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I let him hug me. I’ve already cried into his arms once today; I don’t have more tears in me. Thinking about Ness makes me feel both dead inside and guilty for being alive.
“Maybe he got away,” Wyatt says. “He’s certainly faked his death before. He could be anyone in this world.”
I would love to live in that fantasy. I wouldn’t blame Ness if he managed to escape the enforcers and decided it was too risky to try to find me again. If only I knew he were alive, I could find so much happiness in that thought alone, even if it meant we couldn’t be together. I would spend the rest of my life picturing Ness as different people, questioning if the person w
ho is staring at me for a second too long or smiling as they pass me on the street is Ness in disguise. I just want him alive and I want him with someone where he can be himself, even if it’s only in private. I’d hate for that face to be hidden from the world forever.
But there’s this gut feeling that something has gone terribly wrong with Ness.
The sound of the car pulling up catches my attention and we break our hug. Prudencia parks again at the other side of the drawbridge. They get out of the car and Brighton looks really beat up with his ripped shirt and bandaged forehead. He helps Prudencia, who’s limping toward us. I run toward them, the salve already working its magic and reducing my pain.
“What the hell is that smell?” Brighton asks, taking a step back and coughing.
“I love you, Emil, but you smell like death,” Prudencia says as she presses an ice pack against her black eye and covers her nose.
“And you two look like it. What happened?”
“We were ambushed by some specter,” Prudencia says.
“With reaper powers. Ghost phasing included,” Brighton says. “But we still had him beat.”
I hug them both at the same time. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Brighton gags. “Seriously, did a phoenix piss on you? What is that smell?”
“A healing salve,” Wyatt says. “Phoenix urine smells more like—”
“Did you get Ma’s clothes?” I ask, interrupting Wyatt.
Brighton and Prudencia exchange the kind of glance that can’t possibly mean anything good. Was the apartment raided? Everything tossed since we haven’t been around to pay rent?
“Tell him,” Prudencia says.
Brighton lets out a deep sigh. “Today wasn’t exactly a win for Team Infinity.”
Forty-Two
Predecessor
EMIL
My home is gone forever.
Everything that belonged to us, to Ma, to Dad has been destroyed. Every day in this war it feels like we’re getting closer and closer to being erased from history. Like someone will succeed in killing us sooner or later and the world will move on. Then I’ll be reborn, maybe Brighton too, and there will be no remnants of the Reys of Light for us to connect to—no pictures, no art, no personal tokens.
Brighton and Prudencia are drained so they head to bed, but between all my rest today and this news, I’m wired. It’s chilly out, even as the salve’s effect begins wearing off, so Wyatt and I sit close, with our shoulders pressed together; we’ve both gotten used to the stench by now.
I’m about to break down when Wyatt asks me about what my home life has been like over the years. It’s painful sharing memories of simpler times, but this is how I make sure my family’s history isn’t reduced to ashes. I go in on what it was like being the thought-to-be-younger-brother-by-seven-minutes to someone who has always been so naturally brilliant, and how lucky I was to have parents who loved me so much that I never even suspected that I was adopted. But everything started going downhill once Dad got sick. We were all so spent, Brighton was always snapping at us and others at the hospital, and things only got worse when Dad died. Now Ma is lost, and Brighton was awful to her, and we have no way of finding her.
Now that I’ve gotten started, it’s like I can’t shut up. Before I know it, I’m walking Wyatt through everything that’s happened since getting my powers—joining the Spell Walkers, saving the sun swallower from the arena the night we took Ness hostage, Ness’s faux betrayal that led to him cutting me with an infinity-ender, discovering Prudencia is a celestial, and the battle on the last night of the Crowned Dreamer where Gravesend died in my arms.
For how quick Wyatt can be with his responses, he’s an incredible listener. I can tell he’s fading, though, so I lie about how I’m ready to go to bed so he can actually get some sleep. He deserves some rest after all his research on retrocycling plus preparing the Dayrose salve for me. I take a quick shower, then head back to the room, and I’m up for another couple hours, listening to Prudencia snoring and some phoenix song, before I finally fall asleep.
I’m woken up way too early because of Brighton playing news reports on his phone without any headphones in. Different outlets are covering the story of Brighton’s battle with the specter, and I brace myself for what remains of our home. The building is burnt black and there are fire-escape ladders lying curbside, not doing anyone good down there. I find our windows on the fourth floor, the one to the living room shattered from when Ness was disguising himself as Atlas, and the ones to the bedrooms warped like every other tenant’s. Shelters have been taking people in, and even though Brighton and Prudencia helped save the day, this all happened because the Blood Casters were hoping we’d make the mistake of going home. We’ve displaced all our neighbors for no reason.
I bounce from the room, going straight to the library, where Wyatt is already up and out on the balcony. He’s wearing nothing but the same shorts as yesterday, a thick book resting on his abs as his feet are kicked up on a sleeping Nox’s back. The sunlight hits his brown hair in a way that makes it glow like a halo. I can’t tell if he’s squinting because it’s so bright out or because he’s focused on the page, but it’s a good look on an already-great-looking guy.
“Hey,” I say, stepping outside. The sun instantly warms the back of my neck.
