Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5)(20)
“I have a reservoir filled with lightning under my heart,” said Alexis. “How fast it runs down depends on a lot of things. My voice is usually the first thing to go, followed by my balance, followed by the strength in my arms and legs. Eventually, I wind up unable to move without hurting so much it feels like the storm that brought me back to life is ripping me to pieces. I don’t know how long I could stay that way without dying. I’ve never felt like it was important to learn. Is that what you wanted to know? Would you like more details? I’d offer to show you my scars, but Jack might notice if I started pulling off my clothes, so I’d prefer not to.”
Kade winced. “You’re angry.”
“A little bit, yes. I understand wanting to know what your allies are capable of, but the fact that I’ve been damaged doesn’t make me broken, and you don’t need to behave as if it does. This is my home, my world, and I’m going to fight to get it back, just as hard as Jack will. Harder, maybe. She’ll always be a newcomer here. She loves her land, and she’ll protect it, but this is where I was born. The Moon has known my first breath, all three times I’ve taken it, and She loves me all the same.”
Kade nodded, and was silent.
Ahead of them, leading the ragged gang of teens across the impossible landscape, Jack suddenly stiffened. All of them could hear her anguished cry of “Dr. Bleak!” before she broke into a run, moving with surprising speed over the uneven ground.
Sumi raced after her, easily matching Jack’s sudden, panic-driven speed. Christopher and Kade were close behind. Alexis didn’t run. Alexis walked with quiet resignation, as if she knew that hurrying would change nothing.
She paused for a moment when she reached Cora, who had stopped dead in her tracks, and whose eyes were filled with iridescent swirls, like sunlight dancing on the surface of the sea. Alexis bit her lip.
“I don’t suppose it would make any difference if I said that you’re supposed to help us save the world, would it?” she asked.
Cora didn’t move.
Alexis closed her eyes.
She should have anticipated this, should have found a way to warn Jack of the risks—but then, it was so unpredictable, who’d be called and who wouldn’t be, when they tumbled through the doors. The Master had called the Wolcott girls to him through the sheer force of his wanting, plucking the twin foundlings out of their uncertainty when either one of them could have been his beloved little girl. Dr. Bleak had stolen Jack away, but only because Jill would never have been able to walk away from the Master alive. Christopher’s heart was sworn to a girl with fingers of bone and butterflies where her heart belonged. Kade was … well, based on what Jack had said about him, Kade was sworn to the school.
This girl, though, this girl, with the ocean in her hair and the scales melting under her skin, she’d been vulnerable from the start.
Alexis opened her eyes in time to watch Cora turn away from the windmill, toward the ancient, swallowing sea, and break into a run. She moved faster than seemed possible, legs devouring distance the way a storm devoured ships. In a moment, she’d be gone.
Alexis whirled and ran, not after Cora, but after the others. She caught up with Kade first, grabbing him by the arm and yanking him to a halt. He turned to stare at her, startled and a little angry, only to pale when he realized Cora wasn’t with her.
“What—” he began.
“The Drowned Gods are singing a song that only your friend can hear,” she said. “I’d never make it to the shore. Someone has to go with her.”
Kade’s expression faded into blankness. “The Drowned Gods,” he repeated. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that sometimes, the Moors claim their own,” said Alexis. “Please. She’s getting away.” She pointed toward the horizon, where a flicker of blue-green hair was still visible against the washed-out colors of the field.
Kade hadn’t been as loud or as flashy in his heroism as Sumi, but he was still the Goblin Prince in Waiting; he had still saved his share of lives. He nodded, once.
“Tell Jack I’ll find her,” he said, and then he was gone, running after Cora, leaving Alexis standing alone in the middle of the Moors.
Slowly, the girl with the lightning-powered heart turned and trudged toward the windmill, and the inevitability of what she knew she’d find there.
8?EVERYONE HAS A MASK
SEEN UP CLOSE, the windmill was surprisingly pastoral. The walls were half-covered in trellises that dripped with bean runners and massive white flowers, their petals edged in lurid red. A low stone wall surrounded the gardens, and a cobblestone path led from the gate to the open door. The stones had been gray when they were pressed into place, each chosen for the precision of its fit with its neighbors.
The stones weren’t gray anymore. They weren’t red anymore, either. They were brown, the dark, rich, somehow carnal brown that comes only when blood is allowed to dry on some ordinary surface. The source of the blood wasn’t immediately clear; it took a few seconds of staring after Jack for Christopher to realize that what he’d taken for an oddly shaped rock was actually a man’s booted foot. He stopped running.
Jack didn’t stop. Jack slammed the gate out of her way, almost slipping on the cobblestones, and raced along the path until she reached the raised garden bed concealing the body attached to that foot. She dropped to her knees there, scrabbling for something the rest of them couldn’t see, her face twisting into an expression of anguished disbelief. Then she began to wail.