blamed me for the hopeless future when the carefully rationed provisions

inevitably ran out. He said I should have taken the roses and Isra and made

Yuan’s dark curse our own. He called for a war party to be formed to return

to Yuan and capture the roses and the queen at any cost, to kill every

Smooth Skin we could kill and avenge our tribe. Our usually peace-minded

chief agreed, but the final decision for war is always taken to our people.

It failed by one vote. Meer’s mother said no. She said Meer wouldn’t

have wanted to live if it meant binding our tribe to dark magic. She said

Meer wouldn’t have wanted her son to be raised under the shadow of evil

or for me to lose the woman I love.

I told my people what I felt for Isra. Most of them assumed my head

had been damaged by my time spent under the dome.

I close my eyes now, and let my head fall back against the warm rock

behind me. Isra. Thinking her name is enough to rip me apart. I was sure I

was done with these feelings. I thought I’d known the worst pain any man

could imagine, but I was wrong. There is still more pain. New pain. The

worst pain. I am a broken man. Without Isra, I will never be whole again.

There is nothing left to hope for, no reason to keep living.

I imagined that the worst thing awaiting me in Yuan would be

explaining to Isra why it took me so long to return, asking her forgiveness,

hoping she could understand how lost I was. But this …

By the ancestors …

I should have known it was possible. I should have prepared myself.

You knew. You refused to prepare. Coward.

“I’m not a coward,” I whisper. I never betrayed her. I never lied, I

never took the easy way, even when Gare, the last living member of my

family, disowned me before the tribe, when he said a lover of Smooth Skins

would receive no death wails from his throat, and vowed to let my body rot

on the ground if I were foolish enough to die before he does.

He won’t give me the release of a funeral fire. He hates me that

much.

I don’t hate him, but I would have fought him if he’d tried to hurt

Isra. I would have killed him if I’d had to. My own brother. I’m no better

than he is, but I’m—

“Not a coward,” I choke out.

“No, you’re not.” A soft voice. A girl’s voice.

My eyes fly open—some desperate part of me hoping I’ll see Isra,

though I know her voice is deeper and richer than the one I heard. Instead I

find Needle standing at the base of the rocks I climbed last night and

haven’t bothered to leave all day. She looks up at me, her golden skin rosy

in the fading light, her black eyes glittering with wonder. She

looks … complete.

“I can speak.” She blinks, sending twin streams of water racing down

her cheeks. “For the first time in my life. I was born without the parts I

needed to make words, but a few minutes ago I felt …” Her fingers touch

her throat, her awe clear in their trembling. “It’s magic. Isra was right.

Everything in the queen’s diary is true. The curse is breaking.”

Isra.

“Is she …” I falter and start again. “Is she—”

“She’s in the tower.”

My chest explodes with a relief brighter and purer than anything I

thought I’d feel again. “She’s alive,” I say, just to hear the words out loud.

Then again, “She’s alive!”

“We must return to the city. Quickly.” Needle drops the pack slung

over her shoulder onto the ground and backs away toward the dome. “She

thinks you’re dead and she’s determined to die, too,” she says, sending my

heart plummeting into my stomach. “She wanted to stay with the city until

it falls, to put an end to the covenant, but now that you’re here—”

As if in response to her words, a terrible sound—like thunder, but a

hundred times sharper and closer—erupts from the direction of Yuan.

Needle wheels to look. I lift my eyes in time to see a chunk of the dome as

big as the stones I’m standing on break away from the rest and fall …

farther … farther … until it finally collides with one of the buildings at the

center of the city, sending the structure tumbling to the ground. A little

farther to the left, and the thick shattered glass would have destroyed Isra’s

tower.

I jump from the rock, and hit the ground running.

“Wait!” Needle calls as I race by her.

I glance over my shoulder to find her already running after me.

“There are soldiers still in the city,” she says. “They have orders to kill

Isra if she leaves her rooms.”

“Why?” I ask, slowing just enough for Needle to keep up.

“Junjie forced her to marry his son,” she says, making my stomach

knot. But there’s no time to think about what Isra’s marriage means for us.

I have to save her life. That’s all that matters. I can’t be too late again; I

won’t survive it.

“Once she’s dead, Bo can marry again,” Needle continues, moving

quickly for someone so small. Though … she seems larger than I remember

her. Larger and stronger, with muscled calves peeking out from beneath

her simple gray dress. “Isra was walling herself inside her room to try to

protect herself, but if you hurry, you can reach her before she finishes. Go,”

she pants. “You can run faster. I’ll wait for you both by the stones.”

I’ve just started to push harder, when Needle cries out—

“Get her out, Gem. Kill the others if you have no choice.”

I stop for one precious moment, and turn back with a nod.

Needle sighs with a mixture of relief and fear I completely

understand. “Isra has to live. She has to see this,” she says, arms sweeping

out as if she’ll embrace the entire desert. It’s only then that I notice the

color. Color in the desert.

Patches of green and gold and black and blue prick at my eyes.

Golden grass pushes up from the crumbling earth; green teases the

branches of trees that have been dead for decades. Bruised blue and black

storm clouds sweep over the mountains, smelling of sweating metal and

new grass and the sweetness that comes just before a rain.

I can’t remember the last time it rained. I can’t remember the last

time I saw a storm cloud. It’s been years.

Something’s happening, something miraculous, and Isra has to see it.

She has to know the world can change, no matter how hard the road has

been to get to this place or how viciously the old world will fight to keep us

from walking out of that dying city.

There is hope. For her, for me, for all of our people.

With one last glance at the clouds rolling across the sky, blanketing

the sizzling desert with cool promise, I run for the dome. I run faster than I

have ever run. I run to her, for her, my Isra.

TWENTY-SEVEN

ISRA

I have to get out. I can’t let this be the end. I have to know if Gem

was the one lighting the fires at the gathering stones. I have to know if he’s

alive, and if he is, I have to tell him the way I feel. I refuse to die without at

least trying to—

“Father, please,” Bo says. “Let me talk to her alone.”

“You’ve talked enough!” Junjie shouts. “The world will end, and you’ll

still be talking! Open the door, Isra. Show that you are more than a blight

on your family’s good name.”

I laugh in response, a mad laugh that sends me dashing on tiptoe

deeper into the room. I spin in a circle, looking for a way out, though I know

there is none. The window is bricked closed, save for a sliver of an opening