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Leo stares down at me, either occupied by the hint of my bare chest or my struggling porcelain fingers, then at his own cigarette. “What are you doing?” he asks and he takes a slow drag. He sputters only once, which gives me time to have my own inhale—both cigarettes at once, a tiny fire in my lungs—and when he recovers, Leo glances back at me sheepishly.

“Cass,” he whispers. A warning, maybe. A sad little note, recognition that I’m pathetic for wanting him right now

I’ve won the battle with the buttons. I throw my shirt violently on the ground. “What?”

I’m panting. I can’t stop breathing hard.

He comes and he holds me. Wraps his hand around my neck, presses my head close into him. I smell him, sweat, tobacco. I feel the warmth of him. But I can’t relax. It feels so much easier to give him my body than to let him see me cry.

I want to pull away. Want him to just fuck me. Want everything to be over, want to sleep and never wake up.

“Everything will be alright,” he says, like you’d say to a child.

But it won’t be. We both know it. And death feels so much closer than it should.

“All this and we haven’t even gotten in yet,” I whisper. “Are you scared? Scared that it’ll be worse in the University itself?”

He doesn’t answer but I feel him tense, and I wonder if I’ve said something stupid: if none of this scares him, and none of it is as intense as the rest of England is.

And then he says it outright. He takes my hand—the new one, and I can’t feel his touch, but I am sure he is squeezing the porcelain hard—and he looks at me with pity, and a bit of hard-to-hide anger. “You would have died out there,” he said. “Nemean Lion in the wild? Arm gone? Infection would have festered. You would have died slowly.”

I bite my tongue.

He sees something in my face that makes him roll his eyes. “Oh, I am not stupid, Cass. I will be training to become cannon fodder. I know this. But if I train hard enough, I might actually have a shot at surviving. At lasting longer than a few more stressful, horrible years. London has baths. Food. Actual safety.”

I open my mouth and he pushes my lips closed with a finger. “And don’t say all of those luxuries come from people outside the wards, because I know that. I lived it, and lived it longer than you. You would be a hypocrite for trying to convince me of anything else when you have lived happily here for years. Don’t act like you weren’t given a choice. You could walk out those wards and never return. Stick to your morals and say, ‘I relinquish London’s safety, because it is built on the back of suffering.’ But you would be an idiot, and we both know that. Your sacrifice would stop nothing.”

He puts his hands around my waist. He starts undoing my pants. I let him.

Then he leans in, breath hot against my neck as he whispers, “Neither of us are under any illusion that this place is good. I’ve already told you I plan to be ruthless. I plan to survive. And I think you’re better than me in some regards, Cass—yes, even after Bellamy. Because you were right. I thought you should leave them both. Save yourself.” He pauses. “I think you would do well to be more selfish.”

Which is insane to me, because I have never felt anything but selfish. But Leo is and has always been putting himself first. I realised it the first day we came here—he was using me for information, perhaps is still using me, like I know more than what I’ve told him—and I think I forgot about that. I saw his desire and his niceness and believed for a moment it might be more than something physical.

He is telling me now, almost outright, that Leo Shaw will always come first.

Any sane man would stop this right here. Would set a boundary and walk away and preserve what little peace was remaining.

“Do you—like me?” I ask. “As a person, Shaw, because I know you like my body.”

He looks at me for a long time, contemplating—or formulating, I think. I half expect him to say yes, as if he’s worried I won’t take my clothes off for him otherwise. But he says, “In all honesty, I don’t know,” and I like him all the more for it. “But I don’t think you know if you like me either.”

He smiles like he’s caught me in a lie, and I snort. “Tell me something about yourself.”

He laughs. “Why?”

“I don’t know a damn thing about you. Not really. I can hardly determine if I like you or not.”

He plops down on the bed—and this is not, I think, how he wanted to spend the night. “You know what I think about this place.”

“Why did you choose to come here?” I ask.

He grimaces and shakes his head. “You know why.”

“No,” I say. “I know England is infested. But I don’t know why you’d wilfully risk your life for a city that exploits that fear. Even for the luxuries, I just. . .”

He is smiling like we’re discussing our happiest memories. Is it a barricade, that smile? A defence against all the hurt in his heart?

“Oh, it’s very simple, actually,” he smiles, clasps his hands together. “There’s no one left that I love.”