by Kyla Stone
Her body began to tremble, to shake. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head.
“Amelia!” he cried.
Amelia collapsed.
33
Micah
Micah clawed his way up the steps. He fell to his knees beside Amelia’s seizing body. Her limbs jerked and flopped, spasms shaking her from head to toe. Spittle welled in the corners of her mouth.
He turned her carefully on her side, making sure she didn’t choke on her tongue. He prayed frantically, helplessly. Don’t let her die, God, not now. After all this. Not now, when we’re finally safe.
Gabriel knelt on her other side, his expression frozen in horror. His shoulder was stained red. Blood dripped from a gash in his forehead. His bottom lip was split, the left side of his face swollen, purplish bruises in the shape of fingers ringing his throat.
“Are you okay?” Micah asked.
“I’m fine,” Gabriel grunted. “Help her.”
After an endless minute, Amelia’s body stiffened, then went still.
He checked her pulse. Erratic but present. Her heart was beating. She was alive. But how badly had the seizure damaged her brain?
He shrugged off his jacket and used the sleeve to stop the blood flowing from a jagged cut across her left temple. Blood streaked her hair, her forehead, her neck. Her red silk dress was tattered and torn, stained with splotches of blood and smears of soot, ash, and dirt.
“She got hit in the head,” Gabriel said.
“Amelia!” Willow raced up the steps. She dropped to her knees beside Micah.
Finn lumbered up behind her, his face drawn as he cradled his right arm in a sling. “What can we do to help?”
Micah shook his head, momentarily unable to speak.
“She needs a doctor,” Fiona said, coming up behind them, her face so pale her freckles stood out like drops of blood. “She could have bleeding in the brain. I’ll find someone.”
“Thank you,” Micah managed as Fiona darted away.
Several long, terrible minutes passed. Amelia didn’t wake up. The cold snaked inside him, chilling him to the core. Wet flakes melted in his hair and dripped down the lenses of his glasses. He didn’t wipe it away. The snow sucked the sound out of the world; everything seemed muted, distant.
The four of them knelt around her, standing vigil, oblivious to the rest of the Sanctuary, to the war newly won. No one felt victorious. No one felt anything but dread and fear and desperation.
Micah made every deal he could think of with God in those minutes. If only she would live, if only she would be okay, he would trade his life for hers in a heartbeat.
He could only watch her, fighting the feeling that he was teetering on the edge of a vast pit, about to fall. He loved her. He loved her with his whole heart. If something happened to her, if she didn’t wake up, if she wasn’t okay…
“Where’s Silas?” Gabriel asked gruffly. “He should be here when she wakes up.”
Micah stiffened.
Willow caught the despair in Micah’s eyes. The blood drained from her face. “Micah! What happened?”
Micah took off his wet glasses. He held them limply in his hands. He stared down at Amelia with glassy, unfocused eyes. The words crumbled like ash in his mouth. “The only way to deactivate the last cannon was to do it manually. Silas, he—he volunteered. There were over twenty soldiers. But he made it inside the tower. He did it. If he hadn’t, that cannon would’ve destroyed the airjets. Sloane’s soldiers would have executed us. We wouldn’t be here right now.”
“That’s not an answer!” Willow cried. She seized his upper arm, squeezing so hard her nails dug through his shirt into his skin. “Where is he?”
Micah winced. Sorrow swelled deep inside him. “Two soldiers with pulse guns went up the tower right behind him. I was covering him. I shot the first one. But the second—he got to Silas before I could stop him.”
“You’re wrong,” Willow said. “You made a mistake. Things happen so fast in a battle. He’s just hurt. He’s not—”
Micah shook his head with quiet finality. “He’s dead.”
Willow’s eyes went wide and glittering with shock. “We won. We did it. It’s not supposed to be this way. It’s not supposed to end like this.” Her face crumpled. “He’s not supposed to die…”
Finn wrapped his good arm around Willow. “I’m so sorry.”
