City of Spells (Into the Crooked Place #2) - Alexandra Christo Page 0,54

child’s betrayal,

every success is doomed to fail.

It repeated over and over until Zekia started mumbling the words to herself, humming the tune like she had known it her whole life. It played for so long that when it finally stopped, abruptly and without warning, Zekia kept singing, thinking that it might start up again.

But it didn’t.

And Wesley still stood there, pointing his gun, like he was frozen in time. A clock chimed somewhere and only then did Wesley blink, as though it had sprung him back to life.

Dante Ashwood, made of magic and the kind of dreams you remembered vividly one moment and forgot the next, smiled.

“My boy,” he said.

“Not anymore,” Wesley said.

He fired the shot and Ashwood exploded into a flurry of shadows that flew away like bats. They screeched and screeched as they fled toward the shadow moon.

And the sun burst through.

The darkness faded and the light broke and all around Wesley, silver soaked the streets.

Magic dust. Staves inked on the stone under people’s feet. Painted on buildings and thrown between jugglers like balls, while a crowd clapped and laughed and sang.

A world of magic.

A world of peace.

Zekia let out a breath like it was her first as the vision faded and she was plunged back into the real world.

She gasped in the air and clutched at her throat, the blood from her nose dripping down to her chin.

She wiped it away with shaking hands.

Her demon nudged at her legs, but Zekia could not move to calm the beast, nor reach into its mind to tell it to just go away.

It didn’t make sense.

Wesley—her Wesley—destroying the man who was meant to make the world better, and creating something even more glorious in its place.

Zekia pressed a hand to her head to try to stamp out the future, but it still sang in her mind like a song she’d never forget the tune to. Like the ghostly vision that Ashwood had shown her, only for some reason Zekia felt this one in her heart and in her spirit.

It soothed her, and that was the most confusing part of all.

When Dante Ashwood walked through the door to her room, Zekia pulled herself to her feet and quickly brushed off her dress. It had dust marks from the floor and it wasn’t quite white anymore and she didn’t want him to be angry about that.

“What is it, my little warrior?” he asked.

He crossed the room and reached out a hand to her bloody face.

“Was it a vision?” he asked. “What did you see?”

Zekia pushed the possibility of a new future out of her mind, where he couldn’t find it.

“I didn’t see anything new,” she said. “More of that scary world we have to stop.” She looked up at him. “We will stop it, won’t we?”

Dante Ashwood nodded and kept his hand on her face, stroking her cheek like she was his favorite thing.

“Of course we will,” he said. “Together, we will change everything. But first, we must talk about your family.”

Zekia stared at the dirt on the edges of her dress.

The walls of her mind were closing in again and if she didn’t concentrate hard enough, then she knew she’d forget what she had just seen. She knew she’d forget everything that mattered.

Zekia was so tired of forgetting.

She was tired of her mind being such a lonely place.

She smiled up at Dante Ashwood and, in the perilous corners of her mind—where she kept the memories of Saxony and Amja and her father, where she kept the hearts of her Kin and the fragile pieces of her childhood she couldn’t quite let go—Zekia called out to Wesley.

Please, she said. Please don’t leave me here again.

17

Karam

KARAM FELL ONTO THE SAND.

It only hurt for a moment—less than a moment—and it was not the kind of pain that mattered. It was like banging her knee on a table, or stepping on something sharp.

Quick, dull, and then gone.

When the bullet went through her chest, Karam didn’t feel much at all. Just the sand, wet on her face.

Still, her only thought was this: I’m going to die. I think I’m really going to die. And she had the idea that she should say something, her final words, but she couldn’t think of anything to say and when she tried to move her jaw to speak, all that came was breath.

“If magic won’t kill you, then maybe this will,” the Crafter said, stepping closer to her.

Karam tried to move to kick his legs out from under him, or