I ghost out the way. I move so fast, it feels like I’m stepping outside my body, and the room around me, and everyone in it, becomes frozen in time. In the final second, I can tell she knows it’s over. She must see something in the darkness of the gate that terrifies her, because the expression on Shinigami’s face morphs from triumph to horror. Her sword hovers in midair, arcing towards my neck. In slow motion, almost in freeze-frame, I step around her and deliver a brutal kick to the side of her knee. I hear the bone pop.

Time accelerates.

Shinigami roars in pain and falls forward…into the silvery-blue.

And disappears.

At that precise moment, every Reaper in the room disintegrates. They shriek and fall, shattering into pieces, which then float away like shreds of ash. I stare into the gate for a long time afterwards, half expecting Shinigami to explode back out, sword flashing. But no one emerges. The silvery air is placid and calm, like a skin of water hiding a body dropping unseen into a bottomless dark. The Reapers are gone. Shinigami is gone. And now I know she will not return. The certainty of this becomes something that simply is that way. Like the sun rising and falling. The good and the bad. Heaven and hell. This is the Seventh. All that’s left is me. And Malik.

And Bea.

59

The three of us find our way back to the landing bay and stand on the bridge, door open to the sky and the searing wind. Malik, Bea and me. The sun is high overhead and the sky, metallic-blue. Malik takes my hand. Electricity flies between us, like sparks jumping the two terminals of a battery.

“Look,” Bea says, peering over the edge. “I don’t mean to interrupt this little moment here, but if I could just ask one bloody important question.”

“Fire away,” Malik says.

“What the hell are we doing?”

“We’re Falling,” Malik says. “What else?”

“See now, here’s the thing,” Bea says. “When you say Falling, I hear dying.”

Malik looks at Bea and clutches her hand. “Trust me,” he says.

Bea frowns at me and I can see she’s freaked out, even if she’s playing it cool. “It’s OK,” I tell her. “You’ll be fine. Everything’ll be fine. I promise.”

“Wait,” Bea says. “Just wait—”

We don’t. We run and, together, we leap.

Then we lift.

We float.

—

And we Fall.

Sol

The Welsh of SOL have a beautiful word, among many—Hiraeth. It means “a longing for home.” It’s an idea all Pathfinders carry with them. The Pathfinder way is hard, beset on all sides. Returning home, to your birth world, is not just a yearning; it is a necessity.

60

“Want me to wait here?” Malik says.

I shake my head. My hands are trembling. I can’t catch a breath.