Firelight by Sophie Jordan Page B

small. Farther still, mountains spill like a splash of liquid against the night.
    I hover, suspended in ink, the smack of my wings on the air jarring slaps.
    My body doesn’t feel right. Even my lungs feel oddly…small. Powerless and ordinary. The coldly functioning human Jacinda feels more natural than this. And that makes me want to scream. Grieve.
    Still, I force it, fly over the green course, struggle to gain speed, too wary to fly beyond in case I can’t hold the manifest. I drink air, forcing it down my throat in gulps. Only it doesn’t help. Doesn’t fill me. Doesn’t expand my shriveling lungs.
    I persist, exerting myself until my ragged breath is the only sound ripping through my head. At last I give up, stop, descend in an unwinding circle. Like the fluttering of a dying moth.
    With a sobbing breath, I touch down, return to the copse of trees. Demanifest. There, I bow at the waist, clutch my stomach, my body punishing me for what it’s no longer willing to do. Spasms rack me as I dry-heave. The wretching sounds are ugly. The agony endless.
    I grab a tree with one hand, dig my fingers into the bark. Feel a nail split from the pressure.
    At last, it ends. With shaking hands, I dress myself, and then fall weakly onto my back, arms wide at my sides, palms open. Limp. The beat of my heart fades to a dull fearful thud perceptible only at the wrists.
    The ground beneath me is quiet. I sense no gems. No energy. Below the carpet of grass there is only hard, dead earth.
    I knot my hand into a fist and beat the ground once. Hard. It doesn’t give. Beneath the thin cushion of grass, the earth sleeps without a heart.
    I stare up at the black night through the latticework of branches. For a moment, I can kid myself.
    Pretend that my body does not hurt. Pretend that I’m home again, staring up at the night through a thick growth of pine branches. That nurturing forest presses around me. Shielding and covering with a loving hand.
    Az is near me. Together we stare up at the sky, talking, laughing, unworried for tomorrow. I delude myself awhile longer. Smile like a fool in the dark as I enjoy this game of pretend, remembering when everything was simple and I had only Cassian’s dark-eyed stare to endure.
    In hindsight, it seems such a small nuisance. Before this hell.
    Firelight
    12
    Eventually, I rise and head for home. Home. The word lacks any comfort.
    It’s slow going. My body aches, feels beaten and heavy with every stride. The night is still. No cars drive through the quiet neighborhood at this late hour. My soles scrape the pavement. I follow the meandering sidewalk, watching my shoes fall one after the other on sun-bleached concrete. I turn the corner of my street.
    Close now to Mrs. Hennessey’s, I look up.
    Headlights round the opposite corner, growing larger. I edge the sidewalk, distancing myself from the street. The vehicle is nearly even with Mrs. Hennessey’s house, its engine a heavy purr.
    It slows. So do I.
    I don’t need anyone spotting me out this late. Don’t need a friend of Mrs. Hennessey or another neighbor mentioning it to my mother.
    By now, I can tell it’s not a car. A truck? The windshield glints like a mirror as it rolls closer to the curb. My skin shivers and my pulse jackknifes against the flesh at my neck. I’ve seen enough crime television to feel instant apprehension. And I know enough to trust my instincts.
    I brace myself, slowing down so that I’m barely walking. I wait, watch, assess with a quick darting of my eyes. I grab hold of my apprehension before it explodes into full-scale fear and I manifest…
    assuming I can.
    Then I see it. There’s a light bar on top, unlit. Like it’s in stealth mode. I see that and I understand.
    They’re here. Where I live. Stalking me. Somehow they figured it out. Figured out the truth about me. Maybe Will recognized me at last and is here to revoke his act of mercy from that day in the mountains.
    They see me then. The Land Rover guns