Do I want her to be?
Yes. “Yes.”
Her expression softens. Sona takes a single, graceful step, shifting into a fighting stance. Her long fingers drop to her sides, twitching as her shoulders roll back once more. I don’t realize what she’s doing until her knees are bent, and I fumble for a bracing grip.
It’s no use. The force of the Archangel’s jump sends me to all fours, and beneath my palms, the floor takes in a rush of heat as the jets spark to life, their roar silencing my startled inhale. I rise—shakily—to my feet only out of necessity, to grab a hold as the floor begins to slant. The rubber of my boots securely rooting me, I look to see Sona’s chin tilted toward her toes.
“Are you afraid of heights?” she murmurs.
“Are you kidding me?”
“Yes. Go toward the windows.”
I oblige, pressing my hands against the red-dyed glass and peeking over the edge.
“Eris?”
“Yes?”
“Are you all right? You’ve gone quiet.”
I’m glad she can’t see me swallow hard. “Just taking in the nice view.”
I do not have a fear of heights, but below us, past the tech mirage of bare, snowcapped branches Jenny has strung up, there is a single speck that represents the entirety of my home. And I imagine falling. The vast potentials of falling that the Gearbreakers have always utilized mean nothing to an Archangel. If the mecha were to drop from the sky, the only possible outcome would be calamity.
I see the same realization cross Sona’s face, watch her knuckles go white, and hear the Archangel’s talons screech into their golden palms.
“How does it feel?” I try, but she shakes her head.
“What is the point, Eris?” she murmurs. “I destroy the Academy; I burn the Zeniths and their subordinates and their students. And what then? How long will it take for them to rebuild? How much time will they allow for recovery before they start creating new Windups? Before models like this fill the skies, and what of their wrath afterward? Silvertwin … you know about Silvertwin. You are aware of how Godolia handles noncompliance in their resource towns. Kill one and the rest will be kept in line. It is simple. Efficient. Effective. And at no loss to them. They have thousands left over that will continue to provide their coal and iron and briskberries and whatever else to avoid meeting the same fate.”
Even though her voice has gone shrill with anger that I know is not directed at me, her words still prick. We’re hovering thirty thousand feet above the ground in a mecha that my sister worked tirelessly to create, and she’s suggesting that it was all for nothing. Insinuating that the Gearbreakers’ entire way of life, my entire way of life, is pinned to a futile cause.
And worst of all is the insufferable, excruciating idea that maybe she’s right.
“Just what else are we supposed to do, then, Glitch?” I shout. “If we don’t fight, it means Godolia owns us.”
Sona makes her head even, straightening the floor, and grits her teeth. “Godolia will go into a frenzy looking for the Gearbreakers after Heavensday, on a scale that none of you have ever seen, once we exchange the thorn for a blade.”
“I thought you intended to put that blade there yourself,” I growl.
“I want to. I will, but … the Windup Program may still rise again.”
“So we strike again!”
“And how many of us will be left, Eris, after the hellsfire? After their fury has scorched everything within a thousand miles of the Hollows?”
“So that’s it, then, you’re done? Godolia scares you that much? I wish you would’ve said something before Jenny almost killed herself making this damn thing!”
“I am scared!” Sona cries, and then flinches. But she recovers quickly. “Not of losing my life, or fighting, or the plan. I will be the cause of everything that comes afterward, Eris! It is … I … I cannot lose—”
Suddenly she stops, snapping her head to the side. I have to press my hand to the glass to keep from being flung to the left.
“What the hells, Glitch?” I groan.
“Helicopter,” she breathes, and my blood freezes again.
Outside, a small dot works its way across the skyline. Maybe five miles out, and far, far too close. Close enough to see the winged Windup hovering in midair.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard, forcing my stupor to break.
“Sona—”
“I know,” she says, brows knitted. “Are you braced?”
