The Raging Ones

by Krista Ritchie

Amelda chimes in with a short wave and smile. “For this initial launch, our sister planets believe we’re sending our leaders, but instead, we’re sending ambassadors of peace.”

  Peace. I mull the word. All I’ve ever wanted was peace, but I’m feeling more like a mountain lion held beneath an ax. Sacrificed for someone else’s needs.

  “Saltare-1 will be furious,” Padgett says.

  Gem frowns. “What are we to do then?”

  “The Saga 5 will have ample time to plan and strategize,” Tauris explains. “After one-on-one meetings with me, we’ll announce the five candidates. You’ll have over three months to prepare and bond as a team…”

  I tune him out as wetness leaks from my nostrils. I wipe roughly at my nose. No. It’s not me.

  Franny.

  Blood streams down her lip again. Cupping her hand over her nose and mouth, alarm and fright slithers into her body.

  Gods bless.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Franny

  The air must be irritating your nose, everyone tells me. It’s not like you’re dying anytime soon.

  At three o’night, I lie wide awake on my bed, forehead to my bent knees. Pinching my nose with a bloodied cloth. My mind wanders to fretful places. Sudden, unforeseen deaths. Gory and gruesome.

  I shudder.

  Zimmer sleeps soundlessly and peacefully beneath my quilt, and I think I’d really, really like to trade lives with him. Gods, let me be Zimmer. I wish I were that assured and certain. And safe.

  Shaking my head, I mutter, “Stop. Stop.” Self-pity does nothing but cramp my stomach. I sniff and shut my eyes. So terrified that I’ll start crying blood next.

  When is my deathday?

  Tell me, gods. When will I die?

  Boots suddenly cover my feet. I freeze, brows furrowing. Court has slipped on shoes. He rises off his mattress and then walks to the hallway. The library, I guess. Sometimes he reads late at night. If he planned anything serious, I’d like to think he would’ve told me. Instead of creeping around alone.

  But maybe he prefers keeping me in the dark.

  I shake my head fiercer. “What are you doing?” I mutter heatedly to myself. I’d never let anyone shadow my life, so why am I letting Court?

  Because I feel him.

  I know him.

  I trust him.

  And I hate him. My chin quakes. It hurts to loathe someone that’s so much a part of me. Someone I understand entirely. Their flaws, their quirks. Their ups and downs. None of us are near perfect, and if I condemn him for every imperfection, then I might as well condemn myself.

  Yet, I can’t change what I feel. I can’t replace the bitter resentment with warmth and kindness. So I sit here and blister.

  Not descending stairs, Court just … stops. I frown and concentrate harder. He clasps a doorknob, turns, and steps—I hear him.

  Court is in my dorm.

  “What?” I breathe, my voice muffled in my bloodied cloth.

  Never—not a brief second or moment, not one single day—has Court ventured into my room. Kinden sleeps here and he wanted to avoid his older brother.

  After learning StarDust’s secrets, it’s possible that’s changed. He’s here for Kinden. To speak to him about their father.

  My thought vanishes right as Court draws open my canopy. Surprise sways me backward. Too bewildered to speak, I stay still, but Court carries no hesitations. No reluctance.

  He stretches out his hands. “Will you let me help you?”

  I inhale a sharp breath. Will you let your hallucinations help you? I hear his smooth voice from our first meeting. “Am I hallucinating?” I ask with pooling tears. “Am I dead already?”

  His chest collapses like I impaled him with words alone. I did. The knife drives shrilly into my gut as well as his. “You’d sooner believe you’re dead than believe I’d help you?”

  Yes.

  I can’t bear to say the truth aloud, but my silent affirmation swells an awful pain between us. “Did Mykal force you to do this?” I wedge another blade in our ribs.

  Court grips the canopy so strongly. The phrase I will not quit tonight is embedded in his features and body. “This was my idea, not Mykal’s.”

  Choked on doubled emotion, I rub my neck.

  Court extends a hand again. “Please. Let me help you better this time.”

  Listening to my gut, I ball my bloodied cloth in a fist, blow out a mangled breath, and say, “All right.” I’ll let him try.

