The person on the other side of the door shares some insistent words with Erim, but Sloane cannot decipher them
“Who is it?” Sloane calls.
The whispering gets a little louder and then ceases suddenly. There’s a clicking of shoes on the stairs, and Kazue sticks his head onto the second floor. “It is I, Sloane.”
“Kazue.” Sloane tries to sit up and look more presentable.
“Oh no, no, no, please don’t disturb yourself for me!” His voice is high-pitched and frantic when she moves. The wound he got during the battle is now just a black scar across his head.
“How are you? How is Lapidis?”
“Both recovering, thanks to you, Summum Ponti.” His smile is wide and almost as tall as his hair. “The Midst owes you a great debt.” Erim stands behind him, his face flat and unimpressed.
“I’m just glad it’s over,” Sloane says.
Kazue’s eyes dart between her and Erim, and she realizes that he’s not here for her. “Erim was one of the first to volunteer to help me erect a memorial in Lapidis. I was hoping to consult him on a few matters there.” Kazue looks apologetic.
Erim stares at Sloane, clearly reluctant to leave. “You should go, of course,” she says.
“I can stay.” His eyes are intense with concern.
“I know you can.” She smiles up at him. “You’ve proven that.” She motions to eyes Kazue, whose face looks desperate for Erim’s guidance. “Go, build something that will honor our people. I’ll be right here.” He still looks uncertain. “And, you know, I could really use some more sleep.” Sloane stages a yawn, even drooping her eyelids for effect.
“Yes, you should rest more,” Erim declares, suddenly onboard with the plan’s healing advantages. Kazue claps his hands together and gives a satisfied sigh. His smile gets even bigger, which didn’t seem possible. “I’ll be back tonight, okay?” Erim says. Sloane nods.
After they’re gone, she morphs into her coziest pants, careful to keep Erim’s shirt on, with its soothing scent. She conjures up a warm bowl of mac and cheese with hotdogs, the comfiest of foods. She figures she’s earned it as Hubble settles against her.
For the first few seconds, Sloane wonders what she’s going to do with all the silence. She’s usually saddled with a babysitter; Charmitri, Ben, even Bahram. She doesn’t need one now that Esht is gone. She doesn’t need to wonder long; a storm of thought descends on her, centered around Esht’s last words.
Sloane’s first thought is that he can’t be right. Her mind is resistant to even consider it seriously. Esht was insane, for one. Also, the chances seem too coincidental to be real. As much as she wants to believe it’s not possible, something about the look on Esht’s dying face forces her to contemplate it. She can see his last moments so clearly when she closes her eyes. After his eyes softened from the shock, the fire that had been raging in them was extinguished in a blink. His arctic gray irises poured into his dilated pupils like a cleansing waterfall.
Sloane saw a flicker of purity in that moment as the ever-present voices in Esht’s head finally fell silent. She felt everything fall away in the slight tremble of his body as he was diminished to a person about to become nothing. Sloane believes it brought out a sort of honesty in Esht, a last grasp at humanity. She’s sure that whether his statement was true or not, he believed it was.
A new face comes to mind, and Sloane tries to shut it out just as quickly. There’s only one person capable of releasing Esht. The same man who had Sloane kidnapped when she defied him. The same man who chose Esht over all the other souls in The Midst.
Sloane’s mother never knew much about her father; they weren’t together long enough. But she always said he was older. Sloane shudders to think of it. That’s the only piece of the puzzle that doesn’t make sense; how her mom could have loved him. And she really did love him. Sloane knows that much. Sloane never understood why her mom idolized her father the way she did. Her mom could never say a bad thing about him. He always shone in a positive light. Sloane never thought he did anything to deserve it, and now she knows for sure. She struggles to connect them as the same man.
Compared to all she’s experienced in these last months, this wouldn’t be the craziest thing. But it still feels so impossible. As Sloane persists in her denial, sleep comes for her quickly and wraps her in senseless dark.