But she doesn’t wait for an answer. The forest peels away, the slate stone of the ruined outskirts replacing the scraggly tangle of bare branches, and soon that’s faded, too. The dot marking the helicopter contorts into a collection of edges: twin tails and four whirring circles that are the rotor blades. It’s a large one, probably carrying no less than twenty people in its hold.
Because of this, and not for the first time, I find myself thankful for Sona’s ruthlessness.
Her hand closes around the helicopter’s base, nearly gently, and she goes still. Her shoulders are set back rigidly, allowing us to hover as she pinches one of the rotors between her forefinger and thumb. It yields under the pressure instantly.
“What the hells are you doing?”
“Stealing a look,” she says, then pauses. “Kidding. About the sentiment, anyway. Do you think we should see if the missiles work?”
The blackened windows of the helicopter keep the chaos ensuing inside hidden from view. I don’t have to answer her. We both know this will be a quicker death.
I watch the talons unfold, and the helicopter takes off like a clipped bird, the broken rotor sending it swiveling from side to side as it flies.
“Now?” I ask.
“Give me a second,” she murmurs, and I watch the outline of her shoulder blades jut from her jacket before retracting. “How strange…”
“Do you even know what you’re doing?”
Sona shakes her head, her smile breaking coyly.
The blue of the sky splits cleanly with a line of black smoke.
I don’t see the point where the missile makes contact, but it’d be impossible to miss the aftermath: a bulb of flame twisting to life, screeching with joy as it tears apart the metal and flings charred shrapnel into open air. The wreckage drops from the sky, flaming tail as black and sure as the stroke of a paintbrush.
“I hit it,” Sona says, and the shock in her tone makes a laugh rip free from my throat.
“You think?” There is a hitch in my chest I can recognize only as giddiness. Face pressed close to the glass, I watch the tendrils of smoke coil below.
* * *
A short time later, after the wreckage has finished smoldering, Sona locates a gap in the Junkyard trees wide enough to hold the Windup. Naked branches scrape against the mecha’s skin as we descend, and a breath of relief curls in my chest once the jolt of solid ground shudders beneath my feet. I guide Sona to a lying position again, minding the tilt of the floor, and she begins to pluck away the cords. The Archangel goes still around us.
Sona blinks once, blankness scattering from her expression. Both eyes, along with her skin and deep chestnut hair, are ignited with the red light pouring from above. The hue somehow softens the glow of the Mod.
“Are you going to let me up?” she says, snapping the eye shut.
I sit back on my heels, and she sits upright, opening her palm. A moment passes before I fumble for the eye patch and hand it over.
The air feels strangely heavy when we emerge from the mecha’s neck. Making our way to the sternum, we wait for the small but strong crowd of voices to emerge from what looks like empty, junk-cluttered woods—my crew, bickering profusely, trailed by Jenny, walking backward with her chin arcing from the ground to the sky above. She keeps leaning back until she spots us, then straightens and wanders toward the Archangel’s feet, one hand tracing the air to her left as she tests her mirage tech.
The crew clambers up onto the Windup, where Arsen sniffs the air and goes, “W
hat exploded?”
“Helicopter,” Sona says.
“Rot,” June breathes.
“Is that bad?” Theo squeaks, eyes wide. “Hey, that seems bad, very bad—”
“Sona took care of it.”
They hear it in my voice, something electric, and they stop their fidgeting to look at me. I hug my arms around myself as a grin splits my face.
Xander, standing as still and rigid as the branches above us, says, “Is this going to work?”
I turn to Sona. Her eye lifts to me, and the thrill of it freezes me, and the look in it shatters me. I cannot carry it well.
I am not good.
“This is going to work,” Sona says.
My smile slips from my mouth, and she watches it fall.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
SONA
Godolia scares you that much?
Her voice sounded from all directions, horizon to horizon. I opened my mouth to tell her, fumbled with the thoughts. Too weak to align them, and too afraid of the weakness that would spill from doing so.
