by K. M. Szpara
“What do you think it’s like out there?” Lark asked.
If I could’ve gotten hard, I’d have gone flaccid then. My words caught in my throat and I cleared them. Pressed his right shoulder, until he tipped onto his chest. I straddled his thighs, gave him a moment to adjust the pillow. He hugged it and rested his head sideways, looking off at the far wall, as if the answers might play out across it.
“Do you think there are many people left, or have the monsters gotten them all?” he asked. “They’re certainly corrupted by now, but are they warped? Monstrous? I’ve heard them wailing at night. Barking and howling.”
Then, so that I wouldn’t imagine Ashir’s little black poodle, I spread his ass wide and pressed my mouth against his hole.
Lark’s hips bucked back. I lifted him up to meet my mouth, holding him still as I took my time: breathing in the ripe scent of his body, circling the tight muscle with my tongue, kissing the pucker before sliding my tongue past its ring.
“Stars, Kane…” He stopped asking questions after that. Succumbed as I licked the length of his crack. As I sunk my fingernails into his thighs. Kissed the crease where the globes of his ass met the thick of his thighs.
Lark moaned and rolled over, inviting me into his arms. He shouldn’t have wanted to kiss me, but he did, mouth strong and wanting. There were so many more things I wanted to do to his body, so many ways I wanted to touch him and make him feel pleasure. But I could only do so much on this side of the fence, so it was my turn to succumb.
Still, I cupped his ass and pulled his groin against mine. Ground our hips together and buried my nose in his shoulder. I knew I wouldn’t be able to appreciate his scent until I left. We become used to how spaces and loved ones smell, so much that they become normal.
I knew the other side of the fence didn’t smell like fire. Didn’t smell like sulfur or hot metal or herbs. The air was open, unbound by trees and grasses and sheep. Nova told us it was polluted, but I only smelled perfumes and flowers. Even the scent of cars was welcome. Ashir’s dog smelled like peanut butter.
“Hey.” Lark rested his hands on mine, stilling them. He looked right into my eyes. “I know you turn twenty-five tomorrow, and that you’ve trained your whole life for this. But I want you to be careful out there, okay?”
I barely nod. I’m afraid that if I give, I’ll give too much.
“None of us really knows what it’s like. Sure, outsiders come and trade with us sometimes, and we can tell they’re alive out there, doing … whatever it is they do. But what if they’re feral, like the animals? You could take two steps outside the fence and be attacked by FOEs. Kane, I don’t know if I could live with myself, if—”
“That won’t happen,” I said.
“You don’t know that.”
I knew it wouldn’t because I’d taken more than two steps outside the fence and met only wonderful animals and kind outsiders. I knew because my plan involved stepping right into the open arms of a FOE. I clenched my teeth.
He closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t talk like that. You’re going out into the world tomorrow, the first of us to face it. And you’re going to be incredible.” Lark smiled. I memorized it. His thin pink lips, the dimple in his left cheek. The barely visible stubble that grew on his jaw beneath the sharp line of his cheekbones. The length of his nose and how it turned up right at the end.
I kissed it. “Thank you.”
Incredible.
I was going to turn the Fellowship—my family—in to the outsider authorities. Ashir had connected me to an agent, and there was no going back. Lark was right; I had trained for my entire life, but that training was for nothing. I was done suffering for Nova’s lies.
Lark thought we were meant for something more. We weren’t. But I was something worse than a liar; I was a coward. How could I look in his eyes and tell him he wasn’t special? He loved having a purpose, loved performing rituals, loved being magic. Nova made a mistake Anointing me.
Lark nestled his head against my chest and closed his eyes. Twined his legs between mine. Took a deep breath and released it warm against my skin. I kissed the top of his head and closed my eyes. We lay together, quiet and still, for I don’t know how long—long enough that we should’ve been asleep.
“Lark?” I whispered, not expecting an answer.
“Yeah?” he asked groggily, clearly drifting in and out.
“No matter what happens tomorrow, please be safe. And know that I love you.”
