The sound was so cold, so harsh, Adrian almost didn’t believe it had come from his own mouth.

But it worked. Nova fell silent.

His lungs were no longer cooperating. It felt impossible to make his chest expand enough against the ropes. Ropes that were growing tighter by the second, digging into his flesh. Cold sweat was beading across his bare back. The altar had suddenly become unbearably cold.

Phobia was a villain. An Anarchist responsible for countless deaths, including Adrian’s own mother’s.

Nova reached for him, but he whipped his head away and she froze.

“It’s impossible,” he said again, more viciously this time. “My creations don’t last this long. They die. They … fade away, after a few weeks, maybe months. But not years.” He shook his head. “There’s no way I created Phobia.”

“Adrian…,” Nova started again, her fingers twitching, as if she wanted to comfort him. But how could she?

They were enemies.

That much was perfectly clear. “If that’s true, then how do you explain the drawings? The timing of it all, the similarities…”

“Coincidence,” he spat.

Nova rocked back on her heels, and he could tell that she wanted to believe him, but didn’t.

He snarled, his voice rising. “I didn’t make that monster, Nova! Do you really think I’d be capable of that?”

After a hesitation, she slowly shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “But … I’m not sure I believe in coincidences anymore, either.”

The clatter of Honey’s shoes reverberated through the chapel again, and she appeared in the doorway a moment later.

“I know that probably wasn’t enough time to come to terms with this dreadful new information,” she said, smiling sweetly at Adrian. “The good news is, you’ll soon be put out of your misery.” She beamed at Nova. “Ace wants us in the bell tower.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

NOVA SEEMED SENSITIVE to the ragged wounds on Adrian’s forearms, but Queen Bee showed no qualms about grabbing his bare arms as they hauled Adrian to his feet.

“What’s happening in the bell tower?” he asked.

“Only your doom,” Honey said with a giggle.

Adrian glowered at her. “Is that a dressy occasion? Because someone sort of destroyed my shirt.”

“Believe me, that’s the least of your worries,” said Honey, patting him on the shoulder.

Nova took a handgun from her belt, and though she didn’t aim it at him, the threat was implied.

Adrian shook his head at her, still reeling from the absurd suggestion that he might have created Phobia. “You’re not going to shoot me.”

Nova gave him a look, and it was so hollow and unfamiliar that Adrian immediately wanted to take the words back.

At least she was looking at him, though, and with something more than just pity over his supposed creation. He held the gaze until she was forced to turn away.

Despite everything, it remained impossible for him to imagine Nova shooting him. He had been wrong about her, in so many ways. But this, his mind refused to compromise on.

Nova was not going to kill him. This much, he had to believe.

But would she stand by and do nothing once the other Anarchists decided he’d served his usefulness? That, he couldn’t be so sure about.

It was very likely that he was going to die in this cathedral. Maybe it would be Ace Anarchy himself who did the honors. Or even Phobia.

Phobia. His mother’s murderer. An abomination, maybe, but not one that Adrian had anything to do with. He was sure of that.

Wasn’t he?

He couldn’t fend off a sting of doubt. Honey and Nova had been persuasive, and the drawings did look like the villain … but Phobia had been tormenting Renegades for years. Probably Adrian’s art had been inspired by the villain, on a subconscious level. It didn’t prove anything. Besides, nothing he’d made had ever lived half as long before. Why would Phobia be different?

He shuddered at the very implication—that if Nova was right, he had created his mother’s killer.

But it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true.

He tightened his jaw and tried to convince himself that this was just a mind game they were playing with him. Something to distract him. To leave him disheartened and hopeless. That’s all this was.

Nova and Queen Bee took him down a corridor of watchful statues and past the main altar, then into the north transept. Queen Bee carried the lantern, which offered them enough light to see by, if not enough to fully illuminate the shadowed corners. Nova pulled open a heavy wood door and cocked her head, indicating for Adrian to go first.

He found himself trudging up a marble staircase that wrapped the walls of a large square tower. He could hear the Renegades from here, their attacks drumming against the erected barrier. Though the leaded windows were too narrow to escape through, he kept searching the world beyond them for any sign of what was happening outside. But all he could see were glimpses of the dome and the darkness that filled it. The Renegades hadn’t breached it yet.