Mere months ago, I would have given anything for the opportunity to destroy the Academy. Damn the collateral. Damn the innocents. This was about me, about my town, my family. They never received proper burials. They died entangled in the limbs of others, last breaths inhaling a tonic of chaos and fear and earth. The least I can do for them is ensure that the Academy meets the same fate, no matter the cost.
Eris knows this about me, but she does not know how things have shifted. That she has shifted something, the detrimental, foundational need for vengeance. She sits in the place where its spire once stood, where I carved out all the violent fantasies that allowed me to sleep at night, where I built and nurtured my hate and awaited the day that Godolia would realize that all of it towered miles above their grandest skyscraper.
I do not know how to tell her that, despite it all, I would tear the spire from the skyline if she asked me to. That I would suffocate my hatred, that I would sit quietly if she fancied plucking out every unnatural wire. That even if Jenny’s plan works, if the backlash that follows harms her in any way, I would consider none of it to be worth it.
Because she is more than all of it. The sum of my pain, my past, my hatred. The riot with skin, happiest with a deity kneeling before her.
Could she be happy with me?
I am not good. I am trying my best.
But I am about to kill so many people.
For the first time, I do not sleep at her side, where she can turn over in her sleep and have her cheek to my spine, hand under my ribs. I have my own room because I am one of them. I still feel I should offer an explanation, but I do not; I just come home and close the door behind me and crawl under the sheets. I feel small in the dark, inside my own chest.
It starts slow at first, tears leaking onto my cheeks.
By the end of the hour, I am writhing. Hands pressed over my mouth, sobs shuddering against my fingers, entire body shaking so hard it feels like it is about to splinter apart.
Godolia scares you that much?
I am not scared of Godolia.
I am scared of me.
“No,” I gasp, coiled tight, limbs twitching. “Nononononono…”
I miss my old, simple fear. I miss Jole and Lucindo and Rose and Victoria. Their sincere, effortless delusions, the bareness of their complete ease. I miss my old skin. I miss my parents.
My nails claw at the mattress. My cries carve the walls, but I cannot stop, I can only grapple blindly for nothing, nothing to hold on to, I am spinning, I have lost my footing, this will never stop, this is the last thing I am going to feel, I will carry this with me and nothing else nothing else nothing else—
“Sona.” The sheets are pulled back; I can see it in the light the hallway sheds in yellow rays. Arms around mine, pulling me up—no please no I don’t want to go up—but not all the way, eased into her lap. She is leaning against the headboard, hands smoothing my hair, head bent over mine. “Shhh, hey, love, it’s okay, I got you, I’m here, hey—”
“I’m sorry.” I am sobbing, scraping at her knees. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—”
“What do you need?” Her voice holds at a rare hush, soft as velvet. “Tell me what you need, Sona, please. I can help, I’ll make it better.”
I need not to be a killer, or to be all right with being one.
“Go,” I choke. A small flourish of panic ripples in my chest when I feel her shift, because I did not mean her. But Eris knows, and she is helping me off the bed. She gets my jacket and hugs it around my shoulders, leans over to guide my fingers into a pair of gloves, because it is cold outside. Her arm gentle around mine, we make the hall. She ducks her head into the common room, still tethered to me.
Xander is curled up under the table, delicate features relaxed comfortably beneath the blanket of his black lashes. Nova and Theo lie on their backs on the tabletop. Nova’s out cold, one small white hand limp off the edge of the table, but Theo’s sight rolls toward Eris at her approach.
“We’re going out,” she says gruffly.
His kind, pale eyes touch on me before he nods toward Nova, hand dipping down to grace Xander’s dark curls.
“Want me to wake them?”
“What, do they need me to tuck them in?”
“I, for one, would appreciate it.”
She rolls her eyes. “This place better still be standing when we come back.”
We shuffle out into the Hollows’ courtyard, the winter air stinging my swollen face, heat and salt a tangible weight against my cheeks. She helps me into the front seat of the crew’s pickup and slides into the driver’s seat. The roar of the engine sounds alien in the hush of the night.
