Page 197 of Fallacies

There’s color to his skin that hadn’t been there when I first saw him, a slight Solian shimmer to his sharp cheeks. The grey in his eyes is halfway to burning silver, and even the peppered white in his dark hair glitters beneath the sun.

My father shuts his eyes again, exhaling a deep breath before confessing, “I sent her to you, you know? It was the only option we had. The only way we could guarantee she’d find the right people.”

I freeze in my approach, brows pulling together. “What are you talking about?”

He opens both of his eyes then, watching me as if he doesn’t quite believe in my confusion. But the longer I stare back at him, the more his expression softens, shifting into some emotion I can’t interpret. Guilt? Shame? Pity?

I don’t have time to figure it out as Devon’s sharp whistle cuts through the space. When I turn, I see the hand he holds up, gesturing towards the edge of the city.

“We’ve got to keep moving,” I tell my father, pausing on his blank face for a second longer. “We’ll talk about this later.”

Ignoring the nagging burn of curiosity in my chest, I move back to my place in the front of the group, and I’m kicking my way through discarded chains when it starts—the trembling of the ground.

Crumbled bits of stone vibrate with the rush of a charged…energy. Like an impending stampede.

Whirling around to face the group, the Sol snap out of their blissful states, clinging to each other with wide eyes. Pax is focused on me, Nix and Devon are searching for the origin of the sound, and my father⁠—

His expression is grim, eyes locked on something behind us, and when I trace his gaze, my heart drops like another chain to the ground.

The Estate—a mammoth towering over the city, spires stretched to the clouds—is trembling. Its silhouette quakes in time with the rumble beneath our feet, and the grey light striking its eastern side dims.

The groan of the infrastructure booms through the mile of city between us. The sound reaches a precipice, and then…it stops. Heavy and still. As if it were a figment of all of our imaginations.

If there weren’t so many of us standing here, stunned, I might be inclined to believe it was.

Unable to move, anticipation charges the air, suffocating it of all oxygen.

One moment, the Estate is dark. The windows are empty. And then, with a rupture that rattles the city, the Estate windows shatter, and a blinding white light bursts from inside it.

It explodes across the city, beaming onto every crumbled building and side street, so bright I have to squint against it.

It’s as if…as if the Estate walls have swallowed the sun.

Stumbling back a step, I snap back into my body with brutal force.

“Go!” I scream, urging the Sol forward, to the edge of the city and the bunker beyond. “GO!” I shout again, and Devon and Nix spring into action, corralling the Sol from behind while Pax pushes his side forward.

The Sol move with urgency, the energy they were able to take from the sun making their movements stronger. It gives me more hope that they’ll make the trek back to the Banyan, but we have to get them to Hunter and Easton as soon as possible.

Chaos ensues around me, Sol after Sol rushing past, and all I can do is stare back at the Estate. The building is still shining. Still bursting with light—more sun than Streatham has seen in years.

“Cal!” Pax appears beside me, pulling me from my trance. “Let’s go.”

I resume ushering people out of the city, helping them over the shallow hill to the bunker, relieved beyond belief when Easton and Hunter are waiting exactly where I’d left them.

When we crest the hill, they don’t have much time to be shocked before they have to jump into action, sensing the urgency in how fast we move. They surge forward to meet the Sol, helping where they can.

“Devon!” I bark, and he whips around to face me. “You and Nix go with them.”

His response is a quick nod, and then he turns, whistling to Phoenix, who has anticipated the order and is already at the back of the group, urging the Sol to stay close together.

My father moves beside Pax, the latter watching me and the former darting his attention from us to the group moving south.

“Go with them,” I tell my dad, nodding in their direction, but there’s clear defiance on his face, so I look to Pax instead. “Walk him back. I’ll wait for Cin.”

“We’ll wait with you,” Grey offers, glancing to Pax for backup.

Something flashes in my peripheral, and I whirl around in time to catch that blinding light fade from the Estate, leaving it a haunted, dreary grey once more.