For a moment, she froze. She sucked in deep, shuddering breaths, shaking her head. Then she wilted into him, letting him crush her to his broad chest.
“I know,” Finn said into her hair, tears slipping down his cheeks. “I know.”
“You did your best.” Gabriel reached out and touched Micah’s shoulder. “After Amelia is stabilized, I’ll go find him. We have to—he needs to be buried.”
Micah wiped fiercely at his eyes. He shoved his glasses into place with quivering fingers. This was the price of war. Of violence and greed and selfishness. Good people died. Even in victory, the cost was always devastating. It was always too high. Always. “I’ll go with you.”
“And us,” Finn said for him and Willow both.
They huddled around Amelia’s prone body, their shoulders hunched against the white snow falling like a shroud upon the battle-scarred ground. They watched, waited, prayed. God, don’t let her die, Micah prayed again and again, his lips moving, silent and feverish.
They had fought and endured and sacrificed. They’d lost too much already. They couldn’t bear anything more.
Amelia’s eyelids fluttered. A minute later, her eyes truly opened. She was groggy, unfocused, barely conscious. Her gaze flitted, wild and frantic, as she searched for someone she knew, searched for an anchor to bring her back to herself—
It took her a long time to settle on each face surrounding her, her gaze clearing as she recognized her friends—Micah, Gabriel, Willow, and Finn.
“Benjie,” she croaked.
“He’s safe on one of the airjets,” Finn said softly, because Willow was beyond speaking. “Celeste is at the compound. Your mother is safe inside the governor’s quarters.”
Amelia’s pale eyes darkened. “My father,” she rasped.
“Dead,” Gabriel said. “Cerberus and Sloane have been arrested.”
Amelia blinked. Her gaze flitted past them, still searching.
Micah’s stomach lurched. It was too much. He wasn’t sure if he could bear it.
A line appeared between her white-blond brows. “My brother.”
“You need your rest now—” Gabriel started, but Micah cut him off with a sharp look. She needed to know. It wasn’t right to keep it from her, not even now.
“I’m so very sorry, Amelia,” he said gently, his throat raw. He would rather have taken a bullet than speak the words. But he said them anyway. “Silas didn’t make it.”
She made a sound like a wounded animal.
“Fiona’s coming with two medics and a stretcher,” Finn said.
Micah barely heard him. He didn’t take his eyes off Amelia’s stricken face. He longed to pull her into his arms, to sweep her tangled, bloodied hair back from her face and offer whatever comfort he could give her. But he didn’t know if she wanted it.
Her desperate gaze darted around the circle, then settled on Micah, her eyes huge and raw and full of pain. She reached for him. With a soft moan, she slipped her arms around his neck and buried her head against his chest.
Startled, for a frozen moment, Micah didn’t move, his hands limp and uncertain at his sides. He couldn’t ease her pain, couldn’t change the past or bring Silas back. All he could do was hold her. He enveloped her in his arms, cradling her like a small child, and pulled her to him.
“Tell me something…beautiful.” Amelia whimpered, her eyelids fluttering. She was slipping back into unconsciousness. “Please…”
Micah looked down at her, his heart filling with too many things to name them all—grief and sorrow and regret, but also hope and relief, and something else, something deep inside his so
ul, for this girl that he couldn’t imagine living without.
She couldn’t hear him anymore. But it didn’t matter. He said the words anyway. “I love you.”
34
Amelia
Amelia spent the next three days under observation in the Sanctuary hospital. She’d suffered a cerebral contusion and bleeding between her brain and skull. It took nine stitches to bind the cut at her temple. Despite her medication, she’d suffered a post-traumatic seizure caused by the injury to her head in the battle with Bale.
As after her worst seizures, she was weak and thick-headed, like her brain was stuffed with cotton, and suffered moments of confusion.
But those weren’t the worst moments. The worst moments were every time she woke and was forced to remember anew that Silas was dead.
