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We’re alone now, the three of us. Me, Cor, Crissa. They’ve managed to steer me away from the others, for which I’m grateful, though I can’t think of the words to express it. I can’t think or feel much at all right now, except for the heat of their gazes on my back. I realize we’ve been standing in silence—for how long, I’m not sure. I know I should say something to let them know that they don’t need to look at me like that or handle me like I’m made of glass, that I am all right. But I’m not, and I don’t say anything at all.
I look around the room as if inspecting it, as if us being here is all perfectly normal. When I’d imagined my relatives as refugees in New Pythos—Norcia, now—this is not where I thought they’d be living. The staterooms are ornate, with high ceilings and antique rugs and large windows overlooking the sea. It’s eerily similar to the Farhall of my youth—warm, and open, and full of glorious possibility.
That Farhall is gone. I can still smell the smoke, can still hear the sound of the facade crumbling around me. The burns across my body are still raw; they chafe against the fabric of my soot-stained clothes. It all feels like a lifetime ago, even though it has barely been a day. How can it be that, this morning, I woke up with Annie in my arms as gentle sunlight streamed onto the bedsheets, casting a rosy glow onto her freckled skin? That I walked through my family home, and it was all just as it had been, as clean and in order as the day we’d left to go back to the capital so many years ago? That I wore my father’s flamesuit and crest, and pulled Annie close, and it felt like for the first time, I was allowed to want both? I didn’t have to choose whether to be Leo or Lee. I could see this glimpse of a life that finally felt within reach, and found myself wishing for the very thing I’d trained myself not to want. I’d woken this morning terrified, and anxious, and in love, and more myself than I’d ever been. All of that was mere hours ago, under the safe shadow of the Big House.
I need to think about something, anything, else. Because beside the ruins of the Big House is a pile of ash and bones, and I cannot think about that.
“Lee?” Cor moves to stand beside me. I realize he must have said something. When I meet his eyes, they are filled with discomfort, like it pains him to look at me. “I asked which bed you want.”
There are two beds, one on either side of a large, lit fireplace. Both are king size, like the ones in Farhall. There are dozens of other rooms I could have to myself, but it's evident that Cor and Crissa don’t think I should be alone right now.
I don’t blame them.
“Doesn’t matter.” My voice comes out thin. I can’t remember the last time I spoke—was it at dinner? Mrs. Sutter said something to me, and then Duck…Everything since we landed in Norcia feels hazy, an unsettling dream. I clear my throat. “You pick.”
Cor crosses to the far side of the room and begins unpacking his satchel. He’s left me the bed near the window. It’s dark out, and the hulking shadows of the karsts are occluded in swaths of mist rising off the surface of the water.
Crissa’s still standing in the entrance, watching me. Her expression holds no discomfort, or even pity. She just looks sad. “I’m going to wash up, and then I’ll be back to check in before bed,” she says, her voice somehow both soft and steady. “We’ll make a plan for tomorrow.”
Some part of me wants to ask her to stay. She hasn’t left my side since I woke up in Nigel’s house. Crissa’s presence has always had an anchoring effect, pulling me out of my head when it gets to be too much. I’ve held it together until now, her presence keeping me somewhat grounded, but I worry that, without her close, I’ll drown in the numb emptiness that’s threatening to take over. But I don’t know how to say any of that, so I only nod. She offers me a gentle smile, and then she’s gone.
I feel Cor’s uneasy silence from across the room like a thickness in the air. I know he’s trying to think of what to say to make this moment less painful for us both, but it’s never been his strong suit. When I was in the infirmary, after Julia, he talked a lot. Part of it was his guilt, I think, of not having visited me during those weeks when I was in the stockade—he told me, later, that he regretted it. But I also think he could tell just how drained I was, how impossible it felt to think about anything but the crushing grief and confusion of those first few days. He carried the conversation so that I didn’t feel any pressure to. While comfort may not be his natural instinct, he has always known how to help a situation move forward, imbuing tense moments with levity. I was grateful for the distraction, then. But now, my thoughts are consumed with the wrongness of everything: every step feels unsteady, every breath is labored. There is nothing I can do to forget.
