Logan rocks me in his arms, drops a kiss on my temple as the paper butterflies look on in horror at what their creator has done to me.
“Wish I could have been there,” he rumbles. “Might visit the scene of the crime later for kicks. You can come with, if you need a good laugh.”
“Logan.” I swat his stomach. My mascara is still washed down the side of my cheeks in a mud-slick, and my hair looks like a tumbleweed, but I don’t care. Apparently Gage finds me repulsive in any state.
“Are you listening to yourself?” Logan pulls back and examines me. “You’re insane if you think Gage has been duping you. So what if Dudley denied teaching him the tricks of the trade? Obviously Gage learned how to do this in some way and I’m betting Marshall was the portal to that knowledge.”
“You doubted his capabilities the night you took me to the Falls. You’re the one who fertilized this seed of doubt. Besides…” I shake my head into his chest. It comes out childlike, lost. I take in Logan’s clean scent, the fresh trace of dryer sheets perfuming his sweatshirt. “You’re my forever, Logan.”
He gives a disgruntled huff. “You and I both know how that’s going. We’re down by eight, only four more regions. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know we’re staring down the barrel of eternal servitude. See? Right there, Gage’s prediction comes true. We live very, very long and sorry lives.” He rubs his arms up and down my back.
“And what about my mother’s predictions? About our paths parting and then converging?”
“Probably same thing. I’ll see you in the Transfer. Maybe there’s some stupid Celestra with the capability to drag us into his dreams.”
I let out a groan at the thought.
“They’re taking me, Logan,” I whisper. Maybe that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Maybe if I hadn’t had the threat of disappearing forever looming over me like a sharpened sickle I wouldn’t have mentally imploded for all to see at dinner by way of announcing Marshall as my husband—openly declaring to love him with my body, no less.
“I’ll never leave you, Skyla. I swear to God I’ll be right there with you every single minute.”
“Until I turn into Ezrina and you turn into a bird.” I sniff into him. “How did we ever get sucked into that.”
“I wanted to help you and you wanted to help me.” He rubs his hand over my arm and warms me with his undying affection. “OK, let’s switch gears. It’s time to think positive. We still have your mother. We could win the last four regions. I’ll die to get you to the sword of the Master if I have to. You’re going to sit supreme over the Faction Councils. I swear on my life this is going to happen.”
“You’re right.” I nod. “I need to believe. Things are going to turn around. My mother will find Ezrina and Nev innocent and we’ll get to stay in our own skin.” I say it at an alarming decibel, the way Mom does while trying to convince a docile infant he’s the next prodigy since Einstein, even though his genes demand otherwise. “It’s you I’m going to marry. My visions—our visions are real. Those are the truths I choose to cling to.” I lock eyes with him a very long time.
“Skyla.” Logan’s whisper breaks up the silence. “I believe every word you said, even if you don’t.”
A heavy sigh escapes my chest as I nod into the fact he’s right. I don’t believe jack that just flew out of my mouth.
“Our days are numbered.” It comes out barely audible. “And once the Counts and the Fems take over, so are everyone else’s.”
A strange dark haze infiltrates the butterfly room. Logan and I glance at once another with thin veiled surprise.
We both know what this means.
***
Iron skies, rivers of blood beneath my feet. I appear in the ethereal plane cradling a gun, the cool metal quickly molding to my hand.
“What the hell?” I hold it out, feel its heft. This is hardly my mother’s style.
A landscape emerges—a barren wasteland with old adobe-like structures lying in ruins. Their clay domiciles provide the perfect hiding ground for the enemy. I run my hand over the encrusted walls and it leaves my palm freshly dusted a bright terracotta.
Arrows dart by, and I duck into one of the decimated buildings. I examine the weapon in my hand. Long and slender, looks more like a magazine than a gun itself, but it has a barrel and a place to cradle my finger before discharging. I hold it out and aim at the building across the way to examine its power. I pull the trigger and ball of light shoots across the expanse like a cannon. The structure crumbles to dust at its nuclear command.
