Page 44 of Ashes of Gold
I sigh. “No one’s dying for me.”
“Kai told me to look out for you. And I intend to.”
She said that?I guess knowing we share blood did matter to her after all. Despite her sourness.
“Jelani, you hold the only remnants of our Ancestors’ power in your arms,” Jhamal says. “That matters. It matters to all of us.”
I don’t deserve special treatment. Me, who almost got them killed more than once. I should be the one sacrificing to protectthem.
“If there’s any way we can truly restore the Ancestors’ magic,” Zora goes on. “That’s something we all want. But we need your magic to do it. So of course we’re going to protect it—you—at all costs.”
I don’t like it, but I get it.
Bri climbs out the car window, comes over to us, and offers a hand to Zora to help her up. But she doesn’t take it. Bri apologizes again, but I assure her we’ve all frozen before.
“That trap was set for someone with magic,” I say.
“And it was very advanced,” Bri says. “Heat seeking magic isn’t something I’ve ever seen done. Only heard of it anecdotally, which is why I didn’t think of it first.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Zora says.
“The only person capable of that advanced level of magic is—”
“The Chancellor,” I say as an eeriness moves over me. I peer in every direction but find only an audience of broken windows andcrumbled buildings. I hug around myself, trying to make sense of the shadows between and inside them.He is watching. Somehow…
“We need to get off these streets. And soon.”
Bri shoulders her bag, Zora tucks her weapon under her arm, Jhamal sturdies his shield, and we take off in a full sprint.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE MOON GLOWS OVERHEADand my thighs ache. We can’t be far off now.
Bri is still shook, dragging behind us. She used some purple potion to make a duplicate of her shoe, so she can at least walk normally again. She’s not even looking in her bag anymore, just eyes straight ahead like she’s seen a ghost. I take it she’s never been shot at before. I want to tell her to find thatoomphshe had when she followed my captors after my arrest.
A herd of cats scatter when we cross the next intersection. We segue under Rosh Bridge and head up Creets Walk. One of the dormitory towers is up ahead. It used to be two towers connected by a bridge over a courtyard, but only one tower still stands, and a huge chunk of it is missing. The lush green that used to sit below where I’d fold over my spell book or eat lunch outside is a sandbox of glass shards and broken stone.
“We really should stop soon, for a minute,” Zora says.
“For what?”
She looks at me but says nothing. I try to read her pressed lips, but she’s otherwise stoic. What does she think of me? I wonder. She’s been much nicer than Kai. But she keeps to herself.
“We used to study over there,” I say to her, pointing to the quad courtyard, an abandoned field of rotting trees and overturned benches.
“Learn anything good?” she asks, her expression twisted with sarcasm. “Oh wait… the Chancellor knows nothing about the magic he purports as his own.” Her jaw pulses and it’s the Yakanna in her that shines now.
“My daddy never trusted him,” I say to her. The way the Chancellor had stormed into their village with magic he’d unearthed just felt too convenient. “Everyone was so sick, I remember Aasim explaining.” But they knew whatever magic he’d had must have been stolen. So they pretended to entertain his offer. Then fled.
“My grandmother died of the Sickness,” Zora says, pushing her lip sideways. “She was very young. My mother said she used to take her to pick kaeli berries each morning. That she’d planned the most beautiful turning out—you know, when a girl becomes a woman.”
“Oh, like a sweet sixteen?”
“Uh, sure. But this happens at fourteen. Well, in my GraMemi’s day it did. I never had a turning out. I grew up inside a mountain. The history of my people are stories on the lips of our Elders. For me, they are dreams, pictures in my head, the way I imagine it. That is a childhood I will never know.”
“I’m sorry, Zora. How much he took from you.” I see my father’s face. “And from me, too.”
“The tales say this island was ours,” she says. “It is almost make-believe, you know?”
