Ash opened her eyes. She’d had them shut for fifteen minutes, fingers twitching like she was shuffling through a deck of cards.

“I know where they are,” she said.

“Connor and Niv?”

“Yeah. Darkside Cinema Palace. I saw it. And I can control it, now—what I see.”

We lay there in Radha’s hut, listening to children laugh outside. I wanted to ask her to show me Connor, see how they were treating him. But if it was bad, I didn’t want to know.

Ash stood up. Went to the window, and smiled at whatever she saw out there. I wondered if she had gone away as well. To whatever awful, magicless world I’d been to.

She tilted her head to one side, and then the other. Flexed her hands together in front of her.

The spell was gone. I could see that now. Nothing was holding her back.

She did not need me.

“We should go,” I said. I debated waking Radha. Her powers would certainly come in handy. But the Shield’s headquarters would be packed with angry, powerful soldiers and I felt weirdly certain that we would be walking into our own doom. I couldn’t get Radha hurt too.

“First, I need to try to reach my mother,” Ash said.

“Okay,” I said, but neither one of us moved. The smell of the river was strong. Birds squawked in the air overhead.

I didn’t want the moment to end. Soon this would all be over, one way or another. One or both of us would go down in the attempt to rescue our friends—but even if we emerged victorious, she was still the princess. In the unlikely best-case scenario where we brought down the Shield and saved the city and she reclaimed her rightful place running it, she’d have a whole crowded life with very little room for me. She would leave me behind forever.

Either way, I felt like she was already half gone.

Fifty-Seven

Ash

“It happened more than once,” Solomon said.

The smell of the river was strong. Seagulls squawked in the air overhead. Connor was crying. We sat on the rocks at the river’s edge and shivered. Looking across to Athens, to the abandoned quarry’s loading dock and the empty silo that used to hold— I didn’t know what it held. The lights of the Rip Van Winkle Bridge were just coming on.

“This is real? This really happened?” Connor asked me, but I could see in his eyes that he already knew, already believed.

“Yeah,” I said. “I saw it. I blocked it out for a long time, but I remember it now. I remember everything.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Connor asked Solomon, and I gasped, because of course I’d wanted to ask the same question, but I’d had too much sense.

“This isn’t on Solomon,” I said. “He was a kid.”