wanted her gone and it was going to do whatever it took to expel her.
Arjun squeezed Karam’s hand and the world focused, just a little.
She felt a pulling in her stomach, like there was a string wrapped around her insides and someone was yanking it harshly toward them.
Karam closed her eyes.
The pulling grew more violent. She felt her body convulse and the piercing noises got louder and louder.
Then everything went still.
Karam opened her eyes with hesitance, not quite ready to face the world of unending madness and voices screaming in her ears.
But there was nothing.
When she looked to her hand, still clutched tightly in Arjun’s, it was alight in the gold of his magic, tethering her to him.
“Look,” Arjun said.
He pointed and Karam finally saw.
Wesley stood in the shadows, that familiar half smile on his lips. He seemed taller than Karam remembered and though he was thinner, he still looked very much like Wesley. There was a brand of arrogance and ego to his smile that could never be lost. Tavia was by his side, and in front of them both was Zekia.
Was the Kingpin.
Dante Ashwood was as much a ghost as ever, with his cane clutched in his spindly fingers the only solid part of him. Everything else was shadow and bone.
He placed a hand on Zekia’s shoulder.
“My little warrior,” he said. “Make me proud.”
Zekia nodded.
Karam’s eyes widened.
She had Wesley’s gun.
Zekia raised the weapon in the air, pointing it straight at Tavia.
“I’m sorry I didn’t do this sooner,” she said.
And then she pulled the trigger.
Karam yelled out, but the vision broke and she was already being pulled back into reality, flung so hard into the real world that she hit the sand with a painful thud.
Her head felt like it had been cracked in two as the Shores of the Dead flooded into her vision. Karam tried to make sense of what she had just seen, and what was real and what wasn’t.
It took her longer than it should have.
So long that it was too late by the time Karam realized the cracking sound hadn’t just been the bullet hitting Tavia square in the chest.
Arjun was slumped on the shores in front of her, a bullet in his leg.
Her necklace grew warm again.
Karam turned in a snarl.
And then another shot sounded.
Her body jolted and she felt a burning, unimaginable pain.
Right where her heart was.
Right where she kept Saxony and every promise that she had made.
Karam fell to the sand beside Arjun and let the darkness take her.
14
Wesley
THE FOREST WASN’T HARD to infiltrate.
Wesley was out of practice when it came to being stealthy, but even he had little trouble sneaking past the guard and wandering into the forest like he very much belonged there.
It might have been the Crafter in him, helping him stick to the shadows—or the shadows stick to him—or it might have been because the forest was woefully guarded for a rebellion.
Either way, Wesley was in.
He just wasn’t sure why he’d felt the need to sneak past the guards in the first place. He could have easily introduced himself and explained that he was on their side. Even if they hadn’t believed him and thought every bruise on his body was some kind of infiltration tactic, the worst they could do was bring him to their leader or try to put him in chains.
It wasn’t like he’d never been in chains before.
And it wasn’t like he didn’t have a good in with their leader.
Perhaps the sneaking was just an old habit, like the not trusting people and the need to prove that he could do whatever he put his mind to.
Maybe he needed it, this small and tiny victory, after being lost for so long.
After swimming for his damn life in water so cold it felt like being shot at a hundred times over.
Wesley strolled through the center of the camp.
It was surrounded by streams that reminded him of Creije. Wesley didn’t want to think about it, but it always came to him in the quiet moments.
The home he’d let fall to its knees.
He placed a hand on the trunk of a nearby tree and felt the rough bark beneath his fingers. In an instant, the tree seemed to spring to life, letting out a long exhale, its leaves fluttering in a windswept applause. The forest began to sing, a sweet melody that Wesley was so sure he’d heard before. The branches of each shrub and tree and sapling jerked back and forth in a wave, and