QUADRAGINTA QUINQUE
Hubble’s bark stuns Sloane awake, her body still writhing from a horrible nightmare about cracking gray skin and Erim’s anguished screams. Hubble barks again, and Sloane moves her hand around in the dark to locate and calm her. Even when Sloane’s fingers scoop into her fur, she keeps barking.
Sloane’s eyes strain in the dark as she acclimatizes to her room groggily. Her vision adapts to the pale blue light of the moon, outlining a figure at the top of the stairs. Sloane’s stomach jumps as Esht’s face flashes across her mind. She shuts it out; he’s gone. Her next breath focuses on slowing her pulse quickened by the startle.
“By all means, just come on in.” She pulls herself up into a sitting position, smoothing the comforter over her lap. The silhouette doesn’t answer, only shifts to lean upon the wall. Hubble remains on edge, a low growl rumbling in her chest. Sloane grips her fur tightly, wary that she might try to start a fight she wouldn’t win. “Well, you came all this way. Might as well spit it out.” She realizes how quiet her voice is in the space.
After a moment of silent contemplation, he speaks. “You killed my brother,” Sisiro says slowly. His voice is gravelly but unwavering. His head tilts to the side as if not believing his own words. “You killed my brother,” he repeats, maybe trying to get the incredulity out of his voice.
“He started it,” Sloane mutters.
Sisiro chuckles softly, an unnerving sound. “You killed my brother.” In place of his eyes are two tiny blue pinpricks, reflections of the low misty light.
“Is it sounding redundant yet?” Sloane snaps indignantly.
The amusement fades from his face, and he settles back comfortably into the darkest shadows. “Impudent child.” He hisses. The silence settles again, but this time he doesn’t seem very interested in talking.
That’s fine with her. She’s got some choice words in mind for him. An almost forgotten concern tugs at her. “Is Bahram okay?” No answer, no movement. Liquid heat pours into Sloane’s veins. “I swear if you hurt—”
“What?” Sisiro slinks forward to the foot of the bed, sending Sloane sliding back. “What will you do?” His sneer pulls back his lips to reveal teeth that look blackened in the dark. The tilted straight of his nose catches the paleness of the room. She seals her lips together, her turn to refuse him an answer. He makes a sound, a puff of released breath, disappointment. Sloane glowers at him.
He straightens and steps back, tilting his chin toward the misty light. “My brother and I were at odds from the moment he was born.” His dark cloak drags heavily on the floor. “We quarreled and battled so much in our earlier years, not like brothers should.” His eyes squint, and in any other person, it would look like sadness, but not him. “He became ill many years ago—an imbalance of the mind, you see.” He pauses, resting a bony hand on the stone balcony.
“Wonder where he gets that from,” Sloane mutters, with blatant disregard for his narrative.
He continues like she didn’t even speak. “Hard as I tried, I could not help him. I kept him in Obscuri for his well-being and the safety of others.” He looks directly at her now, his first actual acknowledgment of her presence. “He was deranged, spiteful, and hated me with every bit of his soul.” His eyes tighten on Sloane. “But he was still my brother.”
“I don’t care.” Sloane tries to make her words cutting. “He needed to be stopped.”
He scoffs. “You know nothing of these matters.”
“I know more than you think,” Sloane spits back.
Sisiro’s lined brow raises, asking her to enlighten him. She beckons him to her side. Her instincts scream as
he advances, but she swallows them, even as his weight sinks the edge of the bed at her knees. “Esht said something to me just before he died,” Sloane says.
She bolts forward and tears up Sisiro’s sleeve, revealing a forked scar tracing up his forearm—the same one in her mother’s picture. The feeling drains out of her hands as they drop to her lap.
“It’s true.” Sloane breathes. The rush in her ears is dizzying.
“He told you about my old war wound?” Sisiro laughs, rolling his sleeve back down. “How scandalous.”
“No,” Sloane mutters, hot anger rolling off of her. “He told me who you are.” That makes his breath pause, and he slips back into the shadows, concealing his face masterfully. It’s a place where the angle of the wall prevents the passage of light. It looks like he’s vanished completely. If it weren’t for the weight of his presence thickening the air like smog, Sloane might think she was alone.
