The human body was not built for the upper atmosphere. It was a terrifying, freezing, breathless void.
Lola held on to Femi with a desperation that left bruises on his ribs. She didn't know how to fly; she was simply riding the chaotic, violent updraft of her own panic. Below them, the sprawling megacity of Lagos looked like a broken circuit board—patches of brilliant amber streetlights and neon billboards clashing with massive, gaping voids of blackness where NEPA had withheld its grace.
The wind roared in their ears, stripping away the heat of the Surulere compound and replacing it with the biting chill of the night sky. Femi squeezed his eyes shut, his arms wrapped protectively around Lola's shoulders. The dark stone blade was still gripped tightly in his hand, a heavy anchor in a world without gravity.
"Lola, the water!" Femi shouted over the deafening rush of air. "Head for the water!"
He could smell it before he saw it—the sharp, briny scent of the Atlantic Ocean mixed with the polluted metallic tang of the Lagos Lagoon. If Adeyemi's helicopters were tracking them, the dense, overlapping thermal currents over the water would make it harder to lock onto their heat signatures.
Lola didn't speak. Her eyes were glowing a brilliant, terrifying violet, her teeth gritted as she fought to steer the cyclone. She banked hard to the south, carrying them over the chaotic traffic of Eko Bridge
Her strength was failing. The adrenaline that had fueled her was burning out, leaving behind the fragile exhaustion of a seventeen-year-old girl. The wind beneath them began to stutter, dropping them ten feet, catching them, then dropping them again.
"I can't... hold it..." Lola gasped, her voice thinning out.
"There!" Femi pointed down.
Rising from the reclaimed land of Eko Atlantic City was the skeleton of a massive, unfinished luxury skyscraper. It was a tower of bare concrete pillars and exposed rebar, jutting into the sky like the spine of a dead leviathan. It was dark, silent, and entirely empty.
Put us down on the highest floor!"
Lola let out a ragged cry and killed the updraft. They fell the last thirty feet in a terrifying freefall. At the last possible second, she thrust her hands downward, creating a cushion of compressed air that caught them just before they hit the bare concrete of the fiftieth floor.
They hit the ground hard, rolling across the rough cement. The stone blade clattered away into the dark.
For a long time, the only sound was their ragged, desperate breathing and the distant, rhythmic crashing of the ocean waves far below.
Femi pushed himself onto his hands and knees. His entire body ached, a deep, vibrating pain that settled in his marrow. He coughed, spitting a mouthful of dark, thick blood onto the concrete. Using too much *ase* to alter the Wardens' bodies had torn something deep inside his mortal vessel.
"Femi!"
Lola scrambled across the floor, ignoring the scrapes on her palms. She fell to her knees beside him, her hands hovering over his back before she gently, fearfully pulled him upright.
I'm okay," Femi rasped, though his voice sounded like wet gravel. "I'm okay."
"You're bleeding again," she whispered. The violet light was gone from her eyes, replaced by the terrified, unshed tears of the girl he had known his whole life. She pulled up the sleeve of her hoodie and wiped the dark blood from his chin.
Her touch was cold from the wind, but it sent a shockwave of profound, ancient comfort through Femi's chest. The Yoruba say that the one who falls in the mud must wash in the river. Right now, Lola was his river.
Femi reached up and wrapped his large, clay-dusted hand over hers.
"We made it," he said softly, leaning his forehead against hers. "We're safe. For tonight."
They sat there on the edge of the sky, two runaway gods shivering in the dark. The wind up here was natural, a steady, biting ocean breeze that whipped Lola's hair around her face. Femi slowly let go of her hand and dragged himself toward the center of the concrete slab.
He placed his palms flat against the unfinished floor.
"What are you doing?" Lola asked, pulling her knees to her chest to conserve warmth. "You need to rest."
Adeyemi has trackers. He has money. Money is a kind of magic here," Femi muttered, his eyes closing. "I need to lock the door."
He pushed his *ase* into the concrete. He didn't try to change its nature this time; he simply asked it to move. The concrete around the only stairwell on the floor groaned, liquefied for a fraction of a second, and then sealed completely shut, turning the entrance into a smooth, impenetrable block of solid stone.
Femi slumped backward, utterly spent.
Lola crawled over to him and lay down by his side, resting her head on his chest. She could hear his heart—it was beating too fast, a frantic, irregular rhythm trying to pump divine energy through mortal veins.
"Femi," Lola said quietly, her voice echoing in the vast, empty space. "Who are we? Really?"
Femi stared up at the starless, smog-choked sky. The memory of the celestial hall, of the white robes and the crushing sorrow, was hovering just at the edge of his consciousness
I was Obu," Femi said, the name tasting like ash and honey on his tongue. "I was a sculptor. I worked with the white clay of creation. And you... you were Oya."
Lola shivered, though not from the cold. "The Princess of Storms. The Hunter said I was the Storm of Orun. But Femi... I don't feel like a princess. I feel like a girl who just blew the roof off her mother's house."
Femi turned his head to look at her. In the faint, ambient glow of the city lights reflecting off the ocean, her face was a masterpiece of shadows and sharp angles. She was beautiful, terrifying, and deeply, irrevocably his.
The Council exiled me," Femi whispered, the forgotten truth finally bleeding into the open. "Because I loved you. And you weren't supposed to follow me. But you did."
Lola lifted her head, her dark eyes locking onto his. The space between them crackled, not with static electricity, but with the terrifying, magnetic weight of a taboo that had broken the heavens.
"I followed you," she repeated softly, a small, fierce smile touching her lips. "Of course I did. What is a sculptor without the wind to dry his clay?"
She leaned down, and for the first time in seventeen years, she didn't pull away from the pull. She pressed her lips to his.
It wasn't a spark. It was a thunderstorm. Femi's hands instinctively tangled in her hair, pulling her closer, grounding her volatile energy against his solid, unyielding earth. The kiss tasted of blood, salt water, and a defiance so absolute it made the concrete beneath them tremble.
Let the Council watch. Let Adeyemi hunt. Up here, on the spine of the island, the exile was over.