He snuggled closer against me and licked his lips, still half asleep. “I love you too, you know that,” he mumbled.
“No matter what happens,” I repeated.
His voice was barely audible. “No matter what.”
“Because I’m doing this for you, Meadowlark,” I whispered, my words no more than a breath against the small hairs liberated from his braid. “It’s all for you.”
29
LARK / NOW
By the time night falls, the soles of my feet throb and I glance at the highway exits with want. I ache for a big hotel bed or a couple of blankets in the back of Calvin’s car. For an end.
So many outsiders are watching, common and uniformed alike, all waiting for me to fight a monster I’m not sure is coming.
I roll my shoulders, flex my back against the ache of the weight I carry. I wish Kane were with me. Wish I had my partner to feed my flame. The only lights with me are those from lamps arched tall over the side of the highway. I hear the whir of a helicopter not far off. They used to fly over Druid Hill occasionally, and Nova instructed us to shoot arrows to drive them away. Now, I let it be. The company is nice.
After another hour, the unbearable creep of pain infects every inch of my body. I stop and remove my harness, stretch against the concrete barrier separating the roads. I check Spellslinger, closing my fist around the wooden rod. I can still feel the power Kane and I imbued it with over years and years, waiting for the right opportunity to use it. I fasten my harness back on over Calvin’s turtle shirt. Check my knives. Count my potions. Holster Spellslinger. Hope I have some magic left inside me. I close my eyes as I walk. Don’t need to see. Only forward exists—only the open road.
I stop to remove my boots. To pry my socks carefully from my swollen feet, exposing blisters to the cold open air. Then, I place my bare feet on the road, one by one, one in front of the other, again and again. Forward.
As I walk, I wonder whether Kane is okay in the outsider hospital with Lilian. I wonder if Calvin is still holed up in the cabin where we slept last night—his video may have saved me. Even Deryn crosses my mind, tugging at me to go with them, to go home. The pleading in their eyes as I called them my enemy. Zadie and Maeve watching over the Anointed I left behind in the hotel.
I need you, I think, unsure whether I can link to their minds so far away. Not sure whether Kane is capable of hearing me anymore. I need you and miss you. I miss your touch. I miss our magic. Hot tears roll down my face. I didn’t expect a response, but I wanted one. I think I’m finished.
I stop with a shuddering sigh.
The ground underfoot sighs with me. It rumbles, rises and falls. I drop to one knee, steadying myself as the earth quakes and shifts beneath me. In the distance, the highway rips open as easily as torn cotton, and a gargantuan shadow rises from the depths. Overhead, the streetlights flicker.
I shudder, no longer cold, but burning.
<
I can barely breathe, and yet I stand. I straddle the long crack in the road, clenching my fists. I feel every scar on my body, naming them one by one: brand, knife, oil, cat. Pulling the pain from each metal claw, each lick of flame. From my back and my feet, and from my heart.
The monster’s gray carapace smolders, showing fiery veins in its limbs. Deep pits whorl on its face where eyes should be; teeth protru
de like knives from every angle, from mouth to throat. It rises, and rises further—it is so tall. Its formidable weight shakes the ground with every step, feet charring the pavement and rattling the trees as it walks toward me.
It roars an inhuman sound like grinding metal and helicopter blades and a wind so fast you can’t breathe. The sound wraps around me, crushing and hot. A thousand swords buried to their hilts in my body, pinning skin to muscle to bone. I scream, overwhelmed. The vibrations in my throat, my own. The cocoon of pain on pain on pain.
<
My body hits the asphalt with a crack. Yes, I am. I have to be. I fumble through the pockets of my harness for a healing potion and drink the whole thing. I drink another, and still everything hurts. But I have to stand.
My groan erupts into a scream as I push myself up. The monster towers over me, barely visible against the blackened sky. Eyes like pits stare down at me. Mouth shining with sharp silvery edges.
