The rain had mostly stopped, by the time we finished piecing the rest of the puzzle together. We assembled it from what I remembered, and rumors I’d heard and newspaper reports I’d read, and Ash’s memories, and the scraps of images she could summon up. She wasn’t back completely, not yet. Her ability was still chaotic, uncontrollable. We sat on the rails, facing the riversea, watching waves lap at the shore.

“My mother,” Ash said. “She convened an emergency session of her governing council, told them about what I had done. Police Commissioner Bahrr used it against her—threatened to tell the press that it was my fault, reveal that I was an othersider and that I had instigated the attack.”

She picked up rocks, threw them into the water.

“It was a way to gain control. He told my mother I was dangerous, my power couldn’t be contained, and talked her into having the palace sorcerers sedate me. They agreed to cover up the alleged proof of my guilt, but forever after it was a threat hanging over her head. She knew if she pissed them off too much, they could reveal to the public the intel they had on me, and the public outcry could destroy the monarchy.”

“Did your mom even care what your side of the story was?”

“It didn’t matter. She thought that I wasn’t in control, that my gift involved some kind of dark magic.”

I stood up. “And now Commissioner Bahrr and the Shield are working together. And he has Connor, and Niv. How are we going to stop him?”

Ash shut her eyes. I saw them twitching; saw them move back and forth beneath her eyelids. Trying to control what she saw; trying to track down information that could help us.

Finally she opened her eyes. Shook her head no.

“You’ll get it,” I said.

Queen Carmen had kept her a secret. She was afraid her daughter wouldn’t be safe if everyone knew she was an othersider. But what if the opposite was true? What if the secrecy made us vulnerable? Darkside had so few proud, visible othersiders. We stayed in the shadows. Hate and fear kept us quiet.

Ash could change all that. If she stepped into the spotlight, if everyone knew what she was, maybe we could stop being scary stories that people like the Shield told to make people afraid, and to make themselves more powerful.

“We need to get out of this rain,” she said.

“There’s a brakeman’s hut over there,” I said. We headed that way.

A sound like thunder echoed through the sky, but unlike thunder it just kept growing.

“Ash,” I said, pointing to something very high up, bright lights flickering on the wing of something impossibly far away.

“That’s an airplane,” she said.

“What the fuck is an airplane?”