sure where you’ll end up.”
Any place is better than this one, but I vehemently shake my head. “I told you I’m not leaving without you, and I meant it. You either, Elena.” Hurried, a bit clumsy now, I wind the wire from my bracelet around the metal lock and begin sawing. Sparks fly.
“We’ll be let out soon enough.” He traces a fingertip over my knuckles. “We always are. You need to go.”
“I’m making progress at last.”
“Not fast enough.”
He’s tearing me up inside. “Killian, I can’t—”
“You can. You will.”
“Unless you’re captured today, so you don’t have time for this,” Elena interjects. “Just do what he says.”
Even as I shudder, the last of the song plays through my head. Two I must save, I’ll be brave, brave, brave. The one I adore, I’ll come back for.
Lina foresaw even this. She knew the difficult situation I would face.
There isn’t another way, is there? “Okay. All right,” I say, the words yanked out of me. “I’ll go. I hate this, but I’ll go.” I unwind the wire as tears stream down my cheeks. “I don’t believe in fate, but I think I believe in destiny.” The path set before me, if only I make the right decisions. “I’m coming back for you.”
He looks at me as if he wants to grip the back of my neck and kiss me. “The Generals now agree with Pearl. You’re better off dead than signed with Troika. But if you sign with Myriad, Ten, you’ll be one of us. You’ll be protected. And you and I...we can be together.”
I want that. I want to be with him. He isn’t a boy, he’s a warrior. He isn’t someone I can push around, and I’m glad for that. When he looks at me, he sees who I am and he isn’t scared. Because we’re a match. We burn together—and he only wants me to burn hotter.
He’ll walk through hell for me. I have no doubts about that. And I’ll walk through hell for him. But I’m not signing with Myriad. This? These cages? They seal the deal.
I have to find another way to be with him.
“I’m coming back for you,” I repeat. As I climb away from him, I’m sobbing, but I do what needs doing. I keep going, my determination giving me enough strength to heft Kayla up whenever she slips.
Finally we reach the top, and Reed, who is waiting for us, hauls us onto a stone walkway. Stone above, beside and below us. Every stone carved into the shape of a human skull. Empty eye sockets seem to follow me as I stumble forward, taking the lead. Left, left. Right. My knees shake. In this hallway, skeletons hang from the ceiling, each draped in a violet robe.
Troikan robes?
When we take the next left, strange symbols glowing on the walls, an alarm screeches to life.
Zero! We’ve been found out.
It isn’t long before a stampede of footsteps sounds behind us. I glance over my shoulder as guards hustle around the corner. Six of them.
“Go, go,” I tell my charges. “I’ll divert our tail.”
Kayla reaches for me. “No! We do this together.”
“Reed,” I say, and he understands.
He jerks her to his side, forcing her to keep pace with him. They make the next right, disappearing from my view.
I stop and spin, facing the guards as they barrel toward me. I’ll fight to Second-death if necessary, but these men aren’t getting past me.
A second later, the guards reach me and—
chapter twenty-six
“Today you live, tomorrow you die. Make what you do in the meantime matter.”
—Troika
I jerk upright, my eyelids flipping open. Archer is standing beside me, holding my hand.
Relief bathes his features as he clutches my hand to his chest. “You’re alive. You’re going to be okay.”
“Where am I?” My voice is a foggy rasp. I’m panting, my skin clammy. I’m also dizzy and weak. “Where’s Kayla? Reed?”
He forces me to recline on a mound of pillows. “Let’s start with you. You’re in a Troikan safe house.”
Another safe house...in a bedroom that’s been turned into a makeshift trauma ward. Different machines circle us, some of them beeping in tune to my heart. Monitors are anchored to the walls, flashing numbers and symbols I’ve never seen.
“Kayla and Reed are in Troika, thanks to you,” Archer says with a bright smile. “You saved them.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Killian. Killian saved them. But...how did you find them?”
“They passed through a veil in Myriad and their spirits ended up in the Land of the