They stare at me, utterly stunned.
“The walls around us are for protection. But you remake them a prison.” And I turn and leave, because for my whole life I have been weak and afraid, and I’m tired of it.
Trained Bloods haven’t been able to kill me. A deadly virus that killed all its other test subjects was not able to kill me. So let Quinn and Raven kill me – let them try.
*
My footsteps lead me to a second doorway that isn’t mine. Because I’ve realized something else. The trauma of Hal’s death has shed light on so many things, and now I understand.
Forgiveness isn’t shameful. Selfishly, I made what Luke did about me. I was arrogant enough to be humiliated. But it isn’t about me. It’s about a mistake – and who am I to ever judge someone for a mistake? For making an impossible choice in the only way he – a brave, generous man – knew how?
To hold onto a stupid grudge seems incredibly childish to me in this moment, given what else I know about Luke Townsend, and what I know about myself.
I hesitate before knocking and instead skirt around the small house to the window. Rapping on the glass with my knuckles, I hear the thump of footfalls from within.
The curtain is thrown aside and I am looking up at Luke.
He’s not wearing a shirt, only boxers, and he has white scars on his sun-browned chest. They are nothing compared to the terrible scars he bears on his back, the ones he endured for me. He gazes down at me, startled by my presence.
My heart is trembling in my chest. It’s beating its wings to get free. I am so frightened, but I must be brave. I reach up, placing my palm flat against the glass. Our eyes meet.
The moment stretches out indefinitely. And I feel in this moment the presence of our children. Once upon a time, Luke Townsend told me in a supermarket that he imagined us living on a houseboat with three children. I don’t think he has any idea how much that moment and those words changed my life. I don’t think he understands that by doing that – by giving me the idea of a family – he was indelibly scarring himself on my insides. He is a brand on my heart. A tattoo on my bones. And the children are here now, in my mind, an impossible possibility.
I say, “I love you.” And even though he can’t hear me through the glass, he can see the words on my lips, and he lets his eyes fall shut. A great ache is in his shoulders as he opens the window and helps me to climb in. His gaze looks incredibly green.
“Luke.”
“Josi.” He reaches to touch my cheek and his hand is so warm.
“I wanted to punish you for hurting me,” I say softly, and there are tears slipping from my eyes. “I just wanted to hurt you, and I’m so sorry. I don’t want to do that anymore.”
Both his hands take my face and he leans close.
“Luke. I thought it was you. I thought you were being executed.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“It doesn’t matter. It made everything so obvious. Forgiveness is the easiest thing in the world. We’re supposed to take care of each other, and we can’t do that by lying, and I don’t want to lie anymore, and I don’t want to hold onto the lies. They mean nothing, less than nothing because I know you never lied about anything that mattered, I know you love me – I feel it, I feel the truth of it.”
His hands are trembling. My heart is flying away.
“I love you so much,” I whisper.
And he kisses me. And it is our first kiss.
It is being reborn.
It is an aching, trembling thing.
It’s the whole future.
It is my life in a kiss, the meaning of it.
It is truth.
That’s when the door bursts open and several men aim guns straight at our heads.
“Easy,” Luke says.
“Luke. We gotta take her,” one of them says.
“It’s okay, I’ll go.” I was expecting this.
“What’s the order?” Luke asks.
“To take her to the holding room.”
“Do you want me to stop this?” he asks me as I’m being taken hold of.
“No. I did this. It might get bad, but I can handle it.” And then I smile at him. “I make them nervous.”
Luke gazes at me and grins. “I’m not surprised.” Then, “I love you.”
As they pull me out of the room I say to him, “Even if there were a thousand worlds better than this one, I’d still choose your world every time, crème brûlée boy.”
He laughs a little, and our eyes hold until I am dragged from view.
Chapter 21
March 4th, 2066
Luke
The first thing I say when I wind up on Quinn’s doorstep is, “It doesn’t have to happen like this.”
He ushers me in and I take a seat in his living room. He’s not the problem – his girlfriend is.
“She threatened us,” he says. “She lied about her identity, repeatedly.”
“She’s scared,” I lie. “You don’t have to come at this with guns blazing. She and I will both help you, as long as things remain peaceful. If things go bad …” I hold his gaze. “Life’s going to get ugly.”
“You understand what threats like that can mean for you?”
“And what’s going to happen when you kill us? You think you’d even be able to?”
Quinn looks nervous. He glances at the door.
“Don’t push it to that,” I implore him. “Let Josi go. She’ll help you figure out what’s in her blood. And I’ll help you do everything I said I would. There doesn’t need to be any animosity here. We want the same things.”
“Raven’s furious.”
“So what? She causes enough pain without you obeying her every command.”
“She’s damaged.”
I sigh. “I sympathize, mate. But aren’t we all?”
He doesn’t reply.
“Josi hasn’t done anything.”
“She lied.”
“We all lie. It’s human nature.”