  * * *

  Court brings me to the empty clinic. Doors are unlocked for personal all-hour use, but almost no one has had an injury. So it’s quiet, warm lights dim.

  “Sit on that bed.” Court nods to the center of the room. A protective thin sheet of paper lines a partially reclined bed. I’ve only been here for a physical, but without the glaring white lights turned on, the room is somewhat more inviting.

  As he shuts the door, I climb on the bed, legs hanging off. I sniff constantly, even when my nosebleed ends.

  I watch Court open and close cabinets. Searching. He piles a few instruments and jars onto a rolling tray.

  I slip further into my thoughts. “It’s not important.” I freeze us.

  Court slowly faces me. “What’s not important?”

  “This.” I gesture all around the clinic. “What’s important is StarDust … and Bastell. We don’t have time—”

  “Stop.” His nose flares.

  “Why?” I seethe. “Why do I have to stop? I’m saying exactly what you’ve been telling me. So you’re allowed to utter the words, but I’m not?”

  “I was wrong!” His face breaks, but he pushes forward. “I’ve made you believe that you’re unimportant, and I hate myself for it.” Tears well, but he breathes out, suppressing the waterworks with me, and then he wheels the tray to the reclined bed. “Look up.”

  I meet his gaze.

  “Your health is important,” he says powerfully. “I’m so sorry for acting like it’s not.”

  I’m overwhelmed, not prepared for these emotions at all. My nose runs, not blood. I wipe and then nod and nod. I can accept his apology, but … “Why now?” I question. I can name and list many other days or weeks he could’ve reached out, but why this moment?

  “Feeling how lost you were tonight, I just … cracked.” His dark brown hair shrouds his eyes. “My silence has been more unbearable than speaking, and I realized that we may never find more time. But we have to make time for what’s important. Mykal made time for me after I dodged my deathday, and I denied you that.”

  Every figurative door that Court had shut, he starts whipping open, giving me the chance to cross the mountains we’ve constructed. Just to meet him. I remember how I stopped expecting this moment. Now that it’s here, I can hardly believe it’s real. Rock in my throat, I swallow. Nodding and nodding.

  I sniff loudly. “Now what…?”

  “Now I run a few medical tests on you.”

  “For my nosebleeds?”

  “And your deathday.”

  I almost burst into tears, but I clutch the bed beneath me and fight this onslaught of emotion. “Really?”

  Towering above, Court stares straight into me. Feeling me. “Really.” He’s pained again.

  My brows scrunch. I watch him grab a rectangular purple device: two prongs on one side, a tiny screen on the other. “Why are you already upset?” I have to ask.

  “Because this is where you believe you’ll find hope.”

  I don’t understand. If it’s not that, then what is this?

  Court rakes a hand through his thick hair, his torment staking daggers up my spine. “Hold out your arm for me.”

  I stretch my limb.

  Gently, he cradles my wrist. “This is a Death Reader.”

  I straighten up. Court is retesting my deathday. My pulse speeds at all the deathday possibilities that’ll now shrink to one truth. After wiping what he calls antiseptic on my skin, he places the prongs on the inside of my wrist.

  “T
his’ll hurt.”

  “I don’t care.” I gaze fixedly.

  Court pushes a black button, and the needlelike prongs puncture my flesh. Mayday. I wince, Court winces, and then after a long moment, the strange greenish-blue prongs retract. Paper crinkles while I shift nervously.

  He displays the screen-side of the Death Reader. Numbers flash and scroll rapidly.

  Before I ask, he says, “It’s normal. Give the Reader a second to process.”

  “What is it processing?”

  “Your blood.”

  He’s being more considerate than ever, but his stomach clenches twice as much as mine. Like he foresees the tragic end already.

  The numbers halt. I gasp before reading the actual date. 1-23-3525 is clear. My old deathday. I blink and blink, my body numb. “Maybe … maybe the Death Reader is broken.”

  I wait for Court to say, It’s not. But he returns to the cabinet, finds another Death Reader, and retakes my test. Retreating into my mind, I tune out when the prongs prick my skin.

