“It’d probably be good to leave at least one with you, just in case. I picked this one up when we were in the camp.” Howl holds out one of the guns toward me handle-first. “Xuan had this other one.”
Tai-ge walks over and reaches for the second weapon, Howl hesitating a beat before letting him take it. Tai-ge weighs it in his hand, then checks the chamber with quick, practiced movements. “Ammunition?”
“In your pack.”
I hesitated in accepting the gun Howl held out toward me, so Tai-ge reaches for it as well, raising his eyebrows when Howl doesn’t let go.
“I’ll take that one.” I hold my hand out, attempting to cut through the tension suddenly thick around us again. I’m not particularly worried about Tai-ge shooting any of us, no matter what’s going on with him. I don’t want him to give one of the weapons back to Xuan, though. “Unless you need it while you’re scouting, Howl?” If Howl’s passing out guns, I have a hard time believing he didn’t keep one for himself.
“I don’t do guns.” Howl gives me a bleak smile at the incredulous expression I can feel materializing on my face. “Or I suppose I should say that I don’t do guns anymore.”
He doesn’t do guns anymore. Sole said she couldn’t pick one back up after she saw Howl shoot a little girl who was trying to escape the City with her parents. They were Reds, and that was all they saw until after the bullets had done their work.
“I’ve got this, so I’m good to go.” Howl pulls something out of his pocket and holds it up. The knife, Tai-ge’s name dark in the wooden handle. Why does he keep taking it? How does he keep getting it from my pocket without me noticing? “You don’t mind, do you, Tai-ge?”
Tai-ge stiffens beside me at the sight of it. “How is it you ended up with that? It’s Sevvy’s.”
“Is it?” Howl looks down at the handle, fingers tracing Tai-ge’s name. “My mistake. I’ll bring it back, I promise.” He climbs down the ladder before waiting for an answer.
I stare after him until he’s out of sight. Is Howl with a knife any better than Howl with a gun? There must be more than just the girl Sole told me about. More bodies staring up into the night sky with sightless eyes, so many that even Howl can’t shoulder the burden of pulling the trigger again.
When he can help it, anyway.
Tai-ge reaches for the gun in my hand, startling me. “You really want that, Sev?” he asks when I don’t let go.
“Yes. I do.”
Tai-ge lets his hand fall to his side. Howl’s on my team right now as much as he can be; Tai-ge’s the one I need to make sure of. How to word this? You aren’t thinking of betraying all of us, are you? seems just a bit too aggressive.
“How . . . are you doing?” I try, an awful smile twisting my mouth at just how bad I am at this.
“I’m going to make sure Xuan’s okay,” he responds, turning toward the storage closet. “Tell him we’ve landed and see if he can add to the picture we’ve got already.”
I grab his arm, stopping him. “Tai-ge, wait. I don’t think you should be the one to talk to him until we’ve cleared some things up.”
“Cleared some things . . . ?” Tai-ge’s voice stretches tight, his brow furrowing when I don’t let go of his coat. “What’s bothering you, Sevvy?”
“It doesn’t add up.” I gesture helplessly toward the storage closet. “None of his story does. He just showed up outside your prison cell, happens to know the single bit of information we need, and also wants to defect? He won’t even tell us how he found out you were in the camp. We can’t trust someone who is going to lie about how he dropped into our laps. I’m worried . . .” I fumble for words that don’t sound accusatory. “I’m worried the Seconds let the two of you go. And if they let you go, let us take the heli . . . that’s not good. We still don’t know how they found us before, what they wanted . . . but the City or Mountain, either one, would kill us for the cure if we get it first.” I lower my voice. “We couldn’t even land where he told us to because it’s too dangerous.”
Tai-ge takes a step back, pulling free from my grip. “This isn’t where Xuan told us to go? And you are only telling me this now?” He smooths his coat down from where I grabbed him. “You talked it through with June and Howl and then lied to me. Me.” He stares at me, his face stony. “It’s not just Xuan you don’t trust.”
