Shaw’s voice filled her head. So achingly real, it was as if he stood at her side calling her all sorts of foolish in herforgetfulness—which was exactly what she called herself in his honor as she attempted to maintain her pace, her hand diving within the bag.
A brush of warmth fluttered across her face, and Lux spun toward the welcoming air, racing down the connecting tunnel with everything in her. It wasn’t much anymore, but the quick change of direction gave her the added time to enclose her fingers around Aline’s device as the phantom regained the ground lost.
Hands fumbled in the dark until a small protrusion caught at the pad of her fingertip. She pushed against it and didn’t hesitate.
She tossed it over her shoulder.
Blinding white light flooded the passage like the sun, and a cry sprang up at her back. But Lux didn’t pause. The phantom’s quick breaths were gone. The only footfalls were her own.
With the synthetic, fading sunlight, she came upon a ladder, and climbed.
The stains were ignored. Lux tugged and pushed the couch over the trap door within her parents’ home, and when it was done, she collapsed upon shaking legs, resting her back against the rear of it. Morning had arrived, the grim glow of a new day creeping through the windows.
She wondered why she wasn’t crying. Shouldn’t she be? Part of her remained in denial, the rest of her too exhausted to argue the point. It couldn’t be real. It wasn’t possible that their plan had gone so awry. That Shaw was captured and now at the mercy of monsters, that the phantom had discovered her at last.
It isn’t real.That’s why.
Her eyes fluttered closed, a small, relieved smile on her lips, and with Shaw’s scent cocooned around her and her head propped against his bag, she drifted into fitful sleep.
Chapter thirty-nine
The marching of bootedfeet faded from her dreams and grew louder once Lux blinked open her eyes. The crunch of debris over stone sailing through the shattered window forced her to stand and creep to the fragmented glass. Her legs ached with every step. Her heart ached even more. Denial wasn’t a luxury afforded in the daylight. Lux peered through the window.
The Shield. They filed down the street.
An entire squad of them.
She kept to the shadows, but when they turned, their faces trained upon her parents’ door, her breath caught.
They couldn’t know. They couldn’t know she’d accompanied Shaw, broken into the prison, drained the mayor’s stores of lifeblood and set fire to its remains. They couldn’t know she was here.
Could they?
She glanced to the dried blood marring the tip of her finger.
“Devil’s tits.”
Lux shoved the worn couch back to its place. The rug was rumpled, its edges pulled back from the trap door, and she wrenched it open. When no phantom flew out to run her through, she steeled herself, slipping onto the rungs of the ladder. She could hear them at the front door, prying off the final board attached to its frame as she reached around the edges of the floorboards, tugging the rug up and over. She only hoped they didn’t look too closely, because she wouldn’t be able to cover the seams entirely.
She sunk below, darkness clinging to her like chains, the weight of the bodies above sending dust raining onto her head. She stepped back.
Muffled voices drifted downward.
“The mayor wants her brought directly to him. Unhurt. For now.”
A derisive snort. “As if she’ll come quietly. Did you hear what she did to Blackwell? Clawed his eye!”
A new voice chimed, “And now he’s dead.”
“Orders are orders. I’d rather deal with one crazed girl than have the mayor after me. Check every corner of this shack.”
Heavy footfalls sent more debris cascading down as they stomped over the trap door.
Lux released her breath at last, her body screaming for air. Clutching Shaw’s bag tight to her chest, she turned, following the tunnel once more. She would go home. She would tell Riselda everything.
She was going to need her help.
Lux threw open thefloorboards of her home without a care if Riselda witnessed it. She’d planned to tell her all she knew—and all she’d guessed—and that hadn’t changed in the time she’d spent below ground.
