Extricating herself from the boy, Nova made her way toward them. Ruby had tears shining in her eyes, though she wasn’t yet crying. Actually, as Nova got closer, she realized they were both holding back tears, though Oscar was working hard to disguise them with a determined scowl. He was trying to pull away from Ruby, but she was clinging to his sleeve, refusing to let go.
“I survived one fire,” he said. “I’ll survive this one too!”
“You don’t know that!”
“I’m not letting him die in there!”
“He might already be—”
“Don’t say that!”
Ruby stepped back, her face pinched.
Nova stepped closer. “Adrian?”
Ruby’s face scrunched up in agony. “Still no sign of him.” The words were followed by a sob, but she clapped a hand over her mouth, the struggle to hold in her emotions apparent in the shaking of her shoulders. “Did he say anything to you?”
“He said…” Nova struggled to remember. It felt like ages ago since she’d offered to take Ingrid from him. “He was going to look for the lost kid.” Her gaze slid back to the child, who had returned to the other children across the street.
“I’m going back in,” said Oscar, tearing his arm from Ruby. His limp had become more pronounced as he started to make his way toward the library. Despite the flames and smoke ravishing the shattered windows, the front facade of the building was relatively unscathed compared with the rest of the structure. The exterior brownstone was standing strong, but Nova knew that inside it would be little more than a shell by this point. A smoldering, blackened shell.
“Oscar!”
Ruby’s scream was punctuated by a loud crack within the library, followed by a boom and a spurt of new flames and sparks billowing up out of the open ceiling. Another part of the second-story floor had just caved in.
Nova shuddered and took a few steps closer, watching the building burn.
Surely, he would have gotten out before it was too late. Surely …
But not if he still believed there was a child needing to be rescued. Somehow, though she knew so little about Adrian, she knew this for sure. He would not have left so long as he believed someone needed his help.
She wrapped a hand around the bracelet on her wrist. The sickening thought came to her, unbidden. Ingrid had achieved her goal. She had killed Adrian Everhart.
Captain Chromium and the Dread Warden would be devastated.
Nova felt only hollow disbelief—none of the accomplishment, none of the joy she might otherwise have expected. He might have been her enemy, but … she did not think he deserved to die.
The sudden blow of an air horn screamed through the street. Nova tensed and looked around, unsure where the noise had come from.
It sounded again. A crude, distressed honking, over and over.
Brow knitting, Nova took a step closer to the library. Her heart had started to pound. With disbelief, but also … with hope?
She exchanged looks with Ruby and Oscar, then she took off running, sprinting around to the back of the library. This wall had mostly collapsed when Ingrid launched the bomb into the rare books room and great chunks of brownstone had blown halfway across the street, leaving behind a mountain of rubble where the wall had stood. Inside, the flames were dying down, but the collapsed floors were still smoldering and the air was alive with blackened book pages drifting into ashes.
The horn continued to blow, sounding from somewhere within the smoking ruins.
Oscar stamped past Nova and reached for a piece of splintered wood on top of the nearest pile of debris. With a grunt, he heaved it off the pile, then reached in for a destroyed bookcase. Nova could see he meant to clear a path to wherever that noise was coming from. But not seconds later, Oscar roared and stumbled back, staring at his burned hands. He let out a stream of curses and started using his cane like a crowbar to lift pieces of debris instead.
Ruby joined him a second later, flinging her bloodstone hook and dragging away chunks of stone and wood and plaster.
Nova gulped, her hand landing on the satchel on her belt. Her gloves were heat proof. Nightmare’s gloves …
She shut her eyes and told herself that if anyone became suspicious she would be able to find a perfectly reasonable explanation for why she had gloves so similar to those Nightmare had been seen wearing.
She tried not to think of how the Anarchists would scream at her for doing something so stupid, something that risked giving her away, all to save one measly Renegade—
Exhaling, she opened the pouch and reached inside.