Page 86 of The Black Key

My chest swells with pride. “I know you can,” I say. “Come on.”

We leave the throne room and exit out into a garden filled with butterflies and rosebushes. The sun is molten gold in a perfect blue sky. I feel an overwhelming sense of exuberance. We did it.

Raven grips my hand as I take Hazel’s.

“What are we doing?” she asks.

“We’re going to show you who you really are,” I say. I’ve said it so many times before, at Southgate, Westgate, at all the holding facilities. I’ve given girls something to believe in, showed them what they were capable of.

But it’s never meant as much to me as it does now.

The cliff is perfect when we arrive.

The sky mirrors our sky, cloudless and bright blue. The air is warm and bees buzz lazily around the monument. The trees are lush and green, and the gentle roar of the ocean is soothing below. How I long to see the true ocean.

I turn to my sister. She stares around, captivated by the beauty and wonder of this place. Her violet eyes are filled with awe.

I sigh.

Change her back, I whisper silently to this space, to my ancestors who linger just beyond, in a place between living and dead. Please.

Change her back, Raven whispers beside me. Our pleas drift into the air and swirl around the silvery blue monument and it’s as if I can hear a hundred voices taking up the cry.

Change her back, change her back . . .

Hazel has run to the edge of the cliff, gazing out across the ocean. Suddenly, she grabs her face, dropping to her knees. I start to run toward her but Raven stops me, keeping a tight grip on my hand. Hazel rocks back and forth for a few moments, then goes still.

When she turns back to me, my heart leaps to my throat, and if I could make a sound, cry out in this place, I would.

The magic of this cliff has worked. The Paladin have returned her to who she once was. Whatever the doctor did was no match for the power that exists here.

Hazel’s face is the one I remember, the one I grew up with. Her eyes are back to their original color, her nose and mouth and cheeks all the same as they used to be. She stares the same wide-eyed stare I’ve seen on the faces of so many girls now. Raven and I join her at the edge of the cliff. We look out at the ocean, letting the salty tang fill our nostrils, and I feel a sense of wonder, of curiosity. I feel as if I am a very small part of something so large, it cannot be contained in one island, one city.

I wonder what is out there.

Me too, Raven thinks. Want to find out?

Yes, I think back. But there is something I have to do first.

Twenty-Eight

WHEN WE RETURN FROM THE CLIFF, WE FIND THAT Hazel’s flowers are white, like mine were.

She bends down and they grow taller, reaching toward her fingertips, their cheery faces brushing her skin before withering to die, even as new ones grow to take their place.

“What do you feel?” I ask, wondering which elements she can connect with.

“Everything,” she whispers. “I can feel the grass growing and hear the wind whispering and there’s something shimmery and flowy, like . . . like water.”

I clasp her shoulders in my hands. “Stay out here for a little while. Everything is going to be different from now on. Enjoy this moment. It’s the beginning of your new life.”

In so many ways, I think. It’s a new city. It’s a new world.

I don’t want to leave my sister but there’s something I have to do. Or, more accurately, a place I need to visit.

I turn to Raven, but she’s a step ahead of me. The benefit of having a best friend who can sometimes read your thoughts.

“Garnet and I will stay with her,” she says. “Go.”