“They probably didn’t have to,” Nathan said. “We were attacking the wall and the ground just outside the wall. They already knew roughly where we were.”
Ridley nodded. “Oh, I should have asked as soon as you got here: Is Saoirse with the group you left out in the wastelands?”
Nathan looked up. “No. I thought she might be with you.”
Ridley shook her head. “She was, but we separated before I went up to start burning the panels. She was planning to go into the city to find my dad—to tell him I was okay—and then she was going to join the rest of you outside.”
Nathan’s expression grew troubled. “I haven’t seen her since she left us to go and find you.”
They were all quiet for a moment as the possibility that Saoirse hadn’t made it sunk in.
“And your dad?” Malachi asked quietly.
Ridley shook her head again. “I don’t know where he is. Somewhere within the city, I think, but I can’t sense him. I’m, uh …” She swallowed. “Getting really worried.”
“Planning to rush off on your own again to find him?” Nathan asked, a hard edge to his tone.
Indignation burned immediately through Ridley’s veins. “Planning to forbid me again?”
Silence filled the room for several moments. Malachi looked back and forth between the two of them. Then Nathan responded, his voice gentler now. “You can understand why I said that, can’t you? I knew how important you were—still are—to our cause. I didn’t want to lose you.”
Ridley looked away, the heat of her anger vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. “Yes. I guess so. But I can’t do nothing. Will you help me? Maybe we need to spread out across the city. Just … I don’t know, fly around until one of us gets close enough to sense him?”
“We could try that,” Malachi said.
“Still might not work if he’s being contained within arxium walls,” Nathan said, “but yeah, we can try.”
“Does now work for you?” Ridley asked. She felt she was being remarkably diplomatic when what she really wanted to do was shout, Can we go right now PLEASE?
Nathan stood. “It’s not as though I’ve figured out how we’re going to recruit a bunch more elementals to help us, so yes. Now works. Which part of the city—”
The front door flew open midway through Nathan’s sentence. Shen stopped in the doorway, eyes widening at the sight of two strangers in his home. “They’re friends!” Ridley said hastily. “Elementals.”
“Uh, okay.”
“You weren’t gone very long,” Ridley added. “Is something wrong?”
“Not wrong, exactly.” Shen shut the door and strode toward her, his commscreen in one hand. “I just wanted to make sure you saw this.” He thrust the device in front of her. On the screen, a video had been paused. She tapped to play it, watching the words scrolling on a red banner across the bottom of the screen: ‘Breaking News: Linevale city wall destroyed by magical earthquake and fire originating in wastelands.’
“Holy freaking crap,” Ridley whispered, vaguely aware that Nathan and Malachi were standing behind her, peering over her shoulders. On the screen, shaky footage taken from inside a building right on the edge of a city showed great cracks splitting their way through a wall. The video shook again as the earth shuddered. The wall began to come apart. Flames raced across the giant pieces of the wall as they fell, eating through them. Smoke filled the sky.
“This is Linevale,” Shen said. “It happened this morning. Looks like most of their wall is gone.”
Nathan swore quietly. “Linevale,” Ridley repeated. It was one of the surviving cities on the west coast. She turned to face Nathan. “It’s happening. They’ve done it. They’ve got rid of their arxium.” The urgency that had been coursing through her since she woke up increased in intensity. Her magic felt restless, eager to act.
“We need to try again,” Nathan said, voicing Ridley’s thoughts. “As soon as possible. Before the Shadow Society does something to make it even harder. We need to get everyone back here. Hopefully the fact that another city has succeeded will boost everyone’s confidence.”
“You think?” Malachi said doubtfully. “They were pretty damn terrified by the time we all found each other and started counting the number of people we lost. They won’t easily change their minds. We’ll be lucky if a handful of them decide to come back with us.”
“I can convince them,” Nathan insisted. “Show them that it’s possible. Last time, they didn’t know whether it could be done. And they didn’t know we had Ridley.” He gave Ridley an apologetic look. “I … I should have waited for Saoirse to return with you. I shouldn’t have given up on you. I was … too eager. I’m sorry.”
Ridley’s eyebrows climbed. Was Nathan actually apologizing for something? She wasn’t sure what to say to that, except perhaps apologize for sneaking off to find Archer.
“We have to try,” Nathan said to Malachi before Ridley could formulate any words. “We need as many people as we can get.”
“Yeah, Lumina City is like double the size of Linevale,” Shen pointed out. “And you don’t know how many elementals they had, but it was probably more than three.”
“If we leave now,” Nathan said, “we can probably be back here by morning. By that time, another city’s wall may have fallen. We need to join the revolution. That story we just saw …” He gestured at Shen’s commscreen. “They’re blaming this on the wild magic in the wastelands. But as we free more and more cities, it’ll become obvious that this isn’t a freak storm or a coincidence. Hopefully some small news channel will finally be brave enough to share the video I recorded and sent out.”
“Honestly?” Malachi said. “You should just upload that thing to the social feeds right now and let it go viral.”
Nathan hesitated. “I suppose I could … But I’m not on any of those social things.”
“And you can’t just let something go viral,” Ridley added. “We have no control over that.”
“I’ll post it,” Malachi said with a shrug. “You can share it,” he told Ridley. “Oh, wait, we can ask Callie to share it. She must have a large following from back when she used to make music. That should get things going.”
“It’ll take a hundred years to get a message to Callie out in the middle of nowhere,” Ridley argued, “and then for her to get close enough to a signal to log into her social accounts.” She looked at Nathan. “Sorry, but that recorded video thing was probably never a good idea. We need to just do this, and by the time it’s over and all the arxium’s burned and the wild magic finally calms down and the sun comes out—like really out, the way we haven’t seen it in years—everyone will have their commscreens out, recording what’s going on. And they’ll probably be doing live video, not just recording. So that’s when you stand up in the middle of a busy square somewhere and tell everyone what’s going on. It’ll be everywhere within minutes.”