I muster the pain that lives inside me and take hold of Spellslinger, feel my power erupt from its length like the blade of a sword—forged and sharpened by my efforts, and Kane’s. This is for him. With a wild cry, I thrust the beam into the monster’s foot. Lightning crackles up its leg, splitting its skin. It wails and wriggles against my power as chunks of gray flesh fall from its body. I see its fiery insides, pulsing and raw.
On blistered feet, I climb. I grit my teeth and move with the pain, scaling the monstrous leg. Its fiery flesh burns the soles of my feet. They throb as I find footholds in the shifting plates of the monster’s body, driving my knives in like pitons. Rot works its way up my nostrils as I settle onto its hip. I hold my breath and plunge one of my knives into its exposed insides. The blood-forged blade slides in to the hilt, and the monster thrashes. It roars until I feel like my own flesh is peeling away. I roar back, plunging the knife in again and again, unsheathing the other and stabbing it into the monster’s joint.
Before it can grab me, I jump. Jolts of pain shoot through my legs as I slam into the ground, barely landing on my feet. <
The monster bends onto one crumbling gray knee. Lowers its face until its lifeless eyes are feet from mine. I can feel the corruption that pumps through it flowing past me.
“I did this for you.” My voice is weak. Hoarse. Raw like the monster’s body where my magic flayed it and my knives poisoned it. They drop to the road before me with metallic clangs, but I don’t pick them up. “Because I believed you. Because I believed in you.”
I close my eyes. Feel the pulse of blood under my skin, the burn of my muscles. A thousand wounds scarred over.
“But not anymore,” I whisper, bringing my palms to my face. My lips brush them with the gentleness of a kiss. I don’t need to look to know that the monster is closing in on me. My ears pop as it bellows. Skin blisters from its heat as it looms closer. “You can’t hurt me now.”
The last spell I have the power to speak: protection, peace, hope. A faint glow emanates from my mouth and fingers and braid and my blistered feet, cradling my destroyed body. Keeping it safe.
As the monster falls upon me, I push my magic into it. It reaches for me, and I give it my pain. The world flickers, and I feel peace. The calm of the road. Gentle swaying trees alongside it. A caressing breeze. In that moment, I know I’ve made a world without monsters, even if my spell fails and I do not survive to see it.
30
CALVIN / NOW
We’re too late.
This isn’t how our quest was supposed to end. Lark lies in a rumpled pile on the ground, in a crater of destruction—as if he were a superhero flung down from outer space. Streetlamps spark, concrete barriers lay overturned. Black SUVs and cop cars litter the highway, their lights flashing. Several ambulances crowd the space, their EMTs idling nearby. Why aren’t they doing anything? Why aren’t they—
“Lark!” Deryn dashes past us, through the police line.
I run and Miller follows, digging in her pocket and pulling out her badge. She waves it in the air like a beacon as we run toward the circle of yellow caution tape, shouting “FBI! FBI.”
Deryn reaches it first, but I’m only seconds behind, and then Miller. We toe the edge of the crater. Look at one another. What’s going on? Why is no one …
“Don’t!” An officer steps close—but not too close. “Our first arrivals are being treated by EMTs. There’s some kind of…” She wavers. Shrugs. Sighs. “Shield. I don’t know; it’s some science fiction shit. Don’t ask me. I’m only a traffic cop.”
“What do you think happened?” Deryn asks me.
“I don’t know.” I focus on the air a few feet ahead of us. If I look closely, I can see the air ripple and shift. “Just like Star Trek.” I chuckle. “It’s some kind of force field.” I hold my hand perpendicular to the ground.
“What are you doing?” Miller shrieks. “You heard what the officer said. Don’t hurt yourself.”
“That’s the thing,” I say. Slowly, I press my hand forward. “I don’t think I will.” And I push my hand through. My arm and shoulder. I step inside the shield and, moments later, Deryn and Miller follow.
“It wasn’t for us,” I say. “It was to keep out FOEs.”
Deryn looks at Miller. “I told you,” they say. “You may look the part, but you’re not. You’re family.”