“I think I’ll wash, too,” I say in his direction, and his sigh of relief is audible. I can’t tell if I’m sparing him the awkwardness, or if it’s a purely selfish instinct.
The washroom is tiled in gleaming white marble, to the point where I feel like I’m in a tomb. Once I’ve closed the door, I’m suddenly dizzy, and I lean my weight onto the countertop, gripping the edges until my knuckles are white. I stare into the sink, blinking repeatedly as I wait for the room to stop spinning. When things are still, or close to it, I look into the mirror. It’s the first time I’ve seen myself since, and the sight makes my blood run cold. My face is smeared with ash and dried blood, tear tracks cutting clean lines down my cheeks. My hair is shorn, and though it’s clear that Crissa tried to make it look even, she had to leave small clumps of hair around the angry burns on my scalp. My eyes are rimmed red, though I don’t think I’ve cried in the last few hours. I haven’t had the energy. And the jagged gash across my face—running from between my brows, along the bridge of my nose, and down my right cheek—seems to split my face in two. Crissa or Nigel made careful stitches where the falling beam cut deep, but the damage is obvious. It looks like an irreparable crack in a porcelain cup, razor sharp to the touch yet held together by almost nothing.
I don’t recognize this version of myself.
I hunch back over the sink and fill my cupped hands with cold water, bringing them to my face. I start at my eyes, the water soothing the raw, stretched feeling that’s settled over my eyelids and the surrounding skin. Then I slowly drag the water downward, over my cheeks, my jaw, my chin. The water stings the wound on my face, pricking each exposed nerve, but I don’t stop. I keep my eyes closed, letting the cool water wash away the stickiness, the acrid, overpowering smell of fire. Over and over again, like a ritual. It feels good to do something normal like this. I open my eyes when I begin to feel clean. Dark water pools in the basin, swirling around the drain before slowly slipping under.
All at once, panic seizes me—a mounting, aching pressure in my chest. Lead floods my lungs as I watch the water vanish, leaving a ring of gritty residue around the drain. Particles of ash, scattered—black on white marble. The stark contrast of it dots my vision, and I grip the counter again. I choke, my body rejecting the air I’m trying to breathe in. That’s him, that’s all I have left…
It’s a childish thought, I tell myself as I gasp for air. The traces of ash on the sides of the basin, the dark stains on my hands and arms and clothes, those aren’t Pallor. They are specks of dust, remnants of flesh and fire and wood. Those same remains are lost to the wind at the edge of the world, must be traveling far over the sea by now. Pallor is something else, somewhere else, beyond this strangling pain. What he did, he’d accepted, even embraced, long before it was done. He’d made his peace. And, when the moment arrived, I’d agreed to it. I know all this, and yet I am sinking to the ground, my legs suddenly too weak to hold me up, and I’m shaking, and blackness is creeping into the edges of my vision. I draw my knees to my chest and drop my head into the space between them, hugging myself so tightly it hurts.
Time passes, but I lose track of how long I’m sitting here like this. I focus only on the act of getting air into and out of my lungs. Slowly. Over and over again. A ritual.
Eventually, there is a knock at the door. I’ve come back to myself enough to process it. I steady myself, lift my head. “Sorry,” I croak, before anything is even said on the other side of the wall. It is the phrase that repeats in my mind with each breath—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
“Are you…” Cor’s voice is tentative. “Do you need anything?”
I realize the water is still running. I wonder if he could hear the sounds of me struggling to breathe over it. I pull myself shakily to my feet, using the counter to steady myself. “It’s fine,” I say. I know he can hear the quiver in my voice, but I try to push through it anyway. “I—I’ll be out in a minute.”
A pause. “Okay. Just let me know—”
“Yeah.” Another pause, and then I hear his footsteps recede. Without meaning to, I look into the sink again. The residue is gone, the sides of the basin bright and clean once again.