A near hush, at least. On our way toward the gates, we pass Jenny and Voxter, their bickering the only element distinguishing them from the shadows. Eris slows the car to a stop, leaning out the window to wave. We must be ten feet away, but they do not notice our presence: Jenny seems to still be living in her own distorted sleep-deprived world and Voxter’s anger fixates his attention solely on her.
“Where is it?” he growls.
Jenny flips her hand over as if inspecting her nails, although her gloves cloak them. “Hmm. I’m trying to remember … but I don’t seem to recall…”
“You built it on my campus, and you can’t—”
Jenny waves her hand in the air dismissively. “I can’t? I can do whatever I want, old man.”
Her tone is light, joking, but Voxter’s is tight with irritation.
“Jenny Shindanai, I am your commanding officer, and if you don’t tell me where the Archangel is right now, I’ll—”
She cuts him off again, this time with a low laugh. “Mind your words, Vox. You know I’ll be running this place someday. That means I’ll be the one who decides if you have a bed in which to wither away.”
Suddenly Voxter leaps forward, grabbing Jenny by her shoulders.
“Where is the Archangel?” he screams, and she is so jarred by his tone that her grin wavers.
“Hey!” Eris shouts. From their perspective, she sits casually, but inside the car, her hand is wrapped around the door handle, ready to spring out. “You been drinking again, Voxter?”
For the barest moment, a whisper of a look shifts onto his face. Then he shoves his lip into a deep scowl, expelling it, and releases Jenny. He points his cane at Eris.
“I wish,” he huffs, turning on his heel to totter toward the tree line. “But there isn’t enough liquor in the world to stomach the both of you.”
Jenny watches him go, a bewildered glint in her eye as if she did not quite grasp what just happened. Still, her smile sparks again as she lifts her gaze to us.
“Where you kids off to?” she says.
Eris copies Jenny’s earlier dismissive wave and puts her foot to the gas. “Get some sleep, Jen.”
I stay quiet after we leave the Hollows’ limits, and still when we pass the Junkyard’s grove of trees, bare branches
creeping toward the open, bright sky, our weapons in the truck bed rattling beneath the rush of the wind. Eris asks if I want music, and I say yes, and then start sobbing again. She turns the volume up and puts an arm around my shoulders, holding me close, black-painted fingers braced on the bottom of the wheel. There is no road, only the dust and the cosmos and us.
“Do you want to go anywhere?” Eris murmurs, and it is a few moments before I say, “No.” She keeps driving. There is no difference between going in circles and a straight, steady line.
My tears soak her shirtfront as I shudder under the crook of her arm. I watch the knees of her cotton sweatpants crease and relax as she presses the gas and lets it coast, short, lithe legs feeding into black boots. The Badlands are so blank—pressed to dust by war after damned pointless war—that she can take her sight off the road and look down at me.
Her hand slides up, fingers hooking the strap of my eye patch and tugging it free. The material hangs heavy with tears, skin underneath rubbed raw. I keep the eye closed, let it bleed salt and fuse shut.
I look up, and Eris tucks her head to place the softest kiss on the shut lid, there and gone, light as moths’ wings.
Both my eyes open wide, and then she is red, and the glow pours over those features, that glorious, devastating face. “Stop the car now,” I say, and she does, and I am out in the Badlands, sand biting into my knees, emptying my stomach into the desert.
I sit back against the tire. Eris sits beside me. A star-freckled sky spans over us, listening close.
“You don’t have to do this,” Eris says, but she is lying, and we both know it. Because this is war and people are dying in droves, and it isn’t right, so it does not matter that I am too young for this, that I will hurt so much for this.
It does not matter if I can survive it. What matters is if I can see it through.
We cannot be children, because we have to win.
“Yes, I do.”
She is silent for a while. I have the incomprehensible knowing that we are facing the direction of Silvertwin. I wonder if my parents’ photographs are still on their nightstand, their clothes still in their closet, twined with the scent of earth.
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