Page 28

My lips tremble, sweat beading on my face.

The corners of his eyes turn down, and I wait for him to take pity on me, to change his mind and end it here. But no. His green eyes go wide and glassy with hunger, and all I can see are Reggie Junior’s starved green eyes, the way they sparked to life when he climbed on top of me on that cold floor.

I try to think of other things—home, the wriggly lines on my maps, Kelt—but my mind is scattered, spreading and connecting the fear and the worry, the past, the pain seizing my breath.

He takes one backward step after another, sliding into the corner next to the stack of flat rocks, then picks one up, requiring two hands for the task. He pulses it up and down, weighing its potential for pain, for breaking. Smiling to himself, he returns to my side and plops the huge gray rock down on my chest.

I don’t feel the impact—not at first. It takes a moment to catch up to reality, for the pain to travel to my head, but when it gets there, the feeling of the stone smashing into my ribs…it’s nauseating. He piles more rocks on top of me, covering my body and strapping them down with stretchy vines. Each one is unnaturally heavy, each as painful and cold as the last.

When I’m buried under gray rocks and near breathless from the inexplicable crushing weight, he taps a finger over every rock, and the real pain starts. It drives into me with intention—digging, searching, shredding everything in its path. Though the rocks are motionless and smooth, my skin splits under the assault, as though they were opening me up to find the magic they seek. My dress sticks to my skin in bloody patches, and my necklace burns against my chest.

My mouth dries out, every taste bud rough and raw. I thrash beneath the clamps, the pain reaching the folds of my brain, flames licking my thoughts. A vision saves me—and tortures me.

Kelt is clamped onto a table like mine, his face a comfort until Mallace drops a rock onto it. The crunch of bone vibrates through me. His body jolts, then droops. Blood drips from the jagged pieces of his cracked skull. Children in charcoal jumpsuits watch, unflinching, hands folded in their laps and not even a shadow of emotion on their faces.

Only the heave of my stomach brings me back, the bitter burn and rise of acid and bile and mucus, up and up and up until I turn my head and feel the warmth sliding down my cheek, followed by skimming tears. Shaking and shivering and sending air reeking of blood and vomit in and out with shallow breaths, I go somewhere far, far away. Past the Centress’ midnight-calm face in the corner, past the granite walls, out into the woods, to nature. And deeper. The pain becomes a distant problem. My thoughts disintegrate, leaving only bliss.

“Did you see that?” the Centress asks in one of my lucid moments. “Keep going.”

“That’s—I can’t extract that,” Mallace says.

I don’t know how long it goes on for. Every time the serum wears off and my scream starts to surface, Mallace shoves his knuckles back into my mouth and forces more down my throat. I bite down on the meat of his fingers, eventually tasting blood, but it doesn’t stop him. When it’s all too much, when instinct is lost and every breath is a conscious effort, I slink into the recesses of my mind. I cycle through the phases of pain and escape until rage is all I have left. Useless, squandered rage.

It poured while I was inside the temporary school getting intimate with pain until my mind shattered. The ground is muddy and slippery with wet leaves, and drops still scatter from the trees with every gust of wind. Eli and Kaleida should be back soon. Mallace is steps away, watching me as I wait for Kelt. He doesn’t restrain me, surely knowing I can’t get far with cuffed ankles and a battered body, but the threat of his presence knits through me, the pain enduring.

The Centress tows Kelter out the door and sets him on a path in my direction before sliding in next to Mallace.

Kelt and I are pulled together by defeat. Fresh blood drips from the side of his mouth, but no cuts are in sight, no bruises. What did they do to him? His sandy waves lick up around his neck in half curls, and I see the Kelter I’ve always known. I’m blinded by the day’s pain and the seduction of familiarity.

In lieu of a greeting, I lift my cuffed hands to his face and wipe the blood away with my thumb. The hazel of his eyes is subdued, the life in him all sucked out. His blood trickles around, past my rings and down my thumb like a red-carpeted spiral staircase.

“Your eyes are red,” he says, reaching for my cheek.

Probably from all the tears I used up succumbing to the pain. Or the blood vessels that burst with the upheaval of my stomach.But that’s too…truthful. I shy away from his hand, afraid of his touch, the return of affection.

“They’re indigo,” I joke, reaching into the depths of denial and trying to take us past the tension.

I want everything to go back to how it was. I want to kneel in the dirt of my forest and add to my maps with Kelter by my side, building mazes for bugs. I want to spend Saturday nights at the laundromat, spinning coins while he tugs at the threads in the knee-hole of his jeans and spoils the ends of scary movies I refuse to watch. I want to trudge upstairs after work, only to find him leaning against my door, dinner in one hand and two cups of coffee balanced on the railing. I want real food. I want books and blankets and a bathtub.

I wanthome.

“Ever...” He sighs, too heavily for the lightness I’m seeking. “I didn’t mean that your life in Caldera wasn’t good enough. I only—I want you here too.”

I stiffen from the surge of scalding blood, my hands balling into painful fists. Each word is a whispered hiss. “What kind of life do you think you can have here, Kelt? Because it doesn’t make sense. These people want us dead.”

My eyelids are dams about to burst. I can’t imagine a part of his past so painful that he’d rather find a way to live here. Or die here. Maybe he wasn’t as happy as I thought…

“What the fuck was so bad about spending the last year with me? About hiking in the rain? Cursing at the stars?” I cut open my own scars, willingly bleeding. The wind whips my hair across my face, a temporary shelter to bleed in private.

A wealth of answers must run through his head as his eyes hunt through mine for the right one, but none of them are good enough, it seems, because silence is all he has to offer.

I stare back, a thousand words in none.

He leans down and rests his forehead on mine, and I don’t push him away. I don’t pull him close. I do nothing, like he does nothing to get us out of here.

The walk back is solemn, saturated with raw, lingering pain. Back inside the black room, Eli’s deep brown eyes don’t leave my body, soaking up the bloody cuts through the new slits in my dress. I stand in front of him, waiting for my cuffs to be removed, no defiance left in me. His face is rigid except for the twitch under his eye, his neck pulled so tight that every swallow looks painful.

He runs his hands down my blood-smeared arms, his fingers trembling over the soft start of scabs. His gaze falls to my chest, to my heart, as if he could hear its crestfallen beat. I close my eyes, waiting for the moment his touch will turn rough and awaken those slumbering parts of me he brings out, sharing pain and rage right through his fingertips. Maybe I even want it, that jolt of life. Maybe I crave his darkness to help me forget.