He takes another step back, but his foot catches on the raised floor behind him, sending him to the ground. He shakes his head, mouth open as if there are a million things that need to be said and he can’t think of a single one.
“Xuan risked his life to get me out of that camp.” Tai-ge doesn’t get up, just sits hunched over and small. It makes me feel hollow, as if I’ve betrayed him by second-guessing Xuan. “His girlfriend went berserk and ran off into the forest after the contagious strain ran through the City. All the camps outside of Dazhai are dealing with broken equipment and Menghu waiting in the trees. Everyone is wondering when they’re going to attack or if SS will strike first. . . .” He finally looks up, his face pained. “I—I’m not sure what you want from me, Sevvy. We escaped. I was so scared that I didn’t pay attention to the details. After the Menghu went on their rampage—I’m still not sure how that stopped—things were a little disorganized. Xuan and I were lucky.” He shrugs. “It seems callous to say it that way. Twenty-two soldiers died, and burning their bodies was enough of a distraction that we managed to sneak out.” He opens his hands in a plea. “I thought you’d be . . . relieved, at least. Should I have stayed?”
“Of course not, Tai-ge.” My frustration returns, bring out the edges in my words. “When they took you, I was about one step from trying to disarm the man holding you with my teeth. The only reason I don’t have a bullet sprouting from my forehead is because Howl dragged me away.” I sit next to him on the floor, folding my arms tight around my stomach. “I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t function knowing you were in a cell. Wondering if you even were in a cell, or if they’d shot you.”
Tai-ge lets out a long breath, looking down at my knees instead of my face. “I promised you . . . I’m here with you. I’m trying to find the cure in the way that seems right. Do you trust me?”
“I . . .” I swallow, licking my lips. “I trust you, Tai-ge.”
He scrubs a hand through his hair and finally meets my gaze, the irises of his eyes so dark it’s hard to see where they end and his pupils start. “You’re so different from before, I can’t tell how you’re doing. Something changed while you were out there with Howl and June. I’m worried . . .” He wrinkles his nose. “You couldn’t even sleep in the heli with Howl trapped in the storage closet before, but now you’re siding with him instead of me.”
There’s weight here, as if me not replying will cement the cold space between us—that trust goes both ways, and if I don’t give, I can’t expect to get his trust in return.
Choosing words feels like choosing a match for my own cremation, unwilling and wrong. But I try, even as they ignite one by one. “Howl and I made a deal after what happened at Dazhai. He promised to help get you out, and then I realized our objectives align at the moment. He’s good at reading things. At sneaking and spying and saying all the right things to get what he wants. He used it against me before. It’s sort of a miracle I’m still alive.” I look down at my hands, not really wanting to go further into it. “He’s after the cure, the way we are. But he’s also the one who helped June get away from the camp, the one who led us to you.” I shrug. “We found space that allowed us to not kill each other. That’s all that has changed.”
“It’s a miracle you’re still alive?” Tai-ge echoes. His face clouds. “In the camp he was the Chairman’s son, and then when we were navigating it was the same. A First, down to the way he struts around this place. But he had those guns the whole time. And the way he took Xuan down . . . that doesn’t line up with anything I would have thought he was capable of back in the City.”
A truth Tai-ge couldn’t quite accept from me, at least not until
the proof was before his eyes in black and white.
I wait for the next inevitable questions about whether Howl having different goals than me really should have been enough to send me out of the heli to sleep in the snow.
I don’t want to say it out loud. I don’t want Tai-ge to think about me and Howl. Not together. Not . . . any of the things I thought we were.
“And the camp . . . what we overheard in the Chairman’s tent,” Tai-ge continues, and my chest relaxes. Tai-ge is either blind or doesn’t want to pry any more than he already has. “We’ve been fighting Kamar—or what we thought was Kamar. Menghu—since Jiang Gui-hua . . . since your mother . . .” He looks helplessly down at the gun still clenched in his fist. “And the Chairman is working with them. He was bowing down to Dr. Yang while they were actively shooting up the camp. There were probably people I knew there, people who could be hurt . . .”
