Free Vanish by Sophie Jordan Page B

out at him through vertical pupils. Steam eats up my throat, burns through my mouth and nostrils.
    I stagger back a step. He doesn’t move this time. He lets me go.
    Turning, I sprint through damp air until my lungs burn and feel ready to burst from my too-tight chest. I revel in it—a pleasure that borders on pain, a welcome distraction. Even as I slow my pace, I vow to keep going, keep walking until I’ve regained composure. Until I no longer feel Cassian’s arms around me. Until I no longer hear his words. Selfish, scared little girl. Selfish, scared little girl.
    Damn him for getting in my head. For maybe being right.
    The red-gold beams of fading dusk filter down through the mist. The fiery light touches my skin in flashes, gilding me here and there, reminding me of how I look in full manifest—of what I am. What I will always be. The desert hadn’t killed it. Nothing can.
    I feel certain of that now. My draki will never fade. Maybe it’s all I know anymore.
    I survived my mother’s attempt to kill off my draki. I survived the desert, hunters all around me with their hungry gazes, the fear so thick I could taste it in my mouth. After all that, I know my draki is here to stay. I don’t have to worry about losing that part of myself anymore. I should be happy. Relieved.
    Except I’m not. My eyes sting and I blink them rapidly.
    Inhaling deeply, I move. My chest rises, fills with the aroma of sweet, arable earth. I’m sustained here. Even if my soul yearns for more. For Will.
    Anger surges through me. I’m crazy to yearn for a boy lost to me forever. Why can’t I move on and find what happiness I can with the pride?
    Then I see it sketched against the hazy twilight. The dilapidated tower stretches up through the fog like an ancient, twisting tree covered in thick, wiry vines. It’s not as tall as the other three watchtowers strategically positioned throughout the township, but it’s the oldest, the first, built back when the idea of existing without a shader seemed impossible, a reality for which we needn’t prepare.
    Time changed that attitude. As Nidia aged and no other shader manifested, fear set in that the next generation of draki would be without a shader. The other towers were built then, stronger—taller than before—in preparation for the days to come when we would have to rely on ourselves to safeguard the township.
    I stop at the base and look up. Watchtowers are always camouflaged with vines and bramble, the better to blend them with the natural landscape, but this one looks more natural than the others. And I love that. Love the wildness of it as it returns to nature. It hasn’t been used in years, since before I was born, but I remember this forgotten tower well, my childhood haunt.
    I lay my hand on a weathered rung and begin to climb. An animal, startled by my intrusion, scurries up the twisted beams as I ascend.
    I push through the congestion of leaves. Wiry branches poke me, grab my hair like sharp fingers as I climb higher and higher. Rotting wood creaks beneath me. I reach the top and drop onto my back on the moss-speckled wood with a sigh.
    I splay a hand over my stomach, feel myself breathe in and out, my lungs expanding. And it all comes back to me. My love for this place. A place I can safely exist. Where I can be me. Away from prying eyes.
    A canopy of green covers me. I spot the sky drifting overhead through gaps in the wood and foliage. Sitting up, I cross my legs and stare out at the vast, pulsing green world spread below. The pride is there. The green-tiled roofs peep out through Nidia’s mist.
    Mist curls between the houses and buildings, covering the fields, crawling over the township’s walls and spreading across the land like a living thing, settling thickly into the valleys and over the lesser hills and mountains in a foamy white. Only the tallest treetops poke through the mantle of fog.
    “Thought I’d find you here.”
    I shrink into myself, pulling my knees close to