20

Screaming. There’s screaming in my head, the sound of a siren’s wail that I can’t make my throat do. And the dull certainty, the silent, empty room inside me.

Margot.

So this is what it’s like to be one instead of two.

The loneliness is more than I can bear. I expect to burst into flames, to be swallowed by the nothingness of death. How can I still be alive? I must be alive, I reckon, because there is an endless ocean of pain. A wail bubbles up, but the pain in my throat is excruciating. It comes out more like a mewl.

Someone squeezes my hand. My head is frozen in place, but I know by the subtle weight and feel, even before turning my eyes, that it’s Jared. For the longest time he doesn’t say anything, just stares at me with a look so deadly I’m surprised I don’t die again. I must have died, if only for a time.

I watch the bobble of his Adam’s apple as he swallows. He licks those perfect lips, lips that up until a few days ago I would have watched with keen interest. But now…

“Don’t try to talk.” He peels back a slick of hair from my face. A frown puckers his forehead. His eyes are hollow sockets tinged the color of a bruise. I notice he looks thinner, less of himself somehow. His cheekbones have grown sharper for some reason other than his own shifting.

It’s as though I’m seeing him through a distance of a thousand years. He’s so close, but he might as well be on the moon, for all I can touch him, all I can absorb. I am frozen and lifeless, a dead thing. A Laster’s corpse on the side of the road. I pull my hand from his. I just want him to leave me to die, but I can’t get any words out.

Raising a hand to my throat, I realize why. The bandages are thick. A burning pain accompanies my own swallowed tears. Cautiously, slowly, each inch a bout of torture, I turn onto my side on the bed, away from him and his prying eyes.

“Lu.” Jared’s voice is tortured, but then he says nothing. He keeps his vigil by my bedside for a long time, silent as a statue, until I hear him slip out the door like a whisper.

But I don’t look. I don’t say a word.

No one should have to see a grief like this.

…

Time has lost all meaning. Someone has pulled the blinds back. In the glass, I spy a spitting electric blue, shimmering and dancing like flames. I don’t want to turn over, but something in Storm’s voice commands me.

“Lucy, I know you’re awake. Look at me.”

He says it gently enough, but his tone makes it clear there is no room for debate. I turn far enough to see him where he stands before I float my eyes away. Storm has his hands in the pockets of exquisitely tailored trousers. He pulls them out and places them on the bed, lowering himself into a chair. He says nothing for a long time. It gives me the chance to study him closer.

This is Nolan Storm in mourning clothes. Black shirt, stiff and buttoned. Black suit, perfectly tailored to his muscled body. But it’s his face I study. There is more stubble across the hollows of his cheeks than I’ve ever seen before. Smudged purple circles rim his eyes, which are haunted and filled with something I’d as soon call war. And then there is his spectral crown. The ends have grown longer, thicker, their jutting protrusions tangling more intricately than before.

“We need to talk.” He doesn’t move his hands from the bed, where they lay like an open book. He doesn’t try to touch me, for which I’m grateful. I stare at the ceiling, my throat still a raw, throbbing mess, and listen while his words rumble over me. “The Watchers are gone. You’re safe now.”

He doesn’t understand. Did he see? Does he know?

His voice gentles even more. “Nothing can fix what was broken…what happened to Margot.” He blinks and closes his eyes momentarily as his crown of bone flares hot white. When he opens his eyes again, it’s as though an alien god has replaced him, as his gunmetal gray eyes roil like the clouds of a Flux storm. “By tomorrow morning the preachers and the Upper Circle will receive identical letters.” And when his lip flips up on one side in a grimace of a smile, I want nothing more than to cower under the covers. “That letter will tell them in no uncertain terms what I will do to Dominion City should anyone rise against me or my people again.”

What will you do? I want to ask. But I reckon I know enough.

Nolan Storm is going to tear down Dominion, brick by brick. He’ll kill them all, as impersonal as a hurricane. He’ll wipe them off the face of the earth.

I feel my own lips stretching into the suggestion of a feral smile.

Good.

…

When I next see the sky, it is wearing its familiar white robe. Kira holds my arm like I’m an invalid, much to my horror, though I’ll admit I’m weaker than I’d like, and escorts me down the elevator.

“Don’t worry, Lucy.” Kira says with a wry smile, pulling me closer. “You’re not my type.” She’s clearly trying to coax a smile from me, but my face remains a frozen mask.

They tell me fresh air is good. I would argue with them that Dominion has no fresh air, but I’ve no desire to speak. Despite the bandages having been removed from my ripped-up throat, I don’t even know if I can.

I haven’t seen Jared since the night of my return to Storm’s keep. Haven’t seen him, heard from him. He’s probably forgotten all about me. I tell myself it’s for the best.

As bleak as I feel, Kira puts on fake cheer like she does four-inch stilettos. “Hey, wouldn’t it be nice to take a load off and watch the world go by?”