They passed two stories and then ducked through another narrower door into the top half of the tower. The steps changed from marble to wood. They had reached a place where visitors and worshipers would not have entered, where only bell ringers might once have trod.

The staircase seemed to spiral into eternity, disappearing into shadows overhead. The windows were still Gothic style—leaded glass surrounded by stone moldings—but otherwise, this section of the tower was simple and utilitarian. Undecorated walls and supportive wooden beams crosshatched between the rickety stairs.

Adrian climbed. The wood beneath his bare feet was worn to velvet smoothness and he was grateful that Honey hadn’t started her mutilations with his feet, otherwise this trek would have been torturous. They rounded a corner to another flight of steps and he took the chance to glance back at Nova. She bristled and jabbed the barrel of the gun into his back.

At the top of a particularly steep, narrow section of the staircase, they came to a solid wooden platform overhead. Nova reached past Adrian to push up the trapdoor, doing everything in her power to avoid touching him as she did.

The door fell back with a thud and a cloud of dust rained down through the opening. Adrian angled his face away, coughing.

“Heroes first,” cooed Honey Harper.

It was awkward to climb the last of the tiny steps without being able to use his hands for balance, but Adrian managed to do it without falling on his face. He found himself in the belfry, where two enormous bells hung in the center of the tower, along with a series of smaller bells suspended in the openings around the exterior walls. The windows here had no glass, allowing the bells’ music to ring outward over the surrounding neighborhood.

Back when there had been a surrounding neighborhood.

Up here, the sounds of war were more pronounced, each strike on the enormous shield reverberating through the floorboards at their feet. Explosions. Grinding and chopping. A steady clanging that battered against the dome again and again. Adrian couldn’t help but wonder what sort of damage the Renegades could have done if they hadn’t suffered so many casualties at the arena. As it was, he was proud to hear them putting up such a ferocious fight.

He was led to a window where one of the smaller bells was hung a few feet overhead, where he could view the dead, faded wastelands. Ace’s barrier rose up a couple of hundred feet ahead of them, blocking out the city. Blocking out the sky.

To his surprise, Queen Bee extinguished the lantern. Though it wasn’t pitch-black, it was dark enough that, for a moment, Adrian could barely see the Anarchists’ outlines. Then Nova lit a few of her micro-flares and tossed them out the window. Some landed on the pitched roof of the cathedral below, a couple on the wide arcade that ran along the northern side of the church. A few more fell into the barren land beyond. Though they succeeded in pushing away some of the darkest shadows, their faint light only served to make the atmosphere even more menacing.

Realizing that Nova’s attention was on the front of the cathedral, Adrian followed the look and saw figures emerging onto the roofs of the two western towers that framed the grand cathedral entrance. His blood cooled to see Phobia among them.

Ace Anarchy himself appeared, recognizable by the helmet that seemed to have its own faint glow. The villain lifted his arms dramatically, and Adrian felt both Nova and Queen Bee tense beside him.

The collection of debris that had been forged together to build the dome began to rattle. Rivulets of dust streamed down.

Straight ahead, directly facing the cathedral’s western facade, a slim shard of light appeared unexpectedly from the base of the barrier. Not sunlight, but something blinding white and artificial, as if there were a giant spotlight trained on the barrier. Like massive doors opening, the wall peeled back on either side of the breach. Metal and wood and stone grated against one another, folding inward until an arched tunnel had opened between the wasteland and the world beyond. Adrian squinted against the unexpected onslaught of light, a swath cutting its way straight through to the main entryway of the church.

For a moment, all fell still. Adrian wondered what the Renegades would do with this open invitation, one that could only be a trap.

As soon as the pathway had been cleared, the assault on the dome’s exterior ceased. A heady silence filled the space. Adrian felt the hair standing up on his arms, apprehension hanging in the air with an electric charge.

They waited. In the stillness, he could hear Nova’s breathing. Though she was right beside him, she seemed to be taking care not to touch him and, strangely enough, he translated this as a sign that she still cared for him. He had a heightened awareness of her proximity, and he couldn’t help believing that if she felt nothing for him, then she wouldn’t be taking such care to avoid an occasional brush of skin.

He stopped himself before his thoughts could travel much further down that path, because it raised a series of uncomfortable questions about his own feelings, questions he wasn’t prepared to face. Not when Nova was wearing a black hooded jacket and holding a gun to his side.