The room’s light has become too harsh. Nausea hits me in a slow wave, and I breathe and blink until it passes. I turn down the oil lamp a notch. I notice black and red under my fingernails. I turn to the tub full of water. I think it was steaming when I came into the washroom, but it is cool to the touch, now. I turn down the lamp some more. I pull off my clothes, which stick to me like a second skin, clinging to my body from hours spent soaked in sweat and mist from the clouds. They leave dark smudges on the marble floor. I turn down the lamp again. Over and over again, until there’s nothing but a tiny, dim flame and a sheen of grey moonlight coming through the window. I step into the tub.
I bathe in the dark, with my eyes closed.
***
I emerge from the washroom. Even the warm light from the fireplace feels too bright. My skin stings, as if the ash and grime acted as a protective barrier against the rest of the world. Without them, I feel exposed, scrubbed raw.
There’s no one else in the room; I figure Cor went out to find his brother, or maybe to beg Crissa to come back so we don’t have to sit in more awkward silence. He’s left a robe for me on the bed—likely a loan from Griff Gareson, given that it’s a few sizes too big—and I wrap it around myself. I go to the window. Somewhere out there in the distance is Farhall, what’s left of it. Guilt clenches my heart in its fist. I should be there, sitting vigil, I think.
There’s nothing left to do for him, I think.
I’m itching to leave this room, but I don’t want to see anyone. I feel like I should be doing something, preparing somehow, but I can’t think of anything to do. I settle for sitting on my bed, flipping aimlessly through the pages of the Hermeneuta with the window wide open. The wind causes the fire to flicker, but I don’t mind. It makes everything smell like the sea. Like my home, at the edge of the world.
I try to occupy myself with thoughts of battle formations, but that makes me think of Pallor; of Annie, but that only reminds me that she’s being held captive in Callipolis; of happy memories from my childhood at Farhall, but that just makes me think of afternoons spent playing with Julia, who I killed, and of my father, who I loved and Annie hated and Atreus murdered. Everything that used to break through the grief only seems to heighten it, now.
I don’t let myself think about flying.
The door swings open, and Cor walks in. It seems that Griff has lent Cor some clothes as well; I can’t fully remember, but Cor’s must have been covered with ash, too, and blood—
I snap the book shut, as if the memory of the scent of Pallor’s blood can be trapped between its pages.
“Oh, good,” Cor says when he sees me, keeping his voice light. “You were in there so long, I thought you might be trying to drown yourself.” At this, his eyes widen, and he slumps onto the bed and covers his face. “God damn it,” he groans into his hands. “God damn it, Lee, I didn’t—” He looks up at me, his face contorted into a panicked grimace.
The whole thing is so absurd that a hoarse laugh escapes my throat. Cor’s mouth opens in surprise, then melts into a sheepish grin. He rubs the back of his neck. “That was possibly the worst thing I could say just now, wasn’t it?”
“Possibly.” I can’t help the smile that flickers on my lips for just a moment.
The door opens again, and in walks Crissa, her damp hair curling down in ringlets over her shoulders. She regards us—my half-smile, Cor’s embarrassed expression—with a puzzled look.
“Cor thought I was drowning myself in the bath,” I say matter-of-factly, which sends Cor into full-blown hysterics. His familiar barking laughter shatters the tension between us. The muscles in my cheeks and jaw ache with the strain of smiling, and the wound across my face is pulled uncomfortably taut, but it’s a relief to know that I can still do this, and so I don’t make myself stop. And then Crissa’s smiling like she thinks we’re idiots, and Cor’s holding his stomach like it hurts, and things feel like they used to, and I can feel another laugh rising up, and it comes out as a sob, and the others go quiet.
In an instant, the relief has vanished, replaced by a silence that rips the air out of the room. Cor and Crissa have stilled, stricken, and I feel the gap between us widening with each passing moment. I want to reach for them, call to them, cling to them. They’re looking at me, waiting for me to say or do something, and I have no answer. My whole body feels suddenly exhausted, sluggish, like I’m being pulled underwater. I try to form words, any words, but they stick to the roof of my mouth like a thick paste, and I can’t remember what they mean. I swallow, then swallow again, trying to push down the lump in my throat.