I let her lead me to the bench near the building’s entrance. We sit awkwardly as I watch the occasional city bird swoop down on the hunt for food. They’ve gotten fat and bloated from the corpses, those birds, practically becoming another species. Over the tops of buildings farther downtown, a canopy of lush greenery explodes and spills. The Prayer Tree. The air is clammy, as it is before a day of rain. I can smell it in the air. Iron and dirt.

Like blood.

Kira is far gentler to me than I knew she could be, though she’s still about as tactful as a machine gun. She glances at the scar cutting across my throat. “Looks good, Lucy. Almost like it didn’t happen. I’ve never seen a wound heal like that before.”

I wouldn’t know. There had been no point in me looking at the wound on my throat. Mirrors are for the living.

Tentatively I run a finger lightly over the track where the knife’s blade had kissed me. I feel a line, nothing more. Below that, Ali’s necklace. I pick up the coin, feeling its ancient weight, its strange heat, in my hand.

“You know,” Kira muses, “I think that necklace might just have saved your life. The cut should have severed everything,” she tells me with professional interest. “The necklace was wedged so deep in there it had clotted right into the wound. By the time we got you to Doc Raines, she had to cut into you to get it out. They had to work around it, though. Couldn’t get it off you.”

I stare hard at the lethal assassin beside me. I gulp past the painful knot in my throat. When I finally speak, the sound of my damaged voice, a low, guttural thing, shocks us both. “Where is Ali?”

Kira blows out a deep, whistling breath that pushes the bangs off her face and looks away. “They didn’t tell you.”

I shake my head. Something terrible knots in my belly.

“Ali…went in with us. He was pretty good, too. But the Watchers had guns, Lucy. He—Ali…Gods, Lucy, it shouldn’t be me telling you this.” The assassin’s mask slips, and I see genuine regret in her eyes. “He didn’t make it.”

…

It’s the dream that shakes me awake. The same dark red rain. My tears mix with it, turning the hills and fields around Dominion a blooming crimson. Only this time, I understand its cryptic message. Margot.

And this time, when I open my eyes and blink away the tears, feeling the hot wetness on my pillow, I also know I’m not alone.

He can tell the moment I shift from sleep to wakefulness. One long, lean leg comes uncrossed in the chair across the room. Beside his rumpled form, on the ground, is a litter of pillows he has undoubtedly stomped on. The lamp beside the chair switches on, throwing off enough light to see him by. Enough light for him to see me. He runs a hand across his forehead, as though it pains him, his eyebrows drawing in. I can just make out the white pattern of one of his favorite shirts. Across the front dances a skeleton, which somehow matches the frayed holes of his jeans. He looks…tired. Lost. Defeated. The silence between us lengthens.

“You’re alive. I don’t know how to tell you what it was like when I thought… You were sitting in that chair all covered in blood, and I thought for sure you were dead.” After a few moments, he calls out again from his perch across the room. “Can I…can I come sit with you, Lu? Please?”

It’s not Jared’s way to be tentative or unsure of himself. Jared does what he pleases. And I hate that I’ve taken this away from him, too, like another little death. Still, the moment draws out before I decide to say yes. A moment longer than he likes, I reckon, as I hear a rumble, low and deep, in his throat. “Lu.”

When I finally nod, Jared all but flies out of his chair, faster than my eyes can track. His weight sinks the mattress. There’s a look to him more wild than wild. His eyes marble: green, indigo, green, indigo, like exotic traffic lights. He’s not been sleeping, I can tell. The smudges beneath his eyes make him look as though he’s been punched.

“You look terrible,” I rasp.

His laugh comes out in short, chippy bursts. “Thanks. I know.” He eyes me. “You don’t look so hot yourself.” I don’t have any reply to this, and he doesn’t seem to expect one. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…” He combs anxious fingers through his hair, the blond skeins standing straight up. “I’m just…I’m just so damned glad you’re alive.” I stare at him in wonder as his chest heaves. “I’ve been going through hell, sitting by your bedside whenever you’re asleep. Knowing what you must think of me. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I decided I had to be here anyway.”

I shake my head in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What are you talking about…what I think of you?”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I’m so sorry I was too late.” Jared takes my hand in his two. He raises my hand to his lips, savoring the scent of me before flipping my hand over and gently pressing a kiss to my palm, another to the soft skin at my wrist. The kiss ignites me.

My body leaps to fire. My mind slams that door firmly shut. But not before Jared murmurs, “You even smell different now.”

A flare of annoyance ignites inside me. “That’s because I’m dead.”

He blinks owlishly, as though I’ve spoken in a foreign tongue. “What?”

“Don’t you get it?” I wrench my hand from his. “Don’t you understand? I’m. Dead.” I don’t bother to glare; I simply turn my face to the wall. I can practically hear his horror as he continues to sit there. Slowly, creaking off the bed, Jared walks out of the room. Maybe for the last time. Maybe I’ve finally pushed him away for good this time.

It’s all right, I remind myself. Because the dead don’t have regrets. The dead don’t love.