  We wait for the results, and I breathe shallow, hurried breaths. “Maybe…” I shake my head at a theory that has already been squashed.

  1-23-3525.

  Court tests me for a third time. I don’t even have to ask. He just knows what I want and need.

  1-23-3525.

  Gods. I process this news with a faraway gaze, and Court examines my body for the cause of the nosebleeds. Tucking my black hair behind each ear, he peers in them with a medical instrument. Then looks up my raw nose.

  “Open,” he says.

  My mouth. I fall into a daze as he massages my neck with two fingers. I think he mentions something about “glands”—whatever those are.

  Maybe an hour passes before he finishes. Court rolls the tray aside.

  “And?” I ask.

  “And besides the nosebleeds, you appear healthy, Franny.” He stands strictly. “I’m diagnosing you right now, and telling you, these nosebleeds are not life-threatening.”

  I ease only a fraction. A wave of heartrending realities slams at me. My voice is stilted. “I’ll never know the day I’ll die.”

  I’ve met this truth before, but never with this much permanence. It claws at my throat. Suffocating me. I slide off the bed and pace and pace.

  Court studies me, his quiet intensity hard to ignore.

  I swerve to him and place a hand on his chest. I halt, uncertain. Unsure.

  Of everything.

  He must feel me battling tears. “You’re allowed to cry,” Court says. “You’re allowed to scream and hate everything that’s happening.”

  My whole body shakes. “Is that what you did?”

  Drawing toward me, Court clasps my cheeks, bare hands on my flesh. Sensing me fully as though to say, I’m here for you. I’m not afraid to experience this pain with you. “I bawled,” he says deeply. “I cried until there were no more tears to shed.”

  I rest my other palm on his chest. Like I could shove him away any second.

  I push Court, and his hands fall from my face. “It shouldn’t hurt this badly. I feel like…”

  “Your heart is trying desperately to escape your body. Your lungs are banging against your ribs.” Court steps into my palms. “And you stare at yourself and you wonder if you’re even real.”

  “Am I?” I lick my trembling lips. “Are we real?”

  Court raises my palm to his heart—his knotted, callused scars beneath my hand. “That is real.” So real that someone tried to steal it. He places his hand over my heart. “This is real.” I feel my own heartbeat thud and thud.

  For some reason, I shake my head.

  “What?” His grim eyes bore into me, trying to help me find the words to my feelings. Letting me process and think and understand.

  My face twists. “Am I the same as I’ve always been?” I don’t want to change. I don’t want to change.

  Please, gods. I don’t want to change.

  “No,” he says bluntly. “You’re not the same.”

  I shove him back again, harder, but Court only sways, his dark brown hair skimming his eyelashes.

  I shuffle backward to add distance. Growing hot, sweat builds, and I waft my woolen shirt. “I’m exactly the same,” I say with as much certainty as I can. My stomach twists like I lie to myself. Somewhere inside, I buried uncomfortable truths that I haven’t had time to meet.

  That’s why Court brought me here.

  To cry and scream and cope.

  His squared jaw tightens as he repeats, “You’re not the same.”

  “I am,” I sneer, digging a finger in my chest. “I am Franny Bluecastle. I am my good-natured mother. I am my long-lost friends—”

  “You can be everything you once were, but you’re still not the same.”

  I groan into a scream. I hate this. “Why?!”

  “Because your life no longer ends at seventeen!” he yells back, pumped full of my indignation. “Because you’ll have tomorrow and a year and another year to change and be someone better or worse. We grow. The three of us will grow beyond what we believed.”

  I can’t catch my breath. “It makes no difference…”

  “Deathdays are a part of our identity. You can still feel like a Fast-Tracker, but you’re other things now.” Court walks stringently toward me.

  This time, I don’t push him away. “What other things am I?” We’ve never shied from the heat of our gazes, so he seizes mine as forcefully as I seize his.

  “You are compassionate. You are loving.”

  My lips part, but I have no impulse to shake my head.