“Maybe we should all get some rest,” Crissa says softly after a few moments. Her voice is muted, coming from somewhere far away. There’s a pressure building behind my eyes, and I think it might be pain, but I’m not sure, because the rest of me has gone numb. I nod mechanically, forcing my head to move on my neck. Every movement, every breath and beat of my heart, feels foreign again.
I don’t know what I look like right now, or care, but it must be bad, because Crissa sits down next to me, reaching for my hand sympathetically. I crumple at her touch. The effort it takes to hold myself up is too great, and I give in, letting my body sag against hers. She catches me, keeps me upright somehow. I’m not sure how she manages it; I feel so heavy. I think I feel her hand on my back, the other on my waist. There is another hand gripping my shoulder: I think it’s Cor’s. They are the only things tethering me to this place; everything in me gravitates towards somewhere else with a voiceless, aching yearning.
I want to be where Pallor is. That is the thought that consumes me.
Cor drags his other hand across his eyes, sniffs. I don’t think they are tears of laughter anymore.
Crissa guides me down gently, until I’m lying on my side, staring out the window. The crash of waves against the stone of the karsts echoes in my head. Over and over again. It is loud and it is peaceful. I hear the others moving around me, but they’re just shadows in my blurred vision. I blink, again and again, but the world doesn’t slide back into focus. So I just shut my eyes.
Eventually, there is a blanket laid over me. Behind my eyelids, I can tell they’ve turned the lights down. The window is closed most of the way, left open just enough that I can still hear the sea. Cor and Crissa are whispering to each other somewhere. And then they’re standing by my bed. I can hear them breathing above me. I open my eyes.
“We thought you might be asleep,” Cor says.
“No,” I say.
“You should try,” Crissa says.
“Okay,” I say.
“Do you need anything else?”
No words come. I shake my head. It feels like I’m sinking into the pillow, and soon, I’ll disappear completely. I long for it as much as I fear it.
Cor’s jaw is set, and Crissa’s eyes are shining with tears, but they both nod and turn to go—Cor to his bed, and Crissa to her room next door. They’ll be close. They aren’t gone. They aren’t leaving me here alone. I tell myself this over and over again.
“Wait.” I hear them turn, their steps muffled by the plush rug. I take a shaky breath, trying to cut through the pain that hangs so leaden in my chest. My voice comes out small, like when I was a child. In those long months after Palace Day, when I’d wake up crying, I’d squeeze my eyes shut against the memories that clouded my mind—the faces, the screams, the blood pooling on the carpet. I’ve taught myself to keep all of it at bay, since then.
“Can you stay?”
My voice breaks. My breath catches as blood spreads across my vision like fire—the white-shelled path stained crimson, the ebbing life that fades to nothing. I shut my eyes again, and finally, the tears come, silent and shaking.
I feel Crissa behind me, curling up against my back and wrapping her arms around me. Cor is sitting on the end of the bed. He rests his hand on my leg, squeezes it gently.
I’m crying, and then I’m not, and then I am again. It’s the kind of grief that swallows sound. It strips one clean, leaving them bare and wretched and empty. Crissa holds me tighter. She rubs slow circles on my back, up the nape of my neck, where I used to feel so much, and now feel nothing. It’s like salve on a wound; not quite healing it, but soothing the ache enough for now. I hear Cor’s even breathing, see his strong silhouette in the dark.
No one says anything. No one has to. They’re here, and that’s all I can take.
In their presence, I feel the tightness in my chest begin to loosen. Pieces of it break off, get swept out with the sea. My body tenses up from time to time, a reflex against the pain, but most of the shaking has subsided. I can breathe easier now. My eyelids are heavy. The feeling of my friends beside me is fading. I close my eyes.
My mind is filled with thoughts of Pallor. Sunlight glints off his blue-white scales. When his black eyes meet mine, I am a child again. For the first time in a long time, I am not alone.
See, little one? There is so much left to live for.
I climb onto his back, and the world falls away below us.