AS THEY STEPPED ONTO the platform that led to the station doors, Angel let her eyes linger on the ice that decorated the stony steps and the sharp golden knobs on the pine-colored doors. Blocks of ice were wedged between each stone like checkered tile, trailing from the station's entrance all the way to the stairwell.
As Arkin pushed open the heavy door, a cool breeze blew directly in Angel's face, forcefully pushing her medium-length black hair awry. There had been a time when her hair had run all the way down her spine—just like Nylie's—but she had spitefully chopped it in half when she had been mistaken with her sister twice in the same day. She shoved it roughly from her eyes, eager to see the train she had not laid eyes on in nearly two years.
A train made of both glass and ice, the Alamain stood proudly at the end of the station. It was slim and sleek, its body so long that Angel could hardly see where it ended. The seats were decorated of sapphire and gold, the two colors dancing throughout the interior, the ceiling painted in various patterns of mint green.
There were no separate cars, only a large one with the capacity to seat at least two hundred people. There was nothing but a raised platform beside it for people to enter and leave through the gates. There were no tracks beneath it; the Alamain rode purely on its own magic, a floating train.
What intrigued Angel the most was how the sky stood behind it, forever frozen at 6:38 Q.M.—the Quarter Moon—right when the Sun would have set. But the Sun and Moon had mysteriously vanished that day, leaving not a trace as to where they might have gone. It was a mirrored reflection of what had happened in Paravald, only three years prior.
The sky had stayed frozen for the past 14 years. With no Sun to set the sky, with no Moon to turn the tides, the world had stopped, the clock along with it.
But it was strange how only Windham had been affected. Paravald and Wayward had carried on, as if unaware that they had left a part of themselves behind. Perhaps it was because it was the only territory that both worlds shared—the Mid Ring, they called it, for Windham being located right in the center of the two worlds.
Without the Sun and Moon, Windham would remain frozen. Five more days of this deconstructed time, and the world would crack under pressure, bits and pieces of itself floating around in an abyss with no purpose, no direction.
Not for the first time, Angel wondered for the well-being of Nylie and her friends, and if they had made any progress in finding the Aydar and the Asad. She sometimes found it hard to believe that the world would end in five days, because of two stubborn people she had the displeasure of knowing intimately—her mother and father.
If they don't work out their damn issues, Angel thought angrily, I'll kill them.
Her entire family was selfish, cruel, ruined from the inside out. Every single person. It was amazing, really, how each of them were all rotten in their own way. Even Tristen. Especially Tristen.
"I love it when you look like that," Arkin said, drawing Angel back from her thoughts.
"Look like what?" she said irritably.
"Like you're thinking about something too deep for the rest of us to understand."
Angel rolled her eyes. "Are we getting on this damn train, or what?"
"After you," he said mockingly.
"Don't give me that gentleman-ly bullshit," she said, not looking back as she stomped across the station and onto the train.
Paravald required a different Angel, someone she was no longer used to being. Cold and selfish. On a normal day, she was all of those things. But the place they were going now, Osinharo--Paravald's biggest city--it required her to be just like her sister.
Angel only pretended to hate the world and everyone in it, but Nylie was different. She genuinely wanted nothing to do with anyone, except for the brooding, hot boy she was always around. Rehan. Angel didn't think her sister had ever truly liked anything, but maybe it was different with him. She didn't know. Neither of them told each other anything. It had been that way for some time now.
Paravald had been her world for 14 years; it would always have a special hold on her. But she would not allow herself to grow any ties on this mission. That was not why she had come back. She had done it for a reason, and despite what everyone thought, it wasn't because her sister had forbidden her to. Angel had her own reasons, just like Nylie had hers. Just like they all did. And she would not let anything deter her.
"You're prepared for this? To go back?" Arkin asked, sliding into the seat beside her.
He knew. He knew everything. He knew why she'd had to leave, what it had cost her, the crucial thing that had broken inside her when she'd left. But not once had he brought it up, or demanded her express her feelings. He only waited for her to breach the subject on her own, the subject she avoided like the plague. But she wouldn't start talking about it now.
So she only said, "I don't have a choice."
Arkin did not look at her as he leaned over and secured the seat belt around her waist. The fluorescent light of the train reflected off his platinum hair, making it look even more pale than usual. Peppermint wafted from his clothing as he leaned back, securing his own seat belt.
He finally looked at her and said, "We always have a choice, Angie. We're always left with something. It's just the matter of how desperate we are. That's the only thing that defines the choices we make."
Angel opened her mouth to speak, but the floor rumbled beneath them, drowning out her words. A loud hiss rolled through the car, but no passenger glanced up as the Alamain's doors swung shut, and the train slowly began to pull from the station.
The Aerial Train slowly rose into the air only to pivot back down, causing a few passengers nearby to lose their dinners in the waste bin. The waste bins were baggies installed in separate compartments for Alamain passengers who had extremely loose stomachs. Angel rudely scooted away from them.
