Page 186 of The Silent War

Whoever dressed her had done it badly; they didn’t know her, didn’t know where the fabric always rubbed. I ripped at the neckline like a man drowning, threw the stupid pearls so hard it bounced against the chapel kept rolling.

“Wake up.” I put my mouth over hers and breathed like I could force air her. “Emilia, wake up.”

Her lips stayed cold.

The silence got louder, which was a trick silence knew. It filled your ears with a pressure that felt like drowning.

I pressed my thumb into her sternum, searching for a rise, a betrayal. Nothing. I slid both hands under her shoulders and tried to lift her out of the box altogether. The coffin tilted an inch and slammed back.

“If she dies, I die,” I told the lid. I told the flowers. “Do you hear me?”

If she dies, we die. If she dies?—

If she?—

If—

I wasn’t good at prayers. I had learned the wrong ones. I had learned the kind that asked for blood. My hands shook so hard I had to lace my fingers together.

But I said them anyway, the ones with no words.

I kissed her blue mouth again.

“Breathe,” I begged into the cold. “Please, baby. You can have all of mine.”

There was no air without her. No reason to keep the gentle parts of me alive.

There were footsteps somewhere far away. Men who foldedwomen into boxes and called it a rite. Men who would lower her and speak about legacy.

They would put her under and call it order. They would call it tradition and shake hands over the grave. They would pretend they hadn’t killed a living thing to keep a crest alive.

“You can’t have her,” I told the room, the candles, god, if he was skulking there. “You can’t.”

I pulled her hands out of the folded pose someone had forced on them and rubbed them hard, hating the way the fingers didn’t hold mine back. I pressed my mouth to each knuckle, to the lines where her rings should sit. “Come back. You hear me? Come back.”

The world tilted again.

The ceiling went dark. The flowers lurched at me

I jolted awake, my breathing sharp. The room—our room was quiet. There was a weight against my ribs.

Emilia.

She lay on her side between us, cheek pressed to the pillow. One knee hooked, the sheet caught at the top of her thigh.

“Feel,” Luca said, his hand was clamped on my forearm.

He took my shaking hand and dragged it, flat against her ribs. He pressed until my palm had to register it.

A beat.

Another.

Alive.

My mouth opened but I couldn’t speak. Luca’s hand stayed on mine, until he could feel my pulse come down, and the shake turned into a tremor into a hold.

“What,” he said, not asking. He didn’t need the words. He wanted me to say them. To make them small.