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She had died there.
Literally, metaphorically, it didn’t matter. Before then, she had died a thousand deaths. Exiguous ones, she could say, because it did not make them sound so small.
But they had been.
All those tiny deaths had culminated there.
Overwhelmed her.
Killed her.
Poseidon loved her wings. Emmet, too, had said they were “pretty cool.”
Nerissa wasn’t so sure, though. Her shoulders had ached, for a few days after she had woken up, and now…
The mirror in Emerson’s bathroom wasn’t very big, but she could still see clearly the ugly lines between her shoulder blades where they had first sprouted. Before, Emerson had wondered if they had been infected, but Nerissa had known that that wasn’t the case.
They had only ever been scars. Never wounds.
Only a reminder.
You died for this, or you lived for this, it didn’t matter. They meant the same thing.
Possibly, she had already been uncomfortable in her own body. She had never been the prettiest girl—“That’s what you get for being so smart,” Poseidon might tell her, cheeky as always, but then he would add that she was pretty, she just didn’t see it, because that was who he was—and, indeed, there were a lot of things about herself that she hated. Her nose was a little too big, her eyebrows too bushy, her hair wild and untameable even on the best of days. It was more than that, though: The magic that ran through her veins, evil and monstrous, her skin, much darker than her mother’s had been, than her brother’s was, one of those things people would insist they did not see her any differently for but that she knew they did. It made her feel more dangerous to them, as if her very existence hadn’t already been enough of a threat.
She hated all these things, and yet she knew they were hers, completely and unequivocally.
Poseidon loved her wings, but Nerissa wasn’t sure just yet if they were really hers or not.
It had been weeks, now, though. Weeks since she had woken up, since she had held up the Heavens, since Chaos had bestowed upon her this—what was it? A great gift? She didn’t think so.
A part of her wished that Chaos had simply let her be crushed with the weight of it.
She was not Atlas. She had never wanted to be.
In the mirror, she looked frail. Skinnier than she used to be, but she was a bit more muscled, too. It didn’t feel like a good thing.
Her face was more stoic, war-torn, her eyes filled with something too big, too big, like the pain she had felt when the Heavens had fallen upon her shoulders.
She hated this, too, these ghosts that followed her everywhere she went.
Exiguous deaths, she thought, but maybe they really had not been so little after all.
If Chaos had let the Heavens crush her, would her spirit have found the Underworld? Would she be with Adrienne and Ely now, while Poseidon was still here with Emerson?
It was a terrible thought, and yet she wondered.
The scars were large, obtrusive, except that they weren’t. If she were to put her shirt back on, they would barely even be noticeable. They were little slots of magic, waiting for Chaos’s energy to urge them to open up.
Aether had killed the angels, hundreds of years ago, because they had not made him one of them.
Nerissa did not want this.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, and she started, breath catching in her throat as she turned away from the mirror.
“Nerissa?”
This was Ada’s voice. Nerissa thought she could recognize it anywhere, the sweetest sound in a world filled with malice.
“Are you okay?”
It was such a stupid question.
Of course she wasn’t okay.
She was barely even alive anymore, was she?
Exiguous deaths.
They were not so small. Not really.
When Nerissa still did not respond, Ada asked, “Can I come in?”
Nerissa stared at the door, suddenly feeling rather undone.
“You can say no,” Ada’s muffled voice said.
“It’s okay.” Nerissa’s throat hurt with the words. They came out hoarse, scratchy, not quite broken but something very close to it. “Just...give me a second.”
She glanced in the mirror once more, then turned to grab her discarded clothes. They were not hers, either, but she liked them. It was an old summer dress of Emerson’s, which she had given to Nerissa while she had been working to regain her strength.
“Easy to take on and off,” she had said. “Not great for a fight or anything, though, so don’t go rushing into anything again, okay?”
Somehow, she doubted she would be.
She dressed quickly, and then made her way back to the door. For a moment, she hesitated, hand frozen above the knob with a sort of uncertainty she could not exactly explain.
It was only Ada, wasn’t it? And yet Ada had not only been Ada for quite some time, now.
They were friends, Nerissa thought, and yet they were not.
She exhaled slowly, and opened the door.
Ada’s eyes were all concern, green and gold and warm, but Nerissa stepped aside before she could reach out and touch her.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
And then Ada said, “You’ve been in here for a long time.”
Had she been? She hadn’t exactly been counting the minutes or anything.
“I didn’t realize,” she muttered.
“You look tired. Shouldn’t you be resting more? I know you want to get back to how things were, but you’ve already trained today. There’s nothing more we can do for now.”
“I’m not tired.”
Ada frowned.
“I’m tired of resting,” Nerissa continued. “Tired of being watched all the time. Do you think I’m going to break, Ada?”
Ada watched her a moment, almost as if she were a wild animal in need of taming. And then she said, “I don’t think you’re going to break.”
That really didn’t seem like the case, though.
“What’s wrong, then?” Ada pressed. “Aside from—well, you know…”
Nerissa certainly did know.
She asked, “Do you know what exiguous means?”
Ada shook her head.