“Crap!” I jump in amazement at the goliath display of power.
A large creature, a man, a god approaches with his wings spread wide, ten feet in either direction as he emanates a light that could put the sun to shame.
“Do refrain from discharging at random.” It’s Marshall.
I drop to my knees in his glorious presence. I can’t take my eyes off his glowing eminence, so aggressively perfect that it inclines me to bow at his feet.
“Arise at once,” he barks. “I won’t have you worshiping me. We are one and the same, and we worship the Master together. No need to add idolatry to your long list of celestial offenses.” He helps me up. “Come now. Delphinius has already spoken with Countenance.”
“What?” I take him by the hand as we head down the dusty trail.
“It’s your punishment. Your celestial devices have been revoked, and I’m afraid, this day, in this region, you will also lose your sight,” he says it low, apologetically.
“No.” I shake my head. “If I can’t see, I can’t win. If she takes away my eyesight, I’ll know she hates me.” Not that I ever doubted she felt otherwise.
“I’m sorry, Skyla,” he says, waving his hand in front of my face. “I must go now.”
“Marshall, no!” I lunge at him as he evaporates to nothing and the world fills in with a blinding white fog.
This is no ordinary lights out—not the way I envision being blind in the least. This is an organized chaos orchestrated by the one who loves to watch me suffer, the very same one that bore me through her loins.
“Skyla?” A familiar voice calls out—Gage.
A part of me wants to scream for him to help me out of my worst nightmare with my head intact but my vocal cords don’t bother. Instead, I swat my arms in front of me and try to walk a straight line, not moving three inches in the process.
A warm pair of arms wrap themselves around my middle. He drops a tender kiss on the side of my face and pants. “I’ve got you.”
“Logan?” I cry in a panic. If my mother is capable of this madness, if Gage is capable of deceiving me, and Marshall left me to my own devices, then I need Logan just to breathe.
“It’s just you and me, Skyla,” Gage whispers as he guides me forward with quick easy strides.
Every step feels tragically fatal. Every movement feels like a fresh deception, another step closer to the cliff he’s about to push me off.
“I’d never hurt you, Skyla. Logan told me what Dudley said. I swear to you—”
“I wish I were deaf.” I heave the words out in lieu of tears. “Don’t you dare use this opportunity to stroke me with excuses. If you really love me…” I grab a hold of him and shake him. “If you really want me to listen to you—win this fucking region.”
Gage picks me up. I fly through the air like a trapeze artist and land stomach down over his shoulder, my face bobbing into his backside. The blood rushes to my temples as he moves us out onto the field at an aggressive pace. He snaps the weapon from my hand and fires, time after time loud as a cherry bomb if it were going off in my ear. A stunted silence excavates the noise and I’m left blind and numb with just the simple vibrations of the ground shaking, the thumping of my body as Gage runs while holding me captive. Looks like I got my wish. I hope my mother is proud. Here I am deaf, dumb and blind—dumb because Gage keeps fooling me into giving him my heart on a platter over and over.
A tremendous jolt ro
cks the earth. It knocks Gage to his knees and as he pulls me into his arms. He cradles my head with his hands before falling over me. Gage doesn’t move. I try shouting his name, pushing him off, but he doesn’t budge, doesn’t flinch as I writhe beneath him. I bring my fingers up to his face to touch the features I’ve memorized down to the placement of each molecule, and a warm trickle of liquid greets me. I tap up the side of his cheek and my fingers fall into an open gape of flesh, nothing but tissue over bone.
His face.
It’s gone.
Chapter 85
A True Vision
My lids flutter open. A cascade of butterflies infiltrate the air. Their wings decorate the area in every shade of blue, but it’s the cobalt ones, the ones dipped in the exact color of Gage’s eyes that mesmerize me and make me linger.
