Page 56 of The Song Rising

Survival first. Pain later.

“It’s over,”Hristo says.“All they need is a formal surrender. We’ll go to the border, to Turkey—”

“You can try.”

The district is ablaze around them. All she can hear is the rattle of gunfire. The English soldiers are almost upon them.“Sit with me, Hristo,”she says.“Let’s go to hell with a little dignity.”

“Stoyan—”

“Yoana.”She lights her last cigarette, her hands gloved in blood.“If we’re dying now, please, for once, call me by my name.”

Hristo kneels in front of her.“If you won’t try, I must. My family—”He squeezes her wrists.“I’ll pray for you. Good luck, Yoana.”

She hardly notices him leave, knowing she will never see him again. Her gaze falls to the gun.

Back to Nick. I was rooted in place, unable to stop watching.

Now there are more footprints than eight people could make. He runs. A patrol has come through this part of the forest.

In the clearing, the tents have been torn down. A sign gives notice of their execution.

She is curled on her side by the ashes of their campfire. Håkan is nearby, prostrate, his coat drenched in rust. Their hands reach across snow. Between them, the bottle is undamaged, the bottle they must have bought in secret, the bottle of wine with a Danish label. He gathers her body into his arms and screams like a dying thing.

Warden’s dream-form released me, and the cord rang again. “Go, Paige,” he said.

My spirit fled.

I woke gasping for air. Nick was on his knees, his hand crushing mine. I jumped again, tearing from my body.

I glimpsed enough of Tom’s dreamscape to tell that it took the shape of a factory. Dust fell all around me as I launched myself into his sunlit zone, where his dream-form’s hand reached for mine. Contact between two dream-forms was deeply intimate, but there was no time for embarrassment. The moment we connected, I knew Warden had been right. The memories arced between us like lightning.

Now all we had to do was hold on.

As soon as I landed back in my body, Tom gritted his teeth and projected the memories as oracular images. They hit us first; then the rest of the Assembly drew in their breath as they succumbed. Instead of the dream-like way in which Warden experienced memory, I saw them like pages in a flick book. The forest and the burning street smothered my vision.

“Hold the circle,” Warden commanded. The memories repeated over and over, faster and faster, lifted away from us by the spirits, until all I could see was the moth and the message.

It held for a while, long enough to be remembered. Then we all fell down.

Night and day didn’t exist in the Beneath, but the séance had exhausted the Unnatural Assembly. The lights turned off, allowing them to sleep. I had already noticed the division in our ranks. Most of my supporters had clustered on the lower deck, while those who spoke against me were on the upper. All I could do was hope that Glym would be able to unite them.

I sat on the vacant bunk beside Eliza’s, gazing into the blackness. The thought of leaving now, when I was just about holding on to their loyalty, was hard to stomach. Even harder to stomach was the knowledge that Nick, who was asleep or pretending to be, had spent the last few hours in his bunk, ignoring anyone who spoke to him.

His private memory had been used as fuel. As propaganda. His little sister’s murder.

“You’re going to give me to Styx.”

The voice was hoarse. Light flickered from the end of a flashlight.

“I overheard you talking to Wynn.” Ivy was sitting cross-legged on her bunk. “I want to do it.”

Wynn had covered the “T” on her cheek with a square dressing. I didn’t say anything.

“She doesn’t want to see it, but you know I won’t last long down here. Someone will cut my throat when I’m looking the wrong way. The only reason they haven’t killed me already is because you’ve been here,” she said. “So it has to be me. For all our sakes.”

I breathed in through my nose.

“If you stay with us,” I said, “then you’ll be killed. But if I send you, Wynn will betray us to Scion.”

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