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Tally checked the flash tattoo on Peris’s forehead - a third eye that blinked with his heartbeat - and looked into his gorgeous eyes, brown and soft and depthless Peris seeo - all the Crier saw improvement in him from day to day It was so much harder for the rest of them who hadn’t had the pills, eren’t half-cured like Tally and Zane They could get excited in the short term, but it was hard to keep theive them a jolt

"It’s okay, Nose Let’s skate" Tally pushed off against the flat of one blade, building up speed as she swept around the rink’s outer edge She looked down through the mottledof ice underfoot

The hoverlifters that held the floating rink up in the air were easy to see, spaced in a grid a few eration tendrils Much farther below, the broad oval of the sports stadiuh a pretty- up for the soccer game scheduled in forty-five minutes As always, there would be fireworks before it started, once the croas in their seats Very pretty-

The sky above was an uninterrupted expanse of blue, except for a few hot-air balloons tethered to the tallest party spires When it was airborne, the skating rink was the highest thing in New Pretty Town Tally could glimpse the entire city spread out below

She skated after Zane, catching him as he rounded a turn "Everybody seeracefully reversed, skating backward as easily as breathing His operation-augmented muscles had been freed from pretty ti, climb up to hisin Pulcher Mansion in seconds, and outrun the ht crumblies from the burbs into the central hospital He never broke a sweat and could hold his breath for two solidhiers who’d rescued her from a brushfire on her journey to the Smoke Zane was as physically confident as they had been - fast and strong, but without the twitching inhuents Tally was no slouch herself, but soth and coordination to a new level She loved gliding across the ice with hiraceful center of the Cri from the New Smoke?" he asked, barely audible over the swoosh of skates

"Peris says nothing"

Zane swore and took a tight turn, spraying ice on a non-Criht up to his off"

"I’h the ice The stadiua?"

"Any minute now," she said

As the words left her mouth the first fireworks exploded below, instantly transfor the rink into a mottled palette of reds and blues A second later, a tardy boo ahhh of appreciation frorin, his irritation erased

Tally squeezed his hand and then let hi to a halt in the center of the rink, the farthest point fro hoverstructure around the ice She raised one hand and waited as the other Criht pack around her

"Flasks," she said softly, and heard the whisper spread through the pack

Flashes ofunscrewed Her heart was beating fast, her senses sharpened by anticipation Everyone’s tattoos were totally spinning She saw Zane gathering speed along the outside of the rink

"Pour," she said softly

A liquid sound spread through the pack of Cri out Tally thought she heard a creak, the slightest of co point was lowered by the spirits

Even in the old days, Zane had always dreane on the ice while the Crims skated But the cure had e in his roohtly different mix of vodka and water, and stuck it in the freezer The all-water cube had frozen norot slushier and slushier, leaving the final all-vodka cube completely liquid

Tally looked down at the layer of spirits slowly spreading across the ice through their skates,away the marks of blades and falls The stadiu focus, until Tally could see every detail of a rising plureen and yellow fireworks When the thunderous boom reached her ears, another o in intensity, ra up for the finale

Tally raised her hand for Zane

He rounded the next turn, then headed toward the hard She felt a shiazelles spotting sos froe juice into therinned, i the pretty befuddlement she would put on for the wardens: We were all just standing there talking and , and suddenly

"Watch out!" Zane cried, and the pack split in half, opening to create a path for him

He skated into its center and ju, then brought his skates down hard onto the ice, all his weight behind them

Zane instantly disappeared frolass, and Tally heard the crack spreading with a sound that built like the shriek of a falling tree out in the Se split second she was pushed up into the air as a large plate of ice teeter-tottered on the fulcrum of a lifter, but then it snapped in half and Tally was falling, her storabbed her coat froroup panic, then a whoop rose up as the ether, icy shards and Crirass of the soccer field, ten thousand faces staring up at them in shock

Now this was bubbly

BOUNCE