“It means small. Not taking up a lot of space.” She looked away from Ada, eyes fixing on the mirror again. “I died there, you know. Literally.”
“I know.”
“I think I left something behind, when I did.”
Ada was very quiet for a moment.
And then: “What was it?”
Nerissa laughed. It moved through her chest, a terrible ache. “I have no idea. Maybe I lost it when my mom died. Or maybe when Poseidon almost drowned. Somewhere between here and Aether, maybe, or in all those passages through Chronos’s Gate. I miss my parents, Ada. I wish Chaos had let me die.”
She wasn’t looking at Ada, not even through the reflective glass of the mirror, but she didn’t need to be to see the shock on her face. It was perhaps the most gruesome thing she had ever admitted aloud, but now that she had verbalized it, she realized she had been thinking it for a long time.
It was not just then, either. She remembered telling Avery to leave her with Adrienne’s body, to just let her die there. Remembered running after Poseidon, even as Emmet screamed at her not to, because what good was her life if he wasn’t in it?
Why had Chaos chosen them? They were its messengers, its new angels, and Nerissa wanted nothing more than to rip her wings apart and go home, to Derayn, where Professor Ryes and Adrienne and Ely would be waiting for them.
It was not so simple, though. No matter how much she wished that it could be.
She could not bring them back.
“Okay,” said Ada.
She did not look back at her. In the mirror, she saw her own eyebrows furrowing together.
“I think that’s normal,” Ada continued, and now she stepped into the room entirely, gently closing the door behind her. It was not a very large room, but the space between them felt endless. “But, for what it’s worth...I’m glad Chaos didn’t let you die.”
“Why?” The question left Nerissa’s lips before she could even think about what she was saying.
Ada hummed, as if in thought. “Well,” she said, “I like you a whole lot. There’s that.”
Nerissa snorted. “Thanks. Very meaningful.”
In the mirror, Nerissa saw Ada take a step closer to her, and then stop.
“It is, though,” she said, and now she sounded pained. “You’re important to all of us. I’m sure...Chaos thought you were worthy, so it saved you. And you are worthy. I know you don’t always feel like you are, but…”
Nerissa’s reflection blurred slightly. “It made the wrong choice, then.”
There was a moment, just one moment, where neither of them spoke or moved or barely even breathed at all. And then, suddenly, there were gentle hands at the back of her neck, trailing down slowly towards her shoulders.
“You’re so stupid,” Ada said, but there was no heat to it. “Can you show me them?”
Nerissa tensed beneath her touch. “They’re ugly,” she whispered, cheeks and eyes stinging.
“No,” Ada said, “they’re not.”
Nerissa watched her in the mirror. Though she was much shorter than Nerissa was, she held herself with dignity and grace, a sort of determination in her figure that briefly reminded Nerissa of her mother, but the comparison was lost as soon as it came.
She met Ada’s eyes through the reflection, and then she brought her hands up to drop the sleeves of the dress again. Ada moved away, losing contact with her, and Nerissa focussed all her attention on her clothing.
With trembling hands, she managed to get her arms free of the sleeves, and then brought her hands back to her chest to hold the dress in place, leaving only her shoulders exposed.
“Can I touch them?” Ada asked, so quietly Nerissa wasn’t sure, for a moment, whether she had really spoken or not.
Not trusting her voice, she nodded.
Ada stepped closer again, and now Nerissa could feel her heat. She was acutely aware of just how much control Ada had over her in this moment, but perhaps she had not been in control in a very, very long time anyway.
When Ada’s hands touched Nerissa’s skin again, warmth seemed to travel all through her body, as if Ada’s fingers were breathing life into her cold skin again. Her tension fell away, and she let her shoulders fall. Gently, Ada traced the lines of her scars, where her wings had erupted so many weeks before.
“You can feel the magic in them,” Ada said, sounding rather awed.
Nerissa held the fabric of the dress tighter to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut.
Suddenly, Ada’s hands fell away and were immediately replaced by something different, softer, more intimate.
Nerissa dropped her hold on the dress entirely, and it fell to the ground at her feet, leaving her completely exposed aside from her underclothes.
“What are you doing?” she asked, shaky, as Ada moved away from the scar she had just kissed. The absence of her lips there left only the cold within Nerissa’s body.
“I think they’re beautiful,” Ada said, matter-of-factly, and Nerissa turned to face her now, her heart beating very fast.
“Why?” she asked again, because she could not understand.
Ada stepped closer to her, now, until their bodies were completely flush with one another. They had been here before, Nerissa thought, but never like this, never with so little between them.
“Because you’re beautiful,” Ada told her, as if it should have been obvious, but Nerissa barely had the time to comprehend the words, anyway, before Ada was reaching up and pressing their lips together in a tender kiss.
For a moment, Nerissa could only stand still in shock, but her body was responding before her mind was; she kissed Ada back with purpose, as if their time together was entirely finite, as if Ada, too, could disappear at any moment.
But, beyond a doubt, Nerissa knew that she would not. As long as she was still here, Ada would be by her side reminding her of why she was.
She felt, for the first time, that maybe her wings were not so ugly after all.