Chapter 15

He came for me. They had all come for me.

I didn't let go of Nico once I had him, worried this was all a well-constructed dream that would disintegrate if I didn't hold on to the illusion strong enough. Though I dropped his hand for a fleeting few seconds to hug Luther's neck after he disrupted the barrier.

"Good to see you still causing chaos, boss," he muttered in my ear.

I laughed, but it broke apart. "Just like old times."

He slipped from my arms, still grinning. "The rest of the boys are downstairs, watching the doors. We released the prisoners and armed them each with the weapons from the guards we took down in the process. What's left of the Watch near the docks is being taken care of."

They'd started a riot from the sounds of it—and he had the nerve to call me on my chaos. I pulled my torn tunic higher over my shoulder, wishing I had something more durable to escape in.

"Here," Nico said. As if reading my thoughts, he unlatched the shoulder gauntlets holding up his cape and hood. Making two incisions quickly with a dagger for my arms, he wrapped the thick material around my body like a robe, using a strip of my old tunic as a sash to hold it all together.

"This will work," I said, impressed.

Grey eyes swept over me before nodding in approval. Nico held out his hand for me to take, but a raspy groan tore my attention from his offering to the rubble behind us.

"Milla . . ."

I disregarded Nico's warning to inspect the sound. Swiping a glass shard from the floor for protection, I pulled back a twisted piece of metal and found the source of the suffering.

A charred body lay sprawled over a mound of debris. Bright red hair still clung in places to the singed flesh, and I held my breath to prevent choking on the scent of the burnt alchemist. Her breaths wheezed with every movement of her chest wall, but her eyes were wide on me, aware of everything going on around her.

"Help."

My grip tightened on the glass until it cut into my palm. I wished it would have felt better to stand over her as she suffered. After months of torturing me, it should have been more rewarding than this. To watch her die. To know I'd leave this tower, and her bones would be lost in the remains of stone and forgotten tragedies now crumbling like her plans.

I should walk away. Let her die deliberately. Let the ash in her airways smother her slowly; let the deep burns make every final second one of pain and agony. It was no less than she deserved for what she did to me, the other prisoners, to Luther.

"Milla." Nico was behind me, taking the broken glass from my hand. "What do you want to do?"

"Give me your dagger."

He replaced the shard with a more practical tool for the job. I knelt near the alchemist. Pity didn't exist in my heart for her, no emotion attached to the moment. "This is more mercy than this tower has ever seen, but I will not become the monster you tried to make me. I will not let this place change who I am. I will not let you win."

The dagger slipped into her burnt flesh with little resistance, striking her heart, and the muscle squeezed around the knife, lurching once more, before giving out. The little light left in the alchemist's gaze flickered out. As quickly as the fall of a blade, my oppressor was dead.

"One down," Nico murmured. "A whole city to go."

I wiped my tears before he could see them. "Let's get out of here."

Luther could move the stone.I had no idea how or where he learned the power to do so, but he quickly got us through the hall, removing any rubble that had fallen from the force of Nico's bombs. We emerged from the tower moments later just as the night air slammed into me with a wild breeze from the sea, forcing me to hold together my makeshift robe.

"Milla!"

So many familiar voices spoke my name, it was almost overwhelming. Gideon and Adler rushed to greet me, quickly adding their joy at seeing me alive and on my feet. Nico kept his right hand on the small of my back, urging us to keep going.

"Your remnant is still dulled?" I asked him.

He nodded curtly. "The glint here is stronger. I likely won't get it back for a while, so we need to get to the ship as quickly as possible."

I had no argument against making haste to leave. If I never saw this island again, it would still be too soon.

The yard was empty, though the distant sounds of gunshots carried in the east wind. Nico abandoned his touch on me to grab his own gun. Gideon looked back at me, offering one of his own weapons.

I held up my hands, which blackened from the prime of my remnant. "I'm good, Gideon. But thanks."

The cousins startled at the first impression of my power, while Nico's laugh was wicked with admiration.

He charged his weapon, sliding the round into place. "Is it wrong I'm hoping we run into trouble now?"

A small part of me hoped the same, if only for the opportunity to burn this place to ash. "Don't tempt me to find some, Nicolai. I'm not in the right mind to be merciful."

"She's stunning when she's homicidal, isn't she, cousins?"

I nudged him in the side with my elbow, though it was impossible not to catch the contagious grin he wore as I stole a glance at him. His face was thinner than I'd remembered. I noticed every new line that crafted the shadows around his eyes, a deeper darkness in his smoky gaze. His hair had grown and was left unstyled and unkept. A man so normally well-groomed, who cared about his appearance, and he'd abandoned his usual contemporary style for something more unbalanced. A manic result of his apathy, and yet that same stoic ambition lingered beneath the craze.

He was danger and darkness and deliverance, and he was every desire of my soul embodied.

Nico caught me staring and passed a hand through his dusty hair, smoothing it out. "I need a haircut, I know."

"That's not what I was thinking," I replied.

"Then what?"

I winked at him, glancing at Luther standing too close behind us. "I can't tell you just yet."

"Hells, here the fuck we go with these two," Luther muttered.

We made it through the empty yard and back into the main building with no resistance, but as soon as we came to the center hall leading to the front gate, trouble finally found us.

"I thought you cleared them." Nico spoke to Luther, sounding very displeased.

"We're still working on it," he clipped. A section of the wall moved to reveal a surge of guards. While Luther unloaded his gun on the group, Nico shoved us both into a room off the hall before we were caught in the return fire.

