Jura struggles against his grasp. A dagger is at her throat. The man at his right has her deck in his palm. She’s bloody, but alive. For now.
Gregor is nowhere to be seen.
“Looks like these tunnels are infested with quite a few rats.” Emilia looks from Jura to me.
“I don’t know her,” Jura says, struggling futilely against the knight’s grip. “I was just trying to escape Halazar.”
“You don’t look like a prisoner to me…But if you are an escaped criminal, there’s only one thing for you.” Emilia’s attention shifts to the knight holding Jura. “Kill her.”
“Don’t!” I can’t stop myself. The word tears from my throat before I can think.
Emilia has a wide, triumphant grin. “Quite the reaction for someone you ‘don’t know.’ ” I glare at her, saying nothing. “Let’s make a trade. I’ll let her go free, and you’ll come with me. A life for a life, Clara. A fairer deal than you deserve.”
“Don’t do it,” Jura says, though I barely hear her over the blood racing through my ears. “You know they’ll just follow me and—”
“Shut her up,” Emilia commands calmly.
The Stellis tightens his arm around Jura’s throat, reducing her words to wheezes, and anger flashes through me. But I do nothing.One wrong move and it’s over for Jura. I don’t want to see any more people I love hurt.
“So, Clara, what will it be? Run and she dies. Fight and she dies. Surrender and she lives.”
A thousand thoughts race through my mind. A thousand possibilities. Like a deck shuffling. If Emilia so much as senses magic from me, Jura is dead. I can’t cast anything. I can’t move.
“You know you’re in no position to keep up this fight.” Emilia’s voice has fallen eerily quiet. She can see how weary I am. My time of numbed pain is almost up. “Make your choice.”
What can I do?I look to Jura hopelessly. She merely smiles back at me. But the expression is all sorrow and resignation.
I want to scream, but emotion chokes me.
“Can I say goodbye?” I try to make the question one of pure surrender.
“No.” Emilia’s too smart for that. She’s not going to let me get close. “Dismiss your weapon, deck on the ground, and then two steps back.”
I do as she says, releasing my blade. It vanishes into the air, the magic that formed it unspooling. Then I reach for my deck.
“Clara, don’t!” Jura urges. “You can’t.”
“You’ll let her go? Alive?” I focus only on Emilia as I remove the pouch that holds the remnants of Glavstone’s and Kaelis’s decks.
“I will; I swear it,” Emilia vows.
“Don’t believe her!” Jura’s voice is thin. I scan for any signs of Gregor but find none.Where is he? Did they already get him?
Despite Jura’s warnings, I do believe Emilia. She has honor, in her own way. Slowly, with all their eyes watching me, I place the deck on the ground and step away. Emilia stands taller with triumph.
“Clara, you must keep fighting,” Jura says, drawing my attention back to her. A card is in her hand, down by her pocket. They missed it. She didn’t shuffle it into her deck because it wasn’t hers to begin with. It’s the Queen of Cups, inked by Glavstone. The card I tried to use to heal Arina in the boat.
She must have pocketed it when it fell in the boat.
“No…” The card is too powerful for her. Jura is tenacious, and strong. But she’s not the best Arcanist among us.
We both know she can’t cast above a five, and I can’t reach my deck. The Ten of Cups is beyond my reach.
Jura meets my eyes, and all the sorrow in the world is contained within them. It’s unbearable—the way it fills the space between us with everything we never had a chance to say, all the secrets we missed the opportunity to share and never knew it. The air is as thick as our bond. As heavy as the loss that I already know is coming.
In that instant, we wordlessly share a thousand memories.
The first time I saw her, standing in the doorway of the Starcrossed Club, eyes hollow from weeks upon weeks of seeing Marked Arcanists shipped to mills on the riverboats. Her hands shaking as she clenched a deck one gifted her. “He couldn’t use this any longer, but he told me to. How do I help them?”
