Chapter Thirty-Five: Weight
I am frozen as I watch her eyes roll back in her head. My feet start moving the second she begins to fall. Somewhere in the back of my mind, memory pulls my thoughts toward Oscar, to the insane amount of power he just expended, but Ivy consumes my focus. I slide to my knees, reaching out, catching her head before it hits the stones. The impact jars her. She gasps in a breath, but it is fragile and frail.
“Ivy. Ivy!” I practically shout in her face. I want to shake her, make her look at me, but I’m terrified of moving her. “Ivy, please,” I beg. “Open your eyes.”
The courtyard is quiet as Oscar gets up from his crouch next to David’s destroyed body and walks toward me. Filled to the brim with fury, I round on him. “What did you do to her?” I scream.
I expect a flippant answer, a shrug that will send my fist flying into his mouth. Instead, Oscar kneels down beside me and rests his hand gently on the side of Ivy’s pale face. “I did nothing to harm her. The choice was hers.”
Everyone else suddenly converges on us. Van drops to her knees at my side, her eyes wide and brimming with uncertainty, while Noah comes to a slow stop behind her. Ketchup is right behind them. He slams into Van from the opposite direction and wraps her up in his protective arms, staring down at Ivy in confusion. Annabelle is the last to reach us. Her small hand drops to my shoulder in comfort, but she is quiet as she takes in Ivy’s unmoving body.
I look up at Oscar, pleading for a better explanation, but a tiny movement from the girl in my arms steals my focus. “Ivy?” I beg. My eyes skim over her, searching for some sign that I hadn’t imagined it. My heart nearly stops when I see her fingers twitch. A moment later, her eyes flutter open, but she only manages to lift them halfway.
“Zander,” she whispers, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” I ask as I stroke her hair back from her face.
She tries to smile, but her body is too weak to complete the effort. “For… not being… stronger for you.”
A tear slips past her eyelid and runs down her cheek. Brushing it away quickly, I shake my head at her. “No, no. You are strong. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Her eyes close and more tears fall. “No,” she says so faintly I can barely hear her. “I… made my… choice.”
“Your choice?” I press my hand to her face to try and keep her awake. “Your choice about what?”
The effort it takes for her to smile up at me through her tears breaks my heart. “The meaning… of my death.”
“No, Ivy, please.” My hand starts shaking as it brushes away more tears. “I’m not ready to say goodbye. Please, just hold on. It’s not over yet.”
She shakes her head slowly. Her cold, trembling fingers touch my arm briefly before falling back to her side in weakness. Oscar’s touch is as soft as a lamb as he tenderly picks up Ivy’s hand and places it on mine. The movement seems to hurt her. Pain flashes in her eyes, but Oscar closes his own eyes, rouses his hunger, and takes it all away, making her smile so weakly that it kills me.
“The Richiamos are not meant to lure Godlings to their deaths,” Oscar says softly. “They are meant to soak up the pain of others, taking it from those they touch to ease their suffering, to hold it until we can access it, make it into something better.”
Ivy’s chest convulses, her hand tightens around mine for just a moment. “Not to… kill,” she pleads.
Oscar shakes his head. His kind expression calms her, and I am thankful for it.
“Then for what?” Noah asks.
“I do not yet know,” Oscar replies without looking away from her. He only breaks his attention away from Ivy to look up at me. “She made her choice. A brave choice. It is to be respected.”
His words break me. There is nothing I can do to save her. He knows. He knows because he took what was left of her life to end David’s threat, protecting us all from his madness and obsession. I shake my head as tears roll down my cheeks. He didn’t take it from her. She gave it willingly. She knew what it would cost her, yet she gave the last of her short life to save mine. To save all of our lives. My whole body convulses as I pull her fully into my arms.
“I love you,” Ivy whispers. “I always have.”
Curling around her, I rock her body back and forth with mine. “I love you, too, Ivy. I’m so sorry, so sorry.”
“I’m not,” she says softly.
I press my lips to her forehead and close my eyes. There are so many things left to say, but not a single one can slip past my ravaged emotions.
“Please,” Ivy whispers, “save Sonya.” They are the last words to pass her lips before her body finally gives out. She sinks into my arms, the weight of her sacrifice forever mine to carry.
Nobody stops me from cradling her in my arms. Not a soul makes a sound as I hold her. I fought so hard to be with her, only to be betrayed by her, but even more, by those who pitted us against each other. I fought so hard to hate her after that betrayal. It should have been easy, but the truth complicated everything. I tried to understand it all before time ran out. I would have saved her if I could have. I wanted to save her. I believe what I told her, that if our worlds had not been so twisted and wrong, we might have had a chance to at least be friends.
Annabelle’s hand tightens on my shoulder, trying to ease my pain. I love Annabelle, and I will spend my life trying to make her happy, but I was lying to myself when I tried to pass off what I felt for Ivy as nothing. Every ounce of hatred I once had for her is gone, leaving only loss and love. Oscar’s words echo in my mind. Her choice deserves respect.
Everything the Eroi put her through deserves vengeance. It is suddenly impossible for me to think of anything other than making sure her life, her death, meant something. She was found and taken by the Eroi as a toddler, controlled, made into a weapon, forced into a role she never wanted. Survival meant swallowing their lies, accepting their edicts. When she fell in love, death for us both seemed to be the only option.
I don’t blame her for that any longer.
I blame the ones who tried to remake her into something she was never meant to be.
The thought that any other child should be ripped from their family and home repulses me. Ivy lost so much. They promised her an end to the pain, but all they really gave her was a way to torture herself mercilessly, for years. The Eroi took away her family in payment for their so-called salvation. The people who promised to save her took everything from her in the end but her right to choose the meaning of her life, the purpose behind her death. Pressing her to my chest one more time, I breathe out slowly, determined to live up to her gift.
“There are others like her,” I say, drying my face with the back of my hand.
“There are,” Oscar says as he stands and surveys the wreckage. His eyes pass over the huddled, terrified groups of Godlings, the ruined courtyard, and what is left of David’s body, just as everyone else’s eyes do the same. “We’ll find them,” Oscar promises, “and we won’t let any more of them be used as weapons.”
Annabelle kneels down beside me, taking my free hand in hers. “That will mean going up against Isolde and the other Eroi leaders,” she says softly.
Fire races through me, snapping my eyes up. “Where is she?” I seethe. “Where is Isolde?”
Everyone seems startled by the question, but as their eyes search for the woman David claimed was responsible for this war, we are all left with nothing but questions.