9
Ridley soared to the very top of Aura Tower. The moment she was human shaped again, she tugged the mask free and screamed into the buffeting wind. How could she have been so, so, so stupid? How could she have fallen for Archer Davenport and all his lies? She should have listened to her head and not her ridiculous heart.
She thought of their first kiss beneath a stormy sky in the wastelands. Of Archer saying that her magic was beautiful. Of the way he’d held her gaze when she asked him to confirm he wasn’t part of the Shadow Society. That is the absolute truth, he’d said.
She screamed into the wind again.
Then she became air once more, let herself fragment, and whirled, directionless, amid the shimmering skyscrapers of Lumina City’s Opal Quarter. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Archer was
