do something. Some people don’t have the ability at all.”
“What do they do?” She jogged a little to catch up to him. The streets were packed with cars, some as old-fashioned as the taxi she had taken with Esther and some that looked like little bubbles with wheels. “Move to haven cities?”
“Oh, so you know about those?”
“Mox—you know, that bartender friend I made?—said he was from one.” She had stayed away from Mox since that conversation, sensing that she had made a critical misstep but not understanding what. It hadn’t occurred to her that she could just ask Kyros what she had done wrong. “He said he had to learn not to destroy things with magic as a kid, so he moved up here.”
Kyros raised his eyebrows. “Oh.”
“I don’t understand,” Sloane said. “He seemed to be expecting me to react in a particular way, and I . . . didn’t. That’s why I haven’t been back.”
“That’s probably a wise decision,” he said. “Children having uncontrollable magic is quite rare. If it were more common, we might not need siphons to channel magic at all. So those few talented children were the ones they summoned when they were looking for the Chosen One of Genetrix. If you didn’t react to that information, it’s an indicator that you aren’t from around here.”
“He wouldn’t suspect the truth, though, right?” she said. She felt an odd pressure against the sides of her head, like she had just dived to the bottom of a swimming pool.
“Unlikely,” Kyros said. “People here know there are other dimensions, but they don’t know that they are accessible.”
Sloane pressed her fingers to her temples. The pressure still hadn’t gone away.
“What is it?” Kyros said, setting a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“I don’t know. I just feel like something is wrong,” Sloane said.
And that was when something behind them exploded.
The onset of the Drain was sudden. A change in pressure, and then, in the space of a blink: the tornado. A wall of opaque debris from street to sky. Only it wasn’t wind, it was something else, whipcords of energy that dragged everything in their path into the center of the funnel. And while people were moving toward that point—the core of the destructive force—they came apart, piece by piece, vivisected by magic. Sometimes too quickly for the body to catch up and die, so a person’s last moments were spent in segments.
The first time Sloane had gotten close to a Drain, she had turned and run away. All of them had. There were no thoughts of bravery when the Drain was coming. There were no thoughts at all; there was only survival. She had considered running away from ARIS, fleeing the country and the Dark One. But the prophecy had tied her to him, and when her own honor failed her, that fact kept her in ARIS’s employ. If she fled the Dark One, he would find her, because she was Chosen.
So, because escape was not possible, Sloane learned not to turn and run.
She ducked under Kyros’s outstretched hand and grabbed Esther’s arm right below the elbow. Esther’s arm twisted as she grasped Sloane in the same place, locking them together. Cyrielle was screaming, her hair askew and her cape blown back, the mandarin-size gold pin now up against her throat.
“Retreat! Three groups!” Matt shouted. “Perun and Cyrielle! Sloane, Esther, and Kyros! Me and Edda! Sloane, you there?”
The question made her chest ache. Sloane nodded. It was a familiar procedure: Never go near a Drain with more people than you had weapons. Don’t rush into a fight—live to fight again. They were tenets she had worked into her muscles, mapped into her brain.
“Eyes open. Meet back at the Camel.”
Matt cast a wild look over his shoulder as the group split into thirds. Sloane couldn’t think of him—couldn’t think of anything except the rush of concrete and steel and flesh and earth ahead of them.
Sloane’s grip on Esther shifted as she took the lead. She bent low, pressing against the power that tried to throw her back. She had learned the way the Drain felt, how it pushed you until it pulled you, how the pressure in her head would release when she had gotten too close, how it smelled like ozone and dust at first, then wet earth and blood. She checked behind her for Kyros, who had his siphon outstretched, fingers spread wide.
Eyes open. The only real thing they had known about the Drains before they encountered one was