“You knew your brother could expose you,” she says, “and you still set that monster loose.”
“I need never justify a thing to you.” Sisiro chuckles.
“I don’t want your justifications, Sisiro.” The covers bunch up in Sloane’s fists. “I have no use for your empty lies.” The words come tumbling out, uncontrollable and unchecked and unafraid. “I spent nineteen years thinking there was a piece of me missing. I wasted so much time wondering who my father was, why he left.” She looks up at the black spot where he hovers.
“So, thank you for disappearing. Thank you for never knowing me, for being ashamed of me. I mean it. Because if I knew my father was even a fraction of the sadistic prick you are, I’d never be able to look in the goddamn mirror.” The last word comes out as a shaky laugh, not because she’s scared, but because she’s quite out of breath. Nineteen years of pent-up rage has burst like a dam, spewing venom, cleansing her with an indescribable release.
Sisiro simmers silently in his corner as a weak laugh rolls out of her. “If you really didn’t want anyone to know your little secret, you should’ve killed Esht yourself.” Sloane leans forward, a hateful grin on her face. “I guess if you beat a dog enough, it’s bound to turn around and bite you, right?” The words are bitter rolling off her tongue. “And now, I guess you’ve either come to beg for forgiveness or avenge your brother. Since I’m sure you’re not the kind of man who would scrape up his knees, I’m going to guess it’s the latter.”
Hearing it out loud, Sloane is sure that insanity runs in this miserable family. “You don’t scare me. I want you to know that.” She nods, preparing for what he came here to do. She got her closure; told him what she needed to, for her. She’s confident this is what ultimate peace feels like. Maybe Seti will be in the next world, waiting for her. Sloane would like to see her again. “I’m ready,” Sloane says. “Let’s do this, and then you can go straight to Hell.”
Nothing. Sloane can only barely make out his features because he remains in the dark. The faint blue light reflects off the corner of his mouth as it turns upward in a sinister grin. A rumble grows in his chest, a sound like stones grinding together. Sisiro’s laughter ruptures, the sharpness making Sloane flinch.
“What?” she asks. Her cheeks burn when he replies with a roar of mirth. “What?” she yells. She grabs whatever’s closest to her and flings it at him. The vase shatters on the wall to his right, which just makes him laugh louder. “What are you laughing at?” she shrieks.
She tears herself out of bed and careens in his direction, cringing when the laughter becomes deafening. She’s going to claw his eyes out or strangle him, whichever will make him shut up the fastest. Just before her finger grazes his face, he vanishes, but his cackle still echoes off the walls, trapped in the room. She cups her ears, trying to shut out the ghastly sound, and when that doesn’t work, Sloane screams her throat raw, just to drown it out.
“Welcome to the family, my dear.”
Rhuso’s golden bird is perched on the short wall next to the stairs, high above Sloane. Her body is still humming, partly from the synthetic adrenaline and partly from the rough impact of the floor when her knees crumpled from exhaustion. The screaming, the charge, and the fury had taken too much out of her limited energy. But Sloane doesn’t mind the floor. At least Sisiro’s evil laughter isn’t in her head anymore. Though his parting words are.
Sloane tries to prevent her breathing from choking out as sobs, only forcing her lungs into more irregularity. Hubble tries a few consolation licks but resorts to bracing Sloane’s back when her attempts are unsuccessful. Hubble’s soft whine meshes with Sloane’s hollow breathing.
Then approaches the sound of feet on the stairs, taking them two at a time. He’s a little frantic at first; his hands fall on her ribs and back, gently probing for injury. He asks repeatedly if she’s hurt, and her head rolls back and forth once across the hard stone in response. His hands still, and he removes them silently.
She keeps her gaze low. She doesn’t want to see him. The dust grinds under his feet as he lowers himself to the ground, lining his face up with hers.
Not Rhuso, Erim.
Sloane relaxes at the smooth curves of his face, a reassuring difference from the angular edges she expected from Rhuso’s features. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to her that it would be Erim. She couldn’t pry her mind away from Rhuso, from her… brother.