Alchemy beakers stood dormant on their burners, the pantry of ingredients lined one wall, and the familiar scent of sulfur had my eyes widening. We were in the alchemedis's room. A different lab than the one in the tower. Nico pulled me down into a crouch to hide from any stray bullets that might have ricocheted off the walls.

"Nico, there's too many of them for your cousins to take out themselves."

The floor rumbled—Luther must have made his own blockades in the hall with his power over the stone. In the dim light of the moon slipping through the skylight in the ceiling, his eyes shifted as he planned and plotted.

I snatched his arm, drawing his gaze back to me. "I have an idea, but I need to get out there, in the main room."

A muscle clenched in his jaw. "Impossible. As soon as they see you, they'll take you down."

"Then they better not see me." The table behind him held an assortment of beakers, but I knew well the stuff that counteracted their glint. The smell of it, the color, the way it burned at first touch. Looking through every drawer, I searched until I found the salve Delilah rubbed on my skin before each trial.

"Here." I uncapped the jar and spread a generous amount over two fingers. "Give me your arm."

He extended his right arm in my direction. "What is that?"

I spread the sticky balm over his forearm, grateful he'd lost the watchman's gloves.

"Give it a moment to absorb, but it will nullify the effects of the glint. Delilah and her team used it on me before they—" I swallowed. Now was not the time to unravel that thread of conversation.

Nico's brows furrowed, and I knew he'd pocketed the moment to pull out later.

His false hand flexed in the pale light. "So, what exactly is your plan?"

I smiled, rubbing together my stained black hands. "Turn off the lights and count to ten. I'll take it from there."

"Milla—"

The cousins stumbled inside the room, carrying Adler between them. A bright red stain soaked the front of his guard uniform. Nico cursed and ran to help them, propping his cousin in a nearby chair.

The bender groaned, doubling over to brace the site with his palm. "I'll be fine. Their aim is shit."

"And a good thing, or you'd be dead. Luther, put pressure on the site to slow the bleeding until we can see the haelen," Nico ordered. His head swiveled back to me. "You were saying?"

I nodded, feeling a little breathless at the sight of Adler's bloody front. If that bullet would have been an inch to the right, it would have gone straight through his heart. The Watch would be closing in now, blocking the hall so we couldn't escape. We needed to be quick.

"Let's go."

Before Nico stepped out of the room and into the hall, all the light in the building faded into darkness. Rarely did he use his remnant to control the light—rarely did he need to when the wind and time were powerful enough on their own. Concealed by the shadows, I snuck along the wall leading into the building's center, where the halls branched from the circular intersection.

Not a gun went off. The watchmen must have been worried they'd strike a comrade, and it worked in my favor, though I remained stealthily flush with the wall to avoid any wild ideas. Each breath from my lips was a countdown.

Seven, six, five. . .

I needed to make sure I was in position at the end of the hall before time ran out—before Nico lifted his remnant. A corner materialized beneath my fingers, and I rounded the edge, crossing the point of no return. Too far to turn back, too late to run.

Three, two, one. . .

Moonlight spilled through the glass ceiling. Gas lamps flickered alive once more, lining the room and adding to the illumination. I stood before the entrance of the hall, in front of my husband and his family—my family—with hands filled with dark power and the eyes of every guard locked on the black flames curling down my wrists.

They didn't raise their guns, didn't waste their bullets. The lot of them, over a dozen from a quick count, turned on polished boots and ran in the opposite direction.

They were afraid of me. Hells, it felt good to watch the fear flood their eyes, quicken their strides. Cowards couldn't face me now that I was no longer bound by drug or chain.

Recalling every agonizing memory from this place, I let the anger inundate my veins, become the fuel to my fire, the force behind my power. Marco Gallo, the prisoners they left to die on the side of the island, the games they played to test my remnant. My hands slammed into the ground, assaulting the hard stone that had trapped me all these months inside its cold, coarse fingers. I unleashed what I had always held so close, too afraid to let go completely in fear it might hurt someone innocent. But there was no innocence in this room, no reason to hold back any longer.

A single word from my heart commanded my remnant to do what it did best.

Destroy.

The air charged, filling with static. The glass dome shattered, raining large chunks of glass over the fleeing men. From where I stood, the fallen shards nipped at my bare skin.

The ground gave way, cracking into a thousand pieces before turning to black dust. Fire ate away the foundation beneath their retreat until nothing was left but a gaping hole leading to the cells below. The guards didn't make a few paces before they were each swallowed into the abyss, disappearing with the sounds of their screams as they descended toward an obscure bottom deep beneath the prison.

I stood too fast and swayed on my feet. An arm hooked my waist before I could topple into the hole after them.

"Careful, princess," Nico whispered too tenderly in my ear. "Too much, too fast, remember? Even Chaos has limits."

My hands balled into fists, fearful to touch him before regaining some sense of control over the furious temper still dancing with my pulse. It took his embrace and the soothing words in my ear to realize I was crying. My cheeks were wet, flooded with the expression of all my resentment for Hightower. What it did to me. What it did to all of us.

"I hate them." I slid the words through my teeth. "I hate them all."

Nico stroked my shoulder, holding me up against him. "I know, and the rest will pay for what they did to you, Milla. I vow it on my life."

I nodded mechanically, clutching his false hand over my racing heart when I could finally think straight again. Gideon and Adler came up behind us with Luther between them, eyes wide at the hole in the ground.

"Seven hells," Gideon whispered. "Remind me not to piss you off, Milla."

"Gawk later," Nico snapped. "Get to the docks."

I took one wobbly step before Nico scooped me in his arms and carried me through the front doors, somehow still held together on their hinges. My head fell into the soft curve of his neck and remained there as we departed Hightower.

Never lifting to look back.