Such a Daring Endeavor (41 page)

She passes the coat to Shasa, and her wings fluff out like freshly dried hair. With a breath, Estelle spreads them to their full span. Moonlight pricks the gossamer strands like painted glass.

Estelle extends a hand, indicating I should accompany her to the open drive.

“Ambry.” Shasa steps forward. She grimaces. The unspoken apology ranges between us.

“I’ll get them back,” I promise her.

I join Estelle in the center of the broken concrete drive. Her arms encircle my waist, and after a final glance at the others, she leaps into the air.

Her wings pump, giving height and raising us deeper into the darkness. My stomach flops. Wind lashes my hair, plugging my nostrils so I have to open my mouth to breathe.

Her wings flatten, and we coast through clouds and starlight long enough that I begin to feel the discomfort of her arms digging into my sides. Finally, I notice a familiar sight. Her wings push against the wind, projecting us over the guards, over the gate, the crumbling city and toward the palace at the shore.

“Do you know which balcony is hers?” she asks.

I stare out at the ocean; it expands farther than I ever noticed from the ground. The tears pulse in response to the question, my own internal compass.

“There,” I say, taking their lead. “The third balcony to the left.”

Estelle lands on the stone parapet and smooths a hand over her dark tunic the minute I step away. I take a moment myself to crack my neck, brush hair from my face, and adjust my shirt before heading straight for the double doors.

Curtains drape around a decadent bed across the large room. Matching curtains mark the window beside a long table where Ren and another man I don’t recognize gape at us.

“Ambry?” Ren says.

Relief washes over me at the sight of him. I glance around for a sign of Jomeini, but the petite girl is nowhere to be seen. “Where’s Jomeini?” I ask. “Is she here with you?”

Ren’s neck cords as though he’s fighting himself. “You have to leave,” he says. “Now!”

“Enough.” Gwynn emerges from behind a painted screen, carrying the lid of a small, decorated chest. She places it near a machine on the table beside Ren. The machine’s boxy design and exposed wiring make it look like it belongs in a shop instead of a prissy girl’s bedchamber.

“Ambry,” Gwynn says. “And Estelle. So nice of you to join us.” I expect her tone to scorn and contradict the statement, or for her to reveal even a flicker of fear at the sight of Estelle, but to my surprise she sounds genuinely pleased that a siren and I have appeared in her bedchamber.

The tears hammer at my spine, chiming their excitement at my presence. “They’re here,” I mutter to Estelle. “Please, help me find the tears.”

Though she slices a glare in Gwynn’s direction, she inclines her head. “As you wish.”

“Get out of here!” Ren shouts. His shoulders are taut, like he’s standing too near a stalking bear and is warning me not to come any closer.

“Silence!” Gwynn commands, twisting to fist the air. At the motion, Ren quiets. My mouth slackens. He doesn’t move, doesn’t try to get to me or attack her.

She didn’t. Not again.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “You took his magic? Again?”

With a smirk, Gwynn digs through what looks like jewels in the open chest. She settles on a stunning sapphire, displaying it in her palm. “You seem so surprised. But it wouldn’t have happened at all without your help.”

My
help
? “I would never do that.”

“But you did. You sent that foolish girl to convince me of the ‘error of my ways.’” She fans out her hand at the last few words.

“You mean Jomeini? I never sent her to you.”

“No?” Gwynn examines the sapphire and then lowers her palm to look directly at me, fire in her gaze. “She told me you still saw good in me.”

“There is good in you, Gwynn,” I insist.

I’ve got to get closer. If there’s any chance for this to work, I have to be able to look into her eyes, like Ren did with mine. She has to feel it. To sense what’s truly in her heart.

“You always were slower than everyone else to grasp things.” Sarcasm edges into her voice now. She selects another gem and slams the chest closed. “I just never thought it meant you were stupid too.”

Estelle tilts her head. “You do not have to endure such words from her, sister,” she says. Considering how their last meeting went, it means a lot that the siren isn’t charging Gwynn down here and now. But she said she was here to help me. I ignore the stab of Gwynn’s words.

