevator reserved for the penthouse level. His father stood beside him, speaking into a commscreen, but Ridley didn’t care. She soared past security, wrapped her air form swiftly and tightly around Archer, and whisked him away. Whether or not Alastair Davenport noticed his son’s sudden disappearance—whether anyone in the Aura Tower foyer noticed—didn’t concern Ridley. She was beyond caring what anyone else knew or saw.
Archer fought back instantly, struggling and cursing. Ridley tightened her magical grasp on him and let him continue, the city lights becoming a blur around them as she spun around and around. She slowed near the top of a building where a lush rooftop garden was illuminated by low, hidden lighting and the nighttime glow of the city. The Boards24 Building, from which Lumina City’s vast network of billboard screens was controlled. Probably run by a Shadow Society member, Ridley thought bitterly. Someone who could make sure all the lies about the wild wasteland magic were continually spread to everyone.
She dropped Archer in the middle of the garden, letting go a moment sooner than necessary so that he staggered forward as he landed and took a few clumsy steps before catching his balance. She lowered herself a few paces away and released her magic.
Archer started, then blinked. “Ridley.” He let out a long breath and moved toward her. “You—you’re okay. Thank goodness. When did you—”
“I always knew you could put on a great act,” she said, stepping quickly out of his reach, “but I had no idea you were this good.”
His brow furrowed. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong?” He reached for her again, but she snatched her arm away. A wisp of magic detached itself from her hand, and with barely a thought, it snapped tight and lashed out, striking him across the face.
“Don’t touch me.”
Eyes wide and one hand pressed over his cheek, Archer said, “Ridley, what the—”
“How could you lie to me like this?” she shouted, hating the way her voice cracked before she finished speaking. Tears burned behind her eyes. This wasn’t the way this conversation was supposed to go. She was supposed to show no emotion. Hide how deeply he’d hurt her. Never let him see the kind of power she’d allowed him to have over her.
“What are you—”
“You’re one of them!” she spat. “I saw you, sitting there with your father. The director. All this time, Archer—all. this. time—you’ve been going on about protecting elementals when you’re actually one of the people who hunts us down and kills us.”
Archer was silent, barely moving except for the rising and falling of his chest. Then a whispered curse fell from his lips.
Ridley let her eyes slide shut for a moment as the terrible truth caved in on her all over again. It wasn’t as though he could deny it, but the fact that he didn’t even try somehow made this worse. “Yeah,” she answered. Her face was wet now, not with tears but from the fine droplets of rain in the air.
“It was you,” Archer said quietly, lowering his hand, and Ridley was perversely pleased to see the angry welt on his cheek. “In our apartment earlier. Lilah sent an alert, but she didn’t say who—”
“Did she tell you I was worried about you? That I came to her for help? That I thought you’d been taken?”
“Ridley—”
“Actually, you know what? I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to have this conversation after all.” She turned and started walking away. “I don’t want to hear anything from you ever again.”
“Wait, stop. Ridley. Stop, stop, stop.” When she didn’t listen, Archer shouted, “Stop! Please! I’m not one of them anymore! I was, but not now. I’ve been pretending for months. Please just listen to me!”
Ridley paused but didn’t look back. She focused on the giant red blossom crowning the top of a leafy plant that reached almost to her shoulders. If not for the whine of a siren and the nearby buzz of a scanner drone, it was possible to imagine she wasn’t in the center of a city.