Echo walked past shuttered storefronts, gravel crunching beneath her boots. Beside her, Rowan kept a watchful eye on the stragglers who had refused to abandon the once-bustling market in the wake of the Nest’s fall. His hands were thrust into his pockets; he would have looked like he was out for a casual stroll if not for the tension threaded through his back and the tightness of his jaw. The Agora was not the same as it had once been, but then, Echo thought, none of them were.
The gaslights that illuminated the Agora’s cavernous interior cast a greasy yellow glow over the bare tabletops and darkened windows. Gone was the plum-feathered Avicen woman named Crystal who had peddled a bizarre collection of knickknacks culled from all over the globe. If you were looking for buttons to adorn a Victorian-era waistcoat, she was your girl. If you were in the market for a shrunken head—cursed, naturally—pilfered from an obscure cultist tribe in the depths of the Amazon rain forest, she was also your girl. But now her little kiosk stood empty, bare of its eccentricities and strangely morose in the Agora’s gloom. Also gone were the blacksmith—an Avicen by the name of Othello who had a deep and abiding obsession with speaking in iambic pentameter—and the cobbler and the baker. The cobbler had repaired more than one pair of Echo’s boots over the years, and the baker would sneak her treats when his wife wasn’t looking in exchange for the latest issue of Spider-Man. She’d spotted the cobbler in one of the overcrowded rooms in Avalon Castle, where those who’d survived the attack on the Nest had sought refuge, but the baker was listed among the missing. A wall in the castle’s foyer had been requisitioned as a board for people to post notices of loved ones unaccounted for, though Echo had let her gaze wander to it only once, and only for a few seconds. It made her feel as though icicles were sprouting inside her stomach, spearing her tender organs with their sharp chill. There were too many names on that board she recognized, too many faces she knew. There was nothing she could do for the lost and the dead. At least, that was what she told herself.
She wondered if Crystal had survived the attack on the Nest. Echo hadn’t seen her photo on the board, but she hadn’t pored over every single one. She’d spent a few days raking her eyes over the haunted faces of the refugees at Avalon, but doing so had threatened to drive her mad. It was easier, Echo found, to wonder about the people whose faces she didn’t see. She couldn’t bear to think of them as dead, and if by some miracle they weren’t, she couldn’t bear to see the accusation she feared would be in their eyes. Not all of the Avicen blamed Echo for the tragedy that had befallen them, but enough of them did to stoke the embers of guilt in Echo’s heart to a roaring fire.
Echo and Rowan stuck to the edges of the Agora to avoid the few vendors who had bothered to stay—warlocks, every last one of them, probably selling mummified kittens in jars or something equally horrific. Their pale gazes burned holes in her back. They watched, but they didn’t approach. A small part of Echo hoped they were afraid of her. Warlocks were bad—the kind of bad that should exist only in fairy tales where tricksters spirited away firstborns or made princesses spin gold until their fingers fell off. They were as monstrous as humans could make themselves, and if monsters were afraid of Echo, then maybe she stood a chance in the messed-up fairy tale her own life had become.
Her footsteps slowed as she approached her destination: Perrin’s Enchanting Essentials.
“Wait outside?” she asked Rowan. She didn’t like the look of those warlocks, even if she was newly fearsome. Judging by his terse nod, Rowan didn’t like the look of them either.
“Hurry back.” He took up a position by the door, looking every inch the strapping Warhawk recruit, despite his civilian clothes. He had changed too, just as much as Echo had. With a small huff, Echo steeled herself to enter the shop.
The door swung open with a weak squeal. The hinges were rusty, something that happened to metal with ease down in the Agora, yet Perrin had been fastidious about maintaining his shop; he’d taken such pride in it. But he wasn’t here anymore, not to oil the hinges, nor to wipe down the glass countertops, nor to refill the small bowls of fragrant flowers placed strategically around the room. The flower petals had long since wilted, and the display cases had collected a heavy layer of dust. Handprints cut through the grime in spots, evidence that someone had tampered with the protective charms Perrin had placed on the cases to guard their contents. Those cases stood mostly empty now, ransacked of anything of even moderate value. Shame flooded Echo at the sight. It hadn’t occurred to her that no one would be around to tend Perrin’s shop after…well, after.
If she was completely honest with herself—and she avoided that more often than she cared to admit—she had deliberately skirted memories of Perrin. She hadn’t wanted to remember him. Not his life. Not his death. Memory was a burden borne by the survivors. Dying, Echo knew now, was easy. It could be painful or frightening or any number of things, but when it was done, it was done. She had died once before. She knew, better than most. It was living that was hard. Moving forward when memory wanted nothing more than to pull you back…that was the real challenge. Like Sisyphus pushing his boulder uphill for all eternity, it was a battle that could not be won. But the living kept trying because that was what it meant to be alive. To keep going lest the boulder crush you under its weight. That would be giving up, and giving up was not an option. It hadn’t ever been, not for Echo, not since stabbing herself in the heart and tying her life inextricably to the fates of thousands.