Page 32 of Siege of Shadows

“We werebothin danger.” Belle raised her head almost in defiance. “I’d been captured by Saul. Chae Rin, Lake, and all the train passengers were the hostages of phantoms. You weren’t enough to save us. She would have seen everything through your eyes.” She met my gaze as if to challenge me. “She would have wanted to fight.”

“Seemed to me like she just wanted to live.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Belle’s words evaporated into the silence that stretched out between us, unbroken but for the sizzling of Lake’s frying pan.

There it was. That insidious, nagging suspicion that had bloomed the moment we’d spoken for the first time at La Charte hotel: that I was nothing more than a replacement borrowing Natalya. I lowered my head. That night in France, as she’d held Saul’s ring in her hands, I really believed for a second that she’d do it: wish me away and Natalya back into my body. It would have been an easy wish to grant. Saul had said so himself. I wanted to believe in Belle. I wanted to believe in the tears she’d shed as she dropped the ring and collapsed to the ground. And though there were times it felt as if she were finally warming to the idea of us as a team and of me as the fire Effigy, other times I couldn’t be sure.

Maybe she wanted Natalya back. Even if it meant I was gone forever.

“Wait.” Chae Rin placed down her soda can and stood from the table. “You’re excusing what Natalya did now?” She looked at her in disbelief. “Are you a body-snatcher apologist?”

But it was clear that Belle had realized her mistake. She was already shaking her head as each of us watched her. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Wow.” Chae Rin let out an incredulous laugh. “That’s kind of a new low.”

“That’snotwhat Imeant.” Her voice rang out over the room. Regret was clear in the pale blue of her eyes as she faced me again. “That’snotwhat I meant.”

Panic. Even if it was just a shadow, I wasn’t used to seeing it sweep across her features. Suddenly, she looked sheepish, ashamed of herself. “That’s not what I meant, Maia,” she said, shaking her head. “Please don’t take it that way. I would never.” The regret in her eyes as she pleaded with me told me she remembered that moment in France as well as I did. “I wouldn’t.”

I played it off with a shrug. “I guess I’ll just have to believe you, right?” I wanted to. Ihadto.

“My, what a well-adjusted, functional bunch we are.” Chae Rin rolled her eyes. “Okay, look, we all know Natalya was your mentor and you and her were tight while she was still breathing or whatever, but we need to be realistic about our situation.”

Nudging Lake out of the way, Chae Rin went over to the kitchen cabinet. When she reached under the pile of magazines in the bottom drawer, I knew what she was looking for. We had to put it in an unsuspecting spot after all.

She pulled it out: the cigar box Natalya had buried underneath Belle’s old floorboards. A couple of weekends ago, Belle had cleaned off the moss and dirt that had clung to the dark wood, polishing the stunning handcrafted carvings in appreciation for their design. But it was what was inside that mattered. Lifting the lid, Chae Rin pulled out a small shard of white stone—the same mysterious stone that comprised Saul’s rings.

“You said Saul wants the rest of this, right?” She squeezed the tip of the shard delicately between two fingers. “A death-powered stone that grants wishes. One of the dead fire Effigies in Maia’s head knows how to find it. That’s why he kept coming for Maia. Natalya led us to this thing. She clearly wants us to figure this whole mystery out, but given what happened to Maia, that doesn’t mean we can trust her completely. It’s possible that she wants two things at once.”

She wanted us to solve the mystery she couldn’t. But she also wanted to live again. No one knew which she wanted more. Maybe not even Natalya herself.

Placing the shard back in the box and shutting the lid, Chae Rin turned to me. “Kid, Natalya isn’t going to stop talking to you. And that’s fine. We need her. Listen to what she has to say, but keep two eyes open, you know? Not everything she says may be on the level.”

No. No, it maynotbe, least of all Natalya’s last living memory: Aidan Rhys, standing over her as she struggled to breathe from the poison he’d given her.

But was it really true?

And for the thousandth time I tried to justify my doubts, though it’s not like they weren’t already justified. If I, from the depths of my mind, could see her using my body to decimate Saul’s phantoms in France, then Natalya could see everythingIsaw. She would have seen me with Rhys. She would have felt the way my chest tensed whenever he was close to me, the way my body flared to life when he smiled. She would have known—

I thought back to the way his head moved to follow me, almost involuntarily, as I passed him on the way out of the briefing room.

She would have known.

And Natalya hadn’t wasted a single moment snatching my body the moment my mind crumbled at the thought that he might have killed her.

I knew how much it had meant to her, feeling the air rushing through her lungs again, feeling her muscles burning with adrenaline. More than needing me to find outwhyshe died, she needed me to regain the life she’d lost. It was everything to her. But those memories had felt real. Too real to be lies. And—

And I didn’t know what to think anymore.

“Maia.” Belle’s voice snapped me out of my desperate thoughts.

“Y-yes?”

A pause. “Hasshe shown you?”

There was a strange twinge in her voice as she spoke.

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