His jaw clenches. Finally he says, “This isn’t over. I just need to think. Make sure she doesn’t cause any unrest, Luke, or she really will be dead on her feet.”
I shake his hand, thank him and head for the door.
He says, “The same goes for you. They love you and you’re a good fighter, but you’re not above the law.”
I meet his eyes. “Neither are you, Quinn, and you should remember that.”
When I arrive at the holding cell Raven is inside with Josi. I open the door in time to witness Raven backhanding Josi across the face.
“Enough,” I snap.
Josi’s eye is swollen and her lip is bleeding. She’s been badly worked over. “Let her go for it, Luke. It makes her feel strong.”
Raven is livid. She glances at me, then spins and hits Josi again. I have to stop myself from intervening. It’s not fair, and it’s brutal, but Josi can’t have me trying to save her if she’s to earn any respect.
“You think you just decide to have power and then it’s yours?” Raven snarls. “That’s not how it works. You aren’t strong enough for that.”
Another hard smack to the face, and then Raven strides out. To me she says, “It would be the easiest thing in the world to find a reason for the two of you to be exiled. You have not been and will not be cleared for procreation. They may love you here, but they certainly don’t love the girl. So you’d better start treading very, very carefully, Luke.”
*
Josephine and I go past the infirmary. Ranya’s used to seeing battered faces, but we all know this wasn’t from training or tournaments. She sits Josi on a bed and starts cleaning her face. “I want Claire,” Josi says, a little woozily.
Mom is here in an instant and I shoot her a grateful look as she takes over Josi’s care with soothing murmurs. Josi needs stitches in her forehead and she’ll have a nice gruesome scar, but she doesn’t mind – she’s quite out of it.
When I take her home Pace is sitting on the couch, staring
off into space. She sees Josi and does a double take. “Who did that to you?”
“One guess.”
“That bitch is out of control.”
The three of us look at each other. Then Josi murmurs, “We’re going to have to do something about her.” She sinks onto the couch and the two girls seem content to sit quietly. Josi’s eyes move to me, and she looks at me. Really looks at me.
I am sick with guilt and worry and grief.
But.
I am also vibrating with a fierce and heady excitement. Bubbles of joy keep rising, and I keep having to force them back down. I am woozy with the sheer, outrageous, mad, desperate love inside me – and the ludicrously dangerous relief that has surged. God, the relief. To have had to completely recalibrate the point of my life to account for the sudden absence of Josephine Luquet was too strange to fully comprehend. An agony of shifting perspectives, of denying a soul the thing that had only very recently sustained it – this had been telling my mind and my heart that it could no longer have Josi. And the response was a resounding non comprende.
But. It seems those dark, dark days are over. They were the universe’s way of telling me never, ever to take for granted the incredible privilege of being loved. And not only loved, but loved by Josephine Luquet. There is magic in that, and I can feel it in her gaze now. The magic of the world that exists for those who are lucky enough to be loved by her. How sweet, how rare. How perfect.
I am shown the strength in her heart, and the far reaches of a human’s capacity. In this look. In her forgiveness of all my cruelties. In her ability to be beaten down again and again and to always get back up. It’s the quiet resilience I awoke to see had risen inside her. She is new, remade, but also exactly as she always was.
In this simple look she gives me all of herself, and a promise that we have come to a place where life is shared, forever.
I lift a hand to my heart. I give her the same promise in return. She smiles with love and we allow the moment to stretch out around us, allow ourselves to stand within it forever and for the blink of an eye. And then I turn to leave, sturdier on my feet than I have ever been.
*
On my way to the Den I check on Will, who slept the second half of the night at Shadow’s place. The pair is fashioning arrows when I poke my head through the door.
“Alright, you two?”
They both nod. Will gives me a salute.
“Eaten yet?”
The three of us go to the Den and scarf down as much as we can force ourselves to, then gather a few plates to take back for Josi and Pace. They haven’t moved when we return, both lost in thought, maybe slipping in and out of dozes.
“What happened to your face?” Shadow asks immediately.
Josi blinks, then touches her swollen cheek as if to remember. “You should see the other guy.” She winks at me and I smile. “They know everything about me, but they don’t know about you, Luke,” she says.
“What do you mean?” Pace asks as she takes the plate of food but doesn’t eat.
“They don’t know that Luke has the virus. And it’s going to stay that way.”
“Josi, no more lies,” I sigh. “I’m coming clean.”
She meets my eyes. “No, you aren’t.”
I search her face, but she doesn’t elaborate.
“Will there be a funeral?” Josi asks Pace.
The girl shakes her head mutely.
“Not if someone dies by punishment,” Will explains morosely.
“That’s … No, that’s not happening. We’ll have something private for Hal. Just invite people he loved.” She meets my eyes and murmurs, “We remember our loved ones. We grieve for them, because we are still able to.”
And I remember Anthony Harwood, whose ability to grieve for his daughter was stolen from him.