In the hospital room, Benjie refused to leave Amelia’s side. He climbed right on the bed and buried himself beneath the covers. He wrapped his thin arms around her ribs, rested his chin on her shoulder, and gazed up at her with those huge eyes, his thick hair sticking up all over his head making him look even younger than he was.
“It’s okay to cry, Miss Amelia,” he whispered, his breath hot against her ear. “Remember?”
“I do,” she managed to whisper back. She remembered the night in the art museum after her last seizure. How Benjie had snuggled inside her sleeping bag with her, how she’d sung Brahms’ “Lullaby” to him as they’d both wept long into the night, grieving for all the things they’d lost.
“Crying doesn’t mean you’re not strong,” Benjie said now, repeating what she’d told him. “Feelings are part of what makes you, you and me, me. When you miss someone, tears help you get your feelings out. Like how I cry when I miss my mom and Zia.”
“I know, baby.” She pulled him close and kissed the top of his soft head. She looked into his sweet face, his dark eyes so filled with love and sadness. Her heart cracked open.
Tears leaked down her face and dripped off her chin. She let them come. She let the sorrow come, let it break over her in waves. And then she was gasping, sobbing, clutching Benjie to her like a lifeline.
She’d lost her brother and her father on the same day. Her father whom she’d loathed and adored and feared. And her brother, whom she’d adored ever since she could remember, every part of him, even his sharp eyes and smirking smile and snark.
“I miss him,” she choked out. “I miss him so much.”
Silas had died a hero. Someday, that would give her immense comfort. Today, it meant little beside the towering mountain of her grief.
Her brother, who used to stick out his tongue and make silly faces when the tension in their house threatened to break them both. Her brother, who chose to bear the brunt of their father’s wrath to protect her. Her brother, who always defended her, who always had her back, who—beneath his tough, spiky armor—only longed to be loved.
She wept for that boy. She wept for a world without him in it. She wept for herself, for Benjie, for her friends, and all that she’d lost.
Losing a person you loved meant you lost a chunk of your heart, raw and pulsing and elemental. You weren’t yourself after.
You had to learn to live without that person, like learning to live without a limb. But you also had to learn to live within your own skin again. You were the same and not the same.
You were less, somehow. Diminished. Colors weren’t as bright. The sun wasn’t as warm. Everything was dulled, dimmed, lessened. But it wasn’t the world that changed. It was you.
When her tears finally subsided hours later, Benjie was sleeping. He slept curled up in a ball, his small hand clutching Amelia’s, his mouth slightly opened, his sweet breath warm against her cheek.
Benjie refused to leave her side, except for when Willow forced him to eat or go to the bathroom. The heat of his tiny body nestled next to hers was the only thing that kept her tethered to the earth those first few days.
That and Micah’s constant presence in an armchair at her bedside, as loyal and faithful as ever.
After three days of staring blankly at the ceiling tiles, the doctors released her with strict instructions to rest.
Her mother was waiting to see her. But Amelia wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
Instead, she only wanted to be alone. She fled to the quiet of her quarters in the capitol, to the butterfly garden on her terrace. Here, it was quiet. Here was the closest thing to peace she’d found since her sun-warmed music room.
It seemed a lifetime since she’d stepped foot in that place. There were too many heart-wrenching memories back there. But here on the enclosed terrace, there was light and beauty and life.
Among the green and verdant plants, yellow lilies strained toward the artificial sun, while lavender and burnt-orange orchids entwined like long-lost lovers. Delicate bride-white honeysuckles bloomed along a trellis to her right. Glazed ceramic pots at her feet held sprays of bleeding hearts, their heart-shaped, pale pink petals as fragile and easily bruised as her own.
Her legs felt heavy as lead, but she didn’t sit. Her hands felt strange, aching and shaky, but she refused to let that deter her. She was desperate for the release she found only in her music.
Amelia picked up the violin from the mosaic table with trembling fingers. She felt the familiar heft and shape of the instrument, from the chinrest across the lower and upper boat to the fingerboard to the scroll, each part more familiar than the curves of her own body.
She began to play her favorite song—Bach’s Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D Minor.
