MARCELLUS.
Sitting across from her in a cruiseur, his hazel eyes twinkling, his lips quirked into a small smile.
Marcellus.
Crouched down in front of her chair in the interrogation room, gazing up at her, pleading with her to help him.
Marcellus.
Kissing her on the rooftop of the garment fabrique. Deeply. Intensely. Endlessly.
And finally, Marcellus.
Turning away from her. Calling her a traitor. Walking out of her life forever.
That was what she had always believed. Those were the thoughts and visions and memories that had cycled through her mind during all those lonely days and nights on Bastille.
But now …
Marcellus.
Standing in front of her in the middle of the Terrain Perdu, surrounded by a dying fire and the crashed wreckage of an escape pod. Staring at her like she was a ghost. A phantom. A vision.
Just as she was staring at him.
Because he was a ghost to her. He had been just as dead to her as little baby Henri. He had been just as impossible to bring back as her brother. And yet somehow, at some point, they had both come back to her.
Chatine rubbed her finger against the silver ring that encircled her thumb. The one that she swore had saved her from Bastille. And the one that she was now certain had guided her right here. Right now. To this very spot. Like a tiny Sol, lighting a path through the darkness.
Marcellus was the first to speak, shattering the silence that seemed to have encapsulated them like a dome. “Chatine?”
But as desperately as Chatine wanted to reply, wanted to tell him all the things she’d ever dreamt of telling him while she’d lain awake at night, locked in that dingy tower on the moon—how she was sorry, how she didn’t mean to betray him, how she was selfish and stupide and blind—when she opened her mouth, nothing came out.
Marcellus also seemed to be struggling. “How did you … ? I thought you were … ? What happened … ?” He huffed, frustrated with his own babbling, before finally sputtering out, “Who is that?”
Chatine turned around to see Etienne standing behind her, his eyes dark and narrowed, his mouth pressed into a tight line. She nearly startled at the sight of him. As though she didn’t even recognize him. As though she’d been transported a month into the past, before she had ever been sent to Bastille, before she had ever been rescued by a strange and alluring pilote, before she had been welcomed into his home. It seemed to be the only way this situation made sense. It’s as if she were somehow living two different timelines at the same moment. Existing in two different worlds at once.
How long had he been standing there?
Chatine glanced back and forth between Etienne and Marcellus before finally managing to utter her first syllable. “Uh …” It wasn’t much, but it still felt like progress. She tried again. “He’s … um … well …”
“She’s been living with me,” Etienne said, stepping up to stand next to Chatine.
Chatine felt her entire face explode with heat, and suddenly the words not only came to her, they wouldn’t stop coming to her. “Well, yes, technically, that’s true because he rescued me from Bastille because I was injured trying to escape and he brought me back to his camp where his mother helped heal my leg because she used to be a médecin and also she removed my Skin because they don’t like Skins there because they sort of do their own thing but I’ve been living there because I didn’t have anywhere else to go and you know, because of the injury thing but now that I’m better I’m really not sure what I’m going to do because—”
“A médecin?” someone asked, mercifully cutting Chatine off before she talked herself dizzy.
Chatine glanced over Marcellus’s shoulder, noticing, for the first time, that he wasn’t alone out here in the middle of this frozen wilderness.
“Did you say that you know a médecin?” the same voice asked, and Chatine could now see it belonged to a girl. A girl with dark curls as wild as the Terrain Perdu and eyes as dark as the Darkest Night. A girl who instinctively made every fiber of Chatine’s body tremble with envy and guilt and anger and remorse.
It was her.
It was Madeline.
The girl who had lived with Chatine’s family for three years. Who had been wrongfully blamed for Henri’s death. Who had captured Marcellus’s attention in the Frets. Who he’d called Alouette.
Chatine now glanced back and forth between Marcellus and Madeline, standing only a mètre apart, both dirty and disheveled and shivering from the cold, clearly having landed here together.
“Is this médecin nearby?” Madeline continued. “Can she help us? Our friend is in really bad condition.” She gestured back toward the dying fire, where Chatine could see a man bundled in a layer of blankets, his eyes half closed, his face covered in a sheening layer of sweat despite the freezing temperatures out here.
“What happened to him?” Etienne was suddenly on the move, striding purposefully toward the man. He knelt down to examine him.
“He was shot,” said a girl who Chatine didn’t recognize. But from the style of her clothes—despite their ragged and dirty appearance—Chatine guessed she had to be Second Estate.
“Shot?” Etienne asked, confused. “By a paralyzeur?”
“No,” Marcellus said, speaking for the first time since he’d bombarded Chatine with questions. “It was a cluster bullet.”
Chatine scowled. What the fric is a cluster bullet?
Etienne scoffed and jokingly asked. “A cluster bullet? What, was he on Albion?”
“Yes,” Marcellus said, and the graveness in his tone hardened Etienne’s expression.
Chatine spun to face Marcellus. “What were you doing on—”
“There’s no time,” Etienne cut her off. “His infection is bad. We need to get him back to the camp immediately.”
“Is he going to be okay?” the Second Estate girl asked, her voice barely a whimper.
“I don’t know,” Etienne said bluntly. “My maman is a healer. She’ll be able to tell us more. Help me lift him.”
Marcellus, who had been watching Etienne with a strange mix of confusion and distrust, suddenly sprang into action. With the help of Madeline, they lifted the injured man and carried him swiftly yet carefully toward the idling ship.
“Chatine, open the cargo hold,” Etienne called out.
Chatine darted into the cockpit and quickly found the controls for the hatch. The loading ramp clanked and clattered open, and she jumped back out to see Etienne, Marcellus, and Madeline carrying the man into the hold. Once he was safely aboard, Etienne grabbed Chatine by the elbow and pulled her out of earshot of the others.
“Do you know these people?” he asked. His eyes flickered toward the loading ramp and seemed to land directly on Marcellus. “Can we trust them?”
Chatine followed his gaze, once again marveling at the events that had brought them here. Brought all of them together. Chatine, Etienne, Marcellus, Madeline. Her present and past—both near and far—all colliding like reckless stars. The Sols were either trying to send her some kind of cryptic message, or they just had a really whacked sense of humor.
Either way, she knew what her answer had to be.
“Yes,” she said decisively, knowing that single word would seal her fate in ways she couldn’t even begin to imagine.