"I forgot how disastrous this thing is," Arkin groaned, clutching his stomach.
Angel smirked, fighting back her own wave of nausea. "Your ideas are usually terrible."
"At least I had one," he snapped, his face turning pale.
She rolled her eyes. "Please. I would have come up with my own method to get to Paravald. No matter how risky, dangerous, or illegal."
Arkin threw her a look as the Aerial Train did another pivot. "I don't doubt that. Not even a little."
The Alamain suddenly swerved sideways for no particular reason, bucking and jerking to avoid things that weren't there. The sky was traffic-free; the Aerial Train ruled the entire space. There was nothing stopping it from having a nice, smooth train ride. Yet Angel suspected that it was purposely being difficult--as she sometimes did--to irk people.
"I demand an audience with the conductor," Arkin said, inching closer to the waste bin. His face was positively green now. Angel nearly laughed at the sight of him, but quickly held it in as she felt the contents of her stomach rise abruptly.
"There is no conductor."
"I don't think I can take any more of this," he groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.
"Stupid lycan."
He glanced over at her, his eyes wide. "How are you not dying right now?"
She flipped her hair over a shoulder. Of course she was feeling like she was about to barf up her dinner, but she wasn't about to tell him that. Besides, he was being a drama queen. It wasn't that bad.
The Alamain rose higher into the sky, the temperature in the car dropping by a few degrees. The train plummeted back down. I take it back, Angel thought miserably, holding her head in both hands. It is that bad.
"At least we're almost there," Arkin said beside her, his voice sounding far-off.
"How do you know?" she asked, turning her head to watch the blur of pink and marigold whip past them in the narrow, glass windows. It was like time-traveling, she realized. Like time-traveling through a rainbow.
"Because the sky is growing darker. Paravald is pitch black. Tell me you didn't forget that."
"How could I?" she muttered. Indeed, even the train was beginning to slow, was beginning to lower onto the ground, the sky growing even more vast than it had been before. The stars seemed to wink and gaze at her as the Alamain terminated at long last.
The cruel beauty of Paravald was not lost on her, no matter how long she had lived here. Arkin was just as entranced as she was, though he was better at hiding it. She had a loyalty to Wayward now; Paravald had not been good to her.
Each of the Alamain's five gates slowly swung open on silent hinges. Arkin and Angel cautiously exited the train, hoards of people milling past them to leave. As they exited the station, Angel looked around at the landscape that was becoming easier to see the closer she got to the pine double doors, where it led to the beautiful, bustling streets, dark alleys, and high rooftops of the city below. Memories sprung out at her, demanding to be remembered.
But she would not fall into this perpetual hole, this endless cycle of missing things she would never have again. She felt Arkin watching her, but she did not look at him as she lifted her chin and pushed open the door on her own, allowing the air on the other side to blind her vision for a short moment. She did not balk from the tide of emotions that rushed at her; she let herself feel them for this brief quiet moment, did not try to quell them.
Sometimes you had to feel what needed to be felt, learn what needed to be known. And of course, it would hurt like hell, but once you got through the agony, you'd be free. So Angel did not try to block out the buildings that were as familiar to her as her own name, did not attempt to wipe away the tears that rushed down her face as she suddenly smelled warm caramel cones.
Angel stumbled as she saw the same elderly woman handing out a cone to a young boy, her chestnut eyes twinkling in the moonlight. Arkin made to catch her fall, but she waved him off, already racing as fast as she could to Lolly's Street Vendor.
"Lolly," she said breathlessly. "Lolly, it's me. It's Angel. I'm back."
The old woman looked at her for a long moment, and for a second--for a terrible, heart-wrenching moment--Angel thought she had forgotten her. But then recognition shone in her eyes, then joy, then anger, then sadness. All at once.
Angel laughed, ignoring the cart and rushing at the old woman. "I'm back, Lolly, did you miss me? I certainly missed you."
Lolly shoved her away. Angel stumbled but caught herself, laughing through her tears.
"Oh, quiet, you stupid child. You didn't miss me, you missed my cones."
Angel shrugged. "Not really."
The woman glared at her as Arkin finally reached them, grinning from ear to ear.
"Old woman," he said by way of greeting.
Lolly rolled her eyes dramatically. "Idiot boy."
Angel didn't fight it as she felt Paravald take hold of her, allowing it to unlock something deep inside her, something she had buried long ago. There would be consequences for this, but right now, she didn't care. Not as she stood before two of the most important people in her life. Not as she remembered how much she'd missed this, when her days had been filled with nothing but Arkin, Lolly, and sugar caramelized cones. She didn't know how she had survived without this woman, the woman that had practically become her grandmother.
Paravald had a way of offering you the world, and then watching in delight as all that you loved was stolen right before your eyes. But Angel didn't care.
Damn the consequences. Damn her broken heart. She was right where she belonged.
She was home.