People he knew in the camp. I can see what Tai-ge really means in the lines of discomfort clenching at his jaw. Tai-ge’s mother could have been there. So close, shots ricocheting back and forth through the canvas tents, nowhere to hide.
“The Chairman knew the invasion was coming. He asked them to target specific people.” Tai-ge stands up and goes to the console, laying the gun down, the weapon’s metal dark like a bead of blood squeezing out from a wound.
His father.
I follow Tai-ge to the console, words clogged in my throat as I poke at the captain’s chair, making it circle back and forth. A few days ago, I would have hugged Tai-ge. Let him talk into my shoulder until all the words were spent, or just let him be silent. Now, though, there’s a fire in his eyes that doesn’t look safe, as if touching him might result in an explosion.
“I’m so sorry, Tai-ge. Everything is so . . . wrong.” What else is there that I can say?
Looking out into the gray mist so I don’t have to look at my friend’s unfamiliar expression, I’m completely unprepared for when he pulls me away from the high-backed seat to fold his arms around me, gathering me close. I hug him back, closing my eyes, trying not to feel the prickle of scabs across my neck as they stretch with the movement.
He buries his face into my shoulder, just where I was thinking it wouldn’t fit so well anymore. “I just . . . I can’t even think about it,” he whispers against my coat. “It’s still happening, whatever it is the Chairman is doing. We were there in the middle of it. The shots, and the dead. When I saw you standing behind that tent as if you’d turned into a ghost . . . blood dripping down your neck, and Howl just behind you.” A shudder ripples up through his chest. “The whole time I was sitting with my hands cuffed to my cell door, I was worried they’d seen you. That I’d never see you again.”
Surprise wars with memories of the horror lodged in my gut from the moment I crossed out of Dazhai, as if the world had suddenly started to deflate because I’d left Tai-ge there with a gun to his head. Tai-ge’s my best friend. The world needs him in it. It’s a poor sort of silver lining to our situation, Xuan locked in the closet, hundreds of dead in the City and the Mountain, Lihua waiting for us back at the Post. Howl ranging outside like a gore. But I’m glad to know Tai-ge feels the same way I do about him.
“I’m here,” I say. “You’re here. We’re okay, even if everything else is broken.”
His arms are soft around me, asking for something. Support. Peace. Until he pulls me tight against him, arms dropping down to circle my waist, then curl up my back under my coat. His cheek slides next to mine, his lips on my ear. “We are going to fix this. You and me. Just like you’ve been telling me all along.”
I can’t move, goose bumps prickling out all over my body as I try to figure out what is happening. All of my muscles scrunch up, hollowing out where his hands are touching me, as if I could somehow extricate myself without him noticing.
There are no marks anymore. I’m not a Fourth, and he’s not a Second. This won’t destroy his future. There aren’t any rules now. This is okay. The words sound so nice in my head, so perfect and plausible.
But then his fingers find the curve of my back, pulling me tight. He inches his head back, his cheek against mine.
Everything seems to go fuzzy, a white blur of panic pushing everything out of my head, even as Tai-ge’s lips trail along my jaw, searching until he finds my mouth.
I always wanted this. Before. Back in the City. I knew, deep down, that he did too. But my branded star and his bright City future had always shouted louder than anything I wanted. Tai-ge was the one who made sure I knew it wasn’t a wall I could climb. But now, all I know is . . .
This isn’t how it felt to kiss Howl.
I jerk away, anger at myself a tinny taste in my mouth. Howl has done enough damage. I’m not going to let him take Tai-ge, too. If I skip kissing Tai-ge, it is not going to be because of . . .
A barrage of memories pounds at my brain: Howl lying next to me after a nightmare, the two of us whispering back and forth until it faded. The way he laughed over games of weiqi with June, and then stood between me and the Yizhi doors. His smile less than ten minutes ago.
I force the images away. It doesn’t matter how easy things were when we were running toward the Mountain, that Howl never once made me wonder what he would have to give up to be with me. It wasn’t real.
Maybe. I don’t know anymore.