It takes a second for me to realize I’m back in the butterfly room with Logan. I pull back from his tight embrace and examine him, lap up his beautiful face with my eyes in perfect working order. I give several hard blinks as the butterflies adhere themselves to the walls with a sizzle.
“I had the worst nightmare,” I say.
“That you were in the war? You were blind?” Logan’s longitudinal divot inverts.
“You, too? It’s like we’re living the same nightmares both in and out of reality.”
“Skyla,” he whispers, shaking his head, “that nightmare was real.”
“Gage.” I cry out his name like I were grieving him, an irony in and of itself since only moments before I wanted to cut out his liver and feed it to the dog. “They blew his face off.”
I snatch Logan by the wrist and drop us through the closet. I slam the dresser into the wall and bullet us through the door and down the stairs.
“Jumping Judas!” Tad booms from behind. “She’s taking off with another one!”
I don’t bother stopping to explain to Mom and Tad why I’m racing off in the night with Logan, barefoot in my kitten and tea cups pajamas. I just hop in his truck and scream the word faster at the top of my lungs.
We race through traffic. Logan speeds on the wrong side of the road. He drives on the shoulder and melts the rubber on his tires as soon as we hit the open country that leads to the estates. He doesn’t wait for the long arm of security to rise in his honor. He guns it and crashes through the impotent stick trying to hold us back. We do a full-blown donut as we twist into the Oliver driveway just before Logan plows through Emma’s flower garden. He crashes the truck head-on through the kitchen window, embedding his front end into the side of the house.
Logan and I jump out of the truck and race to find Gage.
***
Emma and Dr. Oliver accelerate down the stairs. Emma pinches up her white flannel gown while Dr. O hugs a bronze shotgun close to his chest.
“What the hell has gotten into you?” He jerks the weapon while raging into Logan. “I’ve a bum ticker in the event you weren’t aware.”
“It’s Gage.” I push past them as I claw my way to his room.
“Let me.” Logan arrives at the door first and flicks on the lights, sheltering me from the sight. “Gage?” He makes his way over to the bed.
I try to follow but my feet won’t budge.
There he is, sprawled out over the mattress, not moving.
A pool of red covers the top of his bed. His sheets are soaked in a crimson gloss while a puddle of blood stagnates on the floor by his shoes.
Dr. Oliver curses up a storm as he chokes over his son’s lifeless body.
Emma grabs onto me by the door and bursts into tears. Her body convulses into mine and shivers from the shock of the gruesome sight.
It takes five full minutes for Barron to assure us he’s going to make it. He whips back and forth at unnatural speeds, disappearing then reappearing with his medical bag, barking out orders at Logan for hot water, clean towels.
Emma and I muster the strength to go over and assess for ourselves what the damage might be. We find Gage staring up the ceiling, blinking slow and exhausted.
“Gage?” I draw in close. He looks perfectly normal from this vantage point. It’s only when I get in further do I see the left side of his face hanging open, exposing the roots of his teeth. A tear runs jagged from his jaw up to his temple. I turn my head at the sight and bump into Logan.
“It’s OK.” Logan dots my face with a kiss. “He’ll be just fine.”
I don’t say anything. I certainly don’t clue his family in on the fact I made Gage try and prove his love for me and therefore put him in danger. We could have hid behind the ruins, sat in silence while the Counts reached victory, arrived back on Paragon with both our faces intact.
“Nothing a few hundred stitches won’t fix.” Dr. Oliver hovers over Gage with a large circular needle that’s usually reserved for repairing yours truly.
“Don’t hurt him.” I take up his hand, close my eyes and envision his perfect beautiful face.
His body jumps with a violent force, shaking me off the mattress.
“What was that?” I scream.
“He’s gone into shock.” Dr. Oliver reaches into his bag and produces two metal paddles. He drops an ointment over one before rubbing them together with an eerie calm. “Logan, I want you to take Skyla downstairs,” he instructs. “Emma, you’re to get on your knees and plead for your son’s life.” He reaches down and plugs the contraption into the wall as Logan extricates me from the premises.