“Sister?” Gwynn laughs at this. “Oh, that’s fresh. Looks like you’ve made a new friend, Ambry. You need one,” she adds with a lifted brow.

I move away from Estelle, closer to Gwynn. The tears hum at me near the balcony. They’re close—so close. “You were my friend, Gwynn. We can be friends again.”

“Funny you should mention friends, because I have a new one too.” She flicks her hand, and the handsome man with the beard tugs on his shirt as if preparing for his entrance into the conversation. “This is Warwick. He’s been designing something for me. That’s what friends should be like. They should do things for each other.”

“What didn’t I do for you?” I ask, stunned. “I helped you, all those times with Clarke. I waited for you at school, I sat with you, I don’t—” I pick for the words like trying to catch fireflies. “I don’t understand why you hate me.”

“Those tears showed me who I really was, and who you really are. I got exactly what I wanted. Something you could never grasp, something you don’t have a clue how to handle.”

“And what’s that?”

Her lip twitches. “Power.”

“That’s what you’re after? I have magic now, Gwynn. I can help you.”

She makes a noise in her throat. “You went from being this utter weakling, and you think now that you have magic you can somehow reach me? Did you ever think that maybe I don’t want to be reached?”

My brain feels sloped and covered with loose rocks. Try as I might, my thoughts can’t keep their balance. “I don’t believe that,” I say. “I came here for you.”

“No, you came for your tears and your brother. Both of which I have.”

“I care about you!”

Her eyes narrow. “Don’t kid yourself. You’ve been against me every step of the way. You even had your whole crew ready to fight me at Mt. Rhine.”

“That was for the tears, Gwynn. I thought you would be Tyrus.”

“That didn’t stop you, did it?”

Tentatively, Estelle steps forward. Tension springs around her like a trap. “You were trespassing with malcontent. And what you’ve done to Elodia will not go unanswered,” the siren says.

Gwynn’s eyes roll. “Spare me the reprimand.” Then she turns back to me. “Trust me, if I wanted to be with you, I already would be. But I intend to be as powerful as I can, and you’re just a block in my path.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “You hate me because you think I’ll hold you back?”

Gwynn folds her arms, her lips in an arrogant pucker.

“Every time I see you, I remember my old life. I see Clarke. I see bandages and pity. I see a weak girl, too weak to stand up for herself, and even that image holds me back. I intend to stay as far away from that as possible, and if that means turning against my own people to do it, I will. I will be the kind of person no one can ever rule over again. It means I can’t be around you, because the memories you bring hold me back. You
weaken
me.”

I
planned to speak from the heart. I planned to touch the core of her, to find some common ground, something that could reconnect us. But there is no common ground here.

“Now,” she says, recomposing herself. “Warwick has been designing something for me. Would you like to see what it does?”

“I thought Tyrus was controlling you,” I say, fighting the rift in my heart.

She shrugs, slipping on a strange glove with metal protrusions on the back of its leather. “You thought wrong.”

“Ambry, I’m serious,” Ren says through gritted teeth. “Get out of here.”

Estelle is at my side, her arms folded. “I’m afraid I agree with the boy,” she says.

I meet her pink, faceted eyes. “I’m not leaving without him.”

“How sweet,” Gwynn mocks. “But I’m afraid Ren won’t be going anywhere. Nor Jomeini for that matter.”

“She’s still here?” I ask, glancing around.

Ren clenches, fighting against an invisible hand. Warwick watches with artificial boredom.

“Gwynn,” I say, stepping toward her. “Please. Be my friend. Come back with us.”

Her eyes skim to Estelle. “I don’t think your
sister
there would like that very much. Besides, everything I want is right here.” And with a ferocious scowl, Gwynn extends the glove in my direction.

“Ambry Csille!” Estelle cries, shoving me aside.

I dive. Estelle rolls with me, gracefully landing to a kneeling position. With us out of the way, the darts sink into the back of a beautiful chair with floral padding and wooden armrests.