Tai-ge looks at me, but he doesn’t seem to notice the discomfort trilling through my every vein. He brings one hand up to my cheek, then extracts the necklace from my coat: stars, ring, and jade piece. My past. The bits of me I didn’t want to forget, even if they were painful to look at. My mother, the City, and him.
“No matter what else happens, or maybe just before anything else happens . . .” He holds the ring up, rust flaking onto his fingers. “You don’t need this to remember me anymore because I’m not going anywhere. I love you, Sevvy.”
I love you? It feels wrong. Not the exciting wrong of forbidden romance, of doing what I want despite what the rules have dictated up until now. Just . . . wrong. I snatch the ring from him, tucking it back into my shirt. Trying to breathe, but he’s stealing all the air, leaning toward me to close the distance between us as if kissing me is the only logical conclusion to his statement.
I step back, brushing his hands away, forcing space between us. “Tai-ge, I’m not . . . I don’t . . .”
He stops. “You don’t what?”
Silence. Too much silence. Xuan sitting in the room just behind us. Howl and June outside. Port North. The cure. My head spins, everything a whirlwind of an unsettled future too dangerous to turn away from. I bite my lip and make myself meet his eyes. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
He lets me pull the rest of the way back, his hands slipping from inside my coat so we’re not touching, watching me try to find something other than him to look at now that my words are hanging in the air between us. As if there is supposed to be a longer explanation, a reason. All I can do is shrug, mortification a heavy weight on my chest.
“What do you feel, Sevvy?” he asks. “What do you want?”
“I can’t want anything.” I take a deep breath, trying to control my expression as tears prick in my eyes. “Not right now. You’re my best friend, Tai-ge, and I love you too. When you were stuck in Dazhai, I thought if we couldn’t get you back, I would die. But, please, just . . . don’t.”
Tai-ge nods slowly, folding his arms across his chest. “Just . . . right now?”
“I don’t know if it’s just right now. When all of this . . . people killing each other . . . people trying to kill us . . .” Until we figure out how long it will be before Xuan sticks a knife in someone. Until I find the family my mother sent me after . . . I can’t quite get a sentence out of my mouth, can’t make any promises about how I’ll feel later. I don’t know if the gap between us will somehow close in a month. Two months. A year. Ever.
Even back in the City, the thought of Tai-ge and me together wasn’t real. It was this dream I had, one I knew was imposs
ible and stupid and all the more alluring as a result. But now, with him standing in front of me, all those years of him not dreaming the same thing—at least, not enough to do anything about it—between us, it doesn’t even make sense. Tai-ge shrugs, folding his arms all the more tightly around himself. “Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make things worse.”
“No, not worse.” Maybe worse. Why is this worse?
Images rush together of all the times we’ve been alone on this heli, suddenly painfully clear. Tai-ge sitting close, Tai-ge touching me, Tai-ge waiting. I didn’t see it until right now. I didn’t care.
It’s not supposed to be this way.
“I’m . . . here, then. I love you. I’m sorry about the misunderstanding with Xuan, but I’m on your side. I’m here for you. I don’t need anything else for now.”
For now? I nod slowly, wishing there were something else I could say. But there isn’t.
CHAPTER 32
JUNE’S HEAD APPEARS THROUGH THE hatch, her cheeks so pale, it’s almost as if she’s turning to ice herself. It’s a relief to see her, the awkward silence between me and Tai-ge suffocating. All the questions I should have asked while we were alone dried up in trying to figure out why I didn’t want to kiss him.
“Do you think we’re clear to start toward the island?” I ask, squatting down by the hatch. There isn’t much to see outside the cockpit windows, smudged over by a thick fog, and the uncertainty itches between my shoulders, as if someone is already out there watching us. Hopefully not the people Xuan warned us about, the ones who hate anything carved from City stone.
June shakes her head, gestures for me to follow her, then disappears down the ladder.
“I’m going out,” I say, not looking at Tai-ge. “Please don’t go in Xuan’s cell. And make sure he doesn’t try to run or anything.”
“You’re still worried about Xuan?” Tai-ge looks up from the console. “After what I told you? Or is it just that you need to talk to the others first?”
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