His hands tightened around the obsidian. Sage. He had used one of the wishes, diminishing the power he’d been building for so many nights. If he collected more—if he tried again—
He eased back into motion, shedding the stillness, the silence, until he was running back out the door.
* * *
Thorn made sure to grab the shovel on his way out. The night was still heavy over Rastre, but dawn was a few hours off, and he didn’t have much time to work.
He couldn’t go back to the funeral parlor. He couldn’t.
Even though a part of him—a traitorous, weak part—wanted to.
Instead, he took his familiar route to the graveyard, shovel slung over one shoulder and determination calcifying his heart.
Belief was stronger than wishes, and he believed that his family’s death would not be in vain.
Trees blotted out the moonlight as he stole through the boundary of the cemetery. It was a verdant block within the city, a walkable path from the park. The citizens of Rastre didn’t shy away from death; they didn’t cart out their dead or burn them. They preferred to visit, to make outings of it. Thorn had watched families gather around tombstones and lay out offerings: flowers, candles, incense, coins, food. They would linger and sit on the grass above their late loved ones, sharing lunch and stories, their laughter like birds taking flight.
Thorn would never have that experience.
Gritting his teeth, he waded through the shrubbery and made it to the central plot. Grave markers stood in neat rows, occasionally interrupted by statues limned in moonlight. A carving of a girl with smooth marble limbs held a hand outstretched as if to tell him, Go back, Thorn.
He trudged into the forest of stone. His eyes swept the ground, looking for the telltale signs of a new grave: disturbed earth, the smell of restless soil and newly shed tears.
Dig it up, take your wish, and get out.
He didn’t hear the rustling grass behind him. He didn’t see the shadow rising up beside his.
A hand smothered his mouth before he could cry out. Another strong hand took hold of his arm and wrenched it up behind his back.
“Got you,” said a voice in his ear, low and male and like the scraping of metal on metal. Thorn’s eyes widened; it was a voice he associated with breaking glass and the crackling of fire, a voice woven with memories of blood and loss.
“They said there was a white-haired boy sneaking about the cemetery,” the mercenary drawled. “I was about to give up, but now here you are at last.”
Thorn couldn’t breathe. His valor turned to terror.
But something else filled him. Not vengeance—what was that, really, but the expulsion of helplessness and anger? He wasn’t helpless, and he wasn’t angry. He was livid with loss, and brimming with power.
He didn’t want more death, he wanted life. He wanted his parents alive.
And this man had taken that away from him.
Thorn swung the hand that still held his shovel and knocked the spade against the man’s head. The mercenary grunted and staggered, loosening his grip enough for Thorn to tear free. Gasping for breath, he turned and finally looked at his parents’ murderer: dressed in black, hair shorn close to his scalp, eyes tight with pain.
Thorn grabbed the obsidian in his pocket. “I wish—”
“What’s going on here?”
Two members of the city guard were stalking over, weaving through the tombstones. Thorn cursed under his breath.
No time to make a wish. He turned to run, to hide, to do again what he’d been doing over and over for two years.
But before he got very far, the mercenary lunged and grabbed him again, and Thorn felt the sharp kiss of a knife at his throat.
How ironic, to die in a cemetery.
Before he could close his eyes against the inevitability that glinted along the blade’s edge, he heard another voice, familiar and clear. It rose above the confused shouting of the city guards. It rose above the fear that he was about to die, and all his family’s secrets with him.
Sage stood at the edge of the graveyard, chest heaving and eyes wide with horror. He called Thorn’s name, and it was its own kind of magic.
“Thorn!” Sage called again.
The mercenary growled. The knife dug into Thorn’s skin.
“I wish everyone knew the truth!” Sage shouted.
The night froze. Thorn’s heart faltered. Everything turned fragile, the city as delicate as a lacework of sugar.
In his pocket, the universe of wishes swirled and lifted. The magic leaked out of the rock, up into the air, dancing and darting higher. And, like a firework, it blew apart and rained down over Rastre, sparks of glittering possibility.
Thorn heard twin gasps behind him from the guards. Even the mercenary’s grip had grown slack. Thorn pushed himself away and ran to Sage, nearly collapsing into his open arms.
They watched as the guards touched their sides. There was wonder and uncertainty in their expressions. The mercenary’s brow was furrowed, the tip of his knife red with Thorn’s blood.
What exactly had been Sage’s wish? There were mechanics to these things—there were rules. I wish everyone knew the truth. The truth Thorn had told him hours ago? The truth about magic?
He had his answer when the guards’ eyes focused on the mercenary and hardened. They hurried forward and pinned him to the damp cemetery grass, wrestling the knife out of his grip. They claimed he was wanted for the murders of Dr. Ash Briar and Dr. Tansy Briar, and that one way or another, he would lead them to his employers.
Their words blended and lost shape in his mind. All he heard was Justice, justice, justice.
But the taste of it was not sweet. He was scraped out, hollow. Defeated.
Because the truth was out, his wishes were gone, and he was falling into the reality he’d refused to believe, even when he’d always known: his parents were never coming back. Not even wishes could raise the dead.
He didn’t realize he was shaking until Sage wrapped him in his arms, and they swayed together. The little tiger padded from Sage’s shoulder onto his. Thorn felt like a flame blown out, charred and tired, and the only thing he cared about was that the boy who held him smelled of lavender and life.
Thorn would have gladly stayed there all night, but there was a cough behind him and he had to draw back from Sage’s embrace. A guard was looking at him strangely, as a dreamer woken abruptly from sleep. It was the wish; it had been sloppily crafted, and she likely had no idea why she was doing what she did. But the guard knew what had happened to him. He could see it in the pity on her face.