Together, we walk over the cracked asphalt toward Lark—or what is left of his scarred and battered body. Burns score his feet. Blood rises to the surface of bruises, patterning blue and purple with scratches of red. The ends of his braids fray, undone, the elastics missing. I know you’re not supposed to move an injured person, but we can’t leave him here, so I cradle his limp weight in my arms and lift him up.
“Careful,” Miller says.
“I’ve got it,” I say. “I’ve got him.” I hold my breath as we cross the barrier, hoping it doesn’t punish me for carrying him out of it. I release my breath when we pass through safely. With the help of EMTs, I lay him on a waiting gurney. He’s wheeled away before I can consider kissing him awake like a sleeping prince. Deryn runs off after them and climbs into the ambulance—I guess that’s a sibling’s privilege, despite their differences. I stand still as a group of Feds descend upon Miller, shooting questions at her like arrows. No one so much as looks at me. There’s no role to fill for the outsider who went along for the ride because he hoped magic might be real.
I dig my phone from my pocket: thirty-eight percent battery and dozens of notifications. Only one from the person I’m interested in.
Lilian
Kane’s okay. Call me when you have a chance.
And I do, right away. Standing on the broken ground where Lark fought a monster—where he killed it—I apologize to Lilian for not trusting her. I thank her for seeing clearly when I couldn’t. I warn her that when we next see each other, I have something to tell her about magic.
31
LARK / NOW
I wake, not in the peace of my protective spell, but in a room full of beeping machines and outsiders dressed in some kind of plain blue uniform with no identifiers, who adjust tubes and wires. I feel them press different areas of my body and stick me with needles.
I survived. I think.
Even though I don’t speak, the outsiders do. They tell me they’re doctors and nurses. They promise I’m going to be okay, as if they can know that. When I ask for Kane, they tell me, “Soon. After you’ve rested. Once your vitals are steadier.”
A nurse asks if I want more pain medication, and I say yes. She presses a button that floods my body with some kind of potion. Medicine, I think outsiders call it. Whatever the name, I don’t care. I am finished with pain. I sleep. It’s the easiest way to pass the time and hurts the least.
When I next open my eyes, Kane is sitting beside me on a metal chair with wheels. A bandage is wrapped around his thigh where I shot him. The arrow gone. “Thank the stars you’r
e awake.” He takes my hand in his and kisses it gently. I squeeze his in return.
“So, did you do it?” he asks, leaning on the side of my bed. “Did you…” His voice trails off. He can’t say it.
“Kill a monster?” I finish, taking his burden. I can still see its towering figure, gray and thick. I still smell its overwhelming rot, as if the stink sank into my skin. My hands feel its pulsing hot insides as I thrust my blade into it.
But I can also feel the breeze picking up escaped strands of my hair and the rough asphalt beneath my bare feet. Hear a song of crickets and leaves.
“I think I did,” I say finally. “I think I used all my magic up. I think…” I feel different. When that used to happen before, I’d feel empty and shaky and sick. Now, the absence inside me is joined by a calm, like my body has settled. And yet. “I think there’s one more monster we need to deal with.” I take his hand. “I’ll need you for this one.”
“I’m sorry.” His body shudders as tears well in his eyes. “I’m sorry I hurt you, and that I didn’t stop when I saw the damage I was causing. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you to stop when you hurt me. I’m sorry I put on that damn chastity cage and let you do the same, when all my instincts were screaming not to.”
“Kane—”
“No.” He sobs. “I need to finish.”
“Okay.” I squeeze his hand again.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t bring you with me the first time I snuck out—even after Nova started giving you to the Elders and extracting my fluids. I should’ve taken you with me, but I thought you’d turn me in to her. I was sure you believed.”
“I did,” I say, the past tense more final than I mean.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t warn you before the SWAT team came and that I didn’t explain what I’d done. I should’ve been there for you. I doubted alone. I never gave you the time or space to doubt with me. I should have. And even though I doubted, I should have gone with you on your quest.”