Sloane’s gaze climbs the wall behind Erim, where the falcon had been perched. The animal is gone, probably flying through the night air, cutting the clouds back to his hominum.
Sloane’s eyes fall back to Erim, whose face is gently questioning. “It’s him,” she whispers, so quietly, it’s almost like she just outlined the words with her lips. But he must have heard her because his face falters, stretching his eyes wide. It isn’t longer than a moment as he neutralizes his face and pushes himself closer, so his body parallels hers. Their faces are only two inches apart, but they don’t touch, and neither makes any move to fill the gap. They just watch each other wordlessly.
Sloane sees such tenderness in the slight crinkles at the edges of Erim’s eyes and the apprehension in the slope of his brows. She can feel his protection just from the proximity of their bodies, the same as if his arms cocooned her.
He said once that he would never dare try to protect her. He’s a liar.
Sloane can see it’s difficult for him to resist the urge to reach for her. But she knows he won’t move closer or ask for anything more because that’s not what she needs. What she needs is this, a silent companion just to lie with in the dark, to ward off the monsters so she can rest. She needs someone trusted to gaze at as fuzziness slowly overtakes her mind. She needs a person who makes her unafraid of sleep because she knows no nightmares are waiting for her, not with him here.
Consciousness slowly reaches for Sloane, and at first, she stretches forward to grasp it. Then, memories of last night hit her like a bat swung into her head. All the pain, anxiety, and fear rush back, sending her into a paralyzing panic.
Reflexively she recoils, clawing back at the peaceful void of slumber. But it’s too far gone now. She’s beginning to wake and resists with everything she has. It’s all too much. She doesn’t want to go back. She wants the calm emptiness of sleep. All she can see as the morning comes closer is the darkness of Sisiro’s cloak and the glimmer on his teeth as he laughs at her.
Sloane wants familiar, she wants light, she wants safe.
And then, there he is, sitting on a bench in their park. The sun streams through the trees. Everything is bright with color, with life. Sloane settles at the sight of Adrian’s face. He looks so much better than when she saw him last. The dark circles under his eyes have diminished, and there is some color in his cheeks. His chocolate hair rustles slightly in the wind.
Sloane realizes that this is where she died. It seems like ages ago now. The playground must have reopened recently; the equipment is new. The yellow tunnel where Sloane was crushed has been replaced by a swing set. Looking at it now, no one would know it was the
site of such a horrific accident. Sloane supposes it’s just a part of the world moving forward, without her.
She sits beside Adrian, watching him work. He’s sketching a picture of the two of them sitting atop the yellow tunnel together. Sloane had hoped that whatever he was doing wouldn’t involve her, but she can hardly be disappointed. He looks back up to the scene before him and continues shading one of the trees.
A powerful gust of wind brushes a lock of hair in front of his eyes, and Sloane reflexively reaches up to clear it from his face. The instant her finger touches his forehead, an electric shock explodes between them, flinging both backward.
Sloane is on her back, staring at the blue sky. She leaps to her feet, momentarily impressed with her newly trained reflexes. The blast knocked them both off the bench and into the dirt. Adrian is sprawled on the ground, holding his head with one hand, groaning. He sits up slowly and looks around, utterly dazed and perplexed.
People around him are staring. One lady asks him if he’s alright. He waves her off, thanking her for her concern. He crawls to retrieve his pencil and sketch pad and then stands. When he turns Sloane’s way, he freezes, staring at her.
Her.
Not through her, not past her, but directly into her eyes. Sloane’s breath catches; she’s shaken by the forgotten and now unfamiliar feeling of his gaze, his focus on her. His detached facade is broken into pieces of horror, then softened into bewilderment, longing.
“Sloane?” he whispers, his lip trembling.
“Adrian?” She gasps.
He lurches forward, closing the distance between them. Sloane clamps her eyes shut, bracing for the unpleasant, frigid feeling of him rushing through her, thoroughly unprepared for his warm lips on hers.
Shit.
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