The bow scraped and screeched against the strings. She made sounds, ugly and raw—not notes. Not music.
Her fingers wouldn’t work properly. They wouldn’t make the correct forms. They were rigid and quivering, alien appendages she didn’t recognize. A strange feeling pulsed through her hands. Shivering vibrations traveling through her nerves when her brain ordered her muscles to obey her commands.
She couldn’t play a single note correctly. The bow felt bizarre and foreign in her hands, no longer a part of her.
For several moments, she played shrill, anguished notes to match the anguish in her heart. But she couldn’t bear the horrible sounds. It was wrong. It was all wrong.
She set down the violin, her hands quivering. She stretched them out in front of her in growing horror. In the hospital, Dr. Ichpujani had said the tremors might never go away. They could be permanent.
She had still been dazed from grief and the after-effects of the seizure. She hadn’t understood what it meant.
Now she did. The seizures had finally taken something precious, something irreplaceable.
A kaleidoscope of butterflies took flight. They fluttered in the air around her, their wings glimmering in spectacular shades of aqua, cobalt blue, black, teal, scarlet, and sunflower-yellow.
Tears pricked her eyes at the startling loveliness of it all, so beautiful it hurt.
She felt her already cracked heart shatter inside her chest.
Maybe it was wrong to grieve for her music, surrounded by so much death, with her father and her brother gone. But she did.
She grieved for them all.
35
Amelia
Someone knocked on Amelia’s door. “Elise Black is here to see you,” the AI said. “Shall I let her in?”
Amelia stiffened. Her gaze dropped to the violin lying on the mosaic table beside her, already gathering dust. It had been seven days since she’d attempted to play, seven days since she’d isolated herself in her quarters and refused to see a soul.
She hadn’t left her suite since she’d been released from the hospital a week ago. Her legs were still wobbly, her brain aching from the seizure. Her hands still quivered like they were electrified by some invisible force.
Her friends had attempted to visit every day—Micah, Willow and Benjie, Gabriel, Finn, and Celeste. And her mother. But she’d turned them all away. She was running out of excuses.
Three days ago, she’d opened one of
the glass windows of the butterfly garden and listened to the world outside the screen.
Once the shock of the battle had worn off, the reality of the cure had set in. Fear gave way to hope, to joy, to life. She couldn’t be a part of that joy, that life. Not right now. It felt like not ever.
A black-and-teal butterfly landed on the violin’s chinrest. Its satiny wings undulated slowly, iridescent in the artificial sunlight. She watched it for a long moment. So much beauty in such a tiny creature.
She couldn’t keep hiding from the world. She knew that.
“Yes,” Amelia said. “Let her in.”
A moment later, she heard her mother’s graceful steps behind her. “I know you’re angry with me,” her mother said. “I know I deserve it. Please, don’t hate me.”
The artificial sunlight warmed her bare arms. Her silk evening robe rustled against her skin. Outside the glass, the sun was setting. The mountains loomed purple against the gold-and-scarlet-striped sky.
“I’m sorry.” Sorrow and regret choked her mother’s voice. “If I hadn’t done what I did—maybe Silas would still be alive.”
Don’t act like you loved him. The thought was a bitter, ugly one. She turned around to face her mother. “He’s dead. My brother is dead.”
Dark shadows like bruises pooled beneath her mother’s red-rimmed eyes. Her normally shiny auburn hair hung lank and dull around her wan face. “I’ve had a lot of time to think over these last few weeks. You’re right, Amelia. You’re right about everything.
“My son had his father in him, and because I loathed his father, I couldn’t love him, not like I should have. I tried. Please believe me, I tried. I—I love him now.”
“It’s too late,” she whispered.
A tear slipped down her mother’s pale cheek. “I know, honey. I know that. I’ve done so many things I regret. I failed Silas. I failed the people who trusted me. In the end, I even failed you. You’re all I have left, Amelia. You’re all I have.” She gazed at Amelia, her hands clasped, her eyes beseeching. “Please, forgive me.”