  “Franny Bluecastle has questioned reality. She’s someone who was left nearly naked in an alley. Who felt hands rip senselessly at her clothes when she wanted them to stop.”

  I shed a maddened tear. “That’s not who I am.” I’m angry because I know it exists inside of me. Those people touched me and changed pieces of me without my permission.

  “I know.” He clutches my arms as my legs weaken. “I know. I’m plagued by the weight of a man on my chest. I feel the weight of yours. I feel his knee digging harder. I feel the scream dying in your throat, and I tried desperately to scream for you.”

  My ribs heave, and I start to cry hard. He’s chipping away the wall he constructed since we met, but I didn’t realize how much agony would be on the other side. How much we’d have to share. I wish for a simple life. Easy and weightless.

  Shielding my face with my hands, a guttural sob rips through me. My legs slacken. Before I sink, Court tugs me close. Arms wrapping around my frame. Hugging me.

  Our hearts pound at the same ragged pace.

  His knees almost buckle. I hold him upright. Giving and taking each other’s senses.

  Court dips his head to my ear, his voice raw. “Franny Bluecastle is more.”

  “What else is she?” I ask so quietly.

  “She’s a girl who asked to die but found strength to live.”

  I cover my face again.

  “She is loved,” he says. “More than she ever dreamed. More than she ever asked.”

  My hands fall, and I look up, his palms encasing my tear-streaked cheeks again. I almost believe I misheard him.

  Court reads the challenge in my features, asking him to say it all again. Unwavering, he tells me, “You are loved by two boys.”

  “Just two?” I joke with a tearful laugh.

  Court rolls his eyes, but there’s a smile attached. Their friendship is the strongest I’ve ever had.

  “What…?” My thought flits away, and I impulsively touch his lips. He lets me feel his smile beneath my fingers.

  And then he hugs me again.

  We hold on to each other, our pulses descending off a terrifying mountain. I’ve been split open, but somehow I can breathe better. Stronger.

  I remember how Court struggles to touch his own memories. How they plague him whenever they involuntarily surface. He was right, I think. Silence can be more unbearable, and breaking it can be even harder.
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  I’m glad he did.

  Court whispers in my hair, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask.”

  I draw back just to see his face. “Is it about Star—”

  “It’s about you.”

  My chest swells because he never asks about me. Not really. Not unless it has significance to StarDust and our goals.

  His hands slide down my arms into my palms, clasping warmly. “What was stolen from you,” he asks, “that ignited your hate for thieves?”

  I smile sadly. “The most beautiful shawl you could ever imagine.” I describe my mother in vivid detail. I tell him the story of how she revealed the garment from a fancy bag. How she spread the fabric across my tiny shoulders, and how she used every bill of her Final Deliverance check for this gift. For me.

  Court listens intently, our gazes reflecting a thousand striking sentiments.

  The door suddenly creaks open, and my lips shut quickly. Our heads whip to the left.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Court

  Swiftly, I attempt to pull Franny behind my back, but just as determinedly, she tries to shove me behind hers. We’re side by side, emotionally spent but jolted in panic. I have no time to really think.

  The door swings fully open and Kinden saunters into the clinic room. Dressed in khaki night slacks and a loose shirt like he snuck out of bed.

  “You followed me?” I say between clenched teeth, irate that my past is jamming itself into this moment of all fucking moments. Just as I breathe, just as she breathes, we’re being choked again.

  “So what if I did?” Kinden replies.

  I laugh an enraged, disbelieving laugh. Out of nowhere, I remember Mykal. If he senses me, he’ll storm the clinic. I turn my head. Concentrating for a split second.

  He’s sound asleep. Unaware. Good. I can only protect Mykal by leaving him out of this confrontation.

  Arms crossed, Franny simmers. “Were you listening through the door?”

  I go rigid. If he heard anything about Franny being a Fast-Tracker, I’ll snap.

  Kinden stalks forward. One step, two steps. “Why? Do you have something to hide?” Unblinking, resolute and raptly focused, he looks disturbed.

  “No,” Franny nearly spits, but she must recall etiquette because she straightens, arching her shoulders.