My lungs rattle out a scream for Gage. Every ounce of me that ever loved him cries out in pain, in sheer agony at the prospect of losing him tonight—of never touching him, never hearing him out.
***
Logan pulls me downstairs. He drags me all the way to the front yard and slams the door, loud as a cannon.
I stagger over to the thick navy lawn and raise my face to the sky.
“Do not let him die!” I scream it at the top of my lungs. “Do you hear me, mother?” My throat bleeds from the caustic effort. “So help me God, you kill him and I’m going to find out what you really love and destroy it!” I drop to my knees with my head spinning from the chaos.
“What the hell?” Ellis shouts as he and a group of guys head in this direction. The stench of weed wafts over, thick like a cloud, but I don’t let the company impede my inter-dimensional rant.
“You said you’d come!” I mean for it to blast from my lungs but it sails out a whimper. “That you would help me fight—you and Daddy. But you lied. Just don’t let Gage die and I’ll leave you alone forever. I’ll live with the Counts like a good girl just like you want. I swear it. I’ll give them all of my blood, every hour I have left on this planet. Let Gage live.” I bury my head in the thick, damp grass. The heavy blades slice against my throat as I give in to the earth, the sky, my mother and her demonic head games.
It’s over.
Skyla? My mother appears behind my lids in a vision. Why are you so upset? She looks angry more than perplexed. Gage is on the mend. Do refrain from irrational outbursts. If you’re to lead the Faction Councils, you must practice irreverent calm. Be slow to anger, impossible to infuriate over a rumor or misunderstanding. You must come from a place of knowing at all times.
I lie motionless, unable to speak and, ironically, this infuriates me.
I’ve clipped your tongue for the night. She smiles into her admission. Don’t trouble your heart over love. Arrangements have been made for you in that arena. She leans into me until the love pours out from her completely. Trust me, Skyla, leave your heart in the Master’s hands. I’ve seen all that is in store for your future. I helped shape it and fashion it just as you would have wanted if you were aware of the circumstances.
She turns to leave, then looks over her shoulder at me. And one more thing—congratulations on your first win.
First win? I try to call after her but she’s already gone.
Logan helps me up to my feet.
We took the region. I wrap my arms around his neck and he spins me victoriously.
&nbs
p; We won the battle.
Gage won.
Chapter 86
On Love and Such
Logan and I meander back to Gage’s bedroom to see how he’s doing.
The dark mahogany bookshelves are neatly lined with hardbacks, each sporting matching gilded fonts along the spines while an army of trophies gleam up top from when he was a boy. Gage keeps his room neat and tidy. You could perform surgery in this ultra-hygienic environment. Lucky for Gage because that’s sort of what’s happening now.
Dr. Oliver finishes up the last chain of stitches. An entire row of thick black X’s dot the left side of his face from his lip to his ear before darting straight up to his temple.
Gage wears a sullen expression as he fights sleep to gaze over at me. His swollen lip breaks into a painful smile, and I feel guilty he even attempted the effort.
“Get some rest,” Dr. Oliver says as he heads to the door. “I’ll be back to check on you. Try not to speak or you run the risk of splitting open.”
Gage plucks at my fingers and gives a brief nod. We did it.
I look to Logan. Tell him he won the region. That he did it.
Logan and I sit on either side of him while I hold his hand. Logan touches his arm, so Gage doesn’t have to risk his stitches to speak.
Will you still be my date for the Kragger dinner tomorrow night? Gage doesn’t seem all that concerned that Logan is listening in on our conversation.
“Give her some breathing room,” Logan says it as nice as possible, but I can feel his agitation in this short distance.
“Skyla?” Emma peers into the room. “I just got off the phone with your mother. I told her Gage had an accident and that you were comforting him.”
“Thank you,” I mouth since my other, not so angelic, mother depleted my vocal cords for the evening.
I’m sure Tad thought of a dozen different scenarios all having to do with me running away or hacking someone’s head off.