“Warwick—again!” Gwynn shouts.

Warwick fiddles with some kind of chamber in the machine. Ren stands at the head of the table, speechless, motionless, and looking more haggard than I’ve seen him in some time.

“Find the tears!” I tell Estelle. Without a word she heads for the wardrobe near a painted tapestry. Meanwhile, I make for Ren, ready for Gwynn to stop me, or to order Warwick to intervene. But Gwynn whirls around and snatches a red gemstone from the table.

Ren’s face dips skyward. With a soundless wail, he begins to fade. Feet from him, I reach for his arm. But my hand slips right through him. “What the—no! Ren!”

He vanishes like he did on the cot back in the safehouse. I break to a stop, standing right where he stood. Fear rattles my bones. “Where is he?”

“It’s the machine,” Estelle calls, unearthing pillows, throwing back the blankets, peering beneath the bed and rifling through drawers in the side table. Behind her, the wardrobe doors hang open, clothes spewing from its depths.

“What have you done with him?” I demand.

“He’s my portable prisoner,” Gwynn says with glee, holding up the red gemstone. “And see? So pretty.”

“He’s in the jewel?” I can’t help the stark shock.

“Here’s Jomeini’s,” Gwynn says, flicking an emerald in the air and catching it. “I’ve got one for you too, you know. And your siren friend over there.”

Any traces of hope I’ve held onto snuff out. I watch Gwynn, waiting for the mask to come off, for her to turn back to the quiet, sweet person I used to know. But Ren and Talon were right—this is who she really is.

“I didn’t want to see it,” I mumble. My heart thuds dully in my chest. I stare openly at her, at the jewels in one hand and the glove on the other, and I wheeze a final, resigned breath.

Hope fades if you let it. I didn’t want to give up. But I can’t go one denying what’s right in front of me. She really is gone.

“You’ve left me no choice,” I say sadly.

Gwynn smirks at this, rolling her shoulders and fanning the fingers of the glove as if preparing for a fight. “Good,” she says.

She shoots the glove’s spines at me once more. I slide beneath them, quickly regain my footing, and head straight for her.

Ren’s in that gem. And I’m not about to let her keep him from me.

Gwynn reels against the table. A vase tips over, spilling flowers and shattering on the ground. I grip her wrist. Magic flares in her palm, streaming a deep purple and sparking a shock straight into my teeth.

The moves Talon taught me eke forward, added to by the magic licking through my bones. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Estelle scavenging through cabinets and drawers, still keeping her word to help with whatever I needed.

Gwynn’s movements are dodgy at best. The streams shooting from my hands meet with hers, silver to purple. She bends at the waist, blocking herself from my advancing hit, and aims the glove at Estelle.

“Estelle!” I call out.

The siren whips back against a set of built-in cabinets. All the darts but one thunk into the wood. The other lands in her arm, but clearly one isn’t enough to facilitate the transfer to the gemstone. Estelle slumps her head back, weakly ripping the spine free.

Warwick loads a fresh vial of tears into the small chamber within the machine’s open door. With her attention on the siren, I bolt, knocking straight into Gwynn. I rip the glove from her hand and shove her to the marble. Heat spills down my arms. Keeping her pinned down, I release it, not at Gwynn, but at the machine near Warwick.

“No!” Gwynn shrieks.

Warwick staggers back at the influx of flame. Orange explodes across the silver mechanism, and he shields his face with his arms.

Gwynn’s magic hits me in the ribs, searing through my flesh. She launches herself toward the table, patting at the fire with a folded cloth until the flames die.

She lowers the cloth to reveal blackened edges and melted, warped metal sections mushed at the machine’s center. The door dangles from a blackened hinge.

Gwynn rakes her hands through her hair. “Fix it! Warwick, fix it!” she cries.

Warwick pants, the vial of tears still in hand.
He was using tears to charge that machine. 
Tyrus threatened Bridar with my tears—tears with enough power to trap an army in gemstones and free the way to Angel’s Basin.