*
I do the rounds, inviting all those who Hal had personal relationships with. There are many – he was a well-loved young man, despite the accusation of his crime. Josi was adamant that I make sure Eric comes, so I stop by his place last. It takes him a long time to answer the door, and when he does it looks like he’s come straight from bed, despite it being sunset.
“Hi, mate. Sorry.”
He swallows. “What’s up?”
“We’re having a memorial for Hal.”
“But he murdered Batch.”
I take a breath. It’s a very dangerous game to play, but I say, “No, he didn’t.”
Eric stares at me, his pale cheeks flushed pink. Without a word he follows, barefoot, blanket still around his shoulders despite the heat.
We all gather at Josi and Pace’s place. There’s about a dozen of us. Each person brings a memory of Hal and shares it with the rest of us, and we take a drink each time. Most of us are sprawled on the floor, squashed onto the couch or perched on the bench. I sit beside Josi but am careful not to touch her, Raven’s warning all too vivid in my mind.
When it gets to my turn, I lift my glass, not sure what I will say until my mouth opens and words come out. “He saved my life. When I first came here I hardly knew how to fire an arrow. He laughed, afterwards, saying he felt privileged to have taught me. That was what I remember about him – his unwavering generosity of spirit.”
We say cheers and drink.
Josi says, “He taught me about the train. Gave me new purpose to my life. I remember him making me feel welcome, and safe, and most of all I remember the way his voice sounded when he talked about the people he loved. His family.”
We all turn to look at Pace, who is leaning against the doorway to her room. Her face crumples, but she swallows hard and gives a small, shaky nod.
I take Josephine’s hand, not caring who is here to report it.
Someone clears his throat, and we look to see Eric, who has been sitting apart and hasn’t had a turn yet. He raises his glass and says, “Hal taught me that love is kindness. He will live in my heart, always.”
We drink with Eric and I realize the truth, as I think we all do, in the wake of such loving words. My eyes go to Pace, who is bone-white. She turns and shuts her bedroom door.
A murmur comes from the front entrance and people move aside to reveal Quinn. He looks at me and Josi, and then at Will, last of all. There are, I see with a start, unshed tears in his eyes.
Someone passes him a cup and he raises it. “A son of The Inferno,” he says softly. “Two sons. Two young men brave enough to fight in a world too broken for it to seem possible. We will remember this, and not the crimes that came in the end. We will mourn the courage, not the mistakes.” And then even more softly, as though an afterthought, “I will mourn this.”
We drink, and I am struck but the enormity of the burden that comes with being a leader. The burden and the privilege of loving every one of the people you lead. The impossible nature of having to punish them and guide them and choose for them. It is too much, it seems to me now, looking at Quinn. And I am glad that my life has never required me to lead.
*
While everyone else is leaving, I take a moment to pull Josi aside. We don’t touch, we just look. I was going to say something about Raven not clearing us for ‘procreation’ and me having to leave, having to keep us a secret, but I see now that it doesn’t need to be said. She knows and I know and even here, in the sudden bliss of love returned, there is still a measure of bitterness.
“Do they get to decide who we love now?” Josi asks quietly, her voice bleak. I understand, in that one question of hers, that she no longer wants to be here. She has begun to see the walls that protect us as a cage. Maybe she always did, but decisions are being made.
“No. Never.” There are eyes on us; I can feel them. I take a step back but hold that blue and brown gaze of hers. “I don’t want them to own a single piece of this. We’ll find a place one day where it can belong only to us. Until then, we wait.”
She shakes her head. “What a waste. A waste of time. Of living.”
Quinn is watching us and I don’t
want to leave her, not now when those words have come loose, but there is no other choice.
“Sleep well, Miss Luquet,” I murmur.
She says nothing. I think she is disappointed in me. In what she perceives as cowardice. Her defiance wants freedom. She screams against the roof of the world at the injustice of not being allowed to choose who she loves. But I know when care is needed; I have made an art form of being careful and precise. So I will be careful enough for the both of us, to ensure that one day there is a world in which she and I can have everything we want and room for more.
*
Raven
“Where have you been?” I demand when Quinn returns.
“At Hal’s memorial.”
“How could you? Don’t you know how weak that makes us look? He’s supposed to be a murderer!”
“But he isn’t.”
I throw a glass at the wall and it shatters noisily. I feel sick and panicked and horrified – why am I suddenly the villain, when it was Quinn’s decision as much as mine?
“Take a breath,” Quinn tells me.
I give a scream of rage. “She’s a lying bitch,” I snarl. “I knew she was lying to us. I fucking knew it.”
“Calm down, love.” He crosses to me and takes my face in his hands. “Calm down.”
“I don’t want calm,” I hiss. “I want to kill her. I can’t believe you let her go. I can’t.”
“Think,” he urges. “The compound doesn’t need another death right now. Hal was necessary because we needed to stem the panic of the murder. Killing the girl will freak everyone out, because we don’t have a crime to pin on her.”
“She lied!”